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j 1

THE

GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

iobd.

BY THE AUTHORS OF

UEADY-MONEV MORTIBOY," " THIS SON OF VULCAN," " MY LITTLE UlUL
"WITH HARP AND CllOWN," "THE CASE OE MR. LUCRAKT," ETC.

TORONTO:

HUNTER,' ROSE & COMPANY

1876.

KnteroU according to the Act of tlie Par-
linnuint 01 Canada, in tlic year ono tliousand
C'lslit hundred and SBvontv-six, by Huntkh
KOSK & Co., in the Olllce of tin; Minister of
Asnculture.

Q.L

: n

ft 'L {

IIUNTER, ROSE & CO..

PRINTKRS AND JiLNUEK.S,
TORONTO.

;:}^pi^ ; '/

THE

GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

vte:

fiologiic.

i^^]

-^^P The speaker, who was leading by half a length,
'^ turned in his saddle and looked at his companion.

" Push on," growled the chief, who was a man of few words.

"If you were not so intolerably conceited about the value of
your words— hang it, man, you are not the Poet Laureate !—
you might give your reasons why we should not camp where
we are. The sun will be down in two hours ; the way is lon<>-
the wind is cold, or will be soon. This pilgrim has tightened
his belt to stave off the gnawing at his stomach ; here is run-
ning water, here is wood, here is everything calculated to charm
the poetic mind even of Captain Ladds — "

"Eoad ! " interrupted his fellow-traveller, pointing alono- the
track marked more by deep old wheel-ruts, grown over ^with
grass, than by any evidences of engineering skill. " Roads
lead to places ; places have beds ; beds are warmer than o-rass
— no rattlesnakes in beds ; miners in hotels — amusino- felFows
miners." '^ *

" If ever I go out again after buffaloes, or bear, or moun-
tain-deer, or any other game whatever which this great conti-
nent offers, with a monosyllabic man, may I be pondemned to
another two months of buffalo steak without Worcester sauce
such as I have had already ; may I be poisoned with bad Bour-
bon wliisky ; may I never again see the sweet shady side of
Pall Mall; may I — "

Till-: GOIJJKN lUJTTEJlKLV

Here lie stopped suddenly, for want of imagination to com-
plete the curse.

The first speaker was a young man of four-and-twenty, the
age which is to my sex what eighteen is to the other, because
at four-and-twenty youth and manlu)od meet. He of four-and-
twenty is yet a youth, inasmuch as women are still angels, every
dinner is a feast, every man of higher rank is a demigod, and
every book is true. He is a man, inasmuch as he has the firm
step of manhood, he has passed through his calf-love, he knows
what chxret means, and his heart is set upon the thing of which
boys care nothing. He is a youth, because he can still play a
game of football and rejoice amazingly in a boat-race ; he is a
man, because he knows that these things belong to the past,
and that to concern oneself seriously with pthletics when you
can no longer be an athlete in the games is to put yourself on
the level of a rowing coach or the athletic critic of a sporting
paper.

Being only four-and-twenty, the speaker was in high spirits.
He was also hungry. He was always both. What has life
better to otfer than a continual flow of animal spirits and a
perpetual appetite 1 He was a tall, slight, and perhaps rather
a weedy youth, a little too long of leg, a little too narrow in the
beam, a little spare about the shoulders ; but a youth of a
ruddy and a cheerful countenance. To say that the lines of his
ftice were never set to gravity would be too much, because I
defy any man to laugh when he is sleeping, eating, or drinking.
At all other times this young man was ready to laugh without
stopping. , Not a foolish cackle of idiotic vacuity such as may
be heard in Earlswood Asylum, or at a tea-party to meet the
curate ; but a cheerful bubble of mirth and good-humour, proof
that the spirit within took everything joyously, seeing in every
misadventure its humorous r.ide, and in every privation its
absurdity.

The other who rode beside him was some years older at
least. A man of thirty-five, or perhaps more ; a man with a
hatchet-face — nose and forehead in one straight line ; long chin
and long upper lip in another ; face red with health as well as
bronzed with the sun ; a good honest face, supernaturally
grave, grave beyond all understanding ; lips that were always
tightly closed ; eyes which sometimes sparkled in response to

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kil
dil
kil
ei

THK GOLDEN BUTTKRFLY.

some genial thought, or biihbled over at some joke of his com-
panion, but which as a rule were like gimlets for sternness, so
that strangers, especially stranger servants — the nigger of
Jamaica, the guileless Hindoo of his Indian station, and other
members of the inferior human brotherhood — trembled exceed-
ingly when they met those eyes. Captain Ladds was accord-
ingly well served, as cold reserved men generally are. Man-
kind take everything unknown |)?o terribili, for something
dreadful, and until we learn to know a man, and think we
know him, he is to be treated with the respect due to a possible
enemy. Bostis means u stranger, and it is for strangers that
we keep our brickbats.

People who knew Ladds laughed at this reputation. They
said the gallant captain was a humbug ; they preteh«led that he
was as gentle as a turtledove ; beneath those keen eyes, they
said, and behind that sharp hatchet-face, lurked the most
amiable of dispositions. At any rate, Ladds was never known to
thrash a native servant, or to swear more than is becoming and
needful at a syce, while his hatchet-face had been more than
once detected in the very act of looking as soft and tender as a
young mother's over her first-born. The name of this cavalier
was short and simple. It was Thomas Ladds. His intimate
friends called him Tommy.

They were in California, and were not buffalo-hunting now,
because there is not a buffalo within five hundred miles of
Sacramento. Their buffalo-hunting was over, having been accom-
panied by sucli small hardships as have been already alluded
to. They rode along a track which was as much like a road
as Richmond Park is like the Forest of Arden. They were
mounted on a pair of small nervous mustangs ; their saddles
were the Mexican saddles used in the country, in front of which
was the never-failing horn. Round this was wound the horse-
hair lariette, which serves the Westerij Nimrod for lassoing by
day and for keeping off snakes at night, no snake having ever
been known to cross this barrier of bristly horsehair. You
might as well expect a burgling coolie, smeared with oil, and
naked, to effect his escape by crawling through a hedge of
prickly pear. Also, because they were in a foreign land, and
wished to be in harmony with its institutions, they wore im-
mense steel spurs, inlaid with silver filigree, and furnished with

Till-: (J()M)lv\ r.lJTTMTlFLY.

"lobs" attached to thoni, wliich jangled and danced to make
nu'l<Mly, just as if they formed i)art of an ilhisti'ation to a
Christmas hook. Boots, of course, tliey wore, and the artistic
instinct wliich, a year before, had converted the younger man
into a thing of beauty and a joy for the whole Park in the
afternoon, now impelled him to assume a cummerbund of scarlet
silk, with white-tasselled fringes, the like of which, perhaps,
had never before been seen on the back of Californian mus-
tang. His companion was less ornate in his pc^rsonal appear-
ance. Both men carried guns, and if a search had been made,
a revolver would have been found, either hidden in the belt of
eacli or carried perdu in the trousers-pocket. In these days of
Pacific Kailways and scampering Globe Trotters, one does not
want to parade the revolver ; but there are dark places on the
earth, from the traveller's as well as from the missionary's
point of view, where it would be well to have both bowie and
Derringer ready to hand. On the American continent the
wandering lamb sometimes has to lie down with the leopard,
the harmless gazelle to journey side by side with the cheetah,
and the asp may here and there pretend to play innocently
over the hole of the cockatrice.

Behind the leaders followed a little troop of three, consisting
of one English servant and two " greasers." The latter were
dressed in plain unpretending costume of flannel shirt, boots,
and rough trousers. Behind each hung his rifle. The English
servant was dressed like his master, but " more so ; " his spurs
being heavier, the pattern of his check-shirt being larger, his
saddle bigger ; only for the silk cummerbund he wore a leathern
strap, the last symbol of the honourable condition of dependence.
He rode in advance of the greasers, whom he held in contempt,
and some thirty yards behind the leaders. The Mexicans rode
in silence, smoking cigarettes perpetually. Sometimes they
looked to their guns, of they told a story, or one would sing
the snatch of a song in a low voice ; mostly they w jre grave
and thoughtful, though what a greaser thinks about has never
yet been ascertained.

The country was so far in the Far West that the Sierra
Nevada lay to the east. It was a rich and beautiful country :
there were park-like tracks — supposing the park to be of a
primitive and early-settlement kind — stretching out to the left.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

These were dotted with white oaks. To the riglit rose the
sloping sides of a hill, which were covered with the brushwood
called the chaparelle, in which grew the inanzanita and the
scrub-oak, with an occasional cedar-pine, not in the least like
the cedars of Lebanon and Clapham Common. Hanging
about in the jungle, or stretching its arms along the side of the
dry watercourse which ran at the travellers' feet beside the
road, was the wild vine, loaded with its small and pretty grapes,
now ripe. Nature in inventing the wild grape has Ix'en as
generous as in her gift of the sloe. It is a fruit of which
an American once observed that it ivas calculated to develop
the generosity of a man's nature, " because," he explained,
" yon would rather give it to your neighbour than eat it
yourself."

The travellers were low down on the western slopes of the
Sierra ; they were in the midst of dales and glades — canons
and gulches, of perfect loveliness, shut in by mountains which
rose over and behind them like friendly giants guarding a
troop of sleeping maidens. Pelion was piled on Ossa as peak
after peak rose higher, all clad with pine and cedar, receding
farther and farther, till peaks became points and ridges be-
came sharp edges.

It was autumn, and there were dry beds which had in the
spring been rivulets flowing full and clear fi;om the snowy sides
of the higher slopes, yet among them lingered the flowers of
April upon the shrub", and the colours of the fading leaves
mingled with the hues of the autumn herpes.

A sudden turn in the winding road brought the foremast
riders upon a change in the appearance of the country. Below
them to the left stretched a broad open space, where the ground
had been not only cleared of whatever jungle once grew upon
it, but also turned over. They looked upon the site of one of
the earliest surface-mining grounds. The shingle and gravel
stood about in heaps ; the gulleys and ditches formed by the
miners ran up and down the face of the country like the wrin-
kles in the cheek of a baby monkey ; old pits, not deep enough
to kill, but warranted to maim and disable, kirked like man-
traps in the open ; the old wooden aqueducts run up by the
miners in the year 'fifty-two, were still standing where they
were abandoned by the "pioneers ;" here and there lay about

THE fiOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

old wasliin.i,'-pans rusty and broken, old cradles and bits of rusty
metal wliicli had once belon<,'ed to shovels. These relics and
signs of bygone gatherings of men were sufficiently dreary of
themselves, but at intervals there stood tbe ruins of a log-house
or a hea]) wliicli had once been a cottage built of mud. Pales-
tine itself has no more striking picture of desolation and wreck
tlian a deserted surface-mine.

They drew rein and looked in silence. Presently tbey be-
came aware of th€ presence of life. Ptight in the foreground,
about two hundred yards before them, there advanced a pro-
cession of two. The leader of the show, so to speak, was a
man. He was running. He was running so hard, that any-
body could see his primary object was speed. After him, with
heavy stride, seeming to be in no kind of hurry, and yet cover-
ing the ground at a much greater rate than the man, there came
a bear — a real old grisly. A bear who was " shadowing " the
man and meant claws. A bear who had an insult to avenge,
and was resolved to go on with the affair until he had avenged
it. A bear, too, who had his enemy in the open, where there
was nothing to stop him, and no refuge for his victim but the
planks of a ruined log-house, could he find one.

Both men without a Avord got their rifles ready. The younger
threw the reins of his horse to his companion and dismounted.

Then he stood still and watched.

The most exhilarating thing in the whole world is allowed to
be a hunt. No greater pleasure in life than that of the She-
karry, especially if he be after big game. On this occasion the
keenness of the sport was perhaps intensified to him who ran
by the reflection that the customary position of things was re-
versed. No longer did he hunt the bear ; the bear hunted
him,. No longer did he warily follow up the game ; the game
boldly followed Jdm. No joyous sound of horns cheered on the
hunter ; no shout, such as those which inspirit the fox and put
fresh vigour into the hare ; not even the short eager bark of the
hounds, at the sound of which, Reynard begins to think how
many of his hundred turns are left. It was a silent chase. The
bear, who represented in himself the whole field — men in
scarlet, ladies, master, pack and everything — set to work in a
cold unsympathetic way, infinitely more distressing to a ner-
vous creature than the clieerful ringing of a whole field. To

THK UOLDEN HUTTERFLY.

bunt in silenco would hv. hard for any man ; to bo luintrd in
silence is intolerable.

Grisly held his head down and wagged it from side to side,
while his great silent paws rapidly cleared the ground and les-
sened the distance.

" Tommy," whispered the young fellow, " T can cover him
now."

"Wait, Jack. Don't miss. Give Grisly two minutes more.
Gad ! how the fellow scuds ! "

Tommy, you see, obeyed the instinct of nature. He loved
the hunt : if not to hunt actively, to witness a hunt. It is the
s.ame feeling v hich crowds the benches at a bull-fight in Spain.
It was the same feeling which lit up the faces in the Coliseum
when Hermann, formerly of the Danube, prisoner, taken red-
handed in revolt, and therefore morifurus, performed with vi-
gour, sympathy, and spirit the?Yl/«of Actjeon, ending, as we all
know, in a splendid chase by bloodhounds ; after which the
poor Teuton, maddened by his long flight and exhausted by his
desperate resistance, was torn to pieces, fighting to the end
with a rage past all acting. It is our modern pleasure to read
of pain and suffering. Those were the really pleasant days to
the Roman ladies when they actually witnessed living agony.
" Give Grisly two minutes," said Captain Ladds.

By this time the rest of the party had come up, and were
watching the movements of the man and bear. In the plain
stood the frame- work of a ruined wooden house. JMan made
for log-house. Bear, without any apparent effort, but just to
show that he saw the dodge, and meant that it should not suc-
ceed, put oil a spurt, and the distance between them lessened
every moment. Fifty yards ; forty yards. Man looked round
over his shoulder. The log-house was a good two hundred
yards ahead. He hesitated ; seemed to stop for a moment.
Bear diminishing the space by'a good dozen yards — and then
man doubled.

" Getting pumped," said Ladds the critical. Then he too
dismounted, and stood beside the younger man, giving the
reins of both horses to one of the Mexicans. " Musn't let
Grisly claw the poor devil," he murmured.
" Let me bring him down, Tommy."
" Bring him down, young 'un,"

TIIK GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

The greasers looked on and laughed. It would have been to
them a pleasant, termhiation to the " play " had Bruin clawed
the man. Neither hunter nor quarry saw the party clustered
the rising ground on which the track ran. Man

bear saw

together on
saw nothing

nothing

but the ground

over which he flew

but the man before him. The doubling manoeuvre

was, however, the one

thing needed

to bring Grisly within

easy reach. Faster flew the man, but it was the last flight of
despair ; had the others been near enough they would have
seen the cold drops of agony standing on his forehead ; they
would have caught his panting breath ; they would have
heard his muttered prayer.

" Let him hav^ it ! " growled Ladds.

It was time. Grisly, swinging along with leisurely step,
rolling his great head from side to side in time with the ca-
dence of his footfall — one roll to every half-dozen strides, like
a fat German over a trois-temps waltz — suddenly lifted his face
arid roared. Then the man shrieked ; then the bear stopped,
and raised himself for a moment, pawing in the air ; then he
dropped again, and rushed with quickened step upon his foe ;
then — but then — ping ! one shot, it has struck Grisly on the
shoulder ; he stops, with a roar.

" Good, young 'un ! " said Ladds, bringing piece to shoulder.
This time Grisly roars no more. He rolls over. He is shot to
the heart, and is dead.

The other participator in this chasse of two heard the crack
of t^e rifles. His senses were growing dazed with fear ; he did
not stop, he ran on still, but with trembling knees and out-
stretched hands ; and when he came to a heap of shingle and
sand — one of those left over from the old surface mines — he
fell headlong on the pile with a cry, and could not rise. The
two who shot the bear ran across the ground — he lay almost
at their feet — to secure their prey. After them, at a leisurely
pace strode John, the servant. The greasers stayed behind
and laughed.

''Grisly's dead," said Tommy, pulling out his km'fe.
" Steak ? "

" No ; skin," cried the younger. " Let me take his skin.
Tommy, we will have the beast skinned. You can get some
steaks cut. Where is the man V

They found him lying on his face, unable to move,

THE GOLDPJN BUTTERFLY.

" Now, old man," said the young fellow cheerfully, " might
as well sit up, you know, if you can't stand. Bruin's gone to
the happy hunting grounds."

The man sat up as desired, and tried to take a comprehen-
sive view of the position.

Jack handed him a flask, from which he took a long pull.
Then he got up and somewhat ostentatiously began to smooth
down the legs of his trousers.

He was a thin man, about five-and-forty years of age ; he
wore an irregular and patchy kind of beard, which flourished
exceedingly on certain square half-inches of chin and cheek,
and was as thin as grass at Aden on the intervening spaces.
He had no boots, but a sort of moccasins, the lightness of which
enabled him to show his heels to the bear for so long a time.
His trousers might have been of a rough tweed, or they might
have been black cloth, because grease, many drenchings, the buf-
feting of years, and tlie holes into which they were worn, had
long deprived them of their original colour and brilliancy.
Above the trousers he wore a tattered flannel shirt, the right
arm of which, nearly torn to pieces, revealed a tattoed limb,
which was strong although thin ; the buttons had long ago
vanished from the front of the garment ; thorns picturesquely
replaced them, He wore a red cotton handkerchief about his
neck, a round felt hat was on his head ; this, like the trousers
had lost its pristine colour, and by dint of years and weather
its stiffness too. To prevent the hat from flapping in his eyes,
its possessor had pinned it up v/ith thorns in the front.

Necessity is the mother of invention : there is nothing
morally wrong in the use of thorns where other men use studs,
diamond pins, and such gauds ; and tho effect is picturesque.
The stranger, in fact, was a law unto himself. He had no
coat ; the rifle of Californian civilization was missing ; there
was no sign of knife or revolver ; and the only encumbrance,
if there was any, to the lightness of his flight was a small
wooden box strapped round tightly, and hanging at his back by
means of a steel chain, grown a little rusty where it did not
rub against his neck and shoulders.

He sat up and winked involuntarily with both eyes. This
was the eff'ect of present bewilderment and late fear.

Then he looked round him, after, as before explained, a few

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

moments of assiduous leg-smoothing, which, as stated above,
looked ostentatious, but was really onl)'^ nervous agitation.
Then he rose, and saw Grisly lying in a heap a few yards off.
He walked over with a grave face, and looked at him.

When Henri Balafr^, Due de Guise, saw Coligny lying dead
at his feet, he is said — only it is a wicked lie — to have kicked
the body of his murdered father's enemy. When Henri HI. of
France, ten years later, saw Balafr^ dead at his feet, he did
kick the lifeless body, with a wretched joke. That king was a
cur. My American was not. He stood over Bruin Avith a
look in his eyes which betokened respect for fallen greatness
and sympathy with bad luck. Grisly would have been his
victor but for the chance which brought him within reach of a
friendly rifle.

" A near thing," he said. " Since I've been in this doggoned
country I've had one or two near things, but this was the
nearest."

The greasers stood round the body of the bear, and the Eng-
lish servant was giving directions for skinning the beast.

" And which of you gentlemen," he went on with a nasal
twang more pronounced than before — perhaps with more em-
phasis on the word " gentlemen " than was altogether re-
quired — " which of you gentlemen was good enough to shoot
the critter ? "

Tbe English servant, who was, like his master Captain
Ladd,^, a man of few words, pointed to the young man, who
stood close by with the other leader of the expedition.

The man snatched from the jaws of death, took off his shaky
thorn-beset felt, and solemnly held out his hand.

" Sir," he said, " I do not know your name, and you do not
know mine. If you did you would not be much happier, be-
cause it is not a striking name. If you'll oblige me, sir, by
to' ching that" — he meant his right hand — "we shall be
brothers. All that's mine shall be yours. I do not ask you,
sir, to reciprocate. All that's mine, sir, when I get anything,
shall be jours. At present, sir, there is nothing ; but I've
luck behind me. Shake hands, sir. Once a mouse helped a
lion, sir. It's in a book. I am the mouse, sir, and you are the
lion. Sir, my name is Gilead P. Beck."

Tlie young man laughed and shook hands with him.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

here-

I only fired the first shot," he explained. " My friend

running

first shot disabled— hunt finished then— Grisly out of

Glad you're not clawed— unpleasant to be

did it. No thanks. Tell us where we

Young 'un

No
the
clawed

are." „ , . . , , ,

Mr. Gilead P. Beck, catching the spirit Df the situation, told
them where they were, approximately. ''This," he said, "is
Patrick's Gamp ; at least, it was. The Pioneers of '49 could
tell you a good deal about Patrick's Camp. It was liore that
Patrick kept his store. In those old days— they're gone now
—if a man wanted to buy a blanket, that article, sir, was put
into one scale, and weighed down with gold-dust in the other.
Same witli a pair of boots ; same with a pound of raisins.
Patrick might have died rich, sir, but he didn't— none of the
pioneers did— so he died poor ; and died in his boots too, like
most of the lot."

'* Not much left of the camp."

" No, sir, not much. The mine gave out. Then they moved
up the hills, where, I conch^do, you gentlemen are on your
way. Prospecting likely. The new town, called Einpire
City, ought to be an hour or so up the track. I was trying to
find my way there when I met with old Grisly. Perhaps if I
had let him alone he would have let me alone. But I blazed
at him, and, sir, I missed him ; then he shadowed me. And
the old rifle's gone at last."

" How long did the chase last ? "

" 1 should say, sir, forty days and forty nights, or near about.
And you gentlemen air going to Empire City 1 "

" We are going anywhere. Perhaps, for the present, you
had better join us."

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

11.

^jj^ E. GILEAD P. BECK, partly recovered from the shock
caused to his nerves by the revengeful spirit of the
bear, and in no way discomfited by any sense of false
shame as to his ragged appearance, marched beside the two
Englishmen. It was characteristic of his nationality that he
regarded the greasers with contempt, and that he joined the two
gentlemen as if he belonged to tlieir grade and social rank. An
Englishman picked up in such rags and duds would have
shrunk abashed to the rear, or he would have apologised for
his tattered condition, or he would have begged for some gar-
ments — any garments — to replace his own. Mr. Beck had no
such feeling. He strode along with a swinging slouch, which
covered the ground as rapidly as the step of the horses. The
wind blew his rags about his long and lean figure as pictur-
esquely as if he were another Autolycus. He was as full of
talk as that worthy, and as lightsome of spirit, despite the
solemn gravity of his face. I once saw a poem — I think in the
Spectator — on Artemus Ward, in which the bard apostrophised
the light-hearted merriment of the Western American : a very
unfortunate thing to say, because the Western American is ex-
ternally a most serious person, never merry, never witty, but
always humorous. Mr. Beck was quite grave, though at the
moment as happy as that other grave and thoughtful person
who has made a name in the literature of humour — Panurge —
when he escaped half-roasted from the Turk's Serai.

" I ought," he said, " to sit down and cry, like the girl on
the prairi\"

" Why ought you to cry 'i "

" I guess I ought to cry because I've lost my rifle and every-
thing except my Luck" — here he pulled at the steel chain —
" in that darned long stern chase."

" You can easily get a new rifle," said Jack.

" With dollars," interrupted Mr. Beck. " As for them,
there's not a dollar left — nary a red cent • only my Luck."

" And what i? vour Luck 1"

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

" That," said Mr. Beck, " I will tell you by and by. Per-
haps its your Luck too, young boss," he added, thinking of a
shot as fortunate to himself as William Tell's was to his son.

He pulled the box attached to the steel chain round to the
front, and looked at it tenderly. It -v.as safe, and he heaved a
sigh.

The way wound up a valley— a road marked only, as has
been said, by deep ruts along its course. Behind the travellers
the evening sun was slowly sinking in the west ; before them
the peaks of the Sierra lifted their heads, coloured purple in
the evening light ; and on either hand rose the hill-sides, with
their dark foliage in alternate " splashes " of golden light and
deepest shade.

It wanted but a quarter of an hour of sunset when Mr.
Gilead P. Beck pointed to a township which suddenly appeared,
lying at their very feet.

"Empire City, I reckon."

A good-sized town of wooden houses. They were all alike,
and of the same build as that affected by the architects of dolls'
houses ; that is to say, they were of one story only, had a door
in the middle, and a window on either side. They were so
.<5mall also, that they looked veritable dolls' houses.

There were one or two among them of more pretentious ap-
pearance, and of several stories. These were the hotels, billiard-
saloons, bars and gambling-houses.

" It's a place bound to advance, sir," said Mr. Beck proudly.
" Empire City, when I first saw it, which is two years ago,
was only two years old. It is only in our country that a great
city springs up in a day. Empire City will be the Chicago of
the West."

" I see a city," said Captain Ladds ;' " can't see the people."

It was certainly curious. There was not a soul in the streets ;
there was no smoke from the chimneys ; there were neither
carts nor horses ; there was not the least sign of occupation.

Mr. Gilead P. Beck whistled.

"All gone," he said. " Guess the city's busted up."

He pushed aside the brambles which grew over what had
been a path leading to the place, and hurried down. The
others followed him and rode into the town.

It was deserted. The doors of the houses were open, and if

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

you looked in you might see the rough furniture which the late
occupants disdained to carry away with them. The two
Englishmen dismounted, gave the reins to the servant, and
began to look about them.

The descendants of Og, king of Bashan, have left their houses
in black basalt, dotted about the lava-fields of the Hauran, to
witness how they lived. In the outposts of the desert stations
of the East the xioman soldiers have left their barracks and
their baths, and their jokes written on the wall, and their
names, to show how they passed away the weary hours of gar-
rison duty. So the miners who founded Empire City, and de-
serted it en masse when the gold gave out, left behind them
marks by which future explorers of the ruins should know
what manner of men once dwelt there. The billiard-saloon
stood open, vdth swinging-doors ; the table was still there ; the
balls lay about on the table and the floor ; the cues stood in
the rack ; the green cloth, mildewed, covered the table.

said the younger, " we will have a

game

to-

nig

" Tommy,'

ht."

The largest building in the place had been an hotel. It had
two stories, and was, like the rest of the houses, built of wood,
with a verandah along the front. The upper story looked as
if it had been recently inhabited ; that is, the shutters wer*)
not dropping off the hinges, nor were they flappip<5 to and fro
in the breeze.

But the town was deserted ; the evening breeze blew chilly
up its vacant streets ; life and sound had gone out of the place.

" I feel cold," said Jack, looking about him.

They went round to the back of the hotel. Old iron cog-
wheels lay rusting on the ground with remains of pumps. ' In
the heart of the town behind the hotel stretched an open space
of ground covered with piles of shingle and intersected with
ditches.

Mr. Beck sat down and adjusted one of the thorns which
served as a temporary shirt-stud.

" Two years ago," he said, " there was ten thousand miners
here : now there isn't one. I thought we should find a choice
hotel, with a little monty or poker afterwards. Now no one
left ; nothing but a Chinaman or two."

" How do you know there are Chinamen ?"

" See those stones V*

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

to-

■ M

He pointed to some great boulders, from three to six feet in
diameter. Some operation of a mystical kind had been per-
formed upon them, for they were jagged and chipped as if they
had been filed and cut into shape by a scub tor who had been
once a dentist and still loved the profession.

" The miners picked the bones of those rocks, but they never
pick quite clean. Then the Chinamen come and finish off.
Gentlemen, it's a special Providence that you picked me up. I
don't altogether admire the way in which that sj^ecial Provi-
dence was played up to in the matter oi' the Bar ; but a Chris-
tian without a revolver alone among twenty Chinamen — "

He stopped and shrugged his shoulders.

"They'd have got my Luck," he concluded.

" Chief, I don't like it," said the younger man. " It's ghostly.
It's a town of dead men. As soon as it is dark the ghosts will
rise and walk about — play billiards, I expect. What shall we
do ? "

" Hotel," growled the chief. " Sleep on floor — sit on chairs
— eat off a ^able."

They entered the hotel.

A most orderly bar : the glasses there ; the brighii-coloured
bottles , two or three casks of Bourbon whisky ; the counter ;
the very dice on the counter with which the bar-keeper used to
" go " the miners for drinks. How things at once so necessary
to civilised life and so portable as dice were left behind, it is
impossible to explain.

Everything was there except the drink. The greasers tried
the casks and examined the bottles. Emptiness. A. miner
may leave behind him the impedimenta, but the real necessaries
of life — rifle, revolver, bowie, and cards — he lakes with him.
And as for the drink, he carries that away too, for greater
safety, inside himself.

The English servant looked round and smiled superior.

" No tap for beer, as usual, sir," he said. " These poor Ca-
lifornians has much to learn."

Mr. Gilead P. Beck looked round mournfully.

"Everything gone but the fixins," he sighed. " There used
to be good beds, where there wasn't more'n two at once in
them ; and there used to be such a crowd around this bar as
you would not find nearer'n St. Louis City."
B

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

" Hush ! " said Jack, holding up his hand. There were
steps.

Mr. Beck pricked up his ears.

'* Chinamen, likely. If there's a row, gentlemen, give me
something, if it's only a toothpick, to chime in with. But that's
not a Chinese step ; that's an Englishman's. He wears boots,
but they are not miner's boots ; he walks firm and slow, like
all Englishmen ; he is not in a hurry, like our folk. And who
but an Englishman would be found staying behind in the Em-
pire City when it's gone to pot 1 "

The footsteps came down tlie stairs.

" Most unhandsome of a ghost," said the younger man, *' to
walk before midnight."

The producer of the footsteps appeared.

" Told you he was an )j]nglishman," cried Mr. Beck.

Indeed there was hO mistaking the nationality of the man,
in spite of his dress, which was cosmopolitan. He wore boots,
but not, as the quick ear of the American told him, the great
boots of the miner; he had on a flannel shirt with a red si^ik
belt ; he wore a sort of blanket thrown back from his shoulders ;
and he had a broad felt hat. Of course he carried arms, but
they were not visible.

He was a man of middle height, with clear blue eyes ; the
perfect complexion of an Englishman of good stock and in com-
plete health ; a brown beard, long and rather curly, streaked
with here and there a gray hair ; square and clear-cut nostrils ;
and a mouth which, though not much of it was visible, looked
as if it would easily smile, might readily become tender, and
would certainly find it difficult to be stern. He might be any
age from five-and-thirty to five-and-forty.

The greasers fell back and grouped about the door. The
questions which might be raised had no interest for them. The
two leaders stood together ; and M' . Gilead P. Beck, rolling an
empty keg to their side, turned it up, and sat down with the
air of a judge, looking from one party to the other.

" Englishmen, I see," said the stranger.

" Ye-yes," said Ladds, not, as Mr. Beck expected, immedi-
ately holding out his hand for the stranger to grasp.
" You have probably lost your way ? "

" Been hunting. Working round — San Francisco. Followed

Iff
1

THE GOLDEN JiUTTERFLY.

re were

five me
it that's
boots,
w, like
nd who
he Em-

in, "to

e man,
boots.

e great
ed si]k
ilders ;
ns, but

s; the

n com- i
reaked 1
•strils ; ,1
ooked m
r, and |

5e any ;^

The 1

ing an M
h the . 1

medi-

owed

track ; accident ; got here. Your hotel, perhaps ? Fine situ-
ation, but lonely."

" Not a ghost, L.ien," murmured the other, with a look of
temporary disappointment.

" If you will come up-stairs to ray quarters, 1 may be able to
make you comfortable for the night. Your party will accom-
modate themselves without our help."

He referred to the greasers, who had already begun their
pj'eparations for spending a happy night. When he led the
way up the stairs, he was followed, not only by the two gen-
tlemen he had invited, but also by the ragamuffin hunter, miner,
or adventurer, and by the valet, who conceived it to be his
duty to follow his master.

He lived, this hermit, in one of the small bedrooms of the
hotel, which he had converted into a sitting-room. It contained
a single rocking-chair and a table.- There was also a shelf,
which served as a sideboard, and a curtain under the shelf,
which acted as a cupboard.

" You see my den," he said. " I came here a year or so ago
by accident, like yourselves. I found the place deserted. I
liked the solitude, the scenery, whatever you like, and I stayed
here. You are the only visitors I have had for a year."

" Chinamen 1 " said Mr. Gilead P. Beck.

" Well, Chinamen, of course. But only two of them. They
take turns, at forty dollars a month, to cook my dinners. And
there is a half-caste, who does not mind running down to Sacra-
mento when I want anything. And so, you see, I make out
pretty well."

He opened the window, and blew a whistle.

In two minutes a Chinaman came tumbling up the stairs.
His inscrutable face expressed all the conflicting passions of
humanity at once — ambition, vanity, self-respect, humour, satire,
avarice, resignation, patience, revenge, meekness, long suiFering,
remembrance, and a thousand others. No Aryan comes within
a hundred miles of it.

" Dinner as soon as you can,*' said his master.

" Ayah ! can do," replied the Celestial,
wantchee ? "

" As soon as you can. Half an hour."

" What time you

'^.

THK (JOLDKN [iUTTKllFLY.

"Can <1(). My no havo got cully powder. Have makoo
finish. Hav^e got ? "

" Look for some ; make Achow help."

" How can 1 No, b'long his pidgin. He no helpee. B'long
my i)idgin makee cook chow-chow. Ayah ! Achow have go
makee cheat over Mexican man. Makee play cards all same
euchre."

In fact, on looking out of the window, the other Celestial
was clearly visible, manipulating a pack of cards and apparenth
inviting the 3Iexicans to a friendly game, in which there could
be no deception.

Then Ladds' conscience smote him.

"Beg pardon. Siiould have seen. Made remark about
hotel. A[)ologise."

*' He means," said the other, " that he was a terrible great
fool not to see that you are a gentleman."

Ladds nodded.

" Let me introduce our party," the speaker went on. " This
is our esteemed friend Mr. Gilead P. Beck, whom we caught in
a bear-hunt — "

" Bar behind," said Mr. Beck.

** This is Captain Ladds, of the 35th Dragoons."

"Ladds," said Ladds. "Nibs, cocoa-nibs — pure aroma —
best breakfast-digester— ^blessing to mothers — perfect fragrance."

" His name is Ladds ; and he wishes to communicate to you
the fsxct that he is the son of the mai who made an immense
fortune — immense, Tommy 1 "

Ladds nodded.

" By a crafty compound known as ' Ladds' Patent Anti-
Dyspeptic Cocoa.' This is Ladds' servant, John Bolmer, the
best servant who ever put his leg across pig-skin ; and my name
is Konald Dunquerque. People generally call me Jack ; I
don't know why, but they do."

Their host bowed to each, including the servant, who
coloured with pleasure at Jack's description of him ; but he
shook hands with Ladds.

" One of ours," he said. " My name is Lawrence Colquhoun.
I sold out before you joined. I came here, as you see. And —
now, gentlemen, I think I hear the first sounds of dinner. Bol-
mer — you will allow me, Ladds? — you will find claret and

TIIK (}()IJ)KN r.UTTKHFLY

v'o makci'

B'long
have go
all same

Celestial
>parenth
ere could

^•k about

)le great

" This
Lught in

roma —

;rance."

to you

imense

Anti-
3r, the
^name
ick; I

who
ut he

boun.
nd—

Bol-

aiid

chiinipagnr boliind tliat cnrtaiu. Paitlon a liermit'.s tare. I
think they have laid out such a table as tlu^ wilderness oan
boast, in the iM^xt room."

The dinner was not altogether Avhat a man might order at
the Junior United, but it was good. There was venison, there
was a curry, there was some mountain ({uail, there was claret,
and there was chami)agne — both good, esix'cially the claret.
Tlien there was colfee.

The Honourable Ronald Dunquerque, whom we will call in
future, what everybody always called him, Jack, ate and drank
like Friar John. The keen mountain air multiplied his normal
twist by ten. Mr. Gilead P. Ik'ck, who sat down to dinner
perfectly unabashed by his rags, was good as a trencher-man,
but many i)lates behind the young Englishman. Mr. Lawrence
Col([uhoun, their host, went on talking almost as if they were
in London ; only now and then he found himself behind the
world. It was his ignorance of the last J)erby, the allusion to
an old and half-forgotten story, perhaps his use of little phrases
— not slang phrases, but those delicately shaded *erms which
imply knowledge of current things — which showed him to have
been out of London and Paris for more than one season.

" Four years," he said, "since I lelt England."

" But you will come back to it again 1 "

"I think not."

*' Better," said Jack, whose face was a little flushed with the
wine

home again

" Much better liobinson Crusoe always wanted to get
So did Selkirk. So did Philip Quarles."

Then the host produced cigars. Later on, brandy-and-water.

The brandy-and-water made Mr. Gilead P. Beck, who found
himself a good deal crowded out of the conversation, insist on
having his share. He placed his square box on the table, and
loosed the straps.

" Let me tell you," he said, " the story of my Luck. I was
in Sonora City," he began, patting his box aff'ectionately, "after
the worst three months I ever had ; and I went around trying
to borrow a few dollars. I got no dollars, but I got free drinks,
so many free drinks, that at last I lay down in the street and
went to sleep. Wal, gentlemen, I suppose I walked in that
slumber of mine, for when I woke up I was lying a mile out-
side the town. I also entertained angels unawares, for at my

TIIK <i(!M)KN lUI'lTKUFLV.

uestituto when the garden-gates were shut on him.

head ilunv. sat an Indian woman. She was as wrinkled an old
scjuaw as ever slirieked at a ))iiryin.' But slie took an interest
in me. She t(jok tiiat amount of inten^st in me tliat she told
me she knew of gold. And then she led me by tiu^ hand, gen-
tlemen, that aged and affectionate old squaw, to a place not far
from the roadside ; and then^ lying between two rocks, and
hiddt^n in the chapparelle, glitteiing in the light, was tins
bauble." He rapped his box. " I did not want to be told to
take it. I wrapped it in my handkerchief and carried it in my
hand. Then slie led me back to the road again. ' Bad kick
y(»u will have,' she .said ; ' but it will lead to good luck so long
as that is not broken, sold, given away, or lost,' Then she h'ft
me, and here it is."

He opened tlie little box. There was nothing to be seen but
a mass of white wool.

" Bad luck I hare had. Look at me, gentlemen, Adam was
not more
But the good will come somehow."

He removed the wool and, behold a miracle of nature ! Two
thin plates of gold delicately wrought in lines and curious
chasing, like the pattern of a butterHy's wing, and of the exact
shape, but twice as large. They were poised at the angle,
always the same, at which the insect balances itself about a
flower. They were set in a small piece of quaintly-marked
quartz, which represented the body.

" A golden butterfly ! "

" A golden butterfly," said Mr. Beck . " No goldsmith made
this butterfly. It came from Nature's workshop. It is my
Luck."

" And if the butterfly fall and break,
Farewell the Luck of Gilead Beck,"

said Jack,

*' Tliank you, sir. That's very neat. I'll take that, sir, if
you will allow me, for my motto, unless you want it for your-
self."

" No," said Jack ; " I have one already."

" if this golden butterfly fall and break.
Farewell the Luck of Gilead P. Beck."

repeated the owner of the insect. " If you are going on, gen-
tlemen, to San Francisco, I hope you will take me with you."

L^l

THK (lOLDKN mnTKllKI.Y.

2:?

an old
interest
he told
id, gen-
not far
<s, and
IS tlii.s
told to

in my
fid luck
so long
she left

Ken but

im was
m him.

! Two
curious
e exact

angle,
,boat a
narked

h made
is my

sir, if
' your-

I, gen-

"Col(iuhoun,"said La<lds, "you do not mean to stay on here
by yourself? Much better come with me, unless, of couiso— -"
Lying on the table was a piece of an old newspaper in which
Jack had wrapped something. Laddssaw Colquhoun mechan-
ically take up the paper> read ii, and change colour. Then he
looked straight b(;fore him, seeing nothing, and Liulds stop[)ed
speaking. Then he smiled in a strange far-ott' way.
" I think I will go with you," In; said.

" Hear, hear ! " cried »Jack. " Selkirk returgs to the sound
of the church-going bell."

Ladds refrained from looking at the paper in search of things
which did not concern himself, l)ut h(5 perceived thatCohpihoun
had, like Kamlet, seen Something. There was, in fact, an an-
nouncement in the fragment which greatly interested Lawrence
Colquhoun :

" On April 3, by the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Turk's
Island, at St. George's, Hanover-square, Gabriel Cassilis, of i^c,
to Victoria, daughter of the late Admiral Sir Benbow Pengel-
ley, K.C.B."

In the morning they started, Mr. Beck being provided with
a new rig-out of a rough and useful kind.

At the last moment one of the Chinamen, Leeching the cook,
besought his late master, as a parting favour and for the pur-
pose of self-protection, tlie gift of a pistol, powder and ball.

Mr. Colquhoun gave them to him, thinking it a small thing
after two years of faithful service. Then Leeching, after load-
ing his pistol, went to work with his comrade for an hour or so.

Presently, Achow being on his knees in the shingle, the per-
fidious Leeching suddenly cocked his pistol and fired it into
A chow's right ear, so that he fell dead.

By this lucky accident Leeching became sole possessor of the
little pile of gold which he and the defunct Achow had scraped
together and placed in a cache.

He proceeded to unearth this treasure, put together his little
belongings, and started on the road to San Francisco with a
smile of satisfaction.

There was a place in the windings of the road where there
was a steep bank. By the worst luck in the world a stone slip-

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY

ped and fell as Leeching passed by. The stone, by itself,
would not have mattered much, as it did not fall on Leeching's
head ; but with it fell a rattlesnake, who was sleeping in the
warmth of the sun.

Nothing annoys a rattlesnake more than to be disturbed in
his sleep. With angry mind he awoke, looked around, and
saw the Chinaman. Illogically connecting him with the fall of
the stone, he made for him, and, before poor Leeching knew
there was a rattlesnake anywhere near him, bit him in the
calf.

Leeching sat down on the bank and realized the position.
Being a fatalist, he did not murmur ; having no conscience, he
did not fear ; having no faith, he did not hope ; having very
little time, he made no testamentary dispositions. Tn point of
fact, he s])eedily curled up his legs and died.

Then the deserted Empire City was deserted indeed, for there
was not even a Chinaman left in it.

END OF PKOLOGUE.

CHAPTER T.

JOSEPH AND HIS BRETHREN.

, ' HE largest and most solid of all the substantial houses in
i\ Carnarvon-square, Bloomsbury, is Number Fifteen, which,
by reason of its corner position (Mulgrave-street inter-
secting it at right angles at this point), has been enabled to
stretch itself out at the back. It is a house which a man who
wanted to convey the idea of a solid income without ostenta-
tion or attempt at fashion would find the very thing to assist
his purpose. The ladies of such a house would not desire to
belong to the world farther west ; they would respect the
Church, law, and medicine ; they would look on the City with
favourable eyes when it was represented by a partner in an old
firm ; they would have sound notions of material comfort ;
they would read solid books, and would take their pleasure
calmly. One always, somehow, in looking at a house, wonders
first of what sort its women are. There were, however, no
women at Number Fifteen at all, except the maids. Its oc-
cupants consisted of three brothers, all unmarried. They were
named respectively Cornelius, Humphrey, and Joseph Jagenal.
Cornelius and Humphrey were twins. Joseph was their junior
by ten years. Cornelius and Humphrey were fifty — Joseph
was forty. People who did not know this thought that Joseph
was fifty and his brethren forty.

When the Venerable the Archdeacon of Market Basing, the
well-known author of Sermons on the Duty of Tithe-Qlferings, the
Leshia of Catullus and a Treatise on the Right use of the Anajacest,
in Greek Iambic Verse, died, it was found that he had bequeathed
his little savings, worth altogether about £500 a year, to his
three sons in the following proportions : the twins, he said,
possessed genius -, they would make their mark in the world,
but they must be protected. They received the yearly sum of
£200 apiece, and it was placed in the hands of trustees to pre-
vent their losing it ; the younger was to have the rest, without
trustees, because, his father said, " Joseph is a dull boy and

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

will koep it." It was a wise distribution of the money. Cor-
nelius, then nineteen, left Oxford immediately, and went to
Heidelberg, where he called himself a poet, studied metaphy-,
sics, drank beer, and learned to fence. Humphrey, for his part,
deserted Cambridge — their father having chosen that they
should not be rivals — and announced his intention of devoting
his life to Art. He took up his residence in Kome. Joseph
stayed at school, having no other choice. When the boy was
sixteen, his guardians articled him to a solicitor. Joseph was
dull, but he was methodical, exact, and endowed with a reten-
tive memory. He had also an excellent manner, and the " ap-
pearance of age," as portwine advertisers say, before he was out
of his articles. At twenty-five, Joseph Jagenal was a partner ;
at thirty, he was the working partner ; at forty, he was the
senior ])artner in the great Lincoln's-Inn firm of Shaw, Fair-
light and Jagenal, the confidential advisers of as many respect-
able county people as any firm in London.

When he was twenty-five, and became a partner, the breth-
ren returned to England simultaneously, and were good enough
to live with him and upon him. They had their ^200 a year
each, and expensive tastes. Joseph, who made a thousand for
his share the first year of his admission to the firm, had no ex-
pensive tastes, and a profound respect for genius. He took in
the twins joyfully, and they stayed with him. When his
senior partner died, and Mr. Fairlight retired, so that Joseph's
income was largely increased, they made him move from Tor-
rington-square, where the houses are small, to Carnarvon-
square, and regulated his household for him on the broadest
and most liberal scale. Needless to say, no part of the little
income, which barely served the twins for pocket-money and
their menus plaisirs, went toward the housekeeping. Cornelius,
poet and philosopher, superintended the dinner and daily inter-
viewed the cook. Humphrey, the devotee of art, who furnished
the rooms according to the latest designs of the most correct
taste, was in command of the cellar. Cornelius took the best
sitting-room for himself, provided it with books, easy-chairs,
pipes, and an immense study-table with countless drawers. He
called it carelessly his Workshop. The room on the first floor
overlooking Mulgrave-street, and consequently with a north
aspect, was appropriated by Humphrey. He called it his

THE GOLDKN BUTTRRFLY.

Studio, and furnished it in character, not forgetting the easy-
, chairs. Joseph had the back room behind the dining-room for
himself; it was not called a study nor a library, but Mr.
Joseph's room. He sat in it alone every evening, at work.
There was also a drawing-room, but it was never used. They
dined together at half-past six ; Cornelius sat at the head, and
Humphrey at the foot, Joseph at one side. Art and Intellect,
thus happily met together and housed under one roof, talked to
each other. Joseph ate his dinner in silence. Art held his
glass to the light, and flashed into enthusiasm over the match-
less sparkle, the divine hues, the incomparable radiance, of tlie
wine. Intellect, with a sigh, as one who regrets the loss of a
sense, congratulated his brother on his vivid passion for colour,
and, taking another glass, discoursed on the aesthetic aspects
of a vintage wine. Joseph drank one glass of claret, after
which he retired to his den, and left the brethren to finish the
bottle. After dinner the twins sometimes went to the theatre,
or they repaired arm-in-arm to their club — the Eenaissance,
now past its prime and a little fogyish ; mostly they sat in the
Studio or in the Workshop, in two arm-chairs, with a table be-
tween them, smoked pipes, and drank brandy and potash-water.
They went to bed at any time they felt sleepy — perhaps at
twelve, and perhaps at three. Joseph went to bed at half past
ten. The brethren generally breakfasted at eleven, Joseph at
eight. After breakfast, unless on rainy days, a uniformcustom
was observed. Cornelius, poet and philosopher, went to the
window and looked out.

Humphrey, artist, and therefore a man of intuitive sympa-
thies, followed him. Then he patted Cornelius on the shoulder,
and shook his head.

" Brother, I know your thought. You want to drag me
from my -work ; you thmk it has been too much for me lately.
You are too anxious about me."

Cornelius smiled.

" Not on my own account too, Humphrey 1 "

" True — on your account. Let us go out at once, brother.
Ah, why did you choose so vast a subject 1 "

Cornelius was engaged— had been engaged for twenty years
— upon an epic poem entitled the Upheaving of Aillfred. The
school he belonged to would not, of course, demean themse Ives

THE OOLDKN BITTTKRFLV.

by speaking of Alfred. To them Edward was Eadward,
Edgar was Eadgar, and old Canute was Knut. In the same way
Cicero became Kikf^ro, Virgil was Vergil, and Socrates was
spelt, as by the illiterate bargee, witli a l\ So the French
prigs of tlie ante-Boileau period sought to make their trumpery
pedantries pass for current coin. So too Chapelain was in
lal)our with the Pucelle for thirty years , and when it came —
But Cornelius Jagenal could not be compared with Chapelain,
because he had as yet brought forth nothing. He sat with what
he and his called " English " books all around him ; in other
words, he had all the Anglo-Saxon literature on his shelves,
and was amassing, as he said, material.

Humphrey, on the other hand, was engaged on a painting,
the composition of which offered difficulties whicli, for
nearly twenty years, had proved insuperable. He was
painting he said, the " Birth of the Renaissance." It
was a subject which required a great outlay in properties.
Venetian glass, Italian jewellery, mediaeval furniture, copies of
paintings — everything necessaiy to make this work a master-
piece — Tie bought at Joseph's expense. Up to the present no
one had been allowed to see the first rough drawings.

" Where's Cajsar 1 " Humphrey would say, leading the way to
the hall. " Ceesar ! Why, here he is. Cajsar must actu-
ally h.ive heard us proposing to go out."

Cornelius called the dog Kaysar, and he refused to answer
to it ; so that conversation betweeii him and Cornelius was
impossible.

There never was a pair more attached to each other than
these twin brethren. They sallied forth each morning at twelve
arm in arm, with an open and undisguised admiration for each
other which was touching. Before them marched Caesar, who
was of mastiff breed, leading the way. Cornelius, the poet,
was dressed with as much care as if he were still a young man of
five and twenty, in a semi-youthful and wholly-aesthetic costume,
in which only the general air, and not the colour, revealed the
man of delicate perceptions. Humphrey, the artist, greatly
daring, affected a warm brown velvet ^nt\\ a crimson-purple
ribbon. Both carried flowers. Cornelius had gloves ; Hum-
phrey a cigar. Cornelius was smooth-faced, save for a light
fringe on the upper lip. Humphrey wore a heavy moustache

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

and a full long silky beard of a delicately-shaded brown, inclin-
ing when the sun shone upon it to a suspicion of auburn. Both
were of the same height, rather below the middle , they had
fentures so much alike that, but for the hair on the face of one,
it would have been difficult to distinguish between them. Both
were thin, pale of face, and both had, by some fatality, the end
of their delicately-carven noses slightly tipped with red. Per-
haps this was due to the daily and nightly brandy-and-water.
And in the airy careless carriage of the two men, their sunny
faces and elastic tread, it was impossible to suppose that they
were fifty and Joseph only forty.

To be sure Joseph was a heavy man, stout of build, broad in

frame, sturc^y in the under-jaw ; while his brothers were slight

shadowy men. And, to be sure, Joseph had worked all his life,

while his brothers never did a stroke. They were born to

'consume the fruits which Joseph Avas born to cultivate.

Outside the house the poet heaved a heavy sigh, as if the
weight of the epic was for the moment off his mind. The artist
looked around with a critical eye on the lights and shadows of
the great common-place square.

" Even in London," he murmured, " Nature is too strong
for man. Did j'ou ever, my dear Cornelius, catch a more
bnlliant effect of sunshine than that upon the lilac yonder ? "

Time, end of April ; season forward, lilacs on the point of
bursting into flower ; sky dotted with swift-flying clouds, alter-
nate withdrawals and bursts of sunshine.

" I really must," said Humphrey, " try to fix that effect."

His brother took the arm of the artist and drew him gently
away.

In front marched Caesar.

Presently the poet looked around. They were out of the
square by this time.

"Where is KaysarT' he said, with an air of surprise,
" Surely, brother Humphrey, the dog cannot be in the Carnar-
von Arms 1 "

" I'll go and see," said Humphrey, with alacrity.

He entered the bar of the tavern, and his brother Avaited
outside. After two or three minutes, the poet, as if tired of
waiting, followed the artist into the bar. He found him with
a glass of brandy-and-water cold.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

((

I had," he exclaimed, " a feeling of faintness. Perhaps
this spring air is chilly. One cannot be loo f •^reful."

"Quite right," said the poet. "I almost think — yes, I
really do feel — ah ! Thank you, my dear."

The girl, as if anticipating his wants, set before him a " four"
of brandy and the cold watei*. Perhaps she had seen the face
before. As for the dog, he was lying down with his head on
his paws. Perhaps he knew there would be no immediate
necessity for moving.

They walked in the direction of the Park, arm-in-arm, affec-
tionately.

It might have been a quarter of an hour after leaving the
Carnarvon Arms when the poet stopped and gasped.

*' Humphrey, my dear brother, advise me. What would you
do if you had a sharp and sudden pain like a knife inside j'^ou 1"

Humphrey replied promptly :

" If I had a sharp and sudden pain like a knife inside me,
I should take a small glass of brandy neat. Mind, no spoil-
ing the effect with water."

Cornelius looked at his broth t with admiration.

"Such readiness of resource," he murmured, pressing his
arm.

" I think I see— ah, yes- x^aysar — he's gone in before us.
The sagacity of that dog is more remarkable than anything I
ever read." He took his small glass of brandy neat.

The artist, looking on, said he might as well have one at
the same time. Not he added, that he felt any immediate
want of the stimulant, but he might ; and at all times preven-
tion is better than cur^.

It was two o'clock when they returned to Carnarvon-square.
They walked arm-in-arm, with perhaps even a greater show of
confiding affection than had appeared at starting. There was
the slightest possible lurch in their walk, and both looked
solemn and heavy with thought.

In the hall the artist looked ai his watch.

" Pa — pasht two. Corneliush, Work — "

He marched to the Studio with a resolute air, and, arrived
there, drew an easy-chair before the fire, sat himself in it, and
went fast asleep.

The poet sought the Workshop. On the table lay the port-

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

folio of papers, outside which was emblazoned on parchment,
with dainty scroll-work by the hands of his brother the artist,
the title of his poem :

S;Uc ^plicavitto of ^tlfxtA :

an epic poem in twenty-four cantos.
By Cornelius Jagenal.

He gazed at it fondly for a few minutes ; vaguely took up a
pen, as if he intended to finish the work on the spot ; and then
with a sigh, thought being too much for brain, he slipped into
his arm-chair, put up his feet, and was askep in two minutes.
At half-past five, one of the maids — they kept no footman in
Carnarvon-square — brough"^ him tea.

*' I have been dozing, have I, Jans ? " he asked. " Very
singular thing for me to do."

We are but the creatures of habit. The brethren took the
same walk every day, made the same remarks, with an oc-
casional variation, and took the same morning drams ; they
spent the middle of the day in sleep, they woke up for the
afternoon tea, and they never failed to call Jane's attention to
the singularity of the fact that they had been asleep. This
day Jane lingered instead of going away when the tea was
finished.

'* Did master tell you, sir," she asked, " that Miss Fleming
was coming to-day 1 "

It was an irritating thing that, although Cornelius ordered the
dinner and sat at the head of the table, although Humphrey
was in sole command of the wine cellar, the servants always
called Joseph the master. Great is the authority of him who
keeps the bag ; the power of the penniless twins was a shadowy
and visionary thing.

The master had told his brothers that Miss Fleming would
probably have to come to the house, but no date was fixed.

"Miss Fleming came this afternoon, sir," said Jane, " with
a French maid. She's in Mr. Joseph's room now."

" O, tell Mr. Humphrey, Jane, and we will dress for dinner.
Tell Mr. Humphrey also that perhaps Miss Fleming would like
a glass of champagne to-day."

Jane told the artist. - *

'/ •

|Ri

THE GOLDEX liUTTERFLY.

" Always thoughtful," said Humphrey, with enthusiasm.
" Cornelius is for ever thinking of others' comfort. To be sure
Miss Fleming shall have a glass of champagne."

He l)rought up two bottles, such was his anxiety to give full
expression to his brother's wishes.

When the dinner-bell rang, the brethren emerged simul-
taneously from their rooms, and descended the stairs together,
arm-in-arm. Perhaps in expectation of dinner, perhaps in an-
ticipation of the champagne, perhaps with pleasure at the
prospect of meeting with Joseph's ward, the faces of both were
lit with a sunny smile, and their eyes with a radiant light,
which looked like the real and genuine enthusiasm of humanity.
It was a pity that Humphrey wore a beard, or that Cor-
nelius did not ; otherwise it would have been difficult to dis-
tinguish between this pair so much alike — -these youthful twins
of fifty, who almost looked like five-and-twenty.

CHAPTER II.

PHILLIS IS MY ONLY JOY.

*' /wC ^ brothers, Miss Fleming ! "
^l^^L Joseph introduced the twins with a pride impos-
^"''^^^ sible to dissemble. They were so youthful-looking,
so airy, so handsome, besides being so nobly endowed with
genius, that his pride may be excused. Castor and Pollux the
wrong side of forty, but slim still and well preserved — these
Greek figures do not run tall — might have looked like Cor-
nelius and Humphrey.

They parted company for a moment to welcome the young
lady, large-eyed, as H§re, who rose to greet them, and then
took up a position on the hearthrug, one with his hand on the
other's shoulder, like the Siamese twins, and smiled pleasantly,
as if, being accustomed to admiration and even awe, they
wished to reassure Miss Fleming and put her at ease.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

Dinner being announced, Cornelius, the elder by a few mo-
ments, gave iiis arm to the young lady. Humphrey, the
younger, hovered close behind, as if he too was taking his part
in the chivalroiu act. Joseph followed alone, of course, not
counting in the little proc ^ssion.

Phillis Fleming's arrival at No. 15 Carnarvon-square was in
a manner legal. She belonged to the office, not to the shrine
of intellect, poesy, and art created by the twin brethren. She
was an orphan and a ward. She had two guardians : one of
them, Mr. Lawrence Colquhoun, being away from England ;
and the otlier, Mr. Abraham Dyson, with whom she had lived
since her sixth birthday, having finished his earthly career just
before this history begins, that is to say, in the spring of last
year. Sliaw, Fairlight, and Jagenal were solicitors to both
gentlemen. Therefore Joseph found himself obliged to act for
this young lady when, Mr. Abraham Dyson buried and done
with, it became a question what w^as to be done with her.
There were offers from several disinterested persons on Miss
Fleming's bereaved condition being known. Miss Skimpit, of
the Highgate Collegiate Establishment for Yo'^ng Ladies, pro-
posed by letter to receive her as parlour-boarder, and hinted at
the advantages of a year's discipline, tempered by Christian
kindness, for a young lady educated in so extraordinary and
godless a manner. The clergyman of the new district church
at Finchley called personally upon Mr. Jagenal. He said that
he did not know the young lady except by name, but that,
feeling the dreadful condition of a girl brought up without any
of the gracious influences of Anglican Ritual and Dogma, he was
impelled to oiler her a home with his Sisterhood. Here she
would receive clear dogmatic teaching, and learn what the
Church meant by submission, fasting, penance, and humiliation.
Mr. Jagenal thought she might also learn how to bestow her
fortune on Anglo-Catholic objects when she came of age, and
dismissed his reverence with scant courtesy. Two or three
widows who had known better days offered their services
which were declined with thanks. Joseph even refused to let
Miss Fleming stay with Mrs. Cassilis, the wife of Abraham
Dyson's second cousin. He thought that perhaps this lady
would not be unwilling to enliven her house by the attraction of
an heiress and a debutante. And it occurred to him that for a
c

THE GOLDEN liUTTEKFLY.

short time at least, she might, without offending a censorious
world and until her remaining guardian's wishes could be
learned, take up her abode at the house of the three bachelors.
" I am old, Miss Fleming," he said. " Forty years old ; a
gr'^at age to you ; and my brothers, Cornelius and Humphrey,
who live with me, are older still. Cornelius is a great poet ; he
is enf^aged on a work — the Upheaving of JElfred — Avhich will
immortalise his name. Humphrey is an artist ; he is working
at a group the mere conception of which, Cornelius says, would
make even the brain of Michael Angelo stagger. You will be
proud, I think, in after-years to have made the acquaintance of
my brothers."

She came, having no choice or any other wish, accompanied
bv her French maid and the usual impedimenta of travel.
" Phillis Fleming — her father called her Phillis because she
was his only joy — was nineteen. She is twenty now, because
the events of this story only happened last year. Her mother
died in giving her birth ; she had neither brothers nor sisters,
nor many cousins, and those far away. When she was six her
father died too — not of an interesting consumption or of a
broken heart, or any ailment of that kind. He was a jovial
fox-hunting ex-captain of cavalry, with a fair income and a care-
fully cultivated taste for enjoyment. He died from an accident
in the field. By his will he left all his money to his one child,
and appointed as her trustees his father's old friend, Abraham
Dyson of Twickenham and the City, and with him his own
friend, Lawrence Colquhouu, a man some ten years younger
than himself, with tastes and pursuits very much like his own.
Of course the child was taken to the elder guardian's house, and
Colquhoun, going his way in the world, never gave his trust
or its responsibilities a moment's thought.

Phillis Fleming had the advantage of a training quite P'f-
ferent from that which is usually accorded to young ladies.
She went to Mr. Abraham Dyson at a time when that old gen-
tleman, always full of crotchety ideas, v/as developing a plan
of his own for female education. His theory of woman's train-
ing having just then grown in his mind to finished proportions,
he welcomed the child as a subject sent quite providentially
to his hand, and proceeded to put his views into practice upon
little Phillis. That he did so showed a healthy belief in his

THE SOLDEN IIUTTEKFLY.

own judgment. Some men would have hastened into print
with a mere theory. Mr. Dyson intended to wait for twelve
years or so, and to write his work on woman's education when
Phillis's example might be the triumphant proof of his own
soundness. The education conducted on Mr. Dyson's princi-
ples and rigidly carried out was approaching completion when
it suddenly came to an abrupt termination. Few things in
this world quite turn out as we hope and expect. It was on
the cards that Abraham Dyson might die before the proof of
his theory. This, in fact, happened ; and his chief regret at
leaving a world where he had been supremely comfortable, and
able to enjoy his glass of port to his eightieth and last year,
was that he was leaving the girl, the creation of his theory, in
an unfinished state.

" Phillis," he said, on his deathbed, " the edifice is now com-
plete — all but the Coping-stone. Alas that I could not live to
put it on ! "

And what the Coping-stone was no man could guess. Great
would be the cleverness of him who, seeing a cathedral finished
save for roof and upper courses, would undertake to put on
these, with all the ornaments, spires, lanterns, gargoyles, pin-
nacles, flying buttresses, turrets, belfries, and crosses drawn in
the dead designer's lost plans.

Abraham Dyson was a wealthy man. Therefore he was
greatly respected by all his relations, in spite of certain eccen-
tricities, notably those which forbade him to ask any of them
to his house. If the nephews, nieces, and cousins wept bitterly
on learning their bereavement, deeper and more bitter were
their lamentations when they found that Mr. Dyson had left
none of them any money.

Not one penny ; not a mourning-ring ; not a single sign or
'token of affection to one of them. It was a cruel throwing of
cold water on the tenderest affections of the heart, and Mr.
Dyson's relations were deeply pained. Some of them swore •
others, felt that in this case it was needless to give sorrow words
and bore their sufferings in silence.

Nor did he leave any money to Phillis.
This obstinate old theorist left it all to found a college for
girls, who were to be educated in the same manner as Phillis
Fleming, and in accordance with the scheme stated to be fully
drawn up and among his papers.

THE (JOLDEN nUTTERFLY.

I » -

Up to the presoiit, Joseph Jug(!iial had not succeeded in
fimhng the sclieiue. There were several rolls of i)aper, forming
portions of the great work, but n(»ne were tinisiied, and all
pointed to the last chapter, that entitled the " Coping-stone,"
in which, it was stated, would he found the whole scheme with
comjdete fulness of detail, liut this last chapter could not bo
found anywhere. If it never was found, what woidd Ijecome
of the will 1 Then each one of Mr. Dyson's relations bega!i to
calculate what | might fall to iiim.self out of the iidieritance.
That was only natural, and perhaps it was not every one who,
like Mr. Gabriel Cassillis, openly lamenteil the number of Mr.
Dyson's collateral heirs

Not to be found. Joseph Jagenal's clerks now engaged in
searching everywhere for it, and all the relations praying — all
fervently and some with faith — that it might never turn up.

So that poor Phillis is sitting down to dimier with her edu-
cation unfinished — where is that Coping-stone ] Every young
lady who has had a finishing year at Brighton may look down
upon her. Perhaps, however, as her education has been of a
kind quite unknown in polite circles, and she has never heard
of a finishing year, she may be calm even in the presence of
other you,,g ladies.

What sort of girl is she 1

To begin with, she has fifty thousand pounds. Not the
largest kind of fortune, but still something. More than most
girls have ; more than the average heiress has. Enough to
make young Fortunio Hunter prick up his ears, smooth
down his moustache, and begin to inquire about guardians ;
enough to purchase a roomy cottage where Luve may be com-
fortable ; enough to enable the neediest wooer, if he be suc-
cessful, to hang up his hat on the i)eg behind the door and sit
down for the rest of his years. Fifty thousand pounds is a
sum which means possibilities. It was her mother's, and, very
luckily for her, it was so tied U[) that Captain Fleming, her
father, could not touch more than the interest, which, at three
per cent, amounts, as may be calculated, to fifteen hundred a
year. Really after explaining that a young lady has fifty thou-
sand, what further praise is wanted, what additional descrii^tion
is necessary » By contemplation of fifty thousand pounds,
ardent youth is inflamed as by a living likeness of IJulen. Be

THE (JOLPP^^N IHTTTF':RFIiY.

-all

fiho lovoly or bo slio loathly, Im; slio yoiinj^ or ol«l, hv siu! .svv(">^
or shrowiali — slu^ has fitly tliousaml pounds.

With her fifty thousand jtouuds tlio gods have given Phillis
Fleming a tall figun?, the lines of which an* as delicately curved
as those of any yacht in the Solent or of any sta^'o from
Greek stu<lio. Slie is slight, perhaps too slight ; she has hair
of a common dark brown, but it is fine hair, there is a great
wealth of it, it has a gleam and glimmer of its own as the sun-
light falls upon it, as if there were a hidden colour lying some-
where in it waiting to be discovered ; her eyes, like her hair,
are brown ; they are also large; and lustrous ; her lips an; full ;
her features are not straight and regular, like those of women's
beauties, for her chin is perhaps a little short, though square
and determined ; she has a forehead which is broad and rather
low ; she wears an expression in which good temper, intelli-
gence, and activity are more marked than beauty. She is quick
to mark the things that she sees, and she sees everything. Her
hands are curious because they are so small, so delicate, and so
sympathetic ; while her face is in repose you may watch a pass-
ing emotion by the rjuivering of her fingers, just as y^ u may
catch, if you have the luck, the laughter or tears of most girls
first in the brightness or the clouding of their eyes.

There are girls who, when we meet them in the street, pass
us like the passing of sunshine on an April day ; who, if we
spend the evening in a room where they are, make us under-
stand something of the waimth which Nature intended to be
universal, but has somehow only made special ; whom it is a
pleasure to serve, whom it is a duty to reverence, who can bring
purity back to the brain of a rake, and make a young man's
heart blossom like a rose in June.

Of such is Phillis Fleming.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

CHAPTER III.

PHILLIS S EDUCATION.

' HE dinner began without much conversation ; partly be-
cause the twins were hungry, and partly because thej'
were a little awed by the presence of an unwonted guest
in white draperies.

Phillis noted that, so far as she had learned as yet, things of
a domestic kind in the outer world were much like things at
Mr. Dyson' s; that is to say, the furniture of the dining-room
was similar and the dinner was the same. I do not know why
she expected it, but she had some vague notion that she might
be called upon to eat strange dishes.

" The Bollinger, brother Cornelius." said the artist.

" Thoughtful of you brother Humphrey," the poet answered.
"Miss Fleming, the Bollinger is in your honour."

Phillis looked puzzled. She did not understand where the
honour came in. But she tasted her glass.

"It is a little too dry for me," she said, with admirable can-
dour. " If you have any Veuve Clicquot, Mr. Jagenal" — she
addressed the younger brother — " I should prefer that."

All three perceptibly winced. Jane the maid presently re-
turned with a bottle of the sweeter wine. Miss Fleming tasted
it critically, and pronounced in its favour.

" Mr. Dyson, my guardian," she said, " always used to say
the ladies like their wine sweet. At least, I do. So he used
to drink Perier Jouet tr^s sec, and I had Veuve Clicquot."

The poet laid ^.lis forefinger upon his brow, and looked medi-
tatively at his /,lass. Then he filled it again. Then he drank
it off helplessly. This was a remarkable young lady.

" You lived a very quiet life," said Joseph, with a note of
interrogation in his voice, " with your guardian at Highgate ] "

" Ves, very quiet. Only two or three gentlemen ever came
to the house, and I never went out."

" A fair prisoner, indeed," murmured the poet. " Danae in
her tower waiting for the shower of gold."

LJb

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

" Danae must have wished," said Phillis, " when she was put
in the box and sent to sea, that the shower of gold had never
come."

Cornelius began to regret his allusion to the mythological
maid, for his classical memory failed, and he could not at that
moment recollect what box the young lady referred to. This,
no doubt, came of much poring over Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.
But he remembered other circumstances connected with Danae's
history, and was silent.

"At least you went out," said Humphrey, "to see the
Academy and the Water-colours."

She shook her head.

" I have never seen a picture gallery at all. I have not
once been outside Mr. Dyson's .grounds until to-day, since I
was six years old."

Humphrey supported his nervous system, like his brother,
with another glass of the Bollinger.

" You found your pleasure in reading divine Poetry," said
the Maker softly ; "perhaps in writing Poetry yourself."

" 0, dear, no ! " said Phillis. " T have not yet learned to
read. Mr. Dyson said that ladies ought not to learn reading
till they are of an age when acquiring that mischievous art can-
not hurt themselves or their fellow-creatures."

Phillis said this with an air of superior wisdom, as if there
could be no disputing the axiom.

Humphrey looked oceans of sympathy at Cornelius, who
took out his handkerchief as if to wipe away a tear, but as
none was in readiness he only sighed.

" You were taught other things, however ? " Joseph asked.

" Yes ; I learned to play. My master came twice a week,
aud I can play pretty well ; I play either by ear or by memory.
You see," she added simply, " I never forget anything that I
am told."

Compensation of civilised nature. We read, and memory
suffers. Those who do not read remember. Before wander-
ing minstrels learned to read and write, the whole Iliad was
handed down .on men's tongues; there are Brahmims who repeat
all their Sacred Books word for word without slip or error,
and have never learned to read ; there are men at Oxford who
can tell you the winners of Events for a fabulous period, and

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

yet get plucked for Greats, because, as they will tell you them-
selves, they really cannot read. Phillis did not know how to
read. But she remembered — remembered everything ; could
repeat a poem dictated twice if it were a hundred linies long,
and never forgot it ; caught up an air and learned to play it at
a sitting.

She could not. read. All the world of fiction was lost to
her. All the fancies of poets were lost to her ; all the records
of folly and crime which we call history were unknown to her.
Try to think what, and of what sort, v. oal i u^. the mind of a
person, otherwise cultivated, unable to read. In the first place,
he would be clear and dogmatic in his views, not having the
means of comparison ; next, he would be dependent on oral
teaching and rumour for his information ; he would have to
store everything, as soon as learned, away in his mind to be
lost altogether, unless he knew where to lay his hand upon it ;
he would hear little of the outer world, and very little would

interest him beyond his own circle ; he would be in the enjoy-
ment of all the luxuries of civilisation without understanding

how they got there ; he would be like the Mohammedans when

they came into possession of Byzantium, in the midst of things

unintelligible, useful and delightful.

" You will play to us after dinner, if you will be so kind,"

said Joseph.

"Can it be, Miss Fleming," asked Humphrey, "tii.it you

never went outside the house at all? "

" O, no ; I could ride in the paddock. It was a good large

field and my pony was clever at jumping ; so I got on pretty

well."

" Would it be too much to ask you how you managed to get

through the day f

" Not at all," she rejilied ; " it was very easy. I had a ride

before breakfast ; gave Mr. Dyson his tea at ten ; talked with

him till twelve; we always talked 'subjects,' you know, and

had a regular course. When we had done talking, he asked me

questions. Then I probably had another ride before luncheon.

In the afternoon I played, looked after my dress, and drew."
" You are, then, an Artist,'' cried Humphrey enthusiastically.

" Cornelius, I saw from the first that Miss Fleming had the eye

of an Artist."

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

" I do not know about that ; I can draw people. I will show
you some of my sketches, if you like, to-morrow. They are all
heads and figures ; I shall draw all of you to-night before going
to bed."

" And in the evening 1 "

" Mr. Dyson dined at seven. Sometimes he had one or two
gentlemen to dine with him ; never any lady. When there
was no one, we talked ' si^bjects ' again."

Never any lady ! Here was a young woman, rich, of good
family, handsome, and, in her way, accomplished, who had
never seen or talked with a lady, nor gone out of the house
save into its gardens since she was a child.

Yet, in spite of all these disadvantages and the strangeness
of her position, she was perfectly self-possessed. When she
left the table, the two elder brethren addressed themselves to
the bottle of Chateau Mouton with more rapidity than was be-
coming the dignity of the wine. Joseph almost immediately
joined his ward. When the twins left the dining-room with
its empty decanters, and returned arm-in-arm to the drawing-
room, they found their younger brother in animated conversa-
tion with the girl. Strange that Joseph should so far forget
his usual habits as not to go straight to his own room. The
two boso'ns which heaved in a continual harmony with each
other felt a simultaneous pang of jealousy for which there was
no occasion. Joseph was only thinking of the Coping-stone. ,

" Did I not feel it strange driving through the streets V
Phillis was saying. " It is all so strange that I was bewildered
— so strange and so wonderful I used to dream of what it was
like ; my maid told me something about it ; but I never guessed
the reality. There are a hundred things more than I can ever
draw."

It was, as hinted above, the custom of this young person, as
it was that of the Mexicans, to make drawings of everything
which occurred. She was thus enabled to preserve a tolerably
faithful record of her life.

"Show me," said Joseph — "show me the heads .of my brothers
and myself, that you promised to do, as soon as they are
finished."

The brethren sat together on the sofa, the Po^t in his
favourite attitude of meditation, forefinger on brow ; the

Ie*^

Ifci

THE GOLDEN BU'lTrRFLY.

J I

Artist with his eyes fixed on the fire catching the effects of
colour. Their faces were just a little flushed with the wine
they had taken.

One after the other crossed the room and spoke to their
guest.

Said Cornelius :

"You are watching my brother Humphrey. Study him, Miss
Fleming ; it will repay you well to know that childlike and
simple nature, innocent of the world, and aglow with the flame
of genius."

" I think I can draw him now," said Phillis, looking at the
Artist as hard as a turnkey taking Mr. Pickwick's portrait.

Then came Humphrey :

" I see your eyes turned upon my brother Cornelius. He is
a great, a noble fellow. Miss Fleming. Cultivate him, talk to
him, learn from him. You will be very glad some day to be
able to boast that you have met my brother Cornelius. To
know him is a Privilege ; to converse with him is an Education."

" Come," said Joseph cheerfully, " where is the piano 1 This
is a bachelor s house, but there is a piano somewhere. Have
you got it, Cornelius."

The Poet shook his head with a soft sad smile.

" Nay," he said, " is a Workshop the place for music 'i Let
us rather search for it in the Eealms of Art."

In fact it was in Mr. Humphrey's studio, whither they re-
paired. The girl sat down, and as she touched the keys her
eyes lit up and her whole look changed. Joseph was the only
one of the three who really cared for music. He stood by the
fire and said nothing. The brethren on either side of the per-
former displayed wonders of enthusiastic admiration, each in
his own way — the poet sad and reflective, as if music softened
his soul ; the artist with an effervescing gaiety delightful to
behold. Joseph was thinking. " Can we" — had his thoughts
taken form of speech — " can we reconstruct from the girl's own
account the old man's scheme anew, provided the chapter on
the Coping-stone be never found 1 Problem given. A girl
brought up in seclusion, without intercourse with any of her sex
except illiterate servants, yet bred to be a lady ; not allowed
even to learn reading, but taught orally, so as^to hold her own

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

;cts of
wine

Miss

:e and

flame

This
Have

in talk: required to discover what the old man meant by it, and
was wanted to finish the structure. Could it be reading
and writing 1 Could Abraham Dyson have intended to finish
where all other people begin ? "

This solution mightily commended itself to Joseph, and he
went to bed in great good spirits at his own cleverness.

In the dead of night he awoke in fear and trembling.

" They will go into Chancery," he thought. " What if the
Court refuses to take my view 1 "

At three in the morning the brethren, long left alone with
their pipes, rose to go to bed.

Brandy-and-soda sometimes makes men truthful after the
third tumbler, and beguiles them with illusory hopes after the
fouiLh. The twins were at the end of their fourth.

"Cornelius," said the Artist, "she has 50,000Z."

" She has, brother Humphrey."

" It is a pity, Cornelius, that we, who have only 20CJ. a year
each, are already fifty years of age."

" Humphrey, what age do we feel 1 "

" Thirty. Not a month more," replied the Artist, striking
out with both fists at an imaginary foe — probably old Time.

" Right. Not an hour above the thirty," said the Bard,
smiting his chest gently. " As for Joseph, he is too old — "

" Very much too old — "

" To think of marrying such a young — "

"Fresh and innocent — "

"Engaging and clever girl as Miss Phillis Fleming."

Did they then both intend to marry the young lady ?

CHAPTER IV.

" To taste the freshness of the morning air."

jE)HILLIS retreated to her own room at her accustomed

JlS hour of ten. Her nerves were excited ; her brain was

troubled with the events of this day of emancipation.

;)

^i II

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

She was actually in the world, the great world of which her
guardian had told her, the world where history was made,
where wicked kings, as i*Ir. Dyson perpetually impressed upon
her, made war iheir play and the people their playthings. She
had seen the streets of London, or some of them — those streets
along which had ridden the knights whose pictures she loved
to draw, tlie princesses and queens whose stories Mr. Dyson
had taught her ; where the business of the world was carried
on, and where there flowed up and down the ceaseless stream
of those whom necessity spurs to action. Asa matter of narrow
fact, she had seen nothing but that part of London which lies
betvreen Highgate-hill and Carnarvon-square ; but to her it
seemed the City, the centre of all life, the heart of civilization.
She regretted only that she had not been able to discern the
Tower of London. That might be, however, close to Mr. Jag-
enal's house, and she would look for it in the morning.

Wiifit a day ! She sat before her fire and tried to picture it
all over again. Horses, carriages, cart's, and people rushing to
and fro ; shops filled with the most wonderful exhibition of
precious things ; eccentric people with pipes, who trundled carts
piled with j'ellow oranges ; gentlemen in blue with helmets,
who lounged negligently along the streets ; boys v/ho ran and
whistled ; boys who ran and shouted ; boys who ran and sold
papers ; always boys — where were all the girls ? Where were
they all going 1 and what were all wishing to do ?

In the evening the world appeared to narrow itself. It con-
sisted of dinner with three elderly gentlemen ; one of whom
was t' ughtful about herself, spoke kindly to her, and asked
her about her past life ; while the other twc — and here she
laughed — talked unintelligibly about Art and themselves, and
sometimes praised each other.

Then she opened her sketch-book and began to draw the
portraits of her new friends. And first she produced a faithful
effigies of the twins. This took her nearly an hour to draw,
but when finished it made a pretty picture. The brethren
stood with arms intertwined like two children, with eyes gazing
fondly into each other's, and heads thrown back, in the attitude
of poetic and artistic meditation which they mostly affected. A
clever sketch, and she was more than satisfied when she held it
up to the light and looked at it, before placing it in her port
folio.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

" Mr. Humphrey said I had the eye of an artist/' she mur-
mured. ' " I wonder what he will say Avhen he sees this."

Then she drew the portrait of Joseph. This was easy. She
drew him sitting a little forward, playing with his watcii-chain,
looking at her with deep grave eyes.

Then she closed her eyes and began to recall the endless
moving panorama of the London streets. But this she could
not draw. There came no image to her mind, only a series of
blurred pictures running into each other.

Then she closed her sketch-book, put up her pencils, and
went to bed. It was twelve o'clock. Joseph was still think-
ing over the terms of Mr. Dyson's will and the chapter on the
Coping-stone. The twins were taking their third split soda —
it was brotherly to divide a bottle, and the mixture was less
likely to be unfairly diluted.

Phillis went to bed, but she could not sleep. The steps of
the passers-by, the strange room, the excitement of the day,
kept her awake. She was like some fair yacht suddenly
launched from the dock where she has grow^n slowly to her
perfect shape, upon the waters of the harbour, which she takes
for the waters of the great ocean. She louked round her bed-
room in Carnarvon-square, and because it was not Highgate,
thought it must be the vast, shelterless, and unpitying world
of which she had so often heard, and at thought of which,
brave as she was, she had so often shuddered.

It was nearly three when she fairly slept, and then she had
a strange dream. She thought that she was part of the great
procession which never ended all day long in the streets, only
sometimes a little more crowded and sometimes a little
thinner. She pushed and hastened with the rest. She would
have liked to stay and examine the glittering things ex-
hibited — the gold and jewellery, the dainty cakes and delicate
fruits, the gorgeous dresses in the windows — but she could
not. All pushed on, and she with them ; there had been

1, MllVl. KJliV^ .»Xl-ii »>ll^I.Xl. ,

no beginning of the rush, and there seemed to be no end.
Faces turned round and glared at her — faces which she marked
for a moment — they were the same which she had seen in the
morning ; ftices hard and faces hungry ; faces cruel and faces
forbidding ; faces that were bent on doing something desperate
— every kind of face except a sweet face. That is a rare thing

"7^

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

;i I

for a stranger to find in a London street. The soft sweet faces
belong to the country. She wondered why they all looked at
her so curiously. Perhaps because she was a stranger.

Presently there was a sort of hue and cry, and everybody
began running, she with them. Oddly enough, they all ran
after her. Why 1 Was that also because she was a stranger 1
Only the younger men ran, but the rest looked on. The twins,
however, were both running among the pursuers. The women
pointed and Houted at her ; the older men nodded, wagged
their heads, and laughed. Faster they ran and faster she fled ;
they distanced, she and her pursuers, the crowd behind ; they
passed beyond the streets and into country fields, where hedges
took the place of the brilliant windows ; they were somehow
back in the old Highgate paddock which had been so long her
only outer world. The pursuers Avere reduced to three or four,
among them, by some odd chance, the twin brethren ; and as
one, but who she could not tell, caught up with her and laid
his hand upon hers, and she could run no longer and could re-
sist no more, but fell, not with terror at all, but rather a sense
of relief and gladness, into a clutch which was like an embrace
of a lover for softness and strength, she saw in front of her dead
old Abraham Dyson, who clapped his hands and cried, " Well
run, Avell won ! The Coping-stone, my Philiis, of your educa-
tion ! "

She woke with a start, and sat up looking round the room.
Her dream was so vivid that she saw the group before her eyes
in the twilight — herself, with a figure, dim and undistinguish-
able in the twilight, leaning over her ; and a little distance off
old Abraham Dyson himself, standing, as she best remembered
him, upright, and with his hands upon his stick. He laughed
and wagged his head and nodded 'it as he said: "Well run,
well won, my Phiilis ; it is the Coping-r.tone ! "

This was a very remarkable dream for a young lady of nine-
teen. Had she told it to Joseph Jagenal it might have led his
thoughts into a new channel.

She rubbed her eyes, and the vision disappeared. Then she
laid her head again upon the pillow, just a little frightened at
her ghosts, and presently dropped off to sleep.

This time she had no more dreams ; but she awoke soon
after it was daybreak, being still unquiet in her new surround,
ings.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

And now she roraembered everything with a rush. She had
left Highgate ; she was in Carnarvon-square ; she was in Mr.
Joseph Jagenal's house ; she had been introduced to two gentle-
men, one of whom was said to have a childlike nature all aglow
with the flame of genius, while the other was described as a
great, a noble fellow, to know whom was a Privilege and to
converse with whom was an Education.

She laughed when she thought of the pair. Like Nebuchad-
nezzar, she had forgotten her dream. Unlike that king, she
did not care to recall it.

The past was gone. A new life was about to begin. And
the April sun was shining full upon her window-blinds.

Phillis sprang from her bed and tore open the curtains with
eager hand. Perhaps facing her might be the Tower of London.
Perhaps the Thames, the silver Thames, with London-bridge.
Perhaps St. Paul's Cathedral, " which Christopher Wren built
in place of the old one destroyed by the Great Fire." Phillis's
facts in history were short and decisive^ like the above.

No Tower of London at all. No St. Paul's Cathedral. No
silver Thames. Only a great square with houses all round.
Carnarvon-square at dawn. Not, perhaps, a fairy piece, but
wonderful in its novelty to this newly-emancipated cloistered
nun, with whom a vivid sense of the beautiful had grown up
by degrees in her mind, fed only in the pictures supplied by
the imagination. She knew the trees that grew in Lord Mans-
field's park, beyond the paddock ; she could catch in fine days
a glimpse of the vast city that stretches itself out from the
feet of breezy Highgate ; she knew the flowers of her own
garden ; and for the rest — she imagined it. River, lake, moun-
tain, forest, and field, she knew them only by talk with her
guardian. And the mighty ocean she knew because her French
maid had crossed it when she quitted fair Normandy, and told
her again and again of the horrors encountered by those who
go down to the sea in ships.

So that a second garden was a new re /elation. Besides, it
was bright and pretty. There were the first flowers of sprir .j^,
gay tulips and pretty things, whose names she did not know
or could not make out frcjm the window. The shrubs and
trees were green with the first sweet chlorine foliage of April,
clear and fresh from the broken buds which lay thick upon the

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

ground, the teiuler leaflets as yet all unsullied by the London
smoke.

Tile pavement was deserted, because! it was as yet too early
for any one, even a milk-boy, to be out. The only living
person to be seen was a gardener, already at work among the
plants.

A great yearniiig came over her to be out in the open air
and among the floAvers. At Highgate she rose at all hours ;
worked in the garden ; saddled and rode her pony in the fields ;
and amused herself in a thousand ways before the household
rose, subject to no restraint or law but one — that she was not
to open the front door, or venture herself in tlie outer world.

" Mr. Jagenal said I was to do as I liked," she said, hesitat-
ing. *' It cannot be wrong to go out of the front-door, now.
Besides," reasoning here like a casuist, " perhaps it is the back-
door which leads to that garden."

In a quartei- of an hour she was ready. She was not one of
those yo.ing ladies who, because no one is looking at them,
neglect their personal appearance. On the contrary, she always
dressiid well.

This morning she wore a morning costume, all one colour,
and I think it was gray, but am iiot quite certain. It was in
the graceful fashion of last year, lying in long curved lines,
and fitting closely to her slender and tall figure. A black ribbon
was tied round her neck, and in her hat — the hats of last year
did not suit every kind of face, but they suited the face of Phillis
Fleming — she wore one of those bright little birds whose de-
struction for tile purposes of fasiiion we all deplore. In her
hand she carried, as if she were at Hiiirhi.'ate and going to saddle
her pony, a small riding whip. And thus she opened the door
and slid down the stairs of the great silent house as stealtiiily
and almost as fearfully as the Lady Godiva on a certain mem-
orable day. It was a ghostly feeling which came over her when
she ran across the iiroad hall, and listened to the pattering of
her own feet upon the oil cloth. The broad dayliglit streamed
througli the reverhhre ; but yet the place seemed only half lit
up. The closed doors on either hand looked as if dreadful
things lurked behind them. With something like a shudder
she let down the door-chain, unbarred the bolts, and opened
the door. As she passed through she was aware of a great

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

rush across the htill behind her. It was Caesar, the mastiff.
Awakened by a noise as of one burgling, he crept swiftly and
silently up the kitchen-stairs, with intent to do a desperate deed
of valour, and found to his rapturous joy that it was only the
young lady, she who came the night before, and that she was
going out for an early morning walk — a thing he, for his part,
had not been permitted to do for many, many moons, not since
he had been brought — a puppy yet, and innocent — to the heart
of London.

No one out at all except themselves. What joy ! Phillis
shut the door very carefully behind her, looked up and down
the street, and then running down the steps seized the happy
Caesar by the paws and danced round and round with him
upon the pavement. Then they both ran a race. She ran like
Atalanta, but Caesar led till the finish, when out of a courtesy
more than Castilian, he allowed himself to be beaten, and
Phillis won by a neck. This result pleased them both, and
Phillis discovered that her race had brought her quite to the
end of one side of the square. And then, looking about her,
she perceived that a gate of the garden was open, and went in,
followed by Csesar, now in the seventh heaven. This was
better, far better, than leading a pair of twins who sometimes
tied knots with their legs. The gate was left open by the under-
gardener, who had arisen thus early in the morning with a view
to carrying off some of the finer tulips for himself. They
raced and chased each other up and down the gravel walks
between the lilacs and laburnums bursting into blossom. Pre-
sently they came to the under-garden er himself, who was busy
potting a selection of the tulips. He stared as if at a ghost.
Half-past five in the morning, and a young lady, with a dog,
looking at him.

He stiffened his upper lip, and put the spade before the flower-
pots.

" Beg pardon, miss. No dogs allowed. On the rules, miss."

" William," she replied — for she was experienced in under-
gardeners, knew that they always answer to the name of William,
also that they are exposed to peculiar temptations in the way
of bulbs — " William, for whom are you potting those tulips V*

Then, because the poor youth's face was suffused and his

TIIK (lOLDEN HUTTEllFLY.

countpiianco was " unto himself for a botrayal,"— she whistled
—actually whittled — to Caisar, and ran on laughing.

" Here's a rum start," said William. *' A young lady as
knows my name, what I'm up to and all, coming here at five
o'clock in the blessed morning when all young ladies as I ever
heard of has got their noses in their pillowses— else 'tain't no
good being a young lady. Ketches me a-disposin' of the tool-
ups. With a dawg, and whistles like a young nobleman."

He b(!gan putting back the ilowers.

" No knowin' who she mayn't tell, nor what slie mayn't say.
It's dangerous, William."

By the different roads, Montaigne v we arrive at the

same end. William's choice of the patn oi virtue was in this
case due to Phillis's early visit.

CHAPTER V.

" Te duco, Ctesar."

[HIED of running the girl began to walk. It was an April
morning, when the east wind for once had forgotten tc
blow. Walking, she whistled one of the ditties that she
knew. She had a very superior mode of performing on that
natural piccolo-flute, the human mouth : it was a way of her
own, not at all like the full round whistle of the street-boy,
with as much volume as in a bottle of '51 port, as full of un-
meaning sound as a later poem of Robert Browning's, and as
unmelodious as the instrument on which that poet has always
played. Quite the contrary. PhiHis's whistle was of a curious
delicacy and of a bullfinch-like note, only more flexible. She
trilled out an old English ditty, " Wlien Love was young," first
simply, and then with variations. Presently, forgetting that
she was not in the old paddock, she began to sing it in her
fresh young voice, William the under-gardener and Caesar the
dog her only audience. They were differently affected. William
grew sad, thinking of his sins. The dog wagged his tail and

THE COLDEN RUTTEllFLY.

rushed round Jind round thi; singer by way of apprev iation.
Music sa<lden.s tlie guilty, hut inaketh glad those who art clear
of conscience.

It was halt-past six when she became aware that she was
getting hungry. In the old times it was (!asy to (hvsecind to the
kitchen and make what Indian people call a clhnUi /ui:jii,ii little
breakfast for lu-rself. Now she was not certain whether, sup-
posing the servants were alxMit, her visit would be well received ;
or, supposing they were not yet up, she should know where to
find the kettle, the tea, and the firt;wood.

She left the gat len, followed by Caosar, wiio was also grow-
ing hungry after his morning walk, and resolved on going
straight home.

There were two objections to this.

First, she <lid not know one house from another, and they
were all alike. Second, she did not know the number, and
could not have read it had she known it.

Mr. Jageiuil's door was painted a dark brown ; so were they
all. Mr. Jagenal's door had a knocker ; so had they all. Could
she go all round the square knocking at every door, and waking
up the people to ask if Mr. Jagenal lived there ? She knew
little of the world, but it did occur to her that it woidd seem
unconventional for a young lady to " knock in" at six in the
morning. She did not, most unfortunately, think of asking
William the under-gardener.

She turned to the dog.

" Now, Caesar," she said ; " take me home."

Cajsar wagged his tail, nodde<l his head, and started off' before
her at a smart walk, looking round now ar.d then to see that
his charge was following.

'* Lucky," said Phillis, " that I thought of tiie dog."

Caesar proceeded with great solemnity to cross the road, and
began to march down the side of the square, Phillis expecting
him to stop at every house, pjut he did not. Arrived at the
corner where Carnarvon Street strikes off" the square he turned
aside, and looking round to see that his convoy was steering
the same course, he trudged sturdily down that thoroughfare.
"This cannot be right," thought Phillis, But she was loth
to leave the dog, for to lose him would be to lose everything,
and she followed. Perhaps he knew of a back way. Perhaps

]■

';*

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

the dog marched into the ««i „x«.xv«v v^^ ^^^wv^ix «« ^^^^^^^^^
~ following, and immediately lay down with

he would t3ke her for a little walk, and show her the Tower of
London.

Caesar, no longer running and bounding around her, walked
on with the air of one who has an important business on hand,
and means to carry it through. Carnarvon Street is long, and
of the half dismal, half-genteel order of Bloomsbury. Csesar
walked half-way down the street. Then he suddenly came to
a dead stop. It was in front of a tavern, the Carnarvon Arms,
the door of which, for it was an early house, was already open,
and the potboy was taking down the shutters. The fact that
the shutters were only half down made the dog at first suspect
that there was something wrong. The house, as he knew it,
always had the shutters down and the portals open. A.s, how-
ever, there seemed no unlawfulness of licensed hours to consider,

bar without so much as looking to
see if Phillis was
his head on his paws.

*• Why does he go in there," said Phillis. " And what is
the place ? "

She pushed the door, which, as usual in such establishments,
hung half open by means of a leathern strap, and looked in.
Nobody in the place but Caesar. She entered, and tried to under-
stand where she was. A smell of stale beer and stale tobacco
hanging about the room smote her senses, and made her sick and
faint. She saw the bottles and glasses, the taps and the counters,
and she understood — she was in a drinking-place, one of the
wicked dens of which her guardian sometimes spoke. She was
in a tavern, that is, a place where workmen spend their earnings
and leave their families to starve. She looked round her with
curiosity and a little fear.

Presently she became aware of the early risen potboy, who,
having taken down the shutters, was proceeding about his
usual work behind the bar, when his eyed fell upon the aston-
ishing sight of a young lady, a real young lady, as he saw at
once, standing in the Bottle and Jug department. He then
observed the dog, and comprehended that she was come there
after Caesar, and not for purposes of refreshment.

" V/hy, miss," he said, " Caesar thinks he's out with the two
gentlemen. He brings them here regular, you see, every
morning, and they takes their little glass, don't they, Caesar?"

THE OOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

Probably, thought watchful Phillis, anxious to learn — pro-
bably a custom of polite life which Mr. Dyson had neglected
to teach her. And yet he always spoke with such bitterness
of public-houses.

" Will you take a drop of somethink, miss?" asked the polite
assistant, tapping the handles hospitably. " What shall it be ? "

" I should like—" said Phillis.

"To be sure, it's full early," the man went on " for a young
lady and all. But Lor' bless your 'art, it's never none too
early for most, when they've got the coin. Give it a name,
miss, and there, the guvnor he isn't hup, and we won't chalk
it down to you, nor never ask you for the money. On'y give
it a name."

" Thank you very much," said Phillis. " I sJwuld like to
have a cup of tea, if I could take it outside."

He shook his head, a gesture of disappointment.

" It can't be had here. Tea ! " as if he had thought better
things of so much beauty — " Tea ! Swipes 1 After all, miss,
it's your way, and no doubt you don't know no better. There's
a Early Caufy-'ouse a liti ,.e way up the street. You must find
it for yourself, because the dawg he don't know it ; knows
nothink about Tea, that dawg. You go out, miss, and Caesar
he'll go too."

Phillis thanked him again for his : attention, and followed
his advice. Csesar instantly got up and sallied forth with her.
Instead, however, of returning to the square, he went straight
on down Carnarvon-Street, still leading the way. Turning
first to the right and then to the left, he conducted Phillis
through what seemed a labyrinth of streets. These were
mostly streets of private houses, not of the best, but rather of
the seediest. It was now nearly seven o'clock, and the signs
of life were apparent. The paper-boy was beginning, with the
milkman, his rounds ; the postman's foot was preparing for the
first turn on his daily treadmill of doorsteps and double knocks.
The workmen, paid by time, were strolling to their hours of
idleness with bags of tools ; windows were thrown open here
and there ; and an early servant might be seen rejoicing to
bang her mats at the street-door. Phillis tried to retain her
faith in Ciesp.r, ai:d followed obediently. It was easy to see
that the dog| knew where he w^s going, and had a distinct

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

! il

purpose in his mind. It was to be hoped, she thought, that
his purpose included a return home as soon as possible, because
she was getting a little tired.

Streets — always streets. Who were the people who lived in
them all 1 Could there be in every house the family life of
which Mr. Dyson used to tell her— the life she had never seen,
but which he promised she should one day see — the sweet life
where father and mother and children live together and share
their joys and sorrows 1 She began to look into the windows
as she walked along, in the hope of catching a hasty glance
at so much of the family life as might be seen so early in the

mornmg

She passed one house where the family were distinctly
visible, gathered together in the front kitchen. She stopped
and looked down through the iron railings. The children were
seated at the table. The mother was engaged in some cook-
ing operations at the fire. Were they about to sing a hymn
and to have family prayers before breakfast 1 Not at this house
apparently, for the woman suddenly turned from her occupation
at the fire and, without any adequate motive that Phillis could
discern, began boxing the children's ears all round. Instantly
there arose a mighty cry from those alike who had already
been boxed and those who sat expectant of their turn. Evi-
dently this was one of the houses where the family life was not
a complete success. The scene jarred on Phillis, upsetting her
pretty little Arcadian castle of domestic happiness. She felt
disappointed, and hurried on after her conductor.

It is sad to relate that Caesar presently entered another pub-
lic-house. This time Phillis went in after him with no hesita-
tion at all. She encountered the landlord in person, who
greeted the dog, asked him what he was doing so early, and
then explain «?d to Miss Fleming that he was accustomed to call
at the house every day about noon, accompanied by two gentle-
men, who hf.d their little whack and then went away • and
that she only had to go through the form of coming and depart-
ing in order to get Caesar out too.

" Little whack i" thought Phillis. " Little glass ! What a
lot of customs and expressions I have to learn ! "

For those interested in the sagacity of dogs, or in com-
parative psychology, it may be noted as a remarkable thing

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY,

that when Csesar came out of that second public-house he hesi-
tated as one struck suddenly with a grievous doubt. Had he
been doing rights He took a few steps in advance, then he
looked round and stopped, then he looked up and down the
street. Finally he came back to Phillis, and asked for instruc-
tions with a wistful gaze.

Phillis turned round and said, " Home, Caesar." Then, after
barking twice, Csesar led the way back again with alacrity and
renewed confidence.

He not only led the way home, but he chose a short cut
known only to himself. Perhaps he thought his charge might
be tired ; perhaps he wished to show her some farther varieties
of English life.

In the districts surrounding Bloomsbury are courts which
few know except the policeman ; even that dauntless function-
ary is chary of venturing himself into them, except in couples,
and then he would rather stay outside, if only out of respect
to a playful custom, of old standing, prevalent among the in-
habitants. They keep flower-pots on their first and second
floors, and when .1 policeman passes through the court they
drop them over. If no one is hurt, there is no need of an apo-
logy ; if a constable receives the projectile on his head or should
der, it is a deplorable accident which those who have caused it
are the first to publicly lament. It was through a succession
of these courts that the dog led Phillis.

Those of the men who had work to do were by this time

gone to do it. Those who had none,

together with those who
and therefore
pipes, leaning

felt strongly on the subject of Adam's curse

wished for none, stayed at home and smoked

against the door-posts. The ideal heaven of these noble English-

meri is forever to lean against door-posts and for ever to smoke

pipes in a land where it is always balmy morning, and where

there are " houses " handy into which they can slouch from

time to time for a drink.

The ladies, their consorts, were mostly engaged in such
household occupations as could be carried on out of doors and
within conversation reach of each other. The court was there-
fore musical with sweet feminine voices.

The children played together — no officer of the London
School Board having yet ventured to face those awful flower-

\ '

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

pots — in a continuous stream along tlie central line of the courts.
Phillis observed that the same game was universal, and that the
players were apparently all of the same age.

She also remarked a few things which struck her as worth
noting. The language of the men differed considerably from
that used by Mr. Dyson, and their pronunciation seemed to her
to lack delicacy. The difference most prominent at first was
the employment of a single adjective to qualify everything—
an observance so universal as to arrest at once the attention of a
stranger. The women, it was also apparent, were all engaged
in singing together a kind of chorus of lamentation, in irregular
strophe and antistrophe, on the wicked ways of their men.

Rough as were the natives of this place, no one molested
Phillis. The men stared at her and exchanged criticisms on
her personal appearance. These were complimentary, although
not poetically expressed. The women stared harder, but said
nothing until she had passed by. Then they made remarks
which would have been unpleasant had they been audible. The
children alone took no notice of her. The immunity from in-
sults which belongs to young ladies in English thoroughfares de
pends, I fear, more upon force of public opinion than upon
individual chivalry. Una could trust herself alone with her
lion ; she can only trust herself among the roughs of London
when they are congregated in numbers. Nor, I think, would
the spectacle of goodness and purity , combined with beputy,
produce in their rude breasts, by comparison with themselves,
those feelings of shame, opening up the way to repentance,
which are expected by self-conscious maidens ministering in
the paths of Dorcas.

Phillis walked along with steadfast eyes, watching everything
and afraid of nothing, because she knew of no cause for fear.
The dog, decreasing the distance between them, marched a few
feet in advance, right through the middle of the children, who
fell back and formed a lane for them to pass. Once Phillis
stopped to look at a child — a great-eyed, soft-faced, curly-
haired, beautiful boy. She spoke to him, asked him his name,
held out her hand to him. The fathers and the mothers looked
on and watched for the result, which would probably take the
form of coin.

The boy prefaced his reply with an oath of great fulness and

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

and

rich flavour. Phillis had never heard the phrase before, but
it sounded unmusically on her ears. Then he held out his hand
and demanded a copper. The watchful parents and guardians
on the door-steps murmured approval, and all the children
shouted together like the men of Ephesus.

At this juncture Csesar looked round. He mastered the
situation in a moment, surrounded and isolated his convoy by
a rapid movement almost simultaneous in flank and rear ;
barked angrily at the children, who threatened to close in en
masse and make short work of poor Phillis ; and gave her
clearly to understand once for all that she was to follow him
with silent and unquestioning docility.

She obeyed, and they came out of the courts and into the
squares. Phillis began to hope that the Tower of London
would presently heave in sight, or at least the silver Thames
with London-bridge ; but they did not.

She was very tired by this time. It was nearly eight, and
she had been up and out since five. Even her vigorous young
limbs were beginning to feel dragged by her three hours' ram-
ble. Quite suddenly Csesar turned a corner, as it seemed, and
she found herself once more in Carnarvon-square. The dog,
feeling that he had done enough for reputation, walked soberly
along the pavement until he came to No. 15, when he ascended
the steps and sat down.

The door was open, Jane, the housemaid, assiduously polish-
ing the bell-handles.

" Lor* a mercy, miss ! " she cried, " I thought you was a-bed
and asleep. Wherever have you a-bin — with Csesar too ? "

" We went for a walk and lost ourselves," Phillis replied.
" Jane, I am very hungry ; what time is breakfast 1 "

" The master has his at eight, miss. But Mr. Cornelius he
told me yesterday that you would breakfast with him and Mr.
Humphrey — about eleven, he said. And Mr. Humphrey
thought you'd like a little fresh fish and a prawn curry, per-
haps."

" I shall breakfast with Mr. Joseph," said Phillis.

She went to her room in a little temper. It was too bad to
be treated like a child wanting nice things for breakfast. A
little more experience taught her that any culinary forethought
on the part of the TAvins was quite sure to be so directed as to
secure their own favourite dishes.

:i''

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

She did breakfast with Joseph : made tea for him, told him
all about her morning adventures, received his admonitions in
good part, and sent him to his offi(;e half an hour later than
usual. One of his letters bore an American stamp. This he
opened, putting the rest in a leather :>ocket-book.

" This letter concerns you. Miss Iieming," he apologised in
an old-fashioned way ; " That is why I opened it before you. It
comes from your remaining guardian, Mr. Lawrence Col-
quhoun. Listen to what he says. He writes from New York :
* 1 am sorry to hear that my old friend Abraham Dyson is
gone. I shall be ready to assume my new responsibilities in a
fortnight after you receive this letter, as I hope to land in that
time at Liverpool. Meantime give my kindest regards to my
ward.' So — LaMTence Colquhoun home again."

" Tell me about him : is he grave and old, like Mr. Dyson 1
Will he want me to go back to the old life and talk * subjects 1 '
Mr. Jagenal, much as I loved my dear old guardian, I could
not consent to be shut up any more."

" You will not be asked, my dear young lady. Mr. Col-
quhoun h a man under forty. He is neither old nor grave. He
was in the army with your father. He sold out seven or eight
years ago, spent a year or two about London, and then disap-
peared. I am his lawyer, and from time to time he used to
send me his address and draw on me for money. That is all
I can tell you of his travels. Lawrence Colquhoun, Miss Flem-
ing, was a popular man. Everybody liked him ; especially the
— the fair sex."

" Was he very clever 1 "

" N-no ; I should s£ y not very clever. Not stupid. And,
now one thinks of it, it is very remarkable that he never was
known to excel in anything, though he hunted, rode, shot, and
did I suppose, all the oth or things that young men in the army
are fond of. He was foni of reading too, and had a consider-
able fund of information ; but he never excelled in anything."

Phillis shook her 1- jad.

" ]\Ii-. Dyson use<t to say that the people we like best arj the
people who are in our own line and have acknowledged their
own inferiority to ourselves. Perhaps the reuoon why Mr. Col-
quhoun was liked was that he did not compete with the men
who wished to excel, but contentedly took a second place."

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

This was one of the bits of Dysonian philosophy with which
Phillis occasionally graced her conversation, quoting it as rev-
erently as if it had been a lint, from Shakespeare, sometimes
with startlinur effect.

" I shall try to like him. I am past nineteen, and at twenty-
one I shall be my own mistress. If I do not like him, I shall
not live with him any longer after that."

" I think you will not, in any case, live at Mr. Colquhoun's
residence," said Joseph ; " but I am sure you will like him."

" A fortnight to wait."

" You must not be shy of him," Joseph went on ; " you have
nothing to be afraid of. Think highly of yourself, to begin
with."

" I do," said Phillis ; " Mr, Dyson always tried to make me
think highly of myself. He told me my education was better
than that of -"ny girl he knew. Of course that was partly his
kind way of encouraging me. Mr. Dyson said that shyness
was a kind of coward it 3 or (4se a kind of vanity. People who
are afraid of other peo de, he said, either mistrust themselves
or think they are not r ited at their true value. But I think I
am not at all afrai;! of strangers. Do I look like being afraid 1 "
She drew herself up to her full height and smiled a conscious
superiority. " Perhaps you will think that I rate myself too
highly."

" That," said Joseph, with a compliment really creditable for
a beginner, — " that would be difficult, Miss Fleming."

When the Twins prepared to take their morning walk at
twelve an unexpected event happened. Caesar, for the first
time on record, and for no reas'^n apparent or assigned, refused
to accompany them. They ent out without him, feeling
lonely, unhappy, and a little unprotected. They passed the
Carnarvon Arms without a word. At the next halting-place
they entered the bar in silence, glancing guiltily at each other.
Could it be that the passion for drink, divested of its usual
trappings of pretence, presented itself suddenly to the brethren
in its. horrid ugliness ? They came out with shamefaced looks
and returned home earlier than usual. They were perfectly
sober, and separated without the usual cheery allusions to
Work. Perhaps the conscience was touched, for when Jane

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

took up their tea she found the Poet in his Workshop sitting
at the table, and the Artist in his Studio standing at his easel.
Before the one wa3 a blank sheet of paper ; before the other
was a blank canvas. Both were fractious, and both found
fault with the tea. After dinner they took a bottle of port,
which, Humphrey said, they really felt to want.

CHAFIEii VI.

"I do not know
Ono ■ • sex ; no woman's face remember
Save, from my glass, mine own."

CLi

N the afternoon Phillis, who was " writing up" her diary
after the manner of the ancient Aztec, received a visitor.
For the first time in her life the girl found herself face to
face with — a lady. Men she knew — chiefly men of advanced
age ; they came to dine with Abraham Dyson. Women-ser-
vants she knew, for she had a French maid — imported too
young to be mischievous ; and there had been a cook at High-
gate, with two or three maids. Not one of these virgins
possessed the art of reading, or they would never have been en-
gaged by Mr. Dyson. Nor was she encouraged by her guardian
to talk with them. Also she knew that in the fulness of time
she was to be somehow transferred from the exclusive society
of men to that in which the leading part would be taken by
ladies — women brought up delicately like herself, but not all,
unhappily, on the same sound fundamental principle of oral
teaching.

Among the loose odds and ends which remained in Mr.
Dyson's portfolios, and where lay all that Joseph Jagenal could
ever find to help in completing his great system of education,
was the following scrap :

" Women brought up with women are hindered in their
perfect development. Let the girls be separated from the society
of their sex, and be educated mostly among men. In this way
the receptivity of the feminine mind [may be turned to best

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

account in the acquirement of robust masculine ideas. Every
girl may become a mother : let Ler therefore sit among men
and listen."

Perhaps this deprivation of the society of her own sex was
a greater loss to Phillis than her ignorance of reading. Con-
sider what it entailed. She grew up without the most rudi-
mentary notions of the great art of flirtation ; she had never
even heard of looking out for an establishment ; she had no
idea of considering every young man as a possible husband ;
she had, indeed, no glimmerings, not the faintest streak of
dawning twilight, in the matter of love ; while as for angling,
hooking a big fish and landing him, she was no better than a
heathen Hottentot. This was the most important loss, but
there were others ; she knew how to dress, partly hy instinct,
partly by looking at pictures; but she knew nothing about
Making-up. Nature, which gave her the figure of Hebe,
made this loss insignificant to her, though it is perhaps the
opinion of Mr. Worth that there is no figure so good but Art
can improve it. But not to knoiv about Making-up is, for a
woman, to lose a large part of useful sympathy for other
women.

Again, she knew nothing of the way in which girls pour
little confidences, all about trifles, into each other's ears ; she
had not cultivated that intelligence which girls can only learn
from each other, and which enables them to communicate
volumes with a ^.dlf-lifted eyelid ; she had a man's way of
saying out what she thought, and even, so far as her dogmatic
training permitted, of thinking for herself. She did not under-
stand the mystery with which women enwrap themselves,
partly working on the imagination of youth, and partly through
their love of secluded talk — a remnant of barbaric times, and
a proof of the subjection of the sex ; the frou-frou of life was
lost to her. And being without mystery, without the art of
flirtation, with nothing to hide and no object to gain, Phillis
was entirely free from the great vice into which women of the
weaker nature are apt to fall — she was perfectly and wholly
truthful.

And now she was about to make acquaintance^for the first
time with a lady — one of her own sex and of her own station.

I suppose Phillis must have preserved the characteristic in-

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

J k

atiiicts of her womjuiliood, despite lior oxtraonlin.iry training,
because the first thing she observed was tliat her visitor was
dressed in a style quite beyond her p(jwer of conception
and imperfect taste. So slie geneialised from an individual
case, and jumped at the notion that here was a very superior
woman indeed.

The superiority was in the " young person" at Melton &
Mowbray's, who designed the dress ; hut that Phillis did not
know.

A more remarkable point witli Mrs. Cassilis, Phillis's visitor,
than her dress was lier face. It was so regular as to be fault-
less. It might have been modelled, and so have served for a
statue. It was also as cold as a face of marble. j\Ien have
prayed — men who have fallen into fciminine traps — to be de- -
livered from every species of woman except the cold women ;
even King Solomon, who had great opportunities, including
long life, of studying the sex, mentions her not ; and yet I
think that she is the worst of all. Lord, give us tender-hearted
wives ! When we carve our ideal woman in marble, we do
not generally choose the wise Minerva nor the chaste Diana,
but Venus, soft-eyed, lissom, tender — and generally true.

Mrs. Cassilis called. As she entered the room she saw a
tall and beautiful girl, with eyes of a deep brown, who rose to
greet her with a little timidity. She was taken by surprise.
She expected to find a rough and rather vulgar young woman, of
no style and unformed manners. She saw before her a girl whose
attitude spoke unmistakably of delicacy and culture. What-
ever else Miss Fleming might be, slie was clearly a lady. That
was immediately apparent ; and Mrs. Cassilis was not likely to
make a mistake on a point of such vital importance. A young
lady of graceful figure, most attractive face, and wluch was all
the more astonishing, considering her education, perfectly
dressed. Phillis, in fact, was attired in the same simple morn-
ing costume in which she had taken her early morning walk.
On the table before her were her sketch-book and her pencils.

Mrs. Cassilis was dressed, for her part, in robes which it
had taken the highest talent of Eegent-street to produce. Her
age was about thirty. Her cold face shone for a moment with
the wintry light of a forced smile, but her eyes did not soften,
as she took Phillis's hand.

Phillis's pulse beat a little faster, in spite of her courage.

THK GOLDEN BUITERFLY.

Art face to. face with Nature. The girl just as she left her
nunnery, ignorant of mankind, before the perfect woman of
the world. They look curiously in oach other's eyes. . Now
the first lesson taught hy the world is the way to dissemble.
Mrs, Cassilis said to herself, " Here is a splendid girl. She is
not what I expected to see. This is a girl to cultivate and
bring out — a girl to do one credit." But she said aloud :

" Miss Fleming? I am sure it is. You are exactly the sort
of a girl I expected."

Then she sat down and looked at her comfortably. " I am
the wife of your late guardian's nephew — Mr. Gabriel Cassilis.
You have never met him yet ; but I hope you will very soon
make his acquaintance."

" Thank you," said Phillis simply.

" We used to think, until Mr. Dyson died and his prepos-
terous will was read, that his eccentric behaviour was partly
your fault. But when we found that he had left you nothing,
of course we felt that we had done you an involuntary wrong.
And the will was made when you were a mere child, and could
have no voice or wish in the matter."

" I had plenty of money," said Phillis ; " why should poor
Mr. Dyson want to leave me any more ? "

Quite untaught. As if any one could have too much money !

" Forty thousand pounds a year ! and all going to Female
education. Not respectable Female education. If it had been
left to Girton College, or even to finding bread-and-butter, with
the Catechism and Contentment, for charity girls in poke bon-
nets, it would have been less dreadful. But ta bring up young
ladies as you were brought up, my poor Miss Fleming — "

" Am I not respectable \ " asked Phillis, as humbly as a
West Indian nigger before emancipation asking if he was not
a man and a brother.

" My dear child, I hear you cannot even read and write."

" That is quite true."

" But everybody learns to read and write. All the Sunday-
school children even know how to read and write."

" Perhaps that is a misfortune for the Sunday-sohool chil-
dren," Phillis calmly observed ; " it would very likely be better
for the Sunday-school children were they taught more useful
things." Here Phillis was plagiarising — using Mr. Dyson's
own words.

III

11^

■' I

TIIK ISOLDKN HUTTKUKLY.

" At least every one in society knows them. Miss Fleming,
I am ten years older than yoii, and, if you will only trust mo,
I will give you suuli advice and assistance as I can."

" You are very kind," said Phillis, with a little distrust, of
which sJH! was asliamed. " I know that I must be very ignor-
ant, because I have already'seen so much that I never suspected
before. If you will only tell me of my deficiencies I will try
to repair them. And 1 can learn reading and writing any
time, you know, if it is at all necessary."

" Tlien let us consider. My poor girl, I fear you have to
learn the very rudiments of society. Of course you are ([uite
ignorant of things that people talk about. Books are out of
the question. Music and <- r»ncerts ; art and pictures ; china —
perhaps Mr. Dyson collected ? "_ ,

" No."

" A pity. China would be a great help ; the opera and
theatres ; balls aTid dancing ; the rink — "

" What is the ..nk ?" asked Phillis.

" The latest addition to the arts of flirtation and killing
time. Perhaps you can fall back upon Church matters. Are
you a Ritualist % "

" What is that ?"

" My dear girl " — Mrs. Cassilis looked unutterable horror as
a thought struck her — "did you actually never go to church ? "

" No. Mr. Dyson used to read prayers every day. Why
should people go to church when they pray ? "

" Why ? why % Because people in society all go ; because
you must set an example to the lower orders. Dear me ! It is
very shocking ; and girls are all expected to take such an in-
terest in religion. But the first thing is to learn reading."

She had been carrying a little box in her hands all this time,
which she now placed on the table and opened. It contained
small wooden squares, with gaudy pictures pasted on them.

" This is a Pictorial Alphabet : an introduction to all educa-
tion. Let me show you how to use it. What is this ] "

She held up one square.

" It is a very bad picture, abominably coloured, of a h9,tchet
or a kitchen chopper."

" An axe, my dear — A, x, E. The initial letter A is below
in its two forms. And this % "

TIIK (JULDlvN UUTTKUKLV.

Are

" TliJit is worst'. I suppose it is meant for a cow. \Vli;it a
COW !

" Hull, my (h'iir -I>, V, i., L, bull. The initial I> is Imlow."

" Aud is this," askt'd Phillis, with great conttunpt, '' the way
to learn reading ? A kitchen chopper stands for A and a cow
with luT le,i;s out of drawing stands for B. Utdess I can draw
my cows for myself, Mrs. (Vssilis, I shall not try to learn
reading."

" You can draw, then ] "

" I draw a little," said Phillis. " Not so well, of course, as
girls brought up respectably."

Pardon me, my dear Miss Fleming, if I say that sarcasm
is not considered good style. It fails to attract."

Good style, thought Phillis, means talking so as to attra'.-t.

" Do let me draw you," said Phillis. Her temper was not
faultless, and it was rising by degrees, so that she wanted the
relief of silence. '* .)o let me draw you as you sit there."

She did not wait for permission, but sket«Oied in a few mo-
ments a profile portrait of her visitor, in which somehow the
face, perfectly rendered in its coldness and strength, was with-
out the look which its owner always thought was there — the
look which invites sympathy. The real unsympathetic nature,
caught in a moment by some subtle artist's touch, was there,
instead. Mrs. Cassilis looked at it, and an angry Hush crossed
her face, which Phillis, wondering why, noted.

" You caricature extremely well. I congratulate you on that
power, but it is a dangerous accomplishment — even more dan-
gerous than the practice of sarcasm. The girl who indulges in
the latter at most tails to attract ; but the caricaturist repels."

"0!" said Phillis, innocent of any attempt to caricature,
by trying to assimilate this strange dogmatic teaching.

" We must always remember that the most useful weapons
in a girl's hands are those of submission, faith, and reverence.
Men hate — they hate and detest — women who think for them-
selves. They positively loathe the woman who dares turn them
into ridicule."

She looked as if she could be one of the few who possess
that daring.

" Fortunately," she went on, " such women are rare. Even
among the strong-minded crew, the shrieking sisterhood, most
E

'■

THE GOLDEN IJUTTERB'LY.

of them are obliged to worship some man or other of their own

school."

" I don't understand. Pardon me, Mrs. Cassilis, that I am
so stupid. I say what I think, and you tell me I am sarcastic.''
" Girls in society never say what they think. They assent
or at best ask a question timidly."

" And I make a little pencil sketch of you, and you tell me
I am a caricaturist,"

" Girls who can draw must draw in the conventional manner
reco'i'nised by society. They do not draw likenesses ; they copy
flowers and sometimes draw angels and crosses. To please men
they draw soldiers and horses."

" But why cannot girls draw what they please 1 And why
must they try to attract 1 "

Mrs. Cassilis looked at this most innocent of girls with mis-
giving. Could she be so ignorant as she seemed, or was she
pretending 1

" Why '{ Philiis Fleming, only ask me that question again
in six months' time if you dare."

Philiis shook her head ; she was clearly out of her depth.
" Have you any other accomplishments ? "
" I an» afraid not. I can play a little. Mr. Dyson liked my
playing ; but it is all from memory and from ear."

Will yon, if you do not mind, play something to me 1 "
\7 ictoria Cassilis cared no more for music than the deaf adder
which hath no understanding. By dint of much teaching,
however, she had learned to execute creditably. The playing
of Philiis, sweet, spontaneous, and full of feeling, had no power
to touch her heart.

" Ye-yes," she said, " that is the sort of playing which some
young men fike ; not those young men from Oxford, who
' follow ' Art, and pretend to understand good music. You
may see them asleep at afternoon recitals. You must play at
small parties only, Philiis. Can you sing 1 "

" I sing as I play," said Philiis, rising and shutting the piano.
" That is only, I suppose, for small parties." The colour came
into her cheeks, and her brown eyes brightened. She was ac-
customed to think that her playing gave pleasure. Then she
reproached herself for ingratitude, and she asked pardon. " 1
am cross with myself for being so deficient. Pra> forgive me,
Mrs. Cassilis. It is very kind of you to take all this trouble."

v^]

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

leir own

lat I am

rcHstic.'"'
y assent

i tell rae

manner
ley copy
?ase men

ind wliy

^ith mis-
Avas she

^n agaui

iepth.

iked

le?"
af adder
eacliing,
playin
10 power

ich some
rd, who
c. You
b play at

le piano.
)ur came
J was ac-
rhen she
on. " 1
give me,
trouble."

My dear, you are a hundred times better than I expected."

Phillis remembered what she had said ten minutes before,
but was silent. *

" A hundred times better. Can you dance, my dear 1 "

" No. Antoinette tells me how she used to dance with the
villa^^ers when she was a little girl at Yport."

" That can be easily learned. Do you ride ? "

At any other time Phillis would have replied in the n forma-
tive. Now she only asserted a certain power of sticking on,
acquired on pony-back and in a paddock. Mrs. Cassilis sighed.

'* After all, a few lessons will give )^ou a, becoming seat.
Nothing so useful as clever horsemanship. But how shall we
disguise the fact that you cannot read or write 1 "

" I shall not try to disguise it," Phillis cried, jealous for Mr.
Dyson's good name.

" Well, my dear, we come now to the most important ques-
tion of all. Where do you get your dresses 1 "

"O Mrs. Cassilis, do not say that my dresses are calculated
to repel ! " cried poor Phillis, her spirit quite broken by this
time. " Antoinette and 1 made this one between us. Some-
times I ordered them at Highgate, but I like my own best."

Mrs. Cassilis put up a pair of double eyeglasses, because
they were now arrived at a really critical stage of the cate-
ciiisni. There was something in the simple dress which forced
her admiration. It was quite plain, and, compared with her
own, as a daisy is to a dahlia.

" It is a very nice dressi," she said critically. " Whether it
is your figure, or your own taste, or the material, I do not
know , but you rr- dressed perfectly, Miss Fleming. No young
lady could dr^'ss better."

Women meet on the common ground of dress. Phillis
blushed with pleasure. At all events she and her critic had
something on which they could agree.

" I will come to-morrow morning, and we will examine your
wardrobe together, if you will allow me ; and then we will go
to Melton & Mowbray's. And I will write to Mr. Jagenal,
asking him to bring you to dinner in the evening, if you will
come."

*' I should like it very much," said Phillis.
made me a little afraid,"

But you have

I'HE (JOLDKN lUJTTERFLY.

" You need not he afraid at all. And it will be a very small
party. Two or three friends of my husband's, and two men,
who have just come home and published a book, which is said
to be clever. One is a brother of Lord Isknvorth, Mr. Ronald
Dunquerciue, and the other is a Captain Ladds. Vou have
only to listen and look interested."

" Then I will come. And it is very kind of you, Mrs.
Cassilis, especially since you do not like me."

That was quite true, but not a cu^^tomary thing to be said.
Phillis perceived dislike in the tones of her visitor's voice, in
her eyes, m her manner. Did Mrs. Cassilis dislike her for her
fresh and unsophisticated nature, or for her beauty, or for the
attractiveness which breathed from every untaught look and
gesture of the girl 1 Swedenborg taught that the lower nature
cannot love the nobler ; that the highest heavens are open to
all who like to go there, buc the atmosphere is found congenial
to very few.

*-' Not like you ! " Mrs. Cassilis, hardly conscious of any
dislike, answered after her kind. " My dear, I hope we shall
like each other very much. Do not let fancies get into yonr
pretty head. I shall try to be your friend, if you will let mii."

Again the wintry smile upon the lips, and the lifting of the
cold eyes, which smiled not.

But Phillis was deceived by the warmth of the words. She
took her visitor's hand and kissed it. The act was a homage
to the woman of superior knowledge.

" O yes," she murmured, "if you only will."

" I skall call you Phillis. My name is Victoria."

" And you will tell me more about girls in society."

" I will show you girls in society, which is a great deal better
for you," said Mrs. Cassilis.

" I looked at the girls I saw yesterday as we drove through
the streets. Some of them were walking like this." She had
been standing: during most of this conversation, and now she
began walking across the room in that ungraceful pose of the
body which was moi-afletted last year than at present. Ladies
do 0(!casionally have intervals of lunacy in the matter of tastti,
but if you giv( them time they cv .•■ round again. F^ven cri-
nolines went out at last, fter the beauty of a whole generation
had been spoiled by them. " Then there were others, who

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

She

walked like this." She laid her head on one side, and affected
a languid air, which I have myself remarked as being prevalent
in the High-street of Islington. Now the way from Highgate
to Carnarvon-square lies through that thoroughfare. *' Then
there were the boys. And they were all whistling. This was
the tune."

Sh<i threw her head back, and began to whistle the popular
song of last spring. You know what it was. It came between
the favourite air from tlie Fille de Madame Angot and that
other sweet melody," Tommy, make room for your Uncle,"
and was called " Hold the Fort." It refreshed the souls of Re-
vivali.si.s in her Majesty'.s Theatre, and of all the street-boys in
this great IJabylon.

INtrs. Cassilis positively shrieked :

"My dear, f/mr, dear girl," she cried, ''you MUST not
whistle ! "

'•'• Is it wrong to whistle ? "

'* Nt)t morally wrong, I suppose. Giils never do anything
morally wrong. But it is far worse, Phillis, far worse ; it is
unspeakably vulgar."

" O.' said Pliillis, " I am so sorry ! "

" Ant. my dear, one thing more. Do not cultivate the power
of mimicry, which you undoubtedly possess. Men are afraid
of young ladies who can imitate them. For actresses, authors,
artists, and common people of that sort, of course it does not
matter. But for us it is different.

" And now, Phillis, I must 'wave you till to-morrow. I have
great hopes of you. Vou have an excellent figure, a very pretty
and attractive face, wmiimg eyes, and a taste in dress which
only wants <'nlr,)vation And that we will begin to-morrow at
Mnltuu *t ^l..\^ ray's."

*'C) yes," said Phillis, clapping her hands, " that will be de-
licrhtful ! T have never seen a Shop yet."

"She has— never — seen— a Shop ! "' cried Mrs, Cassilis.
"Child, it is hard indeed to realize your Awful condition of
mind. That a girl of nineteen should be able to say that she
has never seen a Shop ! My dear, your education has been un-
christian. And poor Mr. Dyson, I fear, cut off suddenly
iiis sins, without rhe chance of repentance."

THK (JOLDEN BUTTP^RFLY.

CHAPTER VII.

" Bid nie discourse, I will enuhaut thiito ear."

fOSEPH JAGENAL and his charge were the last arrivals
at Mrs. Cassilis's dinner. It was not a large party. There
were two ladies of the conventional type, well dressed,
well looking, and not particularly interesting ; with them their
two husbands, young men of an almost preternatural solem-
nity — such solemnity as sometimes results from a too concen-
trated attention to the Money Market. They were there as
friends of Mr. Cassilis, whom they regarded with the reverence
justly due to success. They longed to speak to him privately
on ittvestmeni s, but did not dare. There were also two lions,
newly captured. Ladds, the " Dragoon " of the joint literary
venture — " The Little Sphere, by the Dragoon and the
Younger Son " — is standing in that contemplative attitude by
which 1 ungry men, awaiting the announcement of dinner, veil
an indecent eg^rness ''o begin. The other, the " Younger Son,"
is talking to Mr. Cassilis.

Philiis remarked that the room was furnished in a manner
quite beyond anything she knew. Where would be the dingy
old chairs, sofas, and tables of Mr. Dyson's, or the solid splen-
«lour of Joseph Jagenal's drawing-room, compared with the
glories of dt^corative art which Mrs. Cassilis had called to her
aid ] Siie had no time to make more than a general survey as
she went to grt^et her hostess.

Mrs. Cassilis, for her part, observed that Philiis was dressed
carefully, and was looking her best. She had on a sim[)le
wliite dress of that soft stuff called, I think, Indian muslin, which
falls in graceful folds. A pale lavender sash relieved the mo-
notony of the white, and set off her shapely Hgure. Her hair,
done up in the simplest fashion, was adorned with a single
white rose. Her cheeks were a little Hushed with excitement,
but her eyes were steady.

Philiis stole a glance at the other ladies. They were dressed,

THE GOLDEN IJUTTEKFLY.

she was glad to observe, in the same style as herself, but not
better. That naturally raised her spirits.
Then Mrs. Oassilis introduced her husband.
When Phillis next day attempted to reproduce her impres-
sions of the evening, she had no difficulty in recording the
likeness of Mr. Gabriel Cassilis with great fidelity. He was
exactly like old Time. .•

The long lean limbs, the pronounced features, the stooping
figure, the forelock which our enemy will not allow us to take,
the head bald save for that single ornamental curl and a fringe
of gray hair over the ear — all the attributes of Time were there
except the scythe. Perhaps he kept that at his office.

He was a very rich man. His house was in Kensington-
palace-gardens, a fact which speaks volumes ; its furnishing
v.^as a miracle of modern art ; his paintings were undoubted ;
his portfolios of water-colours were worth many thousands ;
and bis horses were perfect.

He was a director of many companies — but you cannot live
in Kensingtonpalace-gardens by directing companies — and he
had an office in the City which consisted of three rooms. In
the first were four or five clerks, always writing ; in the second
was the secretary, always writing ; in the third was Mr. Gabriel
Cassilis himself, always giving audience.

He married at sixty-three, because he wanted an establish-
ment in his old age. He was too old to expect love froii... a
woman, and too young to fall in love with a girl. He did not
marry in order to make a pet of his wife — indecjd, he might as
, well have tried stroking a statue of Minerva as petting Victoria
Pengelley ; and he made no secret of his motive in proposing
for the young lady. As delicately as possible he urged that,
though her family was good, her income was small ; that it is
better to be rich and married than poor and single ; and he
offered, if she consented .to become his wife, to give her all
that she could wish for or ask on the material and artistic side
of life.

Victoria Pengelley, on receipt of the offer, which was com-
municated by a third person, her cousin, behaved very strange-
ly. She first refused absolutely ; then she declared that she
would have taken the man, but that it was now impossible ;

THE GoLDKN BUTTEUKJ.Y.

{ I,
i

then she retracted the last statement, and, after a week of
agitation, acce))ted the offer.

•• And I mnst say, Victoria," said her cousin, '* that you have
made a strange fuss about accepting an offer from one of tlie
richest men in London. He is elderly, it is true ; but the dif-
ferencQ between eight-and-twenty and sixty lies mostly in the
imagination, I will write to Mr. Cassilis to-night."

Which she did, and they were married.

She trembled a great deal during the marriage ceremony.
Mr. Cassilis was pleased at this appearance of emotion, which
he attributed to causes quite remote from any thought in the
lady's mind. " Calm to all outward seeming," he said to him-
self, " Victoria is capable of the deepest par,sion."

They had now been married between two and three years.
They had one child — a boy.

It is only to be added that Mr. Cassilis settled the sum of
fifteen thousand pounds upon the wedding-day on his wife, and
that they lived together in that perfect happiness which is to be
expected from well-bred people who marry without pretending
to love each other.

Their dinners were beyond praise ; the wine was incompar-
able ; but their evenings were a little frigid. A sense of cold
splendour filled the house — the chill which belongs to new
things and to new men.

The new man thirty years ago was loud, ostentatious, and
vulgar. The new man now — there are a great many more of
them — is very often quiet, unpretending, and well-bred. He
understands art, and in a patron ; he enjoys the atl vantages
which his wealth affords him ; he knows how to bear his riches
with dignity and with reserve. The only objection to him is
that he wants to go where other men, who were new in the
last generation, go, and do what they do.

Mr. Cassilis welcomed Miss Fleming and Joseph Jagenal,
and resumed his conversation with Jack Dunquerque. That
young man looked much the same as when we saw him last on
the slopes of the Sierra Nevada. His tall figure had not filled
out, but his slight moustache had just a little increased in size.
And now he looked a good deal bored.

'* I have never, I confess," his host was saying, wielding a
double eyeglass instead of his scythe, — " I have never been at-

THE (iOLDEN 1]L:TTKKF1.Y.

tracteil by the manners and customs of uncivilised people
My sympathies cease, I fear, where Banks end."

" You are only interested in the country of Lombardy ? "

" Yes ; very good : precisel}'^ so."

" Outside the pale of Banks men certainly carry their money
about vj^ith them — "

" Which prevents the accumulation of wealth, my clear sir.
Civilisation was born when men learned to confide in each other.
Modern history begins with the Fuggers, of vvhom you may
have read."

" I assure you I never did," said Jack truthfully.

Then dinner was announced.

Phillis found herself on the right of Mr. Cassilis. Next to
her sat Captain Ladds. Mr. Dunquerque was at the opposite
corner of the table — he had given his arm to Mrs. Cassilis.

Mrs. Cassilis, Phillis saw, was watching her by occasional
glances. The girl felt a little anxious, but she was not awkward.
After all, she thought, the customs of society at a dinner-table
cannot be very different from those^ observed and taught her
by Mr. Dyson. Perhaps lier manner of adjusting things was
a little wanting in finish and delicacy — too downright. Also,
Mrs. Cassilis observed, she made no attempt to talk with Cap-
tain Ladds, her neighbour, but was, curiously enough, deeply
interested in the conversation of Mr. Cassilis.

Ladds was too young for Phillis, despite his five-and-thirty
years. Old men and graybeards she knew. Young men she
did not know. She could form no guess what line of talk
would be adopted by a young man — one who had a deep bass
voice when he spoke, and attacked his dinner with a vigour
past understanding. Phillis was interested in him, ajid a little
afraid lest he should talk to her.

Others watched her too. Jack Dunquerque, his view a little
inteicepted by the I'pcrgne, lifted furtive glances at the bright
and pretty girl at the other end of the table. Joseph Jagenal
looked at her with honest pride in the beauty of his ward.

They talked politics, but not in the way to which she was
accustomed. Mr. Dyson and his brother graybeards were like
(.'assandra, Elijah, Jeremiah, and a good many prophets of the
present day, inasmuch as the more' they discussed affairs the
more they prophesied <lisaster. So that Phillis had learned

1 1

THE G0LDB:N BUTTKllKLY.

from them to regard the dreadful future with terror. Every
(lay seemed to make these sages more dismal. Phil lis had not
yet learned that the older we get the wiser Ave grow, and the
wiser we grow the more we tremble ; that those are most light-
hearted who know the least. At this table politics were talked
in a very different manner; they laughed where the sages
wagged their heads and groaned : they even discussed, with a
familiarity which seemed to drive out anxiety, the favourite
bugbear of her old politicians, the continental supremacy of
Germany.

The two young City men, who were as solemn as a pair of
Home Secretaries, listened to their host with an eager interest
and deference which the other two, who were not careful about
investments, did aot imitate. Phillis observed the difference,
and wondered what it meant. Then Mr. Cassiiis, as if he had
communicated as many ideas about Russia as he thought desir-
able, turned the conversation upon travelling, in the interests
of the Dragoon and the Younger Son.

*' J. suppose," he said, addressing/ Jack, " that in your travels
among the islanders you practised ihe primitive mode of Barter."

" We did ; and they cheated us when they could. Which
shows that they have improved upon the primitive man. I
suppose he was honest."

" I should think not," said the host. '* The most honest
classes in the world are the richest. People who want to get
things always have a tendency to be - dishonest. England is
the most honest nation, because it is the richest. France is the
next. Germany, you see, which is a poor country, yielded to
the temptations of poverty and took Sleswick-Holstein, Alsace,
and Lorraine. I believe that men began with dishonesty."

" Adam, for example," said Ladds, '* took what he ought not
to have taken."

" Captain Ladds ! " — this was one of the two ladies, she
v/ho had read up the new book before coming to the dinner,
and had so far an advantage over the other — " that is just like
one of the wicked things, the delightfully wicked things, in
the Little Sphere. Now we know which of the two did the
wicked things."

" It was the other man," said Ladds.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

light-

" Is it fair to ask," tho huly went on, " how you wrote the
book 1 "

She was one of those who, could she get the chance, would
ask Messieurs Erckmann and Chatrian themselves to furnish
her with a list of the paragraphs and the ideas due to each in
their last novel.

Ladds looked as if the question was beyond his comprehen-
sion.

At last he answered slowly,

** Steel pen. The other man had a gold pen."

"No — no ; I mean, did you write one chapter and your col-
laborateur the next, or how 1 "

" Let mo think it over," rei)lied Ladds, as if it were a conun-
drum.

Mrs. Cassilis came to the rescue.

" At all events," she said, " the great thing is that the book is
a success. I have not read it, but I hear there are many clever
and witty things in it. Also some wicked things. Of course,
if you write wickedness you are sure of an audience. I don't
think, Mr. Dunquerque," she added, with a smile, " that it is
the Ijusiness of gentlemen to attack existing institutions."

Jack shook his head.

" It was not my writing. It was the other man. I did
wliat I could to tone him down."

*' Have you read the immortal work ] " Ladds asked his
neighbour. He had not spoken to her yet, but he had eyes
in his head, and he was gradually getting interested in the
silent girl who sat beside him, and listened with such rapt in-
terest to the conversation.

This great and manifest interest was the only sign to show
that Phillis was not accustomed to dinners in society.

Ladds thought that she must be some shy maiden from the
country — a little " rustical " perhaps. He noticed now that
her eyes were large and bright, that her features were clear
and delicate, that she was looking at himself with a curious
pity, as if, which was indeed the case, she believed the state-
ment about his having written the wicked things. And then
he wondered how so bright a girl had been able l' listen to the
prosy dogmatics of Mr. Cassilis. Yet she had listened, and
with pleasure.

THE (lOLDKN JIUTTEIIFLY.

1 I ■

i > ■

IMiillis was at tliat stage in her worldly education when she
would have listened with pleasure to ariyhody — Mr. Moody, a
lecture on astronomy, a peuny-reailing, an amateur dramatic
performance, or an essay in the EiUnhuiujh. For everything
was new. She was like the hlind man who received his sight
and saw men, like trees, walking. Every new face was a new
world ; ev(!ry fresl speaker was a new revelation. No one to
her was stupid, was a bore, was insincere, was spiteful, was
envious, or a humbug, because no one was known. To him
who does not know the inflated indiarubber toy is as solid as
a cannon-])all.

" I never read anything," said Phillis, with ;i half blush.
Not that she was ashamed of the fact, but she felt that it wouhl
have j)leased Captain Ladds had she read bis book. " You
see, I have never learned to read."

u Q j .»

It was rather a facer to Ladds. Here was a young lady,
not being a Spaniard, or a Sicilian, or a Levantine, or a Mexi-
can, or a Paraguayan, or a Brazilian, or belongin- to any
country where such things are ])ossible, who boldly confessed
that she could not read. Thi> in England ; this in the year
1875 ; this in a country positively rendered unpleasant by
reason of its multitudinous School Boards and the echoes of
their wrangling!

Jack DuiKpieniue, in his place, heard the statement and
looked u}) involuntarily, as if to see what manner of young
lady this couhl be — a gesture of surprise into which the incon-
gruity of tiie thing startle<l him. He caught her full face as
she leaned a little forward, and his glaiice rested for a moment
on a cheek so fair that his spirit fell. Ueauty disarms the
youthful squire, and arms him who has won his spurs. I
speak in an allegory.

Mrs. Cassilis heard it, and was half amused, half angry.

Mr. Cassilis heard it, opened ids mouth, as if to make some
remark about Mr. Dyson's method of education, but thought
better of it.

The two ladies heard it and glanced at her curiously. Tiuui
they looked at each other with tl.e slightest ui)litting of the
eyebrows, which meant, " Who on earth can she be % "

Mrs. Cassilis noted that too, and rejoice«l, because she was

THE (JULDKN IlL TIKUKLY.

i^oing to bring forward a girl who would nuiko evt'rybody

jralollH.

Ijadds was the oidy one wlio sp<»ke.

" That," hv said iVchly, " must Ito vrry Jolly."

lie began to wonder what could be the reason « this singular

educational omission. Perhai>s she had a crooked back ; could

not sit up to a desk ; could not hoM a book in her hand ; but

no, she was like Petruchio's Kate :

" Like the hazel twij^,
Ah HtraiKht and sletuler."

I'erhaps lier eyes were weak ; but no, her eyes were sparkling
with the " right Promethean hre." Perhaps she was of weak
intellect ; but that was ritliculous.

Then the lady who had read the book l)egan to ask more
<|uestiv)ns. [ do not know anything, more irritating than to be
asked <[uestions about y»jur own book.

" Will you tell us, Mr. Duiupieniue, if the story of the b(\'ir-
huut is a true one, or did you make it up 1 "

" We made up nothing. That story is perfectly true. And
the man's name was Beck."

" Curious," said Mr. Ca.ssilis. " An American named Beck,
Mr. Gilead P. Beck, is in London now, and has been recom-
mended to me. He is extremely rich. I think, my dear, that
you invited him to dinner to-day ? "

" Yes. He found he could not c^ne at the last moment.
He will be here in the evening."

" Then you will see the very man," said Jack, " unless there
is more than one Gilead P. Beck, which is hardly likely."

" This man has practically an unlimited (credit," said the
host.

" And talks, I suppose, like— well, like the stage Americans,
1 suppose," said his wife.

" You know," Jack ex[ilained, " that the stage American is
all nonsen.se. The educated American talks a great deal better
than we do. He can string his .sentences together ; we can
oidy bark."

" I'erhaps our bark is better than their bit(!," uadds re-
marked.

7.S

THE (JOl.DKN HIJTTKKKLV.

" A mail who luis uiilimitctl credit may talk as lio plcasos,"
said Mr. ('assilis doi^iuivtically.

Tln! tw(» soUmhh young men murmured assent.

" And lie always did say that he was going to have luck.
He carried ahout a Oolden Ihitterfly in a box."

" How deeply interesting!" replied the lady who had read
the hook. " Atul is that other story true, that you touiul an
English travt^ller living all alone in a deserted city 1"

" t,)uite true."

" Really ! And who was it ? Anybody one has met ? "

" 1 do not know whether you have ever met him. His
name is Lawrence C/V)l(|uh()un."

Mrs. Oassilis flushed suddenly, and then her p.aU; face became
l)aler.

*' Lawrence Col«iuhoun, formerly of ours," said Ladds, look-
ing at her.

Mrs. ('assilis read the h)ok to ask what business it was of
hers, and why she changed colour at his nanu'.

" Cohiuhoun !" she said softly. Then she raised her voice
and aildresse«l her h\isl)aud : " My dc^ar, it is an old frien«l of
mine of whom we are speaking, Mr. Lawrence Cohpdioun."

" Yes ! " he had forgotten the name. " What did he do 1
I think I remember — " He stopped, for he remembered to
have heard his wife's name in connection with this man. He
felt a sudden ]3ang of jealousy, a quite new antl rather curious
sensation. It passed, but yet he rejoiced that the man was out
of England.

" He is my guardian," Phillis said to Ladds. " And you
actually know him 1 Will you tell me something about him
presently 1 "

When the men followed, half an hour later, they found the
four ladies sitting in a large semicircle round the fire. The centre
of the space so formed was occupied by a gentleman who held
a cup of tea in one hand and declaimed with the other. That
is to say, he was speaking in measured tones, and as if he were
addressing a large room instead of four ladies ; and his right
hand f. nd arm i)erformed a pump-handle movement to assist
and grace his delivery. He had a face so grave that it seemed as
if smiles were impossible ; he was apparently about forty years
of age. Mrs. Cassilis was not listening much. She was con-

Till-: <;(U,nKN mrrrKUFi-Y.

Hi(l»'riii<^, as sho. looked at her visitor, liow far lie might be use-
ful to her evenings. Phillis was catching every word tliat fell
from the stranger's lips, lien; was an (experience (juito new
ami startling. She knew of America ; Mr. Dyson, born not
HO very many years after the War of independence, and while
tlie memory of its humiliations was fresh in the mind of the
nation, always thought and spoke of Americans as England's
hereditary and implacable enemies. Vet here was one of the
race talking amicably and making no hostile demonstrations
whatever. So that another of her collection of early impres-
sions evidently needed reconsideration.

When he saw tht< group at the door, Mr. Gilead Beck — for
it was he — strode hastily across the room, and putting aside
Mr. Cassilis, seized Jack I)un(pierque by the hand and wrung
it for s<!veial nn)ments.

" You have not forgotten me 1 " he said. You remember
that lucky shot 1 You still think of that (Irisly 1 "

" Of course I do," said Jack ; " I shall never forget him."
" Nor shall I, sir ; never." And then he went through the
friendly ceremony with Ladds.
" \ ou are tht; other man, sir ] "

" I always am the other ma«i," said Ladds for the second
time that evenin<;. " How are you, Mr. Beck, and how is the
Golden Birtterflyr'

" That Inseck, capt.ain, is a special instrument working un-
der i'rovidence for my welfare. He slumbers at my hotel, the
Langham, in a lh*e-proof safe."

Then he seized Jack Dmupierque's arm and led him to the
circle round the fire.

" Ladies, this young gentleman is my preserver. He saved
my life. It is owing to Mr. Dunciuerque that Gilead P. Beck
has the pleasure of being in this drawing-room."

" O Mr. l)un([uer(iue," said the lady who had read the book,
'* that is not in the volume."

'* Clawed I should have been, mauled I should have been,
rubbed out I should have been on that green and grassy spot,
but for the crack of Mr. Dunquerque's ritie. You will not
believe roc, ladies, but I thought it wa^ the crack of doom."

'* It was a most charming picturesque spot in which to be
clawed," said Jack, laughing. " You could not have selected
a more delightful place for the purpose."

I I

1 1

' i

Tilt: GULDEN UUTTinilM.Y.

" Tlusir air iiionuuits," said Mr. Jieck, looking roiiiul tho
room sohiiniily aiul letting liis eyes rest on Phillis, who gazed
at liiin with an excitement and interest she could hardly con-
trol, — " there air moments when the soul is dt!ad to poetry.
One of those moments is when you feel the breath of a (hisly
on your cheek. Even you, young lady, would, at such a
moment, lose your interest in the beauty of Nature."

Phillis started when ho addressed her.

" Did he save your life 1 " she asked, with flashing eyes.

Jack J)umiuer{iue blushed as this f;iir creature turned to
him witli looks of such admiration and res^)ect as the ((ueiiu of
tlu! tournament bestowed upon the victoi of the fight. So
L*esdemona gazed upon the Moor when he spake

"Of most (lisiistnuis clmnL't'H,
Of inuviii^ iiccitluiits by tluod and tiuUI."

Mrs. Cassilis effected a diversion by introducing her husband
to Mr. Beck.

" Mr. Cassilis, sir," he said, " I have a letter for you from
one of our most [trominent bankers. And 1 ^ -iled in the City
this afternoon to givt; it to you. But I was unfortunate. Sir,
I h(»pe that wo shall become better ac([uainted. And I am
proud, sir, I am ])roud of making the acciuaintatice of a man
who has the privilege of life partnership with Mrs. Cassilis.
That is a great privilege, sir.and I hope you value it."

" Hum — yes ; thank you, Mr. Beck," replied Mr Cassilis, in
a tone which conveyed to the sharp-eared Phillis the idea that
he thought considerable value ought to be attached to the fact
of having a life partnership with him. " A nd how do you like
our country 1 "

The worst of going to America if you are an Englishman,
or of crossing to Kngland if you are an American, is that you
can never escape that most searching and comprehensive ({ues-
tion.

Said Mr. Gilead Beck :

" Well, Sir, a dollar goes a long way in this country —
especially in cigars and lirinks."

" In drinks I " Phillis listened. The other ladies shot glances
, at each other.

"Phillis, my dear" — Mrs, Cassilis crossed tho room and

TIIK UOI.DKN IJUTTKilKLY.

intorinpted her rapt attention — " let me introduce Mr. HoiiaM
J)iiH(|iierqiio. Do you think you could phiy something 1 '

She bowed to the young hero with sparkling eyes and rose
to comply witli the invitation. He followed her to the piano.
Slie played in that sweet spontaneous manner which the women
wlio have only been taught hear with despair ; she touched the
keys as if she loved them and as if they understood her ; she
played one or two of the " Songs without Words ; " and then,
starting a simple melody, she began to sing, without being
asked, a simple old ballad. Her tone was low at first, because
she did not know the room, not because she was afraid ; but it
gradually rose as she felt her power, till the room was filled
with the volumes of her rich contralto voice. Jack Dunquenjue
stood beside her. She looked up in his face with eyes that
smiled a welcome while she went on singing.

" i^'ou told us you could net read," said the young man when
she finished.

" It is quite true, Mr. Dunquerque. I cannot."

" How, then, can you play and sing *? "

" 0, 1 play by ear and by memory. That is nothing won-
derful."

" Won't you go on playing? "

She obeyed, talking in low and measured tones, in time with
the air.

" I think you know my guardian, Mr. Lawrence Colquhoun.
Will you tell me all about him 1 I have never seen him yet."

This unprincipled young man saw his chance, and promptly
seized tlie opportunity.

" I should like to very much, but one cannot talk here before
all these people. If you will allow me lo call to-morrow, I
will gladly tell you all I know about him."

" You had better come at luncheon-time," she re[)lied, *' and
then 1 shall be very glad to see you."

Mr. Abraham Dyson usually told his friends to come at
liinclieon-time, so she could not be wrong. Also she knew by
this time that the Twins were always asleep at two o'clock, so
that she would be alone ; and it was pleasant to think of a talk,
sola cum solo, with this interesting specimen of newly-discovered
humanity— a young man who had actually saved another man's
life.

'**

\- I

TIIK <;ol,l)KN FU'TTKKKI.V.

" Is she an oiitia<^'eous flirt? " thouglit Jack, "or is she de-
licioiisly and M'oii.lorhilly .sinii)lt.' V

Oil tlie way hoiiK! lie discusst'd the i)i()l»l('ni with Tiadds.

"1 (h)irt cari' whicli it is," lie concluded, " 1 must tice her
atraiii. Ladds, old man, I believe 1 could tall in love with that
^drl. 'Ask me no more, for at a touch 1 yield.' Did you
!iotic( her, Tommy ? J)id you see her sweet ey«'s — I nnist say
she has the sweetest eyes in all the world — lookinij with a pretty
wonder at our (juaint Yankee friend 'I Did you see her tryin.i;
to take an interest in the twaddle of old ( 'assilis ? J )id you — "

" Have we eyes]" Ladds growled. "Is the heart at live-
and-thirty a log ] "

** Antl her figure, tall and slender, lissom and iiracieusi'. And
lier face, ' the silent war of lilies and of roses.' How 1 love
the brunette faces I They never are insi}»id."

*' Do you remember the half-caste Spanish girl in Manilla ]"

" Ladds, don't dare to mention that girl beside this adorable
angel of purity. 1 have found out her ('hristian name — it is
riiillis — rhymes to lilies ; and I am going to call at lu-r house
t<j-morrow— (.':irnarvon-S(iuare."

** And 1 am going to have half an hour in the smoking room."
said Ladds, as they arrived at the ])ortals of the club.

'* So am I," said Jack. " You know what Othello says of
Desdemona:

' O tllDM WOIhI,

Who iirt 8o lovely f.iir, :inil siueirst so .swoot
That thu tiuiise ivc'lios ut thuu ! '

I mean Phillis Fleming, of course, not your confounded tO'
bacco."

CHArTKK VIII.

"Thoy say if money ufoos hcfore, 'vll w.iys do lie oiu'ii."

CALL this kind, boys," said Mr. (Jilead \\ Beck, wel-
coming his visitors, Ca})tain Ladds and Jack DuiKpienpie ;
" I call this friendly. 1 aiked mysidf last night, ' Will

TIIK OOl.DKN lUTTTKHFLV.

rS.)

tlu)S(! boys come to sco me, or will ihoy let the ragged Yankee
slide i " And here yon are.'

" Change," said J^adds the monosyllabic, looking ronnd.
"(Jold looking np /"

There is a certain snite of rooms in the Langham Hotel —
there may b(! a hundred such suites known to the travellei'S
who have exi)lored that mighty hostelry —originally designed
for foreign i)rinces, am])assadors, or those wandering kings
whom our hospitality sends to an inn. The suite occupied by
Ml'. Heck consisted of a large reception-room, a smaller ai)art-
nifut, occupied by himself, and a bedroom. The rooms were
furnished in supposed accordance with the tastes of their
l)rincely occu})ants, that is to say, with solid magnificence. Mr.
Ju'ck had b(H!n in England no more than a week, and as he had
not yet Ijegun to buy anything, the rooms were without those
sjili'Mdid decorations of pictures, plate, and objects of art gene-
rally with which he sul)se(piently adorned them. They looke<l
heavy and rather cheerless. A fire was burning on the hearth,
and Mr. Ik'ck was standing before it with an unlighted cigar
in his li})s. Ap}>arently he had already presented some letters
of introduction, for there were a i\i\v cards of invitation on the
mantelshelf. He was dressed in a black frock-coat, as a gentle-
man should be, and lie wore it buttoned up, so that his tall
stature and thin figure were shown off to full advantage. Jie
wort! a i)lain black ribbon by way of necktie, and was modest
in the way of studs. .Jack I)un(pier(]ue noticed that he wore
no j(!wellery of any kind, which he thought unusual in a man
of unlimited ciedit, a n(!W man whose fortune was not two
years old. He was an unmistakable American. His chin was
not close shaven, and without the tradition.al tuft ; but he had
the bright restless eye, the long s\mTe form, the obstinately
straight hair, the thin flexible mouth with mobile lips, the deli-
cately shaped chin, and the long neck, which seem points char-
acteristic with our Transatlantic brethren. His grave face lit
up with a smile of pleasure when he saw Jack Dunquerque. It
was a thoughtful face; it had lines in it, such as might have
been caused by the bufiets of Fate ; but Ids eyes were kindly.
As for his speech, it preserved the nasal drawl of his New
England birthplace ; he spoke slowly, as if feeling for the right
words, and his pronunciation was that of a man sprung from

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

the ranks. Let us .say at once tliat we rlo not attempt to re-
produce by an afllecteil spelling, save occasionally, the Doric of
the New England speech. He was a typical man of the East-
ern States — self-reliant, courageous, independent, somewhat
prejudiced, roughly educated, ready for any ' mployuKuit and
ashamed of none, and withal as 'rave as an Elizabethan Ijucca-
neer, sensitive as a Victorian dy, sympathetic as — Henry
LouL'fellow.

" There is change, sir " — he > 'dressed himself to Ladds —
" in most things human. The high tides and the low tides
k'^ej) us fresh. Else we should be as stagnant as a Connecticut
gospel-grinder, in his village location,"

" This is high tide, see,'" I said Jack, laughing. " I hope
that American high tides last longer than ours."

"1 am hopeful, Mr. Dunquenjue, th^^ they air of a more
abiding disposition. If you should be ous, gcuitlemen, to
know my history since 1 left you in San Francisco, 1 will tell
it from the beginning. You remember that blessed inseck,
the Golden Ihitterfly ? "

** In the little box," said Ladds. " I asked you after his
welfare last night."
Jack began to blush.

*' Before you begin," he interposed, '• we ought to tell you
that since we came liome we have written a l)ook, we two,
about our travels."

** Is that so 1 " asked Mr. IJeck, with some natural reverence
for the authoi" of a book.

" And we have put you into it, with an account of Empire
City."

" Me — as I was — in rags and without even a gun 1 "
** Yes ; not a flattering likeness, but a true one."
" And the lucky shot, is that there too 1 "
" Some of it is there," said Ladds. "Jack would not iuive
the wliole story published. Looked o; t •ntatMUS."

''Gentlemen, I shall buy that Ikhjk. I shrill like five hun-
dred copies of that book for my peopi*^ ]<i tl'C I. )oHjniion. Just
as I was, you say — no boots I w; moccn^ir, . ; h.Ji a .iollar nor a
cent ; running for bare life betore a Grisly. Gentlemen, that
book will raise me in the estimation of my i(^li<)W-countrymen.
And if you will allow me the privilege, 1 lihall say it was
written by two friends of mine."

^wlS

fS'tfa

TIIK (JOLDKN HUTTKUKLY.

elack breathed freely. He was afraid J\lr lieck mij^lit have
resented the intrusion of his ragged personality. An English-
man certainly would. Mr. Beck seemed to think tiiat the con-
trast between present broadcloth and ]>aHt rags reflected the
highest credit on himself.

This part of the work indeed, which the critics declared to
be wildly improbable, was the oidy portion icad by Mr. iJeck.
And just as he j)ersisted in giving .lack the sole cre(,lit of his
rescue — i)erliaps because in his mental confusion he never even
heard the second shot which finished the bear — so he stead-
f'lstly regardeil Jack as th*^ sole author of this ' tirring chapter,
which was Ladd's masteipiece, and was gr'i .ful accordingly.

" And now," he went on, " I must show you the critter him-
self, the (}(»lden Bug."

There was standing in a corner, where it would be least likely
to receive any rude shocks or collisions, a small heavy iror
safe. This he unlocked, und brought tbrth with great care u
glass case whicli exactly fitted the safe. The frame of the case
was niade of golden rods ; along the lower part of the front
pane, in letters of gold, was the legend :

" If Uiis Golden nutterflv fall and break.
Farewell the Luck of Oilead 1', Beck."

*' Your poetry, Mr. Dunqueroue," sai<l Mr. Heck, pointing
to the distich with pri«le. ""Your own composition, sir, anil
my motto."

Within the case was the Pjutterfly itself, but glorified. The
bottom ofthe glass box was a tiiick slieet of pure gold, on which
was fixed a rose, th« leavts, flower and stalk worked in dull
gold. Not a fine work of art perhaps, but a reasonably good
rose, as good as that Papal rose they show in t!ie Cluny Hotel.
The lUitteifly was poised upon the rose by means of thin gold
wire, which passed round the strip of ((uartz which formed the
body. The ends .re firmly welded into the leaves of the
flower, and when the CLse was moved the insect vibrated as if
he was in reality alive.

" Then^ ! Look at it gentlemen. That is the ins<'ck which
has ma(i(; the fortunt' of (lilead P. P.cck."

lb' ad(!res.sed himself to bc-th, but his eye i<'ste«l on Jack
with a look which showed that he regarded the young man

8(1

TIIK (iOI.DKN I'.r'I'I'KlM'LY.

with soin('tliiii<^ more tlian fricinUincs.s. Tlio man wlio fired
tliiit sliot, tlio youD^i,' fVUow who savotl liini tVoni a cnu'l dcatii,
was his David, tlio lu-lovcd of liis soul.

fjachls looked at it curiously, as it' expecting some manifes-
tation of the supernatural.

"Is it a medium'!" he asked. "Does it rap, or answer
(juestions, or tell the card you are thinkin<^ of 1 Shall you
exhibit the thing in the Kgyjjtian Hall as a freak of Nature i "

"Noj'sir, I shall not. Hut I will tell you what I did, if you
will let me replace him in his box, where he sits and works for
Me. No harm wil' come to him theict, unless an airth(|uak(!
happens. Sit down, general, and you too, Mr. Dun(|Uer(|ue.
Here is a box of cigars, which ought to be good, and you will
call for your own drink.'

It was but twelve o'clock, and therefore early for revivers of
any sort. Finally, Mr. Heck ordered champagnt-.

" That drink," he said, " as you get it lien', is a compound
calculated to insj)irit Job in the thick of his misfortunes. Hut
if there is any other single thing you prefer, and it is to be had
in this almighty city, name that thing and you shall have it."

Then he began :

" I went otf, aft<'r I left you, by the Pacilic Ivailway —
not the first time I travelled uj) and down that line- and
I landed in New York. Mr. Cohjuhoun gav(^ me a rig out,
and you, sir"— he nodded to .lack — "you, sir, gave me the
stami)s to pay the ticket."

Jack, accused of this act of benovolence, naturally blusheil
a guilty acknowhfdgment. ♦

Mr. fJilead P. iieck made no reference to the gift either tlnui or
at any subscr|uent period. Nor did he ever otter to repay it,
even when he discovered the slenderness of Jack's icsources.
That showed that he was a sensitive and sympathetic man.
To olfer a small sum of money in repiiynu'id- of a fret; gift from
an extraonlinarily rich man to a very poor one is not a delicate
thing to do. 'i'hcrefon' this gentleman of the backwoods
abstairutl from dmng ii

" New York City,"' he continuecl, " is not the village I should
recommend to a man without dollars in his pocket, l/ondon,
where there is an institootion, or a cliarity, or a hospital, or a
workliousr, (»r a hot soup boiler in every street, is the city for

UiiSKdl

I'lIK (i()l,l)i;N lUrri'KKKI.Y.

tlwit «,'('utl('in:in. l''iji, |»'r';i|)s, for (Hic who has a yt^aniiii,!^ after
Imiiaiias and black civilisation. itnt i\ot New V'oik. No,
«;entleinen ; if you j^o to New York, let it lie when you've niado
your pile, ati<l not liefore. Tln-n you will lind out that then?
air thirty theatres in the city, with lovely and accomplished
actresses in each, and you can walk into Hehnonico's as if the
place l)elon;<ed to you. lint for men down on their luck, New

Yorl

1 '»!;

\ IS a crue

"I left that city, and I made my way N)rth. T wante<l to
see the old folks I left Ix hind loui; a^'o in Fiexinf^ton ; I found
them dead, and I was sorry. Then I w«Mit farther North.
l*'r'ai)s I was driven hy the yellows toy hanj^'in^ at my hack.
Anyhow it was only six weeks after I left you that I found
myself in the city of fjinu'rick on Lake Ontario.

" Von do not know the city of Linu'rick, I daresay. Tt
was not fanu)us, nor was it pretty. In fact, gentletnen, it was
the duiiidest mishegotten location built around a swamp that
ever ealleil itself a city. There! were a few delooded farmera
trying to \tersuadethemselveH that things would look up ; there
were a i'vw tlown-hearted settlers wondering why they ever
cani'e there, and how the} would get out again ; and there
were a few log houses in a row which called themselves a street*

*' I got th(M»\ and I stayed there. Their car[)enter was dead,
and 1 am a handy man ; so 1 took his place. TIkmi 1 nuuh; a
few dollars doing chores around."

" What ar(^ chores ? "

" All sorts. The (docks were out of repair ; the handles
were coming olV the pails ; the chairs wert^ without legs ; the
pumj) handle crank ; the very bell-rope in the meetin'-house
was broken. Vou never .saw such a helpless lot. I did iu)t
stay among them becau.se I loved them, but because I saw
things^

natural

({hosts I" asked Ladds, still with an eye to the super-

" N(), sir. That was What they thought I saw whcui T went
prowling arou!id by myself of an t'veuing. They thought too
thatl was mad when I began to buy the land. You coidd buy
it for nothing ; a dollar an acre : half a dollar an acre ; any-
thing an acre. I've mentled a cart-whe<'l for a five-acre lot of
swamp. They laughed at me. The chihlren used to (.-ry out

rill-: (loi.DKN luriTKin'i.Y.

when I i)asfiCMl along, *' There goes mad l>eek." lUit I bought
all I could, and my oidy regret was that I eouldn't buy up tho
hull townsliip — clear off men, women, and children, and start
fresh. Some more champagne, Mr. J)un(iuer<|ue."

" What was the (Jolden IJuttertly doing all this time ?" asked
Ladils,

" That faithful inseck, sir, was hanging around my neck, as
when you were Hrst introduced to I ini. He was whi>perin'
and eggin' me on, because he was bound to fulfil the old Mjuaw's
prophecy. Without my knowing it, sir, thai pvodi»;\ of the
world, who is as alive as you air at this mon»»nt, will gt» on
whisperin' till such tim»^ a| the ropi>'s played out and the smash
comes. Then he'll be silrnt again."

He s|H)ke with a s«)lemn earnestness Which impressed his
heaivrs. They looked at the lire proof safe with a fei'ling that
at any moment tin' nu'talliv inject might open the door, fly forth,
and, after hovering \v\\\\\\ the room, light at Mr. Heck's ear,
and begin to whisper wi»rds of counsel. Did not Mobannned
have a piget>i\ I and did not Louis Napoleon at Boulogne have
an eagle ? Why should not Mr. Heek have a butterfly i

" The citizens of Limerick, gentlemen, in that dismal part
of Canada where they bewail their miserable lives, air not a
jteoplo who have eyes to see, ears to hear, or brains to under-
stand. I saw that they were walking — no, sleeping — over
fields of incalculable wealth, and they never suspected. They
smoked their pij)es and ate their pork, liut they never saw and
they never su8pected. Between whiles they praised the Lord
for sending them a fool like me, something to talk about and
somebody to laugh at. They wanted to know what was in tho
little box ; they sent children to peep in at my window of an
evening and report what I was doing. They reported that I
was always doing the same thing ; always with a map of Tiim-
erick City and its picturesipie and interestiu' suburbs, staking
out the ground and reckoning up my acres. That's what 1 did
at nighL. And in the morning I looked about me and won-
dered where! should begin."

" What did you see when you looked about ?"

" I .saw, sir, a barren bog. If il; had been a land as fertile
as the land of Canaan, that would not have made my heart to
bound as it did bound wlnn I looked across that swamp; for

THK (U)r,I)|-:N mJTTKIlFl.V

I never was a tiller or a lover of the soil. A hftrr.'ii li(»g it was.
Tl\e harrenest boggiest part of it all was \\\y claim : wiien the
natives spoke of it they ei\lle>l \l Heck's Farm, an«l then the
])oor eriltins K(Hiin(\e»l in their chairs and langhed. Ves, they
liUighed. jlick's Farm, they said. It was ohe only tiling thev
liad i<> laugh about. Wal, up and down the face of that al-
might / bog there ran creeks, and aft< r rainy weather the water
stood about on the morasses. Plenty of water, but, a curious
thing, none of it lit to drink. Xo living thing except man
would set his lips to that brackish bad-smelling water. And
that wasn't all ; sometimes a thick black slime rose to the sur-
face of the marsh and lay t'lere an inch thick ; sometimes you
came upon patches of "gum-beds," as they called them, where
th(^ ground was like tar, and smelt strong. That is what I
saw when I looked around, sir. And to think that those poor
nuan pork-raisers saw it all the same as I did and never sus-
])ected ! C)idy cursed the gifts of the Lord when the^ weren't
laughing at lieck's Farm."

" And you fouiul— what ? Gold ? "

" No. I found what I expected. And that was bctt«'r than
gold. Mind, I say nothing against gold, (iold has made
many a pret*v little fortv.ne "

"Littler*

" Little, sir. There's no big fortunes made out of gold.
Though many a pretty villa-location, with a tidy flower-garden,
up and down the States, is built out of the gold mines. Di-
monds again. One or two men likes the name of dimonds ;
but not many. There's the disadvantage about gold and di-
monds that you have to dig for them, and to dig durned hard,
and to dig by yourself mostly. Americans do not love dig-
ging. Like the young gentleman in the parable, they cannot
dig, and to beg they air ashamed. It is the only occupation
that they air ashamed of. Then there's iron, and there's coals ;
but you've got to dig for them. Lord ! Lord ! This great
airth holds a hundred things covered up for them who know
how to look and do not mind digging. But, gentleman, the
greatest gift the airth has to bestow she gave to me— abundant,
simntaneous, etarnal, without bottom, and free,"

" And that is-"

"lb is Ilk,"

IM)

rilK JiOLDKN IM'iri'.UI'I.V

Mr. Iirck paus«Ml a inonwiit. His taco was lit with real and
^rimiiic nitliiiHiasin, a pioiis a|i|ir('ciati()ii of t\\o clioiccr hloss-
iii;.,'s of li* • ; tliosc, nanu'iy, wliicli ciial)!*' a man to sit down
and t'nj(ty tlic inocccds oi' otlirr nirn's lalnuir. No provision
Ins lict'ii made in t lie prayer liookot'any Clnirchfor the expression
of this kind of thankfnhiess. Vet surely there on^dit to he some-
where a <danse for the rieh. No more hiissfnl repose can fall upon
the soul than, after lon<^ years of lahour and failure, to sit down
and enj(>y the fruits of other men's lahour. A Form of
Thanksj^ivin/.,' for puhlish»'rs, mana^'ers of theatres, owners of
coal mines, and sueh ^'enth-men as Mr. (iilead I*. I leek, mi'^ht
surely l)(! introduced into our Ritual with advantage. It would
naturally he a(;comi)anied hy incense.

" It is He, sir."

He opened another hottle of champat^ne and took a i^lass.

" He. (Jold you have to di<(, to pick, to wasii. (Jold means
rheumatism and a hent hack. He flows and you heconie sud-
deidy rich. N'ou make all tlu' loafers around fill your pails for
you. And then your hankers tell you how many millions of
dollars you are worth."

"Millions!" repeate«l .lack. "The word sounds very rich
and luxurious."

" It is so, sir. There's nothinji; like it in the Old Country.
Kngland i.^ a heautifiil j)lace, and liondcm is a heautiful city.
Von've ^jot many hlessinj^'s in this heautiful city. If you
haven't <i;ot Joo Tweed, you've j^ot — "

" Hush ' " .said .lack ; '* it's lii)ellous to (^dve names."

" And if you haven't ^ot Krie stock and your whiskey rin^s,
you've jL^ot your foreij^n ])onds to take your surplus cash. No
^'entlemen ; Lomlon is not, in some respects, much hehind New
York. Hut one thini; this country has iu)t got, and that is — •
Ih'.

" It is nearly a year since I made up my mind to begin my
well. I hiciv it was there, because I'd been in Penn.sylvania
and learned the signs ; it was only the question wluaher I
should strike it, and where. The neighbours thought I was
digging for water, and figured around wi:'' tluur superior intel-
lecks, because they were c(!rtain the water would be brackish.
Then they got tired of watching, and I worked on. Boring
a well is not (piito the sort of work a man would select for a

Till-; <IO!,I>KN luriTKini.Y.

!)1

r«'iil aiicl
vr hlcs.s-
<it (iowii
lovisioii
prcssijui
X' sonn'-
all upon
it down
oriii of
vncrs of
, nii^'lit
t Would

j<l;is.s.
I nu'ariR
nn' snd-
pails for
llions of

<'iy rich

-Joiiutry.

t'ul city.

If you

y ru\<iH,
h. No
!i(l New
lat is — .

<in my
ylvariia
'thcr I
I was
V iiitcl-
iickisl).
Boring
t for ;v

pleasant and varii'gated ociMipation. 1 rn i^(»n it's nutnoLonous ;
l)Ut I worked on. I knew wli;i* was cominj^ ; I tlioiiulit o' that
Indian sipiaw, and I always had my (lohh'n (Uitterfly tird in a
1)().\ at my hack. I horeil juid I ho? <1 |)ay aft«'r day 1 hored.
In that lonely mia.sniati(; ho<^' 1 hored all day and hest part of
the nifiht. For nothing' came and -ometimes ijualms (!iosse<l my
mind that perhaps there would never he an} i Idn^. Ihit always
ther( was the^nmniy mud, smelling of wlOit 1 knew washelow,
to lead me on.

"It was tin- ninth day, an<l noon, I had a slianty railed the
farndiouse alxtut a hundred yards from my well. And there F
was taking my dinner. To you two yt)ung Knglish aristo-
crats — "

'* Ladds' cocoa the only perfect fragrance."

*' Shut up, Fiadds," growK <1 .lack, " don't interrupt."

" F say, to you two y<)ung aristocrats a farmer's dinner in
that township uouhl not sound luxurious. Mine consisted, on
that day aiul all <lays, of cold })oiled pork and hread."

"Ah, y-'vh ! " said Jack F)un(iuer(pu«, who had a proud
stomach.

" Yes, sir, my own remark every day when -F sat down to
that simph^ han(|uet. l>ut when you are hungry you must eat,
murmur though you will for Kgyptian flesh-pots. Cold pork
was my dinner with hread. Aiul the water to wash it down
with was hrackish. Fn those days, gentlemen, F said no grace.
Ft didn't seem to nu^ that tlu; most straight-walking Christian
was expected to ho more than tolerably thankful for cohF pork.
My gratitude was so moderate that it wasn't worth otlering."

" And while you were eating the pork," said Ladds, •' the
(Jolden FJutterfly llcw down the shaft l)y himself, ami struck
oil of his own accord."

" No, sir ; for once you are wrong. That most beautiful
creation of nature in her sweet«'st mood— she must have got
up with the sun on a fine .summer morning — was reposing in
his ])()x round my neck as usual. FFe did not go down the
shaft at all. Noboily went down. Fhit something camo up —
up like a fountain, up like the bubbling over of the airth's
eternal tea-pot ; a black muchly jet of stuff. (Ireat sun I I
think F see it now."

Fl(5 paused and sighed.

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23 WEST MAIN STRf ET

WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580

(716) 873-4503

THK (i(HJ)EN liUTTEHFLY.

1 1 '* '.

'* It was nearly all lie, pure and unadulterated, from the
world's workshop. Would you believe it, gentlemen ? There
were not enough barl's not by hundreds in the neighbourhood
all round Limerick City, to catch that He. It flowed in a
stream three feet deep down the creek ; it was carried away
into the lake and lost ; it ran free and uninterrupted for three
days and three nights. We saved whai we could. The
neighbours brought their pails, their buckets, their basins, their
kettles ; there was not a utensil of any kind that was not
filled with He, from the pigs' troughs to the child's pap-bowl.
Not one. It ran and it ran. When the first flow subsided we
calculated that seven millions of bar'ls had been v/asted and
lost. Seven millions ! I am a Christian man, and grateful to
the Butterfly, but I sometimes repine when I think of that
wasted He. Every bar'l worth nine dollars at least, and most
likely ten. Sixty-three millions of dollars. Twelve millions,
of pounds sterling lost in three days for want of a few coopers.
Did you ever think, Mr, Durquerque, what you could do with
twelve millions sterling 1 "

'* I never did," said Jack. " My imaginacion never got
beyond thousands."

" With twelve millions I might have bought up the daily
press of England, and made you all republicans in a month.
1 might have made the Panama Canal ; I might have bought
Palasteen and sent the Jews back ; I might have given Ame-
rica fifty ironclads ; I might have put Don Carlos on the throne
of Spain. But it warn't to be. Providence wants no rivals,
meddling and messing. That was why the He ran away and
was lost while I ate the cold boiled pork. Perhaps it's an
interestin' fact that I never liked cold boiled pork before, and
I have hated it ever since.

"The great spurt subsided, and we went to work in earnest.
That well has continued to yield five hundred bar'ls daily.
That is '"our thousand five hundred dollars in my pocket every
four-and-twenty hours."

"Do you mean that your income is nine hundred pounds :.
day 1" asked Jack.

" I do, sir. You go your pile on that. It is more, but I do
not know how much more. Perhaps it's twice as much. There
are wells of mine sunk all over the place ; the swamp is covered
with rjilead P. Beck's derricks, The township of Lin^erick

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

has become tlie city of Uockoleaville — my name, that was —
and a virtuous and industrious population are all engaged
morning, noon, and night in fiUin' my pails. There's twenty-
five bars, I believe at this moment. There air three meetin'-
liouses and two daily papers ; and there air fifteen lawyers."

*' It seems better than Cocoa Nibs," said Ladds.

'* But the oil may run dry."

" It hm run dry in Pennsylvania. That is so, and I do not
deny it. But lie will not run dry in Rockoleaville. I have
been thinking over the geological problem and I have solved
it, ;ill by myself. What is this world, gentlemen 1 "

" A round ball," said Jack, with the promptitude of a Board
schoolboy and the profundity of a Woolwich cadet.

*' Sir, it is like a great orange. It has its outer rind, what
they call the crust. Get through that crust and what do you
find?"

"More crust," replied Ladds, who was not a competition-
wallah.

" Did you ever eat pumpkin pie, sir 1 " Mr. Beck replied,
more Socratico, by asking another question. " And if you did,
was your pie all crust ? Inside that pie, sir, was pumpkin,
apple, and juice. So inside the rind of the earth there may be
all sorts of things : gold and iron, lava, dimonds, coals ; but
the juice, the pie-juice is He. You tap the rind and you get
the He. This He will run, I calculate, for five thousand and
fifty-two years, if they don't sinfully waste it, at an annual
consumption of eighteen million barl's. Now that's a low esti-
mate when you consider the progress of civilisation. When it
is all gone, perhaps before, this poor old airth will crack up
like an empty egg."

This was an entirely new view of geology, and it required
time for Mr. Beck's hearers to grasp the truth thus presented
to their minds. They were silent.

" At Rockoleaville/' he went on, " I've got the pipe straight
into the middle of the pie, and right through the crust. There's
no mistake about that main shaft. Other mines may give out,
but my He will run for ever."

" Then we may congratulate you," said Jack," on the posses-
sion of.a boundless fortune."

" You may, sir."

" And what do you intend to do ? "

THE OOLDKN iJUTTKRFLY.

" For the present I shall stay in London. I like your great
city. Here I get invited to dinner and dancin', because I am
an American and rich. There they won't have a man who is
not thorouglil)red. Your friend Mrs. Cassiiis asks me to her
house — a firstrattir. A New York lady turns up her pretty
nose at a man -vaio's struck He. ' Shoddy,' she says, and then
she takes no more notice. Shoddy it may be. Rough my
manners may be. But I don't pretend to anything, and the
stamps air real.''

" We always thought ourselves exclusive," said Jack.

*'' Did you, sir 1 Wal — " He stopped, as if he had intended to
say something unpleasanth' true. " [ sliall live in London for
the present. I've got a big income, and I don't rightly know
what to do with it. But I shall find out some time.

" That was a lovely young thing with Mrs. Cassilisthe other
night," he went on meditatively. " A young thing that a man
can worship for her beauty while she is young, and her good-
ness all her life. Not like an American girl. Ours are pret-
tier, but they look as if they would blow away. And their
voices are not so full. Miss Fleming is flesh and blood.
Don't blush, Mr. Dunquerque, because it does you credit."

Jack did blush, and they took their departure.

*' Mr. Dunquerque," whispered Gilead P. Beck when Ladds
was through the door, "think of what I told you; what is
mine is yours. Remember that. If I can do any tiling for
you, let me know. And come to see me. It does me good to
look at your face. Come here as often as you can."

Jack laughed and escaped.

CHAPTER IX.

"By my modesty,
The jewel in my dower, I would not wish
Any comi)anion in the world but you."

pACK DUNQUERQUE was no more remarkable for
shrinking modesty than any other British youth of his
era; but he felt some littb qualms as he walked towards

iwwiwn** *?s«wri*»».

TliE GOLDEN lUJTTKKFLY.

Bloomsbnry the day after Mrs. Cassilis's dinner to avail him-
self of rhillis's invitation.

Was it coquetry or was it simplicity 1

She said she would be glad to see him at luncheon. Who
else would he there 1

Probably a Mrs. Jagenal — doubtless the wife of the heavy
man who brought Miss Fleming to the party ; herself a solid
person in black silk and a big gold chain ; motherly v/ith the
illiterate Dryad.

" Houses mighty respectable," he thought, penetrating into
Carnarvon-square. " Large incomes ; comfortable quarters ;
admirable port, most likely, in most of them ; claret certainly
good too — none of your Gladstone tap ; sherry probably ratlier
coarse. Must ask for Mrs. Jagenal, I suppose."

He did ask for Mrs. Jagenal, and was informed by Jane that
there was no such person, and that, as she presently explained
with warmth, no such person was desired by the household.
Jack Dunquerque thereupon asked for Mr. Jagenal. The
maid asked which Mr. Jagenal. Jack replied in the most irri-
tating manner possible — the Socratic — by asking another ques-
tion. The fact that Socrates went about perpetually asking
questions is quite enough to account for the joy with which
an exasperated mob witnessed his judicial murder. The Athe-
nians bore for a good many years his maddeninng questions —
as to whether they meant this way or that way or how — and
finally lost patience. Hence the little bowl of drink.

Quoth Jack, " Hov: many are there of them 1 "

Jane looked at the caller with suspicion. He seemed a gen-
tleman, but appearances are deceptive. Suppose he came for
what he could pick-up. The Twins' umbrellas were in the hall
and their great-coats. He laughed, and showed an honest
front ; but who can trust a London stranger ? Jane remem-
bered the silver spoons now on the luncheon-table, and began
to think of shutting the door in his face.

" You can't be a friend of the family," she said, " else you'd
knew the three Mr. Jagenals by name, and not come here
showing your ignorance by asking for Mrs. Jagenal. Mrii,
Jagenal indeed I Perhaps you'd better call in the evening and
see Mr. Joseph."

" I am not a friend of the family," he replied meekly. " I

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

wish I was. But Miss Fleming expects me at this hour. Will
you take in my'card 1 "

He stepped into the hall and felt as if the fortress was won.
Phillis was waiting for him in the dining-room, where he
observed luncheon was laid for two. Was he, then, about to
be entertained by the young lady alone ?

If she looked dainty in her white evening dress, she was far
daintier in her half-mourning gray frock, which fitted so tightly
to her slender figure, and was set off by the narrow^ black rib-
bon around her neck, which was her only ornament ; for she
carried neither watch nor chain, and wore neither earrings nor
finger-rings. This heiress was as irmocent of jewellery as any
little milliner girl of Bond-street, and far more happy because
she did not wish to wear any.

** I thought you would come about this time," she said, with
the kindliest welcome in her eyes ; " and I waited for you here.
Let us sit down and take luncheon."

Mr. Abraham Dyson never had any visitors except for dinner
or luncheon ; so that Phillis naturally associated an early call
with eating.

"I always have luncheon by myself," explained the young
hostess ; " so that it is delightful to have some one who can
talk."

She sat at the head of the table, Jack taking his seat at the
side. She looked fresh, bright, and animated. The sight of
her beauty even affected Jack's appetite, although it was an
excellent luncheon.

" This is curried fowl," she went on. ** It was made for Mr.
Jagenal's brothers ; but they came down late, and were rather
cross. We could not persuade them to eat anything this
morning."

*' Are they home for the holidays?"

Phillis burst out laughing — such a fresh, bright, spontaneous
laugh. Jack laughed too, and then wondered why he did it.

" Home for the holidays ! They are always home, and it is
always a holiday with them,"

" Do you not allow them to lunch with you."

She laughed again.

" They do not breakfast till ten or eleven."

Jack felt a little fogged, and waited for further information.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

r. Will

as won.
liere he
ibout to

was far
tightly

ack rib-
for she

ings nor

' as any
because

lid, with
jow. here.

Dr dinner
jarly call

le young
who can

lat at the

sight of

1 was an

e for Mr.
re rather
ling this

)ntaneous
e did it.
and it is

ormation.

" Will you take beer or claret ? No, thank you ; no curry
for me. Jane, Mr. Dunquerque will take a glass of beer.
How beautiful ! " she went on, looking steadily in the young
man's face, to his confusion — " how beautiful it must be to
meet a man whose life you have saved ! I should like — once
— just once — to do a single great action, and dream of it ever
after."

" But mine was not a great action, I shot a bear that was
following Mr. Beck and meant mischief; that is all."

" But you might have missed," said Pliillis, with justice.
" And then Mr. Beck would have been killed."

Might have missed ! How many V.C's we should have but
for that simple possibility ! Might have missed ! And then
Gilead Beck would have been clawed, and the Golden Butter-
fly destroyed, and this history never have reached beyond its
first chapter. Above all, Phillis might never have known Jack
Dunquerque.

" And you are always alone in this great house ? " he asked
to change the subject.

" Only in the day-time. Mr. Joseph and I breakfast at
eight. Then I walk with him as far as his office in Lincoln's-
inn-fields, now that I know the way. At first he used to send
one of his clerks back with me, for fear of my being lost. But
I felt sorry for th*^ poor young man having to walk all the way
with a girl like me, and so I told him, after the second day,
that I was sure he longed to be at his writing, and I would go
home by myself."

" No doubt," said Jack, " he was rejoiced to go back to his
pleasant and exciting work. All lawjjers' clerks are so well
paid, and so happy in their occupa ion, that they prefer it even
to walking with a — a — a Dryad."

Phillis was dimly conscious that there was more in these
words than a literal statement. She was as yet unacquainted
with the figures of speech which consist of saying one thing
and meaning another, and she made a mental note of the fact
that lawyers' clerks are a happy and contented race. It adds
something to one's happiness to know that others are also happy.

" And the boys — Mr. Jagenal's brothers ? "

" They are always asleep from two to six. Then they come
down to dinner, and talk of the work they have done. Don't
G

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

you know tliem 1 0, they are not boys at all ! One is Cor-
nelius. He is a great poet. He is waiting a long epic poem
called the Upheaving of jElfrcd. Humphrey, his brother, says it
will be tlie greatest work ofthis century. But I do not think very
much is done. Humphrey is a great artist, you know. He is
engaged on a splendid picture — at least it will be splendid when
it is finished. At present nothing is on the canvas. He says
he is studying the groups. Cornelius says it will be the finest
artistic achievement of the age. Will you have some more
beer '\ Jane, give Mr. Dunquerque a glass of sherry. And
now let us go into the drawing-room, and you shall tell me all
about my guardian, Lawrence Colquhoun."
In the hall a thought struck the girl.

" Come with me," she said ; " I will introduce ycu to the
Poet and the Painter. You shall see them at work."

Her eyes danced with delight as she ran up the stairs, turn-
ing to see if her guest followed. Slie stopped at a door, the
handle of whicli she turned with great care. Jack mounted the
stairs after her.

It was a large and well-furnished room. Kows of books
stood in order on the shelves. A bright fire burned on the
hearth. A portfolio was on the table, with a clean-inkstand
and an unsullied blotting-pad. By the fire sat, in a deep and
very comfortable easy-chair, the Poet, sound asleep.

" There ! " she whispered. " In the portfolio is the great
poem. Look at it."

" We ought not to look at manuscripts, ought we 1 "
'* Not if there is anything written. But there isn't. Of
course I may always turn over any pages, because I cannot
read."

She turned them over. Nothing but blank sheets, white in
virgin purity.

Cornelius sat with his head a little forward, breathing rather
noisily.

" Isn't it hard work % " laughed the girl. " Poor fellow,
isn't it exhaustive work ? Let me introduce you. Mr. Corne
lius Jagenal, Mr. Konald Dunquerque." Jack bowed to the
sleeping bard. " Now you know each other. That is what
Mr. Dyson used always to say. Hush ! we might wake him up
and interrupt — the Work. Come away, and I will show you
the Artist."

THE GOLDEN UUTTKRFLY.

e is Cor-
bie poem
V, says it
link very
'. He is
Ud when
He says
the finest
)me more
ry. And
ell me all

rcii to the

airs, turn-
door, the
lunted the

of books
led on the
i-inkstand
I deep and

the great

isn't. Of
e I cannot

:s, white in

hing rather

oor fellow,
Mr. Corne
Dwed to the
lat is what
ake him np
11 show you

Another room, equally well furnished, but in a different
manner. There were " properties : " drinking-glasses of a deep
ruby red, luminous and splendid, standing on the shelves ;
flasks of dull rich green ; a model in armour ; a lay figure, with
a shawl thrown over the head and looped up under the arm ; a
few swords hanging upon the walls ; curtains that caught the
light and spread it over the room in softened colouring ; and
by the fire a couch, on which lay, sleeping, Humphrey with
the wealth of silky beard.

There was an easel, and on it a canvas. This was as blank
as Cornelius's sheets of paper.

" Permit me again," said the girl. " Mr. Humphrey Jagenal,
Mr. Ronald Dunquerque. Now you know each other."

Jack bowed low to the genius.

Phillis, her eyes afloat with fun, beckoned the young man to
the table. Pencil and paper lay there. She sat down and
drew the sleeping painter in a dozen swift strokes. Then she
looked up, laughing ;

" Is that like him 1 "

Jack could hardly repress a cry of admiration.

" I am glad you think it good. Please write underneath,
* The Artist at work.' Thank you. Is that it 1 We will now
pin it on the canvas. Think what he will say when he wakes
up and sees it."

They stole out again as softly as a pair of burglars.

" Now you have seen the Twins. They are really very nice,
but they drink too much wine, and sit up late. In the morn-
ing they are sometimes troublesome, when they won't take
their breakfast ; but in the evening, after dinner, they are quite
tractable. And you see how they spend their day."

" Do they never do any work at all 1 "

" I will tell you what I think," she replied gravely.

" Mr. Dyson used to tell me of men who were so vain that
they are ashamed to give the world anything but what they
know to be the best. And the best only comes by successive
effort. So they wait and wait, till the time goes by and they
cannot even produce second-rate work. I think the Twins be-
long to that class of people."

By this time they were in the drawing-room.

" And now," said Phillis, '• you are going to tell me about
my guardian."

KM)

TilK <i(>l.UI,N HinTKUFI.Y.

" Tell nie something luoro about yourself first," said Jack,
not caring to JDring Mr. Lawrence (Jolqulioun into the conversa-
tion just yet. "You said last night that you wouhl show me
your drawings."

" They arc oidy pencil and pen-and-ink sketches." Phillis
put a small portfolio on the table and opened it. " This morn-
ing Mr. .loseph took me to see an exhibition of paintings.
Most of the jirtists in that exhibition cannot draw, but some
can — an<l then — !"

" They cannot draw better than you, Miss Fleming, I am
quite sure."

She shook her head as Jack spoke, turning over the sketches.

" It seems so strange to be called Miss Fleming, everybody
used to call me Phillis."

" Was — was everybody young 1 " Jack asked, with an imper-
tinence beyond his years.

" No ; everybody was old. I suppose young people always
call esich other by their Christian names. Yours seems to me
ratht^r stiff. Ronald, Ronald — I am afraid I do not like it
very much."

" My brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, cousins and
kinsfolk — the people who pay my debts and therefore love me
most — call me Ronald. But everybody else calls me Jack,"

" Jack ! " she murmured. " What a pretty name Jack is !
May I call you Jack 1 "

" If you only would 1 " he cried with a quick flushing of his
cheek. " If you only would ! " Not when other people are
present, but all to ourselves, when we are together like this.
That is, if you do not mind."

Coulil the Serpent when he cajoled Eve have begun in a
more subtle and artful manner 1 -One is ashamed for Jack
Dunquerque.

*' I shall always call you Jack, then, unless when people like
Mrs. Cassilis are present."

" And what am I to call you ? "

" My name is Phillis, you know." But she knew, because
her French maid had told her, that some girls have names of
endearment, and she hesitated a little, in hope that Jack would
find one for her.

He did. She looked him so frankly and freely in the face
that he took courage, and said with a bold heart :

THK r.OT.DEN BirrTEHB^LY.

101

d Jack,
nversa-
\o\v me

Pliillis
s morn-
intings.
Lit some

n;, I am

ketches,
erybody

[1 imper-

! always
IS to me
; like it

jiiis and
love me
Jack,"
Jack is !

ig of his
ople are
like this.

5un in a
tor Jack

lople like

, because
names of
Lck would

the face

" Philliis is a very sweet iiauie. Yoii know the .son<,', ' Phillis
is my only joy ? ' I ought to call you Miranda, the Princess of
the Enchanted Island. But it would be prettier to call you
Phil."

" Phil ! " Her lips parted in a smile of themselves as she
shaped the name. Jt is a name which admits of expression.
You may lengthen it out if you like ; you may shorten it if
you like. " Phil ! Tiiat is very pretty. No one ever called me

Phil before."

" And we will be great friends, shall we not 1 "

" Yes, great friends, I have never had a friend at all."

** Let us shake hands over our promise. Phil, say ' Jack Dun-
querque, I will try to like you, and I will be your friend.' "

" Jack Dunquerque," she placed her hands, both of them, in
his, and began to repeat, looking in his face quite earnestly and
solemnly. " I will try — that is nonsense, because I do like you
very much already ; and I will always be your friend, if you
will be mine and will let me."

Then he, with a voice that shook a little, because he knew
that this was very irregular and even wrong, but that the girl
was altogether lovable, and a maiden to be desired, and a queen
among girls, and too beautiful to be resisted, said his say :

*' Phil, I think you are the most charming girl I have ever
seen in all my life. Let me be your friend always, Phil. Let
me " — here he stopped, with a guilty tremor in his voice — " I
hope — I hope — that you will always go on liking me more and
more."

He held both her pretty shapely hands in his own. She was
standing a little back with her face turned up to his, and a
bright fearless smile upon her lips and in her eyes. O, the eyes
that smile before the lips !

" Some people seal a bargain," he went on, hesitating and
stammering, " after the manner of the — the — early Christians
—with a kiss. Shall we, Phil 1 "

Before she caught the meaning of his words he stooped and
drew her gently towards him. Then suddenly he released her.
For all in a moment the woman within her, unknown till that
instant, was roused into life, and she shrank back — without
the kiss.

102

THK (lOLI)KN BFTTKRFLY.

Jack liung his iieiul in silence. Pliil, in silence too, stood
opi)08ite him, her eyes^ upon the ground.

She looked up stcfjilthily and trembled.

Jack Dunquerquc was troubled as he met her look.

" Forgive me, Phil," he said humbly. "It was wrong — I
ought not. Only forgive me, and tell me we shall be friends
all the same."

" Yes," she replied, not quite knowing what she said ; " I
forgive you. But, Jack, please don't do it again."

Then he returned to the drawings, sitting at che table, while
she stood over him and told him what they were.

There was no diffidence or mock-modesty at all about her. The
drawings were her life, and represented her inmost thoughts.
She had never shown them all together to a single person, and
now she was laying them all open before the young man whom
yesterday she had met for the first time.

It seemed lo him as if she were baring her very soul for
him to read.

" I like to do them," she said, " because then I can recall
everything that I have done or seen. Look ! Here is the
dear old house at Highgate, where I stayed for thirteen years
without once going beyond its walls. Ah, how long ago it seems,
and yet it is only a week since I came away ! And everything
is so different to me now."

" You were happy there, Phil ? "

" Yes ; but not so happy as I am now. I did not know^
you then, Jack."

He beat down the temptation to take her in his arms and
kiss her a thousand times. He tried to sit calmly critical over
the drawings. But his hand shook.

" Tell me about it all," he said softly.

" These are the sketches of my High^-^ate life. Stay ; this
one does not belong to this set. It is a likeness of you, which
I drew last night when I came home,"

" Did you really draw one of me 1 Lei me have it. Do let
mje have it."

" It was meant for your face. But I ould do a better one
now. See, this is Mr. Beck, the American gentleman ; and
this is Captain Ladds. This is Mr. Cassilis."

THK (SOLDKN UUTTKKFI.V

103

, stood

•ong — I
friends

id ; " I

e, while

er. The
loughts.
son, and
n whom

soul for

m recall
'e is the
3n years
it seems,
erything

lot know

,rms and
ical over

tay ; this
»u, which

Do let

Btter one
lan ; and

They were the roughest unfinished tilings, but slie had
seized the likeness in every one.

Jack kept his own portrait in his haml.
" Let me keep it."

" riease, no ; I want that one for myself"
Once more, and for the last time in liis life, a little distrust
crossed Jiv:k Dunquerque's mind. Could this girl, afcer all,
be only the most acconq)lished of all coquettes i He looked
up at her ftice as she stood beside him, and then abused him-
self for treachery to love.

" It is like me," he said, looking at the pencil portrait ; " but
you have made me too handsome."

She shook her head.

" You are very handsome, I think," she said gravely.

He was not, strictly speaking, handsome at all. He was
rather an ugly youth, having no regularity of features. And
it was a difficult face to draw, because he wore no beard —
nothing but a light moustache to help it out.

" Phil, if you begin to Hatter me you will spoil me ; and I
shall not be half so good a friend when I am si)oiled. Won't
you give this to me 1 "

" No ; I keep my portfolio all to myself. But I will draw a
better one, if you like, of you, and finish it ui) properly, like
this."

She showed him a pencil-drawing of a face which Rembrandt
himself would have loved to paint. It was the face of an old
man, wrinkled and crows-footed.

" That is my guardian, Mr. Dyson. I will draw you in the
same style. Poor dear guardian ! I think he was very fond
of me."

Another thought struck the young man.

" Phil, will you instead make me a drawing — of vour own
face?"

** But can you not do it for yourself 1 "

" 1 ? Phil, I could not even draw a haystack."

" What a misfortune ! It sesms worse than not being able
to read."

" Draw me a picture of yourself, Phil."

She considered.

" Nobody ever asked me to do that yet. And I never drew

104

THE G(H.DH,N BUTTERFLY.

•i :'

my own face. It world be nice, too, to think tliat you had a
likeness of me, particularly as you cannot draw yourself.
Jack, would you mind if it were not much like me 1 "

" I should prefer it like you. Please try. Grive me your-
self as you are now. Do not be afraid of making it too pretty."

" I will try to make it like. Here is Mrs. Cassilis. !She did
not think it was very good."

" Phil, you are a genius. Do you know that 1 I hold you
to your promise. You will draw a portrait of yourself, and I
will frame it and hang it up — no, I won't do that ; I will keep
it myself, and look at it when no one is with me."

"That seems very pleasant," said Phil, reflecting. " I should
like to think that you are looking at me sometimes. Jack, I
only met you yesterday, and we are old friends already."

" Yes ; quite old familiar friends, are we not ? Now tell me
all about yourself."

She obeyed. It was remarkable how readily she obeyed the
orders of this new friend, and told him all about her life with
Mr. Dyson — the garden and paddock, out of which she never
went, even to church ; the pony, the quiet house, and the quiet
life with the old man who taught her by talking ; her drawing
and her music ; and her simple wonder what life was like out-
side the gates.

"Did you never go to church, Phil ?"

" No ; we had prayers at home ; and on Sunday evening I
sang hymns."

Clearly her religious education had been grossly neglected.
" Never heard of a Ritualist," thought Jack, with a feeling of
gladness. " Doesn't know anything about vestments ; isn't
learned in school-feasts ; and nevei- attended a tea-meeting.
This girl is a Phoenix." Why — why was he a Younger Son?

" And is Mr. Cassilis a relation of yours ? "

" No ; Mr. Cassilis is Mr. Dyson's nephew. All Mr. Dyson's
fortune is left to found an institution for educating girls as I
was educated — "

" Without reading or writing?"

" I suppose so. Only, you see, it is most unfortunate that
my own education is incon)plete, and they cannot carry out
the testator's wishes, Mr. Jagenal tells me, because they have
not been able to find the concluding chapters of his book. Mr.

THE GOLDKN BUTTERFLY.

105

)u had a
rourself.

Lie yoiir-
pretty."
She did

lold you
If, and I
vill keep

I should
Jack, I

N^ tell me

)eyed the
life with
he never
the quiet
drawing
like out-

Si^:',

ft':-

Dyson wrote a book on it, and the last chapter was called the
* Coping-stone.' I do not know what they will do about it.
Mr. Cassilis wants to have the money divided among the
relations, I know. Isn't it odd 1 And he has so much already."

" And I have got none."

" Jack, take some of mine — do ! I know I have such a
lot somewhere ; and I never spend anything."

'* You are very good, Phil ; but that will hardly be right.
But do you know it is five o'clock ? We have been talking for
three hours. I must go — alas, T must go ! "

"■ And you have told me nothing at all yet about Mr.
Colquhoun."

" When I see you next I will tell you what I know of him.
Good-bye, Phil."

" Jack, come and see me again soon."

** When may I come 1 Not to-morrow — that would be too
soon. The day after. Phil, make me the likeness, and send
it to me by post. I forgot; you cannot write."

He wrote his address on a sheet of foolscap.

" Fold it in that, with this address outside, and post it to
me. Come again, Phil 1 I should like to come every day, and
stay all day."

He pressed her hand and was gone.

Phillis remained standing where he left her. What had
happened to her ? Why did she feel so oppressed ? Why did
the tears crowd her eyes 1

Five o'clock. It wanted an hour of dinner, when she would
have to talk to the Twin brethren. She gathered up her draw-
ings and retreated to her own room. As she passed Hum-
phrey's door, she heard him saying to Jane :

*' The tea, Jane 1 Have I really been asleep 1 A most ex-
traordinary thing for me."

" Now he will see the drawing of the * Artist at work,' "
thought Phillis. But she did not laugh at the idea, as she had
done when slie perpetrated the joke. She had suddenly grown
graver.

She began her own likeness at once. But she could not
satisfy herself. She tore up half a dozen beginnings. Then
she changed her mind. She drew a little group of two. One
was a young man, tali, shapely, gallant, with a queer attractive

»■:

.1 f

lOG

THE GOLDKN BUTTERFLY.

face, who held the hands of a girl in his, and was bending over
her. Somehow a look of love, a strange and new expression,
which she had never seen before in human eyes, lay in his. She
blushed while she drew her own face looking up in that other,
and yet she drew it faithfully, and was only half conscious how
sweet a face she drew and how like it was her own. Nor could
she understand why she felt ashamed.

" Come again soon, Jack."

The words rang in the young man's ears, but they rang like
bells of accusation and reproach. This girl, so sweet, so fresh,
so unconventional, what would she think when she learned, as
she must learn some day, how great was his sin against her 1
And what would Lawrence Colquhoun say 1 And what would
the lawyer say 1 And what would the world say 1

The worst was that his repentance would not take the proper
course. He did not repent of taking her hands — he trembled
and thrilled when he thought of it — he only repented of the
swiftness with which the thing was done, and was afraid of the
consequences.

" And I om only a Younger Son, Tommy " — he made his
plaint to Ladds, who received a full confession of the whole —
" only a Younger Son, v/ith four hundred a year. And she's
got fifty thousand. They will say I wanted her money. I
wish she had none. I wish she had nothing but the sweet
gray dress — "

" Jack, don't blaspheme. Goodness sometimes palls : beauty
always fades ; gray dresses certainly wear out ; figures alter for
the worse ; the funds remain, I am always thankful for the
thought which inrjpired Ladds' Perfect Cocoa. The only true
Fragran -e. Aroma and Nutrition."

Hun.phrey did not discover the little sketch before dinner,
so that his conversation was as animated and as artistic as
usual. At two o'clock in the morning he discovered it. And
at three o'clock the Twins, after discussing the picture with its
scoffing legend in all its bearings, went to bed sorrowful.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

107

ng over
iression,
lis. She
,t other,
3US how
or could

■aiig like
so fresh,
irned, as
nst her 1
at would

lie proper
trembled
,ed of the
lid of the

made his
whole —
A.nd she's
loney. I
the sweet

s : beauty

3 alter for

ul for the

only true

CHAPTER X.

" I have in these rouffh words sliaped out a man
Whom this beneath world iloth embrace and hufj
With amplest entertainment."

R. Gabriel Cassilis, who, like Julius Ctesar and other
illustrious men, was always spoken of by both his
names, stepped from his carriage at the door of the
Langham Hotel and slowly walked up the stairs to Mr. Beck's
room. He looked older, longer, and thinner in the morning
than in the evening. He carried his hands behind him and
bore a look of preoccupation and care. The man of unlimited
credit was waiting for him, and, with his first cigar, pacing the
room with his hands in his pockets.

" I got your letter," said Mr. Cassilis, " and telegraphed to
you because I was anxious not to miss you. My time is valu-
able — not so valuable as yours, but still worth something."

He spread his hands palm downwards, and at right angles to
the perpendicular line of his body, had that been erect. But
it was curved, like the figure of the man with the forelock.

" Still worth something," he repeated. " But I am here, Mr.
Beck, and ready to be of any service that I can."

" My time is worth nothing," said the American, " because
my work is done for me. When I was paid by the hour, it was
worth the hour's pay."

" But now," Mr. Cassilis interposed, "it is worth at the rate
of your yearly income. And I observe that you have
unlimited credit — un-lim-it-ed credit. That is what we should
hardly give to a Rothschild."

He wanted to know what unlir.iiuv.vl credit really meant. It
was a thing hitherto beyond his experience.

" It is my Luck/' said Mr. Beck. " He, as everybody knows,
is not to be approached. You may grub for money like a
Chinee, and you may scheme for it like a Boss in a whiskey-
ring. But for a steady certain flow there is nothing like He. And
I, sir, have struck He as it never was struck before, because my
well goes down to the almighty reservoir of this great world."

" 1 congratulate you, Mr. Beck."

108

THE GOLDEN lUITTERFLY.

ill

" And 1 liave ventured, sir, on the strengLli oi' that introduc-
tory letter to ask you for advice, * Mr. Cassilis,' I was told, * has
the biggest head in all London for knowledge of money.' And
as I am going to be the biggest man in all the States for income
I come to you."

" I am not a professional adviser, Mr. Beck. What I could
do for you would not be a matter of business. It is true, that,
as a friend only, I might advise you as to investments. I could
show you where to place money and how to use it."

" Sir, you double the obligation. In America we do noth-
ing without an equivalent. Here men seem to work as hard
without being paid as those who get wages. Why, sir, I hear
that young barristers do tlie work of others and get nothing
for it ; doctors work for nothing in hospitals ; and authors write
for publishers and get nothing from them. This a wonderful
country."

Mr. Cassilis, at any rate, had never worked for nothing.
Nor did he propose to begin now. But he did n(»t say so.

He sat nursing his leg, looking up at the tall American who
stood over him. They were two remarkable faces that thus
looked into each other. The American's was grave and even
stern. But his eyes were soft. The Englishman's was grave
also, but his eyes were hard. They were not stealthy as of one
contemplating a fraud, but they were curious and watchful, as
of one who is about to strike and is looking for the fittest place
— that is, the weakest.

" Will you take a drink, Mr. Cassilis 1 "

" A — a — a drink 'i " The invitation took him aback alto-
gether, and disturbed the current of his thoughts. "Thank
you, thank you. Nothing."

" In the silver mines I've seen a man threatened with a
bowie for refusing a drink. And I've known temperate men
anxious for peace take drinks, when they were offered, till
their back teeth were under whiskey. But I kno;v your Eng-
lish custom, Mr. Cassilis. When you don't feel thirsty you
say so. Now let us go on, sir."

" Our New York friend tells me, Mr. Beck, that you would
find it difl[icult to spend your income."

Mr. Beck brightened. He sat down and assumed a confi-
dential manner.

•Si

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

109

itroduc-
Id, 'has
f: And
income

I could

le, that,

I could

lo noth-
as hard
•, I hear
nothhig
)rs write
onderful

nothing,
y so.
can who
hat thus
md even
as grave
IS of one
chful, as
est place

,ck alto-
'« Thank

I with a
rate men
ered, till
our Eng-
rsty you

)u would

a confi-

" That's the hitch. That's what I am here for. In America
you may chuck a handsome pile on yourself. But when you
get out of yourself, unless you were to buy a park for the peo-
ple in the centre of New York City, I guess you would find it
difficult to get rid of your money."

" It depends mainly on the amount of that money."

" We'll come to figures, sir, and you shall judge as my friendly
adviser. My bar'ls bring me in, out of my firso well, 2500
dollars, and that's 500Z. a day, without counting Sundays.
And there's a dozen wells of mine around not so good, that are
worth between them another 800/. a day."

Mr. Cassilis gasped.

" Do you mean, Mr. Beck, do you actually mean that you are
drawing a profit, a clear profit of more than 1300/. a day from
your rock-oil shafts 1 "

"That is it, sir — that is the lowest figure. Say 1500/. a
day."

" And how long has this being going on ?"

" Close upon ten months."

Mr. Cassilis produced a pencil and made a little calculation.

" Then you are worth at this moment, allowing for Sundays,
at least a quarter of a million sterling."

" Wal, I think it is near that figure. We can telegraph to
New York, if you like, to find out. I don't quite know within
a hundred thousand."

" And a yearly income of 500,000/., Mr. Beck ! " said Mr.
Cassilis, rising solemnly. *' Let me — allow me to shake hands
with you again. I had no idea, not the slightest idea, in ask-
ing you to my house the other day, that I was entertaining a
man of so much weight and such enormous power."

He shook hands with a mixture of deference and friendship.
Then he looked again, with a watchful glance, at the tall and
wiry American, with the stern face, the grave eyes, the mobile
lips, and the muscular frame, and sat down and began to
soliloquise.

" We are accustomed to think that nothing can compare

with the great landholders of this country and Austria. There

are two or three incomes perhaps in Europe, not counting

crowned heads, which approach your own, Mr. Beck, but they

. are saddled. Their owners have great houses to keep up ;

110

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

armies of servants to maintain ; estates to nurse ; dilapida-
tions to make good ; farmers to satisfy ; younger sons to pro-
vide for ; poor people to help by hundreds ; and local charities
to assist. Why, I do not believe, when all has been provided
for, that a great man, say the Duke of Berkshire, with coal-
mines and quarries, Scotch, Irish, Welsh, and English estates,
has more to put by at the end of the year than many a Lon-
don merchant."

" That is quite right," said Mr. Beck : " a merchant must
save, because he may crack up ; but the land don't run away.
When you want stability, you must go to the Airth. Outside
there's the fields, the rivers, the hills. Inside there's the mines,
and there's He for those who can strike it."

'• What an income ? " Mr. Cassilis went on. " Nothing to
squander it on. No duties and no responsibilities. No ten-
ants ; no philanthropy ; no frittering away of capital. You
can't spend a tenth part of it on yourself. And the rest accu-
mulates and grows — grows — spreads and grows." He spread
out his own hands, and a flush of envy came into his cheeks.
" Mr. Beck, I congratulate you again."

" Thank you, sir."

" I see, Mr. Beck — you are yet an unmarried man, I believe,
and without children — I foresee boundless possibilities. You
may marry an<l found a great family ; you may lay yourself
out for making a fortune so great that it may prove a sensible
influence on the course of events. You may bequeath to your
race the tradition of good fortune and the habit
money."

" My sons may take care of themselves," Said Mr. Beck ;
want to spend money, not to save it."

It was remarkable that during all this generous outburst of
vicarious enthusiasm Mr. Beck's face showed no interest what-
ever. He had his purpose, but it was not the purpose of Mr.
Cassilis. To found a family, to become a Rothschild, to con-
tract- loans — what were these things to a man who felt strongly
that he had but one life, that he wished to make the most of
it, and that the world after him might get on as it could with-
out his posthumous interference ?

" Listen, Mr. Beck, for one moment. Your income is 500,000/,
a year. You may spend on your own simple wants 5000/.

of making

THE GOLDKN BUTTERFLY.

Ill

lilapida-
3 to pro-
charities
provided
ith coal-
estates,
y a Lon-

mt must

m away.

Outside

le mines,

►thing to
No ten-
al. You
•est accu-
Le spread
5 cheeks.

I believe,
es. You

yourself
I seiisible
1 to your

making

3eck; "I

itburst of
est what-
)se of Mr.

to con-
t strongly

most of
ould with-

Ball ! a tritie — not a quarter of the interest. You save the
whole ; in ten vears you have three millions. You are still
under fifty r'
" Forty-five, sir."

" I wish I was forty-five. You may live and work for another
quarter of a century. In that time you ought to be Avorth
twelve millions at least. Twelve millions ! "

" Nearly as much as ran away and was lost when the He was
struck," said Mr. Beck. " Hardly worth while to work for twenty-
five years in order to save what Nature spent ia three days, is
it?"

What, says the proverb, is easily got is lightly regarded. This
man made money so easily that he despised the slow gradual
building up of an immense fortune.

" There is nothing beyond the reach of a man with twelve
millions," Mr. Cassilis went on. " He may rule the world, so
long as there are poor states with vast armies who want to
borrow. Why, at the present moment a man with twelve mil-
lions at his command could undertake a loan with Russia,
Austria, Turkey, Italy, or Egypt. He could absolutely govern
the share market ; he could rule the bank rate — "

Mr. Beck interrupted, quite unmoved by these visions of
greatness :

" Wal, sir, I am not ambitious, and I leave Providence to
manage the nations her own way. I might meddle and muss
till I busted up the whole concern ; play, after all into the hands
of the devil, and have the people praying to get back to their
old original Providence."

" Or suppose," Mr. Cassilis went on, his imagination fired
with the contemplation of possibilities so far beyond his own
reach — " suppose you were to buy up land — to buy all that
comes into the market. Suppose you were to hand down to
your sons a traditional policy of buying land with the estab-
lished principle of primogeniture, in twenty years you might
have great estates in twenty counties — "

" I could have half a state," said Mr. Beck, " if I went out
West."

" In your own lifetime you could control an election, make
yourself President, carry your own principles, force your
opinions on the country, and become the greatest man in it."

! -i

llli

THE UOJ.DEN HUTTEUFLY.

" The greatest conntry in the world is tlie United States of
America — that is a fact," said Mr. Beck, laugliing ; " so the
greatest man in it must be tlie greatest man in the world. I
calculate that's a bitter reflection for Prince Bismarck when he
goes to bed at night ; also for the Emperor of all the Russias.
And perhaps your Mr. Gladstone would like to feel himself on
the same level with General Ulysses Grant."

" Mr. l>eck," cried Mr. Cassilis, rising to his feet in an irre-
])ressil)le l)urst of genuine enthusiasm, and working his right
hand round exactly as if he was really Father Time, whom he
so much resembled — " Mr. Beck, I consider you the most fortu-
nate man in the world. We slowly amass money— for our sons
to dissipate. Save when a title or an ancient name entails a
conservative tradition which keeps the property together, the
process in this country and in yours is always the same. The
strong men climb, and the weak men fall. And even to great
houses like the Grosvenors, which have been carried upv/ards
by a steady tide of fortune, there will surely one day come a
fool, and then the tide will turn. But for you and yours, Mr.
Beck, Nature pours out her inexhaustible treasures— "

" She does, sir — in He."

" You may spend, but your income will always go on in-

creasing.

" To a certain limit, sir — to five thousand and fifty-three
years. I have had it reckoned by one of our most distinguished
mathematicians. Professor Hercules Willemott, of Cyprus Uni-
versity, Wisconsin. He made the calculations for me."

" Limit or not Mr. Beck, you are now a most fortunate man.
And I shall be entirely at your service. I believe," he added
modestly, " that I have some little reputation in financial
circles."

" That is so, sir. And now let me put my case." Mr. Beck

became once more animated and interested.

<< S'

uppose, sir,

was to say to you, * I have more than enough 'noney. I will
take the Luck of the Golden Butterfly and make it the Luck of
other people.' "

" I do not understand," said Mr. Cassilis.

" Sir, what do you do with your own money. ? You do not
spend it all on yourself."

*' I use it to make more."

" And when you have enough 1 "

• , .

?*»!■> "--T^-i^li

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFI-Y.

113

itates of
' so the
)rld. I
vhen he
Russias.
aself on

an irre-
is right
horn he
St fortu-
)ur sons
jntails a
her, the
e. The
to great
ipv/ards
come a
urs, Mr.

o on in-

ty-three
iguished

•us Uni-

Lte man.
e added
inancial

[r. Beck
>e, sir, I
I will
Luck of

I do not

" We look at things from a different point of view, Mr.
Beck. You have enough ; but I, whatever be my success, can
never approach the fourth pc*it of your income. However, let
me understand Avhat you want to do, and I will give you such
advice as 1 can offer."

" That's kind, sir, and what I expected of you. It is a fool-
ish fancy, and perhaps you'll laugli ; but I have heard day and
night, ever since the He began to run, a Voice which says to
me always the same thing — I think it is tlie voice of my Gol-
den Butterfly : ' What you can't spend, give.' ' What you
can't spend, give.' Tliat's my duty, Mr. Cassilis ; that's the
path marked out before me, plain and shinin' as the way to
heaven. What I can't spend, I must give. I've given nothing
as yet. And I am here in this country of giving to find out
how to do it."

" We — I mean the — the — " Mr. Cassilis was on the point of
saying the * idiots,' but refrained in time. *' The people who
give money send it to charities and institutions."

" I know that way, sir. It is like pajang a priest to say your
prayers for you."

" When the secretaries get the money they pay themselves
their own salaries first ; then they pay for the rent, the clerks,
and the advertising. What remains goes to the charity."

" That is so, sir ; and I do not like that method. I want to
go right ahead ; find out what to do, and then do it. But I
must feel like giving, whatever I do."

" Your countryman, Mr. Peabody, gave his money in trust
for the London poor. Would you like to do the same 1 "

" No, sir ; I should not like to imitate that example. Mr.
Peabody was a great man, and he meant well ; but I want to
work for myself. Let a man do all the good and evil he has
to do in his lifetime, not leave his work dragging on after he is
dead. ' Tlrey that go down into the pit cannot hope for the
truth.' Do you remember that text, Mr. Cassilis 1 It means
that you must not wait till you are dead to do what you have
to do."

Mr. Cassilis altered his expression, which was before of a

puzzled cheerfulness, as if he failed to see his way, into one of

unnatural solemnity. It is the custom of certain Englishmen

if the Bible is quoted. He knew no more than Adam what

114

TllK (SOF-DKN lUJTTKllFI-Y.

part of tlio Bible it cuukj fioiii. Dut liu bowed, and pulled out
his handkerchief as if he was at a funeral. In fact, thif, unex-
pected hurling of a text at his head floored him for the nioment.

Mr. Beck was quite grave and in much earnestness.

" There is another thing. If I leave this money in trust,
how do I know that my purpose will be carried out 1 In a
hundred years things will get mixed. My bequests may be
worth millions, or they may be worth nothing. The lawyers
may light over the letter of the will, and the spirit may be
nej'lected.

" It is the Dead Hand that you dread."

" That may be so, sir. You air in the inside track, and you
ought to know what to call it. But no Hand, dead or alive,
shall ever get hold of my stamps."

" Your stamps ? "

" My stamps, sir ; my greenbacks, my dollars. For I've got
them, and I mean to spend them. ' Spend what you can, and
give what you cannot spend,' says the Voice to Gilead P. Beck."

" But, my dear sir, if you mean to give away a quarter of a
million a year, you will have every improvident and extravagant
rogue in the country about you. You will have to answer
hundreds of letters a day. You will be deluged with prospec-
tuses, forms and appeals. You will be called names unless
you give to this institution or to that — "

" I shall give nothing to any society."

" And what about the widows of clergymen, the daughters
of officers, the nieces of Church dignitaries, the governess who
is starving, the tradesman who wants a hundred pounds for a
fortnight, and will repay you with blessings and 25 per cent,
after depositing in your hand as security all his pawn-tickets ? "

'' Every boat wants steering, but I was not born last Sun-
day, and the ways of big 6ities, though they may be crooked,*
air pretty well known by me. There are not many lines of
life in which Gilead P. Beck has not tried to walk."

" My dear sir, do you propose to act the part of Universal
Philanthropist and Distributor at large ? "

"No, sir, I do not. And that puzzles me too. I should like
to be quiet over it. There was a man down to Lexington when
I was a boy, who said he liked his religion unostentatious. So
he took a pipe on a Sunday morning and sat iu the churchyard

THE GOIiDEN BUTTKllFLY.

115

pulled out
thiF unex-
c nioment.

y in trust,
Dut 1 In a
,ts may be
'be lawyers
rit may be

ck, and you
ad or alive,

For I've got
ou can, and
ad P. Beck."
[quarter of a
[extravagant
B to answer
ith prospec-
ames unless

le daughters
iverness who
lounds for a
25 per cent,
m-tickets 'i "
Tn last Sun-
be crooked,'
lany lines of

3f Universal

1 1 should like

[ington when

itatious. So

churchyard

listeniiii^ totlie bumniin' and tlie singin' within. IV'iliaps, sir,
that man knew his own business. Perhaps thoughts came over
his soul when they gave out the Psalm that he wouldn't have
had if he'd gone inside, to sit with his back upright against a
plank, his legs curled up below the seat, and his eyes wandering
around among the gells. Maybe that is my case too, Mr.
Cassilis. I should like my giving to be unostentatiouo."

" Give what you cannot spend," said Mr. Cassilis, " There
are at any rate plenty of ways of spending. Let us attend to
them first."

"And there's another thing, sir," Mr. Beck went on, shifting
his feet, and looking uneasy and distressed. '* It's on my mind
since I met the young gentleman at your house. I want to do
something big, something almighty big, for Mr. Ronald Dun-
querque."
' " Because he killed the bear V

'* Yes, sir, because he saved my life. Without that shot the
Luck of Gilead P. Beck would have been locked up for ever in
that little box where the Golden Butterfly used to live. Wiiat
can I do for him ? Is the young gentleman rich V

" On the contrary, I do not suppose — his brother is one of
the poorest peers in the House— that the Honourable Mr.
Ronald Dunquerque is worth 500/. a year. Really, I should say
that 300/. would be nearer the mark."

*' Then he is a gentleman, and I am — well, sir, I hope I am
learning what a gentleman shou' do and think in such a posi-
tion as the Golden Butterfly has brought me into. But the
short of it is that I can't say to him, Mr. Dunquerque, I owe
you a life, and here is a cheque for so many thousand dollars,
I can't do it, sir."

" I suppose not. But there are ways of helping a young man
forward without giving him money. You can only give money
to poets and clergymen."

" That is so, sir." '

" Wait a little till your position is known and assured. You
will then be able to assist Mr. Roland Dunquerque as much as
you please." He rose and took up his gloves, "And now,
Mr. Beck, I think I understand you. You wish to do some-
thing great with your mt»ney. Very good. Do not be in a

116

THE GOLDEN BUTTEllFLY.

hurry. 1 will think things over. Meantime are you going to
let it lie idle in the bank i "

" Wal, yes ; I was thinking of that."

" It would lie much better for me to place it for you in good
shares, such as I could recommend to you. You wouhl then be
able to — to — give away" — he pronounced the words with mani-
fest reluctance— " the interest as well as the principal. Why
should the bankers have the use of it V

" That seems reasonable," said Mr. Beck.

Mr. Cassilis straightened himself and looked him full in the
face. He was about to strike his blow.

" You will place your money," he said quietly, as if there
could be no doubt of Mr. Beck's immediate assent, " in my
hands for investment. I shall recommend you safe things.
For instance, as regards the shares of the George Washington
Silver Mine "

He opened his pocket-book.

" No, sir," said Mr. Beck with great decision.

" I was about to observe that I should not recommend such
an investment. I think, however, I could place immediately
20,000/. in the Isle of Man Internal Navigation Company."

" An English company 1 " said Mr. Beck.

" Certainly. I propose, Mr. Beck, to devote this morning to
a consideration of investments for you. I shall advise you
from day to day. I have no philanthropic aims, and financing
is my profession. But your affairs shall be treated together
with mine, and I shall bring to bear upon them the same — may I
say insight ? — that has carried my own ventures to success. For
this morning I shall only secure you the Isle of Man shares."

They presently parted, with many expressions of gratitude
from Mr, Gilead Beck.

A country where men work for nothing? Perhaps when
men are young. Not a country where elderly men in the City
work for nothing. Mr. Cassilis had no intention whatever of
devoting his time and experience to the furtherance of Mr.
Beck's affairs. Not at all : if the thoughts in his mind had
been written down, they would have shown a joy almost boy-
ish in the success of his morning visit.

" The Isle of Man Company," we should have read, " is
floated. That 1^0,000/. was a lucky coup. I nearly missed my

THE OOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

117

going to

u in good
I tlien bo
r'lth mani-
a. Why

ull in the

IS if there
t, " in my
de things,
ashington

nend such
mediately
apany."

norning to

dvise you

financing

d together

ne — may I

ccess. For

shares."

gratitude

laps when
n the City
hatever of
ice of Mr.
mind had
tlmost boy-
read, " is
missed my

chancew with the silver mine ; I ought to have known that he
was not liktily to jump at such a bait. A quarter of a million
of money to dispose of, and five hundnul thousand pounds a
year. And mine th(^ handling of the whole. Never before
was such a cluince known in tlic City.

A thought struck him. Ke turned, and went back hastily
to Gilead Beck's rooms.

" One word more. Mr. Beck, 1 need hardly say that I do not
wish to be known as your adviser at all. Perhaps it would be
well to keep our ((Ugagemonts a s«xret between ourselves."

That, of course, was n^adily promised.

" Half a million a year ! " the words jangled in his brain
like the chimes of St. Clement's. " Half a million a year !
And mine the handling."

He spent the day locked up in his inner office. He saw no
one, except his secretary, and he covered an acre or so of paper
with calculations. His clerks went away at five ; his secretary
left him at six ; .at ten he was still at work, feverishly at work,
making combinations and calculating results.

" What a chance ! " he murmured prayerfully, putting down
his pen at length. *' What a blessed chance ! "

Mr. Gilead Beck would have congratulated himself on the
disinterested assistance of his unprofessional adviser, had he
knoM'n that the whole day was devoted to himself. He might
have congratulated himself less had he known the thoughts
that filled the financier's brains.

Disinterested ? How could Mr. Cassilis regard any one with
money in his hand but as a subject for his skill 1 And here
was a man coming to him, not with his little fortune of a few
thousands, not with the paltry savings of a lifetime, not for an
investment for widows and orphans, but with a purse immeas-
urable and bottomless, a purse which he was going to place un-
reservedly in his hands.

" Mine the handling," he murmured as he got into bed. It
was his evening hymn of praise and joy.

118

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

i I

(• !

CHAPTER XI.

" Hi{,'her she cliinh'd, and far l)cl()\v her stretch'd
Hill hej-ond hill, with leiiprthcning slopes and gladea,
And a world widcnint? still."

fr)HILLIS'S world widened daily, like a landscape, which
J^ stretches ever farther the higher you mount. Every
^"^ morning brought her fresh delights, something more
wonderful than she had seen the day before. Her portfolio of
drawings swelled daily ; but with riches came discontent,
because the range of subjects grew too vast for her pencil to
draw, and her groups became everyday more difficult and more
complicated. Lite was a joy beyond all that she had ever
hoped for or expected. How should it be otherwise to her 1
She had no anxieties for the future ; she had no past sins to
repent ; she had no knowledge of evil ; she was young and in
perfect health ; the weight of her mortality was as yet unfelt.

During these early days of emancipation she was mostly
silent, looking about find making observations.. She sat alone
and thought ; she forgot to sing ; if she played, it was as if
she was communing confidentially with a friend, and seeking
counsel. She had so much to think of : herself, and the new
current of thoughts into which her mind had been suddenly
diverted ; the connection between the world of Mr. Dyson's
teaching and the world of reality — this was a very hard thing ;
Mrs. Cassilis, with her hard cold manner, her kind words, and
her eternal teaching that the spring of feminine action is the
desire to attract ; finally, Jack Dunquerque. And of him she
thought a good deal.

All the people she met were interesting. She tried to give
each one his own individuality, rounded and complete. But
she couid not. Her experience was too small, and each figure
in her mind was blurred. Now if you listen to the conversa-
tion of people, as I do perpetually — in trains especially — you
will find that they are always talking about other people. The
reason of that I take to be the natural desire to have in your
brain a clear idea of every man, what he is, and how he is likely

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

119

to be acted upon. Those people are called interesting who are
the most diificult to describe or imagine, and who, perpetually
breaking out in new places, disturb the image which their
friends have formed.

None of Phillis's new friends would photograph clear and
distinct in her brain. She thought she missed the focus.. It
was not so, however; it was the fault of the lens. But it
troubled her, because if she tried to draw them there was always
a sense of something wanting. Even Jack Dunquerque — and
here her eyes brightened — had points about him which she
could not understand. She was quiet, therefore, and watched.
It was pleasant only to watch and observe. She had made
out clearly by this time that the Twins were as vain and self-
conscious as the old peacock she used to feed at Highgate. She
found herself bringing out their little vanities by leading ques-
tions. She knew that Joseph Jagenal, whom in their souls the
Twins despised, was worth them both ten times over ; and she
found that Joseph rated himself far beneath his brothers. Then
she gradually learned that their aesthetic talk was soon ex-
hausted, but that they loved to ennnciate the same old maxims
over and over again, as children repeat a story. And it became
one of her chief pleasures to listen to them at dinner, to mark
their shallowness, and to amuse herself with their foibles. The
Twins thought the young lady was fascinated by their personal
excellences.

" Genius, brother Cornelius," said Humphrey, " always makes
its way. I see Phillis Fleming every night waiting upon your
words."

" I think the fascinations of Art are as great, brother Hum-
phrey. At dinner Phillis Fleming watches your every gesture."
This was in the evening. In the morning every walk was a
new delight in itself, every fresh street was different. Brought
up for thirteen years within the same four walls, the keenest
joy which the girl could imagine was variety. She loved to
see something new, even a new disposition of London houses,
even a minute difference in the aspect of a London square.
But of all the pleasures which she had yet experienced — even
a greater pleasure than the single picture-gallery which she had
visited — was the one afternoon of shopping she had had with
Mrs. Cassilis at Melton Si Mowbray's in Regent-Street.

■ i

.■ ■ :l.

1 !

120

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

Mrs. Cassilis took her there first on the morning of her
dinner-party. It was her second drive through the streets of
London, but an incomparably superior journey to the first.
The thoroughfares were more crowdt>l ;the shops were grander ;
if there were fewer boys running and whistling, there were
picturesque beggars, Punch and Judy shows, Italian noblemen
with organs, and the other humours and diversions of the great
main arteries of London. Phillis looked at it with the keenest
delight, calling the attention of her companion to the common
things which escape our notice because we see them every day
— the ragged broken-down old man without a hat, who has
long gray locks, who sells oranges from a basket, and betrays
by his bibulous trembling lips the secret history of his down-
fall ; the omnibus full inside and out ; the tali Guardsman
swaggering down the street ; the ladies looking in at the win-
dows ; the endless rows of that great and wonderful exhibition
which benevolent tradesmen show gratuitiously to all ; the shop-
man rubbing his hands at the door ; the foreigners and pilgrims
in a strange land — he with a cigarette in his mouth, lately from
the army of Don Carlos ; he with a bad cigar, a blue-black
shaven chin and cheek, and a seedy coat, who once adorned
the ranks of Delescluze, Ferd, Flourens, and Company ; he
with the pale face and hard cynical smile, who hails from free
and happy Prussia ; the man, our brother, from Sierra Leone,
coal-black of hue, with snowy linen and a conviction not to be
shaken that all the world takes him for an Englishman ; the
booted Belgian, cross between the Dutchman and the Gaul ; the
young gentleman sent from Japan to study our country and its
laws — he has a cigar in his mouth, and a young lady with
yellow hair upon his arm ; the Syrian, with a red cap and
almond eyes ; the Parsee, with lofty super-structure, a reminis-
cence of the Tower of Babel, which his ancestors were partly
instrumental in building ; Cretes, Arabians, men of Cappadocia
and Pontus withalltheothermingled nationalities which makeup
the strollers along a London street, — Phillis marked them every
one, and only longed for a brief ten minutes with each in order
to transfer his likeness to her portfolio.

" Phillis," said her companion, touching her hand, " can you
practise looking at people without turning your head or seem-
ing to notice 1 "

THE GOLDEN BL PTERFLY.

121

of her
;reets of
lie first,
rander ;
ire were
)blemen
le great
keenest
:ommon
ery day
who has
betrays
s down-
irdsman
bhe win-
hihition
tie shop-
pilgrims
3ly from
ue-black
adorned
ny ; he
om free
I Leone,
ot to be
lan ; the
aul ; the

and its
dy with
cap and
reminis-
partly
)padocia
make up
m every
in order

can you
)r seem-

Phillis laughed, and tried to sit in the attitude of unobser-
vant carelessness which was the custom in other carriages. Like
all first attempts, it was a failure. Then the great and crowded
street reminded her of her dream. Should she presently — for
it all seemed unreal together — begin to run while the young
men, among whom were the Twins, ran after her ? And should
she at tlie finish of the race, see the form of dead old Abraham
Dyson, clapping his hands and wagging his head, and crying,
" Well run ! well won ! Phillis, it is the Coping-stone 1 "

" This is Melton & Mowbray's," said Mrs. Cassilis, as the car-
riage drew up in front of a shop which contained greater trea-
sures than were ever collected for the harem of Assyrian king.

She followed Mrs. Cassilis to some show-rooms, in which lay
about carelessly things more beautiful than she had ever con-
ceived ; hues more brilliant, textures more delicate, than she
knew.

Phillis's first shopping was an event to be remembered in all
her after-life. What she chose, what Mrs. Cassilis chose for
her, what Joseph Jagenal thought when the bill came in, it
boots not here to tell. Imagine only the delight of a girl of deep
and artistic feeling which has hitherto chiefly found vent in the
study of form — such form as she could g(!t from engravings
and her own limited powers of observation — in being let loose
suddenly in a wilderness of beautiful things. Every lady
knows Messrs. Melton & Mowbray's great shop. Does any-
body ever think what it would seem were they to enter it for
the first time at the mature age of nineteen 1

In one thing only did Phillis disgrace herself There was
a young person in attendance for the purpose of showing off" all
sorts of draperies upon her own back and shoulders. Phillis
watched her for some time. She had a singularly graceful
figure and a patient face, which struck Phillis with pity. Mrs.
Cassilis sat studying the effect through her double eye-elasses.
The saleswoman put on and took oflTthe things as if the girl were
really a lay-figure, which she was, excepting that she turned
herself about, a thing not yet achieved by any lay-figure. A
patient face, but it looked pale and tired. The " Duchess " —
living lay-figures receive that title, in addition to a whole
pound a week which Melton & Mowbray generously give them
— stood about the rooms all day and went to bed late at night.

122

THE (JOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

Some of till' other ji;iils envied her. Tliis shows that there is
no position in life which has not something beneath it.

Presently Phillis rose suddenly, and taking the opera-cloak
which the Duchess was about t^ put on, said :

" You are tired. I will try it on myself. Pcay sit down
and rest."

And she actually placed a chair for the shop-girl.

Mr-:. Catisilis gave a little jump of surprise. It had never
occurred to her that a shop-woman could be entitled to any
consideration at all. She belonged to the establishment ; the
shop and all that it contained were at the service of those who
bought ; tlie personnel Avas a matter for Messers. Melton &
Mowbray to manage.

But she recovered her presence of mind in a moment.

"Perhaps it will be as well," she said, " to see how it suits
you, by trying it on yourself."

When their purchases were concluded and they were com-
ing away, Phillis turned to the poor Duchess, and asked her if
she was not very tired of trying on dresses, and whether she
would not like to take a rest, and if she was happy, with one
or two other questions ; at which the saleswoman looked a little
indignant, and the Duchess a little inclined to cry.

And then they came away.

" It is not usual, Philhs," said Mrs. Cassilis, directly they
were in the carriage, " for ladies to speak to shop-people."

" Is it not 1 The poor girl loo'ied pale and tired."

" Very likely she was. She is paid to work, and work is
fatiguing. But it was no concern of ours. You see, my dear,
we cannot alter things ; and if you once begin pitying people
and talking to them, there is an end of all distinctions of class."

" Mr. Dyson used to say that tlie difficulty of abolishing class
distinctions was one of the most lamentable facts in human
history. I did not understand then what he meant. But I
think I do now. It is a dreadful thing, he meant, that one
cannot speak to or relieve a poor girl who is ready to drop with
fatigue, because she is a shop-girl. How sad you must feel,
Mrs. Cassilis, you who have seen so much of shop-assistants, if
they are all like that poor girl ! "

Mrs. Cassilis had not felt sad, but Phillis's remark made her
feel for the moment uncomfortable. Her complacency was dis-

THr GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

123

turhed. But how could she help herself? She was what her
surroundings had made her. As riches increase, particularly
the riches which are unaccompanied by territorial obligations,
men and women separate themselves more and more ; the lines
of demarcation become deeper and broader ; English castes are
divided by ditches constantly widening ; the circles into which
outsiders may enter as guests, but not as members, become
more numerous ; poor people herd more together ; rich people
live more apart ; the latter become like gods in their seclusion,
and they grow to hate more and more the sight and rumour of
suffering. And the first step back to the unpitying cruelty of
the old civilizations is the habit of looking on the unwashed as
creatures of another world. If the gods of Olympus had known
sympatliy they might have lived till now.

This expedition occurred on the day of Phillis's first dinner-
party, and on the way home a singular thing happened.

Mrs. Cassilis asked Phillis how long she was to stay with
Mr. Jagenal.

"Until," said Phillis, " my guardian comes home; and that will
be in a fortnight."

" Your guardian, child 1 But he is dead."

" I had two, you know. The other is Mr. Lawrence Col-
quhoun — What is the matter, Mrs. Cassilis 1 "

For she became suddenly pallid, and stared blankly before
her, with no expression in her eyes, unless perhaps a look of terror
It was the second time that Phillis had noted a change in this
cold and passionless face. Before, the face had grown suddenly
soft and tender at a recollection ; now, it was white and rigid.

" Lawrence Colquhoun ! " She turned to Phillis and hardly
seemed to know what she was saying. " Lawrence Colquhoun 1
He is coming home — and he promised me — no — he would not
promise — and what will he say to me t "

Then she recovered herself with an effort. The name or the
intelligence of Lawrence Colquhoun's return gave her a great
shock.

" Mr. Colquhoun your gUtirdian 'i I did not know. And he
is coming hor^e 1 "

when I am staying — if I am to

" You will come and see
stay — at his house 1 "

" I shall certainly," said Mrs. Cassilis, setting her lips to-

124

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

gether, — " I shall certainly make a point of seeing Mr. Col-
quhoun on his return, whether you are staying with him or
not. Here is Carnarvon-square. No, thank you, I will not
get down, even to have a cup of tea with you. Good-bye,
Phillis, till this evening. My dear, I think the white dress
that you showed me will do admirably. Home at once."

A woman of steel ? Rubbish. There is no man or woman
of steel, save him who has brooded too long over his own per-
fections. A metallic statue, the enemies of Mrs. Cassilis called
her. They knew nothing. A woman who had always perfect
control over herself, said her husband. He knew nothing.
A woman who turned pale at the mention of a name, and
longed, yet feared, to meet a man, thought Phillis. And she
knew something, because she knew the weak point in this
woman's armoar. iieing neither curious, nor malignant, nor a
disciple in the school for scandal, Phillis drew her little con-
clusion, kept it to herself, and thought no more about it.

As for the reasons whicli prompted Mrs. Cassilis to " take
up " Phillis Fleming, they were multiplex, Uke all the springs
of action which move us to act. She wanted to find out for
her husband of what sort was this system of education which
Joseph Jagenal could not discover anywhere. She was in-
terested in, although not attracted ; , the character of the
girl, unlike any she had ever seen. And she wanted to use
Phillis — an heiress, young, beautiful, piquante, strange — as an
attraction to her hou«e. For Mrs. Cassilis was ambitious.
She wished to attract men to her evenings. She pictured
herself — it is the dream of so many cultured women — as another
Madame Recamier, Madame du Deffand, or Madame de Ram
bouillet. All the intellect in London was to be gathered in
her salon. She caught lions \ she got hold of young tt-uthors ;
she made beginnings with third-rate people who had written
booics. Tht^y were not amusing ; they were not witty ; they
were devoured by envy and hatred. She let them drop, and
now she wanted to begin again. An idlo and a futile game.
She had not the quick sympathies, the capacity for hero-wor-
ship, the loveableness of the Recamier. She had no tears for
others. She did not know that the woman who aspires to lead
men must first be able to be led.

There was another fatal objection, not fully understood by

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

1-25

take

ladies who have '* evenings," and sigli over their enipt}^ rooms.
In these days of clubs, what man is going to get up after dinner
and find his melancholy way from Pall Mall to Kensington -
palace-gardens, in order to stand about a drawing-room for two
hours and listen to " general " talk 1 It wants a Phillis, and
a personal, if hopeless, devotion to a Phillis, to tear the freshest
lion from his club after dinner, even if it be to an altar of adula-
tion. The evening begins properly with dinner : and where
men dine they love to stay.

" Jack Dunquerque came to see me to-day," Phillis told
Joseph. " You remember Mr. Dunquerque. He was at Mrs.
Cassilis's last night. He came at two, to have luncheon and to
tell me about Mr. Colquhon ; but he did not tell me anything
about him. We talked about ourselves."

"Is Mr. Dunquerque a friend of yoiws V

" Yes ; Jack and I are friends," Phillis replied readily.
There was not the least intention to deceive ; but Joseph was
deceived. He thought they had been old friends. Somehow,
perhaps, Phillis did not like to talk very much about her
friendship for Jack.

**I want you to ask him to dinner, if you will."

" Certainly, whenever you please. I shall be glad to make
Mr. Dunquerque's acquaintance. He is the brother of Lord
Isleworth," said Joseph, with a little satisfaction at seeing a
live member of the aristocracy at his own table.

Jack came to dinner. He behaved extremely well ; made
no allusion to that previous occasion when he had V)een intro-
duced to the Twins ; listened to their conversation as if it
interested him above all things ; and not once called Phillis by
her Christian name. This omission made her reflect ; they
were therefore, it was apparent, only Jack and Phil when
they were alone. It was her first secret, and the possession of
it became a joy.

She had not a single word with him all the evening. Only
before he went he asked her if he might call the next day at
luncheon-time. She said him yea.

" After all these Bloomsbury people," said Cornelius, light-
ing his first pipe, " it does one good, brother Humphrey, to
come across a gentleman. Mr. Ronald Dunquerque took the
keenest interest in your Art criticisms at tlinner."

126

THE GOLDEN BUTTEllFLY.

** Tliey are general principles only, Cornelius," said Humphrey.
" He is really a superior young man. A little modest in your
presence, brother. To be sure, it is not every day that he finds
himself dining with a Poet."

" And an Artist, Humphrey."

"Thank you, Cornelius. Miss Fleming had no charms for
him, I think."

" Phillis Fleming, brother, is a girl who is drawn more to-
wards, and more attracts, men of a maturer age — men no
longer perhaps within the jjvemihre jmnesse, but still capable
of love."

'* Men of our age, Cornelius. Shall we split this potash, or
will you take some Apollinaris water ? " .

Jack called, and they took luncheon together as before. Phillis,
brighter and happier, told him what things she had seen and
what remarks she had made since last they met, a week ago.
Then she told him of the things she most wished to see.

" Jack," she said, '* I want to see tlie Tower of London and
Westminster Abbey most."

"And then, Phil ?"

"Then I should like to see a play."

" Would Mr. Jagenal allow me to take you to the Tower of
London ? Now, Phil — this afternoon ? "

Phillis's worldly education was as yet so incomplete that she
clapped her hands with delight.

" Shall we go now, Jack ] How delightful ! Of course Mr.
Jagenal will allow you. I will be five minutes putting on my
hat."

"Now that's wrong too," said Jack to himself. "It's as
wrong as calling her Phil. It's worse than wanting to kiss
her, because the kiss never came off. I can't help it — it's plea-
sant. What will Colquhoun say when he comes home 1 Phil
is sure to tell him everything. Jack Dunquerque, my boy,
there will be a day of reckoning for you — Already, Phil 1 By
Jove, how nice you look ! "

" Do I, Jack ? Do you like my hat ? I bought it with Mrs.
Cassilis the other day."

" Look at yourself in the glass, Phil. What do you see ? "

She looked and laughed. It was not for her to say what
she saw.

THE (JOLUKN Hl'TTEHFLY

127

" There was a litth; maid of Arcadia once, riiil, and she grew
up so beautiful that all the birds fell in love with her. There
were no other creatures except birds to fall in love with her,
because her sheep were too busy fattening themselves for the
Corinthian cattle-market to pay any attention to her. They
were conscientious sheep, you see, and wished to do credit to
the Arcadian pastures." Jack Dunquerque began to feel great
freedom in the allegorical method.

*' Well, Jack r'

" Well, Phil, the birds flew about in the woods, singing to
each other how lovely she was, how prettily she played, and
how sweetly she sang. Nobody understood what they said,
but it pleased this little maid. Presently she grew a tall maid,
like yourself, Phil. And then she came out into the world.
She was just like you, Phil ; she had the same bright eyes, and
the same laugh, and the same identical sunlit face ; and 0,
Phil, she had your very same charming ways ! "

"Jack, do you really mean it? Do you like my face, and
are my ways really and truly not rough and awkward ? "

Jack shook his head.

" Your face is entrancing, Phil ; and your ways are more
charming than I can tell you. Well, she came into the world
and looked about her. It was a pleasant world, she thought.
And then — I think I will tell you the rest of the story another
time, Phil."

" Jack, did other people besides birds love your maid of
Arcadia ? "

" I'm afraid they did," he groaned. " A good many other
people — confound them ! "

Phil looked puzzled. Why did he groan 1 Why should not
all the world love the Arcadian maid if they pleased 1

Then they went out, Jack being rather silent.

" This is a great deal better than driving with Mrs. Cassilis,
Jack," said the girl as she made her first acquaintance with a
hansom cab. " It is like sitting in a chair, while all the peo-
ple move past. Look at the faces. Jack ; how they stare
straight before them ! Is work so dear to them that they can-
not find time to look at each other 1 "

" Work is not dear to them at all, I think," said Jack. " If
I were a clergyman I should talk nonsense and say that it i»

128

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

the race for gold. As a matter of fact, I believe it is a race
for bread. Those hard faces have got wives and children at
home, and life is difficult, that is all."

Phillis was silent a^L lin.

They drove ti.rough the crowded City, \vhere the roll of the
vehicles thundered on the girl's astonished ears, and the hard-
faced crowd sped swiftlypast her. Life was too multitudinous,
too complex, for her brain to take it in. The shops did not
interest her no\y, nor the press of business ; it was the never-
ending rush of tlie anxious crowd. She tried to realize, if ever
so faintly, that every one of their faces meant a distinct and
important personality. It was too much for her, and, as it
did to tile Persian monarch, the multitudes brought tears into
her eyes.

" Where are all the women 1 " she asked Jack at length.

" At home. These men are working for them. They are
spending the money which their husbands and fathers fight
for."

She was silent again.

The crowd diminished, but not much ; the street grew nar-
rower. Presently they came to an open space, and beyond —
0» joy of joys I — the Tower of Loudon, which she knew from
the pictures.

Only country people go to the Tower of London. It would
almost seem a kindness to London readers were I to describe
this national gaudy-show. But it is better, perhaps, that its
splendours should remain unknown, like those of the National
Gallery and the British Museum. The solitudes of London are
not too many, and its convenient try sting places are few. The
beefeater who conducted the flock attached himself specially to
Phillis, thereby shewing that good taste has found a home
among beefeaters. Phillis asked him a thousand questions.
She was eager to see everything. She begged him to take them
slowly down the line of armoured warriors ; she did not care
for the arms, except for such as she had heard about, as bows
and arrows, pikes, battle-axes and spears
room where Sir Walter Raleigh was confined
construction of the headman's axe and the block ; she glowed
with delight at finding herself in the old chapel of the White
Tower. Jack did not understand her enthusiasm. It was his

She lingered in the
she studied the

THE fJOLDKN lUJTTKRFLY.

129

own first visit also to the Tower, but he was unaffected by its
liistorical associations. Nor did he greatly caro for the arms
and armour.

Think of Phillis. Her guardian's favourite lesson to her had
been in history, lie would read her passages at which her
pulse would quicken and her eyes light up. Somehow tiiese
seemed all connected with the Tower. Hhe CQnstructed an
imaginary Tower in her own mind, and peopled it with the
ghosts of martyred lords and suffering ladies. But the palace
of her soul was as nothing compared with the grim gray fortress
tliat she saw. The knights of her imagination were poor crea-
tures compared with tliese solid heroes of steel and iron on
tlieir wooden chargers ; the dungeon in which Kaleigh pined
was far more gloomy than any she had pictured ; the ghosts of
slain rebels and murdered princes gained in her imagination a
place and surroundings worthy of their haunts. The first sight
of London which an American visits is the Tower ; the first
l)lace which the boy associates with the past, and longs to see,
IS that old pile beside the Thames.

Phillis came away at length, with a sigh of infinite satisfac-
tion. On the way home she said nothing ; but Jack saw, by
her absorbed look, that the girl was happy. She was adjust-^
ing, bit by bit, her memories and her fancies with tlie reality.
She was trying to fit the stories her guardian had read her so
often with the chambers and the courts she had just seen.

Jack watched her stealthily. A great wave of passion rolled
over the heart of Luis young man whenever he looked at this
girl. He loved her ; there was no longer any possible doubt
of that ; and she onl} liked him. What a difference ! And to
think that the French have only one word for both emotions !
Slie liked to be with him, to talk to him, because he was young
and she could talk to him. But love ] Cold Dian was not
more free frorr love.

" 1 can make most of it out," the girl said, turning to Jack.
"All except Lady Jane Grey. I cannot understand at all

about her. You must take me ajjain. We will

get

tliat dear

old beefeater all by himself, and we will spend the whole day
there, you and I together, shall we not 1 "

Then, after her wont, she put the Tower out of her mind
and began to talk about what she saw. They passed a print-

VM)

THK (JOI.DKN H n TT K UK I. Y.

seller's. She wuiitecl to look at a j>ictiire in the window, and
Jack stojiped the cab and took her into the shop.

He observed, not without dismay, that she had not the most
rudimentary ideas on tlu^ subject of purchase. She had only
once been in a shop, ami then, it' 1 remember rightly, the bill
was sent to Mr. Joseph Jagenal. Phillis turned over tho en-
gravin<;s and photographs, and selected half a doztm.

Jack i)aid the bill next day. It was not much over fifteim
pounds — a mere trifle to a Younger Son with four hundred a
year. And then he had the pleasure of seeing the warm glow
of pleasure in her eyes as she took the "Light of the World "
from the porttolio. Pictures wore her books, and she took
them home to rt^ad.

At last, and all too soon, they came back to Carnarvon-
S(puire.

" Good-bye, Phil," said Jack, before ho knocked at the door.
" You have had a pleasant day V

" Very pleasant, Jack ; and all through you," she replied.
" 0, what a good thing for me that we became friends !"

He thought it might in the end be a bad thing for himself,
but he did not say so. For every hour plunged the unhappy
young man deeper i a the ocean of love, and he grew more than
ever conscious that the part he at present played would not be
regarded with favour by her guardian.

" Jack," she said, while her hand rested in his, and her frank
eyes looked straight in his face with an expression in which
there was no love at all — he saw that clearly — but only free
and childlike affection, — " Jack — why do you look at me so
sadly ? — Jack if I were like — if I were meant fur that maiden

of Arcadia you told me of "

"Yes, Phil?"

** If other people in the world loved me, you would love me
too a little, wouldn't you ? "

THE (;()LI)KN lUn'TKUFLY.

131

Dvv, and

bhe most

ad only

the bill

I' tlio en-

r fifteen
indred a
rni glow
World "
she took

rnarvon-

ihe door.

I replied.

himself,
unhappy
Lorc than
d not be

ler frank
n which
)nly free
it me so
t maiden

love me

CHAPTKR XII.

" Iliarkun wliat tl\c inner spirit Minf,'H,
' Tlicro is iKi joy l)iit caliii.'
Wiiy siiould \vc onl)' toil, tlio roof and crown of thinifH '/"

ChL.

jT/g AWKENCE COLQUHOUN was coming home. Phillis,
J^^ counting the days, remembered, with a little prick of
^*^ ' conscience, that Jack Dunquerque had never told her a
single word concerning her second guardian. He was about
forty years of age, as old as Joseph Jagenal. She pictured a
grave heavy man, with massive forehead, thick black hair, and ,
a responsible manner. She knew too that there was to l)e a
change in her life, but of what kind she could not tell. The
present mode of living was happiness enough for her ; a drive
with Mrs. Cassilis — odd that Phillis could never remove from
herself the impression that Mrs. Cassilis disliked her ; a walk
with Joseph to his office and back in the morning ; a day of
occasional delight with lier best friend. Jack the unscrupu-
lous ; her drawing for amusement and occupation ; and a
widely-increased area, so" to speak, of dress discussion with
her maid.

Antoinette, once her fellow-prisoner, now emancipated like
herself, informed her young mistress that should the new
guardian insist on a return to captivity, she, Antoinette, would
immediately resign. Her devotion to Phillis, she explained,
was unalterable ; but, contrary to the experience of the bard,
stone walls, in her own case, did make a prison. Was Made-
moiselle going to resign all these pleasures 1 — she pointed to
the evening-dresses, the walking-dresses, the riding-habits —
was Mademoiselle about to give up taking walks when and
where she pleased ? — was Mademoiselle ready to let the young
gentleman. Monsieur Dunquerque, waste his life in regrets —
anti he so brave, so good 1 Antoinette, it may be observed,
had, in the agreeable society of Jane the housemaid, Clarissa
the cook, and Victoria Pamela, assistant in either department,
already received enlightenment in the usages of London court-
ship. She herself, the little flirt with the Norman blue eyes and

132

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

1 ■

was a new thought

light-brown hair, was already the object of a devouring passion
on the part of a young gentleman who cut other gentlemen's hair
in a neighbouring street. Further, did Mademoiselle reflect
on the wickedness of burying herself and her beautiful eyes out
of everybody's sight ?

A change was inevitable. Phillis would willingly have
stayed on at Carnarvon-square, where the Twins amused her,
and the lawyer Joseph was kind to her. But Mrs. Cassilis
explained that this was impossible ; that steps would have to be
taken with regard to her future ; and that the wishes of her
guardian must be consulted till she was of age.

" You are now nineteen, my dear. You have two years to
wait. Then you will come into possession of your fortune,
and you will be your own mistress, at liberty to live where and
how you please."

Phillis listened, but made no reply. It
to her that in two years she would be personally responsible
for the conduct and management of her own life, obliged to
think and decide for herself, and undertaking all the respon-
sibilities and consequences of hei own actions. Then she re-
membered Abraham Dyson's warning and maxims. They
once fell unheeded on her brain, which was under strict ward
and tutelage, just like exhortations ^,0 avoid the sins of the
world on the ears of convent girls. Now she remembered
them.

" Life is made up of meeting bills drawn on the future by
the improvidence of youth."

This was a very mysterious maxim, and one that had often
puzzled her. Now she began to understand what was meant.

" The consequences of our own actions are what men call
fate. They accompany us like our sliadows."

Hitherto, she thought, she had had no chance of performing
any action of her own at ;til. She forgot how she asked Jack
Dunquerque to luncheon and went to the Tower with him.

** Every moment of a working life may be a decisive victory.''

Tiiat would begin in two years' time.

" Biave men act ; philosophers discuss ; cowards run away.
The brave are often killed ; the talkers are always left behind ;
the cowards are caught and cashiered."

Better to act and be killed than to run away and be dis-

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

133

passion
m's hair
! reflect
ayes out

y have
;ed her,
Cassilis
ve to be
; of her

/•ears to
fortune,
lere and

thought

ponsible

liged to

respon-

she re-

They

ct waid

) of the

jmbered

ture by

[id often
meant,
nen call

forming
ed Jack
lim.
ictory.''

n away,
behind ;

I be dis-

graced, thought Phillis. That was a thing to be remembered
in two years' time.

" Women see things through the haze of a foolish education.
They manage tlieir affairs badly because they are unable to
reason. You, Phillis, who have never learned to read, are
the mistress of your own mind. Keep it clear. Get infor-
mation and remember it. Learn by hearing and watching."

She was still learning — learning something new every day.

'• It is not in my power to complete your education, Phillis.
That must be done by some one else. When it is finished you
will understand the whole. But do not be in a hurry."

When would the finisher of her education come 1 Was it
Lawrence Colquhoun 1 And how would it be finishetl 1 Surely
some time in the next two years would complete the edifice,
and she would step out into the world at twenty-one, her own
mistress, responsible for her actions, equipped at all points to
meet the chances and dangers of her life.

So she waited, argued with herself, and counted tlic days.

Meantime her conduct towards the Twins inspired these
young men with mingled feehngs of uncertainty and pleasure.
She made their breakfast, was considerate in the morning, and
did not ask them to talk, V/hen the little dialogue, mentioned
in an early chapter, was finished, she would herself pick out
a flower — there were always flowers on the table, in deference
to their artistic tastes — for their buttonlioles, and despatch
them with a smile.

That "was very satisfactory.

At dinner too she would turn from one to the other while
they discoursed sublimely on Art in its higher aspects. They
took it for admiration. It was in reality curiosity to know
what they meant.

After dinner she would too often confine her conversation to
Joseph. On these occasions the brethren would moodily dis-
appear, and retire to their own den, where they lit pipes and
smoked in silence.

In point of fact they were as vain as a brace of peacocks, and
as jealous as a domestic pet, if attention were shown by the
young lady to any but themselves.

Cajsar, it may be observed, quickly learned to distinguish
between jihe habits of Phillis and those of his masters. He

134

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

■^1;

ill

it;

never now offered to take the former into a public-house, while
he ostentatiously, so to speak, paraded his knowledge of the
adjacent bars when convoying the Twins.

One afternoon Phillis took it into her head to carry up tea
to the Twins herself.

Cornelius was, as usual, sound asleep in an easy chair, his
head half resting upon one hand, and his pale cheek lit up with
a sweet and childlike smile — he was dreaming of vintage wines.
He looked sweetly poetical, and it was a thousand plM's that
his nose was so red. On the table lay his blotting-pad, and on
it, clean and spotless, was the book destined to receive his epic
poem.

Phillis touched the Divine Bard lightly on the shoulder.

He thought it was Jane ; stretched, yawned, relapsed, and
then awoke, fretful, like a child of five months.

"Give me the tea," he grumbled. "Too sweet again, I
daresay, like yesterday."

" No sugar at all in it, Mr. Cornelius."

He sprang into consciousness at the voice.

" My dear Miss Fleming ! Is it really you ? You have con-
descended to visit the Workshop, and you find the Labourer
asleep. I feel like a sentinel found slumbering at his post. Pi :y
do not think — it is an accident quite novel to me — the exhaus-
tion of continuous effort, I suppose."

She looked about the room.

" I see books I see a table ; I see a blotting-pad ; and — "
She actually, to the Poet's horror, turned over the leaves of
the stitched book, with Humphrey's ornamental title-page.
*' Not a word written. Where is your work, Mr. Cornelius 1 "

" I work at poesy. That book, Miss Fleming, is for the re-
ception of my great epic when it is completed. Non omim
noriar. There will be found in that blank book the structure
of a lifetime. I shall live by a single work, like Homer."

" What is it all about"? " asked Phillis. She set the tea on
the table and sat down, looking up at the Poet, who rose from
his easy-chair and made answer, walking up and down the
room:

" It is called the Upheaving of jElfred. In the darkest mo-
ments of Alfred's life, while he is hiding ami'l the Somerset-
shire morasses, comes the Spirit of his Career, and guides hin^

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY,

185

in a vision step by step to his crowning triumphs. Episodes
are introduced. That of the swineherd and the milkmaid is
a delicate pastoral, which I hope will stand side by side with
the Daphnis and Chloe. When it is finished, would you like
me to read you a few cantos ? "

" No, thank you very much," said Phillis. " I think that I
know all that I want to know about Alfred. Disguised as a
neatherd, he took refuge in Athelney, where one day, being
set to bake some cakes by the woman of the cott^ ge, he became
so absorbed in his own meditations that — I never thought it
a very interesting story."

" The loves of the swineherd and the milkmaid — " the Poet
began.

" Yes," Phillis interrupted unfeelingly, " But I hardly think
I care much for swineherds. And if I had been Alfred I
should have liked the stupid story about the cakes forgotten.
Can't you write me some words for music, Mr. Cornolius ? Do,
and I will sing them to soii^ething or other. Or write some
verses on subjects that people care to hear about, as Words-
worth did. My guardian used to read Wordsworth to me."
*' Wordsworth could not write a real epic," said Cornelius.
" Could he not 1 Perhaps he preferred writing other things.
Now I must car y Mr. Humphrey iiis tea. Good-bye, Mr.
Cornelius; and do not go to sleep again."

Humphrey too was asleep on his sofa. Raffaelle himself
could not have seemed a more ideal painter. The very lights
of the afternoon harmonized with the purple hue of his velvet
coat, the soft brown silkiness of his beard, and his high pale
forehead. Like his brother, Humphrey spoiled the artistic
effect by that unlucky redness of the nose.
The same awakening was performed.

"I have just found your brother," said Phillis, "at work on
Poetry."

" Noble fellow, Cornelius ! " murmured the Artist. " Always
at it. Always with nose to the grindstone. He will overdo it
some day."

" I hope not," said Phillis, with a gleam in her eye. " I
sincerely hope not. Perhaps he is stronger than he looks,
And what are you doing, Mr. Humphrey?"

180

THE CJOJ.DEN BUTTE111'\lV.

" Yoii found me asleep. The bow stretched too long must
snap or be unbent."

" Yes," said Phillis ; " you were exhausted with work.

" My ^aeat picture — no, it is not on the canvas," for Phillis
was looking at the bare easel.

" Where is it, then 1 Do show it to me."

'* AVhen the grou[)S are complete I will let. you criticize them.
It may be that 1 shall learn something fiom an artless and un-
conventional nature like your own."

" Thank you," said Phillis. " That is a compliment, I am
sure. What is the subject of the picture 1 "

" It is the ' Birth of the Renaissance.' An allegorical pic-
ture. There will be two hundred and twenty-thiee figures in
the composition."

" The ' Birth of the Renaissance,' " Phillis mused. '' I think
I know all about that. ' On the taking of Constantinople, in
the year 1443, the dispersed Gieeks made their way to the
kingdoms of the West, carrying with them Byzantine learning
and culture. Italy became the chosen home of these exiles.
The almost simultaneous invention of printing, coupled with
an outburst of genius in painting and poetry, and a new-born
thirst for classical knowledge, made up what is known by the
name of the Renaissance.' That is what my guardian told me
one night. I think that I do not want to see any picture on
that subject. Sit down and draw me a girl's face."

He shook his head.

" Art cannot be forced," he replied.

"Mr. Humphrey" — her eyes began to twinkle — "when you
have time — I should not like to force your Art, but when yon
have time — paint me a little group : yourself, Cornelius, and
Caesar in the morning walk. You may choose for the moment
of illustration either your going into or your coming out of
the Carnarvon Arms ; when you intend to have or when you
have had your little whack."

She laughed and ran away.

Humphrey sat upright, and gazed at the door through which
she fled. Then he looked round helplessly for his brother, who
was not there.

" Little whack ! " he murmured. " Where did she learn
the phrase 1 And how does she know that — Cjjesar could not
have told her."

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

137

He was very sad all the evening, and opened his heart to
his brother when they sought the Studio at nine — an hour
earlier than usual.

" I wish she had not come," he said ; " she makes unplea-
sant remarks."

'* She does ; she laughed at my epic to-day." The Poet, who
sat in a dressing-gown, drew the cord tighter round his waist,
and tossed up his head with a gesture of indignation.

" And she laughed at my picture."

" She is dangerous, Humphrey.''

" She watches people when they go for a morning walk, Cor-
nelius, iind makes allusion to the Carnarvon Arms and to after-
noon naps."

" If, Humphrey, we have once or twice been obliged to go
to the Carncvivon Arms — "

" Or have been surprised into an afternoon nap, Cornelius — "

" That is no reason why M'e should be ashamed to have the
subjects mentioned. I should hope that this young lady would
not speak of Us — of You, brother Humphrey, and of Myself —
save with reverence."

" She has no reverence, brother Cornelius."

" Jane certainly tells me," said the Poet, '• that a short time
ago she brought Mr. Ronald Dunquerque, then a complete
stranger, to my room, when I happened by the rarest accident
to be asleep, and showed me to him."

" If one could hope that she was actuated only by respect !
But no, I hardly dare to think that. Then, I suppose, she
brought her visitor to the Studio."

" Brother Humphrey, we always do the same thing at the
same time."

" Mutatis mutandis, my dear Cornelius. I design, you write ;
I group, you close your conceptions in undying words. Perhaps
we both shall live. It was on the same day that she drew the
sketch of me asleep." Humphrey's mind was still running on
the want of respect. " Here it is."

" Forsitan hoc nomen nostrum miscebitur illis,'^ resumed the
Poet, looking at the sketch. " The child has a wonderful

If it were uot for the annoyance
pleased, The girl is young and pretty. If

gift at catching a likeness
one might feel

138

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

our years are double what they should be, our hearts are half
our 5'^ears."

" They are. We cannot be angry with her."

" Impossible."

" Dear little Phillis" — she vv^s a good inch taller than either
of the Twins, who, indeea, were exactly the same height, and
it was five feet four — " she is charming in spite, perhaps on
account, of her faults. Her property is in the Funds, you said,
Cornelius 1 "

" Three-per-cents. Fifty thousand pounds — fifteen hundred
a year ; which is about half what Joseph pays income-tax upon.

A pleasant income, brother Humphrey."

"Yes, I daresay," Humphrey tossed the question of money
aside. " You and I, Cornelius, are persons among the few
who care nothing about three-per-cents. What is money to
us 1 what have we to do with incomes 1 Art, glorious art,
brother, is our mistress. She pays us, not in sordid gold, but
in smiles, in gleams of a heaven not to be reached by the common
herd, in skies of a radiance visible only to the votary's eye."

Cornelius sighed response. It was thus tliat the brothers
kept up the sacred flame of artistic enthusiasm. Pity that they
were compelled to spend their working hours in subjection to
sleep instead of Art. Our actions and our principles are so
often at variance that their case is not uncommon.

Then they had their first split soda ; then they lit their pipes ;
for it was ten o'clock. Phillis was gone to bed ; Joseph was in
his own room ; the fire was bright and the hearth clean. The
Twins sat at opposite sides, with the " materials " on a chess-
table between tl. a, prepared to make the usual night of it.

" Cornelius," said Humphrey, " Joseph is greatly changed
since she came."

The Poet sat up and leaned forward, with a nod signifying
concurrence.

" He is, Humphrey ; now vou mention it, he is. And you
think—"

" I am afraid, Cornelius, that Joseph, a most thoughtful
man in general, and quite awake to the responsibilities of his
position — "

" It is not every younger son, brother Humphrey, who has two
men like ourselves to maintain in a befitting manner. Posterity
will reward him."

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

139

" Quite so. But I fear, brother Cornelius, that Joseph has
thought of changing his condition in life."
Cornelius turned pale.

" He has her to breakfast with him ; she walks to the office
with him ; she makes him talk at dinner. Joseph never used
to talk with us. He sits in the draAving-roora after dinner.
He used to go straight to his own room."

"This is grave," said the Poet. " You must not, my dear
Humphrey, have the gorgeous colouring and noble execution of
your groups spoiled by the sordid cares of life. If Joseph mar-
ries, you and 1 would be thrown upon the streets, so to speak.
What is two hundred a year 1 "

" Nor must you, my dear brother, have the delicate fancies
of your brain shaken up and clouded by mean and petty
anxieties."

" Humphrey," said the Poet, " come to me in half an hour
in the Workshop. This is a time for Action."

It was only half-past ten, and the night was but just begun.
He buttoned his dressing-gown across liis chest, tightened the
cord, and strode solemnly out of the room. The Painter heard
his foot descend the stairs.

" Excellent Cornelius," he murmured, lighting his second
pipe ; " he lives but for others."

Joseph was sitting as usual before a pile of papers. It was
quite true that Phillis was brightening up the life of this hard-
working lawyer. His early breakfast was a time of pleasure ;
his walk to the office was not a solitary one ; he looked forward
to dinner ; and he found the evening tolerable. Somehow,
Joseph Jagenal had never known any of the little o,gr4mens of
life. From bed to desk, from desk to bed, save when a dinner-
party became a necessity, had been his life from the day his
articles were signed.

" You, Cornelius ? " He looked up from his work, and laid
down his pen. " This is unexpected."

"I am glad to find you, as usual, at work, Joseph. We are
a hard-working family. You with law-books ; poor Humphrey
and I with — But never mind."
He sighed and sat down.
" Why poor Humphrey 1 "
" Joseph, we were ha; py before this young lady came,"

140

THE (JOLDEN 15UTTERFLY.

« •■

" VVliat has Pliillis done ? Why, we were then old fogies,
with our bachelor ways ; and she has roused us up a little. And
again, why poor Humphrey?"

'' We were settled down in a quiet stream of labour, think-
ing that there would be no change.

I see a great change com-

ing over us now.

" What change ("

" Joseph, if it were not for Humphrey 1 should rejoice. I
should say, ' Take her ; be happy in your own way.' For me, I
only sing of luve. I might perhaps sing as well in a garret and
on a crust of bread; therefore it matters nothing. It is for Hum-
phrey that I feel. How can that delicately-organised creature,
to wliom warmth, comfort, and ease are as necessary as sun-
shine to the flowers, face the outer world 1 For his sake ]
ask you, Joseph, to reconsider your project, and pause before
you commit yourself."

Joseph was accustomed to this kind of estimate which one
Twin invariably made of the other ; but the reason for making
it staggered him. He actually blushed. Being forty years of age,
a bachelor, and a lawyer — on all these grounds presuniably
acquainted with the world and with the sex — he blushed on
being accused of nothing more than a mere tendency in liie dir-
ection of marriage.

" This is the strangest whim," he said " Why, Cornelius,
I am as likely to marry Phillis Fleming as I am to send Hum-
phrey into the cold. Dismiss the thought at once, and let the
matter be mentioned no more. Good-night, Cornelius."

He turned to his papers again with the look of one who
wishes to be alone. These Twins were a great pride to him,
but he could not help sometimes feeling the slightest possible
annoyance that they were not as other men. Still they were
his charge, and in their future glory his own name would play
an honourable part.

*' Good-night, Cornelius. It is good of you to think of
Humphrey first. I shall not marry — either the child Phillis
Fleming or any other woman."

*' Good-night, my dear Joseph. You have relieved my mind
of a great anxiety. Good-night."

Five minutes afterwards the door opened again,

tToseph looked round impatiently.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

141

one

Tliis time it was Humphrey. The light shone picturesquely
on his great brown beard, so carefully trimmed and brushed ;
on the velvet jacket, in the pockets of which were his hands ;
and on his soft large limpid eyes, so full of unutterable artistic
perception, such lustrous passion for colour and for form.

" Well, Humphrey ! " Joseph exclaimed with more sharpness
than he was v/ont to display to his brothers. " Are you come
on the same wise errand as Cornelius ] "

" Has Cornelius been with youf exclaimed tlie Painter art-
lessly. " What did Cornelius come to you for 1 Poor fellow !
he is not ill, I trust. I thought he took very little dinner to-
day."

" Tut, tut ! Don't you know why he came here 1 "

" Certainly not, brother Joseph." This was, of course
strictly true, because Cornelius had not told him. Guesses are
not evidence. " And it hardly matters, does it I " he asked
with a sweet smile. " For myself, I come because I have a
thing to say."

" Well ? Come, Humphrey, don't beat about the bush."

" It is about Miss — Fleming."

" Ah ! "

"You guess already what I have to say, my dear Joseph. It
is this : 1 have watched the birth and growth of your passion
for this young lady. In some respects I am not surprised.
She is certainly piquante as well as pretty. But, my dear
Joseph, there is Cornelius."

Joseph beat the tattoo on his chair.

" Humphrey," he groaned, " I know all Cornelius's virtues."

" But not the fragile nature of his beautifully subtle brain.
That, Joseph, I alone know. I tremble to think what would
become of that — that dcMcice vmsarum, were he to be deprived
of the little luxuries vvhich are to him necessities. A poet's
brain, Joseph, is not a thing lightly to be dealt with."

Joseph was touched at this appeal.

" You are really, Humphrey, the most tender-hearted pair of
creatures I ever saw. Would that all the world were like you !
Take my assurance, if that will comfort you, that 1 have no
thought whatever of marrying Phillis Fleming."

" Joseph," — Humphrey grasped his hand, — " this is indeed a.
sacrifice." , •

142

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

" Not at all," returned Joseph sharply. " Sacrifice ? Non-
sense ! And please remember, Humphrey, that I am acting as
the young lady's guardian ; that she is an heiress ; that she is
intrusted to me ; and that it would be an unworthy breach of
trust if I were even to think of such a thing. Besides which
I have a letter from Mr. Lawrence Colquhoun, who is coming
home immediately. It is not at all likely that the young lady
will remain longer under my [charge. Good-night, Humphrey."
'• I had a tiling to say to Joseph," said Humphrey, going
up to the Workshop, " and I said it."

" I too had a tlnng to say," said the Poet, " and I said it."
" (*ornelius, you are the most unselfish creature in the world."
"Humphrey, you are — I- have always maintained it — too
thoughtful, much too thoughtful, for others. Joseph will not
marry."

*' 1 know it ; and my mind is relieved. Brother, shall we
split another soda 1 It is only eleven."

Joseph took up his paper. He neither smoked nor drank
brandy-and-soda, finding in his work occupation which left him
no time for either. To-night, however, he could not bring his
mind to bear upon the words before him.

He to marry 'i And to marry Phillis ] The thought was
new and startling. He put it from him ; but it came back.
And why not 1 he asked himself. Why should not he, as well
as the rest of mankind, have his share of love and beauty 1
To be sure, it would be a breach of confidence, as he told Hum-
phrey. But Colquhoun was coming : he was a young man —
his own age — only forty ; he would not care to have a girl to
look after ; he would — again he put the thought behind him.

But all night long Joseph Jagenal dreamed a strange dream,
in which soft voices whispered things in his ears, and he
thrilled in his sleep at the rustle of a woman's dress. He could
not see her face — dreams are always so absurdly imperfect —
but he recognised her figure, and it was that of Phillis
Fleming.

THE (lOLDEN liUTTEHFLY.

143

CHAPTER XIIL

" Slie never yet was fdulish tliat was fair."

HE days sped on ; but each day, as it vanished, made
^ Philhs's heart sadder, because it brought her guardian
nearer, and the second great change in her life, she
thought, was inevitable. Think of a girl, brought up a clois-
tered nun, finding her liberty for a few short weeks, and then
ordered back to her white- washed cell. Phillis's feelings as
regards Lawrence Colquhoun's return were coloured by this
fear. It seemed as if — argument and probability notwith-
standing — she might be suddenly and peremptorily carried
back to prison, without the consolations of a maid, because
Antoinette, as we know, would refuse to accompany her, or
the kindly society of poor old Abraham Dyson, now lying in a
synonymous bosom.

A short three weeks since her departure from Highgate ; a
short six weeks since Mr. Dyson's death ; and the world was
all so different. She looked back on herself, with her old
ideas, contemptuously. " Poor Phillis ! " she thought, " she
knew so little." And as happens to every one of us, in every suc-
cessive stage of life, she seemed to herself now to know everything.
Life without the sublime conceit of being uplifted, by reason of
superior inward light and greater outward experience, above
other men, would be but a poor thing. Phillis thought she
had the Key to Universal Knowledge, and that she was on the
high-road to make that part of her life, which should begin in
two years' time easy, happy, and clear of pitfalls. From the
Archbishop of Canterbury to Joe the crossing-sweeper, we all
think in exactly the same way. And when the ages bring ex-
perience, and experience does not blot out memory, we recall
our old selves with a kind of shame — wonder that we did not
drop into the snare and perish miserably ; and presently fall to
thanking God that we are rid of a Fool.

A fortnight. Phillis counted the days, and drew a histori-
cal record of every one. Jack came three times : once after

144.

THK (K)lJ)KN IUJT'n-:ilF[iY.

Mrs. ('jissilis's diiinor; oiicf; whoii ho took lior to th(! Tower of
London ; and once — 1 liavo boon obliged to omit this tliird
visit -whon lio sat for liis portrait, and Phillis drew him full
length, loaning against tlu; mantelshelf, with his hands in his
pockets — not a graceful attitude, but an easy one, and new to
I'iiillis, who thought it characteristic. She caught Jack's
cheorlul spirit too, and fixed it by a touch in the gleam of his
eve. Mis. Oassilis canio four tinms, and on each occasion took
the girl for a driv(;, l)()Ught something for her, and sent the bill
to Joseph Jag(Muil. On each occasion, also, she asked particu-
larly for Lawrence Colquhoun. There were the li* ' ^ events
with the Twins whicli we have recorded ; and there > walks
with (Jiesar about the scpiaro. Once Joseph Jagenai look her
to a picture-gallery, where she wanted to stay and copy ev(!ry-
thing ; it was her first introduction to the higher Art, and she
was half delighted, half confused. If Art critics were not such
humbugs, and did not pretend to feel what they do not, they
might help the world to a better understanding of the glories
of painters. As it is, they are the only people, except preach-
ers, to whom unreal gush is allowed by gods and men. After
all, no Art critic of the modern unintelligible gush-and-conceit
school can paint or draw, perhaps if they were not to gush and
pile up Alpine heaps of words they would be found out for
shallow wind-l)ags. The ideal critic in Art is the great Master
who sits al)()ve the fear of rivalry or the imputation of envy ;
in Literature! it is the groat writer from whom praise is honour
and dispraise the admonition of a teacher ; in the Drama, the
man who himself has moved the House Avith his words, and
can aftord to look upon a new rising playwright with kindli-
ness.

Phillis in the Art Gallery was the next best critic to the
calm and impartial Master. She was herself artist enough fco
understand the difficulties of art ; she had that intense and
real fooling for form and colour which Humphrey Jagenai
affected ; and her taste in Art was good enough to overmaster
her sympathy with the subject. Some people are ready to
weep at a tragical subject however coarse the daub, just as they
weep at the fustian of an Adelphi melodrama; Phillis was
ready to weep when the treatment and the subject together
were worthy of her tears. It seems as if she must have had
her nature chilled ; but it was not so.

THE (iULDKiN UUITKUFI.V.

14')

Time, whicli oui^lit to Ixi n'|)n!S<*iit(Ml us a loconiotiv*; tfiigiiui,
ihovimI on, iitul hrou^'lit liiiwnMicc (Jolcjiihouii at lrn;^'th to
liOiicion. Il(; \V(!iit first to Joseph .lan^tiiiiirs oH'kms jumI Iwnvd
that his ward was in saft!-k!'(fi)ini,' witli that very safe, solicitor.

" It was tlifUcult," Joseph explaincMl, " to know what to do.
After the funeral of Mr. Dyson, siu; was hix* alone in the phice,
with no more responsihle person tlian a housek(;eper. So,
us .soon as tlie arrangement eoidd be mad(!, 1 hroui^lit lier to
my own house. Three old haciuihjrs miglit safely, I thought,
be trusted with the i)rot<'(tion of a young lady."

" I am nuu;h obliged lo you," sai<l Cohpdioun. " Vou hav(5
removed a gri;at weigiit off my mind. VVhat sort of a girl is
sher'

Joseph V)(!gan to describe her. As lie proceeded he warmed
with his subject, and delinoattid a young lady of such pa.ssing
charms of person and mind that (.olquhoun was terrifi(Ml.

" My deal- Jagenal, if you were not such a steady old file, I
sliould think you were in love with her."

" My love-days an; over," said tlie man of conveyances.
"That is, 1 never had any. But you will find Phillis l^'leming
everything that you can desire. Except of course," he added,
" in resi)ect to her education. It ca'taitdy is awkward that she
does not know how to read."

" Not know how to read 1" •

k^ %^ ^^ »1^ *^ «^ *^

^j* *^ ^f% *^ *f» 0^ *f*

" And so, you see," said the Lawyer, completing the story
we know already, " Mr. Dyson's property will go into Chan-
cery, because Phillis Fleming has never learned to read, and
because we cannot find that chapter on the (Joping-st'me."

" Hang the Coping-stone ! " ejaculated Colquhoun. •' I think I
will go and see her at once. Will you let me dine with you
to-night 1 And will you add to my obligations by letting her
stay on with you till I can arrange something for her."
" What do you think of doing V'

" I hardly know. I thought, on the voyage, that I would
do something in the very superior lady-companion way for her.
To tell the truth, I thought it was a considerable bore — the
whole thing. But she seems very different from what I ex-
pected, and perhap.s I could ask my cousin, Mrs. L'Estrange,

14(:

THE <J(»iJJKN I5UTTERFLY.

to take her into her own liouse for a time. Poor old Dyson !
It is twelve years ago since I saw him last, soon after he took
over the cliild. I remember her then, a solemn little thing,
with big eyes, who oehaved prettily. She held up her mouth
to be kissed when she went to bed, but I suppose she won't
do that now."

" You can hardly expect it, I think," said Joseph.

" Abraham Dyson talked all the evening about his grand
principles of Female Education, I was not interested, except
th-ii" I felt very sorry for the poor child who >vas to be an ex-
periment. I^erhaps I ought to have interfered as one of her
trustees. I left the whole thing to him, you see, and did not
even inquire after her welfare."

" You two were, by some curious error of judgment, as I
take it, left discretionary trustees. As he is dead, you have
now the care of J\Iiss Fleming's hfty thousand pounds. Mr,
Dyson left it in the funds, where he found it. As your legal
adviser, Mr. Colquhouii, I strongly recommend you to do the
same. She will be entitled to the control and management of
it on coming of age, but it is to be settled on herself when she
marries. There is no stipulation as to trustees' consent. So
that you only have the responsibility of the young lady and
her fortune for two years."

It was twelve o'clock in the day. Colquhoun left the office,
and made his way in the direction of Carnarvon-square.

As he ascended the steps of Number Fifteen, the door
opened and two young men appeared. One was dressed in a
short frock, with a tiower in his buttonhole ; the other had on
a velvet coat, and also had a flower : one was '^.liaven ; the
other wore a long and silky beard. Both had pale faces and
red noses. As they looked at the stranger and passed him
down the steps, Colquhoun saw that they were not so
young as they seemed to be ; there were crowsfeet round
the eyes ; and their step had lost a little of its youthful buoy-
ancy, lie Avondered who they were, and sent in his card to
Miss Fleming.

He was come then, this new guardian. Phillis could not
read the card, but Jane, the maid, told her his name.

He was come ; and the second revolution was about to begin,
lustivctively Phillis's first thought was that there would be no

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

147

more walks with Jack Dunquerque. Why she felt so it would
be hard to explain, but she did.

She stood up to welcome him.

She saw a handsome young-looking man, with blue eyes, clear
red and white complexion, regular features, a brown beard,
and a curious look of laziness in his eyes. They were eyes
whicli showed a repressed power of animation. They lit up at
sight of his ward, but not much.

He saw a girl of nineteen, tall, slight, and shapely ; a girl of
fine physique ; a girl wliose eyes, like her hair were brown ;
the former were large and full, but not with the fulness of short-
siglit ; tlie latter was abundant, and was tossed up in the sim-
plest fashion, which is also the most graceful. Lawrence the
lazy felt his pulse quicken a little as this fair creature advanced,
with perfect grace and self-possession to greet him. He noticed
that her dress was perfect, that her hands were small and deli-
cate, and that her head was shaped, save for the forehead,
which was low and broad, like that of some Greek statue.
The Ureeks knew the perfect shape of the head, but they made
the forehead too narrow. If you think of it, the Venus of Milo
would have been more divine still had her brows been a little
broader.

" My ward '] " he said. " Let us make acquaintance, and
try to like each other. I am your new guardian."

Phillis looked at him frankly and curiously, letting her hand
rest in his.

" When I saw you last— it was twelve years ago — you were
a little maid of seven. Do you remember ] "

" I think I do ; but I am not (pute sure. Are you really my
guardian % "

" I am indeed. Do I not look like one % To be sure, it is
my first appearance in the character."

She shook her head.

" Mr. Dyson was so old," she said, " that I suppose I grew
to think all guardians old men."

'' I am only getting old," he sighed. " It is not nice to feel
yourself going to get old. Wait twenty years, and
you will begin to feel the same perhaps. But though lam
thirty years younger than Mr. Dyson, I will try to treat you
exactly as he did." .

Phillis's face fell, and she drew away her hand sharply.

148

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

" ! " she cried. "Bub I am afraid that will not do any
more."

" NVhy, Phillis — I may call you Phillis since I am you guar-
dian, may I not ? — did he treat you badly 1 Why did you not
write to me ? "

" I did not write, Mr. Colquhoun — if you call me Phillis, I
ought to call you Lawrence, ought I not, because you are not
old ? — I did not write because dear old Mr. Dyson treated me
very kindly, and because you were away and never came to see
me, and because I — I never learned to write."

By this time Phillis had learned to feel a little shame at
not being able to write.

" Besides," she went on, " he was a dear old man, and I loved
him. But you see Lawrence, he had his views — Joseph
Jagenal calls them crotchets — and Jie never let me go outside the
house. Now I am free I do not like to think of being a prisoner
again. If you try to lock me up, I am afraid I shall break the
bars and run away."

" You shall not be a prisoner, Phillis. That is quite certain.
We shall find something better than that for you. But it can-
not be very lively, in this big house, all by yourself."

** Not very lively ; but I am quite happy here."

" Most young ladies read novels to pass away the time."

'* I know, })oor things." Phillis looked unutterable symjja-
thy. " Mr. Dyson used to say that the sympathies which
could not be (juickened by history were so dull that fiction was
thrown away upon them."

*' Did you never — I mean, did he never read you novels 1 "

She shook her head.

" He said that my imagination was quite powerful enough
to be a good servant, and he did not wish it to become my mas-
ter. And then there was something else, about wanting the
experience of life necesssary to appreciate fiction."

'• Abraham Dyson wtis a wise man, Phillis. But what do
you do all day 1 "

" I draw ; I talk to my maid Antoinette ; I give the Twins
their l)reakfast — "

" Those were the Twins — Mr. Jagenal 's elder brothers —
whom I met on the steps, I suppose 1 I have heard of them.
Jprc6, Phillis ? "

THE GOLDEN' BUTTERFLY.

149

" I play and sing to myself; I go out for a walk in the
garden of the square ; I go to Mr. Jagenal's office, and walk
home with him ; and I look after my wardrobe. Then 1 sit
and think of what I have seen and heard — put it all away in
my memory, or I repeat to myself over again some of the
poetry which I learned at Highgate."

" And you know no young ladies 1 "

" No ; I wish I did. I am curious to talk to young ladies—
quite young ladies, you know, of my own age. I want to com-
pare myself with them, and find out my faults. You will tell me
my faults, Lawrence, will you 1 "

" I don't quite think I can promise that, Phillis. You see,
you might retaliate ; and if you once begin telling me my faults,
there would be no end."

*'0, T am sorry ! " Phillis looked curiously at her guardian
for some outward sign or token of the old Adam. But she saw
none. " Perhaps I shall find them out some time, and then I
will tell you."

"Heaven forbid!" he said, laughing. "Now, Phillis, I
have been asked to dine here, and I am going to be at your
service all day. It is only one o'clock. What shall we do,
and where shall we go 1 "

" Anywhere," she replied ; " anywhere. Take me into the
crowded streecs, and let me look at the people and the shops.
I like that best of anything. But stay and have luncheon here
first"

They had luncheon. Colquhoun confessed to himself that
this was a young lady calculated to do him the greatest credit.
She acted hostess with a certain dignity which sat curiously on
so young a girl, and which she had learned from presiding at
many a luncheon in Mr. Dyson's old age among his old friends,
when her guardian had become too infirm to take the head of
his own table. There was, it is true, something wanting. Col-
quhoun's practised eye detected that at once. PhiHis was
easy, graceful, and natural. But she had not— the man of the
world noticed what Jack Dunquerque failed to observe— she
had not the unmistakable stamp of social tone which can only
come by practice and time. The elements, however, were there
before him ; his ward was a diamond which wanted but a little
polish to make her a gem of the first water.

150

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

After luncheon they talked again ; this time with a little
more freedom. Colquhoun told her all he knew of the father
who was but a dim and distant memory to her. " You have
his eyes," he said, " and you have his mouth. I should know
you for his daughter." He told her how fond this straight
rider, this Nimrod of the hunting-field, had been of his little
Phillis ; how one evening after mess he told Colquhoun that
he had made a will, and appointed him. Lawrence, with Abra-
ham Dyson, the trustees of his little girl.

" I have been a poor trustee, Phillis," Lawrence concluded.
" But I was certain that you were in good hands, and I let things
alone. Now that I have to act in earnest, you must regard me
as your friend and adviser."

They had such a long talk that it was past four when they
went out for their walk. Phillis was thoughtful and serious,
thinking of the father whom she had lost so early. Somehow
she had forgotten, at Highgate, that she once had a father.
And the word mother had no meaning for her.

Outside the house Lawrence looked at his companion criti-
cally.

" Am I properly dressed 1 " she asked, with a smile, because
she knew that she was perfectly dressed.

At all events, Lawrence thousjht he would have no occasion
to be ashamed of his companion.

*' Let me look again, Phillis. I should like to give you a
little better brooch than the one you have put on."

" My poor old brooch ! I cannot give up my old friend,
Lawrence."

She dropped quite easily into his Christian name, and hesi-
tated no more over it than she did with Jack Dunquerque.

He took her into a jeweller's shop, and bought her a few
trinkets.

" There, Phillis, you can add those to your jewel-box."

" I have no jewels."

" No jewels l Where are your mother's ? "

" I believe they are all in the Bank, locked up. Perhaps
they are with my money."

Phillis's idea of her fifty thousand pounds was, that the
money was all in sovereigns, pack'^l away in a box and put
into a bank.

THE GOLDEN RUTTERFLY.

151

" Well, I think you ought to have your jewels out, at any
rate. Did Mr. Dyson give you any money to spend 1 "

" No ; and if he had I could not have spent it, because I
never went outside the house. Lawrence, give me some money,
and let me buy something all by myself."

He bought her a purse, and filled it with two or three sove-
reigns and a handful of silver.

" Now you are rich, Phillis. What will you buy 1 "

"Pictures, I think."

In all this great exhibition of glorious and beautiful objects
there was only one thing which Phillis wished to buy — pictures.

" Well, let us buy some photographs."

They were walking down Oxford- street, and presently they
came to a photograph-shop. Proudof heme wlj'^-acquired wealth.
Phillis selected about twenty of the largest and most expensive,
Col(]uhoun observed that her taste was good, and that she chose
the best subjects. When she had all that she liked, together
with one or two whicli she bought for Jack, with a secret joy
surpassing that of buying for herself, she opened her purse and
began to wonder how she was to pay.

" Do you think your slenr^' " purse will buy all these views V
Colquhoun asked, " Put it up, Phillis, and keep it for another
time. Let me give you these photographs."

" But you said I should buy something," The words and
action were so childish that Lawrence felt a sort of pity for
h(T. Not to know how to spend money seemed to lazy Law-
rence, who had done nothing else all his life, a state of ^nind
deplorable. It would mean in his own case absolute depr.'va-
ation of the power of procuring pleasure, either for himself or
for any one else.

"Poor little nun ! Not to know even the vaije of mone; ."

" But I do. A soverign is twenty shilling?, and a shilling is
twelve pence,"

" That is certainly true. Now you shall show that you
know the value of money. There is a beggar. He is going to
tell us he is hungry ; he will probably add that he has a wife
and twelve children, all under the age of three, in his humble
home, and that none of them have tasted food for a week.
What will you give him ?"

Phillis paused. How should she relieve so much distress ?

152

THE fJOLDEN BUTTEllFLY.

By tliis time they were close to the beggar. He was a pic-
tures({ue rogue in rags and tatters and bare feet. Though it
was a warm dny lie shivered. In his hand lie held a single box
of lights. But the fellow was young, well fed, and lusty.
Lawrence Colqnhoun halted on the pavemt ' ., and looked at
him attentively.

" This man," he explained to. Phillis, "can get for a penny
a small loaf ; twopence will buy him a glass of ale ; sixpence
a dinner • for ten shillings he could get a suit of working
clothes — which he does not want, because he has no intention
of doing any work at all ; a sovereign would lodge and feed
him for a fortnight, if he did not drink."

" I should give him a sovereigen," said Phillis. " Then he
would be happy for a week."

" Bless your ladyship," murmured the beggar. " I would get
work Gawd knows, if I could."

" I remember this fellow," said Colquhoun, " for six years.
He is a sturdy rogue. Best give nothing to him at all. Co!ne
on, Phillis. We must look for a more promising subject."

" Poor fellow ! '' said Phillis, closing her purse.

They passed on, and the beggar-man cursed audibly. I be
lieve it is Mr. Tupper, in his Proverbial Philosophy, who ex-
plains that what a beggar most wants, to make him feel happier,
is sympathy. Now that was just what Phillis gave, and the
beggar-man only swore.

Colquhoun laughed.

" You may keep your pity, Phillis, for some one who deserves
it better. Now let us take a cab and go to the Park. It is
four years since I saw the Park."

It was five o'clock. The Park was fuller than when he saw
it last. It grows more crowded year after year, as the upward
pressure of an enriched multitude makes itself felt more and
more. There was the usual throng about the gates of those
vho come to look for great people, and like to tell whom they
•ecognised, and who were pointed out to them. There were
the i)edestriaiis on either side of the road ; civilians after office
hours ; bankers and brokers from the City ; men u[ ^rom Al-
dershot ; busy men hastening home ; loungers leaning on the
rails ; curious colonials gazing at the carriages ; '^Venchmen
trying to think that Hyde Park caimot compare with the Bois

TFIK GOLDKN liUTTKKFLY.

153

de Boulogne ; Germans mindful of their mighty army, their
great sprawling Berlili, the gap of a century between English
prosperity and Teutonic militarism, and as envious as philoso-
phy permits ; Americans owning that New York, though its
women are lovelier, has nothing to show beside the Park at
five on a spring afternoon, — all the bright familiar scene which
Colquhoun remembered so well.

" Four years since I saw it last," he repeated to the girl. " I
suppose there will be none of the faces whom I used to know

He was wrong. The first man who greeted him was his old
Colonel. Then he came across a man he had known in India.
Then one whom he had last seen, a war-correspondent, inside
Metz. Then a man with whom he once visited Cashmere. He
shook hands with one, nodded to another, and made appoint-
ments with all at his club. And as each passed, he told some-
thini; about him to his ward

•' That is my old Colonel- -your father's brother-officer. The
most j^gallant fellow who e/er commanded a regiment. As
soon as you are settled, I should like to bring him to see you.
That is Macnamara of che Lmdon Herald — a man you can't get
except in England. That is Lord Blandish ; we were together
up-country in India. He wrote a book about his adventures
in C .shmere. I did not."

It was a new world to Phillis. All these carriages ; these
people ; this crowd — who were they ?

" They are not like the faces I see in the streets," she said.

'* No. Those, are faces of men who work for bread. These
are mostly of men who work not at all, or they work for
honour. There are two or three classes of mankind, you know,
Phillis."

" Servants and masters 1 "

" No^ quite. You belong to the class of those who need not
work — this class. Your father knew all these people. It is a
happy world in its way — in its way," he repeated, thinking of
certain shipwrecks he had known. " Perhaps it is better 'to
have to work. I do not know. Phillis, who — " he was going
to ask who was bowing to her, when he turned pale, and stopped
suddenly. In the carriage which was passing within a foot
of where they stood was a lady whom he knew — Mrs. Cassilis.
He took off" his hat, and Mrs. Cassilis stopped the carriage and
held out her hand.

154

TIIK COL HEN TJI'TTERFLY.

" How do you do, Phillis dear 1 Mr. Colquhoun, I am glad
to see you back again. Come as soon as .you can and see me.
If you can spare an afternoon as soon as you are settled, give
it to me — for auld lang syne."

The last words were whispered. Her lips trembled, and her
hand shook as she spoke. And Lawrence's face was hard. He
took off his hat and drew back ; Phillis did not hear what he
said. But Mrs. Cassilis drove on, and left the Park immedi-
ately.

" Mrs. Cassilis trembled when she spoke to you, Lawrence."
It was exactly what a girl of six would have said.

•■* Did she, Phillis 1 She was cold perhaps. Or perhaps she
was pleased to see old friends again. So yon know her ? "

"Yes. I have dined at h '^ouse ; and I have been shop-
ping with her. She does like me, I know ; but she is
kind. She has spoken to me about you."

" So you know Mrs. Cassilis ? " he repeated. " She does not
look as if she had any trouble on her mind, does she 1 The
smooth brow of a clear conscience — Phillis, if you have had
enough of the Park, I think it is almost time to drive you
home."

Lawrence Colquhoun dined ut Carnarvon-square. The
Twins dined at their club : so that they had the evening to
themselves, and could talk.

" I have made up my mind," Lawrence said, " to ask my
cousin to take charge of you, Phillis. Agatha L'Estrange is
the kindest creature in the world. Will you try to like her if
she consents ? " *

" Yes, I will try. But suppose she does not like me 1 "

" Everybody likes you, Miss Fleming," said Joseph.

" She is sure to like you," said Lawrence. " And I will come
over often and see you ; we will ride together if you like. And if
you would like to have any masters or lessons in anything — "

" I think I should like to learn reading," Phillis remarked
meditatively. " Mr. Abraham Dyson used to say " — she held
up her finger, and imitated the manner and fidgety dogmatism
of an old man — " ' Reading breeds a restless curiosity, and
engenders an irreverent spirit of carping criticism. Any jack-
anapes who can read thinks himself qualified to judge the
affairs of the nation. Reading indeed ! ' But I think I shmld
like after all to do what everybody else can do."

TTTE OOLDEX TIUTTERFT.Y.

1» w
00

CHAPTER XIV.

' ' You bear a gentle mind, and heavenly blessings
Follow such creatures."

ALF a mile or so above TedcUngton Lock, where you
are quite above the low tides, which leave the mud-
banks in long stretches, and spoil the beauty of the
splendid river ; where the stream flows on evenly between its
banks, only sometimes swifter and stronger, sometimes slower
and more sluggish ; where you may lie and listen a whole sum-
mer's day to the murmurous wash of the current among the
lilies and the reeds, — there stands a house, noticeable among
other houses by reason of its warm red brick, its many gables,
and its wealth of creepers. Its gardens and lawns slope gently
down to the river's edge ; the willov.'S hang over it, letting
their long leaves, like maidens' fingers, lie lightly on the cool
surface of the water ; there is a boat-house where a boat used to
lie, but it is empty now — ivy covers it over, dark ivy that con-
trasts with the lighter green of the sweet May foliage ; the
lilacs and laburnums are exulting in the transient glory of
foliage and flower ; the westeria hangs its purple clusters like
grapes upon the wall ; there are green-houses and vineries ;
there are flower-l)eds l.ight with the glories of modern garden-
ing ; and there are old-iashioned round plots of ground inno-
cent of bedding-out, where flourish the good old-fashioned
flowers, stocks, pansies, boy's love, sweet-william, and the
rest, which used to be cultivated for their perfume and colour
long before bedding-out was thought of; an old brick wall
runs down to the river's edge as a boundary on either side,
thick and warm, with peaches, plums, and apric(>ts trained in
formal lines, and crowned with wall-flowers and long grasses,
like the walls of some old castle. Behind are rooms which
open upon the lawn ; round the windows clamber the roses
waiting for the suns of June ; and if you step into the house
from the garden, you will enter a dainty drawing-room, light
and sunny, adorned witt. all manner of feminine things, and
you will find, besides, boudoirs, studies, all sorts of pretty

ir,(j

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY,

rooms into vvliich the occupants of the house may retire, what,
time tliey feel disposed to taste the joys of solitude.

The house of a lady. Does any one ever consider what
thouHunds of these dainty homes exist in England 1 All about
the country they stand — houses where women live away their
innocent and restful lives, lapped from birth to death in an
atmosphere of peace and warmth. Such luxury as they desire
is theirs, for they are we. Ithy enough to purchase all they
wish. ChieHy they love the luxury of Art, and fill their port-
folios witii water-colours. But their passions even for Art are
apt to be languid, and they mostly desire to continue in the
warm air, perfumed like the colour that cometh from the sweet
south, which they have created round themselves. The echoes
of the outer world fall ui)on their ears like the breaking of a
rough sea upon a shore so far off that the wild dragging of the
shingle, with its long-drawn cry, sounds like a distant song.
These ladies know nothing of the fiercer joys of life, and
nothing of its pains. The miseries of the world they under-
stand not, save that they have been made picturesque in
novels. They have no ambition, and take no part in any
battles. They have not spent their strength in action, and
therefore they feel no weariness. Society is understood to
mean a few dinners, with an occasional visit to the wilder
dissijjations of town ; and their most loved entertainments are
those gatherings known as garden-parties. Duty means fol-
lowing up in a steady but purposeless way some line of study
which will never he mastered. Good works mean subscrip-
tions to societies. Many a kind lady thinks in her heart of
hearts that the annual guinea to a missionary society will be of
far more avail to her future welfare than a life of purity and
innocence. The Christian virtues naturally find their home in
such a house. They grovv of their own accord, like the daisies,
the buttercups, and the field convolvulus : Love, Joy, Peace,
Gentleness, Goodness, Faith, Meekness, Temperance, all the
things against which there is no law — which of them is not to
be seen abundantly blossoming and luxuriant in the cottages
and homes of these English ladies 1

In this house by the river lived Mrs. L'Estrange. Her name
was Agatha, and everybody who knew her called her Agatha
L'Estrange. When a woman is always called by her Christian

TJIK (JULI)KN lUJTTKIlKLV.

lo7

name, it is a sign that she is loved and lovable. It" u man, on
the otlier hand, gets to be known, without any reason for the
distinction, by his Christian name, it is generally a sure sign
that he is sympathetic, but blind to his own inter«;sts. She
was a widow and childless. 8he had been a widow so long,
her husband had been so much older than herself, her married
life had been so short, and the current of her life so little dis-
turbed by it that she had almost forgotten that she was once a
wife. She had an ample income ; she lived in the way that
she loved; she gathered her friends about her; she sometimes,
but at rare intervals, revisited society ; mostly she preferred
her quiet life in the country. Girls came from London to stay
with her, and wondered how Agatha managed to exist. When
the season was over, leaving its regrets and fatigues, with the
usual share of hollowness and Dead-Sea fruit, they came again,
and envied her tran(juil home.

She was tirst cousin to Lawrence Colquhoun, whom she
still, from force of habit, regarded as a boy. Hu was veiy
nearly the same age as herself, and they had been broui^lit up
together. There was nothing about his lite that she did not
know, except one thing — the reason of his abrupt ilisappear-
ance four years before. She was his confidante : as a boy he
told her all his dreams of greatness ; as a young man all his
dreams of lt>ve and pleasure. She knew the soft and gene-
rous nature, out of which great men cannot be formed, which
was his. She saw the lofty dreams die away ; and she hoped
for him that iie would keep something of the young ideal.
He did. Lawrence Colquhoun was a man about town ; but
he retained his good nature. It is not usual among the young
gentlemen who pursue pleasure as a profession ; it is not ex-
pected of them, after a few years of idleness, gambling, and
the rest, to have any good nature surviving, or any thought left
at all, except for themselves; therefore Lawrence Colquhoun's
case was unusual, and his popularity proportional. He tired
of garrison life ; he sold out ; he remained about town ; the
years ran on, and he neither married nor talked of marr, ing.
But he used to go down to his cousin once a week, and talk to
her about his idle life. There came a day when he left off
coming, or if he came at all, his manner to his cousin was al-
tered. He became gloomy ; and one day she heard, in a brief

]:>.s

Till': (;()M)I';n ijuttkuki-v.

aiul iinsiitisfactoiy l<'ttor, that lie was going to travel for a
h^iigtlu'iu'tl period. The letter came from Si.otland, and was as
brief a.s a diinuT invitation.

lie went ; lie was away for four years ; during that time
he never once wrote to her ; she heard nothing of him or from
him.

One, day, without any notice, he appeared again.

He was very much tlie same; as when he left England — men
alter little l)etween thirty and fifty — only a little graver ; his
heard a little touched with the gray hairs which belong to the
eighth lustium ; his eyes a little crowsfooted ; his form a little
filled out. The gloom was gone, however • he was again tlu^
kindly Lawrence, the genial Lawience, Lawrence the sym-
pathetic, Lawrence the lazy.

11(5 walked in as if he had l)een away a week. Agatha heai'd
a step upon the gravel-walk, and knew it. Her ht^art beat a
little — altiiough a woman nay l)e past forty she may have a
heart still — and her eyes sparkled. She was sitting at woik —
some little useless prettiness. On the work-table lay a novel,
which she read in the intervals of stitching ; th«^ morning was
bright and sunny, with only a suspicion of east wind, and her
windows were open ; flowers stood upon her table ; flowers in
pots anil vT,ses stood in her windows ; such flowers as bloom
in May were bright in her garden ; and the glass iloors of her
conservatory showed a wealth of flowers within. A house full
of flowers, and herself a flower too — call her a rose fully blown,
or call her a glory of early autumn — a handsome woman still,
sweet and to be loved, with the softness of hor tranquil life in
every line of her face, and her warmth of heart in every passing
expression.

She started when she heard his step, because she recognised
it. Then she sat up and smiled to herself. She knew how
her cousin would come back.

In fact he walked in at her open window, and held out his
hand without saying a word. Then he sat down, and took a
single glance at his cousin first and the room afterwards.

"I have not seen you lately, Lawrence," said Agatha, as if
he had been away for a month or so.

" No ; I have been in America."

TllK (JOM)KN nri'l'KIM'LY.

IV.)

" lleully ! You liko Aniurica f " Slie waitcxl for him to t*;!!
her wljiit Iu5 would.

" Yi!s. I cjiuu! back yesU-nlay. You art; looking W(!ll,
Agatha."

" I am V(;iy well."

" And you have got a new pictuiu on the wall. VVhcic! did
you buy this]"

" At Agiu-'w's, thr(!0 years ago. It was in the Kxhibition.
Now I think of it, you have been away for four y(!ars, Law-
rence."

" I like it. Have you anything to tell me, Agatha ]"

" Nothing that will interest you. The house is the same.
We have had several dreadful winters, and I have been in con-
stant fear that my shrubs would be killed. Some of them
were. My dog Pheenie is dead, and I never intend to havi^
another. The cat that used to tease is well. My aviary has
increased ; my horses are the same as you knew four years ago ;
my s«a-vants are the same ; and my habits, 1 am thankful t<»
say, have not deteriorated to my knowledge, although I am
four years older."

" And your young ladies — the traps you used to set for me
when 1 was four years younger, Agatha — where are they "

" Married, Lawrence, all of them. What a pity that you
could not fix yourself ! But it is never too late to mcmd. At
one time I feared you would be attracted by Victoria Pen-
gelley."

Lawrence Colquhoun visibly changed colour, but Agatha was
not looking at him.

"That would have been a mistake. I thought so then, and
I know it now. She is a cold and bloodless woman, Lawrence.
Besides, she is married, thank goodness. We must Hnd you
some one else."

" My love-days are over," he said, with a harsh and grating
voice. " 1 buried them before I went abroad."

" You will tell me all about that some day, when you feel
communicative. Meantime stay to dinner, and enliven me
with all your adventures. You may have some tea if you like,
but I do not invite you, because you will want to go away
again directly afterwards. Lawrence, what do you intend to
do, now you are home again 1 Are you going to take up the
old aimless life, or f hall you be serious 1 "

100

THE (Jor.DKN ]}1;TTKI{I'LY.

" I think tilt! iiimk'ss life suits me best. A-iid it certainly is
the slowest. Don't you think, Agatha, that as we have got to
get old and presently to die, we may as well go in for making the
iuiiii go slow 1 That is the reason why I have never done
juiything."

" I never do anything myself, tjxcept listen to what otiier
[)eoi)Ie tell nie. I>ut I find the days slij) away all too quickly."

" Agatha, I am in a ditfictdty. That is one of the reasons
why I have come to see you to-ihiy."

" Poor Lawrence ! You are always in a dilliculty."

** This time it is not my fault ; I)ut it is serious. Agatha, 1
hav(! got — a — "

T do not know why he hesitated, but his cousin caught him
u{) with a little try.

" Not a wife, Lawrence ; not a wife, vvitiiout tcilling me ! "

'' No, Agatha," he flushe«l crimson, '' not a wife. That would
have been a great deal worse. What 1 have got is a ward."

"Award?"

" Do you rem(!ml>»!r Dick Fhiuiing, who was killed in the
hunting-field about fifteen years ago?"

" Yes, j>erfectly. He was one of my swains ever so long ago,
before I married my poor dear husband."

Agatha had used the formula of her " poor dear husband "
for more than twenty years ; so long, in fact, that it was become
a mere collocation of words, and had no longer any meaning,
certainly no sadness.

" He left a daughter, then a child of four or five. And he
made me one of that child's guardians. The other v/as a Mr.
1 )yson, who took her and brought her up. He is dead, and
the young Lady, now niiieteen years of age, comes to me."

" But, Lawrcmce, what on earth are you going to do with a
girl of ninet<;en ? "

"I don't know, Agatha. I cannot have her with me in the
Albany, can I ? "

" Not very well, I think."

" I cannot tak(^ a snudl house in Chester 8(|uare, and give
evening i)arties for my ward and myself, can I? "

" Not very well, Lawrence."

" She is staying with my lawyer, Jagenal ; a capital
fellow, but his house is hardl)' the right place for a young
lady."

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

161

IS a very serious

"Lawreiic(i, what will you do ? This
responsibility."

"Very."

" What sort of a girl is she ? "

" Phillis Fleming is what you would call, I think, a beautiful
girl. She is tall, and has a good figure — a delicious figure.
Her eyes are brown, and her hair is brown, with lots of it. Her
features are small, and not too regular. She has got a v^ry
sweet smile, and I should say a good temper, so long as she has
her own way."

" No doubt," said Agatha. " Pray go on ; you seem to have
studied her appearance with a really fatherly care."

" She has a very agreeable voice ; a naivete in manner that you
would like ; she is clever and well informed."

" Is she strong-minded, Lawrence?"

" NO," said Lawrence, with emphasis, " she is not. She has
excellent ideas on the subject of her sex."

" Always in extremes, of course,'' said Agatha, meaning some-
thing, I suppose, though I am not certain what.

*' She wants, so far as I can see, nothing but the society of
some amiable accomplished gentlewoman — "

" Lawrence, you are exactly the same as you always were.
You begin by flattery. Now, I know what you came here
for."

" An amiabh* accomplished gentlewoman, who would exercise
a gradual and sU^ady influence upon her."

" You want h<ir Uj stay with me, Lawrence. And you are
keeping something l^ack. Tell me instantly. You say she is
beautiful. It must Ix; something else. Are her manners in
any way unusual. Does she drop h's, and eat with her
knife 1 "

*' No ; her manners are, I should say, perfect."

" Temper good, you say ; manner perfect ; appearance grace-
ful. What can be the reserved objection 1 My dear cousin,
you pi(|ue my curiosity. She is sometimes, probably, in-
sane '] "

No,

guard

lan

Agatha, not that I know of. It is only that her

entire seclusion from the wor

wouM not have tauurlit \wr to read and write

and

How very remarkable ! "

162

TIIK (JOIJJEN IJUTTKllFLY.

" On the other liand, she can draw. Slie <h-aws everything
and everybody. She h.id got a book full of drawings which
she calls h<T diary. They are the record of her life. She will
show them to you, and tell you all her story. You will take
her for a little, Agatha, will you 1 "

Of course she said " yes." She had never refused Lawrence
Colquhoun anything in her life. Had he been a needy man he
would have been dangerous. But Lawrence Cokjuhoun wanted
nothin'f for himself.

" My dear Agatlia, it is very good of you. You will find the
most splendid material to work ujjon, better than you ever
had. The girl is different from any other girl you have ever
known. She talks and thinks like a hoy. She is as strong and
activ<! as a young athlete. I 'relieve sIk; would outrun
Atalanta ; and yet I think she is a thorough Avoman at
heart."

"I shouhl not at all wonder at her being a thorough woman
at heart. Moft, of us are. llut, Jjawrence, you must not fall
in love with your own ward."

He laughed, a little uneasily.

" I am too ohl for a girl of ninete^.'ii," he rejjlied.

" At any rate, you have excited my curiosity. Let her
come, Lawrence, as soon as you please. I want to see this
paragon of girls, who is more ii^norant than a charity school-
girl."

" On the (Contrary, Agatha, she is better infdrmed than most
girls of her age. If she is not well read she is well told."

"]^ut really, Lawrence, think. She cannot read, even."

"Not if you gave her a basketful of tracts. But that is
rather a distinction now. At least, she will never want to go
in for what they call the Higher Education, will she / "

"She mu.st learn to read ; but will siie ever master spelling?"

" Very few people do ; they only pretend. I am Aveak my-
self in spelling. Philli- does not want to l)e a certificated
Mistres.s, Agatha."

" And Arithmetic too."

"Well, my cousin, of conrap the K. !« of Three is as neces-
sary to life as the l."-'- of the TJlobes, over which the school-
mistre.sses used to keep such a coil. And it has been about as
accessible to poor rhilli-^ as an easy seat to a tombstone cherub.

TFfK COLDKN lUITTPniFLY.

103

ich
vill
iko

iDce

ited

I the
ever
ever

itrun
an at

roTYian
ot i":vU

A't her

,ee this

cliool-

.11 n

lost

til at IS

la to go

cllini;'?"
cak iiiy-

titicated

as neces-
• scbool-
ahoiit as

(. cherub.

But she can count and multiply and add, and tell you how
much tliinLjs ought to come to ; and really, when you think of
it, a woman does not want much more, does she 1 "

" It is the mental training, Lawrence. Think of the loss of
nw Mtal training."

• 1 feel tJKit too." he said, with a smile of sympathy. " Think
of growing up without the discipline of Vidgar Fractions or
Genteel Decimals. One is appalled at imagining what our
you ig ladies would be without it. Ihit you shall teach her
what you like, Agatha."

" I am half afraid of her, Lawrence."

" NouH use, my cousin; she is sweetness itself. Let me
bring her to-morrow 1 "

*' Yes ; she can have the room next to mine." Agatlia .sighed
a little. " Sup)»ose we don't get on together after all. It
would be such a disa]>[»niutui('nt. and such a ])ain to pai't."

"({et on, Agatha? — and with you/ Wliy, all the world
gets on with you. Was tliere ever a girl in the world that
vou did not iret on with ? "

*' Yes, tliere was. 1 never got on with Victoria Pengelley —
Mrs. Cassilis. Shall you call upon her, Lawrence?"

"No — y -I don't know, Agatha," h«' repli»Ml hurriedly ;
and went away with scant leave-taking. lie neither took any
tea nor stayed for dinner.
Then Agatha remembere<l.

"Of c«mr.se," sh« said. 'How stupid of me I They used
to talk about Lawrence and Vi- toria. Can he think of her
still ? Why, the voman is as cold as ice and as hard as steel,
besides V)eing marrit^i. A man who would fall in love with
Victoria Peng»dlpv would be capaltle of falling in love with a
marbh' statue.'

" My cousin. Lawrence Cohjuhouti," she told her friends in
her fetters — .Vi^atha spent as much tini'^ letter-writing as
Madame du Detfand — " has come back from his travels, lie is
not at all changed, except that he has a few gray hairs in his
ix'ard. He laughs in the same })leasant way ; has the same
s*)ft voice ; thinks .-is little seriously al)out life, and is as per-
fectly charming,' as lu- has always been, lie has a ward, a young
bitiy, daughter of av old friend of mine. She is named JMiillis
Fleming. I am going to have her with me for a while, and 1

164

THE GOLDEN BUTTEltFLY.

hope )'ou will conio and make her acquaintance, but not just
yet, nob until we are used to each other. I hear nothing but
good of her."

Thus did this artful woman gloss over the drawbacks of poor
Piiillis's education. Her friends were to keep away till such
time as Phillis liad been drilled, inspected, reviewed, mancBU-
vred, and taught the social tone. No word, you see, of the
little dericiencies which time alone could be expected to fill up.
Agatha L'Estrange, in her way, was a woman of the world.
She expected, in spite of her cousin's favourable report, to find
an awkward, raiher pretty, wiiolly unpresentable hoyden.
And she half repented that slie had so easily acceded to Law-
rence Colquhouu's request.

It was nearly six next day when Piiillis arrived. Her guar-
dian drove her out in a dug-cart, her maid following behind
with the lugir:itge. This mode of conveyance, being rapid, open,
and especially adapted for purposes of observation, pleased
Phillis mightily ; she even preferred it to a hansom cab. She
said litth' on the road, bei'ig too busy in the contemplation of
men and manners. Aitjo she was as yet hardly at home with
iun- \w\v guardian. Hf was ]»h*asant ; he was thoughtful of
her ; but she ha<l not yet found out how to talk with him.
Now with Jack Duiniuenjue — and then she began to think liow
Jack would look driving a dog-cart, and how she should look
beside him.

Lawrence Cohjnhoun looked at his charge with eyes of ad-
miration. Many a prettier girl, he thought, might be seen in
a London ball-room <»r in the Park, but not one brighter or
fresher. Where did it come from, this pi(iuante way i

Philliisasked nomore ([uestions aboutMrs. L'Kstrange. Having
once maile up her mind tiiat she should rebel and return to
Mr. Jagenal in case she did not approve of Mr. Colquhoun's
cousin, she rested tranquil. To l)e sure slu^ was perfectly
prepared to like her, being still in the stage of credulous curi-
osity in wliich every fresh ac(iuaintance seemed to possess all
possible virtues. Up to the present she had made one excep-
tion ; I am sorry to say it was that of the only woman she
knew — Mrs. Cassilis. Phillis could not help feeling as if life
with Mrs. Cassilis would after a time become tedious. Ivather,
she tho.ight, life with the Tv^ins.

THE GOLDEN m^TTERFLY.

165

Tluy arrived at the house by the river. Agatha was in the
garden. She looked at her visitor with a little curiosity, and
welcomed her with both hands and a kiss. Mrs. Cassilis did
not kiss Phillis. In fact, nobody ever had kissed her at all
since the day when she entered Abraham Dyson's house. Jack,
she remembered, had proposed to commence their friendship
with an imitation of the early Christians, but the proposal,
somehow, came to nothing. So when Agatha drew her gently
towards herself and kissed her softly on the forehead, poor
Phillis changed colour, and was confused. Agatha thought it
was shyness, but Phillis was never shy.

"You are in good time, Lawrence. We shall have time to
talk before dinner. You may lie about in the garden if you
please till we come to look for you. Come, my dear, and I will
show you your room."

At Highgate Phillis's room was furnished with a massive four-
post bedstead and adorned with dusky hangings. Solidity,
comfort, and that touch of gloom which our grandfathers al-
ways lent to their bedrooms, marked the Highgate apaitment.
At Carnarvon-square she had the " spare room," and it was fur-
nished in much the same manner, only that it was larger, and
the curtains were of lighter colour.

She saw now a small room, still with the afternoon sun U))on
it, with a little iron bedstead in green and gold, and white cur-
tains. There was a softi, an easy-chair, a table at one of the
win<lows, and one in the centre of the room ; there were book-
shelves ; and there were pictures.

Phillis turned her bright face with a grateful cry of surprise.

" O, what a beautiful room ! "

" I am glad you like it, my dear. I hope you will be com-
fortable in it."

Phillis l)egan to look at the pictures on the wall.

She was critical about pictures, and these did not seem very
good.

" Do you like the pictures ? "

" This one is out of drawing," she said, standing before a
water-colour. " I like this better," n«oving on to the next.
"But the i^ainting is not clear."

Agatha rememberiHl what she had paid for these pictures^
and ho])ed th(^ fair critic was wrong. But she was not; she
was right. ^

166

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

And then, in her journey round the room, Pliillis camo to
the open window, and cried aloud with surprise and aston-
ishment.

" O Mrs. L'Estrange, is it — is it — " she asked in an awe-
struck voice, turning grave eyes upon her hostess, as if implor-
ing that no mistake should be made on a matter of such im-
portance. " Is it — really — the Tliames T'

" Why, my dear, of course it is."

" I have never seen a river. 1 have so longed to see a river,
and especially the Thames. ])o you know

'Sweet Tliiiiues, run softly ti'l I end my soiiy."

And again — O, there are swans !

' Willi that I saw two swuiis of ir""<ll\' l»ii-'
(.!oiiiL' softly swiiniiiiii!^ down I'loiiif the leo ;
Two fairer itirds 1 iiuver yet did sue.' "

" I am glad you read poetry, my dear."

" ])ut I do not. 1 cannot rea»l ; I only remember. Mrs.
L'Estrange, can we get close to it, (piitt! close to the water ] 1
want to see it flowing."

They went back into the garden, where Lawrence was lying
in the shade, doing nothing. Phillis looked not at the flowers
or the spring blossoms ; she hurried Agatha across the lawn,
and stood at the edge, ga/ing at the water.

" I should like," she murmured ])resently, after a silence, —
" I should like to be in a boat and drift slowly down between
the banks, seeing everything as we passed, until we came to
the place where all the ships come up. Jack said he would
take me to see the great ships sailing home laden with their
precious things. Perhaps he will. But O, Mrs. L'Estrange.
how sweet it is ! There is the reflection of the tree ; see how
the swans sail up and down ; there are the water-lilies ; and
look, there are the light and shade chasing each other up the
river before the wind."

Agatha let her stay a little longer, and then led her away to
show her flowers and hothouses. Phillis knew all about these
and discoursed learnedly. But her thoughts were with the
river.

ill

THE GOLDEN BUTTEUFI.V.

167

Lawrence went away soon after dinner. It was a full moon,
anil the night was warm. Agatlia and Phillis went itito the
garden again when Lawrence left them. It was still and silent,
and as they stood upon the walk the girl heard the low mur-
murous wash of the current simrinc an invitation amonjr the

grasses and reeds of the bank.

" Let us go and look at the river again," she said.

If it was beautiful in the day, with the evening sun upon it,
it was ten times as beautiful by night, when the shadows made
great blacknesses, and the bright moon silvered all the outlines
and threw a long way of light upon the rippling water.

Presently they came in and went to bed.

Agatha, half an hour later, heard Phillis's window open.
The girl Avas looking at the river again in the moonlight. She
saw the water glimmer in the moonlight; she heard the whisper
of the waves. Her thoughts — they were the long thoughts of
a child — went up the stream, and wondered through what mea-
dows and by what hills the stream had flowed ; then she fol-
lowed the current down, and had to picture it among the ships
before it was lost in the mighty ocean.

As she looked there passed a boat full of people. They were
probably rough and common people, but among them was a
woman, and she was singing. Phillis wondered who they
were. The woman had a sweet voice. As they rowed by the
house one of the men lit a lantern, and the light fell upon
their faces, making them clear and distinct for a moment, and
then was reflected in the black water below. Two of them
were rowing, and the boat sped swiftly on its way down the
stream. Phillis longed to be with them on the river.

When they were gone there was silence for a space, and then
the night became suddenly musical.

*' Jug, jug, jug ! " it was the nightingale ; but Phillis's brain
was excited, and to her it was a song with words. " Come,
come, come," sang the bird. " Stay with us here and rest —
and rest. This is better than the town. Here are sweetness
and peace ; this is the home of love and gentleness ; here you
shall find the Coping-stone."

168

THK GOLDEN P.rTTKRFLY

CHAPTER XV.

" IJiit if ye saw that whicli no eyes can sec,
T|u' inward beauty of her lively s|»ri|,'ht
(iarnished with lieaveidy >;ifts of hi(fh dejfrcc,
Mneh more, then, wonld yon wonder at the sijfht.'

C»^

((

v«s~»

LIKE her, my dear Lawrence," Agatha wrote, a fortnight
after Phillis's arrival. " I like her not only a good deal
better than T expected, but more than any girl I have ever
learned to know. She is 'nnocent, but then innocence is ver}'-
easily lost ; iheis fresh, but then freshness is very often a kind
of electroplating, which rubs off and shows the base metal
beneath. Still Phillis's nature is pure gold, of that I am quite
certain, and with sincere people one always feels at ease.

'* We were a little awkward at first, though perhaps the
the awkwardness was chiefly mine, because I hardly knew what
to talk about. It seemed as if, betwern myself and a girl who
cannot read or write, there must be such a great gulf that there
would be nothing in common. How conceited we are over our
education ! Lawrence, she is quite the best-informed girl that 1
know ; she has a perfectly wonderful memory ; repeats pages of
verse which her guardian taught her by reading it to her; talks
French very well, because she has always had a French maid ;
plays and sings by ear ; and draws like a Royal Academician*
The curious thing, however, is the effect which her knowledge
has had upon her mind. She knows what she has been told,
and nothing more. Consequently her mind is all light and
shade, like a moonlight landscape. She wants atmosphere ;
there is no haze about her. I did not at all understand, until
I knew Phillis, what an important part haze plays in our
every-day life. I thought we were all governed by clear and
definite views of duty, religion and politics. My poor Law-
rence, we are all in a fog. It is only Phillis who lives in the
cloudless realms of pure conviction. In politics she is a Tory,
with distinct ideas on the necessity of hanging all Radicals.
As for her religion — But that does not concern you, my
cousin. No doubt you are yourself so hopelessly astray with

THE CJOLDKN lUTTTKUFI.Y.

IGO

all the cross-lights of modern scepticism, that the simple creed
of an illiterate girl would only make your perplexity worse.
Or perhaps, like most of your class, yx)u never think about
religion at all, in which case you would not be interested in
Phillis's doctrines.

" I took her to church on Sunday. Before the service I read
her the hymns which we were to -sing, and after she had criti-
cized the words in a manner peculiarly her own, I read them
again, and she knew those hymns. 1 also told her to do ex-
actly as I did in the matter of uprising and downsitting.

*• One or two things I forgot, and in other one or two she
made little mistakes. It is usual, Lawrence, as you may re-
member, for worshippers to pray in silence before fitting down.
Phillis was looking about the church, and therefore di<l not
notice my performance of this duty. Also I had forgotten to
tell her that loud speech was forbidden by custom within the
walls of a church. Therefore it came upon me with a shock
when Phillis, after looking round in her quick eager way,
turned to me and said quite loud, * This is a curious place !
Some of it is pretty, but some is hideous.'

" It was very true, because the church has half a dozen
styles, but the speech caused a little consternation in the place.
1 think the beadle would have turned us out had he recovered
his presence of mind in time. This he did not, fortunately, and

tlu;

service began.

*' No one could have behaved better during the prayers than
Phillis. She knelt, listening to every word. I could have
wished that her intensity of attitude had not betrayed a perfect
absence of famili.arity with church customs. During the^salms
she began by listening with a little pleasure in her face. Then
she looked a little bored ; and presently zl\e whispered to me,
* Dear Agatha, 1 really must go out if this tune is not changed.*
Fortunately the psalms were not long.

" She liked the hymns, and made no remark upon them,
except that one of the .choir-boys was singing false, and that
she would like to take him out of the choir herself there and
then. It was quite true, and I really feared that her sense of
duty might actually impel her to take the child by the ear and
lead him solemnly out of church.

" During the sermon, I regret to say that she burst out laugh-

170

TIIK (iOLDKN llt'TTKUFLV

mg. You know Pliillis's laiigli — a pretty ripplin;^ laugh witli-
oub any rnalicu in it. 0, how rare a sweet lau^h is 1 Th(^
curate, who was in the pulpit — a very nice young man, and a
gentleman, but not, 1 mubt own, intellectual ; and T hear he
was phicked rciteatedly for his degree — stoi)peil, puzzh'd and
indignant, and then went < i with his discourse. I looked i
suppose, so horrified that Tiiillis saw she had done wrong, and
Idusiied. There were no more contrckmps in the church.

"' My dear Agatha,' shr xplained, when we came out, " I
suppose J ought not to iiav» laughed. But I really could not
help it. Did you notice the young gentleman in the box ? He
was trying to act, ])ut lui spoke the words so badly, just as if
he did not understand them. And I laughed without thinking.
I am afraid it was very rude of me.'

" 1 tried to explain thini!:s to her, but it is difficult, because
sometimes you do not ([uite know her jwint of view.

" Next day the curatt; called. To my vexation Phillis apolo-
gized. Without any blushes she went straight to the point.

" ' Forgive me,' she said. ' I laughed at you yesterday in
church ; 1 am very sorry for it.'

*' He was covered with confusion, and stammered something
alx)ut the sacred building.

" ' ]jut I never was in a church before,' she went on.

" ' Tiiat is very dreadful!' he replied. 'Mrs. 1/Estrange,
do you not think it is a very dreadful state for a young lady \ "

" Then she laughed again, but without apologizing.

" ' Mr. Dyson used to say,' she explained to me, ' that every-
body's chuich is his own heart. He never went to church,
and he di«l not consider himself in a dreadful state at all, poor
ilear old man ! '

" If she can fall back on an axiom of Mr. Abraham Dyson's,
there is no further argument possible.

" Tlie curate went away. He has been here several times
since, and I am sure that I am not the attraction. We have
iuul one or two little afternoons on the lawn, and it is pretty
to see Phillis trying to take an interest in this young man.
She listens to his remarks, but they fail to strike her ; she
answers his <iuestions, but they seem to bore her. In fact, he
is much too feeble for her ; she has no respect for the cloth at
all ; and I very much fear that what ',is sport to her is going to

THK (JOLPKN lUITTKHILV.

171

b«' death to him. Of course, Lawiencu, you may he <iuit«' sure
tliat 1 shall not allow IMiillis to be compromised hy the atten-
tions of any young man — yet. Later on we shall ask your
views.

" Her guardian must have been a man of great eii Lure. He
has taught her very well, and (jverything. She astonished tlu;
cuiati! yesterday by giving him a little historical essay on his
favourite ,Laud. He understood very little of it, but he wtait
away sorrowful. I could read in his face a det(!rminatioii to
get up the whole subject, come back, and have it opl with
IMiillis. liUt she shall not be dragged into an argunu'Ut, if I
can prevent it, with any young man. Nothing more easily
leads to entanglements, and we must be ambitious for our
Phillis.

" ' It is a beautiful thing ! ' she said the other dav, after I bad
been talking about the theory of public worship — 'a beautitul
thing for the people to come tog(!ther every week and ]>ray.
And the hymns are sweet, thoiigh 1 cannot umhu-stand why
they keep on singing the same tune, ami that such a simi)le
thing of a few notes.'

"The next Sunday I had a hea<lach<', and Phillis refusiv.l to
go to church without me. She spent the day drawing on the
bank of the river.

" Mrs. Cassilis has been to call upon us. Victoria was never
a s^reat frii^nd of mine when she was young, and T really like
ht'r less now. She was kind to Piiillis, ;ind proposed all .sorts
of hospitalities, which we escapt^l for the present. 1 (piite
think that Phillis should be kei)t out of the .social whirl for a
few months longer.

*' Victoria looked pale and anxious. She asked after you in
her iciest manner ; wi.shed to know where you were ; said that
you were once one of her friends ; and hoped to see you b(;fore
long. She is cold by nature, but her coldness was assumed
here, because she suddenly lo^t it. I am quite sure, Lawrence,
that Victoria Pengelley was once touched, and by you. Tlu-rt^
must have been something in the rumours about you two four
years ago. Lazy Lawrence ! It is a good thing for you that
there was nothing more than rumour.

" We were talking of other things — important things, such
as Phillis's wardrobe, which wants a great many additions —

172

THK (SOLDKN niTTKHKI.V.

wIm'ii Vi<;t(»ria, (ipropos of'notliing, asked me if yoii w«^ro chatigod
at all. 1 said nu, except tliat fyou were m ore 'confirmed in
laziness. Then IMiillis opened her portfolio, where she keeps
her J)iary ni'U'r her own fashion, and showed the pencil sketch
she has niaih^ of your countenance. It is a good deal better
than any photograph, V)ecause it lias caught your disgraceful in-
dolence, an<l you stand confessed for wliat you are. How the
girl contrives to put the real person into her portraits. 1 cannot
tell. Victoria took it, and her face suddenly softened. I have
seen the look on m.any a woman's face. I look for it wlien I
susp(;ct that one of my young friends lias dropped hea«l over
ears in love ; it comes into her (^yes when young Orlando
enters the room, and then I know and act accordingly. Poor
Victoria ! 1 ought not to have told you, Lawrence, hut you
will forget what I said. She glanced at the portrait and changed
colour. Then she asked Phillis to give it to her. ' You can
easily make another,' she said, 'and 1 will keep this, as a speci-
men of your skill and a likenes's of an old friend.'

*' She kept it, and carried it away with her.

** I have heard all about tln^ Coping-stone. What a curious
story it is ! Phillis talks quite gravely of the irnsparable injury
to the science of Female Education involved in the loss of thai
precious chapter. Mr. Jagenal is of opinion that without it
the Will cannot be carried out, in which case Mr. Cassilis will
get the money, i sincerely hope he will. I am one of those
who dislike, above all things, notoriety for women, and 1 should
not like our Phillis's education and its result made the subject
of lawyers' wit and rhetoric in the Court of Chancery. Do you
know Mr. Gabriel Cassilis ] He is said to be the cleverest
man in London, and has made an immense ft)rtune. I hojie
Victoria is happy with him. She has a child but does not talk
much about it.

" I have been trying to teach Phillis to read. It is a slow
process, but the poor girl is very patient. How we ever man-
aged to * worry through,' as the Americans say, with such a
troublesome acquirement, I cannot uiiderstand. We spend two
hours a day over the task, and are still in words of one syllable.
Needless to tell you that the lesson-book — * First Steps in
Reading' — is regarded with most profound contempt, .ind is
already covered with innumcirable drawings in pencil.

Till-: (JULDKS HUTTKUKLY.

I7.S

" NoU'.s ill music are easiei'. Phillis can alri^aJy loiul a little»
but the (litHculty iieni is, that if she learns the air from tlio
notes, slie knows it once for all, and further rea«lin<^ is super-
tluoUH. Now little girls have as much ditKculty in playing
notes as in spelling them out, so that they have to he perpetu-
ally i)raclising the art of reading. 1 now understand why peonle
who teach are so immeasurably conceited. 1 am already so
proud of my superiority to Phillis in being able to read, that I
feel my moral nature deteriorating. At least, 1 can sympathise
with all schoolmasters, from the. young man who holds his
certificated nose high in the air to Dr. IJuthu- of Harrow, who
sews up the pockets of his young gentlemtiu's trousers.

" Are you tired of my long letter t Only a few words more.

" 1 have got a music and a singing-master for Phillis. They
are both delighted witli her taste ami musical ])owers. Her
voice is very sweet, thougii not strong. She will never be
tempted to rival professional people, and will always be sure to
pleas(5 when she sings.

" 1 have also got an artist to give her a few lessons in the
management of her colours. Ho is an elderly artist, with a
wife and bairns of his own, not one of the youlig gentlemen
who wear velvet coats and want to smoke all day.

" You must yourself get a horse for her, antl then you
can come over and ride with her. At present she is happy in
the contemplation of the river, which exercises an extra-
onlinary power over her imagination. She is now, while
I write, sitting in the shade, singing to herself in solitude.
P)eside her is the sketch-book, but she is full of thought and
happy to be alone. Lawrence, she is a great responsiltility,
and it is sad to think that the Lesso/i she most rcquirt^s to
learn is the Lesson of distrust. She trusts everybody, and when
any thing is done or said which v/ould arouse distrust in our-
selves, she oidy gets puzzled and thinks of her own ignorance.
Why cannot we leave her in the Paradise of the Innocent, and
never let her learn that every stranger is a possible villain 1
Alas, that I must teach her this lesson ; and yet one woyld not
leave her to find it out by painful experience ! My dear Law-
rence, I once read that it was the custoiu in savage; times to
salute the stranger with clubs and stones, because he was sure
to be an enemy. Uuw fur have we advanced in all these years {

174

I'ilH (JOr.DKN hUTTKllFLV.

You sent IMiillis to mo for tcacliing. but it is 1 wlio l«!arii from
licr. I am a worldly woman, cousin Lawrence, and my life is
fidl of hollow shams. Somcitimcs I think that the world would
lt<' more tolerable wert; all the women as illitenite as dear
Phillis.

"Do not come to see her for a few days yet, and you will
lind her chaii.i^ed in those few thin^u's whicli wanted change."

Sitting in solitude 1 (Jazing (m the river] Singing to her-
seli'? IMiillis was (iuit(! otherwise occupied, and much more
pleasantly.

She had been doing all these things, with much contentment
of soul, while Agatha was witing her letters. She .sat under
liie trees ujjon the grass, a little straw hat upon her liead, let-
ting the beaut Y of the season lill hei'soul with hap})iiU'ss. The
sunlit river rij)pled at luir feet; on its broad surface the white
swans lazily floated ; the soft air of early summer fanned her
cheek ; the Idrds darted across tlu. wnU'V as if in an ecstacy of
joy at the return of the sun — as a matter of fact they iiad their
mouths wide open and were catching Hies ; a lark was singing in
the sky ; there were a blackbird and a thrush somewhere; in
the wood acioss the river; away n\) the stream there was a fat
old gentleman sitting in a punt ; he hehl an umbrella over his
head because tlh' sun was hot, aiul he supported a fishing-rod
in his other hand. Presently he had a nibide, and in his anxiety
ht^ stood up the better to mano.Mivre his float ; it was only a
i>ll)ble, and he sat down agair. I'nfortunately he miscalcul-
at(!d the position of the chair, and sat upon space, so that he
fell backwards all along tin; })unt. Phillis hear(i the bump
against the l)ottom of the boat, and saw a ])air of fat litth;
legs sticking u\) in the most comical manner ; she laughed,
and resolvecl upon drawing the fat old gentleman's accident as
soon {IS she couhl lind time.

The afternoon was v«'ry still; the blackbird carolled in the
trees, and the *' wise thrush " repeated his cheerful phiIoso[)hy;
the river ran with soft wliisper:^ along the bank ; and Phillis
began to look before her with eyes that saw not, and from «!ye-
lids that, in a little, would close in s!eep.

Then something «'lse happened.

A boat came slowly up the river, close to her own bank.
She saw the bows first, naturally ; and then she saw the back

THK (JOLDKN '/.rTTKUl- LY

175

of tho man in it. Tlum the. Ijoat rovjialed itsolf in full, and
riiillis saw that the crew consisted of Jack Dnnqucriiuo. Her
heart ij;ave ai^reat leap, and she starttul from the Sleepy Hol-
low of her thoughts into life.

.lack l)un(iu(!rque was not an ideal oar, such as (Mie dreams
of and rea«ls about. He did not " jfrnsp his sculls with the
precision of a machine, and row with a grand long sweep which
made the boat spring under his arms lik*; a thing of life "—I
quot«! from an author whose name 1 have forgotten. C^uite the
contrary ; .lack was rather unskilful than otlierwise ; tlie ship
in which he was eml)arked was iu)t one of those crank craft
consisting of half a cedar lath with cross-bars of iron ; it was a
boat without outriggers, and he had hired it at Uich.mond. He
was not so straight in the back as an Oxford stroke ; and he
bucketed about a good d(!a], but lie got along.

.Just as \w. was nearing I'hilHshe fell into ditticulties, in con-
se(|ueiu;e of (Uie; oar catching tight in the weeds, 'I'he eifcct of
this was, as may be imagined, to bring her ])ows on straight
into tlie bank. In fact .Jack ran tli<' shin ashore, and sat with
the bows high on th(! grass just a few inches off Philiis's feet.
Tiu'n he drew himself upright, tried to diseiitangle the oar.and
began to think what he should do next.

" I wisli I hadn't come," he said aloud.

Phi 11 is laughed silently.

Then slu; noticed the painter in the bows, though sin; did
not know it by thai name, l^iinters in fjondon boats are some-
times longish ropes, for convenience of mooring. Phillis iu)ise-
lessly lifte<l the cord and tied it fast round the trunk of a small
elder-tree besidi; her. Then slie sat down again and waited.
This was much better fun than watching an elderly gentleman
tumbling backwards in a punt.

.}aek, having extricated the scull aud rested a little, look«'d
at his }»alms, which were blistering under the rough exercise of
rowing, and muttered something inaudible. Then he seized
the oars again and began to back out vigorously.

The boiit's bows descended a few inches, and then, the jjainter
being taut, moved no more.

i'hillis leaned forward, watching .Jack with a look of rap-
turous delight.

"Damn the .ship!" said .lack softly, after three or four
minutes' strenuous backing.

170

THE GULDEN ULT'lEHKLY.

»l

*' l>uii'; Hwcur at the boat, .Jack," Phillis brokcj in, with her
low liiu'^y. and niti.sital voice.

.Jack looked roiiiul. Tliero was Ids goddess standing on tlie
bank, ciapiMng lier liands witli <lelight. He gave a vigorous
pull, wldcli drove the hoat halt-way up to shore, and sprang
out

".i;!ck, you must not use words that sound liad. (), how
glad 1 am to see you I I think you look best in Flannels, .Jack."

'' V'ou here, IMiil I 1 thought it was a mile higher up."

" Dill you km)W where 1 was gone to J"

** Ves, I found out. 1 asked Cohjuhoun, and he told nu^
liut ill' did not oiler to introducts nie to Mrs. L'Kstrange ; and
so I tlunight 1 would - 1 thought that perhaps it' 1 rowed up
the river, you know, I ndglit perhaps m'c you."

"O.Iack," she replied, touched by this act of friendship,
" <lid you really row up in the hope of seeing me ' I am so
glad. Will you come in ami be introiluced to Agatha -that
is, Mrs. L'l'jstrange 'I I have not told \iv.v about you, because
we hail so many things to say."

" lift us sit ilown and talk a little tirst. Phil, you look even
better than when you were at Carnarvon-square Tell me what
you ar»' doing."

" I am learning to rtMd, for oini thing ; and Jack, a nuich
more important thing, I am taking lesson.s in water-colour
drawing. 1 have learned a great deal already, (piite enough to
show me how ignorant 1 have- been. Hut, .lack, Mr. Stencil
cannot draw .so well as 1 can, and 1 am glad to think so."

•• When shall we be able to get out again for another visit
sonnnvhere, I'hil I "

•' -Vh, I do not know. We shall stay heri; all summer, I am
sure ; and .\gatha talks of going to the seaside in the autumn.
I do not think I shall like the sea so much as T like the river,
but I want to se«^ it. .Jack, how is Mi', (rilead l»eck'{ have
you .seen him lately j "

" Yes, I very often .^ee him. We are great iViends. Hut
never mind him, l*hil ; go on telling me al)out yourself. It is a
whole fortnight since I saw you.'

" Is it really / O .Jack I and wo two promistMl to be frit^nds.
'i'heic is pretty rrien<Ishi[( fttr you! 1 am very happy, .lai-k.
Agatha L'Kstrange i.-^ so kiml that 1 cui:not tell you h<nv I love

TIIK CiOl.DKN IU:iTKIlKr,Y.

inch

lour

h to

U'ucil

visit

hor. Lawreiico Col<|nlioiui is \wi liist cousin. I liko my
•guardian, too, very mucli, but 1 have not yt!t tbuml out how
to talk witli liim. I am to liavi; a lioiso as soon as he can
find nu! one ; and then W(^ sluiU he ixhh to ri(h5 together,
.lack, it' it is not too far for you to come out here."

'* Too far, PliiU "

" A<^'atlia is writing h'tt(!rs. Certainly it must be pleasant
to talk to your friends when tliey are away from you. 1 shall
learn to writ<! as fast as I can, and then wis will send hitters to
each other. I wonder if she would mind being disturbed.
INirhaps I had bett(!r not take you in just yet."

" Will you come for a row with me, IMiil 1 "

" in the boat, .lack '. on the river I (>, if you will only take

.lack untied the jiainter, i)ulled the ship's head round, and
laid her alongside the baid?.

" Vou will promise to sit perfectly still, and not move 1 "

" y«!s, I will not move. Are you afraid for me, .Jack 1 "

" A little, riiil. Vou see, if w«^ were to upset, i)erhaps you
would not trust yourself entirely to me,"

" \'es, I woidd, -lack, f am s^m; you would bring mo safe
to the bank."

*• Ihit Wi'. must not upset. Now, IMiil."

lie rowed her up stream. She sat in tlu! st(!rn, and enjoyed
the situation. As in «'very fresh expcuu^nce, sin; was silent,
drinking in tin* details. She watched the transparent water
beneath her, and .saw the yellow-gr;,en weeds sloping gt^ntly
downwards with the current ; she noticed the swans, which
looked so tran<|ud from the bank, and which now followed tlse
boat, goltbling angrily. They passed the old g(Mitleman in the
punt. He had reeoveied his chair by this time, and wjis sitting
in it, still fishing, i'.ut IMiillis could not see: that he; had caught
many fish. He lookeil from under his umbrella and saw them.
" YoJtth and Heauty," he .sighed.

" I like to /)*/ the river,". said I'hillis s<)ftly. " It is i.leasant
on i\\v bank, b\it it is so nuich sweeter here. Can there be
anything in the world," she nuirnmred half to her.self, "more
pleasant than to be rowed along the river on such a tlay as
this l "

There was no one on the river e.^cept tluimselve.s and the

178

THE (JUI.DKN BUTTKRFI.Y.

old an.nlcr. .lack rowed up-stream for half a mile or so, ami
then t»iriie(l licr head and let Imr drift gently down with the
current, occasionally dipping the oars to kee}) way oi*. i)Ut he
left tlu! girl to Ik^' own thoughts.

" It is all like a dream to me, this -^iver," said jMiillis in a
low voice. '* It comes from some unk . )wn place, and goc^s to
some unknown place."

"It is like life, Phil."

" Yes ; we come like the river, trailing long glories hehind
us — you know Avhat Wordsworth says—hut we do not go to
be swallowed uj) in the ocean, and we are not alone;. W(! liavi^
those that love us to he with us, and prevent us from getting
sad with thought. I have you, .lack,"

" Yes, Phil." Tie couhl not meet her fa • which was so
full of uns(dfish and passiordess affection, hecau "nis own eyes
were hrinmiing ovct with passion.

" Take me in, .Tack," she said, when they reached Agatha's
lawn. " It is enough for one day."

She le<l him to the morning-room, cool and sheltered, where
Agatha was writing the letter we have already read. Andslie
introduced him as .Jack ])un(|uerque, her friend.

Jack explained that he was rowing up the river, that he saw
Miss Fleming by accident, that he had taken her for a row up
the stream, and so on — all in due; form.

" Jack and 1 are old friends," said Phillis.

Agatha did not ask how old, which was fortunate. Ihit she
put aside her letters and sent for tea into the garden. .lack
became more amiable and more sympathetic than any young
man Mrs. L'Kstrange had ever known. So much did he win
upon her that, having ascertained that he was a friend of
Lawrence Cohjuhoun, she asked him to dinner.

Jack's voyage homeward was a joyful one. Many is the
journey begun in joy that ends in sorrow ; few iS re those which
begin, as Jack's bucketing uj) the ri\"<;) , in unccrtiui>ty, and
end in unexpected happieess.

' I'lIt-JiyWi lii'i ■^^^■■:^^i^

•iWn'-jMHnntl'ir'

^^W

TIIK nOT.nKN I5UTTKIIK1.Y.

17})

0, an<l
til Iho
Jilt he

is in a
MK!S to

In'liind
(. go to

jotting

was so
n\ eyes

gatha's

, wluTO
k.n(lsho

ho saw
row up

^)Ut sho

.lack

young

lio win

iond of

is the
wliich
ty, ami

CHAPTER XVI.

" Sou\(Mit fumiiic Mirie,
r.ii'ii fill (|iii n'y \\v."

C» -

^AWUKNOK COLgniiOUN was not, in point of fact,
devoting much tliouglit to ins ward at tiiis tinio. Slio
was protty ; sho was frosii ; sh(^ was unconvontioiial ; l)Ut
tlion ho was forty. For twenty years \n\ had ' !n moving
through a panorama of protty girls. It was hai..iy to lu^ o.v-
pectod that a girl whom ho had soon hut onco or twice; should
move a tough old heart of forty. Phillir-. ])loased him, i)utla/-y
Lawrence wanted girls, if that could Ix; manage<l, to come to
him, and sho lu'cossarily stayed at Twicki^idiam. Anyhow,
■she was in good and safe hand.s. It was enougli to know that
Agatha had her in safe charge and cu.stody, and when ho could
find tinn; hv would go down an<l see her again. As h<' had
hoon thirteen yoais trying to Jind tinu' to visit Piiillis at High-
gate, it was possible that ho might he in the same way pre-
vented by adverse circumstances from going to 'rwickonhani.

H was troubled also by otlu-r an<l graver matters.

Victoria Cassilis asked him in the Park to call upon her —
for auld lang syne. What he rop!ird is not on record, because,
if anybody heard, it could only h. IV o boon the lady. P>ut ho
did iu)t call upon her. After a day or two then; came a letter
fnmi her. Of this In; took no notice. It is nt)t usual for a
man to ign(»re the receipt of a letter from a lady, but Lawrence
Cohjuhoun did d(» so. Then there cami; another. This also
ho tore in small pieces. And then another. "Hang the wo-
man." said Lawnuico; "I bolii^vo sho wants to have a row. I
begin to bo sorry I came honn; at all."

His chambers wore o.. Jie second floor in tin; Albany, ami
any one wlio knows Lawrence Cohiuhonn will understand that
tluy wore furnished in considoj'ablo comfort, and even luxury.
Ho did n(>t protend to a knowledge of Alt, })Ut his pictures
were good ; nor was ho a ddettanto about furniture, but liis
was in good stylo. China he al)iiorn;d, like many other per-
sons of sound and healthy taste. Lot us leave a loophole of

180

THE OOLDKN I5UTTKRFLY.

escapo ; there may l>e some occult reason, unknown to the un-
initiated, tor (indiu!^ heauty, loveliness, and desirahility in
hideous ehina monsters and porcelain. Alter all W(^ are hut a
Hock, and follow tlie leader. Why should we not ^o mad tor
china / It is as sensihle as goin^ mad over rinking. Why
should \v«! not l)uy wat«'r-colours at t'ahidous jtrices ? At least
these (;an he sold again tor sonuithiug, whereas l»ooks — an ex-
tinct form of madness — cauiiot ; and hesides, present their
hacks in a mute appeal to he read.

The rooms of a man with whom c(unfort is the lirst thimf
aimed at. Tlw^ chairs an; I(>w, dee[), and comfortahh^ ; there:
are hrackets, tiny tahles, and all sorts of api)liances for saving
troul)le and exertion ; the curtains arc of the light shad*' for
softening the light ; the pictunjs are of suhjects which soothe
the mind ; tlu; hooks, if you look at them, are l)ooks of travel
and novels. The place is exactly such a home as Tia/y Law-
reiu;<! would choos(^

And yet when wi; saw his Laziness in the Pr(»logue, he was
living alone in a deseited city, among the bare wooden walls of
a half-ruined hotel. i»ut Lawnsnce was not then at home. Ii(^
took what comfort he couldget even there ; and while In; indulged
his whim for solituih;, im[)i'i'ssi!d into his «)wn service fnr his
own condort the two (yhinanitni who constituted with him tlu^
[iopulati(»u of Mujpire City.

hut at l'lm[»ire City h(! was all day shooting. That makes
a ditlereiu;e to the la/iest of men. And he wouhl not have
stayed there so long had he not heen too laz}' to go away. If
a nuiu dcjes not mind lonely evenings, the air on the lower
slopes of the Sierra Nevada is pleasant and the gam(^ is ahun-
daut. Now, how(!vei', he was hack in liondon, where the
lazie.st nuMi live heside tlu> busiest. The sun streamed in at
his win«h)ws, which were bright with ll<»weis ; and he sat in
the shade <loiiig iiolhing. iJrsth^s men taUe cigais ; uwn who
tind their own thoughts insullicient for the [)assing hour U\kr
books ; nu'ii who <.aniiot sit still walk about. Lawrence Col-
ipdioun simply l.iy baek in an asy-chair, watchiiej, the sun-
light u[ion tlu; llowers with la/y eyes. Ht^ bad the gift of pas-
sive and happy idleness.

To him there came a visitor — a woman whom he did not
know.

THE (JOLDKN lUITTKHKLY.

181

was

s of

llr

Ills
the

n(»t

She was a woman about thirty yjiais of h^l', a harcl-foatured
sallow-fiiccd woman. She h)()k«(l in Jjawroncc's Uim' with a
grim curiosity as sho walked across the room and handed him
a U'ttcr.

" From Mrs. Cassilis, sir."

** ! " said liawrcncc. " And you are — "

" I am her maid, sir."

" Wiicrc is.lanct, thciiv"

".lauct is dead. She died tlin-e years ago, belong Mrs. Cas-
sihs married."

'• (), flaiiel is dead, is sh(! '/ All, that accounts -I mean,
where did Janet die 'i "

" In lodging at Ventnor, sir. Mrs. Cassilis -Miss I'engelley
she was tiien, as you know, sir,"- -Lawrence looked up sharply
but thert! was no change in the woman's imi)assive face as she
spoke, — '' Miss JVngelley sent me with her, and .lanet died in
my arms, sir, of consumption." \

" AJi, I am sorry ! And so ^trs. L'assilis has .sent you to me
with this Iriitr, has she T' He did not open it. "Will ycui
tell .Mr.s. (a.ssilis that 1 will send an answer by })ost, if there is
any answer re(|uii«'d >. "

'• I beg your pardon, sir; but Mrs. C'a.ssilis told nu' expressly
that if you were in town 1 was to wait for an answer, if 1 had
to wait all day."

" In that case I suppose T had better read the letter."

He opcntd it, and it seemed as if the contents were not
plea.sant, because \u) rose from his chair and began to walk
about. The sallow faced wiunan watched him all the time as
oiu who has lired a .shot, and wishes to know whether it has
struck, and where.

He held the letter in his left hand, and with his right moved
and altered the jiosition of things on the mantelshelf, a sign of
mental agitation. Then he turned round brus<piely aiul said,

" Tell you)' mistress that 1 will call upon her in the after-
noon."

" Will you wiit(> that, sir ? "

" No, I will not." he renlied fiercely. " Take vour answer

'!>

m»l Dejjrone

She went without a word.

There will be troul)le," she said to herself. 'Manet said

182

Tin: COF.DKN lUrTTKIJKI.V.

it would iill coiiir up ;i<<iiin .sonic day. IIc'.s a liaiid.sonic cliajt,
aiul iiii.s.sus is a fool. She's wor.sti than a fool ; .she's a hard-
iicarted creature, witli no more blood ihan a stone statue. If
there's lo he trouble, it won't fall on his head, but on hern. And
if 1 was hiui, I'd ;^m) away again (|uiet, aiul then maybe no
oiU( wouldn't find it out. As f(»r her, shell blow on it herself."
iiawrciuee's thoughts a.ssunied a form something like the
foil

owing ;

" Three noti's from her in rapid succession, (^ach one imue
velieiuent than the first. She nnist sec me ; slie insists on my
calling on her ; she will see me ; she has something in\portanl
to tell me. Il's a marv ellous thing, and a gi'eat proot of the
absenct! of the inventive faculty in all of thet\», that when tl»ey
want to see y\m they invarialily pretenti that they have some-
thing important to tell you. '''rou\ the durl\i'.ss to the nurse-
maid, by .l(»\e, the) areallal'kol Aiul now she is coming
here unless I call unon her tovla\,

" It won't do tv> lit herc\Uiie Uww I might go down to the
sea-side, go intv» the co\uitrv, go anywlu're, back to Anuuica;
but what would be the good of that \ Hesides, wliy should I
run away i'

" I have Wot done anything to be afraid of, or ashamed of,
uidess a knowledge of a thing is guilt. I havi'i nothing to fear
for myself. luMuains tlu- question, Ought I iu»t to screeii her i

" Hut screen her from whom ? No one knows except danet,
and .lanet is dea<l. l\;rhaps that woman with a face like a
horse knows; that woidd be awkward for Victoria if she were
to otfend her, for a more damned unforgiving countenance I
ncxerset ,'yes ui»on. Hut daiu^t was faithful ; 1 am sure -lanet
would not split even when she was <lying. And then tlu-rc!
was very little to split about when .she di.ed. Victoria hadn't
niarried Mr. Ca.ssilis.

" What the deucc! does she want to rake up old things for ?
V\'hy can't sin- let things be? it's the way of women They
can't forget ; an«l hang nie if I don't think she can't forgive nn;
becaust! she has done me a wrong ! W hy did I couje l)ack from
FiUipire City i There at all I'vents one can b'^ safe fromaiuioy-
ance.

" On a day like this too, the rir.st really tiiu' day of the season ;
and it's spoiled. I might have dinetl with cousin Agatha and

TIIK <I(>I<I>I';N Hl'T'l'Kin'LY.

icsn

talked to Pliillis— the pretty little PiuUis ! T might have
rnooned away the at'teniooii in tl»e TiVlK and dined at thu Club.
1 might have gone to hallado/en plaees in tlie evening. I
niigiit iiave gone to (Jrev^nvieh and nnewed n»y youth at the
Sldp I might have gone to liiehnu»ntl with old Kveigie»!n and
his party Ihit IMiillis tor ehoiic. lUit now I nmsthavtMt out
with Vii.oria I'assilis. There's a fair in it. We can't he
aUowed to rest and he i»a})py. Likt; the schoolboy's scrag-end
of the roly poly pudding, it is helped and nuist be eaten."

Philoso[)hy brings resignation, but it does not bring ease of
mind. Those uid'ortunate gentlemen who used to be laid nptm
the wheel and have their limbs b.oken might hav(t cont(>m]>Iated
tile approach onnevitabh; suilering with resignation, but never
with happiness. In Colquhoun's mind, Victoria (Jassilis wa«
associated with a disagreeabh^ ;i,nd painful chapter in his life.
He .saw her marriage in the fragment of Ladds' pap<a\ a;id
thought the chapter closed, lie came home and found her
waiting for him ready to o})en it again.

'' 1 dill think," he said, turning ovt^r her lett(u- in his fingers,
" that for her own sake, slu^ would have let things bo forgotten.
It's ruin f«)r her if the truth comes out, and not pleasant for me.
A prtitty fool I s' ould look ' A[»laiiiing matteis in a witness-box.
lUit i must set! her if only to biing lu^r to reason. Iveason |
^vhen was a woman reasonable ]"

" I am ht!re,' \\v said, standing before Mrs. Cassilis at her
own house af(!W iiours later. " I am here." ,

Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and l)'Artagnan would have said
exactly the same thing.

" Me void .' "

And they would have folded tlmir arms and thrown back
their heads with a preliminary taj) at the sword hilt, to make
sure that the trustj'^ blade was loose in the scabbard and easy
to draw, in cas(! M. le Mari — whom the old French allegorists
calKul Jhdu/cr — .should suddenly ap[)ear.

Ihit Lawrence Col([uhoun said it (piite meekly, to a woman
who neither lu^hl outlier hand nor rose to meet him, nor looked
him in the face, but sat in her chair with bowed head and
weeping eyes.

.\ woman of stet^l ? There are no wcmien of steel.

It was in Mrs. Cassilis's morning-rot)m, an apartment sacnnl

1.S4

TMK (JOLDKN I5UTTKUFI.Y.

to iHTHclf ; slic u.s('«l it for l<!ttor- writing, for interviews with
(Ircssriijikers, for all sorts of tilings. And now she rcccivo^l
Ju!r old friend in it. But why was she crying', and wliy did shts
not look np ?

" 1 did want to se(! yon, Lawrenci;," she ninrnnired. "(/an
yon not (nnlerstan*! why ?"

" My name is Cohinhoun, Mrs. Cassilis. And 1 cannot
understand why — "

"My name, Lawrence, is Victoria. Have you forgotten
that ? "

" I have forgotten everything, Mrs. Cassilis, Jt is Ix'st to
forget everything."

" But if you cannot ! O Lawnaice," .she looked U)) in his
face — *' ( ) Ijawrence, if you cannot ! "

Her weeping eyes, her tear-clouded face, her piteous gesture,
moved the man not one whit. The [»ower which she might
once hav(! had ov(!r him was gone,

" This is mere foolishness, Mrs. ( assilis. As a stianger, a
])erfect stranger, may I ask why you call me by my Christian
name, and why these t<;ars ? "

"Strangers! it is ridiculous!" she cried, stalling u^) and
stamling before him. '* It is ridiculous when all the W()rl<l
knows that we were once friends, and half the world thought
that we were going to be sometliing- Ui'Jirer."

"Nearer- -and dearer, Mrs. Cassilis? What a foolish world
it was ! Supi)ose we had become nearer, and therefore very
much less dear."

" lie kind to nn!, Lawrence."

" I will 1)(^ whatever you like, Mrs. Cassilis. — vxce])t what 1
was, provided yon do not call v/- Lawrence any more. (!ome,
let us bn reasonable. The past is gone ; in deference to your
wishes 1 removed myself from the scene ; 1 went abroad ; 1
transported myself for four years : then I saw the announce-
ment of your marriage in the paper by accident. And 1 came
home again, because of your own free will and accord you had
given me my release. Is this true ? "
" Yes," she replied.

" Then, in the name of Heaven, why seek to revive the past %
Believe me, I have forgotten the few days of madness and re-

TIIK (JOI.DKN lilJTTKUKLY.

1 85

pcnliiuco, Tlicy aro gono. Sonn' ghosts (.f tlic p.'ist vomo to
me, hut thoy do not take tlic .sh.i|Hj of \ ictoria IV'ngcHcy."

*' Siijiposr we cannot forget 1' «

" Tlu'ti we iniisf forget. Victoria — Mrs, Cassilis, nuise your-
self. Think of what you are- what you have nia<le yourself."

" 1 <lo think. I think every day."

'' V'ou have a hushan<l and a child ; yon have yonr position
in the world. Mrs. Cassilis, yoM liavi^ youi honour."

"My honour," she ecluxid. "What honour I And if all
were known ! Ijawri^ice, don't you even )>ity me ( "

" What is th(^ good o\' pity ] " hi^ asked rudely. " Pity can
not alter things. Pity cannot make things which are as if they
are not. Yo\i setim to me to have done what you have done
knowing well what you were doing, and kiiowing what you
were going to get hy it. You have got one of the very hest
h()uses in London ; you have got a rich husband ; you havt^ got
an excellent position ; and you have got — Mrs. Cassilis, you
liav(i got a child, wlios«; future hapi)iiu'ss <lei)ends ujion your
reticence."

"I will tell you what I have lusidos," she huist in, with
passion. " 1 have the most intolerable hushaitd, the most mad-
«lening and exasperating man in all the world ! "

" Is he cruel to you ?"

" No ; he is kin<l to me. If he were cruel 1 should know
how to treat him. lUit he is kind."

" Heroics, Mrs. Cassilis. Most women could very well endure
a kind hu.sl>and. Aro you not overdoing it 1 You alm<>st make
me remend)er a scene — call it a dream- -which took place in a
certain (Jlasgow hotel about four years and a half ago."

" In the City he is the greatest Knancier living, 1 am told.
In the house he is the King of Littleness."

" I think there was — or is — a bishoi)," .said Lawrence medi-
tatively, '* who gav(^ his gigantic intellect to a Treatise on the
Sinfulness of Little Sins. Perhajjs you h.ad better buy that
work and study it. Or present it to your hu.sband."

" Very well, Lawrence. I suppose you think you have a
right to laugh at me ]"

" Right ! Good God, Mrs. Cassilis," he cried, in the greatest
alarm, " do you think I claim any right — the smallest — over
you 1 If 1 ever had a right it is gone now — gone, by your own
actj and my silence,"

^"^ "^;oQ>

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Sdences

Corporation

33 WEST MAIN STREET

WEBSTER, H.Y. 14580

(71«) 872-4S03

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THE GOLDKN BUTTKllFLY.

" Yes, Lawrence," she repeated, with a hard smile on her
lips, " your silence."

He understood what she meant. He turned from her and
leaned against the window, looking into the shrubs and laurels.
She had dealt him a blow which took effect.

*' My silence ! " he murmured ; " my silence ! What have I
to do with your life since that day — that day which even you
would find it difficult to forget 1 Do what you like, marry if
you like, be as happy as you like, or as miserable — what does
it matter to me ? My silence ! Ami, then, going to proclaim
to the world my folly and your shame?"

" Let us not quarrel," she went on, pleased with the effect
of her words. There are women who would rather stab a man
in the heart, and so make some impression on him, than see
him cold or callous to what they say or think. " It is foolish
to quarrel after four years and more of absence."

" Absence makes the heart crow fonder " said Lawrence.

Yes, Mrs. Cassilis, it is foolish to quarrel. Still I suppose it
is old habit. And besides — "

" When a man has nothing else to say, he ^neers."

" When a woman has nothing else to say, she makes a gen-
eral statement."

" At all events, Lawrence, you are unchanged since I left
yoii at that hotel to which you refer so often. Are its
memories pleasing to you 1 "

" No ; they are not. Are they to you 1 Come, Mrs. Cassilis,
this is foolish. You told me you had something to say to me.
What is it V

" I wanted to say this. When we parted — "

" 0, hang it ! " cried the man, " why go back to that 1 "

" When we two parted " — she set her thin lips together as if
she was determined to let him off no single word — '' you used
bitter words. You told me that I was heartless, cold and bad-
tem^^ered. Those were the words you used."

" By Gad, I believe they were ! " said Lawrence. " We had
a blazing row ; and Janet stood by with her calm, Scotch face,
and said, ' Eh, sir ! Eh, madam ! ' I remember."

"I might retaliate on you,"

" You did then, Mrs. Cassilis. You let me have it in a very
superior style. No need to retaliate any more."

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

187

■I

" 1 mi^lit tell you now that you are heartless and cold. I
might tell you — "

"It seems that you are telling me all this without any use of
the potential mood."

" That if you have any lingering kindness for me, even if
you have any resentment for my conduct, you would pity the
lonely and companionless life I lead."

" Your son is nearly a year old, I believe 1 "

" What is a baby ? "

Lawrence thought the remark wanting in maternal feeling ;
but he said nothing.

" Come, Mrs. Cassilis, it is all no use. I cannot help you.
I would not if I could. Han^; it ! it would be too ridiculous
for me to interfere. Think of the situation. Here we are,
we three ; I first, you in the middle, and Mr. Cassilis third.
You and I know, and he does not suspect. On the stage,
the man who does not suspect always looks a fool. No French
novel comes anywhere near this position of things. Make
yourself miserable if you like, and make me uncomfortable ;
but, for Heaven's sake, don't make us all ridiculous ! As things
are so you made them. Tell me — what did you do it for 1 "

" Speak to me kindly, Lawrence, and I will tell you all.
.After that dreadful day I went back to the old life. Janet and
I made up something — never mind what. Janet was as secret
as the grave. The old life — 0, how stupid and dull it was !
Two years passed away. You were gone, never to return, as
you said. Janet died. And Mr. Cassilis came."

'' Well ? "

" Well, I was poor. With my little income I had to live
with friends, and be polite to people I detested. I saw a
chance for freedom ; Mr. Cassilis offered me that, at least. And
I accepted him. Say you forgive me, Lawrence."

" Forgive 1 What a thing to ask or to say ! "

" It was a grievous mistake, I wanted a man who could
feel with me and appreciate me."

" Yes," he said, '* I know. Appreciation — appreciation. Per-
haps you got it, and at a truer estimate than you thought. I have
sometimes found, Mrs. Cassilis, in the course of my travels,
people who make themselves miserable because others do not
understand their own ideals. If these people could only label

188

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

themselves with a few single descriptivi^ sentences, — such as ' I
am good ; I am great ; I am full of lofty thoughts ; I am noble ;
I am wise ; I am too holy for this world ; ' and so on, — a good
deal of unli.'ippir.ess might be saved. P^ ^haps you might even
now try on this method with Mr. Cassilis."

" Cold and sneering," she said to herself, folding her hands,
and laying her arms straight out before her in her lap. If you
think of it, this is a most effective attitude, provided that the
the head be held well back and a little to one side.

" What astonishes nie," he said, taking no notice of her re-
m.ark, " is tliat you do not at all seem to realize the Thing you
have done. Do you 1 "

"It is no use realizing what cannot be found out. Janet is
in her grave. Lawrence Colquhoun, the most selfish and
heartless of men, is quite certain to hold his tongue."

He laughed good-naturedly.

"Very well, Mrs. Cassilis, very well. If you are satisfied,
of course no one has the right to say a word. Aftc!r all, no one
has any cause to fear except yourself. For me, I certainly
shall hold my tongue. It would be all so beautifully explained
by Serjeant Smoothtongue : * Six years ago, gentlemen of the
jury, a man no longer in the bloom of early youth was angled
for and hooked by a lady who employed a kind of tackle com-
paratively rare in English society. She was a femme inrorn-
lirise. She despised the little ways of women ; she was full of
infinite possibilities ; she was going to lead the world if only
she could get the chance. And then, gentlemen of the jury,
then—' "

Here the door opened, and Mr.' Gabriel Cassilis appeared.
His wii" ■ was sitting in the window, cold, calm, and impassive.
Some four or five feet from her stood Lawrence Colquhoun ;
he was performing his imaginary speech with great rhetorical
power, but stopped short at sight of M. le Mari, whom he
knew instinctively. This would have been a little awkward,
had not Mrs. Cassilis proved herself equal to the occasion.

" My dear ! " She rose and greeted her husband with the
tips of her fingers. " You are early to-day. Let me introduce
Mr. Colquhoun, a very old friend of mine."

" I am very glad, Mr. Colquhoun, to know you. I have
heard of you."

!1
m

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

189

ids.

" Pray sit down, Mr. Colquhoun, unless you will go on with
your description. Mr. Colquhoun, who has just returned from
America, my dear, was giving me a vivid account of some
American trial-scene which he witnessed."

Her manner was perfectly cold, clear, and calm. She was
an admirable actress, and there was not a trace left of the weep-
ing shamefaced woman who received Lawrence Colquhoun.

Gabriel Cassilis looked at his visitor with a little pang of
jealousy. T.h, then, was the man with whom his wife's name
had been coupled. To be sure it was a censorious world ; but
then he was a handsome fellow, and a quarter of a century
younger than hiiiiself. However, he put away the thought,
and tapped his knuckles with his double-glasses while he talked.

To-day, whether from fatigue or from care, he was not quite
himself ; not the self-possessed man of clear business mind that
he wished to appear. Perliaps something had gone wrong.

Lawrence and Mrs. Cassilis, or rather the latter began talk-
ing about days of very long ago, so that her husband found him-
self out of the conversation. This made him uneasy, and less
useful when the talk came within his reach. But his wife was
considerate — made allowances, so to speak, for age and fatigue ;
and Lawrence noted that he was fond and proud of her.

He came away in a melancholy mood.

" I can't help it," he said. " I wish I couldn't feel anything
about it, one way or the other. Victoria has gone off, and I
wonder how in the world — And now she has made a fool of
herself. It is not my fault. Some day it will all come out.
And I am an accessory after the fact. If it were not for that
Phillis girl — I must see after her — and she is pretty enough to
keep any man in town — I would go back to America again, if
it were to Empire City."

1!)()

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

CHAPTER XVII.

" Now ydu set your foot on sliore
In Novo Orbc ; here's the rich Peru ;
And there, within, sir, are the yoklen mines,
Great Solomon's Oi)hir."

fNLIMITED credit ! Wealth without bound ! Power
to gratify any desire — all desires ! That was the Luck of
the Golden Butterfly. No wish within the reach of man
that Gilead Beck could not gratify. No project or plan within
limits far, far beyond what are generally supposed reasonable
that he could not carry out. Take your own case, brother of
mine, struggling to realize the modest ambitions common to
cultured humanity, and to force them within the bounds of a
slender income. Think of the thousand and one things you
want ; think of the conditions of your life you would wish
changed ; think of the generous aspirations you would gratify ;
think of the revenges, malices, envies, hatreds, which you would
be able to satiate — had you the loectUh ivhich gives the power.
Then suppose yourself suddenly possessed of that wealth, and
think what you would do with it. ^

Your brain is feeble ; it falters at a few thousands -, a hundred
thousand a year is too much for it — it was as much, if I
reciamber rightly, as even the imagination of the elder Dumas
attained to. Beyond a paltry twenty thousand or so, one feels
oppressed in imagination with a weight of income. Let us
suppose you stick at twenty thousand. What would you do
with it % What could you not do with it ? Your ideal Society
— the one thing wanting, only rich men cannot be brought to
see it, to regenerate the world — that could instantly be put on
a sound footing. Your works — those works which you keep
locked up in a desk at home — you could publish, and at once
step into your right position as a leader of thought, an am^
dvSpwi/. Your projects educational, moral, theatrical, literary,
musical, could all together, for they are modest, be launched
upon the ocean of public opinion. You could gratify your
taste for travel. Like Charles Kingsley, you could stand in

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

191

tlie shadow of a tropical forest (it would not be one quarter so
beautiful as a hundred glades ten miles from Southampton) and
exclaim, " At last ! " You are an archseologist, and have as
yet seen little. You could make that long desired trip to
Naples and see Pompeii ; you could visit the cities of the
Midi, and explore the Roman remains you have as yet only
read of, you could take that journey to Asia Minor, your dream
of twenty years, and sketch the temples still standing, roofed
and perfect, unvisited since the last stragglers of the last
crusading army died of famine on the steps, scoffing with their
latest breath at the desecrated altar. Their bones lav moulder-
ing in front of the marble columns — silent monuments of a
wasted enthusiasm — while the fleshless fingers pointed as if in
scorn in the direction of Jerusalem. They have been dust
this many a year. Dust blown about the fields ; manure for
the crops with the peasant raises in luxuriance by scratching
the soil. But the temples stand still sacred yet to the memory
of Mother Earth, the many-breasted goddess of the Ephesians.
Why, if you had that 20,000/. a year, you could go there,
sketch, photograph, and dig.

What could not one do if one had money 1 And then one
takes to thinking what is done by those who actually have it.
Well, they subscribe — they give to hospitals and institutions —
and they s.-^ve the rest. Happy for this country that Hondu-
ras, Turkey, and a few other places exist to plunder the British
capitalist, or we should indeed perish of wealth-plethora.

round us wait to be done ; things
by rich men, and cannot be done by
trading men, because they would not pay.

Exemvli gratia ; here are a few out of the many.

1. They are always talking of endowment for research ; all
the men who think they ought to be endowed are clamouring
for it. But think of the luxury of giving a man a thousand a
year, and telling him to work for the rest of his days with no
necessity for doing pot-boilers. Yet no rich man does it.
There was a man in Scotland, the other day, gave half a
million to the Kirk. For all the luxury to be got out of that
impersonal gift, one might just as well drop a threepenny-bit
into the crimson bag.

2. This is a country in which the dramatic instinct is so

Thousands of things all
which must be done

192

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

strong as to be second only to that of France. We want a
National Theatre, where such a thing as a 300 nights' run would
be impossible, and which should be a school for dramatists as
W(dl as actors. A paltry 10,000Z. a year would pay the annual
deficit in such a theatre. Perhaps, taking year with year, less
than half that sum would do. No rich man has yet proposed
to found, endow, or subsidise such a theatre.

3. In this City of London thousands of boys run about the
street ragged and hungry. Presently they become habitual
criminals. Then they cost the country huge sums in gaols,
policemen, and the like. Philanthropic people catch a few of
these boys and send them to places where they are made ex-
cellent sailors. Yet the number does not diminish. A small
15/. a year pays for a single boy. A rich man might support a
thousand of them. Yet no rich man does.

4. In this country millions of women have to work for their
living. Everyl)ody who employs those women underpays and
cheats them. Worae^. cannot form trade-unions — they are
without the organ o; government ; therefore they are down-
trodden in the race. They do men's work at a quarter of men's
wages. No trade so flourishing as that which is worked by
women — witness the prosperity of dress-making masters. The
workwomen have longer hours, as well as lower pay, than the
men. At the best, they get enough to keep body and soul to-
gether; not enough for self-respect; not enough, if they are
young and good-looking, to keep them out of mischief. To
give them a central office and a central protecting power might
cost a thousand pounds a year. No rich man, so far as I know,
has yet come forward with any such scheme for the improve-
ment of women's labour.

5. This is a country where people read a great deal. More
books are printed in England than in any other country in the
world. Reading forms the amusement of half our hours, the
delight of our leisure time. For the whole of its reading So-
ciety agrees to pay Mudie and Smith from three to ten
guineas a house. Here is a sum in arithmetic ; house-bills,
1,500/. a year ; wine-bill, 300/. ; horses, 500/. ; rent, 400/. ;
travelling, 400/. ; dress — Lord knows what ; reading — -say
5/. ; also, spent at Smith's stalls in two-shilling novels, say
thirty shillings. That is the patronage of Literature. Suc-

-jjgja

THE GOLDKN BUTTERFLY.

103

3 want a
n would
atists as
3 animal
car, less
)ropostMl

bout tlie
habitual
11 gaols,
a few of
aade ex-
A small
ipport a

for their
•ays and
hey are
e dovvn-
3f men's
rked by
s. The
han the
soul to-
-hey are
ef To
r might
I know,
tnprove-

y in the
irs, the
ling So-
to ten
se-bills,
400/. ;
ig— say
els, say
!. Suc-

cessful authors make a few hundreds a year — successful grocers
make a few thousands — and people say, " How well is Litera-
ture rewarded ! "

Mr. Gilead Beck once told me of a party gathered together
in Virginia City to mourn the decease of a dear friend cut off
prematurely. The gentleman intrusted with the conduct of
the evening's entertainment had one-and-forty dollars put into
his hands to be laid out to the best advantage. He expended
it as follows : —

Whiskey Forty dollars. (!j40)

Bread ... One dollar. ($1)

Total Forty-one dollars ($41)

" What, in thunder," psked the chairman, " made you waste
all that money in bread V

Note. — He had never read Henry IV.

The modern patronage of Literature is exactly like the
proportion of bread observed by the gentleman of Virginia
City.

Five pounds a year for the mental food of all the house-
hold.

Enough ; social reform is a troublesome and an expensive
thing. Let it be done by the societies ; there are plenty of
people anxious to be seen on platforms, and plenty of men who
are rejoiced to take the salary of secretary.

Think again of Mr. Gilead Beck's Luck and what it meant.
The wildest flights of your fancy never reached to a fourth
part of his income. The yearly revenues of a Grosvenor fall
far short of this amazing good fortune. Out of the bowels of
the earth was flowing for him a continuous stream of wealth
that seemed inexhaustible. Not one well, but fifty, were his,
and all yielding. When he told Jack Dunquerque that his in-
come was a thousand pounds a day, he was far within the limit;
In these weeks he was clearing fifteen hundred pounds in every
twenty-four hours. That makes forty-five thousand pounds a
month ; five hundred and forty thousand pounds a year. Can
a Grosvenor or a Dudley to reach that ?

The first well was still the best, and it showed no signs of
giving out ; and as Mr. Beck attributed its finding to the direct

i ■■

194

THE (iOLDEN BUTTEKFLY.

personal instigation of the Golden Butterfly, he firmly believed
that it never would give out. Other shafts had been sunk
round it with varying success ; the ground was oovered with
derricks and machinery, erected for boring fresh wells and
working tlio old ; an army of men were engaged in these
operations ; a new town had sprung up in the place of
Limerick City ; and Giiead P. Beck, its King, was in London
trying to learn how his money might best be spent.

It weiglied heavily upon his mind ; the fact that he was, by
no effort of his own, through no merit of his own, earning a
small fortune every week made him thoughtful. In his rough
way he took the wealth as so much trust-money. He was en-
titled, he thought, to live upon it according to his inclination ;
he was to have what his soul craved for ; he was to use it first
for his own purposes ; but he was to devote what he could not
spend — that is, the great bulk of it — somehow to the general
good. Such was the will of the Golden Butterfly.

I do not know how the idea came into Giiead Beck's head
that he was to regard himself as a trustee. The man's antece-
dents would seem against such a conception of Fortune and her
responsibilities. Born in a New England village, educated till
the age of twelve in a village school, he had been turned upon
the world to make his livelihood in it as best he could. He
was everything by turns ; there was hardly a trade that he did
not attempt, not a calling which he did not for a while follow.
Ill luck attended him for thirty years ; yet his courage did not
flag. Every fresh attempt to escape from poverty only seemed
to throw him back deeper in the slough. Yet he never des-
paired. His time would surely come. He preserved his in-
dependence of soul, and he preserved his hope.

But all this time he longed for wealth. The desire for riches
is an instinct with the Englishman, a despairing dream with
the German, a stimulus for hoarding with the Frenchman, but
it is a consuming fire with the American. Giiead P. Beck
breathed an atmosphere charged with the contagion of restless
ambition. How many great men — presidents, vice-presidents,
judges, orators, merchants — have sprung from the obscure vil-
lages of the older States I Giiead Beck started on his career
with a vague idea that he was going to be something great. As
the years went on he retained the belief, but it ceased to take

THE (JOLDKN UUT'IKUFLY.

105

y believed
been sunk
ered with
wells and
i in these
place of
n London

he was, by
, earning a
I his rough
He was en-
iclination ;
use it first
} could not
;he general

deck's head
m's antece-
ne and her
iucated till
irned upon
30uld. He
that he did
lile follow,
ige did not
nly seemed
never des-
ved his in-

e for riches
:lream with
chman, but
id P. Beck
of restless
presidents,
obscure vil-
1 his career
y great. As
sed to take

a concrete form. He did not see himself in the chair of Ulysses
Grant ; he did not dream of becoming a statesman or an orator.
But he was going to be a man of mark. Somehow he was
bound to be great.

And then came the Golden Butterfly.

See Mr. Beck now. It is ten in the morning. He has left
the pile of letters, most of them begging-letters, unopened at
his elbow. He has got the case of glass and gold containing
the Butterfly on the table. The sunlight pouring in at the
open window strikes upon the yellow metal, and lights up the
delicately-chased , 'ings of this freak of Nature. Poised on
the wire, the Golden Butterfly seems to hover of its own ac-
cord upon the petals of the rose. It is alive. As its owner
sits before it, the creature seems to him endowed with life and
motion. That is nonsense, but Mr. Beck thinks so at the
moment.

On the table is a map of his Canadian oil-fields.

He sits like this nearly every morning, the gilded box before
him. It is his way of consulting the oracle. After his inter-
view with the Butterfly, he rises refreshed and clear of vision.
This morning, if his thoughts could be written down, they
might take this form :

" I am rich beyond the dreams of avarice. I have more
than I can spend upon the indulgence of every whim that ever
entered the head of sane man. When I have bought all the
luxuries that the world has to sell, there still remains to be
saved more than any other living man has to spend.

" What am I to do with it ?

*' Shall I lay it up in the Bank 1 The Bank might break.
That is possible. Or the well might stop. No ; that is im-
possible. Other wells have stopped, but no well has run like
mine, or will again ; for I have struck through the crust of the
earth into the almighty reservoir.

" How to work out this trust 1 Who will help me to spend
the money aright 1 How is such a mighty pile to be spent 1

" Even if the Butterfly were to fall and break, who can de-
prive me of my wealth ? "

His servant threw open the door : " Mr. Cassilis, sir."

*?*i^

196

THE aOLDKN HUTTKKFLY.

P! \

(UIAPTEK XVIII.

" I)nu»itfiill,v it stood,
As two spent swiiiimtTs that do cling t()),'ctlicr
And choke tlieir art."

^NE of Gilead Beck's difficulties — pevluips his greatest—
was liis want of an adviser. Peoule in England who
have large incomes pay private secretaries to advise
them. The post is onerous, but carries with it considerable
influence. To be a Great Man's whisperer is a position coveted
by many. At present the only confidential adviser of the
American Croesus was Jack Dunquerque, and he was unsalaried
and therefore careless. Ladds and Oolquhoun were less ready
to listen, and Gabriel Cassilis showed a want of sympathy with
Mr. Beck's Trusteeship which was disheartening. As for Jack
he treated the sacred Voice, which was to Gilead Beck what
his demon was to Socrates, with profound contempt. But he
enjoyed the prospect of boundless spending in which he was
likely to have a disint^.rested share. Next to unlimited
"chucking" of his own money, the youthful Englishman would
like — what he never gets — the unlimited chucking of other
people's. So Jack brought ideas, and communicated them as
they occurred.

" Here is one," he said. " It will get rid of thousands ; it
will be a Blessing and a Boon for you ; it will make a real hole
in the Pile ; and it's Philanthropy itself Start a new daily."

Mr. Beck was looking straight before him with his hands in
his pockets. His face was clouded with the anxiety of his
wealth. Who would wish to be a rich man ?

" I have been already thitiking of it, Mr. Dunquerque " he
said. " Let us talk it over."

He sat down in his largest easy-chair, and chewed the end of
an unlighted cigar.

"I have thought of it," he went on. " I want a paper that
shall have no advertisements and no leading articles. If a man
can't say what he wants to say in half a column, that man may
go to some other paper. I shall get only live men to write for

THE GOlJ)KN HirTTKKKLY.

1})7

reatiist—
and who
bo advise
isiderable
n coveted
er of the
insalaried
ess ready
athy with
; for Jack
eck what
But he
h he was
unlimited
an would
of other
them as

sands ; it
, real hole
w daily."
hands in
sty of his

rque " he

he end of

aper that

If a man

man may

I write for

me. I will have no loni< reports of spreclu'S, and tlic hunkum
of life sliull be cut out of tlif piipt-r."

"Then it will be a Very little paper."

" No, sir. There is a great deal to say, once you *^(!t tlu^ right
man to say it. I've been an editor myself, and I ktu»w."

"You will not expect the paper to pay you i ''

" Nc, sir ; I shall pay for that i)aper. And there shall be no
cutting up of bad books to show sniiiit writing. 1 shall teach
some of ycur i-eviews good manners."

" But we pride ourselves on the tone of our reviews."

" Perhaps you do, sir. I have remarked that Englishmen
pride themselves on a goo*! many things. I will back a first-
class British subject for bubbling around against all humanity.
See, Mr. Dunquerque, last week I read one of your high-toned
reviews. There was an article in it on a novel. The novel
was a young lady's novel. When I was editing the Clearville
Iioari'/r I couldn't have laid it on in finer style for the rough
back of a Ward Politician. And a young lady !"

" People like it, I suppose," said Jack.

*' I daresay they do, sir. They used to like to see a woman
flogged at the cart-tail. I am not much of a company man,
Mr. Dunquerque ; but I believe that when a young lady sings
a song in a drawing-room, if that young lady sings out of tune
it is not considered good manners to get up and say so. And
it isn't thought polite to snigger and grin. And in my country,
if a man was to invite the company to make game of that
young lady he would perhaps be requested to take a header
through the window. Let things alone, and presently that
young lady discovers that she is nob likely to get cracked up as
a vocaller. I shall conduct my paper on the same polite prin-
ciples. If a man thinks he can sing and can't sing, let him be
for a bit. Perhaps he \/ill find out his mistake. If he doesn't,
tell him gently. And if that won't do, get your liveliest
writer to lay it on once for all. But to go sneakin' and pryin'
around, pickin' out the poor trash, and cutting it up to make
the people grin — it's mean, Mr. Dunquerque, it's mean. The
cart-tail and the cat-o'-nine was no worse than this exhibition.
I'm told it's done regularly, and paid for handsomely."

" Shall you be your own editor 'i "

" I don't know, sir. Perhaps if I stay long enough in this

198

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

'.:1

\:4

h M

I I

He brought his fingers together
how strong

city to get to the core of things, I shall scatter my own ob-
servations arounu. But that's uncertain."

He rose slowly — it took him a long time to rise — and ex-
tended his long arms, bringing them together in a comprehensive
way, as if he was embracing the universe.

" I sball have central offices in New York and London. But
I shall drive the English team first. I shall have coiTesi)ondents
all over the world, and I shall have information of every dodge
goin', from an emperor's ambition to a tiu-pot company
bubble."

with a clasp. Jack noticed
and bony those fingers were, with bunds whose
muscles seemed of steel.

The countenance of the man was earnest and solemn. Sud-
denly it changed expression, and that curious smile of his, un-
like the smile of any other man, crossed his face.

"Did I ever tell you my press experiences'?" he asked.
" Let us have s^me champagne, and you shall hear tliem."

The champagne having been brought, he told his story,
walking slowly up and down with his hands in his pockets, and
jerking out the sentences as if he was feeling for the most
telling way of putting them.

Mr. Gilead Beck had two distinct styles of conversation.
Generally, but for his American tone, the length of his sen-
tences, and a certain florid wealth of illustration, you might
take him for an Englishman of eccentric habits of thought.
When he went back to his old experiences he employed the
vernacular — rich, metaphoric, and full — which belongs to the
Western States in the rougher period of their development.
And this he used now.

" I was in Chicago. Fifteen years ago. I wanted employ-
ment. Nobody wanted me. I spent most of the dollars, and
thought I had better dig out for a new location, when I met
one day an old schoolfellow named Rayner. He told me he
was part proprietor of a morning paper. I asked him to take
me on. He said he was only publisher, but he would take me
to see the Editor, Mr. John 13. Van Cott, and perhaps he would
set me grinding at the locals. We found the Editor. He was
a short active man of fifty, and he looked as cute as he was.
Because you see, Mr. Dunquerque, unless you are pretty sharp

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

199

n ob-

— and ex-
rehensive

don. But
5i)ondents
Bry dodge
company

k noticed
ds whose

in. Sud-
f his, lui-

iie asked.
I em."
bis story,
3kets, and
the most

versation.
)f his sen-
^ou might
thought.
)loyed the
ngs to the
elopment.

d employ-
dlars, and
hen I met
)ld me he
m to take
d take me
3 he would
He was
as he was.
etty sharp

on a Western paper, you won't earn your mush. He was
keeled back, I remember, in a strong chair, with his feet on
the front of the table, and a clip full of paper on his knee.
And in that position, he used to write his leading articles.
Squelchers, some of them ; made gentleman of opposite politics
cry, and drove rival editors to polishing shooting-irons. The
floor was covered with exchanges. And there was nothing
else in the place but a cracked stove; half a dozen chairs stand-
ing around loose, and a spittoon.

" I mention these facts, Mr. Dunquerque, to show that there
was good standing-room for a free fight of not more than two.

*' Mr Van Cott shook hands, and passed me the tobacco-
pouch, while ilayner chanted my praises. When he wound up
and went away, the Editor began.

'* ' Wal, sir,' he said, * you look as if you knew enough to go
indoors when it rains, and Rayner seems powerful anxious to
get you on the paper. A good fellow is Rayner ; as white a
man as I ever knew ; and he has as many old friends as would

make a good sized

ricv.

brings

them

all here, Mr. Beck,
and wants to put every one on the paper. To hear him hold
forth would make a camp-meeting exhorter feel small. But
he's disinterested, is Rayner. It's all pure goodness.'

" I tried to feel as if I wasn't down-hearted. But I was.

" * Any way,' I said, ' if I can't get on here, I must dig out
for a place nearer sundown. Once let me get a fair chance on
a paper, and I can keep my end of the stick.'

" The Editor went on to tell me what I knew already, that
they wanted live men on the paper, fellows that would do a
murder or a prize-fight right up to the handle. Then he came
to business ; offered me a triple execution just to show my
style ; and got up to introduce me to the other boys.

Just then there was a knock at the door,

" ' That's Poulter, our local Editor,' he said, ' Come in,
Poulter. He will taV^e you down for me.'

" The door opened, but it was'nt Poulter. I knew that by
instinct. It was a rough-looking customer with a black-dyed
moustache, a diamond pin in his shirt-front, and a great gold
chain across his vest : and he carried a heavy stick in his hand.

" ' Which is the one of you two that runs this machine 1 '
he asked, looking from one to the other.

200

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

'" I am the Editor,' said Mr. Van Cott, ' if you mean that.'

" ' Then you air the Rooster I'm after,' he went on. ' I am
John Halkett of Tenth Ward. I want to know what in
thunder you mean by printing infernal lies about me and my
party in your miserable one-hoss paper."

" He drew a copy of the paper from his pocket, and held it
before the Editor's eyes.

" * You know your remedy, sir,' said Mr. Van Cott, quietly
edging in the direction of the table, where there was a drawer.

" ' That's what 1 do know. That's what I'm here for. There's
two remedies. One is that you retract all the lies you have
printed ; the other — '

" * You need not tell me what the other is, Mr. Halkett.* As
he spoke he drew open the drawer ; but he hadn't time to take
the pistol from it when the Ward Politician sprang upon him,
and in a flash of lightning they were rolling over each other
among the exchanges on the floor.

" If they had been evenly matched, I should have stood
around to see fair. But it wasn't equal. Van Cott, you could
see at first snap was grit all through, and as full of fight as a
gpme-rooster. But it was bulldog and terrier. So I hitched
on to the stranger, and pulled him off' by main force.

" * You will allow me, Mr. Van Cott,' I said, * to take this
contract off your hands. Choose a back seat, sir, and see fair."

" ' Sail in,' cried Mr. Halkett, as cheerful as a coot, ' and
send fov the coroner, because he'll be wanted. I don't care
which it is.'

" That was the toughest job I ever had. The strength of
ward politiciar.s' opinions lies in their powers of bruising, and
John Halkett, as I learned afterwards, could fight his weight
in wild cats. Fortunately I was no slouch in those days.

" iie met my advances half way. In ten minutes you
cou] In't tell Halkett from me, nor me from Halkett. The fur-
niture moved around cheerfully, and there was a lovely racket.
The sub-editors, printers, and reporters came running in. It
was a new scene for them, poor fellows, and they enjoyed it
accordingly. The Editor they had often watched in a fight
before, but here were two strangers worrying each other on the
floor, with Mr. Van Cott out of it himself dodging around
cheering us on. That gave novelty.

THE GOLDKN BUTTERFLY.

201

(an that,'

'I am

what in

and my

A held it

, quietly
drawer.
There's

^ou have

3tt.' As

e to take
)on him,
ch other

re stood

ou could

^ht as a

hitched

ake this
ee fair."
ot, 'and
►n't care

mgth of

ing, and

weight

ites you
The fur-
' racket.

in. It
joyed it
1 a fight
r on the

around

" The sharpest of the reporters had his flimsy up iu a minute,
and took notes of the proceedings.

" We fought that worry through. It lasted fifteen minutes.
We fought out of the office ; we. fought down the stairs ; and
we fought on the pavement.

" When it was over, I found myself arrayed in the tattered
remnants of my gray coat, and nothing else. John Halkett
hadn't so much as that. He was bruised and bleeding, and he
was deeply moved. Tears stood in his eyes as he grasped me
by the hand.

" ' Stranger,' he said, ' will you tell me where you hail from f

" ' Air you satisfied, Mr. Halkett,' I replied, ' with the edi-
torial management of this newspaper 1 '

" ' I am,' he answered. ' You bet. This is the very best
edited paper that ever ran. Good-morning, sir. You have
took the starch out of John Halkett in a way that no starch
ever was took out of that man before. And if ever you get
into a tight place, you come to me.'

** They put him in a cab, and sent him home for repairs. I
went back to the Editor's room. He was going on again with
his usual occupation of mi*nufacturing squelchers. The frag-
ments of the chairs lay around him, but he wrote on unmoved.

" * Consider yourself permanently engaged,' he said. ' The
firm will pay for a new suit of clothes. Why couldn't you say
at once that you were fond of fighting 1 I never saw a visitor
tackled in a more lovable style. Why, you must have been
brought up to it. And just to think that one might never have
discovered your points if it hadn't been for the fortunate acci-
dent of John Halkett's call ! *

" I said I was too modest to mention my tastes.

" ' Most fortunate it is. Blevins, who used to do our fighting
— a whole team he was at it — was killed three months ago on
this very floor ; there's the i-ork of his fluid still on the wall.
We gave Blevins a first-class funeral, and ordered a two hun-
dred dollar monument to commemorate his virtues. We were
not ungrateful to Blevins. »

" ' Birkett came next,' he went on, making corrections with a
pencil stump. ' But he was licked like a cur three times in a
fortnight. People used to step in on purpose to wallop Birkett,
it was such an easy amusement. The paper was falling into

202

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

disgrace, so we shuiited him. He drives a cab now, which
suits him better, because he was always gentlemanly in his
ways.

" * Carter, who followed, was very good in some respects, but
he wanted judgment. He's in hospital with a bullet in the
shoulder, which comes of his own carelessness. We can't take
him on again any more, even if he was our style, which he
never was.'

" ' And who does the work now 'I ' I ventured to ask.

" * We have no regular man since Carter was carried off on a
shutter. Each one does a little, just as it happens to turn up.
But I don't like the irregular system. It's quite unprofessional.'

" I asked if there was much of that sort of thing.

*•' * Depends on the time of year. It is the dull season just
now, but we are lively enough when the fall elections come on.
We sometimes have a couple a day then. You won't find your-
self rusting. And if you want work, we can stir up a few
editors by judicious writing. I'm powerful glad we made your
acquaintance, Mr. Beck.'

".That. Mr. Dunquerque, is how I became connected with
the press."

" And did you like the position 1 "

" It had its good points. It was a situation of great respon-
sibility. People were continually turning up who disliked our
method of depicting character, and so the credit of the paper
mainly rested on my shoulders. No, sir ; T got to like it, ex-
cept when I had to go into hospital for repairs. And even that
had its charms, for I went there so often that it became a sort
of homo, and the surgeons and nurses were like brothers and
sisters."

" But you gave up the post 1 " said Jack.

" Well., sir, I did. The occupation after all wasn't healthy,
and a little tt o lively. The staff took a pride in me too, and
delighted to promote freedom of discussion. If things grew
dull for a week or two, they would scarify some ward ruffian
just to bring on a fight. They would hang around there to see
that ward ruffian approach the office, and they would struggle
who should be the man to point me out as the gentleman he
wished to interview. They were fond of me to such an extent
that they could not bear to see a week pass without a fight.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

20:^

on a

And I will say this of them, that they were as level a lot of
boys as ever destroyed a man's character.

" Most of the business was easy. They came to see Mr.
Van Cott, and they were shown up to me. What there is of
me takes up a good deal of the room. And when they'd put
their case 1 used to open the door and print. ' Git,' I would
say. ' You bet/ was the general reply ; and they would go
away quite satisfied with the Editorial reception. But once a
week or so there would be a put-up thing, and I knew by the
look of my men which would take their persuasion fighting.

" It gradually became clear to me that if 1 remained much
longer there would be a first-class funeral, with me taking a
prominent part in the procesh ; and I began to think of dig-
ging out while I still had my hair on.

" One morning I read an advertisement of a paper to be
sold. It was in the city of Clearville, Illinois, and it seemed
to suit. I resolved to go and look at it, and apprised Mr. Van
Cott of my intention.

" ' I'm powerful sorry,' he said ; ' but of course we can't keep
you if you will go. You've hoed your row like a square man
ever since you came, and I had hoped to have had your valu-
able services till the end.'

" I attempted to thank him, but he held up his hand, and
went on thoughtfully.

" ' There's room in our plat at Eose-hill Cemetery for one or
two more ; and I had made up my mind to let you have one
side of the monument all to yourself. The sunny side too —
quite the nicest nest in the plat. And we'd have given you
eight lines of poetry — Blevins only got four, and none of the
other fellows any. I assure you, Beck, though you may not
think it, I have often turned this over in my mind when you
have been in hospital, and I got to look on it as a settled thing.
And now this is how it ends. Life is made up of disappoint-
ments.'

" I said it was very good of him to take such an interest in
my funeral, but that I had no yearning at present for Rose-hill
Cemetery, and I thought it would be a pity to disturb Blevins.
As I had never known him and the other boys, they mightn't
be pleased if a total stranger were sent to join their little
circle.

204

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

Mr.

\'jiii Cott was good enough to say that they wouldn't
mind it for the sake of the paper ; but I had my prejudices, and

I resigned.

*' I don't know whether you visited Illinois when you were
in America, Mr. Dunquerquo ; but if you did, perhaps you
went to Clearville. It is in that part of the State which goes
by the name of Egypt, and is so named on account of the be-
nighted condition of the natives. It wasn't a lively place to go

to, but still-

ger

" The Clearville Roarer was the property of a Mrs. Scrimma-
widow of the lately defunct editor. She was a fresh
buxum widow of thirty-five, with a flow of language that
would drown a town council or a vestry. I inferred from tin's
that the late Mr, Scrimmager was not probably very sorry when
the time came for him to pass in his checks.

" She occupied the upper flats of a large square building, in
the lower part of which were the offices of the paper. I
inspected the premises, and having found that the books and
plant were pretty well what the advertisement pretended, I
closed the bargain at once, and entered into possession.

" The first evening I took tea with Mrs. Scrimmager.

" 'It must be more than a mite lonely for you,' she said,
as we sat over her dough-nuts and flipflaps, * up at the
tavern. But you'll soon get to know all the leading people.
They're a two-cent lot, the best of them. Scrimm^; (v/e
always called him Scrimmy for short) never cottoned to them.
He used to say they were too low and common, mean enough
to shoot a man without giving him a chance — a thing which
Scrimmy, who was honourable from his boots up, would have
scorned to do.'

" I asked her if it was long since her husband had taken his
departure.

" * He started,' she said, * for kingdom come two months ago,
if that's what you mean.'

" * Long ill ? '

" ' 111? ' she replied, as if surprised at the question. ' Scrimmy
never was ill in his life. He was quite the wrong sort of stuff"
for that. Scrimmy was killed.'

" * Was he ? ' I asked. ' Railway accident, I suppose ? '

" Mrs. Scrimmager looked at me resentfully, as if she thought

I'HE GOLDEN liUTTERJ^LY.

205

said.

I really ought to have known better. Then she curved her
upper lip in disdain.

" ' Railway accident ! Not much. Scrimmy was shot.'

" 'Terrible ! ' I ejaculated, with a nervous sensation, because
I guessed what was coming.

" * Well, it was rough on him,' she said. ' Scrimmy and
Huggins of the Scaljxr — do you know Huggins ? Well, you'll
meet him soon enough for your health. They hadn't been
friends for a long while, and each man was waiting to draw a
bead on the other. How they did go for one another ! As
an ink-slinger, Huggins wasn't a patch oa my husband ; but
Huggins was a trifle handier with his irons. In fact, Huggins
hae shot enough men to make a small graveyard of his own ;
and his special weakness is editors of your paper.'

" I began to think that Clear ville was not altogether the
place for peace and rest. But it was too late now.

" The lady went on :

" ' Finally, Scrimmy wrote something that riled Huggins awful
So he sent him a civil note, saying that he'd bore a hole in him
tirst chance. I've got the note in my desk there. That was
gentlemanlike, so far ; but he spoiled it all by the mean sneak-
ing way he carried it through. Scrimmy, who was wonderful
careless and never would take my advice, was writing in his
office when Huggins crept in quiet, and dropped a bullet through
his neck before he had time to turn. Scrimmy knew it was
all up ; but he was game to the last, and finished his article,
giving the Scalper thunder. When he had done it he came
up-stairs and died.'

" ' And Mr. Huggins ? '

" ' They tried him ; but, Lord, the jury were all his friends,
and they brought it in justifiable homicide. After the funeral
Huggins behaved handsome ; he put the Scalper into deep
mourning, and wrote a beautiful send-off notice, saying what a
loss the community had suffered in Scrimmy 's untimely end.
I've got the article in my desk, and I'll show it to you ; but
somehow I never could bring myself to be friends with Huggins
after it.'

" 'Mr. Scrimmager was perhaps not the only editor who has
fallen a victim in Clearville.'

" ' The only one 'I Not by a long chalk,' she replied. ' The

200

THE GOLDEN lUTTTKRFLY.

I ■;

Roarer has had six editors in fivj years ; they've all been shot
except one, and he died of consumption. His was a very sad
case. A deputation of leading citizens called to interview him
one evening ; he took refuge on the roof of the office, and
they kept him there all night in a storm. He died in two
months after it. But he was a poor nervous critter, quite unfit
for his position.'

" ' And this,' I thought, 'this is the phce I have chosen for
a quiet life.'

" I debated that night with myself whether it would be
better to blow the roof off' my head at once, instead of waiting
for Huggins or some other citizen to do it for me. But I
resolved on waiting a little.

" Next day I examined the files of the Roarer, and found
that it had been edited with groat vigour and force ; there
was gunpowder in every article, fire and brimstone in every
paragraph. No wonder, I thought, that the men who wrote
those things were chopped up into sausage-meat. I read more,
and it seemed as if they might as well have set themselves up
as targets at once. I determined on changing the tone of the
paper ; I Avould no longer call people midnight assassins and
highway robbers ; nor would I hint that political opponents
were all related to suspended criminals: I would make the
Roarer something pure, noble and good ; I would take Washing-
ton Irving for my model ; it should be my mission to elevate
the people.

" VVal, sir, I began. I wrote for my first number articles
as elevating as Kentucky whiskey. Every sentence was richly
turned ; every paragraph was as gentle as if from the pen of
Goldsmith. There was a mutiny among the compositors ;
they were unaccustomed to such language, and it made them
feel small. One man, after swearing, till the atmosphere was
blue, laid down his stick in despair, and we' it and got drunk.
And the two apprentices fought over the mer.ning of a sentence
in the back yard. One of those boys is now a cripple for life.

" It would have been better for me, a thousand limes Oetter,
if I had stuck to the old lines of writing. The people were
accustomed to that. They looked for it and they didn't want
any elevating. If you think of it, Mr. Dunquerque, people
never do. The Clearville roughs liked to be abused, too, be-

THE GOLDEN liUTTEKFLY.

207

cause it gave them prominence and importance. But my pure
style didn't suit them, rnd, as it turned out, didn't suit me
either.

" The City Marshal was the earliest visitor after the issue of
my first number. He came to say that, as the chief executive
officer of the town, he would not be responsible for the public
peace if I persevered in that inflammatory style. I told him I
wouldn't change it for him or anybody else. Then he said it
would cause a riot, and he washed his hands of it, and he'd done
his duty.

" Next came the Mayor with two town-councillors.

" ' What, in thunder, do you think you mean, young man,'
his honour began, pointing to my last editorial, ' by bringing
everlasting disgrace on our town with such mush as that 1 '

He called it mush.

" I asked him what was wrong in it.

u < Wrong 1 It is all wrong. Of all the mean and miserable
twaddle — '

" He called, it miserable twaddle.

" * Hold on, Mr. Mayor,' I said ; ' we must discuss this article
in a different way. Which member of your august body does
the heavy business 1 '

*' ' We all take a hand when its serious,' he replied ; ' but
in ordinary cases it's generally understood that I do the muni-
cipal fighting myself.'

" ' We'll consider this an ordinary case, Mr. Mayor,' I said ;
and I wont for that chief magistrate. He presently passed
through the window — the fight had no details of interest — and
then the town-councillors shook hands with me, congratulated
me on my editorial, and walked out quiet through the door.

" Nearly a dozen Egyptians dropped in during the afternoon
to remonstrate. I disposed of them in as gentlemanlike a
manner as possible. Towards evening I was growing a little
tired, and thinking of shutting up for the day, when my fore-
man, whom the day's proceedings had made young again —
*uch is the effed: of joy — informed me that Mr. Huggins of the
Scalper was coming down the street. A moment later, Mr.
Huggins entered. He was a medium-sized man , with sharp
piercing eyes and a well-bronzed face, active as a terrier and
tough as a hickory-knot. I was sitting in the wreck of the
office desk, but I rose as he came in.

208

TIIK OOLDKN BUTTKRFI Y.

(< (

'I'

Don't stir,' he said pleasantly. ' My name is Huggins ;
but I am not going to kill you to-day.'
" I said I was much obliged to-him.

" * I see you've been receiving visitors,' he went on, looking at
the fragments of the chairs. ' Ours, Mr. Beck, is an active
and responsible profession.'
" I said I thought it was.

" ' These people have been pressing their arguments home
with unseemly haste,' he said. 'It is unkind to treat a
stranger thus. Now as for me I wouldn't draw on you for
your first article not to be made Governor of Illinois. It would
be most unprofessional. Give a man a fair show, I say.'
" ' Very good, Mr. Huggins.'

" ' At the same time Mr. Beck I do think you've laid yourself
open. You are reckless, not to say insulting. Take my case.
You never saw me before, and you've had the weakness to
speak of me as the gentlemanly editor of the Scalper.*
" ' I'm sure, Mr. Huggins, if this term is offensive — '
" ' Offensive 1 Of course it is offensive. But as this is our first
interview, I must not let my dander rise.'

" ' Let it rise by all means and stay as high as it likes. We
may find a way of bringing it down again.'

** ' No, no,' he answered smiling ; * it would be unprofessional.
Still I must say that your sneaking, snivelling, city way of
speaking will not go down, and I have looked in to tell you
that it must not be repeated.'

" ' It shall not be repeated, Mr. Huggins. I shall never again
make the mistake of calling you agentlsman.'

" He started up like a flash, and moved his hand to his breast-
pocket.

" * What do you mean by that ? '

"I was just in time, as I sprang upon and seized him by
both arms before he could draw his pistol.

" ' I mean this,' I said : * you've waked up the wrong pas-
senger, this time, Mr. Huggins. You needn't wriggle. I've
been chucking people through that window all day, and you
shall end the lot. But first I want that shooting-iron ; it might
go off by accident and hurt some one badly.'

" It was a long and mighty heavy contract, for he was as
* supple as an eel and as wicked as a cat. But I got the best

THE GOLDKN BUTTERFLY.

209

B:uggiris ;

ooking at
an active

its home
> treat a
I you for
It would

y.'

[ yourself
my case,
ikness to

sour first

:es. We

Fessional.

' way of

tell you

rev again

is breast-

iiim by

ong pas-
e. I've
and you
it might

was as
bhe best

holt at last, relieved him of his pistol, and tossed him through
the window.

" ' Jim,' I said to the foreman, as I stretched myself in a
corner, panting and bleeding, * you can shut up. VVe sha'n't
do any more business to-day.'

" I issued two more numbers of the Roarer on the same refined
and gentlemanly principle, and I fought half the county. But
all to no purpose. Neither fighting nor writing cou'd reform
those Egyptians.

" Huggins shot me through the arm one evening as I was
going home from the office. I shall carry his mark to the
grave. Three nights later I was waited on by about thirty
leading citizens, headed by the Mayor. They said they thought
Clearville wasn't agreeing with me, and they were cone to
remove me. I was removed on a plank, escorted by a torch-
light procesh of the local fire-brigade. On the platform of the
railway-station the Mayor delivered a short address. He said,
with tears, that the interests of party were above those of
individuals, and that a change of residence was necessary for
me. Then he put into my hands a purse with two hundred
dollars, and we paited with every expression of mutual esteem.

" That is how I came out of the land of Egypt, Mr. Dunquer-
que ; and that is the whole history of my connection with the
press."

CHAPTER XIX

" We do not know
How she may soften at the sight o' the child.

(Vi

jF hfe was pleasant in Carnarvon-square, it was far more
pleasant by the banks of the river. Phillis expanded like
a rose in June under the sweet and gracious influences
with which Agatha L'Estrange surrounded her. Her straight-
forward way of speaking remained — the way that reminded
one of a very superior schoolboy who had not been made a prig
N

^1^

•*1

1 :

210

TUK (JOLDEN HUTTKRFLY.

at Uu},'l)y-

biit it was loundiMl ott' by somotliiiig niuro of what
we call maidenly reserve. It should not be called reserve at
all ; it is an atmosphere with which women have learned to
surround themselves, so that they show to the outward world
like unto the haloed moon. Its presence was manifested in a
hundred little ways — she did not answer quite so readily ; she
did not look into the face of a stranger quite so frankly ; she
seemed to be putting herself more upon her guard — strange
that the chief charm of woman should be a relic of barbarous
times, when the stronger sex were to be feared for their
strength and the way in which they often used it. Only with Jack
Dunquerque there was no change. With him she was still the
frank, free-hearted girl, the friend who opened all her heart,
the maiden who, alone of womankind, knew not the meaning
of love.

Phillis was perfectly at home with Agatha L'Estrange. She
carolled about the house like a bird ; she played and sang at
her sweet will ; she made sketches by thousands ; and she
worked hard at the elements of all knowledge. Heavens, by
what arid and thirsty slopes do we climb the hills of Learning !
Other young ladies had made the house by the river their temo
porary home, but none so clever, none so bright, none so en-
tirely lovable as this emancipated cloister-child. She was not
subdued, as most young women somehow contrive to become ;
she dared to have an opinion and to assert it ; she did not
tremble and hesitate about acting before it had been ascertained
that action was correct ; she had not the least fear of compro-
mising herself ; she hardly knew the meaning of proper and
improper ; and she who had been a close prisoner all her life
was suddenly transformed into a girl as free as any of Diana's
nymphs. Her freedom was the result of her ignorance ; her
courage was the result of her special training, which had not
taught her the subjection of the sex ; her liberty was not
license, because she did not, and could not, use it for those pur-
poses v/hich schoolgirls learn in religious boarding-houses. She
could walk with a curate, and often did, without flirting with
the holy young man ; she could make Jack Dunquerque take
her for a row upon the river, and think of nothing but the
beauty of the scene, her own exceeding pleasure, and the
amiable qualities of her companion.

THE (JOLDEN Rt'TTKUKTT.

211

of what
eserve at
jarned to
,r(i world
sted in a
flily ; she
ikly ; she
— strange
barbarous
for their
kvith Jack
,s still the
ler heart,

meaning

ige. She
d sang at
i and she
ivens, by
.earning !
iheir tenu
ne so en-
was not
become ;
Q did not
certained
compro-
opcr and
1 her life
f Diana's
ice; her
had not
was not
hose pur-
ises. She
ing with
que take
but the
and the

Ofc(»in>e A{;atl)a's frirmls callrd upon licr. Anu)Mj; thrni
were several specimens of tiie iiritisli young lady, rhillis
watched thorn with mucli curiosity, but she could not get on
with them. They seemed mostly to be sutfering from feeble
circulation of the pulse ; they spoke as if they enjoyt-d notliing ;
those wl\o were very young kiiuUed into entliusiasm in talking
over things which Fhillis knew nothing about, such as dancing
— Phillis was learning to dance, but did not yet compreliend
its fiercer joys — and sports in which the other sex took an equal
part. Their interest was small in painting; they cared fof no-
thing very strongly ; their minds seemed for the most pa/t as
languid as their bodies. This life at low ebb seemed to tho girl
whose blood coursed freely, and tingled in her veins as it ran, a
poor thing ; and she mentally rejoiced that her own education
was not such as theirs. On the other hand, there were points in
which these ladies were clearly in advance of herself. Phillis
felt the cold ease of their manner ; that was beyond her efforts ;
a formal and mannered calm was all she could assume to veil
the intensity of her interest in things and persons.

" But what do they like, Agatha V she asked one day, after
♦^he departure of two young ladies of the highest type.

*' W jll, dear, I hardly know. T should say that they have no
strong likings in any direction. After all, Phillis dear, those
who have the fewest desires enjoy the greatest happiness."

" No, Agatha, I cannot think that. Those who want most
things can enjoy the most. 0, that level line ! what can shake
them off it?"

" They are happier as they are, dear. You have been brought
up so differently that you cannot understand. Some day they
will marry. Then the equable temperament in which they
have been educated will stand them in good stead with their
husbands and their sons."

Phillis was silent, but she was not defeated.

Of course the young ladies did not like her at all. They were
unequal to the exertion of talking to a girl who thought differ-
ently from all other girls. Phillis to them, as to all people
who are weak in the imaginative faculty, was impossible.

But bit by bit the social education was being filled in, and
Phillis was rapidly becoming ready for the debut to which
Agatha looked forward with so much interest and pride.

There remained another kind of education.

212

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

Brought up uloiie, with only lier maid of her own age, and
only an old man on whom to pour out her wealth of affection,
this girl would, but for her generous nature, have grown up cold
and unsympathetic. She did not. The first touch of womanly
love which met her in her escape from prison was the kiss
which Agatha L'Estrange dropped unthinkingly upon her cheek.
It was the first of many kisses, not formal aud unmeaning,
which were interchanged between these two. It is difficult to
explain the great and rapid change the simple caresses of another
woman worked in Phillis's mind. She became softer, more
careful of what she said, more thoughtful of others. She tried
harder to understand people ; she wanted to be to them all
what Agatha L'Estrange was to her.

One day, Agatha, returning from early church, whither Phillis
would not accompany her, heard her voice in the kitchen.
She was singing and laughing. Agatha opened the door and
looked in.

Phillis was standing in tiie middle of a group. Her eyes
were bright with a sort of rapture ; her lips were parted ; her
long hair was tossing behind her ; she was singing, talking,
and laughing, all in a breath.

In her arms she held the most wonderful thing to a woman
which can be seen on this earth.

A BAliY.

The child of the butter-woman. The mother stood before
Phillis, her pleased red face beaming with an honest pride.
Phillis's maid, Antoinette, and Agatha's three servants sur-
rounded these two, the principal figures. In the corner, grin-
ning, stood the coachman. And the baby crowed and laughed.

" O, the pretty thing ! 0, the pretty thing ! " cried Phillis,
tossing the little one-year-old, who kicked and laughed and
pulled at her hair. " Was there ever such a lovely child ?
Agatha, come and see, come and see ! He talks, he laughs, he
dances ! "

" Ah, madame ! " said Antoinette, wiping away a sympa-
thetic tear. " Dire que ma'amselle n'en a jamais vu ! Mais
non, mais non — pas meme des poup6es ! "

vSt

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

213

age, and
affection,
n up cold
womanly
the kiss
ler cheek,
meaning,
ifficult to
if another
ier, more
She tried
them all

er Phillis

kitchen.

ioor and

Her eyes

ted ; her

talking,

^ woman

d before
t pride,
mts sur-
ler, grin-
laughed.
1 Phillis,
;hed and
y child?
lUghs, he

sympa-
! Mais

■•si';.

CHAPTP]K XX.

'Go seek your fortunes farther than lit home."

JjT^AWPtENCE COLQUHOUN returned home to find
^j^j himself famous. Do you remember a certain book of
*^^ ' travels written four or five years ago by Lord Milton
and Dr. Cheadle, in which frequent mention was made of un
nommd Harris, an inquiring and doubting Christian, who wore
a pair of one-eyed spectacles, and carried a volume of Paley ?
If that Harris, thus made illustrious, had suddenly presented
himself in a London drawing-room while the book was enjoy-
ing its first run, he would have met with much the same suc-
cess which awaited "Lawrence Colquhoun. Harris let his op-
portunity go, and never showed up ; perhaps he is still wan-
dering in the Rocky Mountains and pondering over Paley.
But Colquhoun appeared while the work of the Dragoon and
the Younger Son was still in the mouths of men and women.
The liveliest thing in that book is the account of Empire City
and its Solitary. Everybody whose memory will carry him
back to last year's reading will remember so much. And
everybody who knew Colquhoun knew also that he was the
Solitary.

The Hermit ; the man with the Golden Butterfly, now a
millionaire ; the Golden Butterfly, now in a golden cage— all
these actually present, so to speak, in the flesh, and ready to
witness if the authors lied. Why, each was an advertise-
ment of the book, and if the two Chinamen had been added,
probably people might have been reading the work still. But
they, poor fellows, were defunct.

It annoyed Lawrence at first to find himself, like Cambuscan,
with his tale half told ; and it was monotonous to be always
asked whether it was really true, and if he was the original
Hermit. But everything wears off ; people in a week or two
began to talk of something else, and when Colquhoun met a man
for the first time after his return he would startle and confuse
that man by anticipating his question. He knew the outward

^jj^Mi'pi

214

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

signs of its approach. He would watch for the smile, the look
of curiosity, and the parting of the lips before they framed the
usual words :

" By the way, Colquhoun, is it actually true that you are the
Hermit in Jack Dunquerque's book ? "

And while the questioner was forming the sentence, think-
ing it a perfectly original one never asked before, Lawrence
would answer it for him.

" It is perfectly true that I was the Hermit. Now talk of
something else."

For the rest he dropped into his old place. Time, matri-
mony, good and evil hap had made havoc among his set ; but
there were still some left. Club-men come and club-men go ;
but the club goes on forever.

Colquhoun had the character of being at once the laziest and
the most good-natured of men. A dangerous reputation, be-
cause gratitude is a heavy burden to bear. If you do a man a
good turn he generally finds it too irksome to be grateful, and
so becomes your enemy. But Colquhoun cared little about his
reputation.

When he disappeared, his friends for a day or two wondered
where he was. Then they ceased to talk of him. Now he was
come back they were glad to have himamong themagain. He was
a pleasant addition. He was not altered in the least — his eyes
as clear from crows-feet, his beard as silky, and his face as
cheerful as ever. Some men's faces have got no sun in the m ;
they only light up with secret joy at a friend's misfortunes ; but
tl^iit is an artificial fire, so to speak ; it burns with a baleful
and lurid light. There are others whose faces are like the
weather in May, being uncertain and generally disagreeable.
But Lawrence Colquhoun's face always had a cheerful
brightness. It came from an easy temper, a good digestion, a
comfortable income, and a kindly heart.

Of course he made haste to find out Gilead Beck. Jack
Dunquerque, who forgot at the time to make any mention of
Phillis Fleming, informed him of the Golden Butterfly's wonx
derful Luck. And they all four dined together — the Hermit,
the Miner, the Dragoon, and the Younger Son.

They ran the bear hunt over again ; they talked of Empire
City, and speculated o\\ the two Chinamen ; had they known

jfcif^''

THE GOLDKn BLTTTEHFLY.

215

the look
imed the

I are the

e, think-
lawrence

talk of

6, matri-
set ; but
nen go ;

iest and
m, be-
a man a
ful, and
bout his

ondered

V he was

He was

his eyes
face as
1 the m ;
les ; but
k baleful
like the
jreeable.
cheerful
istion, a

. Jack
ntion of
y's won-r
Hermit,

Empire
kpown

the fate of the two, their speculations might have taken a
wider range.

" It was rough on me that* time," said Gilead. " It had
never been so rough before, since I began bumming around."

They waited for more, and presently he began to tell them
more. It was the way of the man. He never intruded his
personal experiences, being for the most part a humble and
even a retiring man ; but when he was among men he knew,
he delighted in his recollections.

" Thirty-three years ago since I began. Twelve years old ;
the youngest of the lot. And I wonder where the rest are.
Hiram, I knoAv, sat down beside a rattle one morning. He
remembered he had an appointment somewhere else, and got
up in a hurry. But too late, and his constitution broke up
suddenly. But for the rest I never did know what became of
them. When I go back with that almighty Pile of mine, they
will find me out, I daresay. Then they will bring along all
their friends and the rest of the poor relations. The poorer
the relations in our country, the more affectionate and self-
denying they are."

" What did you do first ? " asked Ladds.

" Ran messages ; swept out stores ; picked up trades ; went
handy boy to a railway engineer ; read what I could and when
I could. When I was twenty 1 kept a village school at a dollar
a day. That was in Ohio. I've been many things in my pil-
grimage and tried to like them all, but that was most too much
for me. Boys ajid gells, Captain Ladds. Boys themselves are
bad ; but boys and gells mixed, they air — wal, it's a curious and
interestin' thing that, ever since that time, when I see the gells
snoopin' around, with their eyes as soft as velvet and their
sweet cheeks the colour of peach, I say to myself, ' Shoddy.
It is shoddy. I've seen you at school, and I know you better
than you think.' As the poet says, * Let gells delight to bark
and bite, for 'tis their nature to.' You believe, Mr. Dunquerque,
because you are young and inexperienced, that gells air soft.
Air they 1 Soft as the shell of a clam. And tender 1 Tender
as a hickory-nut. Air they gentle, unselfish, and yieldin' l
As rattlesnakes. The child is mother to the woman, as the
poet says ; and school-gells grow up mostly into women. They're
sweet to look at ; but when you've tended school, you feel to
know them. And then you don't yearn after them so much.

216

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

" There was one hoy I liked. He was eighteen, stood six
foot high in his stocking-boots, and his name was Pete Conk-
ling. The lessons that boy faught me were useful in my

after-life. We began i'. every

morning

at five minutes past

nine. Any little thing set us off. He might heave a desk, or
a row of books, or the slates of the whole class at my head. I
might go for him first. It was uncertain how it began, but the
fight was bound to be fought. The boys expected it, and it
pleased the gells. Sometimes it took me half an hour, and
sometimes the whole morning, to wallop that boy. When it
was done, Pete would take his place among the little gells, for
he never could learn anything, and school would begin. To
see him after it was over sitting alongside of little Hepzibah and
Keziah, as meek as if he'd never heard of a black eye and never
seen the human fist, was one of my few joys I was fond of Pete,
and he was fond of me. Ways like his, gentlemen, kinder
creep round the heart of the lonely teacher. Very fond of him
I grew. But I got restless and dug out for another place ; it
was when I went on the boards and became an actor, I think ;
and it was close on fifteen years afterwards that I met him.
Then he was lying on the slopes of Gettysburg — it was after
the last battle — and his eyes were turned up to the sky ; one of
them, I noticed, was black ; so that he had kept up his fighting
to the end. For he was stark dead, with a Confed. bullet in
his heart. Poor Pete ! "

" You fought for the Nor^^^h 1 " asked one of his audience.

" I VMS a Northerner," he replied simply. How could he help
taking his part in maintaining undivided that fair realm of
America, which every one of his countrymen love as Queen
Elizabeth's yeomen loved the realm of England 1 We have no
yeomen now, which is perhaps one of the reasons why we could
not understand the cause of the North.

** I w^orried through that war without a scratch. We got
wary towards the end, and let the bullets drop into trunks
of trees for choice. And when it was over, I was five-and-
thirty, and had to begin the world again. But I was used to
it."

" And you enjoyed a wandering life ? "

" Yes, I believe I did enjoy barkin' up a new tree. There's
a breed of Americans who can't keep still. I belong to that

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

217

stood six
te Conk-
1 in my
jtes past
desk, or
head. I
, but the
t, and it
)ur, and
When it
^ells, for
;in. To
bah and
id never
of Pete,
, kinder
I of him
)lace ; it
[ think ;
let him.
^as after
; one of
fighting
►ullet in

nee.

he help
ealm of
i Queen
have no
e could

We got

trunks

ve-and-

used to

There's
to that

breed. We do not like to sit by a river and watch the water
flow ; we get tired of livin' in the village lookin' in each other's
faces while the seasons come round like the hands of a clock.
There's a mixture among us of Dutch and German and English
to sit quiet and till the ground. They get their heels well
grounded in the clay, and there they stick."

" Where do you get it from, the wandering blood V asked
Colquhoun.

Gilead P. Beck became solemn.

" There air folk among us," he whispered, " who hold that
we are descended from the Ten Tribes. I don't say those folk
are right, but I do say that it sometimes looks powerful like as
if they were. Descended from the Ten Tribes, they say, and
miraculously kept separate from the English among whom they
lived. Lost their own language — which, if it was Hebrew, I
take it was rather a good thing to be quit of — and speakin'
English, like the rest. What were the tribes? Wanderers,
mostly. Father Abraham went drivin' his cows and his camels
up and down the country. Isaac went around on the rovR;
and Jacob couldn't sit still. Very well then. Didn't their
children walk about, tryin' one location after another, for forty
years, and always feelin' after a bit as if there must be a softer
plank farther on 1 And when they'd been settled down for a
few hundred years, didn't they get up and disappear altogether 1
Mark you, they didn't want to settle. And where are the Ten
Tribes now 1 For they never went back ; you may look Pales-
teen through and through, and nary a Tribe.'*

He looked round asking the question generally, but no one
ventured to answer it.

" Our folk, who have mostly gut religion, point to them-
selves. They say, * Look at us ; we air the real original Wan-
derers.' Look at us all over the world. What are the hotels
full of ? Full of Amer'cans. We are everywhere. We eat up
the milk and honey, and we tramp off on the ramble again.
But there's more points of gen'ral resemblance. We like bounce
and bunkum ; so did those people down in Syria : we like to
pile up *jhe dollars ; so did the Jews : they liked to set up their
kings and pull them down again ; we pursue the same generous
and confiding policy with our presidents ; and if they were

21S

THE GOT.DEN HUTTKHFLY.

stiff-necked and backsliding, we are as stiff-necked and back-
sliding as any generation among all the lot."

" A very good case indeed," said Colquhoun.

" I did not think so, sir, till lately. B'lt it's been borne in
upon me with a weight and force that can't be resisted, and I
believe it now. The lost Ten Tribes, gentlemen, air now
located in the States. I am certain of it from my own case.
Do any of you think — I put it to you seriously — that such an
inseck as the Golden Butterfly would have been thrown away
upon an outsider] Is it likely that such all-fired Luck as
mine would have been wasted on a man who didn't belong to
the Chosen People 1 No, sir ; I am of the children of Israel ;
and I freeze to that."

CHAPTER XXI.

'Animum picturft pascic inani.

HEN Panurge was in t' t dreadful difficulty of his
about marrying, he tocK counsel of all his friends.
Pantagruel, as we know, advised him alternately for
and against, according to the view taken at the moment by
his versatile dependent. Gilead Beck was so far in Panurge's
position that he asked advice of all his friends. Mr. Cassilis
recommended him to wait and look about him ; meantime he
took his money for investment ; and, as practice makes perfect,
and twice or thrice makes a habit, he found nov no difficulty
in making Mr. Beck give him cheques without asking their
amount or their object, while the American Fortunatus easily
fell into the habit of signing them without question. He was
a Fool ? No doubt. The race is a common one ; especially
common is that kind of Fool which is suspicious from long
experience, but which, having found, as he thinks, a fellow-
creature worthy of trust, places entire and perfect trust in him,
and so, like a ship riding at anchor with a single stout cable,
laughs at danger even while the wind is blowing, beam on, to

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

219

a lee shore. Perfect faith is so beautiful a thing that neither
religionists who love to contemplate it, nor sharpers who pro-
fit by it, would willingly let it die out.

Lawrence Colquhoun recommended pictures.

" You may as well spend your money on Artists as on any
other people. They are on the whole a pampered folk, ai)d
get much too well paid. But a good picture is generally a
good investment. And then you will become a Patron and
form a gallery of your own, the Beck Collection, to hand down
to posterity."

'* I can't say, Colonel — not with truth — that T know a good
picture from a bad one. I once tried sign-painting. But the
figures didn't come out right, somehow. Looked easy to do,
too. Seems I didn't know about Perspective, and besides, the
colours got mixed. Sign-paintinqc is not a walk in life that I
should recommend from personal experience."

But the idea took root in his brain.

Jack Dunquerque encouraged it.

" Yovi see. Beck," he said, " you may as well form a gallery
of paintings as anything else. Buy modern pictures ; don't
buy Old Masters, because you will be cheated. The modern
pictures will be old in a hundred years, and then your collec-
tion will be famous."

" I want to do my work in my own lifetime," said the mil-
lionaire. He was a man of many ideas but few convictions,
the strongest, being that man ought to do what he has to do in
his own lifetime, and not to devise and bequeath for posthu-
mous reputation.

" Why, and so you would. You buy the pictures while you
are living ; when you go off, the pictures remain."

A patron of Art. The very name flattered his vanity, being
a thing he had read of, and his imagination leaped up to the
possibilities of the thing. Why should he not collect for his
own country 1 He saw himself, like Stewart, returning to
New York with a shipload of precious Art treasures bought in
London ; he saw his agent ransacking the studios and shops of
Florence, Naples, Rome, Dresden — wherever painters congre-
gate and pictures are sold ; he imagined rich argosies coming
to him across the ocean — the American looks across the ocean
for the luxuries and graces of life^ his wines^ his Art, and his

220

THK GOLDEN liUTTKRFLY.

V.I

literature. Then he saw a great building, grander than the
Capitol at Washington, erected by a grateful nation for the
reception of the Gilead P. Beck Collection of Ancient and Mo-
dern Paintings.

Now one of the earliest callers upon Mr. Beck was a certain
picture-dealer named Burls. Mr. Burls and his fraternity re-
gard rich Americans with pec.liar favour. It is said to have
been Bartholomew Burls who invented especially for American
use the now well-known " multiplication " dodge. The method
is this : You buy a ^vork by a rising artist, one whose pictures
may be at some future time, but are not yet, sufficiently known
to make their early wanderings matter of notoriety. One of
your young men — he must be a safe hand and a secret — makes
two, three, or four copies, th** number depending on the area,
rather than the number, of your cUenthle. You keep the artist's
receipt, a proof of the genuineness of the picture. The copies,
name and all, are so well done that even the painter himself
would be puzzled to know his own. You then proceed to place
your pictures at good distances from each other, representing
each as genuine. It is a simple, beautiful, and lucrative method.
No so profitable, perhaps, as cleaning old oil-paintings, which
takes half an hour apiece and is charged from ten shillings to
ten pounds, according to the dealer's belief in your power to
pay. Nor is it more profitable than the manufacture of a Cor-
reggio or a Cnyp for a guileless cotton manufacturer, and there
is certainly a glow of pride to be obtained by the successful
conversion of a new into ail old picture by the aid of mastic
varnish, mixed with red and yellow lake to tone it down, and
the simple shaking of a door-mat over it. But then people
have grown wary, and it is difficult to catch a purchaser of a
Correggio, for which a large sum has to be asked. The multi-
plication dodge is the simpler and the safer.

Mr. Beck, as has been already shown, was by no means de-
ficient in a certain kind of culture. He had read such books
as fell in his way during his wandering and adventurous life.
His reading was thus miscellaneous. He had been for a short
time an actor, and thus acquired a little information concerning
dramatic literature. He had been on a newspaper, one of the
rank and file as well as an editor. He knew a good deal about
many things, arts, customs, and trades. But of one thing he
was profoundly ignorant, and that was of painting.

THE GOLDEN BUTTEKFLY.

221

pian the
for the
md Mo-
certain
nity re-
to have
merican
method
pictures
known
One of
-makes
le area,
artist's
copies,
himself
to place
senting
inethod.
, which
lings to
ower to
a Cor-
d there
3cessful
mastic
m, and
people
er of a
multi-

ans de-
books
us life.
I short
erning
of the
about
ing he

He looked up Burls's card, however — " Bartholomew Burls
<fe Co., Church-street, City. Inventors of the only safe and
perfect Method of Cleaning Oil-painting" — and, accompanied
by Jack Dunquerque, who knew about as much of pictures as
himself, hunted up the sliop, and entered it with the meekness
of a pigeon about to be plucked.

They stood amid a mass of pictures, the like of which
Gilead Beck had never before conceived. They were hanging
on the walls ; they were piled on the floor ; they were stretched
across the ceiling ; they climbed the stairs ; they were hiding
a\/ay in dark corners ; a gaping doorway lit with gas showed
a cellar below where they were stacked in hundreds. Pictures
of all kinds. The shop was rather dark, though the sun of
May was pouring a flood of light even upon the narrow City
streets. But you could make out something. There were
portraits in hundreds. The effigies of dead men and women
stared at you from every second frame. Your ancestor — Mr.
Burls was very particular in ascertaining beyond a doubt that
it was your own ancestor, and nobody else's — frowned at you in
bright steel armour with a Vandyke beard ; or L.'. presented a
shaven face with full cheeks and a Kamillies wig ; or he
smirked upon you from a voluminous white scarf and a coat
collar which rose to the top of his head. The ladies of your
family — Mr. Burls was very particular, before selling you one,
in ascertaining beyond a doubt that she belonged to your own
branch of the house, and none other — smiled upon you with
half-closed lids, like the consort of Potiphar, the Egyptian ; or
they frisked as shepherdesses in airy robes, conscious of their
charms ; or they brandished full-blown petticoats, compared
with which crinolines were graceful ; or they blushed in robes
which fell tightly about the figure, and left the waist beneath
the arms. Name any knight, or mayor, or court beauty, or
famous toast among your ancestry whose portrait is wanting to
your gallery, and Burls, the great genealogical collector, will
find you, before many weeks, that missing link in the family
history. Besides the portraits, there were landscapes, nymphs
bathing, Venuses asleep, Venuses with a looking-glass, A^'enuses
of all sorts; scenes from Don Quixote; Actajons surprising
Dianas ; battle-pieces, sea-pieces, river-pieces ; " bits " of
Hampstead Heath, and boats on the Thames.

■i. '\

I. 1

9»>«>

THE fJOr.DKN lUJTTKHFLY.

Ml'. IJt'ck lookcMl rouiul him, stroked his chin, uiul luhlressed
the j,'iuirtliuii of this treasure-house :

"I am going to buy pictures," he began comprehensively.
" You air the Boss ? "

"This ^aitlemun means," Jack explained, " that he wants
to look at your pictures, with a view to buying some if he ap-
proves of them."

The man in the shop was used to people who would buy one
picture after a whole morning's haggling, but he was not ac-
customed to people who wanted to buy pictures generally. He
looked astonished, and then, with a circular sweep of his right
hand, indicated that here were pictures, and all Mr. Beck had
to do was to go in and buy them.

" Look round you, gentlemen," he said ; " pray look round
you ; and the more you buy, the better we shall like it."

Then he became aware that the elder speaker was an Ameri-
can, and he suddenly changed his front.

" Our chicer pictures," he explained, " are up-stairs. I should
like you to look at them first. Will you step up, gentlemen ? "

On the stairs, more pictures. On the landing, more pic-
tures. On the stairs mounting higher, more pictures. But
they stopped on the first floor. Mrs. Burls and hi^ assistants
never invited any visitor to the second and third floors, because
these rooms were sacred to the manufacture of old pictures, the
multiplication of new, and the sacred processes of cleaning,
lining, and restoring. In the first-floor rooms were fewer pic-
tures, but more light.

One large composition immediately caught Mr. Beck's eye.
A noble picture ; a grand picture ; a picture whose greatness
of conception was equalled by its boldness of treatment. It
occupied the whole of one side of the wall, and might have
measured twenty feet in length by fourteen in height. The
subject was scriptural — the slaying of Sisera by Jael, Heber the
Kenite's wife. The defeated general lay stretched on the couch,
occupying a good ten feet of the available space. Beside him
stood the woman, a majestic figure, with a tent-peg and a mal-
let, about to commit that famous breach of hospitality. The
handle of the mallet was rendered most conscientiously, and had
evidently been copied from a model. Through the open hang-
ings of the tent were visible portions of the army chasing the
fugitives and lopping off their heads.

THK (iOLDKN HL'TTKHFLV

2*2S

Idiessed

msively.

e wants
if he ap-

buy one
5 not ac-
Jly. He
lis right
•eck had

k round

I Ameii-

I should
emen ? "
lore pic-
is. But
ssistants
because
ures, the
leaning,
wer pic-

)k's eye.
reatness
ent. It
lit have
t. The
eber the
e couch,
ide him
d a mal-
y. The
and had
sn hang-
ling the

"Tliat seerns a striking jncturc," said Mr. IJeck, " I take
that picture, sir, to represent George VV^ishington after the news
of the surrender at Saratoga, or General Jackson after the
battle of New Orleens."

" Grant after Gettysburg," suggested Jack.

" No, sir. I was at Gettysburg myself; and tlie hero asleep
on the bed, making every allowance for his fancy dress, which
I take to be allegorical, is not at all like General Ulysses Grant,
nor is it like General Sherman. The young female, I s'pose, is
Liberty, with a hammer in one hand and a dagger in the other.
Too much limb for an American gell, and the flesh is redder
than one could wish. But on the iiull a striking picture..
What may be the value of this composition, mister 1 "

" I beg your pardon, sir. Not Washington, sir, nor General
Jackson, though we can procure you in a very short time fine
portraits of both these 'eroes. This, gentleman, is a biblical
subject. Cicero, overtaken by sleep while in jail, about to be
slain by 'Eber the wife of the Kenite. That is 'Eber with the
'eavy 'ammer in 'er 'and. The Kenite belonged, as t have always
understood — for I don't remember the incident myself — to the
opposite faction. That splendid masterpiece, gentlemen, has
been valued at five 'undred. For a town 'all or for an altar-
piece it would be priceless. To let it go at anything under five
'undred would be a sin and a shame, besides a-throwing away
of money. Look at the light and shade. Look at 'Eber's arm
and Cicero's leg. That leg alone has been judged by connis-
seers worth all the money."

Mr. Beck was greatly disappointed in the subject and in the
price ; even had it been the allegorical picture which he thought,
he was not sufficiently educated in the prices of pictures to
offer five hundred for it ; and when Mr. Burls's assistant spoke
of pounds, Mr. Beck thought of dollars. So he replied :

" Five hundred dollars'? I will give you five-and-twenty."

" That," interposed Jack Dunquerque, "is a five-pound
note."

" Then, by gad, sir," said the man with alacrity, " it's yours !
It's been hangin' there for ten years, and never an offer yet.
It's yours ! "

This splendid painting, thus purchased at the rate of rather
more than three-pence a square foot, was the first acquisition

224

THK GOf.DKN HUT'rKKFLY.

mado hy Mr. iJeck tuwunls liis yrcnt Uallery of Ancient and
Modbi'u Masters.

IIo paid tor it on the spot, calling .Fack to witness the tran-
saction.

" We will senil it up to the hotel to-morrow," said the man.

" 1 shall have it fixed right away along the side of my room,"
said Mr. Beck. *' Should it he framed 1 "

" I should certaitdy have it framed," said Jack.

" Yes, sir ; we shall bo happ}/^ to frame it for you."

" I daresay you would," Jack went on. " This is a job for a
house-carpenter, Mr. Beck. You will have to build the frame
for this gigantic picture. Have it sent over, and consider the
frame afterwards."

This course was approved ; but, for reasons which will sub-
sequently appear, the picture was never framed.

The dealer proceeded to show other pictures.

'* A beautiful Nicolas Pushing — ' Nymphs and Satyrs in a
Bacchanalian Dance' — a genuine thing."

"I don't think much, of that, Mr. Dunquerque ; do you 1
The Nymphs haven't finished dressing ; and the gentlemen with
the goats' legs may be satires on human natur,' but they are not
pretty. Let u? go on to the next show in the caravan, mister."

" This is Heity. In the master's best style. * Graces sur-
prised while Bathing in the Kiver.' Much admired by con-
nisseers."

" No, sir ; not at all," said Mr. Beck severely. " My gallery is
going to elevate the morals of our gells and boys. It's a pretty
thing too, Mr. Dunquerque, and I sometimes think it's a pity
morality was ever invented. Now, Boss."

" Quite so, sir. Hetty is, as you say, rayther — What do you
think of this, now — a lovely Grooze 1 "

" Grooze," said Mr. Beck, " is French, I suppose, for gell.
Yes, now that's a real pretty picture ; I call that a picture you
ain't ashamed to admire ; there's lips you can kiss ; there's a
chin you can chuck — "

" How about the morals ] " asked Jack.

" Wal, Mr. Dunquerque, we'll buy the picture first, and we'll
see how it rhymes with morals afterwards. There's eyes to
look into a man's. Any more heads of pretty Groozes, mister 1
111 buy the lot."

TIIK (JOI.DKN lUTT'rKllKhV.

225

le mail.

"This is a Coiira<,'o-oli ! " tlio <'xhi1)it()r went on, after ox-
prossins his sorrow tliat lie had no more Groozes, and bringing
out H Madonna. " Thought to Ix; genuine l)y tlie best judges.
History of tlie ])i(;tur(^ unknown redooces tht; value."

" I can't go fooling around with copies in vui gallery," said
Mr. Beck. " I must have genuine pictures, or none."

"Then we will not offer you that Madonna, sir. I think I
have scmKithing here to suit you. Come this way. A Teniers,
gentlemen — a real undoubtcid gem of a Teniers. This is a
picture now for any gentleman's collection. It came from the
gallery of a nobleman lately deceased, and wjis bought at the
sale by Mr. Burls himself, who knows a })icture when he s(;es
one. Mr. Bartholomew Burls, our senior partner, gentlemen.
' The Bagpipe player.' "

It was an excellent imitation, but of a well known picture,
and it re<iuired consummate impudence to pretend that it was
original.

" O," said Jack, " but I have seen this .somewhere else. In
the Louvre, I believe."

" Very likely, sir," replied the unabashed vendor. " Teniers
painted six hundred pictures. There was a good many * Bag-
pipe-players' among them. One is in the Louvre. This is
another."

On the advice of Jack: Dunquerque, Mr. Beck refrained from
buying, and contented himself with selecting, with the option
of purchase. When they left the shop, some twenty pictures
were thus selected.

The seller, who had a small interest or commission on sales,
as soon as their steps were fairly out of the shop, executed a
short dance indicative of joy. Then he called up the stairs,
and a man came slowly down.

A red-nosed bibulous person ; by name Critchett. He was
manufacturer of old masters in ordinary to Bartholomew Burls
t^ Co. ; cleaned and restored pictures when other orders were
slack, and was excellent at ' multiplication.' He had worked
for Burls for a quarter of a century, save for a few weeks, when
one Frank Melliship, a young gentleman then down on his
luck, worked in his stead. A trustworthy and faithful creature,
though given to drink ; he could lie like an echo ; was as in-

226

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

t . ' ITT

capable of blushing as the rock on which the echo plays ; and
bore cross-examination like a Claimant.

" Come down, Critchett — come down. We've sold ' Cicero
and 'P:ber.' "

" * Sisera and Jael.' "

" Well, it don't matter — and I said * Cicero in Jail.' They're
gone for ?.\e pounds. The governor he always said I could
take whatever was oifered, and keep it for myself. Five
pounds in my pocket ! Your last Teniers — that old bag-pipe
party— I tried him, but it was no go. But I've sold the only
one left of your Groozes, and you'd better make a few more,
out of hand. Look here, Critchett : it isn't right to drink in
hours, and the guv'nor out and all ; but this is an occasion.
This ain't a common day, because I've sold the Cicero. I
. won't ask you to torse, nor yet to pay ; but I says, ' Critchett,
come across the way, my boy, and put your lips to what you
like best.' Lord, Lord ! on'y give me an American, and give
him to me green! Never mind your hat, Critchett. 'It's
limp in the brim and it's gone in the rim,' as the poet says ;
and you look more respectable without it, Critchett."

" That's a good beginning," Beck observed after luncheon.
They were in Jack Dunquerque's club, in the smoking-room.
" That's a first-rate beginning. Eow many pictures go to a
gallery V

" It depends on the size of it. About five hundred for a
moderate-sized one."

Mr. Beck whistled.

" Never mind. The He pays for all. A Patron of Art. Yes,
sir, that seems the right end of the stick for a rich man to keep
up. But I've been thinking it over. It isn't enough to go to
shops and buy pictures. We must go in for sculpting too,
and a Patron ought to get hold of a struggling artist, and lend
him a helping ha^d ; he should advance unknown talent.
That's my idea."

" I think I can help you there," said Jack, his eyes twink-
ling. " I know just such a man ; an artist unknown, without
friends, with slender means, of great genius, who has long
languished in obscurity."

" Bring him to me, Mr. Dunquerque. Bring that young
man to mo. Let me be the means of pushing the young gentle-

THE GOLDEN JiUTTERFLY.

227

►lays ; and
Id ' Cicero

I.' They're
id I could
self. Five
i bag-pipe
i the only

few more,
) drink in
ti occasion.
Cicero. I
' Critchett,

what you

,, and

lett.

poet

give
'It's

says;

luncheon,
king-room.
es go to a

ired for a

A.rt. Yes,
lan to keep
;h to go to
Ipting too,
and lend
talent.

fcvn

syes twink-
n, without
has long

hat young
ing gentle-

man. Holy thunder, vvhat is money if it isn't used ? Tell me
his name."

" I think I ought to have spoken to him first," said Jack, in
some confusion, and a little taken aback by Mr. Beck's deter-
minatiou. " But, however, you can only try. His name is
Humphrey Jagenal. I will, if you please, go and see him
to-day. And I will ask him to call upon you to-morrow morn-
ing."

" I would rather call upon Mm" said Mr. Beck. " It might
look like the pride of patronage asking him to call at the Lang-
ham. I don't want him to start with a feelin' of shame."

" Not at all ; at least of course it will be patronage, and I
believe he will prefer it. There is no shame in taking a com-
mission to execute a picture."

" Mr, Dunquerque, every day you confer fresh obligations
upon me. And I can do nothing for you — nothing at all."

At this time it was Gilead Beck's worst misfortune that he
was not taken seriously by any one except Gabriel Cassilis, who
literally and liberally interpreted his permission to receive all
his money for safe investment. But as for his schemes, vague
and shadowy as they were, for using his vast income for some
practically philanthropic and benevolent objects, none of his
friends sympathised with him, because none of them understood
him. Yet the man was deeply in earnest. He meant what he
said, and more, when he told Gabriel Cassilis that a voice
urged him by day and b)' night not to save his money, but to
use for others what he could not use himself. He had been
two months in England on purpose to learn a way, but saw no
way yet. And every way seemed barred. He would not give
money to societies, because they were societies : he wanted to
strike out something new for himself. Nor would he elaborate
a scheme to be carried out after his death. Let every man, he
repeated every day, do what he has to do in his lifetime. How
was he to spend his great revenues ? A Patron of Art ? It was
the first tangible method that he had struck upon. He would be
that to begin with. Art has the great advantage, too, of swal-
lowing up any conceivable quantity of money.

And on the way from Burls'sD^pot of Real and Genuine
Art, he hit upon the idea of advancing artists as well as Art.
He was in thorough earnest when he raised his grave and now

i'-'

t,:':

228

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

solemn eyes to Jack Dunquerque, and thanked him for his
kindness. And Jack's conscience smote him.

" I must tell you," Jack explained, *' that I have never
seen any of Mr. Humphrey Jagenal's pictures. Miss Fleming,
the young lady whom you met at Mrs. Cassilis's, told me once
that he was a' great artist."

" Bring him to niO, bring him to me, and we will talk. I
hope that I may be able to speak clearly to him without hurt-
ing his feelin's. If I brag about my Pile, Mr. Panquerque, you
just whisper ' Shoddy,' and I'll sing small."

" There will be no hurting of feelings. When you come to a
question of buying and selling, an artist is about the same as
everybody else. Give him a big commission ; let hipi have
time to work it out ; and send him a cheque in advance. I
believe that would be the method employed by patrons whom
artists love. At least I should love such a patron."

" Beck," he went on, after a pause ; both were seated in the
long deep easy-chairs of the club smoking-room, with the
chairs pretty close together, so that they could talk in low
tones — "Beck, if you talk about artists, there's Phil — I mean
Miss Fleming. By Jove ! she only wants a little training to
knock the heads off half the K.A.'s. Come out with m> and call
upon her. She will show you her sketches."

" I remember her," said Gilead Beck slowly ; " a tiii: >o- ag
lady ; a lovely Grooze, as the man who grinds that picture mill
would sav ; she had large brown eyes that looked as if they
could be nothing but tender and true, and a rosebud mouth
all sweetness and smiles, and lips that trembled when she
thought. I remember her — a head like a queen's, piled up with
her own brown hair and flowers, an' a figure like — like a Mexi-
can half-caste at fourteen."

" You talk of her as if you were in love with her," said Jack
jealously.

" No, Mr. Dunquerque ; no, sir. That is, I may be. But
it won't come between you and her, what I feel. You air a most
fortunate man. Go down on your knees when you get home, and
say so. For or'nary blessin's you may use the plan of Joshua
Mixer, the man who had the biggest claim in Empire City be-
fore it busted up. He got his Petitions and his Thanksgivin's
printed out neat on a card together, and then he hung that

THE GOLDEX BUTTKTIFLY.

229

oa for his

ve never

Fleming,

me once

talk. I
out hurt-
rque, you

come to a
i same as
lipi have
i'-ance. I
ns whom

ied in the
with the
Ik in low
— I mean
aining to
e and call

al: : 0' ag
cturt; mill
iis if they
id mouth
when vshe
i up with
;e a Mexi-

said Jack

be. But
air a most
lome, and
of Joshua
City be-
iksgivin's
mng that

card over his bed. ' My sentiments,' he used to say, jerkin'
his thumb to the card when he go^ in at night. Never omitted
his prayers ; never forgot that jerk, drunk or sober. Joshua
Mixer was the most religiouo man in all that camp. But for
special Providences ; for He ; for a lucky shot ; for a sweet,
pure, heavenly, gracious creature like Miss Fleming — I say, go
on vour knees and own it, as a man should. Well, Mr. Dun-
querque," he continued, " I wish you success ; and if there's
anything I can do to promote your success, let me know. Now
there's another thing. What I want to do is to unlock the
door which keeps me from the society of men of genius. I can
get into good houses ; they all seem open to me because I've
got money. London is the most hospitable city in this wide
world for those that have the stamps. Republican 1 Repub-
lican ain't the word for it. Do they ask who a man is ? Not
they. They ask about his dollars, and they v/eloome him with
smiles. It's a beautiful thing to look at, and it makes an
Amer'can sigh when L*^ thinks of his own country, where they
inquire into a stranger's antecedents. But there's exceptions,
and artists and authors I cannot get to. And I want to meet
our great men. Not to interview them, sir. Not at all. They
may talk a donkey's hind leg off, and I wouldn't send a single
line to the New York papers to tell them what was said nor
what they wore. But I should like, just for one evening, to
meet and talk with the great writers whom we respect across
the water."

Again Jack Dunquerque's eyes began to twinkle. He could
not enter into the earnestness of this man. And an idea occurred
to him at which his face lit up with smiles.

" It requires thinking over. Suppose I was to be able to get
together half a dozen or so of our greatest writers, how should
we manage to entertain them 1 "

" I should like, if they would only come — I should like to
give them a dinner at the Langham. A square meal ; the very
best dinner that the hotel can serve. I should like to make
them feel like being at the Guildhall."

" I will think about it," said Jack, " and let you know in a
day or two what I can do for you."

Ill

1 ' **

230

THE GOLDEN BUTTFRFLY.

, !, -i •,

J !

'.r

ill

CHAPTER XXTI.

•' Ambition should be made of sterner stuff."

PATRON at last, Cornelius," said Elnmphrey Jagenal,
partly recovering from the shock of Jack Dun-
qnerque's communication. " A Patron. Patronage is,
after all, the breath of life to Art. Let others pander to the
vitiated public taste and cater for a gaping crowd round the
walls of the Royal Academy. I would paint for a Lorenzo
only, and so work for the highest interests of Art. We will
call, brother, upon this Mr. Beck to-morrow."

*' We will ! " said Cornelius, with enthusiasm.

It was in the Studio. Both brothers, simultaneously fired
with ardour, started to their feet and threw back their heads
with a gesture of confidence and determination. The light of
high resolve flashed from their eyes, which were exactly alike.
The half-opened lips expressed their delight in the contempla-
tion of immortal fame. Their chance had arrived ; their youth
was come back to them.

True, that Gilead Beck at present only proposed to become
a Patron to the Artist ; but while it did not enter into Hum-
phrey's head for one moment that he could make that visit un-
supported by his brother, so the thought lay in cither's brain
that a Poet wanted patronage as much as an Artist.

They were both excited. To Humphrey it was clear that
the cotitemplation of his great work, in which he had basked
so many years, was to be changed for days of active labour.
No longer could he resolve to carry it into execution the " day
after to-morrow," as the Arabs say. This was difficult to realize,
but as yet the thought was like the first shock of ice-cold
water, for it set his veins tingling and braced his nerves. He
felt within him once more the strength felt by every young
man at first, which is the strength of Michael Angelo. He saw
in imagination his great work, the first of many great works,
finished, a glorious canvas glowing with the realisation of a
painter's dream of colour, crowded with graceful figures, warm

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

231

Jageiial,
,ck Dun-
onage is,
er to the
ound the
Lorenzo
We will

usly fired
eir heads
e light of
tly alike.
)ntempla-
eir youth

become
to Hum-
visit uu-
r's brain

lear that
d basked

labour,
the "day
realize,
f ice-cold
ves. He
T young

He saw
it works,
ition of a
•es, warm

with the thought of genius, and rich with tlie fancy of au
Artist-scholar — a work for all time. And he gasped. But for
his beard he might have been a boy waiting for the morrow,
when he should receive the highest prize in the school ; or an
undergraduate, the favourite of his year, after the examination,
looking confidently to the Senior Wranglership.

In the morning they took no walk but retired silently each
to his own room. In the Studio the Artist opened his port-
folios, and spread out the drawings made years ago when he was
studying at Rome. They were good drawings ; there was feel-
ing in every line ; but they were copies. There was not one scrap
of original work, and his Conscience began to whisper — only
he refused at first to listen — that the skill of hand and touch
was gone. Then Conscience, which gets angry if disregarded,
took to whispering, more loudly, and presently he heard. He
took crayon and paper, and began, feverishly and in haste, to
copy one of his own old drawings. He worked for a quarter of
an hour, and then, looking at the thing he had once done beside
the thing he was then doing, he dashed the pencil from him,
and tore up the miserable replica in disgust. His spirit, which
had flown so high, sank dull and heavy as lead ; he threw
himself back in his chair and began to think, gazing hopelessly
into space.

It was the opportunity of Conscience, who presently began
to sing as loudly as any skylark, but not so cheerfully. " You
are fifty," said that voice which seldom lies; " you have wasted
the last twenty years of life ; you have become a windbag and
a shallow humbug ; you cannot now paint or draw at all ; what
little power was in you has departed. Your brother, the
Poet, has been steadily working while you have slept" — it will
be perceived that Conscience spoke from imperfect information.
" He will produce a great book, and live. You will die. The
grave will close over you, and you will be forgotten."

It was a hard saying, and the Artist groaned as he listened
to it.

In the Workshop, Cornelius also, startled into action,
spread out upon the table a bundle of papers which had been
lying undisturbed in his desk for a dozen years or more. They
were poems he had written in his youth, unpublished verses,
thoughts iu rhyme such as an imaginative young man easily

i i

282

TIIK GOT. DEN BUTTERFLY.

pours forth, rciproilucing the fashion of the time and the

thoughts of others.

He began to read tliese over again with

mingled pleasure and pain. For the thoughts seemed strange
to him. He felt +hat they were good and lofty thoughts, but
the conviction forced it«(.iif upon him that the Ijrain which had
produced them was changed. No more of such good matter
was left within it. The lines of thought were changed. The
poetic faculty, a delicate plant, which droops unless it is watered
and carefully tended, was dead within him.

And the whole of the Epic to be written.

Not a line done, not a single episode on paper, though to
Phillis he claimed to have done so much.

He seized a pen, and with trembling fingers and agitated
brain forced himself to write.

In half an hour he tore the paper into shreds, and, with a
groan, threw down the pen. The result was too feeble.

Then too he be^an to meditate, like liis brother in the Studio,
Presently his guardian angel, who very seldom got such a
chance, began to admonish him, even as the dean admonishes
an erring undergraduate.

" You are fifty," said the invisible Censor. " What have
you done with yourself for twf^nty years and more '? Your
best thoughts have passed away ; the poetical eye is dim ; you
will Avrite no more. Your brother, the Artist, is busy with
pencil and brain. He will j^roduce a great work and live for
ever. You will do nothing ; you will go down into the pit and
be forgotten.

It was too much for the Poet. His lips trembled, his hand
shook, li could no more rest in his chair.

He walked backwards and forwards, the voice pursuing him.

" Wasted years ; wasted energies ; wasted gifts ; your chance
is gone. You cannot write now.''

Poets are more susceptible than artists. That is the reason
why Cornelius rushed out of the Workshop to escape this torture,
and sought his brother Humphrey.

Humphrey started like a guilty person. His face was pale,
his eye was restless.

" Cornelius 1 "

" Do not let me disturb you, my dear brother. You are
happy ; you are at work ; your sou' is at peace."

" And you, Cornelius ? "

THK GOLDEN HUTTERFLY.

233

and the
;ain with
I strange
hts, but
hich had
d matter
h1. The
watered

lOUgh to

agitated

1, with a

! Studio,
, such a
nonishes

at have
( Your
m ; you
isy with
Hve for
pit and

lis hand

ng him.
' chance

; reason
torture,

as pale,
''ou are

"I am not at ])eace. I am restless this morning. 1 am
nervous and agitated."

" So am 1, Cornelius. I cannot vt^ork. My pencil refuses
to obey my brain."

" My own case. My pen will not write what I wish. The
link between the brain and the nerves is for the moment
severed."

" Let us go out, brother. It is now three. We will walk
slowly in the direction of the Langham Hotel."

As they put on their hats Cornelius stopped, and said
reflectively :

" The nervous system is a little shaken witli both of us. Can
you suggest anything, brother Humphrey 1"

" The best thing for a shaken nervous system," replied
Humphrey promptly, " is a glass of champagne. I will get
some champagne for you, brother Cornelius."

He returned presently with a modest pint bottle, which they
drank together, Humphrey remarking (in italics) that in such
a case it is not a question of what a man ivants, so much as of
what he needs.

A pint of champagne is not much between two men, but it
produced an excellent eftect upon the Twins. Before it they
were downcast ; they looked around \v^ith the furtive eyes of
conscious imposture ; their hands trembled. After it they
raised their heads, laughed, and looked boldly in each other's
eyes, assumed a gay and confident air, and presently marched
off arm-in-arm to call upon the Patron.

Gilead Beck, unprepared to see both brethren, welcomed
them with a respect almost overwhelming. It was his first
interview with Genius.

They introduced each other.

" Mr. Beck," said Cornelius, " allow me to introduce my
brother, Humphrey Jagenal. In his case the world is satisfied
with the Christian name alone, without the ceremonial prefix.
He is, as you know, the Artist."

If his brother had been Titian or Correggio he could not
have said more.

**Sir," said Mr. Beck, shaking Humphrey's hand warmly," I
am proud indeed to make your acquaintance. I am but a
rough man myself, sir, but I respect genius."

■■ \

1 1?

284

THE (lOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

"Then," saifl Humphrey, with admirable presence of mind,
" Allow me to introduce my brother. Cornelius Jagenal, as
you doubtless know, Mr. Beck, is the Poet."

Mr. Beck did not know it, and said so. But he shook
hands with Cornelius none the less cordially.

" Sir, I have been knocking about the world, and have not
read any poetry since I was a boy. Then I read Alexander
Pope. You know Pope, Mr. Jagenal ? "

Cornelius smiled, as if he might allow some merit to Po.^e,
thougli small in comparison with his own.

" I have never met with your poems, Mr. Cornelius Jagenal,
or your pictures, Mr. Humphrey, but I hope you will now en-
able me to do so."

" Mv Vjrother is engaged — " said Cornelius.

" My brother is engaged — " began Humphrey. " Pardon,
brother."

" Sit down, gentlemen. Will you take anything '? In Cali-
fornia, up country, we always begin with a drink. Call for
what you please, gentlemen. Sail in, as we say."

They took champagne, for the second time that day, and
then their eyes began to glisten.

Mr. Beck observed that they were both alike — small and
fragile-looking men, with bright eyes and delicate features ; he
made a mental note to the effect that they would never advance
their own fortunes. He also concluded from their red noses,
and from the way in which they straightened their backs after
placing themselves outside the champagne, that they loved the
goblet, and habitually handled it too often.

" Now, gentlemen," he began, after making these observa-
tions, " may I be allowed to talk business ? "

They both bowed.

"Genius, gentlemen, is apt to be careless cf the main chance.
It don't care for the almighty dollar ; it lets fellows like me
heap lip the stamps. What can we do but ask Genius to dig
into our Pile ? "

Humphrey poured out another glass of champagne for his
brother, and one for himself. Then he turned to Cornelius and
nodded gravely.

" Cornelius, Mr. Beck, so far as I understand him, speaks
the strongest common sense."

ttlE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

23i5

*' We agree Witti you so far, Mr, Beck," said Cornelius criti-
cally, because he was there to give moral support to his brother.
" Why should I have any delicacy in saying to a young man,
or a man of any age," he added doubtfully, for the years of the
Twins seemed uncertain, * You, sir, are an Artist and a Genius.
Take a cheque and carry out your ideas' 1 "

" What reason indeed 1 " asked Cornelius. " The offer does
honour to both "

" Or to another man, * You, sir, are a Poet. Why should
the cares of the world interfere with your thoughts ? Take a
cheque and make the world rejoice.' 1 "
Humphrey clapped his hands.

"The world lies in travail for such a patron of poetry," he
said.

" Why, then, we are agreed," said Mr. li ck. " Gentlemen,
I say to you both, collectively, let me usher into the world those
works of genius which you are bound to produce. You, sir,
are painting a picture. When can you finish me that picture 1 "
" In six months," said Humphrey, his brain suffused with
a rosy warmth of colour, which made him see things in a im-
possibly favourable light.

" I buy that picture, sir, at your own price," said the patron.
" I shall exhibit it in London, and it shall then go to New
York with me. And you, Mr. Cornelius Jagenal, are engaged
upon poems. When would you wish to publish your verses V
" My Epic, the Upheaving of JElfred, will he ready for
publication about the end of November," said Cornelius.

Humphrey felt a passing pang of jealousy as he perceived
that his brother would be before the world a month in advance
of himself. But what is a month compared with immortality ?
" I charge myself, sir, if you will allow me," said the Ameri-
can, " with the production of that work. It shall be printed
in the best style possible, on the thickest paper made, and
illustrated by the best artist that can be found — you, perhaps,
Mr. Humphrey Jagenal It shall be bound in Eussian leather ;
its exterior shall be worthy of its contents, and as for business
arrangements, gentlemen, you will perhaps consider them at
your leisure, and let me know what you think. We shall be
sure to agree, because, if you will not think it shoddy in me to

I -

(
I

< 1

E' ij
I

'\\

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236

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

say so, I lijive my IMlo to dig into. And I shall sen«l you, if
you will allow me, gentlemen, a small cheque each in advance."

They murmure(i assent and rose to go.

" If you would favour me further, gentlen)en, by dining
with me — say this day week — I should take it as a great dis-
tinction. I hope, with the assistance of Mr. Dunquerque, to
have a few prominent men of letters to meet you. I want to
have my table full of genius."

" Can we, brother Humphrey, accept Mr. Beck's invitation? "

Cornelius asked as if they were weeks deep in engagements.
As it was, nobody ever asked them anywhere, and they had no
engagements at all.

Humphrey consulted a pocket-book with grave face.

♦' We can, Mr. Beck."

" And if you know any one else, gentlemen, any men of
Literature and Art who will come too, bring them along with
you, and I shall feel it an honour."

They knew no one connected with Literature and Art, not
even a printer's devil, but they did not say so.

At twelve o'clock, toward the close of this fatiguing day,
Cornelius asked Humphrey with a little hesitation if he really
thought he should have finished his great work in six months.

" Art cannot be forced, Cornelius," said the Painter, airily.
" If I am not ready, T shall not hesitate to consider the pledge
conditional. My work must be perfect ere it leave my hands."

" And mine too," said the Poet. " I will never consent to
let a poem of mine go forth unfinished to the world. The
work must be polished ad miguem."

" This is a memorable day, brother. The tumblers are
empty. Allow me. And, Cornelius, I really do think that
considering the way in which we have been treated by Phillis
Fleming, and her remarks about afternoon work, we ought to
call and let her understand the reality of our reputation."

" We will, Humphrey. But it is not enough to recover lost
ground ; we must advance farther. The fortress shall be made
to surrender."

" Let us drink to your success, brother, and couple with the
toast the name of Phillis — Phillis — Phillis Jagenal, brother ? "

They drank that toast, smiling unutterable things.

■t li

THE GOLDEN BUTTEHFJ.Y.

237

CHAPTER XXIII.

" Call mo not fool till iloavcn hath scut me fortune."

HEN Jack DuiKiueifiue communicated to Lawrence
Colquhoun the fact ot" liaving made the acquaintance
of Miss Fleming, and subsequently that of Mrs.
1/Estrange, Lawrence expressed no surprise and felt no suspi-
cions. Probably, had he felt any, they would have been at
once set aside, because Col<iuhoun was not a man given to cal-
culate the future chances, and to disquiet himself about possi-
ble events. Also at this time he was taking little interest in
Phillis. A pretty piquante girl ; he devoted a whole day to
her ; drove her to Twickenham, and placed her in perfect
safety under the charge of his cousin. What more was
wanted 1 Agatha wrote to him twice a week or so, and when
he had time he read the letters. They were all about Phillis,
and most of them contained the assurance that he had no en-
tanglements to fear.

" Entanglements ! " he murmured impatiently. " As if a.
man cannot dine with a girl without falling in love with her.
Women are always thinking that men want to be married."

He was forgetting, after the fashion of men who have gone
through the battle, how hot is the fight for those who are just
beginning it. Jack Dunquerque was four-and-twenty ; he was
therefore, so to speak, in the thick of it. Phillis's eyes were like
two quivers filled with darts, and when she turned them inno-
cently upon her friend the enemy, the darts flew straight at
him and transfixed him as if he were another Sebastian. Col-
quhoun's time was past ; he was clothed in the armour of in-
difference which comes with the years, and he was forgetting
the past.

Still, had he known of the visit to the Tower of London, the
rowing on the river, the luncheons in Carnarvon -square, it is
possible that even he might have seen the propriety of request-
ing Jack Dunquerque to keep out of danger for the future.

He had no plans for Phillis, except of the simplest kind. She

,\ f

238

T'fK (JOLOKN BU'lTKHKLY.

'et about him,

..il unrighteous

was to reni.ain in rharge of Agatha for a year, and then she
would come out. He hoped that she would marry well, be-
cause her father, had he lived, would have wished it. And tlmt
was all he hoi)ed about her.

Ho had his private worries at this time— those already in-
dicated — connected witli Victoria Cassilis. The ice once
broken, that lady allowed him no rest. She wrote to him on
some pretence nearly ev(?ry day ; she sent her maid, the un-
lovely one, with three-cornered notes all about nothing ; she
made him meet her in society ; she made him dine with her
it seemed as if she was spreading a sort of
through the meshes of which he could not es

With the knowledge of what had been, it w
thing for Colquhoun to go to the house of Gabriel Cassilis ; he
ought not to be there, he felt ; it was the one house in all
London in which he had no business. And yet — how to
avoid it ?

And Gabriel Cassilis seemed to like him ; evidently liked to
talk to him ; singled him out, this great financier, and talked
to him as if Colquhoun too was interested in stock ; called upon
him at his chambers, and told him, in a dry but convincing
way, something of his successes and his projects.

It was after many talks of this kind that Lawrence Col-
quhoun, f'^igetful of the past, and not remembering that of all
men in the world, Gabriel Cassilis was the last who should
have charge of his money, put it all in his hands, with power-
of-attorney to sell out and reinvest for hira. But that was no-
thing, Colquhoun was not the man to trouble about money.
He was safe in the hands of this great and successful capitalist;
he gave no thought to any risk ; he congratulated himself on
his cleverness in persuading the financier to take the money
for him ; and he continued to see Victoria Cassilis nearly every
day.

They quarrelled when they did
versation between them in which
bitter, and he something savage.

the courage to refuse the invitations which were almost com-
mands. Nor could she resign the sweet joy of making him
feel her power.

A secret, you see, has a fatal fascination about it. School-girls,

meet ; there was not a con-
she did not say something
And yet he did not have

THK CJOLDKN HUTTKRKLY.

230

I am told, arc given to invent little secrets which mean noising,
and to whisper them in the ears of their dearest friends t(- tlu;
exclusion of the rest. The possession of this unknown and
invaluable fact brings them together, whispering and conspir-
ing at every possible moment. Freemasons again — how are they
kept together, except by tiie possession of secrets which are
said to have been published over and over again 1 And when
two people have a secret wliich means — all that the secret
between Colquhoun and Mrs. Cassilis meant, they can no more
help being drawn together than the waters can cease to find
their own level. To be together, to feel that tiie only other
person in the workl who knows that secret is with you, is a
kind of safety. Yet what did it matter to Colquhoun 1 Simply
nothing. The secret was his as well as hers ; but the reasons
for keeping it a secret were not his at all, but hers entirely.

So Phillis was neglected by her guardian, and left to Agatha
and Jack Dunquerque with such results as we shall see.

So Lawrence Cohjuhoun fell into the power of this man of
stocks, about the mouth of whose City den the footsteps
pointed all one way. He congratulated himself ; he found out
Gilead Beck, and they congratulated each other.

" I don't see," said Colquhoun, who had already enough for
four bachelors, " why one's income should not be doubled."

" With Mr. Cassilis," said Gilead Beck, " you sign cheques,
and he gives you dividends. It's like lie, because you can go
on pumping."

" He understands more than any other living man," said
Lawrence.

" He is in the inner track, sir," said Mr. B';ck.

" And a man," said Lawrence, " ready to take in his friends
with himself."

** A high-toned and a whole-souled man," said Gilead Beck,
with enthusiasm. " That man, sir, I do believe, would take
in the hull world."

240

THE GOLDEN BUTTliRFLY.

't-

CHAPTER XXIV.

' I liad rather hear a brazen candlestick turn'd,
Or a dry wheel (^rate i>n an axle-tree ;
And that would set niy teeth nothing on edge,
Nothinjr so nnich as niincinf? iwictry."

ACK DUNQ.UERQUE repaired to the Langham, the day
^^f after the call of the Twins, with a face in which cheertul
i^^ anticipation and anxiety were curiously blended. He
was serious with his lips, but he laughed with his eyes. And
he spoke with a little hesitation not often observed in him.

'• I think your dinner will come off next Wednesday," he
said. "And I have been getting together your party for you."

" That is so, Mr. Dunquerque? " asked Gilead Beck with a
solemnity which hardly disguised his pride and joy. " That
is so ? And those great men, your friends, are actually com-
ing ? "

" I have seen them all, personally. And I put the case be-
fore each of them. I said, * Here is an American gentleman
most anxious to make your acquaintance ; he has no letters of
introduction to you, but he is a sincere admirer of your
genius ; he appreciates you perhaps better than any other living
man.' "

" H'jap it up. Mr. Dunquerque," said the Man of Oil. " Heap
it up. Tell them I am Death on appreciation."

" That is in substance what I did tell them. Then I ex-
plained that you deputed me, or gave me permission, to ask
them to dinner. ' The honour,' I said, 'is mutual. On the
one hand, my friend, Mr. Gilead P. Beck ' — I ventured to say,
" my friend, Mr. Gilead P. Beck—' "

" If you hadn't said that you should have been scalped and
gouged. Go on, Mr. Dunquerque ; go on, sir."

" * On the one hand, my friend, Mr. Gilead P. Beck — ' "

" That is so — that is so."

'* ' Will feel himself honoured by your company ; on the
other hand, it will be a genuine source of pleasure for you to
know that you are as well known and as thoroughly appreciated
on the other side of the water as you are here.* 1 am not

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

241

much of a speechmaker, and I assure you that littlu effort cost
me a good deal of thought. However, the end of it is all you
care about. Most of the writing swells will come, either on
Wednesday next or on any other day you please."

" Mr. Dunquerque, not a day passes but you load me with
obligations. Tell me, if you please, who they are."

" Well, you will say I have done pretty well, I think." Jack
pulled out a paper. '* And you will know most of the names.
First of all, you would like to see the old Philosopher of Cheyne
Walk, Thomas Carlyle, as your guest ] "

" Carlyle, sir, is a name to conjure with in the States. When
I was Editor of the Clearville Roarer I had an odd volume of
Carlyle, and I used to quote him as long as the book lasted. It
perished in a fight. And to think that I shall meet the man
who wrote that work! An account of the dinner must be
written for the Eockoleaville Gazette. We'll have a special re-
porter, Mr. Dunquerque. We'll get a man who'll do it up to
the handle."

Jack looked at his list again.

'* What do you say of Professor Huxley and Mr. Darwin 1 "

Mr. Beck shook his head. These two writers began to
flourish — that is, to be read — in the States after his editorial
days, and he knew them not.

" I should say they were j)rominent citizens, likely, if I knew
what they'd written. Is Professor Huxley a Professing Chris-
tian / There was a Professor Habbakkuk Huckster once down
Empire City way in the Moody and Sankey business, with an
interest in the organs and a percentage on the hymn-books ;
but they're not relations, I suppose ? Not probable. And the
other genius — what is his name — Darwin 1 Grinds novels
perhaps ? "

" Historical works of fiction. Great in genealogy is Darwin."

" Never mind my ignorance, Mr. Dunquerque. And go on,
sir. I'm powerful interested."

" Ruskin is coming ; and I had thought of Robert Browning,
the poet, but I am afraid he may not be able to be present.
You see. Browning is so much sought after by the younger men
of the day. They used to play polo and billiards and other
frivolous things till he came into fashion with his light and
graceful verse, so simple that all may understand it. His last
P

242

THE (JOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

poem, I believe, is now sung iibout the streets. However,
there are Tennyson and Swinburne — they are both coming.
Buchanan I would ask, if I knew him, but I don't. George
Eliot, of course, I could not invite to a stag party. Trollope we
might get, perhaps — "

" Give me Charles Reade, sir," said Gilead Beck. " He is the
novelist they like on our side."

" I am afraid I could not persuade him to come ; though he
might be pleased to see you if you would call at his house, per-
haps. However, Beck, the great thing is — " he folded up his
list and placed it in his pocket-book — " that you shall have a
dinner of authors as good as any that sat down to the Lord
Mayor's spread last year. Authors of all sorts, and the very
best. None of your unknown little hungry anonymous beggars
who write novels in instalments for weekly papers. Big men,
sir, with big names. Men you'll be proud to know. And they
shall be asked for next Wednesday."

"That gives only four days. It's terrible sudden," said
Gilead Beck. He shook his head with as much gravity as if
he was going to be hanged in four days. Then he sat down
and began to write the names of his guests.

" Professor Huxley," he said, looking up. " I suppose I can
buy that clergyman's sermons ? And the Universal Genius
who reels out the historical romances, Mr. Darwin ? I shall
get his works, too. And there's Mr. liuskin, Mr. Robert
Browning — "

" What are you going to do ?"

"Well, Mr. Dunquerque, I am going to devote the next four
days, from morning till night, to solid preparation for that
evening. I shall go out, right away, and I shall buy every
darned book those great men have written ; and if I sit up every
night over the job, I'm bound to read every word."

" ! " said Jack. " Then I advise you to begin with Robert
Browning."

" The light and graceful verse that everybody can under-
stand 1 I will,'' said Gilead Beck. " Thev shall not find me
unacquainted with their poems. Mr. Dunquerque, for Lord's
sake, don't tell them it was all crammed up in four days."

" Not I. But — I say — you know, authors don't like to talk
about their own books."

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

243

" That's the modesty of real genius," said the American, with
admiration.

It will be perceived that Jack spoke with a certain rashness.
Most authors I have myself known do love very much to talk
about their own books,

" That is their modesty. But they will talk about each
other's books. And it is as well to be prepared. What I'm
bound to make them feel, somehow, is that they have a man
before them who has gone in for the hull lot and survived, A
tough contract, Mr. Dunquerque, but you trust me."

" Very well," said Jack, putting on his hat, " only don't ask
them questions. Authors don't like being questioned. Why,
I shouldn't wonder if, next Wednesday, some of them pre
tended not to know the names of their own books. Don't you
know that Shakespeare, when he went down to Stratford, to
live like a retired grocer at Leytonstone, used to pretend not
to know what a play meant 1 And when a strolling company
came round, and the manager asked permission to play Homlet,
he was the first to sign a petition to the mayor not to allow
immoral exhibitions in the borough."

" Is that so, sir ? "

" It may be so," said Jack, " because I never heard it contra-
dicted."

As soon as he was gone, Gilead Beck sought the nearest
bookseller's shop and gave an extensive order. He requested
to be furnished with all the works of Carlyle, Kuskin, Tenny-
son, Swinburne, Browning, Buchanan, Huxley, Darwin, and a
few more. Then he returned to the Langham, gave orders
that he was at home to no one except Mr. Dunquerque, took off
his coat, lit a cigar, ordered more champagne, and began the
first of the three most awful days he ever spent in all his life.

The books presently came in a great box, and he spread
them on the table with a heart that sank at the mere contem-
plation of their numbers. About three hundred volumes in
all. And only four days to get through them. Seventy-five
volumes a day, say, at the rate of fifteen hours' daily work ;
five an hour, one every twelve minutes. He laid his watch
upon the table, took the first volume of Robert Browning that
was uppermost, sat down in his long chair with his feet up, and
began.

244

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

The book was Fifine at the Fair. Cilf^ad Beck road cheer-
fully and with great ease the first eigiit or ten pages. Tlien
he discovered with a little annoyance that he understood
nothing whatever of the author's meaning. "That comes of too
rapid reading," he said. So he turned back to the beginning
and began again with more deliberation. Ten minutes clean
wasted, and not even half a volume got through. When he
had got to the tenth page for the second time, he questioned
himself once more, and found that he understood less than
ever. Were things right ? Could it be Browning, or some im-
postor ? Yes ; the name of Robert Browning was on the title-
page ', also it was English. And the words held together, and
were not sprinkled out of a pepper-pot. He began a third
time. Same result. He threw away his cigar and wiped his
brow, on which the cold dews of trouble were gathering
thickly.

"This is the beginning of the end, Gilead P. Beck," he mur-
mured. " The Lord, to try you, sent His blessed He, and
you've received it with a proud stomach. Now you air going
off your head. Plain English, and you can't take in a single
sentence."

It was in grievous distress of mind that he sprang to his feet
and began to walk about the room.

" There was no softenin' yesterday," he murmured, trying to
reassure himself. " Why should there be to-day ? Softenin'
comes by degrees. Let us try again. Great Jehoshaphat ! "

He stood up to his work, leaning against a window-post, and
took two pages first, which he read very slowly. And then he
dropped the volume in dismay, because he understood less than
nothing.

It was the most disheartening thing he had ever attempted.

he said. " I'd

" I'd rather fight John Halkett over

again.

rather sit with my finger on a trigger for a week, expecting
Mr. Huggins to call upon me."

Then he began to construe it line by line, thinking every
now and then that he saw daylight.

It is considered rather a mark of distinction, a separating
seal upon the brow, by that poet's admirers to reverence his
later works. Their creed is that because a poem is rough,
harsh, ungramniatical, and dr.rk, it must have a meaning as deep
as its black obscurity.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

245

" It's like the texts of a copybook," said Gilead. "Pretty
things, all of them, separate. Put them together, and where
are they ? I guess this book would read better upsy down."

He poured cold water on his head for a quarter of an hour
or so, and then tried reading aloud.

This was worse than any previous method, because he com-
prehended no more of the poet's meaning, and the rough hard
words made his front teeth crack and fly about the room in
splinters.

" Cffisar's ghost ! " he exclaimed, thinking what he should do
if Robert Browning talked as he wrote. "The human Jaw
isn't built that could stand it."

Two hours were gone. There ought to have been ten volumes
got through, and not ten pages finished of a single one.

He hurled Fifine to the other end of the room, and took up
another work by the same poet. It was Red Cotton Nightcap
Country, and the title looked promising. No doubt a light
and pretty fairy story. Also the beginning reeled itself off
with a fatal fjicility which allured the reader onwards.

When the clock strucV ix he was sitting among the volumes
on the table, with Bed Cotton Nightcap Country still in his
hand. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair was pushed in dis-
order about his head, his cheeks were flushed, his hands were
trembling, the nerves in his face were twitching.

He looked about him wildly, and tried to collect his facul-
ties. Then he arose and solemnly cursed Robert Browning.
He cursed him eating, drinking, and sleeping. And then he
took all his volumes and, disposing them carefully in the fire-
place, he set light to them.

" I wish," he said, " that I could put ^he Poet there too."
X think he would have done it, this mild and gentle-hearted
stranger, so strongly was his spirit moved to wrath.

He could not stay any longer in the room. It seemed to be
liaunted with ghosts of unintelligible sentences ; things in
familiar garb, which floated before his eyes and presented
faces of inscrutable mystery. He seized his hat and fled.

He went straight to Jack Dunquerque's club, and found that
hero in the reading-room.

" I have a favour to ask you," he began in a hurried and

246

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

(',

nervous manner. '*If you have not yet asked Mr. Eobert
Browning to the little spread next week, don't."

" Certainly not, if you wish it. Why ? "

" Becaase, sir, I have sj^ent eight hours over his works."

Jack laughed.

"And you think you have gone oft" your head ? I'll tell you
a secret. Everybody does at first ; and then we all fall into
the dodge, and go about pretending to understand him."

" But the meaning, Mr. Dunquerque, the meaning 1 "
♦* " Hush ! he hasn't got any. Only no one dares to say so,

and it's intellectual to admire him."

" Well, Mr. Dunquerque, I guess I don't want to see that
writer at my dinner, anyhow."

" Very well then. He shall not be asked."

" Another day like this, and you may bury me with my
boots on. Come with me somewhere, and have dinner as far
away from those volumes of Mr. Browning as we can get in
the time."

They dined at Greenwich. In the course of the next three
days Gilead Beck read diligently. He did not master the three
hundred volumes, but he got through some of the works of
every writer, taking them in turn.

The result was a glorious and inextricable mess. Carlyle,
Swinburne, Huxley, Darwin, Tennyson and all of them were
hopelessly jumbled in his brains. He mixed up the Sartor
Uesartus with the Missing Link, confounded the history of
Frederick the Great with that of Queen Elizabeth, and thought
that Maud and Atalanta in Calydon were written by the same
poet. But time went on, and the Wednesday evening, to which
he looked forward with so much anxiety and pride, rapidly
drew near.

THE GOLDEN BUTTE II FJ.Y.

247

CHAPTER XXV.

three

•' Why, she is cold t<» all the world."

ND while Gilead Beck was setting himself to repair in
a week the defects of his early education, Jack Dun-
querque was spending his days hovering round the
light of Phillis's eyes. The infatuated youth frequented ,the
house as if it was his own. He liked it, Mrs. L'Estrange liked
it, and Phillis liked it. Agatha looked with matronly suspicion
for indications and proofs of love in her ward's face. She saw none,
because Phillis was not in love at all. Jack to her was the
first friend she made on coming out of her shell. Very far, indeed,
from being in love. Jack looked too for any of those signs of
mental agitation wliich . ,ccompany, or are supposed to accom-
pany, the birth of love. There were none. Her face lit up
when she saw him ; sht treated him with the frankness of a
girl who tells her Srothcr everything ; but she did not blush
when she saw him, nor was she ever otherwise than the
sweetest and lightest-hearted of sisters. He knew it, and he
gi'oaned to think of it. The slightest sign would have
encouraged him to speak ; the smallest indication that Phillis
felt something for him of what he felt for her would have been
to him a command to tell what was in his heart. But she
made no sign. It was Jack's experience, perhaps, which taught
him that he is a fool who gives his happiness to a woman
before he has learned to divine her heart. Those ever make
the most foolish marriages who re most ignorant of the sex.
Hooker the Judicious is a case in point, and many a ghostly
man could, from his country parsonage, tell ths same tale.

Jack was not like the Judicious Divine ; he was wary,
though susceptible ; he had his share of craft and subtlety ; and
yet he was in love, in spite of all that craft, with a girl who
only liked him in return.

Had he possessed greater power of imagination he would
have understood that he was expecting what was impossible.
You cannot get wine out of an empty bottle, nor reap corn

ril

4 a

24H

THK (iOLlJKN BUTTKllFI.Y.

without first sowing the seed ; and he forgot that Phillis, who
was unahle to read novels, knew nothing, positively nothing,
of that great passion of Love which makes its victims half
divine. It was always necessary, in thinking of this girl, to
remember her thirteen years of c{i])tivity. Jack, more than
any other person, not excepting Agatha L'Estrange, knew what
she would say and think on most things. Only in this matter
of love he was at fault. Here he did not know, because here
he was selfish. To all the world except Jack and Agatha she
was an impossible girl ; she said things that no other girl would
have said ; she thought as no one else thought. To all those
who live in a tiglit little island of their own, fortified by triple
batteries of dogma, she was impos-iible. But to those who
accepted and compr ided the conditions of Phillis's educa-
tion she was possibl al, charming and full of interest.

Jack continually thought what Phillis would say and what
she would tliink. For her sake he noticed the little tilings
around him, the things among which we grow up unobservant.
We see so little for the most part. Things to eat and drink
interest us ; things that please the eye ; fair women and rare
wine. We are like cattle grazing on the slopes of the Alps.
Around us rise the mountains, with their ever-changing marvels
of light and colour ; the sunlight flashes from their peaks ; the
snow-slopes stretch away and upwards to the deep blues be-
yond in curves as graceful as the line of woman's beauty ; at
our feet is the belt of pines perfumed and warmed by the sum-
mer air ; the mountain stream leaps, bubbles, and laughs,
rushing from the prison of its glacier cave ; high overhead
soars the Alpine eagle ; the shepherds jodel in the valleys ;
the rapid echoes roll the song up into the immeasurable silence
of the hills, — and amid all this we brouse and feed, eyes down-
ward turned.

So this young man, awakened by the quick sympathies of
the girl he loved, lifted his head, taught by her, and tried to
catch, he too, something of the child-like wonder, the appre-
ciative admiration, the curious enthusiasm with which she saw
every thing. Most men's thoughts are bound by the limits of
their club at night, and their chambers or their offices by day ;
the suns rise and set, and the outward world is unregarded.
Jack learned from Phillis to look at these unregarded things,

THE (JOLUKN BUTTEIIKLV.

249

Such simple pleasures as a sunset, the light upon the river, the
wild flowers on the bank, he actudh'^ tasted with delight, pro-
vided that she was beside him. And after a day of such Arca-
dian joys, he would return to town, and Hnd the chil) a thirsty
desert.

If Phillis had known anything about love, she would have
fallen in love with Jack long before ; but she did not. Yet he
made headway witli her, because he became almost necessary to
her life. She looked for his coming ; he brought her things
he had collected iu his " globe-trotting ;" he told her stories of
adventure ; he ruined himself in pictures ; and then he looked
for the love softening of her eyes, and it came not at all.

Yet Jack was a lovable sort of young man in maidens' eyes.
Everybody liked him to begin with. He was, like David, a
youth of a cheerful, if not of a ruddy, countenance. Agatha
L'Estrange remarked of him that it did her good to meet cheer-
ful young men — they were so scarce. " I know fiuantities of
young men, Phillis, my dear ; and I assure you that most of
them are enough to break a woman's heart even to think of.
There is the athletic young man — he is dreadful indeed, only
his time soon goes by ; and there is the young man who talks
about getting more brain power. To be sure he generally looks
as if he wants it. There is the young man who ought to turn
red and hot wh^n the word Prig is used. There is the bad
young man who keeps betting-books ; and the miserable young
man who grovels ;id flops in a Ritualist church. I know young
men who are envioas and backbite their friends ; and young
men who aspire to be somebody else ; and young men who pose
as infidels, and would rather be held up to execration in a paper
than not to be mentioned at all. But, my dear, I don't know
anybody who is so cheerful and contented as Jack. Fie isn't
clever and learned, but he doesn't want to be ; he isn't sharp,
and will never make money, but he is better without it ; and he
is true, I am sure."

Agatha unconsciously used the word in the sense which most
women mean when they speak of a man's truth. Phillis under-
stood it to mean that Jack Dunquerque did not habitually tell
fibs, and thought the remark superfluous. But it will be observed
that Agatha was fighting Jack's battle for him.

After all Jack might have taken heart had he thought that;

250

TJIK (JOLI)KN mriTKIlFLY.

all these visits and all this interest in himself were but the lay-
ing of the seed, which might grow into a goodly tree.

" If only she would look as if she cared for me, Tommy," he
bemoaned to Ladds.

" Hang it ! can't expect a girl to begin making eyes at you."

" Eyes ! Phillis make eyes ! Tommy, as you grow older you
grow coarser. It's a great pity. That comes of this club life.
Always smoking and playing cards."

Tommy grinned. Virtue was as yet a flower new to Jack
Dunquerque's buttonhole, and he wore it with a pride difficult
to dissemble.

" Better go and have it out with Cohjuhoun," Tomrny ad-
vised. " He won't care. He's taken up with his old flame,
Mrs. Cassilis, again. Always dangling at her heels, I'm told.
Got no time to think of Miss Fleming. Great fool, Colquhoun.
Always was a fool, I believe. Might have gone after flesh and
blood instead of a marble statue. Wonder how Cassilis likes
it."

" There you go," cried Jack impatiently. " Men are worse
than women. At Twickenham one never hears this foolish
sort of gossip."

" Suppose not. Flowers and music, muffin, tea, and spoons.
Well, the girl's worth it. Jack ; the more flowers and music you
get the better it will be for you. But go and square it with
Colquhoun."

chaptp:u XXVI.

" A ri^fht royal baiu|uot."

f) T seven o'clock on the great Wednesday Gilead Beck
was pacing restlessly his inner room, the small apart-
ment which formed his sanctum, waiting to receive his
guests. All the preparations were complete : a quartette of
singers was in readiness, with a piano, to discourse sweet music
3,fter the dinner ; the noblest banquet ever ordered at the

THF-: GOLDEN IJUTTRRFLY.

251

Langham was timed for a quarter to eight punctually ; the
wine was in ice ; the waiters were adding the last touches to
the artistic decorations of a table which, laid for thirteen only,
might have been prepared for the Prince of Wales. In fact,
when the bill came up a few days later, even Gilead Beck, man
of millions, quailed for a moment before its total. Think of
the biggest bill you ever had at V6four's — for francs read
pounds, and then multiply by ten ; think of the famous Lord
Warden bill for the Emperor Napoleon when he landed in all
his glory, and then consider that the management of the Lang-
ham is in no way behind that of the Dover hostelry. But
this was to come, and when it did come, was received lightly.

Gilead Beck took a last look at the dinner-table. The few
special injunctions he had given were carried out ; they were
not many, only that the shutters should be partly closed and
the curtains drawn, so that they might dine by artificial light ;
that the table and the room should be entirely illuminated by
wax -candles, save for one central lamp, in which should be
burning, like the sacred flame of Vesta, his own rock-oil. He
also stipulated that the flowers on the table should be disposed
in shallow vessels, so as to lie low, and not interfere with the
freedom of the eyes across the table. Thus there was no cen-
tral tower of flowers and fruit. To compensate for this he
allowed a whole bower of exotics to be erected round the
room.

The long wall opposite the window was decorated with his
famous piece by an unknown master, bought of Bartholomew
Burls, known as " Sisera and Jael." As theframe had not yet been
made, it was wreathed about for its whole length and breadth
with flowers. The other pictures, also wreathed with flowers,
were genuine originals, bought of the same famous collector.
For the end of the room Gilead Beck had himself designed,
and partly erected with his own hands, an allegorical trophy.
From a pile of books neatly worked in cork, there sprang a jet
of water illuminated on either side by a hidden lamp burning
rock-oil. He had wished to have the fountain itself of oil, but
was overruled by Jack Dunquerque. Above, by a i invisible
wire, hovered a golden butterfly in gilded paper. And on
either side hung a fl;ig — that on the right displaying the Stars
and Stripes, that on the left the equally illustrious Union Jack,

252

THE OCI.DKN lUJlTKKFI.Y.

At every man's place lay a copy of the menu, in green and
gohl, elaborately decorated, a masterpiece of illumination.
Gilead Beck, after making quite sure that nothing was neglect-
ed, took his own, and, retiring to the inner room, read it for
the fiftieth time with a pleasure as intense as that of the young
author who reads his first proof-sheet. It consisted of a large
double card. On the top of the left-hand side was painted in
colours and gold a butterfly. And that side read as follows :
(I regret that the splendours of the original cannot be here re-
produced) :

f angbam '§oU\,

May 20, 187r..

r'.*^'V.--VN •\J\t

DINNER IN HONOUR OF UTERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

UIVKN BY
GILEAD P. BECK,

AN OBSCURE AMBKK.'AN OITIZEX RAISED AT LEXINGTON,

WHO STRUrK ILK IN A MOST SURl'KISINCi MANNER

BY THE HELP uE

THF- GOLDEN BUTTERFLY,

BUT WHO DESPISES SHODDY AND RESPECTS GENIUS.

^epwi8i(tttativej9i of ^literature, %tu ana ^txtntt,

Thomas Carlyle,
Alfred Tennyson,
John Ruskin,
Algernon Swinburne,
George Augustus Sala,
Charles Darwin,
Professor Huxley,
Frederick Leighton, R.A.,
Cornelius Jagenal, and
Humphrey Jagenal,

WITH

captain LADDS, the HON. RONALD DUNQUERQUE, AND

GILEAD P. BECK.

254

THE (iOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

After this preamble, which occupied a whole side of the double
card, followed the menu itself.

I unwillingly suppress this. There are weaker brethren
who might on reading it feel dissatisfied with the plain lamb
and rhubarb tart of the sweet spring season. As a present
dignitary of the Church, now a colonial bishop, once a curate,
observed to me many years ago, a propos of tliirst, university
reminiscences, a neighbouring public-house, a craving for to-
bacco, and the fear of being observed, '' These weaker brethren
are a great nuisance."

Let it suffice that at tlie Langham they still speak of Gilead
Beck's great dinner with tears in their eyes. 1 believe a copy
Ox" the green-and-gold card is framed, and hung in the office so
as to catch the eye of poorer men when they are ordering din-
ners. It makes those of lower nature feel envious, and even
takes the conceit out of the nobler kind.

Gilead Beck, dressed for the banquet, was nervous and rest-
less. It seemed as if, for the first time, his wealth was about
to bring him something worth having. His face, always grave,
was as solemn as if he were fixing it for his own funeral.
From time to time he drew a paper from his pocket and read
it over. Then he replaced it, and with lips and arms went
through the action of speaking. It was his speech of the even-
ing, which he had carefully written and imperfectly committed
to memory. Like a famous American lawyer, the attitude he
assumed was to stand bent a little forward, the feet together,
the left hand hanging loosely at his side, w'nie he brandished
the right above his head.

In this attitude he was surprised by the Twins, who came a
quarter of an hour before the time. They were dressed with
great care, having each the sweetest little eighteenpennybou(|uet,
bought from the little shop at the right hand of the Market as
you go in, where the young lady makes it up before your eyes,
sticks the wire into it, and pins it at your buttonhole with her
own fair hands. Each brother in turn winked at her during
the operation. A harmless wink, but it suggested no end of
possible devilries should these two young gentlemen of fifty
find themselves loose upon the town. Those who saw it thought
of Mohocks, and praised the Lord for the New police.

They both looked very nice ; they entered with a jaunty

THE (JOLDEN BUTTKKKLY.

25r»

step, a c ireless backward toss of tho licad, parted lips, and
briglit eyes which faced fearlessly a critical but reverent world.
Nothing but the crow's-feet showed that the first glow of youth
was over ; nothing but a few streaks of grey in Hunphrey's
beard and Cornelius's hair showed that they were nearing the
Indian summer of life. Mr. Beck, seeing them enter so ^r' sh,
so bright, and so beaming, was more than ever puzzled at their
age. He was waiting for them in a nervous and rather excit-
able state of mind, as becomes one who is about to find him-
self face to face with the greatest men of his time.

" You, gentlemen," he said, " will sit near me, one each side,
if you will be so kind, just to lend a helping hand to the talk
when it flags. Phew ! it will be a rasper, the talk to-day.
I've read all their works, if I c^.n only remember them, and I
bought the History of English Literaiure yesterday to get a grip
of the hull subject. No use. I haven't got farther than Chau-
cer. Do you think they can talk about Chancer ? He wrote
the Canterbury Tales."

" Cornelius," said Humphrey, " you will be able to lead the
conversation to the Anglo-Saxon period."

" That period is too early, brother Humphrey," said Cor-
nelius. " We shall trust to you to turn the stream in the di-
rection wf tlie Kenaissance."

Humphrey shilted in his se:'t uneasily. Why this unwilling-
ness in either Twin to assume the lead on topics that had en-
gaged their attention for twenty years 1

Mr. Beck .shook iiis head.

" I mo«t wish now," he said, " that I hadn't asked them.
But it's a thnnd<rin' great honour. Mr. Dun({uer({ue did it
all for me. That young gentleman met those great writers, I
suppose, in tb<^ baronial halls of his brother, the Earl of
Isle worth."

" Do we know Lord Isleworth ? " asked Cornelius of Hum-
phrey.

" Lord Isleworth, Cornelius ? No ; I rather think that we
have never met him," said Humphrey to Cornelius.

" None of your small namew to-night," said Gilead Beck,
with serious and even pious joy. " The Lord Mayor may have
them at Guildhall. Mine are the big guns. I did want a
special report for my own Gazette, but Mr. f)ur'fjnerque thought

256

THE (iOLDEN BT TTERFLY.

i ■

■

i i

it better not to have it. P'r'a])s 'twould have seemed kind o'
shoddy. I ought to be satisfied witli the private honour, and
not want the public glory of it. What would they say in
Boston if they knew, or even in New York 1 "

" You should have a dinner for Poets alone," said Hum-
phrey, anxious for his brother.

" Or for Artists only," said Cornelius.

" Wal, gentlemen, we shall get on. As there's five minutes
to spare, would you like to give an opinion on the wine list,
and oblige me by your advice 1 "

The twins perused the latter document with sparkling eyes.
It was a noble list. Gilead Beck's plan was simple. He just
ordered the best of everything. For Sauterne, he read Chateau
Iquem; for Burgundy, he took Cliambertin; for Claret, Chateau
Lafitte ; for Champagne, Heidsieck ; for l^herry, Montilla ; a
Box Boutel wine for Hock; and for Fort, the '34. Never
before, in all its experiences of Americans, Russians, and re-
turned colonials, had the management of the Langham so
* thorough " a wine-bill to make o\it as for this dinner.

" Is that satisfactory, gentlemen 1 "

" Cornelius, what do'you think I "

*' Humphrey, I think as you do ; and that is, that this
princely selection shows Mr. Beck's true appreciation of Litera-
ture and Art."

" It is kind of you, gentlemen, to say so. I talked over the
dinner with the chef, and I have had themenou printed, as you
see it, in gilt and colours, which I am given to understand is
the corrert thing at the Guildhall. Would you like to look at
that?"

They showed the greatest desire to look at it. Humphrey
read it aloud with emphasis. AVhile he read, and while his
brother listened, Mr. Beck thought they seemed a good deal
older than before. Perhaps that was because their faces were
turned to the light, and the reflection through an open window
of the sinking sun showed up the crow's-feet round their eyes.

•' Humph ! Plovers' ''ggs. Clear inullagatawny ; clear, Cor-
nelius. Turtle-Hns Salmon — I translate the French. Turbot,
Lochleven trout-

" Very good indeed, so . - * said (, <»rnelius, with a palpable
smack of his lips.

TllK GOLDKN HLTTTIiUFLY

257

cind o'
ir, and
say in

uin-

" Lamh-cutlets with peas — a simple but excellent dish ; aspic
oi foic gni.'< — ah, two or three things which I cannot translate ;
a preparation of pigeon ; haunch of venison ; yes — "

" An excellent dinner, indeed," said Cornelius. "Pray go
on, Humphrey."

He bei'an to feel like Sancho in Barataria. So good a dinner
-eemed leally impossible.

" Duckling ; cabob curry of chicken-liver with l^ombay
ducks — really, Mr. Beck, this dinner is worth a dukedom."
" It is, indeed," said Cornelius, fcndingly.
" Canvas-back — ah ! — from Baltimore — Cornelius, this is
almost too much ; apricots in jelly, ice-pudding, grated Par-
mesan, strawberries, melons, peaches, nectarines (and only
May, Cornelius 1 ), ])in('s. West Indian bananas, custard apples
from Jamaica, and dried letchis from -China, Cornelius."

Humphrey handed the document to his brother with a look
of appeal which said volumes. One sentence in the volumes
was clearly, " JSay something appropriate."
Quoth Cornelius, deeply moved,

" This new Mieceuiis ransacks the corners of the earth to find
a fitting entertainment for men of genius. Humphrey, you
shall ] lint him."

" Coi lius, you shall sing his praise^."

By a simidtaneous impuls*^ the Twins turutHl to their patron,
and presented each a right hand. Gilead Beck had only one
right hand to gi^ e. He gave that to Cornelius, and the left to
Humphrey.

While this sMHHMnt of fri«'ndship was proceeding was heard
a sound as of iiun y men simultaneously stifling much laughter.
The door opene«l, and the other guests arrived in a body. They
were precede<l })y Jack Dnn(|uer(p2e, an<l on entering the room
dro^»f>eil, auk if i!»y word of coramancl, into Une, like soldiers on
parade. Seven of them were strangers, but Captain Ijadds
iBWight up the rear.

They were, as might be expected of such great mvn, a re-
markable assemblage. At the extreme rigiit stood a tall, well-
set-up old man, with tangletl gray locks, long gray eyebrows,
and an immense gray beard. His vigorous bearing belied the
look of age, and what part of his face could be seen had a re-
markably youtiiful appearance.

258

thp: golden butterfly.

Next to him were other two aged men, one of whom was
bent and bowed by the weight of years. They also had large
eyebrows and long gray beards ; and Mr. Beck remarked at
once that, so far as could be judged from the brightness of
their eyes, they had wonderfully preserved their mental'
strength. The others were younger men, one of them being
apparently a boy of eighteen or so.

Then followed a ceremony like a Uvea. Gilesid Beck stood
in the centre of the room, the table having been pushed back
into the corner. He was supporter I, right and left, by the
Twins, who formed a kind of Court, and above whom he
towered grandly with his height of six feet two. He held him-
self as ereit, and looked as solemn, as if he were the President of
the United States. The Twins, for their part, looked a little
as if they were his sons.

Jack Dun(|uerque acted as Lord Chamberlain or Master of
the Cernmonies. He wore an anxious face, and looked round
among the great men whom he preceded, as soon as they had
all filed in, with a glance which might have meant admonition,
had that been possible. And, indeed, a broad smile, which
was hovering like the sunlight upon their vciuerable faces, dis-
appeared . t the T-own of this young gentleman. It was very
curious.

It was the Grand Manner — that peculi.ar to Courts — in which
.lack Dunqueniue presented the first of the distinguished
guests t<i Mr. Beck.

'* Sir," he said, with low and awe struck voice, " before
you stands Thomas (^arlyle."

A tlirill ran through the American's veins as he grasped the
hand which had written so many splendid things, and looked
into the eyes which harboured such splendid thought. Then
he said in softened tones, because his soul was moved : " This
is a proud moment, sir, for (iilead P. Beck, I nev(!r thought
to have shaken by the lianfl the autlior of the French lievolu-
tion and the Stonri^ of Venire."

(It really was unfortunate that his reading had been so mis-
cellan<^ous during the four days preceding the dinner.)

The venerable Philosopher opened his mouth an<l spake.
His tones were deep and his utterance slow.

*' Vou are ])roud, Mr. Jieck ? The only Pride should l)e the?

TIIK CJOLDKN BUTTERFLY.

259

lom was
ad large
irked at
tness of
mental
m being

3k stood
e,d back
by the
horn he
eld him-
jident of
1 a little

aster of
d round
hey had
lonition,
p, which
ices, dis-
vas very

n which
iguished

" before

sped the
i looked
. Then
: "This
thought
I lievolu-

\ so mis-

l spake.

d ))«' the

pride of work. Beautiful the meanest thing that works ; even
the rusty and unmusical Meatjack. All else belongs to the
outlook of him whom men cull Jjeelzebub. Tiie l)rief Day
passes with its poor paper crowns in tinsel gilt ; Night is at
hand with her silences and her veracities. What hast thou
done ] All the rest is pliantasmal. Work only remains. Say,
brother, what is thy work ?"

" I have struck lie," replied Oilead prou<lly, feeling that his
Work (with a capital W) had been well and thoroughly done.
Tiie Philosopher stepped aside.
Jack Duuijuerque brought up the next.
" Mr. Beck, Alfred Teimyson, the Poet Laureate."
This time it was a man with rolnist frame and strongly-
marked features. He wore a long black beard, streaked with
gray and rather ragged, with a ragged mass of black hair, look-
ing as he did at Oxford when ihey made him an honorary D. C. L.,
and an undergraduate from the gallery asked him politely,
" Did they wake and call you early 1 "

'* Mr. Tennyson," said Mr. Beck, " I do assure you, sir, that
this is the kindest thing that has been done to me since I came
to England. I hope I see you well, sir. I read your Fifine at
the Fair, sir — no, that was the other man's — 1 mean, sir, your
Soiujs before Sunrise ; and I congratulate you. We've got some
poets on our side of the water, sir. Fve written poetry myself
for the papers. We've got Longfellow and Lowell, and, take
out you and Mr. Swinburne, with them we'll meet your k t."
Mr. Tennyson opened his mouth to speak, but shut it again
in silence, and looking at Jack mournfully, as if lie had forgotten
something, he stepped Jiside.
Jack presented another.
" Mr. John Kuskin."

A sharp-featured clever-looking man with gray locks and
shaven face. He seized Mr. Jieck by the hand and spoke first,
not giving his host time to utter his little set speech.

"1 welcome," he said, "one of our fellow-workers from the
other side of the Atlantic. I cannot utter to you what I would.
We all see too dimly as yet what are our great world-duties,
for we try and out-line their (enlarging shadows. You in
America do not seek j»eac<^ jus M«'niih<'m sought it, when he gave
the King of Assyria a thousand }>ieces of silver. You fight for

200

THE UUliDKN 1U?TTKKFLY.

your pt'ace, and you liavo it. Vou do not buy what you want ;
you take it. Tliat is strength ; that is harmony. You do not
sit at liome lisping comfortable prayers - yt>u go out and work.

fd of

lation shall be

conn;, sir, tneswor*
whetted to save and tt) subdue."

He stopped suddenly, and closed his lips witli a snap.

Mr. Beck, turned rather helplessly to the Twins. He wanted
a diversion to this utterly unintelligible harangue. Tlu^y stared
straight before them, and pretended to be absorbed in medi-
tation.

" Mr. Beck, Mr. Swinburne. Deaf people think Mr. drowning
is nuisical, sir ; but all people allow Mr. Swinburne to be the
most musical of poets."

It was the very young man. He stood before his host and
laughed aloud.

" Sir," said Mr. Beck, " I have read some of your verses. I
can't say what tliey were about, but I took to singin' them
softly as I read tliem, and 1 seemed to be in a green Held, lyin*
out among the flowers while the bees were bummin' around
and tlie larks were liftin' their hymns in the sky."

Mr. Swinburne laughed again and made way for the next
comer.

" Mr. Beck, let me introduce Mr. George Augustus Sala."

" This," said the Man of Oil, " is indeed a pleasure. Mr.
Sala, when I say that I am an old and personal friend of
Colonel Quagg, you will be glad to meet me."

Contrary to reasonable expectation, the face of Mr. Sala
showed no sign of joy at the reminiscence. He only looked
rather helplessly at Jack Dunquer({ue, who turned red, and
brought up the rest of his men together, as if to get the intro-
ductions over quickly.

" Mr. Beck, these gentlemen are Mr. Darwin, Professor
Huxley, and Mr. Frederick Leighton. Ladds you know well
enough already. Step up. Tommy."

Gilead Beck shook hands with each, and then, drawing
himself up to his full height, laid his left hand within his
waistcoat, brandished his right above his head with a prelimi-
nary flourish, and began his speech.

"Gentlemen all," he said, "I am more than proud to
make your acquaiiitance. Across the foaming waves of the

THK OOLDKN HUTTEUKI.V.

•2G1

mighty Athintio there; is a laixl wliosc institootions — known to
Mr. JSahi — air iioL iinlikn your own, wliose literature is your
own up to a hundred years ago [' Hear, hear ! ' from Cornehus],
whose hinguage is the sjime as yours. A\'e say hard things of
each other, genth'men ; hut tlie hard things are said on the low
levels, not on the heights wiiere you and your kindred s|.irits
dwell. No, gentlemen," — here he rai.^ed hoth his arms and
prej)ared for a rhetorical huist, — " wlien the Anua-ican eagle,
proudly bearing the stars and stripes — "

" Dinner on the table, sir ! " bawled tlu? hea<l-waiter, throw-
ing open the doors with the grandest flourish and standing in
the open doorway.

" Hear, hear ! " cried Humphn^y a little late, because he
meant the cheer for the speech, and it sounded like a joy-bell
ringing for the announcement of dinntu'. Mr. Beck tiiought it
rather rude, but he did not say so, and vented his wrath upon
the waiter.

"Great Jehoshaphat ! " he cried, "can't you see when a
gentleman is on the stump 'I Who the devil asked you to
shove in 1 "

" Never mind," said Jack irreverently. " Spout the rest
after dinner."

A sigh of relief escaped the lips of all, and tlui party, headed,
after some demur, by the liost, who was escorted, one on each
side, like a great man with his private secretary, by the Twins,
l)assed into the dining-room.

Oddly enough, when their host passed on before them, the
guests turned to each other, and the same extraordinary smile
which Jack Dunquerque checked on their first appearance
passed from one to the other. Why shouhl Alfred Tennyson
look in the face of Thomas Carlyle and laugh 1 What secret
relationship is there between John Kuskin, Swinburne, and
George Augustus Sala, that they should snigger and grin on
catching each other's eyes 1 And, if one is to go on asking
([uestions, why did Jack J)u!i(jU(a<iue whis])er in an agitated
tone, "For Heaven's sake, Tom, and you fellmvs, keej) it up?"

There was s«)me little <lilliculty in seating the guests, because
they all showed a bashful reluctance to sitting near their host,
and crowded together to the lower end. At last, however,
they were settled down. Mr. Carlyle, who, with a mo<lesty

262

THE COLDEN BUTTERFLY.

worthy of \\'\H liieat !iame, seized the lowest chair of all - -tluit
on the left of Jack Diuiquerque, who was to occupy the end of
the table — was i)romptly dragged out and forcil)ly led to the
right o*' the host. Facing him was Alfred Tennyson. The
Twins, one on each side, came next. Mr. Sala faced John
Ruskin. The others disposed themselves as they pleased.

A little awkwardness was caused at the outset by the host,
who, firm m the belic^f that Professor Huxley was in the Moody
and Sankey line, called upon him to say Grace. The invita-
tion was warmly seconded by all the rest, but the Professor,
greatly confused, blushed, and after a few moments of reflec-
tion, was fain to own that he knew no Grace. It was a strange
confession, Gilead Beck thought, for a clergyman. The sing-
ers, however— Misit Claribelle, Signors Altotenoro, Bassopro-
fondo, and Mr. Plantagenet Simpkins — performed Non nobis
with great feeling and power, and dinner began.

It was then that Gilead Beck first conceived, against hi*; will,
suspicion of the Twins, So far from being the back bom's atui
stay of the whole party, so far frt)m giving a lead to the con-
versation, and leading up to the topics loved by tlu^ guests, they
gave themselves unreservedly f.nd from the very first to ' tuck-
ing in.' They went at the dinner with the go of a Kugby boy
— a young gentleman of Elton very soon teaches himself that the
stomach is not to be trifled with.

So did the rest. Considering the overwhelming amount of
genius at the table, and the number of years represented by the
guests collectively, it was really wonderful to contemplate the
vigour with which all, including the octogenarian, attacked
the courses, sparing none. Could it have been believed by an
outsider that the author of Maud was so passionately critical
over the wine 1 It is s.ad to be disillusionised, but pleasant,
on the other hand, to think that you are no longer an outsider.
Individually the party would have disappointed their host, but
he ' did not allow himself to be disappointed. Mr. Beck (ex-
pected a battery of wit. He heard nothing but laudation of
the wine and remarks upon the cookery. No anecdotes, no
criticism, no literary talk, no poetical enthusiasm.

" In my country, sir," he began, glancing reproachfully at
the Twins, whose noses were over their plates, and feeling his
way feebly at a conversation with Ciirlyle- " in my country,

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY

2G3

that

iiul of

tlif

The

John

sir, I hope we know how to apprecicite what we cannot do our-
selves."

Mr. (Jarlyle stared for a moment. Tlien he replied.

" Hope you do, Mr. Heck, I'm sure. Didn't know you'd got
so good a chef at the Langham."

This was disheartening, and for a space no one spoke.

Presently Mr. Carlyle looked round the table s»s if he was
about to make an utterance.

Humphrey Jagenal, who happened at the moment to have
nothing before him, raised his iiand and said solemidy, " Hush !"
Cornelius bent forward in an attitude of respectful attention.

Said tiie Teacher,

"Clear mullagatawny's about the best thing I know to begin
a dinner upon. Some fellows like Palestine soup. That's a
mistake."

" The great<;st minds," said Cornelius to the Poet Laureate,
" condescend to the meanest things."

" Gad I " said Tennyson, " if you call such a dinner »«; this
mean, I wonder what you'd call respectable."

(Cornelius felt snubbed. But he presently rallied and went
on again. It was between the courses.

"Pray, Mr. Carlyle," he :vsked with the sweetest smile,
" what was the favourite soup of Herr Teufelsdriickh ? "

" Who 1 " {isked the Philosoi)her. " Beg your pardon, Herr
how much 1 "

" From your own work, Mr, Carlyle," Jack sang out from
his end. It was remarkable to notice how anxiously he fol-
lowed the conversation.

" 0, ah ! mite so," said Mr. Carlyle. " Well, you see, the
fact is — Jack Dunquenpie knows."

This was disconcerting too, and the more because everybody
began to laugh. What did they lj»:igh at 1

The dinner went on. Gilead Beck, silent and grave, sat at
the head of the table, watching his guests. He ought, he said
to himself, to be a proud man that day. But there were one or
two crumpled rose-leaves in his bed. One thing was that he
could not for the life of him remember each man's works, so as to
address him in honeyed tones of adulation. And he also rightly
judged that the higher a man's position in the woiid of letters,
the more you must pile up the praise. No doubt the late

if
i

204

llll-: »i(>I,l)KN I51TTKI;I'I,Y.

luiiu'iitcd (M'(U|;t' tlio Foiirtli, tlio l'\)iiiL('rulli liOiiis, uiid John
Stuart Mill grew at last to Ih^Hcvc in tlir worth of tht^ praise-
paiiitiiig which siirroiin(h'(l their iianuis.

AihI then the Twins were ])rovokin<r. ^)nly one attempt «)n
the i>ait of Cornelius, at which everybody laughed. Anil
nothing at all from Iluniphrey.

Carlyle and Tenn\ on, for their part, sat p« i h-ctly sih»nt.
Lower down — below the Twins, that is — Sala, Huxley, and
the others were conversing freely, but in a low tone. And when
Gilead Heck caught a ' 'W words it S(H'nie<l to him as if they
talked of hoise-rai inu

Presently, to his relief, John Rnskin loanetl forward ami
spoke to him.

*' I hav(( been studying lately, Afi-. I'eck, the Art giowth of
America."

" Is that so, sir? And perhaps you have got something to
tell my countrymen 1 "

" Perhaps, Mr. Peck. You doubtless know my principle,
that Art should interpret, not create. You also know that T
have preached all my life the doctrine that where Art is fol-
lowed for Art's own sake, there infallibly <'nsues a distinction
of intellectual and moral principh>s, whiU', devoted honestly
and self-forget fully to the clear statement and record of the facts
of the universe, Art is always helpful and beneticial to mankind.
So much you know, Mr. Beck, I am sure."

" Well, sir, if you would not mintl saying that over again —
slow — 1 might b(! able to say 1 know it."

"I have sometimes gone on to say," ])ursued Mr. Puskin,
"that a time has always hitherto come when, having readied
a singular perfection, Art begins to contemplate that perfection
and to deduce rules from it. Now all this has nothing to <lo
with the relations between Art and mi^ntal development in the
United States of Ameiica."

*' I am glad to hear that, sir," said Gilead Ik'ck, a little
relieved.

He looked for lielp to the Twins, but he leaned npon a slen-
der r(!ed, for they were both engaged upon the duckling, and
proffered no help at all. They ilid not even seem to listen.
The dinner was far advanced, tln'ir cheeks were red and their
eyes were sparkling

'«•

THK (iol.DKN III riKUKLV.

:>(;

I.)

" W'liiit is it Jill about ? " Mr. (\nlyl<' iinirmiiiiHl across the
tabK' to Tt'iinysoii.

" Don't know," replied th«^ Maker. " Didn't think he had
it in him."

Could these two <j;n'at men he jealous of Mr. I'nskin's fame "J

" Vour remarks, .Mr. liuskin," sai«l the host, '' sonntl very
pretty. Ihit T should like to have them hefore nw. in Mark
and white, .so I coidd tackle them (piietly for an hour. Then
I'd tell you what I thiidv. I was readini^, last week, all your
works."

" All my works in a week ! " cried Uu.skin. *' Sir, my works
re(juire loving' thoujj;ht and linj^iainuj tender care. You must
get up early in the morniui; with them, you must watch the
(Irapftry of the clouds at sunrise when you read them, you
must take them int<» the field at spring time, and nuirk, as you
meditat(! on the words of the printed page, the young leaHi't.s
breathing low in the sunshine. Then, as the thoughts grow
and glow in the i)ure ether of your mind — hock, if you please
— you will rise above the things of the earth, your wings will
expand, you will care for nothing of the mean and practical —
1 will take a little more duckling -your faculties will be woven
into a cunning subordination with tlu^ wondrous works of
Nature, and all will be beautiful alike, from a blade of grass
to a South American for<>st."

** There are very good forests in the Sierra Nevada," said Mr.
Beck, who just un<lerstood the last words : '* We needn't go t(»
South America for forests, i guess."

" That, Mr. Beck, is what you will get from a study of my
works. But a week — a week, Mr. Beck ! "

He shook his head with a whole libiary of reproach.

"My time was limited, Mr. Kuskin, and I hope to go
through your books with more study, now 1 have had the plea-
sure of meeting you. What I was going to say was, that 1 am
sorry not to be able to t dk Avith you gentlemen on the subjects
you like best, becau.se things have got mixed, and I find I can't
rightly remember Avho wrote what."

" Thank goodness ! " murnuired Mr. Tennyson, under his
breath.

Presently the diners began to thaw, ami something like
general conversation set in.

2(i(J

TIIFl (JOI.DKN nUTTKRKLY.

About till! «,'nitt'(l l*jirnu'saii period, Mr. Deck ohsrrvcd witli
satisfaction tliat tlu^y \vv\v all talking,' to«,'<'ther. The Twins
were the loudest. With Hushed faces and l>ri;^dit eyes they
were laying down the law to their neigiihours in Poetry and
Art. Cornelius gave Mr. Tennyson some home truths on his
later style, which the Poet Jiaureate received without so much
as an attempt to defend himself. Ilamphrey, from the depth
of his Ivoinan experiences, treated Mr. liuskin to a brief treatise
on his imperfections as a critic, and Mr. Leighton to some
remarks on his paintings, which those great men heard with a
polit*' stare. Gilead lieck ohserve*! also that .lack Dunquenpie
was trying hard to kt^ep tlu^ talk in literary grooves, though
with small measun; of success. For as the dinner went on the
conversation resolvtfd itself into a geiu-ral discussion on horses,
events, Aldershot, Prince's, polo, the drama from its lightest point
of view, and such topics as might jua'haps be looked for at a regi-
mental mess, but hardly at a dinner of Literature. It was
strangle that the two greatest men among them all, C'arlyle and
Ttinnyson, ai)peared to be as inten-sted as any in this light
talk.

The Twins were out of it altogether. If tluMi; was one
thing about which they were absolutely ignorant, it was the
Turf. Probably they had never seen a race in their lives.
They talked fast and a little at random, but chiefly to each
other, because no one, Mr. Beck observed, took any notice of
what they said. Also, they drank continuously, and their
host remarked that to the flushed cheeks and the bright eye
was rapidly being added thickness of speech.

Mr. Beck rose solemnly, at the right moment, and asked his
guests to allow him two or three toasts only. The first, he said,
was England and America, lie, he said briefly, had not yet
been found in the old country, and so far she was behind
America. But she did her best ; she bought what she could
not dig.

By special recpiest of the host Mademoiselle Clariltelle sang
"Old John hrovvn lies a-mouldering in his grave."

The riext toast, Mr. Beck said, was one due to the peculiar
position of himself. He would not waste their time in telling
his own story, but he would only say that until the Golden
Butterfly brought him to Limerick City and showed him lie,

THK CJOLDKN lUnTKUKF-V.

•J(i7

1 with

TwitiH

tlu-y

ry ami

oil his

miicli

(it'pth

1)11 tilO

conid

\w was bm a poor galoot. Thcn-foiv, he askfd tin'iii to jt)iii
him ill a stuitiment. Hti wouM ^ivo theiii, " More lie."

Sii^nor Altotenoro, an Englishnian who had adopted an
Italian name, san«; "The Light of other Days."

Then Mr. JJeck rose for the third time and begged tlu! iiulul-
gonce of iiis friends. He spoke slowly and with a certain
sadness.

"I am not," he said, "going to orate. Von did not C(mie
here, I guess, to hear me pay out chin nuisic. Not at all. You
came to do honour to an American. (Jentlemen, 1 am an ob
scure American ; I am half educated ; 1 am a man lift(^d out of
the ranks. In our country — and 1 tjjink in yours as well,
though some of you have got handles to your names — that is
not a thing to apologise for. Mo, gentlemen. I only mention
it because it does me th<! greater honour to have received you.
lint 1 can read and I can think. I see here to-night some of
the most honoured names in England, and I can tell you all
what 1 was goin' to say befon; dinner, only the misbegotten
cuss of a waiter took the words out of my mouth, that I feel
this kindness greatly, and I shall never forget it. I did think,
gentlenn^n, that you would have been too many for me in tlie
matter of tall talk, but exceptin' Mr. Kuskin, to whom I am
grateful for his beautiful language, though it didn't all get in,
not one of you has made me feel my own uneducated ignorance.
That is kind of you, and I thank you for it. It was true feel-
ing, Mr. Carlyh', which prompted you, sir, to give the conversa-
tion such a turn that I might join in without bein' ashamed or
makin' myself feel or'nary. Gentlemen, what a man like me
has to guard against is shoddy. If I talk Literature, it's shoddy.
If I tjilk Art, it's shoddy. Because I know neither Literature
nor Art. If I pretend to be what 1 am not, it's shoddy.
Therefore, gentlemen,. I thank you for leavin' the tall talk at
home, and tcllin' me about your races and your amusements.
And I'll not ask you, eithe"-, to make any speeches ; but if
you'll allow me, I will drink your healths. Mr. Carlyle, sir,
the English-speaking race is proud of you. Mr. Tennyson, our
gells, I'm tohl, love your poems more than any others in this
wide world. What an American gell loves is generally worth
lovin', because she's no fool. Mr. laisKin, if you'd come across
the water you might learn a wrinkle yet in the matter of plain

L^f)8

THK (lOl.DKN ItrriKUKF-V

sjKHJch. Mr. Sala, we know V(»ii already over tluii', and I sliall
Ih) gliul i(» tell the l»\;vei«'n(l (Joloiu;! C^>uu,uj;' ot" your welfare
when I see liim. Mr. SAvinlmrne, you air youn^f, Imt you air
,1,'ettinjjj on, l*rotes.sor Huxley and Mr. l)arwin, 1 shall read
your seniions and your novels, and T shall l»e proud to hav(^
seen you at my tahh-. Mr. Cornelius ami Mr. Jhunphrey Ja^'
enal, I would drink your lu'alths too, if you were n(»t souu«l
asleep." This was unfortunately the case ; the Twins, havinu;
succunihed to the mixture and (piantity of the drinks almost
hefort! the wiiu^ wvut round once, wcae now leaning; hack in
their chairs, slumherinn with the sweetest of smiles. ''Cap-
tain Ladds, you know, sir, that you are always N/cihonu'. Mi'.
Dunquerque, you have done me another favour, (ientlenien
all, I drink your health. '

" Jack," whisptrred Mr. Swinhurne, "1 call tiiis a hurninu
shame, lie's a rattling good fellow this, and you must tell
him."

" I will souu' time ; not now," said .lack, looking renu>rseful.
" I haven't the heart. I thought lu^ wouhl have found us out
long ago. I wonder how he'll tak»i it. "

They had coll'ee and cigars, ami pr<^sentIy (Jilead Heck began
telling ahout Anu;rican trotting nuitches, which was interesting
to eveiyhody.

It was nearly twelve when Mr. IJeck's guests (hqiarted.

Mr. Carlyle, in right of his seniority, solemnly " up ami
spake."

" Mr. l»eck," he said, "you are a trump. Come down to the
Derby with n)e, and wt; will show you a race woith twenty oi
your trotting. (lood-night, sir. Yc^i've treated us like a
prince."

He grasped his hand with a grip which had all itn youthful
vigour, and strode out of the roou' with the step of early man-
liood.

" A womUaful old man ! " said Mr. Deck. " \Vh(> would havt;
thought it 1 "

The rest shook h;Muls in silencj*, except Mr. Ivuskin.

"1 am sorry, Mr. heck," he said nu'ekly, " hat thi* nonsense
I talke<l at dinner annoyed you. It's always the way if a fellow
tries to b(! clev<'r ; he overdoes it, and makes himself an ass.
(Jood-night, sir, an<l 1 hope we shall meet on the lacecourse next
Wedne.sday."

TIIK (JOLDKN I'.inTKKKI.V.

2(>i)

Ml'. Imm-K- was left alone with .lack |)mi(|iUM'qm', tlic waiter,
Mid the Twins still sleepint;.

" What am 1 to do with these ^'eiitletnen, sir?" asked the
waiter.

Mr. Heck lookiMl at them with a little disdain.

"(Jet doh.ti, and yank tlu-m both to l»ed, and leaver a hrandy-
and-soda at their elbows in case they're thirsty in the night.
Mr, |)iin(|ner(|ne and (^ajjtain Ladds, don't go yet. Let ns
have a cigar t(>gcther in tin- little room."

They sat in silence for a while. Then Jack said, with a good
deal of hesitation :

" I've got something to tell yon, Heck."

"Then don't tell it to-night," replied the American. '' I'm
thinking over the evening, and I can't get ont of my mind that
I might have made a better speech. Seems as if I wasn't nigh
gratefnl eiiongh. Wal, it's done. Mr. Dnnqnenine, there is
one thing whi(;h pleases me. (Jrc^at anthors an* like* the! rest
of ns. They are powerfnl fond of raciiig ; th«'y shoot, they ride,
and they hnnt ; th(\y know how to ta<;kle a dinner ; and all of
'em, from Tiiomas (Jarlyle to yonng Mr. Swinhnrn*'. seem to
love the gells alike. Tliat's a healthy sign, sir. It shows that
their iiearts air in the right place. Th«' world's bonnd to go
on well, somehow, so long as its lealeis like to talk of a pn^tty
womaii's eyes ; because it's human. .\nd tlu^n for me to hear
these gri'at men actually doing it ! Why, C'a})tain Ladds, it
adds HiK inches to my stature to feel sure that tln\y likt* what I
like, and that, after all said and doiu', Alfnsd Tennyson and
(lilead 1*. IJeck are men and brothers."

(^IIAITKII .WVII

"(•riHtor hiiniiinitv.

'^jl ]\\V' world, largely as it had unfoldtMl itself to Phillis, con-

U|K, sisted as yet to her wholly of tin* i-asy classes. That

^-^' there were poor people in the country was a matter of

liearsay. That is, she had caught a glimpse during a certain

270

Till-: (lOLDEN HUTTEUFLY.

walk with Ca'sar of a cl.iss whose ways wore clearly not her
ways, nor their maiiiior of thought hers. She had now to
learn — as a s fp to tiiat wider sympathy first awakened by the
butK r-wonian's hahy— that there is a kind of folk who are more
danj^erous than pictui'escjue, to h(^ i)itied rather than to be
painted, to bo schooled and (lisci[)lined rather than to be looked

She learned this lesson throu«^h Mrs. Ti'Kstrange, whoso
laudaltle custom it was to pay periodical visits to a certain row
of cottages. Tln^y were not nice c(>ttages, but nasty. They
faced an unrelenting ditch, noisome, green, and jmtrid. Thoy
were slatteridy and out at elbows. The people who lived in
them wen^ unpleasant to look at or to think of ; the men be-
longed to the river-side— th(!y were boat-cads and touts; and
if there is any one jjursuit more demoralizing than another, it
is that of launching boats into the river, handing the oars, and
helping out the crow.

In the daytime the cottages were in the hands of the wives.
Towards nightfall tlu^ men returned ; those who had money
enough were drr.nk ; those who were sober envied those who
were drunk. Both drunk and sober found scolding wives,
s(|ualid homes, and crying children. Both «lrunk and sober
laid down with curses, and slept till the morning, when they
awoke, and went forth again with tlu; jocund curse of dawn.

Nothing so beautiful as the civilization of the period. Half
a mile from Agatha L' Estrange and Phillis Fleming were
these cott.ages. Almost within earshot of a house where vice
was uidcnown, or only dindy seen like a ghost at twilight, stood
the hovels, whore virtue was impossible, and goodness a dream
of an unknown land. What notion do they have of the gentle
life, tlu'He dwellers in misery and sfpialor 1 What fond ideas
of wealth's power to procure unlimited gratification for the
throat do they conceive, these men and women, whose only
I)leasure is to drink beer till they <lrop ?

One day Phillis went there with Agatha.

Tt was such a bright warm morning, the river was so spark-
ling, the skies were so blue, chc? gardens wore so sunny, the
song of the birds so l(Mid,the laburnums so golden, an<l the lilacs
so gl(>rious to behold, that tlu^ girl's heart was full of all the
sweet thoughts which she; had learnod of others or framed for

THK (iOLDKN lUJTTKRFLV.

271

horself — thoughts of poets, which eclioed in her brain .and
flowed down the current of her thoughts like th<i swans upon
the river ; happy thoughts of youth and innocence.

She walked l)esi(h> her companion with liglit and elastic
tread ; she looked about her with the fresh unconscious grace
that belongs to childhood ; it was her greatest charm. 13ut
the contentment of her soul was rudely shaken — the beauty
went out of the day — when ^frs. Ti' Estrange only led her
away from the leafy road, and took her into her " Kow."
There the long arms of the; green trees were ciianged into pro-
truding sticks, on which linen was hanging out to dry ; th(^
sonijs of the birds became tlu^ crv of children and the scohlini'
of women ; for flowers there; was the irridescence on the puddles
of soapsuds ; for greenhouse were dirty windows and open
doors, which looked into stjualid interiors.

" I am going to see old Mrs. IMedlicott," said M is. L' Estrange
cheerfully, picking her accustomed way among the cabbage-
stalks, wash-tubs, and other evi(h'nc(!s of human habitation.

The wonu^n looked out of their houses and retired hastily.
Presently they came out again, and stood every one at her
door with a clean a])ron on, each pre})ared to lie like an am-
bassador, for the good of the family.

In a great chair by a fin^ tlu^re sat an old woman- a malig-
nant old woman. She looked up and scowUhl at the ladies ;
then she looked at tin; lire and scowled ; then she pointed to
the corner and scowled aurain.

" Look at hini," slu; growled in a hoarse crescendo. " Look
at him, lying like a pig — like a pig. Do you hear 1 "

" 1 hear."

The voice came from what Phillis took at first to be a heap
of rags. She was right, because slu; could not see beneath the
rags the supine form of a man.

Mrs. L'Estrange took no notice of the old woman's intro-
duction to the human pig. That phenomenon re})eated his
answer :

•* 1 hear. I'm her beloved grandson, ladie.s. I'm Jack-in-
the-water.''

'•Get up and work. Go down to your river. Comes home
and lies down, hcj does -yah ! ye lazy pig; sjiys he's goin' to
have the horrors, he doiis — y;di I ye drunken pig ; piigs my

*'7ii

rilK (lol.DKX lini'TKISKLV.

luoiicy tot iliink — yali I ye tliicvin' Jut,^ (let up iuu\ lijo out of
blit' pl.icc, L«';ivt' lue and tlu! liulics to talk. < Jo, I say ! "

.lark iu-tlit'-Watcr arose slowly, lit- was a loii<^-l(']i^,i^o(l <;r<\'i-
tun' with sliaky liiuhs, aud when lio stood u|>ri)L,dit his head
nearly touclu'd thc^ rat'teis (tf the low uuccilcd room. An«l he
had a tact' at slight ot" which I'hillis ( uddered an animal face
with no forehead ; a cruel, had, selt c face, all jowl antl no
t"r<)nt. His eyes were hloodshoL ant! lis lips wei'ci thick. He
twitched aud treiuhled all ovei- — his legs tremhled ; his hands
tremhletl ; his cheeks twitched.

" '( )rrors 1 " he said in a husky voice, " Aud should ha' had
the 'orrors if I hadn't a took th;- ujoney. 'I'wo-and-tuppence.
L(Mnme Lfo.

He pushed i)ast IMiillis, who shrank in alarm, aud disapi>eared,

"Well, Mrs. Medlicott, and how are '"asked Mrs.

I/ivstiange in a cheerful voice — she took no manner of notice
of the man.

"Worse. What have you got for me? Money? T want
money. Flannel? I wanti tlannel. Physic? 1 want physic.
Ihaudy I I want brandy very had ; 1 mner wanted it so had.
What have you got ? (iimme hrandy and you shall read me a
track."

" Vou forget," said Agatha, "that 1 lun'er read to you.'

" iict the young lady lead, then. ( 'ome here, missy. Lord,
lioril ! Don'tet^ he afraid of an old woman as has got no ttM'th.
Come now. (rimme your hand. Ay, ay, ay! Kh, eh, eh !
Here's a pretty little hand."

" Now, Mrs. Medlicott, you said you would not do that ony
more. N'ou know it is all foolish wickedness."

" Foolish wickedness ! " etthoed the. Witch of Futlor. "Never
after to-day, my lady, (,'onu', my pretty lass, take olf the glove
aiul gimme tlu; hand."

Without knowing what she did, IMiill' dr-'w olf the glove
from her left hand, 'i'lu! (»ld wonui \ l-uied. torv, ard in her
chair and looked at tlu^ lines. She \vn^ ;> i'erc'.. Miid ( ager old
wonuiu. jjife was strong in her yet, .ie?j>iti3 h'.a roursconi
years ; her «!yes were hright an<l liery , in i toothless gums
chattered without s).)eakirig; her long leaji lingers sliook as
they seized on the girl's diiinty palu).

" Ay, ay ! Fh, eh ! 'V'iw Wur of life is long. A silent child-

'--i*

'iniK (l()M)KN lUTTTKKKLY.

i>7:i

niiv

lild-

hood ; u love knot hindered ; ^o on, girl -go on, wife and
mother ; happy life ami hapi)y age, hut far away— not here —
far away ; a lucky lot with him you love ; to .sleej* hy his side
for fifty years or more ; to see your chihlr»'n and your grand-
children ; to watch tin; sun rise and set from your door — a
happy lite, hut far away."

►She dropped the girl's hand as (piickly as she; ha«l s(uzed it,
and fell hack in her cliair nnimhli'ig and moaning.

*'(limme hrandy, Mrs. L'KstratJge — you are a charitable
woman — gimme brandy. And port- wine — ah ! lemme have
sonic port-wine. Teal Don't forget the ^ And .lack-in-

ihe-Water drinks awfni, he does. Wors, than his father ;
worse than his grandfatlu^r — my old man ; worsts than his great
grandfather — and they all went otf at Hve-and-lhirty."

" I wilfsend you u)) a basket, Mrs. Medlicott. Come, Thillis,
I have to go to the next cottage."

lint JMiillis stayed b«'hind a moment.

She touched tlM! old woman on the forehead with her lingers
and said softly,

" Tell me, are you happy ? Do you suffer 1 "

" Hapi)y ? only the rich are happy. Suffer? of couise I
suti'er. All the pore suflers."

" Poor thing ? May 1 come and see you and bring you
things ? "

'* O' course you may."

" And you will tell me jiLt)iit yourself f "

'' Child, child ! " cried the oid woman impatiently. " Tell
you about myself? There, tlu're, you're om? of tlu^ni the
Lord loves — wife a;id mother ; happy life and hajipy death ;
childer and grandchilder ; but far away, far away."

Mrs. Medlicott gave IMiillis her first insight into that life so
nep.r and yet so distant from us. She shouhl have been intro-
duced to the ideal cottage, where tlu; stalwart husband sup-
ports the smiling .Te, and both do honour to the intellectual
curate with the long co.it and the lofty brow. Where are they
— lofty brow of jjriest and stalwart form of virtuous peasant?
Kemark that l*hillis was a child ; the first effect of the years
upon a child is to Siulden it. IMiih tiion and haucis in their cot
would hnw rejoiced her 3 that of old Mis. Medlicott set her
thiukinu.

! i

274

THK (JOIJ>KN HI'TTKKI'IY.

And wliilf shv \\iv\v tVoin mtMiiory tlu' old toi'tiiuc-telltT in
her (Dttagc, certain words of Abraliani Dy.son's <anie back
to lier :

" Tiit'c is a joy to one and a l)iird('n to nint'ty-ninc. liemeni-
ber in your joy as many as you can of the ninety nine.

" Learn that you cannot be caitirely happy, because of the
hinety-nine wlio are entirely wretched. «

" Wh(!n you reach tliis knowledge, Pliillis, be sure that the
Coping-stone is not fir off."

^CHAlTEUXXVIll.

" Noll |>(issiih'iitein nuiltii vuciivfriM *
Kecto lioiitiiiii."

II K manner in which Mr. Cassilis conveyed his advice, or
rather itistructions, to (Jilead Heck, inspired the Anii;-
rican with a blin<l confidenci'. lie spoke slowly, Hrndy,
and with deliberation. He spoke as out! who knew. Most
men speak as those who only half know, like the Frenchman,
who said, " Ce (pie je sais, je le sais mal ; ce (pie j'ignoic, je
I'ignore parfaitement."

Mr. Cassilis weighed each word. While he spoke, his eyt^s
sought those of his friend, and looked straight in tlunn, not
defiantly, but meditatively. He brought Mr. Htsck bills, which
he mach; him accept ; and Ik; brought prospectuses, in which
the American, finding they wen* English sclu!m(!s, invested
nionciy at his adviser's suggestion.

'* You have now," said Mr. ('aHHllis, "a very largt; sum
invested in different companies ; you must consi(ier now how
long to hold tin >liares — when to sell out, in fact."

" Can't I sell my shares at once, if I ph'as(i /"

** You (XTtainly can, and so ruin the companies. (N)nsider
my undei taking to my friends on the allotment comnutt(!es."

" Yes, sir."

" V^»u forget, Mr. l>eck, that yoii are a wealthy man. We

TFtK (iOI.DKN IIUTTKIU'IA'

27.')

Hit in
i3 back

't'lnom-

of the

li:it the

vue, or
«' Am»!-
, firmly,
"Most

uhnian,

IKUC, jt'

lis eyes

n!iu, not

which

1 \viii(;h

It vested

•m) sum
low huvv

;onsi(ler
itt(iea."

tn. We

do not in;in;ii.';e matters in Ji hole and conuT. The bears liav«'
sold on expectation ot" an allotment. Now as they iiave not
got an allotment, and we have, they nnist l)ny. Wlu'ii such
nn'ii as y(»n buy largely, the ell'ect is to run shares up ; when
yon sell htrgely, you run tluim down."

Mr. Cassilis did not (explain that he had himsell" gn^itly pro-
fited by this tidal inilueiice, and jtroposed U) i)rotit stih nn)re.

" Maiiy (omp:i:iies, perfectly sound in i)rincii)le, may l)e
ruined by a sudden dicreasc! in the price of shares ; a panic
sets in, and in a few hours the shareholders may lose all. And
if you bring this about by selling without concert with the
otliei' favoured allottees, you'll be called a black shec^)."

Mr. Beck hesitated. " It's a hard thing — " lu; began.

His adviser went on :

'* \'ou have ^hus two things to think of — n(»t ti> losti youi
own profit, and not to spr(;ad disaster ovtir a number of otluu'
people by the very magnitude! of your transactions."

'I his was a !iew light to (Jih^ad.

•'Then why sell at iiW'l Why not keep the shares and s(«-
cure the divi<hiid f it's a hard hank, all this money."

And this was a iiew light for the financier.

Hold the shares I Wlien they were, scores of them, at !(»
premium 1 " Vou can certainly do that, if you please," ho
8ai<l slowly. " That, however, puts you in the simi>lu jMsition
of an investor."

*« I tluMight I was that, Mr. Cassilis."

" Not at all, Mr. IJeck. Vhv, wise man distrusts all com-
panies, but puts his hope in a rise or fall. \'ou an; not con-
versant with the way hiisine.ss is done. A company is formed
— the A lie let us say. liefiuc any allotment of shar»!s is
made, inlluential brok«'r.s, acting in lUv. intrresi of the pruUKit-
ers, go on to the Stock Exchange and make a market."

'* How is that, sir?"

•* They purchase; as many shares as they can gi-t
technically called '* bears ' in London or in New
tlies( shares on the chance of an allotment."

" Well i "

" To their {istonishment they don't get any shares allotted.
Millions of money in a year are allotted tt» clerks, Mr. iieck —
to anybotly, in fact a market is establi.shed, and our shares

l*ersons
York sell

270

THE (JOLI)KN lUIlTKUKI.Y.

figure at a pn'tty itrcmiuin. Thru Ix'^iiis tlui gaino of l)a«'kiiig
and Hlliiig to and fro, backward and forward — and all tliis
time we are gradually unloading tlie sliares on the public, the
real holders of everything."

" I begin to see," said Mr. lit'ck slowly.

" By this time you will perceive," Mr. ('assilis contiruu-tl,
"the blears are at the mercy of the favoured allottees. You —
we — are favoured allottees. Then up go the shares : ti\e pub
lie have come in. I recollect an old friend o{' mim^ who madi^
a fortune on 'Change -small compared with vouvh, Mi. Heck,
but a great fortune- UMed to say, lalkijig vtf shav«>s in his rather
homely style, ' When they rise, tin* people buys ; wh«>n they
fa's, they lets Vm goes.' Ha, ha! it's so tru«' I have but a
very poor opinion of the Isle of Holyhead li\l;uid Navigation
('omi)any; l>ut I thought tln'ir shares would g«» \\\^, and I
bought for you. You i\<»ld twenty out of fifty thousand. \Yait
tdl ' the peojde buys," and then unload cautiously." *

'• And leave the vest in the lurch I No, sir, 1 can't do that."

*' Then, Mt. lleck, I can advise you no nu>re."

" 1 hold tweiiiy thousand shares ; and if I sell out, that
company will bust up."

**1 do not say so much. I say that if you sell out at once
you will greatly damage the company. If you sell out gradually
you take advaiitage of die prinnium, and the company is left
exactly where it was before you joined, to stand or fall upon its
own merits. But if you sell your shares without conoin-t witji our
colleagues in these companies you are in, we shall be very pro-
perly called black sheep."

"Then Mr. (!a,ssilis," said (» dead, "in (Jod's name let us
have done Avith companies ! "

" Yery well ; as you })lease. You have only to give me a
power of attorney, and i will dispose of all your f^har(\s in the
best way possible for your interests. Will you give me that
power of attorney 1 "

" Sir, I am dcu'ply obliged to you for all the trouble you are
taking."

"Ajtower of attorney convc^ys large powers. It will put
into my hands the management of your great revenues. Tlds
is not a thing to be <lont^ in a moment. Thmk well, Mr, Beck,
before you sign such a document."

TIIK C3()M)I-:N HU'lTKHFLY.

277

•• 1 liav<' thou^'lit, sir," s;ii»| Uii»>ml " juul 1 will wi^n it with
grjititii(K'."

" In tlijit n\H{\ \ w ill \u\\v th«i <iocmiU'nt- it i« only a printed
form- (illoil up and Kent on to you for sijpiaturt! ininuuliat«'ly,"

'* Thank y».u, Mr. Cassilis."

•* And as for the siiares in the various Companies whirh yon
have ai(pured hy my advict', I will, if you please, take them
all over one with another at tln! price you j^ave for them,
without considering which have gone; nj) and which down."

They had all gone up, a fact whici; Mr Cassilis might have
remendiercd had he given the thing a numient's thought. Tho
companies on )>aper were doing extremely well.

" Sii," said Mr. I'ecK, starting to his fett, "you heap coals
of tire on my head. When a gentleman like you advises me,
1 ought to he thankful, and not go worrying round like a ln'ii
in a farmyard. The English mition air the oidy people who
can raise a man like yt)u, sir. Honour is your hirtliright.
Duty is your instinct. Truth is your nature. We Amciricans,
sir, come next to yo»i English in that respect. The rest of the
world ar(i nowhere." 11(^ was walking hackwards and forwards,
with his hands in his r.»ckets, while Mr. Cassilis looked at him
throu';h his gold eyeglasses as if he was a little amused at i\w
onthurst. " Nowhere, .sir. Truth lives only among us. Tho
French lie to please you. The (Jermans lie to get something
for themselves. The Iv'ussians li(^ hecau.se they imitate the
French and have caught the had tricks of the (Jermans. Sir,
no oiu' hut an Knglishman would have made ni«' the generous
otfer y(m have just made, and I respect you for it, Mr. Cassilis,
1 respect you, sir."

(iahriel Cassilis looked a little, a very little, coidiLSiul at all
these comj)liments. Then he held out his hand.

*' My dear friend, the respect is mutual," he; said, with a
forced smile. " Do not, however, act alway > upon your helief
in the hon»!sty of Knglishmen. It m.ay lead you into mischief."

" As for tilt; shares/' said l^cck. " they will stay as they are,
if you plea.se, or they will he sold, as you will. And no more
companies, Mr. L'jissilis, for me."

" Ytiu shall have no more," said his adviser.

In his pocket was a heautiful pros])ectus, hrand new, of a com-
pany ahout to he fornieil for the purpose of lighting tjie town of

278

TIIK (ini.DKN HI'TTKHKI-Y.

La ('onccpcioii IiMiiiju'iilata on tlic Amazon Ivivor in Brazil with
gas. A cot rcssion of land liad Immii <»l)tain«'<l, ('n<^in('rr.s had
l)('»'n out to survey i\\v, placr, and tlu^ir |)ros|>c(ts wt'io most
l»ii<^ht.

Now, lio felt, tliat project must br released. [le turned the
jKiper in Ids linj^ers nervously lound and round, and the muscles
of his cheek t,witche<l. Then he looked up auil smiled, hut in
a joyless way. Mr. J»eck «lid not smile. He was growing morii
serious.

" Vou shall have no more shares," said th(i adviser. " Those
tliat you hav(^ already shall he disposed of as soon as possible,
liemains the (juestion, What am 1 to do with the moiu'y ?

" Vou have j)la(;ed yourself," In; went on, " in my hands hy
nu'ans of that promised power of attorney. 1 advised, first of
all, certain shares my intlueiu:e enabled nu^ to get allotte«l to
you. You havt^ scruples ab(»ut s«'lling shares at a i)rofit. Let
us respect y(»ur scruples, Mr. lieck. Instiad of shares, you
shall itivest your njoney in (iovernment sto''ks."

" That, sir," said Mr. I>eck, "would nuua my wishe.s."

" 1 am glad of it. Tln're are two or three ways of investing
money in stocks. Tlu; first — your way— is to buy in jindtak*^
the interest. The next- my way — is to buy in when tliey are
low and sell out wlien tliey go uj»."

" You may buy in low and sell out lower," said the astute
Heck.

" Not if you can afford to wait. This game, Mr. lU'ck, as
jilayed by the few who understand it, is one which calls into
jilay all tin; really valuable (pialities of the human intellect."

Mr. Cassilis rose as ho spoke and drew himself up to his
full height. Then he b( gan to walk backwards and forwards,
hiruing occasionally to jerk a word straight in the face of his
client, who was now leaning against the window with an un-
lighted cigar between his li})s, listening gravely.

" Foolish people think it is a game oi' gambling. So it is —
for them. AVhat is it to us ( It is the foiecasting of events.
It is the pitting of our experience, our sr^^^city, against what
some outsiders call chance and some Providenc(^ We antici-
pate events ; wv read the futun^ by tlu' light of the present."

"Then it isn't true about Malachi," said Mr. Ueck. "Ami
he wasn't the last ]»i()i>het."

Mr. Cassilis went on without regarding this observation :

•

TITK rjOLDKN lUr'ITKUFI.V.

•27! >

** TIm'It is no ^'.'iint' in flic world x) \v«'II worth pliiyin^.
politics? \'on stake ><ini reputation on the bnath ot the
moll. War ? ^ (tu throw awav your lite at a .sto<ka(le of
sava}j;es 1m tore y«)ii <an learn it. Tiade ? It is th»' lower
hranch of the ;;;anie of specniiition. In this ^aine those who
have cool hea«ls and lion nerve win. '!'(» lose your head for a
nionuMit is to lose the resnlts of a lifetime nnless," he inur-
mnred as if to himself — " indesH you can wait."

" Well, sir," said (Jilead, " I am a scholar, and I learn some-
thing lunv every day. Do yon wish nui to learii this ^ame I
It siiems to me

" Yon?" ( 'ontemiit that could not ho repre.ssed tiashed for a
moment across the thin teatures of tho speculator. "You?
No. IVrhaps, Mr. Heck, I lo not interest you." lie resumed
his hahitually cold nianner. and went on: " I propose, how(!V(»r,
to }^ive you my a>sistance in investing youi- money, to such
advantage as I can, iti Faiglish an<l for«'ign stocks, including
railway companits, hut not in the shares of newly-formed
trading ctmii>anies."

" Sir, this is very kind."
" You trust me, then, Mr. IJeck ?"

Again the joyless smile, which gleamiMl foi' a moment on his
lips and <lisa[)peare(l.

" That is satisfactory to both of us," he said. " And I will
send up the power-of-attorni^y to-day."

Mr. Cassilis departtMl. liy tlui morning's work ho had ac-
(juired absolute control over a quarter of a million of money,
liefori! this he had influence, l)Ut he recpiired persuasion for
each separate transaction. Now he had this great fortune
(entirely in his own control. It was to bo the same as his own.
And by its imsans he had the powiir which every tinancier wants
— that of waiting. He could wait. And (iilead lieok, this
man of unparalhded sharpiu^ss and nnecpialled experience, was a
Fool. We have beidi Christians for nearly two thousand years,
and vet Ih? v/ho trusts anotlu^r man is a Fool. It seems odd.

Mr. Cassilis fidt young again. Vm held his head erect as he
walkcid ^]own the stops of the Langham Motel. Me lost his
lik«Mioss to old Father Time, or at least resembled that poten-
tate in liis younger days, when he used to accommodate him-
self to people, moving slowly for tho happy, sometimes sitting

IMAGE EVALUATION
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WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580

(716) •72-4503

I i

280

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

down for a few weeks in the case of young lovers, and gallop-
ping for the miserable. He strode across the hall with the gait
of a Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief, and drove off to the
City with the courage of five-and-twenty and the wisdom of
sixty.

Before him stretched an endless row of successes, bigger than
anything he had ever yet tried. For him the glory of the coup
and the profit ; for Gilead Beck the interest on his money.

In his inner room, after glancing at the pile of letters and
telegrams, noting instructions, and reserving a few for private
reply, he rang his bell.

The private secretary of Mr. Gabriel Cassilis did not disdain
personally to ansv/er the bell. He was a middle-aged man,
with a sleek appearance, and a face which, being fat, shiny,
and graced only with a slight fringe of whisker lying well be
hind, somehow conveyed the impression of a Particular Baptist
who was also in the oil-trade. That was not the case, because
Mr. Mowll was a member of the Church of England and a
sidesman. He lived at Tulse Hill, and was a highly-respect-
able man. Mr. Cassillis gave him a fair salary,, and a small
amount — a very small amount of his confidence. He also,
when anything good in a humble way offered, tossed the in-
formation to his secretary, who was thus enabled to add
materially to his salary.

In the outer world Mr. Mowll was the right-hand man of
Gabriel Cassilis, his factotum, and the man, according to some,
by whose advice he walked. Gabriel Cassilis walked by no
man's advice save his own.

" For you, Mowll,'' said his employer briefly. " These I
will attend to. Telegraph to — wherever his address is — to
the man Wylie — the writing-man " — newspaper people and
writers of articles were " writing-men " to Gabriel Cassilis — "I
want him at once."

Then he absorbed himself again in his papers.

When he was left alone he pulled some printed documents
out of a drawer, and compared them with letters which had
the New York post-mark upon them. He read carefully, and
made notes at various points with a stump of a blue lead-pen-
cil. And he was still engaged on them when, half an hour
later, his secretary asked him through a tube whether he
Vfould see Mr. Wylie.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

281

Mr. Wylie was an eldeily man — a man of sixty — and he
was a man on whose face many years of rum-and-water were
beginning to tell. He was a man of letters, as he said himself;
he had some kind of name, in virtue of certain good things he
had written in his early manhood, before the rum-and-water
period set in. Now he went up and down, doing odd jobs of
literary work, such as are always wanting some one to do
them in this great city. He was a kind of literary cad.

" You are free to-day, Mr. Wylie '? "

" I am, Mr. Cassilis."

" Good. Do you remember last year writing a short poli-
tical pamphlet~I think at my suggestion— on the prospects of
Patagonian bondholders ? "

" You gave me all the information, you know."

" That is, you found the papers in my outer office, to which
all the world has access, and on them you based your

opinion." ,

" Quite so," said the pamphleteer. "I also found five-and-

twenty pounds in gold on your secretary's table the day after

the pamphlet appeared."

" Ah ! Possibly— perhaps my secretary had private reasons

of his own for — "

'* Let us talk business, Mr. Cassilis," said the author a little
rouo-hly. " You want me to do something. What is it 1 "

'°Do you know^ the affairs of Eldorado 1 "

" I have heard of Eldorado bonds. Of course, I have no
bonds either of Eldorado or any other stock."

" I have here certain papers — published papers— on the re-
sources of the country," said Mr. CassiUs. " I think it might
pay a clever man to read them. He would probably arrive at
the conclusion that the Kepublic, with its present income, can-
not hope to pay its dividends — "

" Must smash up, in short."

" Do not interrupt. But, with any assurance of activity and
honesty in the application of its borrowed money, there seems,
if this paper is correct— it is published in New York— no
doubt that the internal resources would be more than sufficient
to carry the State triumphantly through any difficulty."

" Is it a quick job, or a job that may wait 1 "

" 1 dislike calling things jobs, Mr. Wylie. I give you asug-

•282

THE GOLDEN BXTTTERFLY.

gestion which may or may not be useful. If it is useful — it is
now half-past twelve o'clock — the pamphlet should be adver-
tised in to-morrow's papers, in the printers' hands by four, and
ready on every counter by ten o'clock in the morning. Make
5'our own arrangements with printers, and call on me to-morrow
with the pamphlet. On me, mind, not Mr. Mowll."

" Yes— and— and— "

" And perhaps, if the pamphlet is clever, and expresses a
just view of Eldorado and its obligations, there may be double
the sum that you once found on my secretary's table."

Mr. Wylie grasped the papers and retired.

The country of Eldorado is one of the many free, happy,
virtuous, and enlightened republics of Central America. It
was constituted in the year 1839, after the Confederation broke
up. During the thirty years which form its history, it has en-
joyed the rule of fifteen Presidents. Don Rufiano Grechyto,
its present able administrator, a half-blood Indian by birth,
has sat upon the chair of state for nearly a year and a half,
and approaches the period of two years, beyond which no pre-
vious President has reigned. He is accordingly ill at ease.
Those who survive of his fourteen predecessors await his de-
position, and expect him shortly in their own happy circle,
where they sit like Richard IL, and talk of royal misfortunes.
Eldorado is a richly-endowed country to look at. It lias moun-
tains where a few inches of soil separate the feet of the rare
wayfarer from rich lodes of silver ; forests of mahogany cover
its plains ; indigo and tobacco flourish in its valleys ; every
where roam cattle waiting to be caught and sent to the London
market. Palms and giant tree-ferns rise in its woods ; creepers
ol surpassing beauty hang from tree to tree ; in its silent re-
cesses stand, covered with inscriptions which no man can read,
the ruins of a perished civilization. Among these ruins roam
the half-savage Indians who form nine-tenths of the popula-
tion. And in the hot seaboard towns loll and lie the languid
whites and half-castes who form the governing class. They
never do govern at all ; they never improve ; they never work ;
they are a worthless, hopeless race ; they hoard their energies
for the excitement of a pronunciamento ; their favourite occupa-
tion is a game of monte ; they consider thought a wicked

cheating. They ought

waste of energy, save for purposes of

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

283

3r-

nd
ike

all, and without exceptiou, to be rubbed out. And it is most
unfortunate, in the interests of humanity, that their only
strong feeling is an objection to be rubbed out. Otherwise we
could plant in Eldorado a colony of Germans ; kill the pythons,
alligators, jaguars, and other impediments to free civilization ;
open up the mines, and make of it a country green with sugar-
canes and as sweet as Rimmel's shop by reason of its spicy
breezes. There are about five thousand of the dominant class ;
they possess altogether a revenue of about 60,000^., a year, a
good deal less than a first-class fortune in England. As every
man of the five thousand likes to have his share of the 60,000/.,
there is not much saved in the year. Consequently when one
reads that the Eepublic of Eldorado owes the people of Great
Britain and France, the only two European States which have
money to lend, the sum of six millions, one feels sorry for the
citizens of Eldorado. It must be a dreadful thing for a high-
minded republican to have so little and to owe so much. Fancy
a man with GOO/, a year in debt to the tune of 60,000J.

It all grew by degrees. Formerly the Eldoradians owed no-
thing. In those days champagne was unknown, claret never seen,
and the native drink was rum. Nothing can be better for the
natives than their rum, because it kills them quickly, and so
rids the earth of a pestilent race. In an evil moment it came
into the head of an enterprising Eldoradian President to get
up a loan. He asked for a million, which is, of course, a trifle
to a nation which has nothing, does nothing, and saves nothing.
They got so much of their million as enabled them to raise every-
body's salary and the pay of the standing army, also to make the
dividend certain for a few years. After this satisfactory trans-
action somebody boldly oruered the importation of a few cases
of brandy. The descent of Avernus is easy and pleasant. Next
year they asked for two millions and a half. They got this
small trifle conceded to them on advantageous terms — 10 per
cent, which is nothing to a Republic with 60,000/. a year, and
the stock at 60. The pay of every ofiicial was doubled, the
army had new shirts issued, and there were fireworks at San Mer-
curio, the principal town. They promised to build railways
leading from nowhere into continental space, to carry passengers
who did not exist, and goods not yet invented. The same in-
novator who had introduced the brandy now went farther, and

284

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

sent for claret and champagne. Then they asked for more
loans, and went ahead quite like a First-class Po'ver.

When there was no more money to pay the dividends with,
and no more loans to be raised, Eldorado busted up.

The gallant officers who commanded the standing army are
now shirtless and bootless ; the men of the standing army have
disappeared ; grass grows around the house of the importer of
European luxuries ; but content has not yet returned to San
Mercurio. The empty bottles remain to remind the populace
of lost luxuries ; the national taste in drink is hopelessly per-
verted ; San Mercurio is ill at ease ; and Don Rufiano Grechyto
trembles in his marble palace.

But a year ago the country was not quite played out. There
seemed a chance yet to those who had not the materials at hand
for a simple sum of Arithmetic.

The next morning saw the appearance of a pamphlet— a short
but telling pamphlet of thirty-two pages — called " Eldorado and
her resources. Addressed to the Holders of Eldorado Stock,
by Oliver St. George Wylie."

The author took a gloomy but not a despairing view. He
mentioned that where there was no revenue there could be no
dividends. Therefore, he said, it behoved Eldorado stock-
holders to be sure that something was being done with their
money. Then he gave pages of facts and figures which
proved the utter insolvency of the State unless something could
be done. And he then proceeded to point out the amazing re-
sources of the country, could only a little energy be introduced
into its Council. He drew a lively picture of millions of acres,
the finest ground in the world, planted with sugar-canes ; forests
of mahogany ; silver mines worked by contented and laborious
Indians ; ports crowded with merchant fleets, each returning
home with rich argosies ; and a luxurious capital of marble made
beautiful by countless palaces.

At eleven Mr. Wylie called on Gabriel Cassilis again. He
brought with him his pamphlet.

" I have read it already," said Mr. Cassilis. " It is on the
whole well done, and expresses my own view, in part. But I
think you have piled it up too much towards the end."

" Why did you not give me clearer instructions, then 1 "

^' I daresay it will haye a success, Meantime," said the

THE C.OLDEN BUTTERFLY.

•285

financier, pushing over a little bag, ' you can ^o^'^t ^ f '
There ought to be fifty sovereigns. Good morning, Mr.\ ylit.

" Good morning, Mr. Cassilis. I don't know '-he tm-ned
the bag of gold over in his hands-- I don't know ; thirty
years ago I should have looked with suspicion on such a job
as this ; thirty years ago—"

" Good morning, Mr. Wylie. , ., . „.i„.

" Thirty vears ago I should have thought that a man who
could afford fifty pounds for a pamphlet—"

" Well— that he had his little game. And I should have left
that man to play it by himself. Good morning again, J^r
Cassilis. You know my address, I believe, in case of any othci

little job turning up." „. i„^tv

That afternoon Eldorado stock went down It was lucky
for Mr. Gabriel Cassilis, because he wished to buy in— ana cm
— largely.

CHAPTER XXIX.

" It is my lady ; O, it is my love - ^_
Would that she knew she were !

^ACK is late," said Phillis.

^" She was making the prettiest picture that painter ever
' - drew, st-nding in the sunlight, with the laburnums
and lilacs behind her in their fresh spring glory. Her slender
and shapely figure clad in its black riding-habit stood out m
relief against the light and shade of the newly-born foliage ;
she wore one of the pretty hats of last year's fashion, and m
her hand she carried the flowers she had just been gathering.
Her face was in repose, and in its clear straight hnes might
have served for a model Diana, chaste and fair. It was habitu-
ally rather a grave face ; that came of much solitude and long
companionship with an old man. And the contrast was all the
greater when she lit up with a smile that was like a touch ot

286

thp: golden huttkufly.

tt'iuh'T .siiiushiiie upon her fiicu iuid gavo the statue a soul. But
now slie stood Avaiting, and her eyes were grave.

Agatha L' Estrange watched, her from her shady garden-seat.
The girl's mind was full of the hidden possibilities of things —
for herself: the elder lady — to whom life had given, as she
thought, all it had to give — was thinking of these possibilities
too — for her charge. Only they approached the subject from
different points of view. To the girl, an eager looking forward
to new joys which were yet not the ordinary joys of London
maidenhood. Each successive day was to reveal to her more
secrets of life ; she was born for happiness and sunshine ; the
future was brighter in some dim and misty fashion, far brighter
than the present ; it was like a picture by Claude, where the
untrained eye sees nothing but mist and vapour, rich with
gorgeous colour, blurring the outlines which lie behind. But
the elder lady saw the present and feared the future. Every
man thinks he will succeed till he finds out his own weakness ;
every woman thinks she is born for the best of this world's
gifts — to happiness, to be lapped in warmth and comfort, to
be clothed with the love of husband and children as with a
garment. Some women get it. Agatha had not received this
great happiness. A short two years of colourless wedded life
with a man old enough to be her father, and twenty years of
widowhood. It was not the lot she might have chosen ; not
the lot she wished for Phillis. And then she thought of Jack
Dunquerque. Oddly enough, the future, in whatever shape it
was present to the brain of Phillis, was never without the
figure of Jack Dunquerque.

" Jack is late," said Phillis.

" Come here, dear, out of the sun ; we must take a little care
of our complexion. Sit down, and let us talk."

Agatha took Phillis' s hand in hers, as tlie girl sat upon the
grass at her feet.

" Let us talk. Tell me, dear Phillis, don't you think a little
too much about Mr. Dunquerque 1 "

" About Jack 1 How can I, Agatha 1 Is he not my first
friend?"

She did not blush ; she did not hesitate ; she looked frankly
in Agatha's face. The light of love which the elder lady ex-
pected was not there yet.

I '

THK GOLDEN liUTTKUFLY.

2cS7

But

seat.

*' Changed as you are, my dear, in some things you are only
a child still," said Agatha.

"Ami only achihU" asked Phillis. " Tell me why you
say so now, dear Agatha. Is it because I am fond of Jack V

" No, <lear," Mrs. L'Estrange laughed. What was to be said
to this je line ingenue ? *' Not quite that."

" I have learned a great deal — O, a great deal — since I came
here. How ignorant I was ! How foolish ! "

" What have you learned, Phillis 1 "

" Well, about people. They are not all so interesting as they
seemed at first. Agatha, it seems like a loss not to think so
much of people as I did. Some are foolish, like the poor cu-
rate — are all curat(!s foolish, I wonder 1 — some seem to say one
thing and mean another, like Mr. Cassilis ; some do not seem
to care for anything in the world except dancing ; some talk
as if china was the only thing worth living for ; but some are
altogether lovely and charming, like yourself, my dear."

" Go OR, Phillis, and tell me more."

" Shall I 'I I am foolish perhaps, but most of our visitors
have disappointed me. How can people talk about china as
if the thing could be feU, like a picture 1 What is it they like
so much in dancing and skating-rinks, that they prefer them
to music and painting, and — and — the beautiful river 1 "

" Wait till you come out, dear Phillis," said Agatha.

For all the things in which young ladies do most delight
were to her a vanity and foolishness. She heard them talk
and she could not understand. She was to wait till she came
out. And was her coming out to be the putting on of the
Coping-stone 1

" Jack is late," said Phillis.

It was a little expedition. Mrs. L'Estrange and Gilead
Beck were to drive to Hampton Court, while Jack and Phillis
rode. It was not the first of such expeditions. In late May
and early June the Greater London, as the Registrar calls it,
is a marv.el and a miracle of loveliness ; in all the world there
are no such meadows of buttercups, with fragrant hedges of
thorn ; there are no such generous and luxuriant growths of
westeria, with purple . clusters ; there are no such woods of
horse-chestnuts, with massive pyramids of white blossom ; there
are no such apple-orchards and snow-clad forests of white-blos-

288

THK (;()M)KN lUiTTKIMM.V

somed pluui' trees as aro to bu seen around this great city of
ours. ColoTiials returned from exile shed tears when they see
them, and think of arid Aden and thirsty Indian plains ; the
American owns that though Lake George with its hundred
islets is lovely, and the Hudson liiver is a thing to dream of,
there is nothing in the States to place beside the incomparable
result of wealth and loving care which the outlying suburbs of
south and western London show.

If it was new to Phillis ; if every new journey made her
pulses bound, and every new place seen was another revc^lation
— it was also new to the American, who looked so grave and
smiled so kindly, and sometimes made such funny observations.

Gilead Beck was more silent with the ladies than with Jack,
which was natural, because his only experience of the sex was
that uncomfortable episode in his life when he taught school
and fought poor Pete Conkling. And to this adventurer, this
man who had been of all trades — who had roamed about the
world for thirty years ; who had habitually consorted with
miners and adventurers, whom the comic American books have
taught us to regard as a compound of drunkard, gambler, buc-
caneer, blasphemer, and weeping sentimentalist — his manner
of life had not been able to destroy the chivalrous respect for
women with which an American begins life. Only he had
never known a lady at all until now : never any lady in America.

In spite of his life, this man was neither coarse nor vulgar.
He was modest, knowing his defects, and he was humble.
Nevertheless he had the self-respect which none of his country-
men are without. He was an undeniable ' ranker,' a fact of
which he was proud, because, if he had a weakness, it was to
regard himself as another Cromwell, singled out and chosen.
He had two languages, one of which he made sparing use.
save when he narrated his American experiences. This, as we
have seen, was a highly ornamental tongue, a gallery of imagery,
a painted chamber of decorative metaphor — the language of
wild California, an argot which, on occasions, he handled with
astounding vigour. The other was the tongue of the cultivated
American. In England we bark : in the States they speak.
We fling out our conversation in jerks ; the man of the States
shapes his carefully in his brain before he speaks. Gilead Beck
spoke like a gentleman of Boston, save that his defective edu-
cation did not allow him to speak so well.

THE GOLDEN IJlJTTKin'LV.

280

His njroiit terror \v;is i\u\ word Slioddy. Ho looked at
Shoddy full in the t'aco ; ho iiiado ii[> his mind what Slioddy
was — tho thing which pretends to be what it is not, a blanch
of the great family which has the Frig at one end and tlu^ Snob
at the other^ — and he was n^solute in avoiding the slightest
suspicion of Slioddy.

If In; was of obscure birth, with antecedents which left him
jH)tliing to boast of but honesty, he was also soft-hearted as a
girl, ((uick in sympathy, which Adam Smith teaches us is the
groundwork of all morals, and refined in thought. After many
years, a man's habitual thoughts are stamped upon his face. The
face of Gi^ead Beck was a record of purity and integrity. Such
a man in P^ngland would, by the power of circumstances, have
been forced into taprooms, and slowly dragged downwardsinto
that beery morass in which, as in another Malebolge, the Bri-
tish workman lies stupified and helpless. Some wicked cynic
— was it Thackeray 1 — said that below a certain class no English
woman knows the meaning of virtue. He might have said
with greater truth, that below a certain class no Englishman
knows the meaning of self-respect.

To go into that orderly house at Twickenham, where the
higher uses of wealth were practically illustrated by a refine-
ment new to the good ex-miner, was to this American in itself an
education, and none the less useful because it came late in life.
To be with the ladies, to see the tender graces of the elder
and the sweetness of the younger, filled his heart with
emotion.

"The Luck of the Golden Butterlly, Mrs. L'Estrange," he
said, " i^ more than what the old squaw thought. Itb?g?.n
with dollars, but it has brought me — this."

They were sitting in the garden, Agatha and Gilead Beck,
while Jack Dunquerque and Phillis were watering flowers, or
gathering them or always doing something which would keep
Jack close to the girl.

*' If by this you mean friendship, Mr. Beck," said Agatha,
** I am very glad of it. Dollars, as you call money, may take
to themselves wings and fly away, but friends do not."

It will be observed that Agatha L'Estrange had never seen
reason to abandon the old-fashioned rules invented by those
philosophers who lived before Rochefoucauld.
s

200

TIIK (JOt.DKN lU'TTKItl LV.

" I sometimes think I should like to try," said Gilead Beck.
** Poor men have no friends ; tliey have mates on our side the
water, and pals on yours."

"Mates and pals ? " cried Piiillis, laughing, 'Mack, do you
know mates and pals 1 "

" 1 ought to," said .lack, "because I'm poor enough."

"Friends come to rich folk iMtuiully, like the fruit to the
tree, or— or — the flower to tho rose," Gilead added poetically.

" Or the mud to the wheel," said Jfick.

"Suppose all my dollars were suddeidy to vamose — I mean,
to vanish away," Gilead Beck went on solemnly — " would the
friends vanish away too 1 "

" Jack would not," said Phillis promptly, and " Agatha
would not. Nor should I."

She held out her hand in the free frank manner which was
hergreatest charm. Gilead Beck took the little fingers in his big
rough hand, the bones of which seemed to stick out all over it,
so rugged and hard it was, and looked in her face with the
solemn smile which made Phillis trust in him, and raised her
fingers to his lips.

Then she blushed with a pretty confusion, which drove poor
Jack to the verge of madness. Indeed, the ardour of his passion
and the necessity for keeping silence were together making the
young man thin and pale.

They were gradually exploring, this party of four, the out-
side gardens, parks, castles, and views of London. (Df course
they were as new to Jack and Mrs. L'Estrange as tliey were to
Phillis and the American. Jack^knew Greenwich, wliere he had
dined j and Kichmond, where he had dined ; and the Crystal
Palace, wiiere he had also dined, revealed to him one summer
evening an unknown stretch of fair country ; more than that
he knew not.

Perhaps more exciting pleasures might have been found, but
this simple party found their own unsophisticated delight in
driving and riding through green lanes.

" Phillis will have to come out next year," said Agatha,
half apologising to herself for enjoying such things. " We
must amuse her while we can."

They went to Virginia Water, where Mr. Beck made some
excellent observations on the ruins and on the flight of time,

TilK (J()IJ)KN lU'TTKIJFLY.

291

1 Beck,
lide the

do yoii

b to the
ically.

I moan,
uld tho

Agatha

ich was

his big

over it,

vith the

ised her

»ve poor

passion

cing the

the oiit-
f course

were to
e he had

Crystal
summer
lan that

und, but
elight in

Agatha,
"We

,de some
of time,

insomuch that it was really sad to discover that tliey wero only,
80 to speak, new ruins.

They wont to Ifanipton Court, where they strolled through
the }>icture-ga11oru's and looked at the Lc^ly hoautios ; walked
up the long avenues, and saw that quaint old modiiuval ganh^n
which lies hidden away at the side of the Palace, maikod by
few. Gilead Beck said that if he was the Quoon and had such
a piiic'\. ho should sometimes live in it, if only for the sak»^ of
giving a dinner in the great Hall. But Phillis liked luist the
gardens, with tluur old-fashioned flowers, and the peaces which
reigns perpetually in the (piaint old courts. And (lilead Bock
asked Jack privately if he thought the Palace might bo bought,
and if so, for how much.

They visited Windsor. Mr. Ijock said that if he had such
a location, he should always live there ; he speculated on the
probable cost of erecting such a fortniss on the banks of th(i
Hudson River; and then he cast his imagination backwards up
the stream of time and plunged into history.

PhiUis allowed him to go on, while he jumbled up kings,
mixed up cardinals, and tried, by the recovery of old associa-
tions, to connect the venerable pile with the past.

" From one of those windows, I guess," he said, pointing his
long arm vaguely round the narrow lattices, " Charles came
out to be beheaded, while Oliver Cromwell spurted ink in hi§
face. It was rough on the poor king. Seems to me, kings
very often do have a rough time. And perhaps too that Car-
dinal Thomas a Beckett, when he told Henry IV. that he
wished he'd served his country as well as he'd lovt d his C4od,
it was on this very terrace. Perhaps--"

" Mr. Beck, when did you learn English history ? " cried
Phillis.

Then, like a little pedant as she was, she began to unfold all
that she knew about the old fortress and its history. Its his-
tory is not so grim as that of the Tower of London, which she
had once narrated to Jack Dunquerque ; but it has a pictu-
resque story of its own, which the girl somehow made out from
the bare facts of English History — all she knew. But these
her imagination converted into living and indisputable truths,
pictures whose only fault was that the lights were too bright
and the shadows too intense.

2!)2

Tl'K (^OLDKM lUTT'lEltl'LY

Alas tliis is tlie way with posterity ! The dead are to he
judged as they seem from such acts as have remained on record.
The force of circumstances, the mixture of motives, the general
muddle of good and bad together, are lost in the summing-up ;
and history, which after all only does what Phillis did, but
takes longer to <lo it, paints Nero black and Titus white, with
the clear and hard outline of an etching.

Gilead Beck, after the lecture, looked round the place with
renewed interest.

" I am more ignorant than I thought," he said humldy.
" but I am trying to read, Miss Fleming."

" Are you ! " she cried, with a leal delight in finidng, as she
thought, one other person in the world as ignorant of that art
as herself. " And hov/ far have you got 1 "

*• I've got so far," he said, " that I've lost my way, and shall
have to go back again. It was all through Robert Browning.
My dear young lady,'' he said this in his most impressive tones,
"if you should chance upon one of his books with a pretty
title, such as Red Cotton Nightcap Country or Fifine at the Fair,
don't read it, don't try it. It isn't a fairy story, nor a love
story. It's a stor)' without an end, it's a story told upsy-down ;
it's like wandering in a forest without a j)ath. It gets into
your brain and makes it go round ; it gets into your eyes and
makes you see ghosts. Don't you look at that book.

" Reading in a general way, and if you don't take too much
of it, is a fine thing," he continued. " The difficulty is to keep
the volumes separate in your head. Anybody can write a book.
I've written columns enough in the Clearville Roarer for a dozen
books ; but it takes a man to read one."

" Ah, but it is different with you," said Phillis. " I am only
in words of two syllables. I've just got through the first
reading-book. * The cat has drunk up the milk.' I suppose I
must go on with it, but I think it is better to have some one
to read for you. I am sure Jack would read for me whenever
I asked him."

" I never thought of that," said Gilead Beck. " Why ^ot
keep a clerk to read for you, and pay out the information in
small chunks ? I should like to tackle Mr. Carlyle that way."

" Agatha is reading a novel to me now," Phillis went on.
** There is a girl in it ; but somehow I think my own life is

THK GOLDKN BUTTERFLY.

29.1

with

more interesting than her.s. She belongs to a part of the
country where the common people say clever things — 0, very
clever things ! — and she herself says all sorts of clever things."

" Mr. Dunquerque," interrupted Gilead Beck, who was not
listening, " would.read to you all the days of his life, I think,
if you would let him."

Phillis made no reply. As she neither blushed, nor smiled,
nor gave any of the ordinary signs of apprehension with which
most young ladies would "have received this speech, it is to be
presumed that she did not take in the full meaning of it.

" There is one thing about Mr. Dunquerque," Gilead Beck
went on, " that belongs, I reckon, to you English people only.
He !« not a young man "

" Jack not a young man 1 Why, Mr, Beck-

" Not what we call a young man. Our young men are six-
teen and seventeen. Mr. Dunquerque is five-and-twenty. Our
men of five-and-twenty are grave and full of care. Mr. Dun-
querque is light-hearted and laughs. That is what I like him
for."

•* Yes ; Jack laughs, I should not like to see Jack grave."

She spoke of him as if he were her own property. To be
sure, he was -her first and principal friend. She could talk to
him as she could talk to no one else. And she loved him with
the deep and passionless love, as yet, of a sister.

" Yes," said Gilead Beck, looking round him, " England is
a great country. Its young men are not all mad for dollars ;
they can laugh and be happy ; and the land is one great garden.
Miss Fleming, that is the happiest country, I guess, whose
people the longest keep their youth."

She only half understood him, but she looked in his face
with her sweet smile.

*' It is like a dream. That I should be walking here with
you, such as you, in this grand place — I, Gilead P. Beck. To
be with yoiv and Mr. Dunquerque is like getting back the youth
I never had : youth that isn't always thinkin' about the next
day ; youth that isn't always plannin' for the future ; youth
that has time to enjoy the sunshine, to look into a sweet gell's
eyes and fall in love — like you, my pretty, and Mr. Dun-
que — w'io saved my life."

He added these words as an after thought, and as if he was
reminded of some duty forgotten.

294

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

Pliillis was sil(!iit, because his words fell upon her heart and
made lier think. It was not her youth that was prolonged ; it
was her childhood. And that was dropping from her now like
the shell of the chrysalis. She thought how, somewhere in the
world, there were people born to be unhappy,.and she felt humi-
liated when she was selfishly enjoying what they could not.
Somewhere in the world — and where 1 Close to her, in the
cottages where Mrs. L'Estrange had taken her.

For until then the poor, who are always with us, were not
unhappy, to Phillis, nor hungry, nor deserving of pity and sym-
pathy ; they were only picturesque.

They went /to St. George's Chapel, after overruling Gilead
Beck's objections to attending divine service — for he said that
he hadn't been to meetin' for more than thirty years ; also,
that he had not yet " got religion " — and when he stood in
the stall under the banner of its rightful owner he looked on
from an outsider's point of view.

The ceremonial of the ancient Church of England was to him
a pageant and a scenic display. The picture, however, was
very fine : the grand chapel with its splendour of ornamenta-
tion ; the banners and heraldry ; the surpliced sweet-voiced
boys ; the dignified white-robed clergymen ; the roll of the
organ ; the sunlight through the painted glass ; even the young
subaltern who came clanking into the chapel as the service
began, — there was nothing, he said, in America which could
be reckoned a patch upon it. Church in Avenue 39, New
York, was painted and gilded in imitation of the Alhambra ;
that was jonsidered fine, but could not be compared with St.
George's, Windsor. And the performance of the service, he
said, was so good as to have merited a larger audience.

Jack Dunquerque, I grieve to say, did not attend to the
service. He was standing beside Phillis, and he watched her
with hungry eyes. For she was looking before her in a sort of
trance. The beauty of the place intoxicated her. She listened
with soft eyes and parted lips. All was artistic and beautiful.

TLe chapel was peopled again with mailed knights ; the
voices in the anthem sang the greatness and the glory of Eng-
land ; the sunshine through the painted glass gave colour to the
picture in her brain ; and when the service was over she came
out with dazed look, as one who is snatched too suddenly from
a dream of heaven.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

•2J)5

This too, like everything else, was ])art of her education.
She had to learn the beauty of the world and its splendours.
She was to see the things she had only dreamed of, but by
dreaming had wrapped in a cloud of coloured mist

When was it to be completed, her education ? Phillis waited
for that Coping-stone for which Joseph Jagenal was vainly
searching. She laughed when she thought of it, the mysterious
completion of Abraham Dyson's great fabrio. What was it 1
She had not long to wait.

" I love her, Mrs. L'Estrange," said Jack Dunquerque, paa-
sionalely on the evening of the last of their expeditions ; " I
love her."

" I have seen it for some time," Agatha replied. " And I
wanted to speak to you before, but I did not like to. I am
afraid I have been very wrong in encouraging you to come here
so often."

" Who could help loving her ? " he cried. " Tell me, Mrs.
L'Estrange, you who have known so many, was there ever a
girl like Phillis — so sweet, so fresh, so pretty, and so good V
" Indeed she is all that you say," Agatha acknowledged.
" And will you be my frien^. with Colquhoun ? I am going
to see him to-morrow about it, because 1 cannot stand it any
longer."

" He knows that you visit me ; he will be prepared in a way.
And — Mr. Dunquerque, why are you in such a hurry?
Phillis is so young and you are so young."

" I am five-and-twenty, and Phillis is nineteen."
" Then Phillis is so inexperienced."

" Yes ; she is inexperienced," Jack repeated. " And if expe-
rience comes, she may learn to love another man."

" That is what all the men say. Why, you silly boy, if Phillis
were to love you first, do you think that a thousand men could
make her give you up V

" You are right . out she does not love me ; she only likes
me ; she does not know what love means. That is bad enough
to think of. But even that isn't the worst."
" What more is there 1 "

" I am so horribly, so abominably poor. My brother Isle-
worth is the poorest peer in the kingdom, and I am about the
poorest younger son. And Colquhoun will think I am coming
after Phillis's money."

29G

THE GOI.DKN UUTTKliFLY.

" As you arc puur, it will l>e a great comfort for everybo'ly
concerned," said Agatha, with good sense, " to think that,
should you marry Phillis, she has some money to help you
with. Go and see Lawrence Colquhoun, Mr. Dunquerque,
and — and if I can help your cause, 1 will. There ! Now let
us have no more."

" They will make a pretty pair," said Mr. Gilead Beck pre-
sently to Mrs. L'Estrange.

'* O Mr. Beck, you are all in a plot ! And perhaps after all
— and Mr. Dunquerque is so poor."

" Is that so 1 " Mr. Beck asked eagerly. '' Will the young-
lady's guardian refuse the best man in all the world because he
is poor? Now, Mrs. L'Estrange, there's only one way out of
this muss, and perhaps vou Avill take that way for me."

" What is it, Mr. Beck ? "

" I can't say myself to Mr. Dunquerque, ' What is mine is
yours.' And I can't say to Mr. Colquhoun — not with the
delicacy that you would put into it — that Mr. Dunquerque
shall have all I've got to make him happy. I want you to say
that for me. Tell him there is no two ways about it — that
Mr. Dunquerque must marry Miss Fleming. Lord, Lord ! why,
they are made for each other ! Look at him now, Mrs.
L'Estrange, leanin' towards her, with a look half respectful and
half hungry. And look at her, with her sweet innocent eyes ;
she doesn't understand it, she doesn't know what he's beatin'
down with all his might, the strong honest love of a man —
the beet thing he's got to give. Wait till you give the word,
and she feels his arms about her waist, and his lips close to
hers. It's a beautiful thing, love. I've never been in love my-
self, but I've watched those that were ; and I venture to tell
you, Mrs. L'Estrange, that from the Queen down to the kitchen-
maid, there isn't a woman among them all that isn't the better
for be ng loved. And they know it too, all of them, except
that pretty creature."

THE » OLDEN BUTTE I {FLY.

297

CHAPTER XXX.

" Pictoribiis atqnc Coftis
Quidlibot audendi seiiij)or fuit joiiuii j.otestas."

ITH commissions" — Coriulius Jagenal spoke as if
Gilead Beck was a man of multitude, siguifyitig
many, and as if one commission was a thousand —
"wiuii commissions pouring in as they shoukl, brother Hum-
phrey — "

" And the great Epic, the masterpiece of the century, about
to be published in the Grand Style, brother Cornelius, the only
style which is worthy of its merits — "

" Something definite should be attempted, Humphrey — "

" You mean, brother — "

" I mean, Humphrey — "

" With regard to—''

" With regard to Phillis Fleming."

They looked at each other meaningly and firmly. The
little table was between them ; it was past twelve o'clock ; al-
ready two or three soda-water bottles were lying on it empty ;
and the world looked rosy to the poetic pair,

Humphrey was the first to speak after the young lady's name
was mentioned. He removed the pipe from his mouth, threw
. back his head, stroked his long brown beard, and addressed the
ceiling.

♦' She is," he said, " she is indeed a charming girl. Her
outHnes finely but firmly drawn ; her colouring delicate, but
strongly accentuated ; the grouping to which she lends her-
self always differentiated artistically ; her single attitudes de-
signed naturally and with fieedom; her flesh-tints remarkably
pure and sweet ; her draperies falling in artistic folds ; her
atmosphere softened as by the perfumed mists of iiiorning ; her
hair tied in the simple knot which is the admiration and des-
pair of many painters ; — you agree with my rendering, brother
Cornelius " — he turned his reflective gaze from the ceiling, and
fixed his lustrous eyes, perhaps with the least little look of
triumph, upon his brother — " my rendering of this incom-
parable Work ? "

298

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFT.Y.

lie H])oko of the young lady as if slie were a inctuie. This
was because, iminediate-.y after receiviug his commission, he
bethought him of reading a little modern criticism, and so
bought the Academy for a few weeks. In that clear bubbling
fount of modern English undefiled the Art criticisms are done
with such entire freedom from cant and affectation that they are
a pleasure to read ; and from its pages every Prig is so jealously
kept out, that the paper is as widely circulated and as popular
as Punch; thus Humphrey Jagenal acquired a new jargon of
Art criticism, which he developed and made his own.

Cornelius had been profiting by the same delightful and
genial enemy to Mutual Admiration Societies. He was a Utile
taken aback for a moment by the eloquence and fidelity of his
brother's word-picture, but stimulated to rivalry. He made
answer, gazhig into the black and hollow depths of the empty
fireplace, and speaking slowly, as if he enjoyed his words too
much to let them slip out too fast :

" She is all that you say, Humphrey. From your standpoint
nothing could V)e better. I judge her, however, from my own
platform. I look on her as one of Nature's sweetest poems ;
such a poem as defies the highest effort of the greatest creative
genius ; where the cadenced lines are sunlit, and as they
ripple on make music in your soul. You are rapt with their
beauty ; you are saddened with the unapproachable magic of
their charm ; you feel the deepest emotions of the heart
awakened and beating in responsive harmony. And when,
after long and patient watching, the Searcher after the Truth
of Beauty feels each verse sink deeper and deeper within him,
till it becomes a part of his own nature, there arises before
him, clad in mystic and transparent Coan robe, the spirit of
subtle wisdom, long lying perdu in those magic utterances.
She is a lyric ; she is a sonnet ; she is an epigram — "

" At least," interrupted Humphrey unkindly, cutting short
his brother's freest flow, " at least she doesn't carry a sting."

" Then let us say an Idyl—"

*' Cornelius, make an Idyl yourself for her," Humphrey in-
terrupted again, because really his brother was taking an unfair
advantage of a paltry verbal superiority. " Now that we have
both described her — and. I am sure, brother," he added, out of
the kindness of his heart, "no description could be more

■

i...

THE GOT.DEf? BUtTRRELY.

::99

This
), he
ul so

poetically tine than your own— it would make even a stranger
see Phillis standing in a vision before his eyes, But let us see
what had better be done."

" We must act at once, Humphrey. We must call upon her
at her guardian's, Mrs. L'Estrange, at Twickenham. Perhaps
that lady does not know so many men of genius as to render
the accession of two more to her circle anything but a pleasure
and. an honour. And as for our next steps, theiy must be
guided by our finesse, of our knowledge of the world, our in-
sight into a woman's heart, our — shall I say our power of
intrigue, Humphrey ? "

Then the Artist positively winked. It is not a gesture to be
commended from an artistic ])oint of view, but he did it. Then
he chuckled and wagged his head.

Then the Poet in his turn also winked, chuckled, and wagged
his head too.

" We understand each other, Humphrey. We always do."

** We must make our own opportunity," said the Artist
thoughtfully. " Not together, but separately."

•' Surely separately. Togetlier would never do."

"We will go to bed early tonight, in order to be fresh to-
morrow. Have you — did you — can you give me ^ny of your
own experiences in this Avay, Cornelius ? "

The Poet shook his head.

" I may have been wooed," he said. " Men of genius are
always run after. But as I am a bachelor, you see it is clear
that I never proposed."

Humphrey had much the same idea in his own mind, and
felt as if the wind was a little taken out of his sails. This often
happens when two sister craft cruise so very close alongside of
each other.

" Do not let us be nervous, Humphrey," the elder brother
went on kindly. " It is the simplest thing in the world, I
dare say, when you come to do it. Love finds out a way."

" When I was in llomeT— " Humphrey said, casting his
thoughts backwards thirty years.

" When I was in Heidelberg — " said Cornelius, in the same
mood of retrospective meditation.

*' There was a model — a young artist's model — "
" There was a little country girl — "

i, I

300

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

" Witli the darkest eyes, and hair of a deep blue-bhick, the

kind of colour one seems only to read of or to see in a picture."

" With blue eyes as limpid as the waters of the Ncckar, and

liglit-brown hair which caught the sunshine in a way that one

seldom seems to see, but which we poets sometimes sing of."

Tiien they both started and looked at each other guiltily.
" Cornelius," said Humphrey, " I think that Phillis would
not like these reminiscences. We must offer viriiin hearts."

" True, brother," said Cornelius, with a sigh, " we must.
Yet the recollection is not unpleasant."

They went to bed early, only concentrating into two hours
the brandy-and-soda of four. It was a wonderful thing that
neither gave the other the least hint of a separate and indivi-
dual preference for Phillis. They were running together, as
usual, in double harness, and so far as miglit be gathered from
their conversation they were proposing to themselves that both
should marry Phillis.

They dressed with more than usual care in the morning, and,
without taking their customary walk, sat each in his own room,
till two o'clock, when Humphrey sought Cornelius in the Work-
shop.

They surveyed each other with admiration. They were certainly
a remarkable pair, and, save for that little redness of the nose
already alluded to, they were more youthful than one would
conceive possible at the age of fifty. Their step was elastic ;
their eyes were bright : Humphrey's beard was as brown and
silky, Cornelius's cheek as smooth as twenty years before. This
it is to lead a life unclouded and devoted to contemplation of Art.
This it is to have a younger brother, successful, and never tired
of working for his seniors.

" We are not nervous, brother*?" asked Cornelius, with a
little hesitation.

" Not at all," said Humphrey sturdily, " not at all. Still, to
steady the system, perhaps — "

" Yes," said Cornelius ; *• you are quite right, brother. We
will."

There was no need of words. The reader knows already
what was implied.

Humphrey led the way to the dining-room, where he speedily
found a pint of champagne. With this modest pick nie-up,

THK UOLDKN UUTTKHFLY.

301

ick, the
ticture."
car, and
hat one
g of."
Itily.

would
arts."
e must.

hours
ncr that

1 iiidivi-
bher, as
ed from
lat both

ng, and,
n room,
3 Work-

ertainly
;lie nose
B would
elastic ;
wn and
■e. This
I of Art.
er tired

wit! I a

Still, to

r. We

already

peedily
nie-up,

which no one surely will grudge the brethren, they started on
their way.

" What we need, Cornelius," said Humphrey, putting himself
outside the last ufop, — " what we need. Not what we wish for."

Then he straightened his V)ack, smote his chest, stamped
lustily with his ri};;ht foot, and looked like a war horse before
the battle.

Unconscious of the approaching attack of these two conquer-
ing heroes, Phillis and Agatha L'Estrange were sitting in the
shade and on the grass : the elder lady with some work, the
younger doing nothing. It was a special characteristic with
her that she could sit for hours doing nothing. So the modern
Arabs, the gipsies, niggerdom in general, and all that large
section of humanity which has never learned to read and write,
are contented to fold their hands, lie down, and think away
the golden hours. What they think about, these untutored
tribes, the Lord only knows. Whether by degrees, and as they
grow old, some faint intelligence of the divine order sinks into
their souls, or whether they become slowly enwrapped in the
beauty of the world, or whether their thoughts, always turned
in the bacon-and- cabbage di ction, are wholly gross and earthly,
I cannot tell. Phillis's thoughts were still as the thoughts
of a child, but as those of a child passing into womanhood :
partly selfish, inasmuch as she consciously placed her own
individuality, as every child does, in the centre of the
universe, and made the sun, the moon, the planets, and
all the minor stars revolve around her ; partly unselfish, because
they hovered about the forms of the two or three people she
loved, and took the shape of devising means of pleasing these
people ; partly artistic, because the beauty of the June after-
noon cried aloud for admiration, while the sunshine lay on the
lawns and the flower-beds, threw up the light leaves and blos-
soms of the passion-flower on the house-side, and made darker
shadows in the gables, while the glorious river ran swiftly at
her feet. The river of which she never tired. Other things
lost their novelty, but the river never.

" I wish Jack Dunquerque was here," she said at last.

"I wish so, too," said Agatha. "Why did we not invite
him, Phillis?"

Then they were silent again.

" I wish Mr. Beck would call," remarked Phillis,

•i

302

THE flOLDKN HUTTEHFLY

" My dear, wo do nothinjj; but wish. But hei'e is somebody
— two young gentlemen. Who are they, I wonder 1 "

" 0, Agatlui, they are the Twins ! "

riiillis sprang from her seat, and ran to meet them with a
most unaffected phnisure.

" Tliis is Mr. Cornelius Jagenal," she said, introducing them
to Agatha. " The Poet, you know." And here she laughed,
because Agatha did not know, and Cornelius perked up his
head, and tried to look unconscious of his fame. " An<l this
is Mr. Humphrey, the Artist." And then she laughed again,
because Humphrey did exactly the same as Cornelius, only
with an air of deju'ecation, as one who should say, " Never mind
my fame for the present."

It was embarrassing for Mrs. L'Estrange, because she ccMdd
not for her life recollect any Poet or Artist named Jagenal.
The men and their work were alike unknown to her. And why
did Phillis laugh 1 And what <iid the pair before her look so
solemn about ?

They were solemn partly from vanity, which is the cause of
most of the grave solemnity we so much admire in the world,
and partly because, finding themselves face t'^ face with Phillis,
they became suddenly and painfully aware that thoy had come
on a delicate errand. Cornelius looked furtively at Humphrey,
and the Artist glanced at the Poet, but neither found any help
from his brother. Their courage, as evanescent as that of Mr.
Kobert Acres, was rapidly oozing out at their boots.

Phillis noted their emljarrassmenb, and tried to put them at
their ease. This was difficult ; they were so inordinately vain,
so self-conscious, so unused to anything beyond their daily ex-
perience, that they were as awkward as a pair of fantoccini.
People who live alone get into the habit of thinking and talk-
ing about themselves ; the Twins were literally unable to think
or speak on any other subject.

Phillis, they saw, to begin with, was altered. Somehow she
looked older. Certainly more formidable. And it was awk-
ward to feel that she was taking them in a manner under her
own protection before a stranger. And why did she laugh 1
The task which they discussed with such an airy confidence
over the brandy-and-soda assumed, in the presence of the
young lady herself, dimensions quite out of proportion to their

THK GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

303

)mebody

1 with a

ng them
laughetl,
up liis
Vnd this
d again,
us, only
er iniud

le could

Jagenal.

Lnd why

look so

ause of
world,

Phillis,
[id come
mphrey,
my help
t of Mr.

them at
sly vain,
iaily ex-
itoccini.
id talk-
to think

bow siie
as awk-
der her
laugh 1
ifidence
of the
bo their

midnight estimate. All these considerations made them feel
and look ill at ease.

Also, it was vexatious that neither of the ladies turned tlu;
conversation upon the subject nearest to each man's heart — his
own Work. On the contrary, Phillis asketl after Joseph, and
sent him an invitation to come and see her ; Mrs. L'lCstrange
talked timidly about the weather, and tried them on the Opera,
on the Academy, and on the last volume of Browning. It was
odd in so great an Artist as Humphrey that he had not yet
seen the Academy, and in so great a Poet as Cornelius that he
iiad not read any recent poetry. Tiien they tried to talk about
flowers. The two city-bred artists knew a wallflower from a
cabbage and a rose from a sprig of asparagus, and that was all.

Phillis would not help either the Twins or Agatha, so that
the former grew more helpless every moment. In fact, the girl
was staring at them, and wondering to feel how differently she
regarded men and manners since the first evening in Carnar-
von-square, when they produced champagne in her honour, and
drank it all up themselves.

She remembered how she had looked at them with awe ;
how, after a day or two, this reverence vanished ; how she
found them to be mere shallow wind-bags and humbugs, and
regarded them with contempt ; how she made fun of them with
Jack Dunquerqe ; and how she drew their portraits.

And now — it was a mark of her advanced education — she
looked at them with pity. , They were so dependent on each
other for admirat! . ; they were so childishly vain ; they were
so full of themselves ; and their daily life of sleep, drink, and
boastful pretension showed itself to her experienced head as so
mean and sordid a thing.

She came to the help of the whole party, and took the Twins
for a walk among the flowers, flattering them, asking how
Work got on, congratulating them on their good looks, and
generally making things comfortable for them.

Presently she found herself on the sloping bank of the river,
where she was wont to sit with Jack. She looked round and

saw Humphrey

standing

before Mrs. L'Estrange, and occa-

sionally glancing over his; shoulder. And she noticed, then, a
curiously nervous motion of her companion's hand ; also that
his cheek was twitching with some secret emotion. He looked

;)()4

TilK (JOLDKN lUITI'KllKLV.

j ■

i I

older too, slie thouglit ; perhaps that wjis the hri^^lit sunlii;lit,
which brought out the tlells and valleys and the crow's-feet
round his eyes.

He cleared his voice witli an eli'ort, and opened his mouth to
speak, hut shut it again, silent.

'* You W(ae going to say, Mr. Cornelius? "

" Yes, Will you sit down Miss Fleming 'I "

" Ho is going to tell me about tiie l/phcarinr/ of .Klfred"
thought Phillis. " And how does the Workshop get on 'I " she
asked.

" Fairly well," he replied modestly. " We publish in the
Autumn. The work is to \w. brought out, you will be glad to
learn, with all the luxury of the best illustrations, paper, print,
and binding that money can procure."

" So that all you want is the poem itself," said Phillis, with
a mischievous light in her eyes.

*' Ye-yes — " he winced a little. " As you say, the Epic itself
alone is wanting, and that advances with mighty strides. My
brother Humphrey — a noble creature is Humphrey, Miss
Fleming — "

She bov/ed and smiled.

"Is he still hard at work ? Always hard at' work ?" She
laughed as she asked the (][uestion.

" His work is crushing him, Miss Fleming — may I call you
Phillis ?" He spoke very solemnly — " his work is crushing him."

" Of course you may, Mr. Cornelius. We are quite old
friends. But I am sorry to hear that your brother is being
crushed."

"Yesterday, Phillis — I feel to you already like a brother,"
pursued the Poet — " yesterday I discovered the secret of Hum-
phrey's life. May I tell it you ? "

" If you please." She began to be a little bored. Also she
noticed that Agatha wore a look of mute suffering, as if the
Artist was getting altogether too much for her. " If you
please ; but be quick, because I think Mrs. L'Estrange wants
me."

" I will tell you the secret in a few words. My brother
Humphrey adores you with all the simplicity and strength of
a noble artistic nature."

" Does he 1 You mean he likes me very much. How good

THE (JOI.DKN nriTKUKLY.

'M):

he is ! 1 Jim very j^lud to licjir it, Mr. (.'onieliiKs, though wliy
it need be a secret 1 do not know."

" Then my poor brotlier — lie is all loyalty, and brings you
a virgin heart" — Cornelius ! and tlui model with the blue-
black hair! — "an unsidlied name, and the bright prospects of
requited genius — my brother may hope ] "

rhillis did not understand on(i word.

" Certaiidy," she said ; *' I am sure I should like to see him
hoping."

"I will tell him, sister Philli.s,"said Cornelius, nodding with
a sunny smile. " You have made two men happy, and one at
least grateful."

Mis mission was accomplished, his task done. It will hardly
be believed that this treacherous bard, growing more and
more nervous as he reflected on the uncertainty of thc^ vv(Mlded
life, actually came to a sudilen resolution to plea<l his brother's
cause. Humphrey was the younger, l^et him bear off the
winsome bride.

*' It will be a change in our lives," he said. " You will allow
me to have my share in his happiness."

Phillis made no reply. Decidedly the Poet Avas gone dis-
traught with over-much reading and thought.

Cornelius, smiling, crowing, and laughing, almost like a child,
pressed her hand and left her, stepping with a youthful elasti-
city across the lawn. Humphrey, sitting beside Mrs. L'Estrange,
was bewildering that good lady with a dissertation on colour
it pnypos of a flower which he held in his hand. Agatha could
not understand this strange pair, who looked so youthful until
you came to see them closely, and then they seemed to be of
any age you pleased to name. Nor could she understand their
talk, which was pedantic, affected, and continually involved
the theory that the speaker was, next to his brother, the great-
est of living men.

If it was awkard and stupid sitting with Humplirey on a
bench while he discoursed on Colour, it was still more awkward
when the other one appeared with a countenance wreathed
with smiles, and sat on the other side. Nor did there appear
any reason why the one with the beard should suddenly break
off his oration, turn very red in the face, get up,and walk slowly

300

THK GOLDKN BUTTERFLY.

across the lawn to take his brother's place. But that is what he
(lid, and Cornelius took up the running.

Humphrey sat down beside Phillis without speaking. She
noticed in him the same characteristics of nervousness as in his
brother. Twice he attempted to speak, and twice his tongue
clave to the roof of his mouth.

" He is going to tell me that Cornelius adores me," she
thought.

It was instinct. That was exactly what Humphrey — the
treacherous Humphrey — had determined on doing. Matrimony,
contemplated at close quarters and in the presence of the
enemy, so to speak, lost all its charms. Humphrey thought of
the pleasant life in Carnarvon-square, and determined, at the
very last moment, that if either of tliem was to marry it should
not be himself. Cornelius was the elder. Let him be married
first.

" You are peaceful and happy here, Miss Fleming— may I
call you Phillis?"

" Certainly, Mr. Humphrey. We are old friends, you know.
And I am very happy here."

'* I am glad " — he sighed heavily — " I am very glad indeed
to hear that."

*' Are you not happy, Mr. Humphrey 1 Why do you look
so gloomy 1 And how is the Great Picture getting on 1 "

" The ' Birth of the Renaissance ' is advancing rapidly —
rapidly," he said. " It is already bought by a rich and gener-
ous patron. It will occupy a canvas fourteen feet long by six
high."

" If you have got the canvas, and the frame, and the pur-
chaser, all you want now is the Picture."

" True, as you say^ the Picture. It is all that I wont. And
that is striding — literally striding. / am happy, dear Miss
Fleming, dear Phillis, since I may call you by your pretty
Christian name. It is of my brother that I think. It is on
his account that I feel unhappy."

" What is the matter with him 1 "

She tried very hard not to laugh, but would not trust her-
self to look in his face. So that he thought she was modestly
guessing his secret.

" He is a great, a noble fellow. His life is made up of

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

307

sacrifices and devoted to hard work. No one works so coiisci-
entiouslj^ as Cornelius. Now, at length, the prospect opens
up, and he will take immediately his true position among Eng-
lish poets."

"Indeed, I am glad of it."

" Thank you. Yet he is not happy. There is a secret sor-
row in his life."

" 0, dear ! " Phillis cried impatiently, *' Do let me know it,
and at once. Was there ever such a pair of devoted brothers 1 "
Humphrey was disconcerted for the moment, but went on
again.

" A secret which no one has guessed but myself."
" I know what it is." She laughed and clapped her hands.
" Has he told you, Phillis ? The secret of his life is that
my brother Cornelius is attached to you^with all the devotion of
his grand poetic soul."

'* Why, that is what I thought you were going to say ! "
" You knew it 1 Humphrey was as solemn as an eight-day
clock, while PhiUis's eyes danced with mirth. " And you feel
the response of a passionate nature 1 He shall be your
Petrarch. You shall read his very soul. But Cornelius brings
you a virgin heart, a virgin heart, Phillis " (0 Humphrey !
and after what you know about Gretchen !)." May he hope
that—"

" Certainly he may hope, and so may you. And now we
have had quite enough of devotion and secrets and great poetic
souls. Come, Mr. Humphrey."

She rose from the grass and looked him in the face, laugh-
ing. For a moment the thought crossed the Artist's brain that
he had made a mess of it somehow.

" Now," she said, joining the other two, " let us have some
tea and be real."

Neither of them understood her desire to be real, and the
Twins declined tea. That beverage they considered worthy
only of late breakfast, and to be taken as a morning pick-me-
up. So they departed, taking leave with a multitudinous
smile and many tender hand-pressures. As they left the
garden together arm-in-arm they straightened their backs, held
up their heads, and stuck out their legs like the Knave of
Spades. And they looked so exactly like a pair of triumphant
cocks that Phillis almost expected them to crow.

.SOS

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

" All rcvolr" said Cornelius, taking oiF his hat, with a whole
wreatli of smiles, for a final parting at the gate.

" Sails dire adieu,'^ said Humphrey, doing the same, with a
light in his eyes which played upon his beard like sunshine.

" Phillis, my dear," said Agatha, '' they really are the most
wonderful pair I ever saw."

" They are so funny," said Phillis, laughing. " They sleep all
day, and when they wake up they, pretend to have been work-
ing. And they sit up all night. And, Agatha, each one
came to me just now, and told me he had a secret to impart
to me."

" What was that, my dear ? "

" That the other one adored me, and might he hope V

" But, Phillis, this is beyond a joke. And actually here,
before my very eyes 1 "

" I said they might both hope. Though I don't know what
they are to hope. It seems to me that if those two lazy men,
who never do anything but pretend to be exhausted with work,
were only to hope for anything at all it might wake them up a
little. And they each said that the other would bring me a
virgin heart, Agatha. What did they mean V

Agatha laughed.

" Well, my dear, it is a most uncommon thing to find in a
man of fifty, and I should say, if it were true, which I don't
believe, that it argued extreme insensibility. ^ Such an offering
is desirable at five-and-twenty, but very, very rare, my dear,
at any age. And at their time of life I should think that it
was like an apple in May — kept too long, Phillis, and tasting
of the straw. But then you don't understand."

Phillis thought .that a virgin heart might be one of the
things to be understood when the Coping-stone was achieved,
and asked no more.

At the Richmond railway-station the brothers, who had not
spoken a word to each other since leaving the house, turned
into the refreshment-room by common consent and without
consultation. They had as usual, a brandy-and-soda, and on
taking the glasses in their hands they looked at each other and
smiled,

" Cornelius."

" Humphrey."

THE GO^iDEN BUTTET^FLY.

309

here,

" Shall we " — the Artist dropped his voice so that the atten-
dant damsel might not hear — " shall we drink the health and
happiness of Phillis ? "

" We will, Humphrey," replied the Poet with enthusiasm.

When they got into the train, and found themselves alone
in the carriage they dug each other in the ribs once with great
meaning.

" She knows," said the Poet with a grin worthy of Mephis-
topheles, " that she has found a virgin heart."

" She does," said Humphrey. " O Cornelius, and the little
Gretchen, and the milk-pails 1 ■ Byronic Eover ! "

" Ah Humphrey, shall I tell her of the contadina, the black-
eyed model, and the old wild days in Eome, eh 1 Don Gio-
vanni ! "

Then they both laughed, and then they fell asleep in the
carriage, because it was long past their regular hour for the
afternoon nap, and slept till the guard took the tickets at
Vauxhall.

CHAPTER XXXI.

"This fellow's of cxceediivj: honesty,
And knows all (lualities."

<>£

jT was the night of the Derby of 1875. The great race had
-^ been run, and the partisans of Galopin were triumphant.
Those who had set their affections on other names had
finished their weeping, because by this time lamentation,
especially among those of the baser sort, was changed for a
cheerful resignation begotten of much beer. The busy road
was deserted, save for the tramps who plodded their weary way
homeward ; the moon, now in its third quarter, looked with
sympathetic eye upon the sleeping forms which dotted the
silent downs. These lay strewn like unto the bodies on a
battle field— they lay ip rows, they lay singly ; they were pro-

■

310

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

tected from the night-dews by canvas tents, or they were ex-
posed to the moonlight and the wind. AH day long these
people had plied the weary trade of amusing a mob ; the Derby,
when most hearts a^e open, is the harvest day of those who play
instruments, those who dance, those who tumble, those who
tell fortunes. Among these honest artists sleeps the 'prentice
who is going to rob the till to pay his debt of honour ; the
seedy betting-man in a drunken stupor -, the boy who has
tramped all the way from town to pick up a sixpence somehow ;
the rustic who loves a race ; and the sharp-fingered lad with the
restless eye and a pocket full of handkerchiefs. The holiday is
over, and few are the heads which will awake in the morning
clear and untroubled with regrets, remorse, or hot coppers. It
is two in the morning, and most of the revellers are asleep.
A few, still awake, are at the Burleigh Club ; and among these
are Gilead Beck, Ladds, and Jack Dunquerque.

They have been to Epsom. On the course the two English-
men seemed, not unnaturally, to know a good many men.
Some, whose voices were, oddly enough, familiar to Gilead
Beck, shook hands with him and laughed. One voice — it be-
longed to a man in a light coat and white hat — reminded him
of Thomas Carlyle. The owner of the voice laughed cheerfully
when Beck told him so. Another made him mindful of John
Ruskin. And the owner of that voice, too, laughed and
changed the subject. They were all cheerful, these friends of
Jack Dunquerque ; th'iy partook with affability of the luncheon
and drank freely of the champagne. Also there was a good
deal of quiet betting. Jack Dunquerque, Gilead Beck observed,
was the least adventurous. Betting and gambling were luxuries
which Jack's income would not allow him. Most other things
he could share in, but betting was beyond him. Gilead Beck
plunged, and won. It was a part of his Luck that he should
win ; but, nevertheless, when Galopin carried his owner's colours
past the winning-post, Gilead gave a great shout of triumph,
and felt for once the pleasures of the Turf.

Now it was all over. Jack and he were together in the
smoking-room, where half a dozen lingered. Ladds was some-
where in the club, but not with the'n.

" It was a fine sight," said Gilead Beck, on the subject of the
race generally ; a " fine sight. In the matter of crowds you beat

■a

THE GOI.OEN lUTTTKUrLY.

311

ex-

these

erby,

play

who

$ntice

the

has

lis : that I allow. And the horses were good : that I allow, too.
But let me show you a trotting-race, where the sweet little win-
ner goes his measured mile in two minutes and a half. That
seems to me better sport. But the Derby is a fine race, and 1
admit it. When I go back to America," he went on, " I shall
institute races of my own — with a great National Dunquerque
Cup — and we will have an American Derby, with trotting thrown
in. There's room for both sports. What do you think, Mr.
Dunquerque, of having sports from all countries'?"

*' Seems a bright idea. Take your bull-fights from Spain ;
your fencing from France ; your racing from England — what
will you have from Germany 1 "

" Playing at soldiers, I guess. They don't seem to care for
any other game."

" And Russia 1 "

" A great green table with a pack of cards and a roulette.
We can get a few Egyptian bonds for the Greeks to exhibit
their favourite game with. We may import a band of brigands
for the Italian sports. Imitation murder will represent Turkish.
Delights, and the performers shall camp in Central Park. It
wouldn't be bad fun to go out at night and hunt them. Say,
Mr. Dunquerque, we'll do it. A permanent Exhibition of the
Amusements of all Nations. You shall come over, if you like,
an.d show them English fox-hunting. Where is Captain
Ladds?"

" I left him hovering round the card tables
him up."

Presently Jack returned.

" Ladds is hard at work at ecaiie with a villanous-looking
stranger. And I should think from the way Tommy is stick-
ing at it, that Tommy is dropping pretty heavily."

" It's an American he's playing with," said one of the other
men in the room. " Don't know who brought him ; not a
member ; a Major Haniilton Ruggles — don't know what ser-

I will bring

vice

Mr. Beck looked up quietly, and reflected a moment. Then
he said softly to Jack,

" Mr. Dunquerque, I think we can have a little amusement
out of this. If you were to go now to Captfiin Lndds, and if
you were to bring him up to this same identical room with

312

THE (JOLDF-N BUTTERFLY.

Major Hamilton Ruggles, I think, sir, — I do think you would
Bee something pleasant."

There was a sweet and winning smile on thr face of Mr. Beck
when he spoke these words. Jack immediately understood
that there was going to be a row, and went at once on his
errand, in order to promote it to the best of his power.

" You know Major Ruggleo ? " asked the first speaker.

" No, sir, no — 1 can hardly say that I know Major Ruggles.
But I think he knows me."

In ten minutes Ladds and his adversary at ^carte came up-
stairs. Ladds wore the heav}' impenetrable look in which, as
in a mask, he always played ; the other, who had a limp in one
leg and a heavy scar across his face, came with him. He was
laughing in a high-pitched voice. After them came Jack.

At sight of Mr. Beck, Major Ruggles stopped suddenly.

** I beg your pardon. Captain Ladds," he said. " I find I
have forgotten my handkerchief."

He turned to go. But Jack, the awkward, was in his way.

" Handkerchief sticking out of your pocket," said Ladds.

" So it is, so it is ! "

By a sort of instinct the half dozen men in the smoking-
room seemed to draw their chairs and to close in together.
There was evidently somethir>o; going to happen.

Mr. Beck rose solemnly — .."ely nobody ever had so grave a
face as Gilead P. Beck — and advanced to Major Ruggles.

" Major Ruggles," he said, " I gave you to understand, two
days ago, that I didn't remember you. I found out afterwards
that I was wrong. I remember you perfectly well."

" You used words, Mr. Beck, which — "

*' A.y, ay — I know. You want satisfaction, Major. You
shall have it. Sit down now, sit down, sir. We are all among
gentlemen here, and this is a happy meeting for both of us.
What will you drink ? — I beg your pardon, Mr. Dunquerque,
but I thought we were at the Langham. Perhaps you would
yourself ask Major Ruggles what he will put himself out-
side of."

The Major, who did not seem quite at his ease, took a
seltzer-and-brandy and a cigarette. Then he looked furtively
at Gilead Beck. He understood what the man was going to
say and why he was going to say it.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

313

" Satisfaction, Major ? Wal, these gentlemen shall be wit-
nesses. Yesterday mornin', as I was walkin' down the steps of
the Langham Hotel, this gentleman, this high-toned whole-
souled pride of the American army, met me and offered his
hand. ' Hojje yon are well, Mr. Beck,' were his affable words,
* Ho])e you are quite well. Met you last at Delmonico's,
dining with Boss Calderon.' Now, gentlemen, you'll hardly
believe me when I tell you that I answered this politeness by
askin' the Major if he had ever heard of a Banco Steerer, and
if he knew the meanin' of a Roper. He did not reply, doubt-
less because he was wounded in his feelin's — being above all
things a man of honour and the boast of his native country. I
then left him with a Scriptural reference, which p'r'aps he's over-
hauled since, and now understands what I meant when I said
that, if I was to meet him goin' around arm in arm with
Ananias and Sapphira, I'.l say he was in good company."

Here the Major jumped in his chair, and put his right hand
to his shirt-front.

" No, sir," said Beck, unmoved. " 1 can tackle more'n one
wild cat at once, if you mean fightin', which you do not. And
it's no use, no manner o' use, feelin' in that breast pocket of
yours, because the shootin' irons in this country are always left
at home. You sit still, Major, and take it quiet. I'm goin' to
be more improvin' presently."

" Perhaps, Beck," said Jack, " you would explain what a
Banco Steerer and a Eoper are."

"I was comin' to that, sir. They air one and the same
animal. The Roper or the Banco Steerer, gentlemen, will find
you out the morning after you land in Chicago or St. Louis.
He will accost you — very friendly, wonderfully friendly — when
you come out of your hotel, by your name, and he will remind
you — which is most surprising, considerin' you never set eyes
on his face before — how you have dined together in Cincinnati,
or it may be Orleans, or perhaps Francisco, because he finds
out where you came from last. And he will shake hands with
you ; and he will propose a drink ; and he will pay for that
drink. And presently he will take you somewhere else, among
his pals, and he will strip you so clean that there won't be left
the price of a four- cent paper to throw around your face and
hide your blushes, In London, gentlemen, they do, I believe^

314

THE GOLDEN IJUTTERFLY.

the confidence trick. Perhaps Major Rugf^les will explain his
own method presently."

But Major Ruggles preserved silence.

*• So, gentlemen, after I'd shown my familiarity with the Ax
of the Apostles, I went down town, thinkin' how mighty clever
I was — that's a way of mine, gentlemen, which generally takes
me after I've made a durned fool of myself. All of a sudden I
recollected the face of Major Ruggles, and where I'd seen him
last. Yes, Major, you did kuQw me — you were quite right, and
I ought to have kept Ananias out of the muss — you did know
me, and I'd forgotten it. Those words of mine. Major, required
explanation, as you said just now."

" Satisfaction, I said," objected the Major, trying to recover
himself a little.

«," Sir, you air a whole-souled gentlemen ; and your sense of
honour is as keen as a quarter-dollar razor. Satisfaction you
shall have ; and if you are not satisfied when I am done with
you, ask these gentlemen around what an American nobleman
— one of the noblemen like yourself that we do sometimes show
the world — wants more, and that more you shall git.

" You did know me, Major ; but you made a little mistake.
It was not with Boss Calderon that you met me, because I do
not know Boss Calderon ; nor was it at Delmonico's. And
where it was I am about to tell this company."

He hesitated a moment.

" Gentlemen, I believe 'it is a rule that strangers in your
clubs must be introduced by members. I was introduced by
my friend Mr. Dunquerque, and I hope I shall not disgrace
that introduction. May I ask who introduced Major Ruggles ? "

Nobody knew. In fact he had passed in with an acquaint-
ance picked up somehow, and stayed there.

The Major tried again to get away.

" This is fooling," he said. "Captain Ladds, do you wish
me to be insulted 'i If you do, sir, say so. You will find that
an American officer "

" Silence, sir ! " said Mr. Beck. " An American officer ! Say
that again, and I will teach you to respect the name of an
American officer. I've been a private soldier myself in that
army," he added, by way of explanation. " Now Major Rug-
gles, I am going to invite you to remain while I t<^ll these gen-

THE GOI.DEN HUTTKRFLY.

fits

tlemen a little story — a very little story — but it concerns you.
And if Captain Ladfls likes, when that story is finished, I will
apologise to yon, and to him, and to all this honourable com-
pany."

" Let us .hear the story," said Jack. " Nothing could be
fairer."

" Nothing ! " echoed the little circle of listeners.

Beck addressed the room in general, occasionally pointing
the finger of emphasis at the unfortunate Major. His victim
showed every sign of bodily discomfort and mental agitation.
First he fidgeted in the chair ; then he threw away his cigarette;
then he folded his arms and stared defiantly at the speaker.
Then he got up again.

" What have I to do with you and your story 1 Let me go.
Captain Ladds, you have my address. And as for you, sir, you
shall hear from me to-morrow."

" Sit down, Major." Gilead Beck invited him to resume his
chair with a sweet smile. " Sit down. The night's young.
Maybe Captain Ladds wants his revenge."

" Not I," said Ladds. " Had enough. Go to bed. Not a re-
vengeful man."

"Then," said Gilead Beck, his face darkening and his man-
ner suddenly changing, " I will take your revenge for you. Sit
down, sir ! "

It was an order he gave this time, not an invitation, and the
stranger obeyed with an uneasy smile.

" It is not gambling. Major Kuggles," Beck went on. " Cap-
tain Ladds' revenge is going to be of another sort, I reckon."

He drew close to Major Euggles, and, sitting on the table,
placed one foot on a chair which was between the stranger and
the door.

" Delmonico's, was it, where we met last ? And with Joe
Calderon — Boss Calderon? Really, Major Ruggles, I was a
great fool not to remember that at once. But I always am
weak over faces, even such a striking face as yours. So we met
last when you were dining with Boss Calderon, eh ? "

Then Mr. Beck began his little story.

" Six years ago, gentlemen, — long before I found my Butter-
fly, of which you may have heard, — I ran up and down the
Great Pacific Railway between Chicago and Franc'sco for

;no

THE (lOT.DEN IKTTTKRFLY.

;

close upon six months. I did not clioose that way of spendin'
the gohlen hours, because, if one had a choice at all, a Pull-
man's sleeping-car on the Pacific R.ailway would be just one of
the last places you would choose to pass your life in. I should
class it, as a ]<ermanent home, with a first-class saloon in a
Cunard iteamer. No, gentlemen, I was on board those cars
in an official capacity. I was conductor. It is not a proud
position, not an office which you care to magnify ; it doesn't
lift your chin in the air and stick out your toes like the proud
title of Major does for our friend squirmin' in the chair before
us. Squirm on, Major ; but listen, because this is interestin'.
On those cars and on thfit railway there is a deal of time to be
got through. T am bound to say that time kind of hangs heavy
on the hands. Yon can't be always outside smokin' ; you can't
sleep more'n a certain time, because the nigger turns you out
and folds up the beds ; and you oughtn't to drink more'n your
proper whack. Also you get tired watchin' the scenery. You
may make notes if you like, but you get tired o' that. And
you get mortal tired of settin' on end. Mostly, therefore, you
stand around the conductor, and you listen to his talk.

" But six years ago the dulness of that long journey was en-
livened by the presence of a few sportsmen like our friend the
Major here. They were so fond of the beauties ot l\ature, they
were so wrapped up in the pride of bein' American citizens and
ownin' the biggest railway in the world, that they would travel
all the way from New York to San Francisco, stay there a day,
and then travel all the way back again. And the most remark-
able thing was, that when they got ^o New York again they
would take a through ticket all the way back to San Fran.
This attachment to the line pleased the company at first. It
did seem as if good deeds was going to meet their recompense
at last even in this world, and the spirited conduct of the gen-
tlemen when it first became known filled everybody with ad-
miration. — You remember. Major, the very handsome remarks
made by you yourself on the New York platform.

" Lord, is it six years ago ? Why it seems to me but yester-
day, Major Ruggles, that I saw you standin' erect and bold —
lookin' like a senator in a stove-pipe hat, store boots, and go-
to-meetin' coat — shakin' hands with the chairman. ' Sir,' you
said, with tears in your eyes, ' you represent the advance of

THK (lOLDEN BUTTKltFLY.

317

civilization. Wc air now, iiulced, alu-ad of ihv hull cn-ation.
You have united the Pacific and the Atlantic. And, .sir, hy
the iron road the West and the P^ast may jine hands and defy
the tyranny of Europe.' Those, gentlemen, wvw the noble
sentiments of Major Hamilton Kuggles. — Did I say Major, that
1 would give you satisfaction '( Wait till 1 have done, and you
shall bust with satisfaction."

The Major did not look, at all events, like being satisfied
so far.

" One day an ugly rumour got about — you know how ru-
mours spread — that the Great Pacific Railroad was a big gam-
blin' shop. The enthusiastic travellers up and down that line
were one mighty confederated gang. They were up to every
dodge : they travelled together, and they travelled separate ;
they had dice, and those diet were loaded ; they had cards,
and those cards were marked ; they played on the square, but
behind every man's hand was a confederate, and he gave signs,
so that the honest sportsman knew how to play. And by
these simple contrivances, gentlemen, they always won. So
much did they win, that I have conducted a through train in
which, when we got to Chicago, there wasn't a five-dollar
piece left among the lot. And all the time strangers to each
other. The gang never, by so much as a wink, let out that
they had met before. And no one could tell them from the
ordinary passengers. But I knew ; and I had a long conver-
sation with the Directors one day, the result of which — Major
Ruggles, perhaps you can tell these gentlemen what was the
result of that conversation."

The man was sallow. His sharp eyes gleamed with an
angry light as he looked from one to the other, as if in the
hope of findiuiij an associate. There was none. Only Ladds,
his late adversary, moved quietly round th^ room and sat near
to Gilead Beck, on the table, but nearer the dvor. The Major
saw this manoeuvre with a sinking heart, because his pockets
were heavy with the proceeds of the evening game.

" Well, gentlemen, a general order came for all the con-
ductors. It was ' No play.' We were to stop that. And
another general order was— an imperative order, Major, so that
I am sure you will not bear malice — ' If they won't leave off,
chuck 'em out.' That was the order, Major, ' Chuck 'em out,'

rns

THK (}OM)KN BTITTEIIFLY.

'* It was (HI tlu) joiiriioy back from 8aii Francisco that tlie
first trouble began. You were an upriglit man to look at then,
Major ; you hadn't got the limp you've got now. and you
hadn't received that unfort'nate scar across your handsome
face. You were a most charmin' companion for a long railway
journey, but you had that little weakness — that you wimhl
play. I warned you at the time. I said, ' Cap'en, this must
stop.' You were only a Cap'en then. But you would go on.
* Cap'en,' I said, * if you will not stop, you will be chucked
out.* You will acknowledge, Major, that I gave you fair war-
iiin'. You laughed. That was all you did. You laughed and
you shufHed the cards. But the man who was playing with
you got up. lie saw reason. Then you drew out a revolver
and used bad language. So I made for you.

" (ientlemen, it was not a fair fight. But orders had to be
observed. In lialf a minute I had his pistol from him, and in
two minutes more he was Hyin' from the end of the train. We
were goin' twenty miles an hour, and we hadn't time to stop
to see if he was likely to get along somehow. And the last I
saw of Captain Ruggles — I beg your pardon, Major —was his
two heels in the air as he left the end of the train. I s'pose.
Major, it Wc-.. stoppin' so sudden gave you that limp and orna-
mented your face with that beautiful scar. The ground was
gritty, I believe *? "

Everybody's eyes were turned on the Major, whose face was
livid.

" Gentlemen," Mr. Beck continued, " that aerial flight of
Captain Kuggles improved the moral tone of the Pacific Itail-
road to a degree that you would hardly believe. I don't think
there has been a single sportsman chucked out since. — Major
Ruggles, sir, you were the blessed means, under Providence
and Gilead P. Beck conjointly, of commencing a new and moral
era for the Great Pacific Railroad.

" And now, Major, that my little story is told, may I ask if
you air satisfied ? Because if there is any other satisfaction in
my power you shall have that too. Have I done enough for
honour, gentlemen all V

The men laughed.

** Now for a word with me," Ladds began.

" Cap'en," said Gilead Beck

" let me work through this con-

THK f5()FM)KN mm'KUFLY.

nif)

tract, ity«)ii liavo no ol»joction. — Major Uuggluss, you will cliNir
out till your pockets."

Th(! miserable man made no reply.

" Clear out every one, and turn them insidt; out, right away."

He i.either moved nor spoko.

" CJentlenien," Mr. lieck said calmly, "you will be kind
enough not to interfere."

He pulled a penknife out of his pocket and laid it on a chair
open. He then seized Major Kuggles l)y the collar and arm.
The man fought like a wild cat, but Beck's grasp was like a
vice. It seemed incredible to the bystanders that a man should
be so strong, so active, and so skilled. He tossed, rather than
laid, his victim on the table, and then, holding both his hands
in one grip of his own enormous fist, ho deliberately ri])ped
open the Major's trousers, waistcoat and coat pockets, and took
out the contents. When he was satisfied that nothing more
was left in them he dragged him to the ground.

On the table lay the things which he had taken possession
of.

" Take up those dice," he said to Ladds. " Try them ; if they
are not loaded, I will ask the Major's pardon."

They were loaded.

" Look at those cards," he went on. " They are the cards
you have been playing with, when you thought you had a new
pack of club-cards. If they are not marked, I will ask the Major
to change places with me."

They were marked.

*' And now, gentlemen, I think I may ask Captain Ladds
what he has lost, and invite him to take it out of that heap."

There was a murmur of assent.

" I lost twenty pounds in notes and gold," said Ladds, " And
I gave an I O U for sixty more."

There w^ere other I U's in the heap, and more gold when
Ladds had recovered his own. The paper was solemnly torn
up, but the coin restored to the Major, who now stood abject,
white, and trembling, but with the look of a devil in his
eyes.

" Such men as you, Major," said Gilead the Moralist, " air
the curse of our country. You see, gentlemen, we travel
about, we make money fast ; we air sometimes a reckless lot ;

;^20

THE GOLDKN HUTTKJiFLY.

the miners have got puckcts full

encourage such

there's everything to
a crew as Major lluggles heionged to. And
when we find them out, we lynch them. — Lynch is the word,
isn't it, Major 1 — Do you want to know the end of this man,
gentlemen 1 I am not much in the prophetic line, but I think
I see a crowd of men in a minin' city, and I see A thick branch
with a lope over it. And at the end of that rope is Major Kug-
gles's neck tightened in a most unpleasant and ungentlemanly
manner. — It's inhospitable, but what can you expect, Major ?
We like play, but we like play in' on the square. Now, Major,
you may go. And you may thank the Lord on your knees
before you go to sleep that this providential interference has
taken place in London instead of the States. For had I told
my interestin' anecdote at a Bar in any City of the Western
States, run up you would have been. You may go. Major
Ruggles ; and I daiesay Cap'en Ladds, in consideration of the
damage done to those bright and shinin' store clothes of yours,
will forego the British kicking which I see trembling at the
point of his toes."

Ladds did forego thai revenge, and the Major slunk away.

CHAPTER XXXIL

I i

" Nulla fere causa est in qua non feniiiia litem
Movent."

'XwT'HEN Mr. Wylie, the pamphleteer, left Gabriel Cassilis,
^(^^y^ the latter resumed with undisturbed countenance his

'^ previous occupation of reading the letters and tele-
grams he had laid aside. Among them was one which he took
up gingerly, as if it were a torpedo.

" Pshaw ! " he cried, impatiently, tossing it from him.
" Another of those anonymous letters. The third." He looked
at it with disgust, and then half involuntarily his hand reached
out and took it up again. " The third, and all in the same hand-
writing. * I have written you two letters, and you have taken

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

321

no notice. This is the third. Beware ! Your wife was with
Mr. Colquhoun yesterday ; she will be with him again to-day
and to-morrow. Ask her, if you dare, what is her secret with
him. Ask him what hold he has over her. Watch her, and
caution her, lest something evil befall you. — Your well-wisher.' "

" I am a fool," he said, "to be disquieted about an anony-
mous slander. What does it matter to me ? As if Victoria —
she did know Colquhoun before her marriage — their names
were mentioned — I remember hearing that there had been a
flirtation — flirtation ! As if Victoria could ever flirt ! She was
no frivolous, silly girl. No one who knows Victoria could for
a moment suspect — suspect ! The word is intolerable. One
would say I was jealous."

He pushed forward his papers and leaned back in his chair,
casting his thoughts behind him to the days of his stiff" and
formal wooing. He remembered how he said, sitting opposite
to her in her cousin's drawmg room — there was no wandering
by the river-bank or in pleasant gardens on summer evenings
for those two lovers :

" You bring me fewer springs than I can offer you, Vic-
toria ; " which was his pretty poetical way of telling her that
he was nearly forty years older than herself; "but we shall
begin life with no trammels of previous attachments on either

hand."

He called it— and thought it— at sixty-five beginning life ;
and it was quite true that he had never before conceived an
attachment for any woman.

" No, Mr. Cassilis," she replied ; " we are both free, quite
free ; and the disparity of age is only a disadvantage on my
side, which a few years will remedy."

This cold stately woman conducting a flirtation before her
marriage ? This Juno among young matrons causing a scandal
after her marriage 1 It was ridiculous.

He said to himself that it was ridiculous so often, that he
succeeded at last in persuading himself that it really was. And
when he had quite done that, he folded up the anonymous
document, docketed it, and placed it in one of the numerous
pigeon-holes of his desk, which was one of those which shut
up completely, covering over papers, pigeon-holes, and every-
thing.

u ■ ■

322

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY,

Then he addressed himself again to business, and, but for
an occasional twinge of uneasiness, like the first throb which
presages the coming gout, he got through an important day's
work with his accustomed ease and power.

The situation, as Lawrence Colquhoun told Victoria, was
strained. There they were, as he put it, all three— himself,
for some reason of his own, put first ; the lady ; and Gabriel
Cassilis. The last was the one who did not know. There was
no reason, none in the world, why thing.) bhouici not remain as
they were, only that the lady would not let sleeping dangers
sleep, and Lawrence was too indolent to resist. In other words,
Victoria Cassilis, having once succeeded in making him visit
her, s|)ared no pains to bring him constantly to her house, and
to make it seem as if he was that innocent sort of cicisbeo whom
English society allows.

Why?

The investigation of motives is a delicate thing at the best,
and apt to lead the analyst into strange paths. It may be dis-
covered that the philanthropist acts for love of notoriety ; that
the preacher does not believe in. the truths he proclaims ;
that the woman of self-sacrifice and good works is '•(♦asciously
posing before an admiring world. This is dishearcouiag, be-
cause it makes the cynic and the worldly-minde I n.,n to
chuckle and chortle with an open joy. St. Paul, wLo was
versed in the ways of the world, knew this perfectly when he
proclaimed the insufficiency of good works It is at all times
best to accept the deed, and never ask the motive. And after
all, good deeds are something practical. And as for a foolish
or a bad deed, the difficulty of ascertaining an adequate motive
only becomes more complicated with its folly or its villany.
Mrs. Cassilis had everything to gain by keeping her old
friend on the respectful level of a former acquaintance ; she
had everything to lose by treating him as a friend. And yet
she forced her friendship upon him.

Kindly people who find in the affairs of other people suffi-
cient occupation for themselves, and whose activity of intellect
obtains a useful vent in observation and comment, watched
them. The man was always the same ; indolent, careless, un-
moved by any kind of passion for aii/ other man's wife or for
any maid. That was a just conclusion. Lawrence Colquhoun

■

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

323

was not in love with this lady^ And yet he suffered himself
to obey orders ; dropped easily into the position ; allowed him-
self to be led by her invitations ; went where she told him to
go; and all the time half laughed at himself and was half angry
to think that he was thus enthralled bv a siren who charmed
him not. To have once loved a woman ; to love her no longer ;
to go 'about the town behaving as if you did : this, it was
erident to him was not a position to be envied or desired. Few
false positions are. Perhaps he did not know that Mrs. Grundy
talked ; perhaps he was only amused when he heard of re-
marks that had been made by Sir Benjamin Backbite ; and
although the brief sunshine of passion which he once felt for
this woman was long since past and gone, nipped in its very
bud by the lady herself perhaps, he still liked her cold and
cynical talk. Colquhoun habitually chose the most pleasant
paths for his lounge through life. From eighteen to forty
there had been but one disagreeable episode, which he would
fain have foi;^otten. Mrs. Cassilis revived it ; but in her pre-
sence, the memory was robbed somehow of half its sting.

Sir Benjamin Backbite remarked that though the gentleman
was languid, the lady was shaken out of her habitual cold-
ness. She was changed. What could change her, asked the
Brronet, but passion for this old friend of her youth 1 Why
it was only four years since he had followed her, after a London
season, down to Scotland, and everybody said it would be a
match. She received his attentions coldly then, as she received
the attentions of every man. Now the tables were turned ; it
was the man who was cold.

These social observers are always right. But they never
rise out of themselves ; therefore their conclusions are
generally wrong. Victoria Cassilis was not, as they charitably
thought, running after Colquhoun through the fancy of a way-
ward heart. Not at all. She was simply wondering where it
had gone — that old power of hers, by which she once twisted
him round her finger — and why it was gone. A woman can-
not believe that she has lost her power over a man. It is an
intolerable thought. Her power is born of her beauty and
her grace ; these may vanish, but the old attractiveness remains,
she thinks, if only as a tradition. When rhe is no longer
beautiful she loves to believe that her loveys are faitliful still.

324

THE (iOLDEN JBIJl rFUFi^Y.

Now Victoria Cassilis reniembcrod this man as a lover and a
slave ; his was the only pleading she had ever heard wliich
could make her understand the meaning of man's passion : he
was the only suitor whom a word could make wretched or a
look happy. For he had once loved her with all his power and
all his might. Between them there was the knowledge of a
thing which, if any knowledge could, should have cruslwd out
and beaten down the memory of this love. She had made it,
by her own act and deed, a crime to remember it. And yet, in
spite of all, she could not bring herself to believe that the old
power was dead. She tried to bring him again under her influ-
ence. She failed, but she succeeded in making him come back
to her as if nothing had ever happened. And then she said to
herself that there must be another woman, and she set herself to
find out who that woman was.

Formerly many men had hovered — marriageable men, excel-
lent partis — round the cold and statuesque beauty of Victoria
Pengelley. She was an acknowledged beauty ; she brought an
atmosphere of perfect taste and grace into a room with her ;
men looked at her and wondered ; foolish girls, who knew no
better, envied her. Presently the foolish girls, who had soft
faces and eyes which could melt in love or sorrow, envied her
no longer, because they got engaged and married. And of all
the men who came and went there was but one who loved her,
so that his pulse beat quicker when she came ; who trembled
when he took her hand ; whose nerves tingled and whose blood
ran swifter thorugh his veins when he asked her, down in that
quiet Scotch village, with no one to know it but her maid, to
be his wife.

The man wasLawrence Colquhoun. The passion had been his.
Now love and passion were buried in the ashes of the past.
The man was impassible, and the woman, madly kicking
against the fetters which she had bound around herself, was
angry and jealous.

[t is by some mistake of Nature that women who cannot
love can yet be jealous. Victoria Pengelley's pulse never once
moved the faster for all the impetuosity of her lover. She
liked to watch it, this curious yearning after her beauty, this
eminently masculine weakness, because it was a tribute to her
power ; it is always pleasant for a woman to feel that she is

■

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

325

loved as women are loved in !iovels — men's novels, not the
pseudo-passionciLe scliool-giils' novels, or the cahnly-respecta-
ble feminine tales where the young gentlemen and the young
ladies are superior to the instincts of common humanity. Vic-
toria played with this giant as an engineer will play with the
wheels of a mighty engine. She could do what she liked with
it. Sanison was not more pliable to Delilah ; and Delilah was
not more unresponsive to that guileless strong man. She soon
got tired of her toy, however. Scarcely were the morning and
the evening the fifth day, wlien, by pressing some unknown
spring, she smashed it altogether.

Now, when it was quite too late, when the thing was utterly
smashed, when she had a husband and child, she wa-ii actually
trying to reconstruct it. Some philosopher, probing more deeply
than usual the mysteries of mankind, once discovered that it
was at all times impossible to know what a woman wants. He
laid that down as a general axiom, and presented it as an irre-
fragable truth for the universal use of humanity. One may
sometimes, however, guess what a woman does not want.
Victoria Cassilis, one may be sure, did not want to sacrifice
her honour, her social standing, or her future. She was not
intending to go off", for instance, with her old lover, even if
he should propose the step, which seemed unlikely. And yet
she would have liked him to propose it, because then she
would have felt the recovery of her power. Now her sex, as
Chaucer and others before him pointed out, love power beyond
all other earthly things. And the history of Queens, from Se-
miramis to Isabella, shows what a mess they always make of
it when they do get power.

A curious problem. Given a woman, no longer in the first
bloom of youth, married well, and clinging with the instincts
of her class to her reputation and social position. She has
everything to lose and nothing to gain. She cannot hope even
for the love of the man for whom she is incurring the suspicions
of the world, and exciting the jealousy of her husband. Yet it
is true, in her case, what the race of evil-speakers, liars, and
slanderers say of her. She is running after Lawrence Col-
quhoun. He is too much with her. She has given the enemy
occasion to blaspheme.

As for Colquhoun, when he thought seriously over the situa-

^pr

326

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

tion, he laughed when it was a fine day, and swore if it was
raining. The English generally take a sombre view of things
because it is so constantly raining. We proclaim our impotence,
the lack of nation:d spirit, and our poverty, until other nations
actually begin to believo us. But Colquhoun, though he might
swear, made no eltort to release himself, when a wor«i would
have done it.

" You may use harsh language to me, Lawrence," said Mrs.
Cassilis — he never had used harsh language to any woman —
" you may sneer at me, and laugh in your cold and cruelly im-
passive manner. But one thing I can say for you, that you
understand me."

" I have seen all your moods, Mrs. Cassilis, and I have a good
memory. If you will show your husband that the surface of
the ocean may be stormy sometimes, he will understand you a
good deal better. Get up a little breeze for him."

" I a'^ certainly not going to have a vulgar quarrel with Mr.
Cassilis."

" A vulgar quarrel % Vulgar % Ah, vulgarity changes every
five years or so. What a pity that vulgar quarrels were in
fashion six years ago, Mrs. Cassilis ! "

" Some men are not worth losing your temper about."

" Thank you. I was, I suppose. It was very kind of you,
indeed, to remind me of it, as you then did, in a manner at
once forcible and not to be forgotten. Mr. Cassilis gets no-
thing, I suppose, but east wind, with a cloudless sky which has
the sun in it, but only the semblance of warmth. I got a good
sou'-westt^r. But take care, take care, Mrs. Cassilis ! You have
wanton ij thrown away once what most women would have
kept — kept, Mrs. Cassilis ! I remember when I was kneeling
at your feet years ago, talking the usual nonsense about being
unworthy of you. Rubbish ! I was more than worthy of you,
'because I could give myself to you loyally, and you — you could
only pretend ! "

" Go on, Lawrence. It is something that you regret the
past, and something to see that you can feel, after all."

She stopped and laughed carelessly.

" Prick me, and I sing out. That is natural. But we will
have no heroics. What I mean is, that I am well out of it ;
and that you, Victoria Cassilif, are — forgive the plain speak-
ing — a foolish woman."

THE GOLDEN BtTTTERFT.Y.

J^27

" Lawrence Colquhoun has the right to insult me as he
pleases, and I must bear it."

It was in her own room. Colquhoun was leaning on the
window ; slie was sitting on a cliair before him. She was agi-
tated and excited. He, save for the brief moments when he
spoke as if with emotion, was languid and calm.

" I have no right," he replied, " and you know it. Let us
finish. Mrs. Cassilis, keep what you have, and be thankful."
" What I have ! What have 1 1 "

" One of the best houses iu London. A.n excellent social ^
position. A husband said to be the ablest man in the City.
An income which gives you all that a woman can ask for. The
confidence and esteem of your husband — and a child. Do these
things mean nothing ? "

" My husband — my husband. He is insufferable some-
times, wh"en I remember, Lawrence."

** He is a man who gives his trust after a great deal of doubt
and hesitation. Then he gives it wholly. To take it back
would be a greater blow, a far greater blow, than it would ever
be to a younger man — to such a man as myself."

" Gabriel Cassilis only suff'ers when he loses money."
" That is not the case. You cannot aff'ord to make another
great mistake. Success isn't on the cards after two such blun-
ders, Mrs. Cassilis."

** What do I want with success ? Let me have happiness."
" Take it ; it is at your feet," said Lawrence. " It is in
this house. It is the commonest secret. Every simple country
woman knows it."

" No one will ever understand me," she sighed. " No one."
'* It is simply to give up for ever thinking about yourself. Go
and look after your baby, and find happiness there."

Why superior women are always so angry if they are asked
to look after their babies, I cannot understand. There is no
blinking the fact that they have them. The maternal instinct
makes women who cannot write or talk fine language about the
domestic affections take to the tiny creatures with a passion of
devotion which is the loveliest thing to look upon in all this
earth. The femme incomprise alone feels no anguish if her
baby cries, no joy if he laughs, and flies into a divine rage if
you remind her that she is a mother.

328

THK GOLDEN BUTT KR FLY.

1
1 i!

■ !i

"My baby !" cried VicLuria, spiiu'^iiig to h(;r feet. " You see
me yearning lor syrnpatliy, looking to you as my oldest — once
my dearest — friend, for a little — only a little — interest and
pity, and you send me to my baby ! The world is all selfish
and cold-hearted, but the most selfish man in it is Lawrence
Colquhoun."

He laughed again. After all he had said his say.

"lam glad you think so, because it simplifies matters.
Now, Mrs. Cassilis, we have had our little confidential talk,
and I think under the circumstances, that it had better be the
last. So, for a time, we will not meet, if you please. I do
take a certain amount of interest in you — that is, I am always
curious to see what line you will take next. And if you are
at all concerned to have my opinion and counsel, it is this :
that you've got your chance ; and if you give that man who loves
you and trusts you any unhappiness through your folly, you
will be a much more heartless and wicked woman than even I
have ever thought you. And, by gad, I ought to know ! "

He left her. Mrs. Cassilis heard his step in the hall and the
door close behind him. Then she ran to the window, and
watched him strolling in his leisurely careless way down the
road. It made her mad to think that she could not make him
unhappy and made her jealous to think that she could no
longer touch his heart. Not in love with him at all — she never
had been ; but jealouse because her old power was gone.

Jealous 1 There must be another girl. Doubtless Phillis
Fleming. She ordered her carriage and drove straight to
Twickenham. Agatha was having one of her little garden-
parties. Jack Dunquerque was there with Gilead Beck. Also
Captain Ladds. But Lawrence Colquhoun was not. She
stayed an hour ; she ascertained from Phillis that her guardian
seldom came to sea her, and went home again in a worse temper
than before, because she felt herself on a wrong track.

Tomlinson, her maid, had a very bad time of it while she was

dressing her mistress for dinner.

Nothing

went right, some-

how. Tomlinson, the hard-featured, was long-suffering and
patient. She made no reply to the torrent which flowed from
her superior's angry lips. But when respite came with the
dinner-bell, and her mistress was safely downstairs, the maid
sat down to the table and wrote a letter very carefully. This

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

329

slie read and re-roud, beiiiji; finally satisfied with it, she took it
out to the post herself. Alter that, as she would not be wanted
till midnight at least, she took a cab and went to the Maryle-
bone Theatre, where she wept over the distresses of a lady
ruined by the secret voice of calumny.

It was at the end of May, and the season was at its height.
Mrs. Cassilis had two or three engagements, but she came home
early, and was even sharper with the unfortunate Tomlinson
than before dinner. But Tomlinson was very good, and bjre
all in patience. It is Christian to endure.

Next morning Gabriel Cassilis found among his letters an-
other in the same handwriting as that of the three anonymous
communications he had already received.

He tore it open with a groan.

"This is the fourth letter. You will have to take notice of
my communications, and to act upon t.iem, sooner or later. All
this morning Mr. Colquhoun was locked up with your wife in
her boudoir. He came at eleven and went away at half-past
one. No one was admitted. They talked of many things — of
their Scotch secret especially, and how to hide it from you. I
shall keep you informed of v/hat they do. At half-past two
Mrs. Cassilis ordered the carriage and drove to Twickenham.
Mr. Colquhoun has got his ward there, Miss Fleming. So that
doubtless she went to meet him again. In the evening she
came home in a very bad temper, because she had failed to meet
him. She had hoped to see him three times at least this very
day. Surely, surely even your blind confidence cannot stiaid a
continuation of this kind of thing. All the world knows it
except yourself You may be rich and generous to her, but she
doesn't love you. And she doesn't care for her child. She hasn't
asked to«ee it for three days — think of that. There is a pretty
mother for you ! She ill-treats her maid, who is a most faithful
honed person, and devoted to your interests. She is hated by every
servant in the house. She is a cold-hearted cruel woman. And
even if she loves Mr. Colquhoun, it can only be through jeal-
ousy, and because she won't let him marry anybody else, even
if he wanted to. But things are coming to a crisis. Wait ! "

Mr. MowU came in with a packet of papers, and found his
master staring straight before him into space. He spoke to
him, but received no answer. Then he touched him gently on

330

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

lilu; .'inii. Mr. Cassilia started, aiui looked round hastily. His
first movement was to lay his hand upon a letter on the desk.

" What is it, Mowll — what is it 1 I was thinking. I
was thinking. I am not very well today, Mowll."

•' You have been working too hard, sir," said his secretary.

" Yes — yes. It is nothing. Now, then, let us look at wliat
you have brought."

For two hours Mr. Cassilis worked with his secretaiy. He
had the faculty of rapid and decisive work. And he had the
eye of a hawk. They were two hours of good work, and the
secretary's notes were voluminous. Suddenly the financier
stopped — the work half done. It was as if the machinery of a
clock were to go wrong without warning.

" So," he said, with an efl'ort, " I think we will stop for to-
day. Put all these matters at work, Mowll. 1 shall go home
and rest."

A thing he had never done before in all his life.

He went back to his house. His wife was at home and alone.
Thev had luncheon together, and drove out in the afternoon.
Her calm and stately pride drove the jealous doubts from his
troubled mind as the sun chases away the mists of morning.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

" An excellent play."

ITCH things as dinners to Literature were the relaxations
r-ic^ Qf Giieji(j Beck's serious life. His real business was to
find an object worthy of that enormous income of which
he found himself the trustee. The most sympathetic man of
his acquaintance, although it was difficult to make him regard
any subject seriously, was Jack Dunquerque, and to him he
confided his anxieties and difficulties..

" I can't fix it," he groaned. " I can't fix it anyhow."
Jack knew what he meant, but waited for further light, like
him who readeth an acrostic. .

THE GOLDKN BUTl'ERFf.Y.

331

"Tlie more 1 look at that growin' pile — there's enough now
to build the White House over again — the more 1 misdoubt
myself."

" Where have you got it all 1 ''

" In Government Stocks — by the help of Mr. Cassilis. No
more of the unholy traffic in shares which yon buy to sell
again. No, sir. That means makin' the widow weep and the
minister swear ; an' I don't know which spectacle of these two
is the more melancholy for a Christian man. All in stocks —
Government Stocks, safe and easy to draw out, with the inte-
rest comin' in regular as the cliant of the cuckoo-clock."

" Well, can't you let it stay there 1 "

" No, Mr. Dunquerque ; I can't. There's the voice of tliat
blessed Inseck in the box there, night and day, in my ears.
And it says, plain as speech can make it, * Do sometlung with
the money.'"

" You have bought a few pictures."

" Yes, sir : I have begun the great Gilead P. Beck collection.
And when that is finished, I guess there'll be no collection on
this airth to show a candle to it. But that's personal vanity.
That's not what the Golden Butterfly wants."

" Would he like you to have a yacht 1 A good deal may be
chucked over a yacht. That is, a good deal for what we Eng-
lishmen call a rich man."

" When I go home again I mean to build a yacht, and sail
her over here and race your people at Cowes — all the same as
the America, twenty years ago. But not yet."

" There are a few trifles going about which run away with
money. Polo, now. If you play polo hard enough, you may
knock up a pony every game. But I suppose that would not
be expensive enough for you. You couldn't ride two ponies
at once, I suppose, like a circus fellow 'i "

" Selfish luxury, Mr. Dunquerque," said Gilead, with an al-
most prayerful twang, " is not the j>latform of the Golden But-
terfly. I should like to ride two ponies at once, but it's not to
be thought of. And my legs are too long for any but a Ken-
tucky pony."

" Is the Turf selfish luxury, I wonder?" asked Jack. "A
good deal of money can be got through on the Turf. Nothing,
of course, to your pile ; but still you might make a sensible
hole in it by judicious backing."

332

THK (iOI.DKN niTTTKRFLY.

(iiltad pM'ck was as frco from ostentation, vanity, an<l the
dcsiit! to liavu his ears tickled as any man. l>ut still lu; <ii<l
like to feel that, by the act of Providence, he was separated
.from other men. An income of fifteen hundrcMl pounds a day,
which does not depend on harvests, or on coal, or on iron, or
anything to eat and drink, but only on the demand for rock-
oil, whicl.' increases, as ht; often said, with the march of civili-
zation, does certainly separate a man from his fellows. This
feeling of division saddened him ; it imparted something of the
greatness of soul which belongs even to the most unworthy em-
perors ; he felt himself bound to do ' nething for the good
of mankind while life and strength w n him. And it was
not unpleasant to know that others recognised the vastness of
his Luck. Therefore, when Jack Dunquenjue sjmke as if the
Turf were a gulf which might be filled up with his fortunts
while it swallowed, without growing sensibly more shallow, all
the smaller fortunes yearly shot into it like the rubbish on the
future site of a suburban villa, Gilead Beck smiled. Such re-
cognition from this young man was doubly pleasant to him on
account of his. unbounded affection for him. Jack Dunquerque
held saved his life. Jack Dunquerque treated him as an equal
and a friend. Jack Dunquerque wanted nothing of him, and,
poor as he was, would accept nothing of him. Jack Dunquerque
was the first, as he was also the most favourable, specimen he
had met of the class which may be poor, but does not see. a
to care for more money ; the class which no longer works for
increase of fortune.

"No, sir," said Gilead. " I do not understand the Turf.
When I go home 1 shall rear horses and improve the breed.
Maybe I may run a horse in a trotting-match at Saratoga."

In the mornings this American, in search of a Worthy Ob-
ject, devoted his time to making the round of hospitals, Lon-
don societies, and charities of all kinds. He asked what they
did, and why they did it. He made remarks which wire gen-
erally unpleasant to the employ<5s of the societies ; he went
away without offering, the smallest donation ; and he returned
moodily to the Langham Hotel.

" The English," he said, after a fortnight of these investiga-
tions, "air the most kind-hearted people in the hull world.
We are charitable, and I believe the Germans, when they are

<iii«i the

lu! (lid

parated

s a day,

iron, or

)!' rock

f civili-

. This

g of the

thy em-

He good

1 it WHS

;ness of
if the
fortiints
low, all
on the
inch re-
hiin on
^uerque
m equal
m, and,
[juerque
men he
ot see: a
)rks for

e Turf,
breed.

hy Ob-
5, Lon-
at they
re gen-
e went
sturned

i^estiga-

world.

tiey are

THE (tor.DKN HUTTKUFF.Y.

:va:]

not officers in their own army, are a well-disposed folk Hut
in America, when a man tuml^les down the ladder, h^^ falls
hard. Here there's every contrivance for makin' him fall soft.
A man don't feel handsome when he's on the broad of his back,
but it must be a comfort for him to feel that his back-bone
isn't broke. Lord, Mr. Dunquercpie ! to look at the hospitals
and refuges, one wouhl think tlie liull l'»ible had got nothin'
but th«^ story of the Prodigal Son, and that every other English-
man was that misbehaved boy. I reckon if the young man
had lived in London, he'd have gone homo very 8h)w — most
as slow as ev(!7 he could travel. Tliere'd be the hospitals,
comfortable and warm, when his constitootion had broke down
with too many drinks ; there'd have been the convalescent
home for him to enjoy six months of happy meditation by the
seaside when he was pickin' up again ; and when he got well,
would he take to the swine-herdin', or would he tramp it home
to the old man 1 Not he, sir ; he would go back to the old
courses and become a Roper. Then more hospitals. P'r'aps
when he'd got quite tired, and seen the inside of a State prison,
and been without his little comforts for a spell, he'd have gone
home at last — just as I did, for I was the prodigal son without
the riotous livin' — and found the old man gone, leavin* him
his blessin'. The elder one would hand him the blessin' cheer-
fully, and stick to the old man's farm. Then the poor broken-
down sportsman — he'd tramp it back to London, get into an
almshouse, with an allowance from a City charity, and die
happy.

" 'There's another kind o* prodigal," Mr. Beck went on, being
in a mood for moralizing. " She's of the other sex. Formerly
she used to repent when she thought of wha*" was before her.
There's a refuge before her now, and kind women to take her
by the hand and cry over her. She isn't in any hurry for the
cryin' to begin, but it's comfortable to look forward to ; and
so she goes on until she's ready. Twenty years' fling, maybe,
with nothing to do for her daily bread ; and then to start fair
on the same level as the woman who has kept her self-respect
and worked.

" I can't see my way clear, Mr. Dunquerque ; I can't. It
wouldn't do any kind of honour to the Golden Butterfly to lay
out all these dollars in helpin' up them who are bound to fall —

■

334

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

bound to fall. There's only two classes of people in this world
— those who are goin' up, and those who are goin* down. It's
no use tryin* to stop those who are on their way down. Let
them go ; let them slide ; give them a shove down, if you like,
and all the better, because they will the sooner get to the bottom,
and then go up again till they find their own level."

It was in the evening, at nine o'clock, when Gilead Beck
made this oration. He was in his smaller room, which was lit
only by the twilight of the May evening and by the gas-lamp
in the street below. He walked up and down, talking with
his hands in his pockets, silencing Jack Dunquerque, who had
never thought seriously about these or any other things, by his
earnestness. Every now and then lie went to the window and
looked into the street below. The cabs rattled up and down,
and on the pavement the customary sight of a West-end street
after dark perhaps gave him inspiration.

* Their own level," he repeated it. " Yes, sir, there's a pro-
per level for every one of us somewhere, if only we can find it.
At the lowest depth of all there's the airth to be ploughed, the
hogs to be drove, and the corn to be reaped. I read the other
day, when I was studying for the great dinner, that formerly, if
a man took refuge in a town, he might stay there for a year
and a day. If then he could not keep himself, they opened
the gates and. they ran him out on a plank ; same way as I left
Clearville City. Back to the soil he went — back to the plough
Let those who are going down hill get down as fast as they can,
and go back to the soil.

*' I've sometimes thought," he went on, " that there's a kind
of work lower than agriculture. It is to wear a black coat and
do copying. You take a boy and riiake him a machine ; tell
him to copy, that is all. Why, sir, the rustic who feeds the
pigs is a Solomon beside that poor critter. Make your poor
helpless paupers into clerks, and make the men who've got
arms and legs and no brains into farm-labourers. Perhaps I
shall build a city and conduct it on those principles."

Then he stopped because he had run himself down, and they
began to talk ot Phiilis.

But it seemed to Jack a new and singular idea. The weak
must go the wall ; but they might be helped to find their level.
He was glad for once that he had that small four hundred a

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

335

is world
^n. It's
n. Let
ou like,
bottom,

ad Beck
1 was lit
jas-lamp
Liig with
ivho had
s, by his
iow and
1 down,
id street

)'s a pro-
1 find it.
hed, the
he other
onerly, if
»r a year
opened
as I left
e plough
hey can,

's a kind
coat and
tie ; tell
eeds the
[)ur poor
lo've got
jrhaps I

md they

he weak
eir level,
indred a

year of his own, because, as he reflected, his own level might
be somewhere on the stage where the manufacture by hand,
say of upper leathers, represents the proper occupation of the
class. A good many other fellows, he thought, among his own
acquaintance might find themselves accommodated with boards
for the cobbling business near himself. And he looked at
Gilead Beck with increased admiration as a man who had
struck all this, as well as He, out of his own head.

Jack Dunquerque suggested educational endowments. Mr.
Beck made deliberate inquiries into the endowments of Oxford
and Cambridge, with a view of founding a grand National
American University on the old lines, to be endowed in perpe-
tuity with the proceeds of his perennial oil-fountains. But there
were things about these ancient seats of learning which did
not commend themselves to him. In his unscholastic ignorance
he asked what was the good of pitting young men against each
other, like the gladiators in the arena, to fight, like them, with
weapons of no earthly modern use. And when he was told of
fellowships given to men for life as a prize for a single battle,
hf laughed aloud.

He went down to Eton. He was mean enough to say of the
masters that they made their incomes by overcharging the
butchers' and the grocers' bills, and he said that ministers, as
he called them, ought not to be grocers : and of the boys he
said that he thought it unwholesome for them that some should
have unlimited pocket-money, and all should have unlimited
tick. Also some one told him that Eton boys no longer fight^
because they funk one another. So that he came home sorrow-
ful and scornful.

" In ray country," he said, " we have got no scholarships^
and if the young men can't pay their professors they do with-
out them and educate themselves. And in my country the
boys fight. Yes, Mr.'Dunquerque, you bet they do fight."

It was after an evening at tlie Lyceum that Gilead Beck hit
upon the grand idea of his life.

The idea struck him as they walked home. It fell upon him
like an inspiration, and for the moment stunned him. He wis
silent until they reached the hotel. Then he called a waiter.

" Gt't Mr. Dunquerque a key," he said. " He will sleep here.

.s:30

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

" is a grand

That means, Mr. Dunquerque, that we can talk all night if you
please. 1 want advice."

Jack laughed. He always did laugh.

" It is a great privilege," he said, " advising Fortunatus."

*' It is a great privilege, Mr. Dunquerque," returned For-
tunatus, " having an adviser who wants nothing for himself.
See that pile of letters. Every one a begging letter, except
that blue one on the top, which is from a clergymen. He's a
powerful generous man, sir. He offers to conduct my charities
at a salary of three hundred pounds a year."

Mr. Beck then proceeded to unfold the great idea which had
sprung up, full grown, in his brain.

" That man, sir," he said, meaning Henry Irving,
actor. And they are using him up. He wants rest.

" I was an actor myself once, and I've loved the boards ever
since. I was not a great actor. I am bound to say that I did
not act like Mr. Henry Irving. Quite the contrary. Once I
was the hind legs of an elephant. Perhaps Mr. Irving him-
self, when he was a 'prentice, was the fore legs. I was on the
boards for a month, when the company busted up. Most
things did bust up that I had to do with in those days. I was
the lawyer in Flowers of the Fored. I was the demon with the
keg to Mr. Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle. Once I played
Horatio. That was when the Mayor of Constantinople City
inaugurated his year of office by playin' Hamlet. But he'd
always been fond of the stage, that Mayor, but through bein'
in the soft goods line could never find time to go on. So when
he got the chance, bein' then a matter of four-and-fifty, of
course he took it. And he elected to play Hamlet, just to
show the citizens what a whole-souled Mayor they'd got, and
the people in general what good play-actin' meant. The cor-
poration attended in a body, and sat in the front row of what
you call the dress circle. All in store clothes and go-to-meet-
in' gloves. It was a majestic and imposin' spectacle. Behind
them was the Fire Brigade in uniform. The citizens of Con-
stantinople and their wives and daughters crowded out the
liouse. .

" Wal, sir, we began. Whether it was they felt jealous, or
whether they felt envious, that corporation laughed. They
laughed at the sentinels, and they laughed at the moon. They

I =,

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

337

laughed at the Gliost, and they laughed at me — Horatio. And
then they laughed at Hamlet.

" I watched the Mayor gettin' gradually riz. Any man's
dander would. Presently he rose to that height that he went
straight to the footlights, and stood there facin' his own town
council like a bull behind a gate.

"They left off laughing for a minute, and than they began
again. We air a grave people, Mr. Dunquerque, I am told,
and the sight of those town councillors all laughin' together
like so many free niggers before the war was most too much for
any one.

" The Mayor made a speech that wasn't in the play.
" * Hyar,' he said^ lookin' solemn. ' You jest gether up your
traps and skin out of this. I've got the say about this house,
and I arn't agoin' to have the folks incited to make game of
their Mayor. So— you — kin— jist — light.'
"They hesitated.

" The Mayor pointed to the back of the theatre.
" ' Git,' lie said again.

" One of the town councillors rose and spoke.
" ' Mr. Mayor,' he began, * or Hamlet, Prince of Denmark—'
" * VVal, sir,' said the Mayor. ' Didn't Nero play in his own
theaytre V

" * Mr. Mayor, or Hamlet, or Nero,' he went on, ' we came
here on the presumption that we were paying for our places,
and bound to laugh if we were amused at the performance.
Now, sir, this performance does amuse us considerable.'

" ' You may presump,' said the Mayor, ' vhat you dam
please. But git. Git at once, or I'll turn on the pumps.'

" It was the Ghost who came to the front with the hose in
his hands ready to begin.

" The town council disappeared before he had time to play
on them, and we went on with the tragedy.

*' But it was spoiled, sir, completely spoiled. And I have
never acted since then.

" So you see, Mr. Dunquerque, I know somethin* about act-
in'. 'Tisn't as if I was a raw youngster starting a theatrical
idea all at once. I thought of it to-night, while I saw a man
actin' who has the real stuff in him, and only wants rest. I
mean to try an experiment in London, and if it succeeds I

338

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

shall take it to New York, and make the American Drama the
^i^reatest in all the world."
What will you do 1 "

I said to myself in that theatre : ' We want a place where
we can have a different piece acted every week ; we want to
give time for rehearsals and for alteration ; we want to bring
up the level of the second-rate actors ; we want more intelli-
gence ; and we want more care.' Now, Mr. Dunquerque,how
would you tackle that problem 1 "

"I cannot say."

" Then I will tell you, sir. You must have three full com-
panies. You must give up expecting that Theatre to pay its
expenses ; you must find a rich man to pay for that Theatre ;
and he must pay up pretty handsome."

" Lord de MoUeteste took the Royal Hemisphere last year."

" Had he three companies, sir 1 "

" No ; he had only one ; and that was a bad one. Wanted
to bring out & new actress, and nobody went to see her. Cost
him a hundred pounds a week till he shut it up."

*' Well, we wUl bring along new actresses too, but in a dif-
ferent fashion. They will have to work their way up from the
bottom of the ladder. My Theatre will cost me a good deal
more than a hundred pounds a week, I expect. But I am
bound to run it. The idea's in my head strong. It's the thing
to do. A year or two in London, and then for the States.
We shall have a Grand National Drama, and the He shall pay
for it."

He took paper and pen, and began to write.

" Three companies, all complete, for tragedy and comedy.
I've been to every theatre in London, and I'm ready with my
list. Now, Mr. Dunquerque, you listen while I write them
down.

" I say first company ; not that there's any better or worse,
but because one must begin with something.

" In the first I will have Mr. Irving, Mr. Henry Neville, Mr.
William Farren, Mr. Toole, Mr. Emery, Miss Bateman, and
Miss Nelly Farren.

" In the second, Mr. George Rignold — I saw him in Hairy V.
last winter in the States — Mr. Hare, Mr. Kendal, Mr. Lionel
Brough, Miss Kendal, '.nd that clever little lady. Mis Angelina
Claude.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

3S9

" In the third I will have Mr. Phelps, Mr. Charles Mathews,
Mr. W. J. Hill, Mr. Arthur Cecil, Mr. Kelly, Mr. and Mrs.
Bancroft, and Mrs. Scott-Siddons, if you could only get her.

" I should ask Mr. Alfred Wigan to be stage-manager and
general director, and I would give him absolute power.

" Every company will play for a week and rehearse for a
fortnight. The principal parts shall not always be played by
the best actors. And I will not have any piece run for more
than a week at a time."

" And how do you think your teams would run together?"

" Sir, it would be a distinction to belong to that Theatre.
And they would be well paid. They will run together just
for the very same reason as everybody runs together — for their
own interest." ^»*»

** I believe," said Jack, "that *}''!!" have at last hit upon a
plan for getting rid even of youJ j, .^ vfluous cash."

" It will cost a powerful lot, I Jn^'^e. But Lord, Mr. Dun-
querque I what better object ^^ii^ttV b^ than to improve the
Stage 1 Think what it would rapm. The House properly
managed; no loafin' around behind the scenes; every tctor
doing his darn best, and taking time for study and rehearsal ;
people comin' do\v ». to a quiet evening, with the best artists to
entertain them, and the best pieces to play. The Stage would
revive, sir. We should hear no more about the decay of the
Drama. The Drama decay ! That's bunkum, sir. That's the
invention of the priests and the ministers, who go about down-
cry in' wliat they can't have their own finger in."

•'But I don't see how your scheme Avill encourage authors."

" 1 shall pay them too, sir. I should say to Mr. Byron :
* Sir, you air a clever and a witty man. Go right away, sir.
Sit down for a twelvemonth, and do nothin' at all. Then write
me a play ; put your own jokes in it, not old jokes ; put your
own situations in it, not old ones. Give me somethin' better.'
Then I should say to Mr. Gilbert : * Your pieces have got the
real grit, young gentleman ; but you write too fast. Go away
too for six months and do nothin'. Then sit down for six
months more, and write a piece that will be pretty and sweet,
and won't be thin.* And there's more dramatists behind — only
give them a chance. They shall have it at my House."

" And what will the other houses do J "(

340

TfiE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

( !

i I

sit I.

" The other houses, sir, may y;o on p^ lying pieces for four
hundred nights if they like. 1 leave them plenty of men to
stump their boards, and my Theatre won't hold more than a
certain number. I shall only uake a small house to begin with,
such a house as the Lyceum, and we shall gradually get along.
But no profit can be made by r .^h a Stage, and I am ready to
give half my He to keep it goin'. Of course," he added, " when
it is a success in London I shall carry it away, company and
all, to New York."

He rose in a burst of enthusiasm.

"Gilead P. Beck shall be known for his collection of pictures.
He shall be known for his Golden Butterfly, and the Luck it
brought him. But he shall be best known, Mr. Dunquerque,
because he will be the finfrti man to take the Stage out of the
mud of commercial enteooisJBe, and raise it to be the great edu-
cator of the people. Bales, ill be known as the founder of the
Grand National Am«ri<!gkt Drama. And his bust shall be
planted on the top of J||^|^merican stage."

;

■

CHAPTER XXXIV.

In such a cause who would not give? What heart
But leaps at such a name ? ""

^IP^EOPLE of rank and position are apt to complain of beg-
,^1^ ging-letters. Surely England must be a happy country
*^-^ since its rich people complain mostly of begging-letters ;
for they are so easily dropped into the waste-paper basket. A
country squire — any man with a handle to his name and a place
for a permanent address — is the natural prey and victim of
the beggars. The lithographed letter comes with every post,
trying in vain to look like a written letter. And though in
fervid sentences it shows the danger to your immortal soul if
you refuse the pleading, most men ha*"^ the courage to resist.
The fact is that the letter is not a nuisance at all, because it is
never read. On the other hand; a new and very tangible nuis-

THE GOLDEN IJUTTERFLY.

341

ance is springing up. It is that of the people who go round and
call. Sir Roger de Coverley in his secluded village is free from
the women who give you tl.e alternative of a day with Moody
and Sankey, or an eternity of repentance -, he never sees the
pair of Sisters got up like Roman Catholic nuns, who stand
meekly before you, arms crossed, mutely refusing to go without
five shillings at least for their Ritualist hot-house. But he who
lives in Chambers, he who puts up at a great hotel and becomes
known, he who has a house in any address from Ches Ler-square
to Notting-hill, understands this trouble.

In some mysterious way Gilead Beck had become known.
Perhaps this was partly in consequence of 1 lis habit of going to
institutions, charities, and the like, and wanting to find out
everything. In some vague and misty way it became known
that there was at the Langham Hotel an American named
Gilead P. Beck, who was asking questions philanthropically.
Then all the people who live on philanthropists, with all those
who work for their pleasure among philanthropists, began to
tackle Gilead P. Be< k. Letters came in the morning, which he
read, but did lot a iswer. Circukrs were sent him, of which
he perhaps made a note. Telegrams were even delivered for
him — people somehow must read telegrams — asking him for
money. Those wonderful people who address the Affluent in
the 'Times and ask for 300Z. on the security of an honest man's
word ; those unhappy ladies whose father was a gentleman and
an officer, on the strength of which fact they ask the Benevo-
lent to help them in their undeserved distress, poor things ;
those disinterested advertisers who want a few hundreds, and
who will give 15 per cent on the security of a splendid piano,
a small gallery of undoubted pictures, and some unique china ;
those tradesmen who try iv stave off" bankruptcy by asking
the world generally for a loan on the strength of a simple refer-
ence to the clergyman of St. Tinpot, Hammersmith ; those
artful dodgers, Mr. Ally Sloper and his friends, when they
have devised a new and ingenious method of screwing money
out of the rich —all these people got hold of our Gilead, and
pelted him with letters. Did they know, the ingenious and
the needy, how the business is over-done, they would change
their tactics and go round calling. .

It requires a front of brass, entire absence of self-respect,

K£«

342

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

and an epidermis like that of the rhinoceros for toughness, to
undertake this work. Yet ladies do it. You want a tempera-
ment off whicli insults, gibes, sneers, and blank refusals fall
like water off a nasturtium-leaf to go the begging-round. Yet
women do it. They doit not only for themselves, but also for
their cause. From Ritualism down to Atheism, from the
fashionable enthusiasm to the nihilism which the British work-
man is being taught to regard as the hidden knowledge, there
are women who will brave anything, dare anything, say any-
thing, and endure anything. They love to be martyred, so long
especially as it does not hurt ; they are angry with the luke-
warm zeal of their male ''upnorters, forgetting that a man sees
the two sides of a question, while a woman never sees more
than one ; th istake notoriety for fame, and contempt for
jealous admira.:.. ..

And here, in the very heart of London, was a man who
seemed simply born for the Polite Beggar. A man restless
because he could not part with his money. Not seeking pro-
fitable investments, not asking for ten and twentj per cent. ;
but anxious to use his money for the best purposes : a man
who was a philanthropist in the abstract, who considered him-
self the trustee of a gigantic gift to the human race, and was
desirous of exercising that trust to the best ad" antage.

In London ; and at the same time, in the same city, thou-
sands of people not only representing their individual distresses
or their society's wants, but also plans, schemes, and ideas for
the promotion of civilisation in the abstract. Do we not all
know the projectors 1 I myself know at this moment six men
who want each to establish a daily paper ; at least a dozen who
would like a weekly -, fituy who see a way by the formation of
a new Society to check immorality, kill infidelity once for all,
make men sober and women clean, prevent strikes and destroy
Republicanism. There is one man who would " save " the
Church of England by establishing a preaching order ; one who
knows how to restore England to her place amofig the nations
without a single additional soldier ; one who burns to abolish
bishops' aprons, and would make it penal to preach in a black
gown. The land teerns with idea'd men. They yearn, pray,
and sigh daily for the capitalist who will reduce their idea to
practice. ,

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

343

And besides the projectors, there are the inventors. I once
knew a man who claimed to have invented a means for em-
barking and setting down passengers and goods on a railway
without stopping the trains. Think of the convenience. Why

the invention, I cannot explain,
have inventions which will re-
domestic appliances ; there are
on encouragement to reform the

no railways have taken up
Then there are men who
form the whole svstem of
others who are prepared

whole conduct of life by new inventions. There are men by
thousands brooding over experiments which they have not
money to carry out ; there are men longing to carry on experi-
mentn whose previous failure they can now account for. All
these men are looking for a capitalist as for a Messiah. Had
they known — had they but dimly suspected — that such a capi-
talist was in June of last year staying at the Langham Hotel,
they would have sought that hotel with one consent, and be-
sieged its portals. The world in general did not know Mr.
Beck's resources. But they were beginning to find him out.
The voice of rumour was spreading abroad his reputation.
And the people wrote letters, sent circulars, and called.

" Twenty-three of them came yesterday morning," Gilead
Beck complained to Jack Dunquerque. " Three-and-twenty, all
with a tale to tell. No, sir " — his voice rose in indignation^ —
" I did not give one of them so much as a quarter-dollar. The
Luck of the Golden Butterfly is not to be squandered among
the well-dre, 3d beggars of Great Britaiti. Three-and-twenty,
counting one little boy, who came by himself. His mother
was a widow, he said, and he sat on the chair and sniffed.
And they all wanted money. There was one man in a white
choker who had found out a new channel for doing good — and
one man who wished to recommend a list of orphans. The rest
were women. And talk 1 There's no name for it. With little
books, and pencils, and bundles of tracks."

While he spoke there was a gentle tap at the door.

" There's another of them," he groaned. " Stand by me,
Mr. Dunquerque. See me through with it. Come in, come
in. Good Lord ! " he whispered, " a brace this time. Will
you tackle the young one, Mr. Dunquerque 1 "

A pair of ladies. One of them a lady tall and thin, stern of
aspect, sharp of feature, eager of expression. She wore spec-

344

THE (}OLT)KN HUTTEItKF.Y.

tacles ; she was apparently careless of dress, which was of black
silk, a little rusty. With her was a girl of about eighteen,
perhaps her daughter, perhaps her iiiece ; a girl of rather sharp
but pretty features, marked by a look of determination, as if
she meant to see the bottom of this business, or know the rea-
son why.

" You are Mr. Beck, sir ? " the elder lady began.

" I am Gilead P. Beck, madam," he replied.

He was standing before the fireplace, with his long hands
thrust into his pockets, one foot on an adjacent chair, and his
head thrown a little back — defiantly.

" You have received two letters from me, Mr Be^k. written
by my own hand, and — how many circulars, child 1"

" Twenty," said the girl.
. " And I have had no answer. I Jim come for your answer,
Mr. Beck. We will sit down, if you please, while you con-
sider your answer."

Mr. Beck took up a waste-paper basket which stood at his
feet, and tossed out the whole contents upon the table.

" Those are the letters of yesterday and to-day," he said.
*' What was yours, madam 1 Was it a letter asking for
money ? "

♦'It was."

" Yesterday there were seventy-four letters asking for money.
To-day there are only fifty-two. May I ask, madam, if you air
the widow who wants money to run a mangle 1 "

" Sir, I am unmarried. A mangle ! "

He dug his hand into the pile, and took out one at random.

•* You air, perhaps, the young lady who writes to know if |
want a housekeeper, and enploses her carte-de-visite 1 No ;
that won't do. Is it possible you are the daughter of tjie Con-
federate general who lost his life in the cause 1 "

"Really, nir ! "

" Then, madam, we come to the lady who " — here he read
from another letter — " who was once a governess, and now is
reduced to sell her last remaining garments."
"Sir!"

There was a withering scorn on the lady's lips.
♦' I represent a Cause, Mr. Beck. I ajn not ^ beggar for

THE UOLDKN HUTTKUFI.Y.

:i45

myself. My cause is the sacred one ot Womanhoorl. You, sir,
in your free and happy Kepublic — "

Mr. Beck bowed.

** Have seen woman paitially restored to her proper phice —
on a level with man."

" A higher level," murmured the girl, who had far-oft'-eyes
and a sweet voice. " The higher level reached by the purer
heart."

" Only partially restored at })resent. But the good work
goes on. Here we are only beginning. Mr. Beck, the Cause
wants help — your help."

He said nothing, and she went on.

" We want our rights ; we want suffrage ; we want to be
elected for the Houses of Parliament ; we insist on equality in
following the professions and in enjoying the endowments of
Education. We shall prove that we are no whit inferior to
men. We want no ])rivileges. Let us stand by ourselves."

** Weal, madam, there air helpers who shove up, and 1 guess
there air helpers who shove down."

She did not understand him, and went on with increasing
volubility.

" The subjection of the Sox is the most monstrous injustice
of all those which blot the fair fame of manhood. What is
there in man's physical strength that he should use it to lord
over the weaker half of humanity 1 Why has not our sex pro
duced a Shakespeare V

" It has, madam," said Mr. Beck, gravely. " It has produced
all our greatest men."

She was staggere«i.

" Your answer, if you please, Mr. Beck."

" I have ilo answer, madam."

" I have written you two letters, and sent you twenty cir-
culars, urging upon you the claims of the Woman's Bights
Association. I have the right to ask for a reply. I expect
one. You will be kind enough, sir, to give categorically your
answer to the several heads. This you will do of your courtesy
to a lady. We can wait here while you write ii I shall pro-
bably, I ought to tell you, publish it."

" We can wait,'' said the yciung lady.

They sat with folded hands in silence,

346

Tf»!5 flOLDEN HiTTTKHFTT.

Mr. Beck shifted his foot from the chair to the carpet. Then
he took his hands out of his pockets and stroked his chin. Then
ho gazed at the ladies, steadily.

Jack ])nn(iu('rque sat in the background, and rendered no
help whatever.

" Did you ever, ladies," asked Mr. Beck, after a few mo-
ments of reflection, " hear of Paul Deroon of Memphis 1 Ho
was the wickedest man in all that city. Which w.is allowed.
He kept a bar where the whiskey was straight and the lan-
guage was fnje, and where Paul would tell stories, once you
set him on, calculated to raise on end the hair of your best
sofa. When th(5 Crusade began — I mean the Whiskey Crusade
— the ladies naturally began with Paul Deroon's saloon."

" This is very tediou^, my dear," said the ekler lady, in a
loud whisper.

" How did Paul Deroon behave 1 Some bar-keepers came
out and cursed while the Whiskey War went on ; some
gave in and po' red away the Bourbon ; some shut up shop and
took to preachiii . Paul just did nothing. You couldn't tell
from Paul's face that he even knew of the forty women around
him prayin' ail- together. If he stepped outside he walked
through as if they weren't there, and they made a lane for
him. If he'd been blind and deaf and dumb, Paul Deroon
couldn't have taken less notice."

" We shall not keep our appointment, I fear," the younger
lady remarked.

" They prayed, preached, and sang hymns for a whole week.
On Sunday they sang eighty strong. And on the seventh day
Paul took no more notice than on the first. Once they asked
him if he heard the singin'. He said he did ; and it was very
soothin' and pleasant. Said, too, that he liked music to his
drink. Then they asked him if he heard the prayers. He said
he did ; said, too, that it was cool work sittin' in the shade and
listenin' ; also that it kinder seemed as if it was bound to do
somebody or other good some day. Then they told him that
the ladies were waitin' to see him converted. H e said it was
very kind of them, and, for his own part, he didn't mind
meetin' their wishes half-way, and would wait as long as they
did."

The ladies rose. Said the elder lady viciously : " You are

THE GOLDEN lUITTERFLY.

347

unworthy, sir, to represent your great country. Vou are a
common scoffer."

" Ueneral Schenck represents my country, madam."

" You are unworthy of being associated with a great Cans*;.
We have wasted our time upon you."

Their departure was less dignified than their entry.

As they left the roo'.ii another visitor arrived. It was a tall
and handsome man, with a full flowing beard and a genial
presence.

He had a loud voice and a commanding manner.

*' Mr. Beck 1 I thought so. I wrote to you yesterday,
Mr. Beck. And I am come in person — in i)er.son, sir — for your
reply."

" You air the gentleman, sir, interested in the orphan children
of a colonial bisliop 1 "

" No, sir, I am not. Nothing of the kind."

*' Then you air perhaps the gentleman who wrote to say that,
unless I sent him a ten-pound note by return of post, he would
blow out his brains 1 "

" I am Major Borington. I wrote to you, sir, on behalf
of the Grand National Movement for erecting International
Statues."

" What is that movement, sir ? "

" A series of monuments to all our great men, Mr. Beck.
America and England, sir, have ancestors in common. We
have our Shakespeare, sir, our Milton."

" Yes, sir, so 1 have heard. I did not know those ancestors
myself, having been born too late, and therefore I do not take
that interest in their stone figures as you do."

" Positively, Mr. Beck, you must join us."

" It is your idea. Colonel, is it ]'■

" Mine, Mr. Beck. I am proud to say it is my own."

" I knew a man once. Colonel, in my country who wanted to
be a great man. He had that ambition, sir. He wasn't par-
ticular how he got his greatness. But he scorned to die and
be forgotten, and he yearned to go down to posterity. His
name, sir, was Hiram Turtle. First of all, he ambitioned mili-
tary greatness. We went into Bull's Run together. And we
came out of it together. We came away from that field side
by side. We left our guns there too. If we had had shields,

;48

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

Li 't

i k

we should have left them as well. Hiram concluded, sir, after
that experience, to leave military greatness to others."

Major Borington interposed a gesture.

" One moment, Brigadier. The connection is coming. Hiram
Turtle thought the ministrj' opened up a Held. So he became
a preacher. Yes ; he preached once. But he forgot that a
preacher must have something to say, and so the Elders con-
cluded not to ask Hiram Turtle any more. Then he became
clerk in a store while he looked aboiit him. For a year or two
he wrote poetry. But the papers in America, he found, were
in a league against genius. So he gave up that lay. Politics
was his next move ; and he went for stump-orating with
the Presidency in his eye. Stumpin' offers amusement as well
as gentle exercise, but it doesn't pay unless you get more than
one brace of niggers and a bubbly-jock to listen. Wal, sir, how
do you think Hiram Turtle made his greatness ] He figured
around, sir, with a List, atid his own name a-top, for a Grand
National Monument to tht memory of the great men who fell
in the Civil War. They air still subscribing, and Hiram Turtle
is the great Patriot. Now, General, you see the connection."

" If you mean, sir," cried Major Borington, " to imply that
my motives are interested — "

" Not at all, sir," said Mr. Beck ; " I have told you a little
story. Hiram Turtle's was a remarkable case. Perhaps you
might ponder on it."

" Your language is insulting, sir ! "

" Colonel, this is not a country whf .b men have to take care
what they say. But if you should ever pay a visit out West,
and if you should happen to be about where tar and feathers
are cheap, you would really be astonished at the consideration
you would receive. No, sir, I shall not subscribe to your
Grand National Association. But go on. Captain, go on. This
is a charitable country, and the people haven't all heard the
story of Hiram Turtle. And what'll you take. Major. ? "

But Major Borington, clapping on his hat, stalked out of the
room.

The visits of the strong-minded female and Major Borington,
which were typical, took place on the day which was the first
^nd only occasion on which Phillis went to the theatre. Gilead

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

349

B«!ck took the box, and they went — Jack Dunqnerque beinj;
himself the fourth, as they say in Greek exercise-books — to tlie
Lyceum, and saw Henry Irving play Hamlet.

Phillis brought to the play none of the revere'ice with which
English people habitually approach Shakespeare, insomuch
that, while we make superluiman efforts to undersLaiid him, we
have lost the power of criticism. To her George III.'s re-
mark that there was a great deal of rubbish in Shakespeare
would have seemed a perfectly legitimate conclusion. But she
knew nothing about the great dramatist.

The house, with its decorations, lights, and crowd, pleased
her. She liked the overture, and she waited with patience for
the first scene. She was gonig to see a representation of life
done in show. So much sIk' understood. Instead of telling a
story the players would act the story.

The Ghost — perhaps because the Lyceum Ghost was so
palpably flesh and blood - inspired her with no terror at all.
But gradually the story grew into her, and she watched the
unfortunate Prince of Denmark torn by his conflicting emotions,
distraught with the horror of the deed that had been done and
the deed that was to do, with a beating heart and trembling
lip. When Hamlet with that wihl cry threw himself upon his
uncle's throne she gasped and caught Agatha by the hand.
When the play upon the stage showed the King how much of
th<; truth was known she trembled, and looked to see him im-
me/liately confess his crime and go out to be hanged. She was
indignant with Hamlet for the slaughter of Polonius ; she was
conUuiiptoous of Ophelia, whom she did not understand ; and
shf was impatient when the two Gravediggers came to the
front, resoiutf! to spare the audience none of their somewhat
musty old jokes and to abate nothing of the stage-business.

When they i^ft the theatre, Phillis moved and spoke as in a
dream. VV^ar, battle, consj)iracy, murder, crime — all these
things, of which her guardian liad told her, she saw presented
before her on the stage. She had too much to think of ; she
had to fit all these new surroundings in her mind with the
stories of the past. As for the actors, she had no power wluit-
ever of distinguishing betw«'»Mi them and tlie parts they played.
Irving Wiis Hamlet; Miss l>at«'man was Ophelia; an»l they

350

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

were all like the figures of a dream, because she did not under-
stand how they could be anything hut Hamlet, Ophelia, and
the Court of Denmark.

And this too was part of her education.

CHAP PER XXXV.

" Love in her eyes lay liidinjj,
His time in patience bidiiiff."

QUARE it with Cohjulioun before you go any fartlier,"
said Ladds.
Square it with the guardian — speak to the young lady's
father — make it all right with the authorities : what excellent
advice to give, and how easy to follow it up ! Who does not
look forward with pleasure, or backward as to an agreeable
reminisc(Mice, to that half-hour spent in a confidential talk
with dear papa? How calmly critical, how severely judicial,
was his summing up ! With what a determined air did he
follow up the trail, elicited in cross-examination, of former
sins ! With how keen a scent did he disintar forgotten follies,
call attention to bygone extravagancies, or place the finger of
censure upon debts which never ought to have been incurred,
and economies which ought to have been made !

Remember his " finally " — a word which from childhood has
been ashociated with sweet memories, because it brings the ser-
mon to an end, but which henceforth will awake in your brain
the ghost of that iiumvais quart d'heure. In that brief jierora-
tion he ton- the veil from the last cherished morsel of self-illu-
sion ; he showed you that the furnishing of a house was a
costly business, tliat he was not going to do it for you, that
servants require an annual income of considerable extent, that
his daughter tius been brought up a lady, that lady's dress is a
serious affair, that wedlock in di reason brings babies, and
that he was n«>t so ricii .i he seemed.

Well, perhaps be saitl ' Y<!s " reluctantly, in spite of draw-

ii-

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY

351

backs. Then you felt that you were regarded by the rest of
the family as the means of preventing dear Annabella from
making a brilliant match. That humbled you for life. Or
perhaps he said " No." In that case you went away sadly,
and meditated suicide. And whether you got over the fit, or
wliether you didn't — though of course you did — the chances
were that Annabella never married at all, aud you are still re-
garded by the family as the cause of that sweet creature not
making the exceptionally splendid alliance which, but for you,
the disturbing influence, would liave been her lot.

However, the thing is necessary, unless people run away, a
good old fashion by whicli such interviews, together with wed-
ding-breakfasts, wedding-garments, and wedding-presents were
avoided.

Running away is out of fashion. ' It would have been the
worst form possible in Jack Dunquerque even to propose such
a thing to Phillis, and I am not at all certain that he would
ever have mad<; her understand either the necessity or the
romancr of the thing. And I am (juite sure that she would
never understand that Jack Dunquerque was asking her to do
a wrong thing.

Certainly it was not likely that this young man would pro-
ci 1 farther in the path of irregularity — which leads to repent-
*ance — than he had hitherto done. He had now to confess be-
fore the young lady s guardian something of the part he had
played.

Looked at dispassionately, and unsoftened by the haze of
illusion, this part had, ts he acknowledged with groans, an ap-
pearanct^ rar froon pleasing to the (^hristian moralist.

He had taken advantage of the girl's total ignorance to in-
troduce himself »t the house where she was practically alone
for thf wfauie day ; he found her like a child in the absence of
the reserv-e which girls are li ained to ; he stepped at once intf)
the p«).sition of a confidential friend; he took her about for
walks and drives, a thing which might have compromised her
seriously; he allowed doseph Jagenal, without, it is true,
stating It in so many words, to believe him an old friend of
Phillis's ; he followed her to Twickenham, and installed him-
self at Mrs fj'Estrange's as an (imi de famille ; he h.ad done so
much to Uiake th<^ girl's life bright and happy, he was so dear

352

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

to her, tliJit he felt there wah but one step to bo taken to pass
from a brotlier to a lover.

It was a black record to look at, and it was poor consolation
to think that any other man would have done the same.

Jack Dunquerque, like Phillis herself, was changed within a
month. Somehow the fun and carelessness which struck
Gilead Beck as so remarkable in a man of five-and twenty were
a good deal damped. For the first time in his life he was se-
rious ; for the first time he had a serious and definite object
before hira. He was perfectly serious in an unbounded love
for Phillis. Day by day the sweet beauty of the girl, hvr
grace, her simple faith, her child- like affection sank into his
heart ami softened him. Day after day, as he rowed along
the meadows of the Thames, or lazied under the hanging wil-
lows by the shore, or sat with her in the garden, or rode along
the leafy roads by her side, the sincerity of her nature, as clear
and cloudless as the blue depths of heaven ; its purity, like
the bright water that leaps and bubbles and Hows beneath the
shade of Lebanon ; its perfect truthfulness, like the midday
sunshine in Jutu^ ; the innocence with which, even as atiother
Eve, she bared iier very soul for him to read— these things, when
he thought of them, brought the unaccustomed tears to his eyes,
and riade his si)iiit rise and bound within him as to unheard-
of heights. For lovc, to an honest man, is like Nature to a poet*
or colour to an artist — it makes liim see great depths, and
gives him, ifonly foronoe in his life, a Pisgah view of a Land far,
far holi(^r, a life far, far higher, a condition far, far sweeter and
nobler than anything in this world can give us — except the
love of a good woman. In such a vision the ordinary course
of our Vii'e is sus[)ended ; we move on air ; we see men as trees
walking, and regard them not. Happy the man who once in
his life has been so lifted out of the present, and knows not
afterwards whether he was in the Hesh or out of tlu; fiesh.

Jack with the infiuence of this great passion upon him was
transformed. Fortunately for us this emotion had its ebb and
flow. Klse that great dinner to Literature had never come off.
But at all times he was under its sobering influence. Audit was
in a penitent and humble mood that he sought Lawrence
Colquhoun, in the hope of •' squaring it " with him ix» Ladds
advised. Good fellow. Tommy ; none better ; but wanting in

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

353

to pass

eolation

k^ithin a

struck

ty were

was se-

I object

ed love

irl, h»'r

into liis

id along

iiig wil-

le along

as clear

ty, like

3ath the

midday

another

8, when

lis eyes,

nheard-

) a poet*

and

uid far,

ter and

pt the

course

IS trees

)nce in

ws not

rn was
3 b and
me otf.
it was
■wrence
Ladds
ing in

the higher delicacy. Somehow the common words and phrases
of every-day use applied to Phillis jarred upon him. After
all, one feels a difficulty in offering a princess the change for a
shilling in coppers. If I had to do it, I should fall back on a
draft upon the Cheque Bank.

Lawrence was full of his own annoyances — most of us always
are, and it is one of the less-understood ills of life that one can
never get, even for five minutes, a Monopoly of Complaint.
But he listened patiently while Jack — Jack of tlie Rueful Coun-
tenance — poured out his tale of repentance, woe, and prayer.

" You see," he said, winding up, " 1 never thought what it
would come to, I dropped into it by accident, and then —

then "

" When people come to flirt, they stay to spoon," said Law-
rence. " In other words, my dear fellow, you are in love.
Ah!"

Jack wondered what was meant by the interjection. In all
the list of interjections given by Lindley Murray, or the new
light Dr. Morris, such as Pish ! Pshaw ! Alas ! Humph ! and
the rest which are in everybody's mouth, there is none which
blows with such an uncertain sound as this. Impossible to tell
whether it means encouragement, 'sympathy, or cold distrust !

" Ah ! " said Lawrence. " Sit down and be comfortable,
Jack. When one is really worried, nothing like a perfect chair.
Take my own. Now, then, let us talk it over."
" It doesn't look well," thought Jack.

" Always face the situation," said Lawrence (he had got an
uncommonly awkward situation of his own to face, and it was
a little relief to turn to some one else's). " Nothing done by
blinking tacts. Here we are. Young lady of eighteen or so —
just released from a convent ; ignorant of the world ; pretty j
attractive ways ; rich, as girls go — on the one hand. On the
other, you : good-looking as my cousin Agatha L'Estrange says,
though 1 can't see it : of a chetaful disposition — aptus luUere,

fit to play, cum puella, all the day '

" Don't chatt', Colquhoun ; it's too serious."
But Colquhoun went on :

" An inflammable young man. Well, with any other girl
the danger would have been seen at once ; poor Phillis is so
innocent that she is supposed to be quite safe. So you go on

^54

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

calling. My cousin Agatha writes me word that she has been
looking for the light of love, as she calls it, in Phillis's eyes ;
and it isn't there. She is a sentimentalist, and therefore silly.
Why didn't she look in your eyes, Jack 1 That would have
been very much more to the purpose."

" She has, now. I told her yesterday that I — I — loved
Phillis."

" Did she ask you to take the young lady's hand and a bless-
ing at once 1 Come, Jack, look at the thing sensibly. There
are two or three very strong reasons why it can't be."

" Why it can't be ! " echoed Jack dolefully.

" First, the girl hasn't come out. Now, I ask you, would it
not be simply sinful not to give her a fair run ? In any case
you could not be engaged till after she has had one season. Then
her father, who did not forget that he was grandson of a Peer,
wanted his daughter to make a good match, and always spoke
of the fortune he was to leave her as a guarantee that she
would marry well. He never thought he was going to die, of
course ; but at all events I know so much of his wishes. Lastly,
my dear Jack Dunquerque, you are the best fellow in the world,
but you know — but — "

" But I am not Lord Isle worth."

" That is just it. You are his lordship's younger brother,
with one or two between you and the title. Now don't you
see ? Need we talk about it any more 1 "

** I suppose Phil — I mean Miss Fleming — will be allowed to
choose for herself. You are not going to make her marry a
man because he happens to have a title and an estate, and otters
himself]"

" I suppose," said Lawrence, laughing, " that I am going to
lock Phillis up in a tower until the right man comes. No, no.
Jack ; there shall be no compulsion. If she sets her heart upon
marrying you — she is a downright young lady — why, she must
do it J but after she has had her run among the ball-rooms, not
before. I<et her take a look round first ; there will be other
Jack Dunquerques ready to look at, be sure of that. Perhaps
she will think them fairer to outward view than you. If she
does, you will have to give her up in the end, you know."

" 1 have said uo word of love to her, Oolquhoun, I give you

THK GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

855

my honour," suiil Jack hotly. " I don't think she vvouUl un-
derstand it if 1 did."

"I am glad of that, at least."

" If I am to give her up and go away, I daresay," the poor
youtii went on, with a little choking in his throat, " that she
will regret me at first, and for ■ day or two. But she will get
over that ; and — as you say, there are plenty of fellows in the
world better than myself — and— "

" My dear Jack, there will be no going away. You tell me
you have not told her all the eflect that her beavx yeux have
produced upon you. Well, then— and there has been nothing
to compromise her at all ? "

" Nothing ; that is, once we went to the Tower of London
in a hansom cab."

" 0, that is all, is it ? Jack Dunquerque — Jack Dunquer-
que ! "

" And we have been up the river a good many times in a
boat."

" I see. The river is pleasant at this time of the year."

" And we have been riding together a good deal. Phil rides
very well, you know."

*' l)oes she ? It seems to me, Jack, that my cousin Agatha
is a fool, and that you have been having rather a high time in
consequence. Surely you can't complain if I ask you to con-
sider the innings over for the present 1 "

" No : 1 can't complain, if one may hope — "

" Let us hope nothing. Sufficient for the day. He who
hopes nothing gets everything. Come out of it at once, Jack,
before you get hit too hard."

" I think no one was ever hit so hard before," said Jack.
*' Colquhoun, you don't know your ward. It is impossible for
any one to be with her without falling in love with her. She
is — " Here he stopped, because he could not get on any farther.
Anybody who did not know the manly nature of Jack Dun-
querque might have thought that he was stopped by emotion.

*' We all get the fever some time or other. But we worry
through. Look at me, Jack. I am forty, and, as you see, a
comparatively hale and hearty man, despite my. years. It
doesn't shorten life, that kind of fever ; it doesn't take away
appetite ; it doesn't interfere with your powers of enjoyment.

856

THE GOLDEN BUTTFUVLY.

There is even a luxury about it. You can't remember Gerald-
ine Arundale, now Lady Newladegge, when she came out, of
course. You were getting ready for Eton about that time.
W^ill, she and I carried on for a whole season. People talked.
Tnen she got engaged to her present husband, after seeing him
twice. Slie wanted a Title, you see. I was very bad, that
journey ; and I remember that Agatha, who was in my con-
fiden3e, had a hot time of it over the fiiithlessness of shallow
hearts. But I got over the attack, and 1 have not been danger-
ously ill, so to speak, since. That is, 1 have made a contempt-
ible ass of myself on several occasions, and I daresay I shall go
on making an ass of myself as long as I live. Because the
older you grow, somehow, the sweeter do the flowers smell."

Jack only .,roaned. It really is no kind of consolation to
tell a suffering man that you have gone through it yourself.
Gilead Beck told me once of a man who lived in one of the
Southern States of America : he was a mild and pirtC'd creature,
inoffensive as a canary bird, quiet as a mongoose, and much
esteemed for his unusual meekness. This harmless being once got
ear-ache — very bad ear-ache. Boyhood's ear-aches are awful
things to remember ; but those of manhood, when they do come,
which is seldom, are the Devil. To him in agony came a friend,
who sat down beside him like Eliphaz the Temanite, and sighed.
This the harmless being who had the ear-ache put up with,
though it was irritating. Presently the Friend began to relate
how he once had had the ear-ache himself. Then the harmless
creature rose upsuddenly,and, seizingan adjacent chunk of wood,
gave that Friend a token of friendship on the head with such
effect that he ceased the telling of that and all other stories,
and has remained quite dumb ever since. The jury acquitted
that inoffensive an<i meek creature, who wept when the ear-ache
was gone, and often laid flowers on the grave of his departed
Friend.

Jack did not heave chunks of wood at Colquhoun. He only
looked at him with ineffable contempt.

" Lady Newladegge ! why she is five-and-thirty ! and she is
fat!"

" She wasn't always five-and-thirty, nor was she always fat.
On the contrary, when she was twenty, and I was in love with

i, Peeress, she

wasc

uddl

may so speak

esome.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

357

" Cuddlesome ! " Jack cried, liis deepest feelings outmged.
" Good Heavens ! to think of comparing Phil with a woman
who was once cuddlesome ! "

Lawrence Colquhoun laughed.

" In fifteen years, or thereahouts, perhaps you vail trko
much the same view of things as I do. Meantime, Jack, let
things remain as they are. You shall have a fair chance with
the rest ; and you must remember that you have had a much
better chance than anybody else, because you have had tho
first running. Leave off going to Twickenham quite so much ;
but don't stop altogether, or Phillis may be led to suspect.
Can't you contrive to slack of!" by degrees 1 "

Jack breathed a little more freely. The house, then, was not
shut to him.

'* The young lady will have her first season next year. I
don't say I hope she will marry anybody else, Jack, but I am
bound to give- her the chance. As soon as she really under-
stands a little more of life she will find out for herself what is
best for her, perhaps. Now we've talked enough about it."

Jack Dun([uerque went away sorrowful. He expected some
such result of this endeavour to " square " it with Colquhoun,
but yet he was disappointed.

*' Hang it all Jack," said Ladrls, " what can you want more ?
You are told to wait a year. No one will step in between you
and the young lady till she comes out. You are not told to dis-
continue your visits — only not to go too often, and not to com-
promise her. What more does the hum want ? "

" You are a very good fellow. Tommy," sighed the lover ;
"a very good fellow in the main. But, you see, you don't
know Phil. Let me call her Phil to you, old man. There's
not another man in the world that I miiM talk about her to —
not one, by Jove ; it would Geem a <lesecration."

" Go on. Jack — talk away ; and I'll give you good advice."

He did talk away ! What says Solomon l " Ointment and
perfume rejoice the soul ; so doth the sweetness of a man's
friend by hearty counsel." The Wise Man might have expn^ssed
himself more clearly, but his meaning can be made out.

Meantime Lawrence Colquhoun, pullinrj himself together
after Jack went away, remembered that he had not once gone
near his ward since he drove her to Twickenham.

"It is too bad," said Conscience; "a whole month."

358

THK GOLDKN HI TTKUKLY.

** It is all that woman's fault," he iiioaded. " I have been
dangling about, in obedience to her, like a fool."

*' Like a fool," echoed Conscience.

He went that very day. and was easily persuaded to stay and
dine with the two ladies.

He said very little, but Agatha observed him witching his
ward closely.

After dinner s le got a chance.

It was a pleasant evening, early in Jnn<^ Tiuiy had straw-
berries on a garden-table. Phillis i)resently gn*\v tired of sit-
ting under the sli t% and strolled down to the i iver-.side, where
she sat on the gra.^s and threw biscuits to the swans.

" What do y(»u think, Lawrence ] "

He was watching her in silence.

" I don't understand it, Ag-.tha. What have you done to
her 1 "

" Nothing. Aie you pleased ? "

" You are a witch ; I believe you must liJive a familiar some-
where. She is wonderful — wonderful ! "

" Is she a ward to be proud of and to love, Lawrence ? Is
she the sweetest and pretti<'st girl you ever saw? My dear
cousin, I declare to you tliat I think her faultless. At least
her very faults are attractive. She is impetuous and self-willed,
but she is full of sympatliy. And that st oms to have grown up
in her altogether in the last few months."

" Her manner appears to me more perfect than anything I
have ever seen."

" It is because she has no self-consciousness. She is like a
child still, my dear Phillis, so far."

" I wonder if it is because she cannot read ? Why should
' wo not prohibit the whole sex from learning to read ? "

" Nonsense, Lawrence. What would the novelists do ? Be-
sides, she is learning to read fast. I put her this morning into
the Third Lesson Book — two syllables. And it is not as if she
were ignorant, because she know.s a great deal."

"Then why is it?"

{' I think her sweet nature has something to do with it ; and,
besides, she has been shielded from many l3ad influences. We
send girls to school, and— and — well, Lawrence, we cannot all
be angels, any more than men. If girls learn about love, and

THE (JOLDKN lUTTTKIlFI.Y

;j50

establishments, and flirtations, and the rest <»f it, why, they natu-
rally want their share of these j^ood things. Then they get
self-conscious."

" What about Jack Duncjuenjue ? " asked Lawrence abruptly.
" He has been to me about her."

Agatha blushed as prettily as anv self-conscious young girl.

" lie loves Phillis," she said ; " but Phillis only regards him
as a brother."

" Agatha, you are no wiser than little Red Uiding-IIood.
Jack Dunquerque is a wolf."

" I am sure he is a most honourable, good young man."

" As for good, goodness knows. Honourable no doubt .ind
a wolf. You are a matchmaker, you bad, bad woman. I be-
lieve you want him to marry that young Princess over there."

" And what did you tell poor Jack 1 "

" Tohl him to wait. Acted the stern guardian. Won't have
an engagement. Must let l*hillis have her run. Mustn't come
here perpetually trying to gobble up my dainty heiress. Think
upon that now, cousin Agatha."

'* She could not marry into a better family."

" Very true. The Dunquerques had an Ark of their own,
I believe, at the Deluge. But then Jack is not Lord Isle-
worth ; and he isn't ambitious, and he isn't clever, and ho isn't
rich."

" Go on, Lawrence ; it is charming to see you in a new char-
acter — Lawrence the Prudent ! "

" Charmed to charm la belle comine. He is in love, an«l he
is hit as hard as any man I ever saw. But Phillis shall not be
snappe«l up in this liasty and inconsiderate manner. There are
lots of better partis in the field."

Then Phillis came back, dangling her hat by its ribbons.
The setting sun made a glory of her hair, lit up the splendour
of her eyes, and made a clear outline of her delicate features
antl tall shapely tigure.

" Come and sit hy me, Phillis," said her guardian. *' I liave
neglected you. Agatha will tell you that I am a worthless
youth of forty, who neglects all his duties. You are so much
improved, my child, that I hardly knew you. Prettier and —
and — everything. How goes on the education ? "

" Heading and writing," said Phillis, " do not make e«luca-

»6()

THK (JOLHKN HUTTKUKLY.

tion. Really, Lawrence, you ought to know better. A year
or two with Mr. Dyson would have done you much good. I
am in words of two syllables ; and Agatha thinks I am getting
on very nicely. I am in despair about my painting since we
have been to picture-galleries. And to think how conceited I
was onco over it ! But I can draw, Lawrence ; I shall not
give up my drawing."

" And you liked your galleries ?"

" Some of them. The Academy wjis tiring. Why don't
they put all tl e portraits in one room together, so that we
need not waste time over them ?

" What did you look at ? "

" I looked at what all the other people pressed to see, first
of all. There was a picture of Waterloo, with the French and
English crowded together so that they could shake hands. It
was drawn beautifully ; but somehow it made me feel as if
War was a little thing. Mr. Dyson used to say that women
always take the grandeur and strength out of Art. Then there
was a brown man with a sling on a platform. The? platform
rested on stalks of corn ; and if the man were to throw the
stone he would topple over, and tumble of!" his platform. And
there was another one, of a row of women going to be sold for
slaves ; a curious picture, and beautifully painted, but I did
not like it."

"What did you like?"

" I liked some that told their own story, and made me
think. There was a picture of a moor — take me to see a moor,
Lawrence — with a windy sky, and a wooden fence and a light
upon it. O, I liked all the landscapes. 1 think our artists
feel trees and sunshine. But what is my opinion worth 1 "

** Come with me to-morrow, Phillis ; we will go through the
pictures together, and you shall teach me what to like. Your
opinion worth 1 Why, child, all the opinions of all the critics
together are not worth yours."

THE fJOLDRN BIJ'ITKRKLY.

.S()l

CIIAPTKR XXXVI.

" What is it thiit Iion been «l<)iiu ? "

(HESE anonymous letters and this fit of jealousy, the more
dangerous because it was a new thing, came at an awk-

~'^ ward lime for Gabri<'l Cassilis. He had got " big " things
in liand, and the eyes of the City, lie felt, were on him. It was
all-important that he should keep his clearness of vision and
unclouded activity of brain. For the first time in his life his
operations equalled, or nearly approached, his ambition. For
the first time he had what he called \\. considerabh? sum in his
hands. That is to say, there was his own money —he was
reported to be worth three bundled thousand j)ounds — Gilead
Beck's little pile, with his unlimited credit, and smaller sums
placed in his hands for investment by private friends, such as
Colquhoun, Lad<ls, and others. A total which enabled him to
wait. And the share-rrarket oscillating. And telegrams in
cipher reaching him from all quarters. And ( }al)riel Cassilis
unable to work, tormented by the one thought, like lo by her
gad fly, attacked by fits of giddiness which made him cling to
the arms of his chair, and relying on a brain which was .active
indeed, because it was filled with a never-ending suc<;ession of
pictures, in which his wife and Colquhoun always formed the
principal figures, but which refused steady work.

Gabriel Cassilis was a gamester who played to win. His
game was not the roulette-table, where the bank holds one
chance out of thirty, and must win in the long-run ; it was a
game in which he staked his foresight, knowledge of events,
financial connections, and calm judgment against greed, panic,
enthusiasm, and ignorance. It was his business to be prepared
against any turn of the tide. He would have stood calmly in
the Rue Quincampoix, buying in and selling out up to an hour
before the smash. And that would have found him without a
siifgle share in Law's great scheme. A great game, but a diffi-
cult one. It requires many qualities, and when you have got
these, it requires a steady watch inlness and attention to the
smallest cloud appearing on the horizon.

im-i

TIIK (;OM)KN lUJTTKUKLY.

Thorp were many clouds on tho horizon. Flis errand roup
was to ho in Khlorado Stock. Thanks to Mr. Wylio's pamph-
let tiioy wont down, and (lahriol Cassilis bought in — bought all
ho oould ; and tho Stock went up. Thoro was a fortnight bo-
foro sottling day.

Thoy wont up highor, and yot liighor. Kl Sonor Don Bollaco
do la Carambola, Minist(;r of tho i^^ldorado Kopublic at St.
Janios's, wroto a strong lottor to tho daily papers in roply to
Mr. Wy lie's pamphlet. He called attention to t\u) ra])i<l — the
enormous -advance ni.ade in tho State, As no one had seen the
place, it was quite safe to speak of buildings, banks, commercial
prosperity, and " openings uj)." It appealed, indiMMl, from his
letters that the time of universal wealth, long looktsd for by
mankiml, was actually arrived for Eldorado.

The Stock wont higher. Half the; country (clergy who had a
Wiw hundreds in the bank wanted to })ut them in Kldorado
Stock Still dabriel Cjissilis made no move, but held on.

And every day to got another of those accursed lettt^rs, with
some now fact; every day to groan under fresh torture of sus-
picion ; every «lay to go houK? ami «lino with tho calm cold
creature whoso beauty had bocni his prifUi, and try to think
that this impassive woman could Im; faitldtsss !

This torture lasted for weeks ; it bt^gan when (\>l(|uhotin first
went to his house, and continued through May into Juno. His
mental sufferings w«;re so groat that his specK^h became afioct(;d.
He found himself saying wrong woids, or not being able to hit
upon tlie right word .tt all. So \w grew silent. VVhen ho re-
turned home, which was now early, he hovonid about the
house. Or he crept up to his nursery and played with his y<!ar-
old chihl. And the ninses noticed how, whil<j he laughed and
crowed to please tho baby, the tears came into his eyes.

Tho letters grew mor<: savage.

He would take them out and look at them. Some of the
sentences burned into his brain like firo.

" Mr. Lawrence Cohiuhoun is the only man she ever loved.
Ask lier for tho secret. Thoy think no one knows it.

" Does she care for the child — your child ? Ask Tomlinson
how often she sees it.

" When you go to your office, Mr. Cohpdioun comics tq your
house. \Vhi!n you come homo, he goes out oi it, Tiien thoy
met!t somewhere else.

TFtK CJOI,[>f;N FMrrriORKLY.

^(J.H

<1 coup
)ami)h-
i^'iit all
rht 1)0-

" Ask him for the socrct Thon ask hor, and comparH what
thoy say.

" Fivo years ai^o Mr. Lawrence Cohiuhoun and Miss Penf;<^lley
were j^oing to be married. Kverybody .saitl so. She went ta
Scothuul. lie went after her. Ask him why.

" You are an old fool with a young wife. She loves your
money, not you ; slie despises you V)ecause you are a City-man ;
and she loves Mr. Cohjuhoun."

He sat alone in his study after dinncT, rt-ading these wretched
things, in mistjry of soid. And a thought came across him.

'* 1 will go and scu; Cohjuhoun," lie said. " I will talk to him,
ami ask him what is this s(!cret."

It was about ten o'clock. He put on his hat and took a cab
to Coh|uhoun's chand)ers.

Onthatilay Lawrence ('oh|uhoun was ill at ease;. It was
borne in upon him with es])ecial force-— probably beiiause it wa»
one of the sultiy and thunderous days when Conscien(;e has it
all her own disagreeable way — that he was antl had been an
enormous Ass. By some accident lie was ac(|uaint«!«l with the
fact that ho had given rise to talk by his freijucint visits to
Victoria Cassiiis.

** And to think," he said to himself, " that I only went thero
at her own special re(juest, aiul because she likes (piarrelling ! "

He began to thiidi of possible dangers, not to himself, but to
her and to her husband, even old stories revived and things
forgotten brotight to light. And tin; thing which she luul done
came before him in its real shapes an«l ghastliness — a bad and
ugly thing ; a thing for whose sake ho slioidd have fled from
her i)n'sence and avoided her ; a thing wliich he was guilty in
hiding. No possible danger to himself 1 Well, in one .sonso
none ; in every other sense all dangers. He had known of thi.^
thing, and yet he sat at her table ; he was conscious of the
crim(?, and yet he was seen with her in pu])lic places ; ho wa.^
almost jiartia'ps criminisy because he did not tell her what ho
knew ; and yet ho went day after day to her house -for the
l)h!asure of quarrelling with her.

Ho 8at<h)wnand wrote to her. Ho tohl her that perhaps
she did not wholly understand him when he told her that the
renewed acquaintance between them must cease ; that, ccjnsid-
tjring the past and with [an eye to the future, he was going to

nr>4

THK OOLDKN BUTTKUKIT.

put it out of her powor to compromise herself by seeing her no
more. H«* r('iniinl<'<l her tliat she had a great secret to keep
unknown, an<l a great ])Osition to hise ; and th(ui he bogged
her \ » give u]) her wild attempts at renewing the old ties of
friendship.

The letter, considering what tlu; secn^t really was, seemed a
wretched mockery to tlu; writer, but h(^ signed it and sent it by
his servant.

Then he strolled to his club, and read the pa])ers befon^ din-
ner. Hut he was not easy. There was upon him the weight
of impending misfoitune. He dined, an<l tried to drown care
in claret, but with j)()or success. Then he issued forth — it
was nine oV-lock and still light — and walked gently homewards.

He walked so slowly that it was half-past nine when he let
himself ijito his chambers in the Albany. His servant was
out, and the rooms looked dismal and lonely. They were not
dismal, being on the s?cond floor, where it is light and airy,
and being furnished as medijeval bachelorhood with jjlenty of
money alone understatids furniture. Ihit he was nervous to-
night, and grim stories came into his min«l of spectres and
strange visitors of lonely men in chambers. Such things hap-
pen mostly, h(! remembered, on twilight ev<!nings in midsiim-
mcr. He was (juit(5 right. The only ghost 1 ever saw myself
was in one of the Inns of Court, in chambers, at nine o'clock
on a June morning.

He made haste to light a lamp — no such abomination as gas
was permitted in Lawrence C\>l«(uhoun's chambers ; it was one
of t\u' silver reading-lamps, good for small tables, and provided
with a green shade, so that the light might fall in a bright cir-
cle, beyond which was Cimmerian blackni'ss shading off ik.uo
tin; sepia of twilight. It was his habit, too, to have lighted
candles on the mantelshelf and on a table ; but to-night he for-
got them, so that, exc(^pt for the light cast upwai'ds by t\\o gas
in the court antl an opposite window illuminated, and for the
half-darkness of the ilune (evening, the room was dark. It was
very quiet too. There wen; no footsteps in the court below,
and no voices or steps in the room neai- him. His nearest
neighbour, young Lord Orlebar, woidd certainly not be home
mu(^h before one or two, when he tnight return with a few
friends connected with the twin servi(-es of the army and the

THK GOLDKN HUTTKRFLY.

365

g lier no
to keep

1 1 ties of

i<'ernefl a
'lit it by

or(! (liii-
H('i<iht

WW CiUV,

)rth — it
•'Wards,
n he \v.t
ftiit was
ere not
d airy,
Jiity of
^ous to-
res and
^'s liaj).
lidsum-
rnyself
o'clock

•18 gas
as one
)vided
lit cir-

Ik.uO

gbted
le for-
e ^'as
•r the
i was
'low,
arest
loine

few

the

ballet for a little cheeiful supper. Below liiui wjis old Sir
Richard de Counterpane, who was by this timt; certainly in
bed, and perhaps sound asleep. Very (juiet — lie had never
known it more quiet : and he began to feel as if it would be a
relief to his nerves were something or somebody to make a little
noise.

He took a novel, one that he had begun a week ago. Whe-
ther the novel of the day is inferior to the novel of Col-
([uhoun's youth, or whether he was a bad reader of Hction,
certainly he had been more than a week over the first volume
alone.

Now it interested him less than ever.

He thrciw it away and lit a cigar. And then his thoughts
went back to Victoria. What was the devil which possessed the
woman that she could not rest quiet ] What was the meaning
of this madness upon her 1

'* A cold — an Arctic woman," Lawrence murmured. " Cold
when 1 told her how much I loved her ; cold when she engaged
lierself to me ; cold in her crimo ; and yet she follows me about
as if she was devoured by the ardour of love, like another
8appho."

It was not that, Lawrence Cohjuhoun ; it was the spn-fiv
injuria fornuv, the jealousy and hatred caused by the lost
pow(!r.

" 1 wish," he said, starting to his feet, and walking like the
Polar bear across his den and back again, " 1 wish to I leaven
I luul gone on living in Empire City with my pair of villanous
Chinamen. At least I \y:,a free from her over thtire. When 1
1 saw her marriage, by gad, 1 thought it was a tinisher. Then
1 came home again."

He stopped in his retrospection because he heard a foot
upon the stairs.

A woman's foot ; a light step and a «piick step.

•* May be De Counterpane's nurse. Too early for one of
young Orlebar's friends. Can't be anybody for me."

JJut it was ; and a woman stopped at his doorway, and see-
ing him alone stepped in.

She had a hooded cloak thrown about an evening-dress ; the
hood was drawn completely over her face, so that you couhl
see nothing of it in tiie dim light. And she came in without
a W4)rd.

'1^

i-.

"'>*,^-

366

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

Then Colqiilioun, wlio was no coward, t'rit his hiood run
cold, because he knew by her figure and by her step tliat it was
Victoria Cassilis.

She threw back the hood with a gesture almost theatrical,
and stood before him with parted lips and flnshing eyes.

His spirits rallied a little 'hen, because he saw that her face
was white, and that she wi in a royal rage. Lawrence Col-
quhoun could tackle a woni; in a rage. That is indeed ele-
mentary, and nothing at all o be proud of. The really difti-
cult thing is to tackle a woman in tears and distress. The
stoutest heart (piails before such an enterprise.

'* What is this 1 " she b(;gan, with a rush as of the liberated
whirlwind. '* What does this letter mean, Lawrence 1 "

" Exactly what it says, Mrs. Cassilis. May I ask, is it cus-

their

gentlemen

ternary for married ladies to visit i
chambers, and at night ? "

"It is not usual for — married — ladies — to visit — single —
gentlemen, Lawrence. Do not ask foolish questions. Tell me
what this means, I say."

" It means that my visits to your house have been too fre-
quent, and that they will be discontinued. In other words,
Mrs. Cassilis, the thing has gone too far, and I slnill cease to
be seen with you. I suppose you know that people- will talk."

" Let them talk. What do I care how people talk ? Law-
rence, if you think that I am going to let you go like this, you
are mistaken."

"I believe this poor lady has gone mad," said L. wrence
quietly. It was not the best way to (juiet and soothe her, but
he could not help himself.

" You think you are going to play fast and loose with me
twice in my life, and you are mistaken. You shall not. Years
ago you showed me what you are — cold, treacherous, and
crafty—"

" Go on, Victoria ; I like that kiuvl *} iuing, because now I
know that you are not mad. Quit j in yo»'.r Isv-t style."

" And 1 forgave you when you r. .nned, und allowed you
once more to visit me. W });:.t other wovmr,!; would have acted
so to such a man 1 "

'* Yet she must be mad," said Tiawrersoe. " How else could
she talk such frightful rubbish I "

mmmm

THE (JOLDKN lUITTKKFLY.

;U)7

"Once more we liavr Ix'cti fricmls. Aiiaiii you have drawn
mc on, until 1 liiivt'- Irarncil lu look to yoti, tor the second time,
for the appreciation denied to nie by my — l»y Mr. Cassilis.
No, sir ; this second desertion must not and shall not be."

" One would think," said Lawrence helplessly, " that we had
not quarrelled every time we met. Now Mrs. ('assilis, you
have my resolution. What you please, in your sweet romantic
way, to call second desertion must be and shall be."

"Then 1 will know the reason why."

" I have told you the reason why. Don't be a fool Mrs.
Cassilis. Ask yourself what you want. Do you want me to
run away with you ? I am a lazy man, ^ know, and I gener-
ally do what people ask me to do ; bu? i . for that thing, I am
damned if I do it 1 "

" Insult me, Lawrence," she cried, sinking into a chair.
" Swear at mo as you will."

"Do you wish me to philander about your house like n ridi-
culous tame cat, till all the world cries out ? "

8he started to her feet.

"No !" she cried. " I care nothing about your coming and
going, liut I know why— O, I know why ! -you nuike up
this lame excuse about my good name — -mi/ good name ! As
if you ever cared about that ! "

" More than you cared about it yourself," he retorted.
" IJut pray go on."

"It is Phillis Flemiijfr J I saw it from the very first. You
began by taking her iVMty from m(;, and placing her with your
cousin, where you could h.ive her completely undt^r your own
intluence. You let Jack Duncjuerque hang about her at tirst,
just to show t)ie ignorant creature what was meant by Hirta-
tion, and then you send him about his business. Lawrence,
you are more wicked than 1 thought you."

" Jealousy, by gad ! " he cried. " Did ever mortal man hear
of snch a thing ^ Jealousy ! And after all that she has done — "

" I warn ^ :. You may do a good many things. You may
deceive and insu't me in any way except one. But you shall
never, never marry Phillis Fleming ! "

Colqulioun was about to reply that he never thought of
marrying Phillis Fleming, but it occurred t(» him that there
was no reason for making that assertion. .So he replied
uothiiig.

.s»;8

THK (4()I,DKN BnTTKUKLY.

" I t'sciijM'd," sho said, '* under pretence of being ill. And I
uvdde tlieni t'etcli me a cub to come away in. My cab is at the
IJurlington-gardens end of the court now. Before I go you
shall make me a promise, liawrence — you used to keep your
])romises — to act as if this miserable letter iuid not been
written."

" I shall promise nothing of the kind."

*' Then remember, Lawrence — you shall never vutrry Phillis
Flcmhuj ! Not if I have to stop it by proclaiming my own dis-
grace- -you shall not marry that girl, or any other girl. I have
that i)()wer over you, at any rate. Now 1 shall go."

" There is som<^ one on the stairs," said Lawrtnice (piietly.
** Perhai)s he is conung here. You had l>ett('r not be seen.
Best go into the other room and wait."

There was only one objection to her waiting in the othta-
room, and that was that the door was on the opposite side ;
that the outer oak was wide open ; that the step upon the f^lairs
was already the step upon the landing ; and that tlu! owner of
the step was ali(!ady entering the room.

Mrs. Cassilis instinctively shrank back into the darkest cor-
ner that near the window. The curtains were of .some light-
coloured stuff. She drciW them closely round her and cowered
down, covering the head with the hood, like (iuinevere before
her injured lord. For the late culler was no other than her
own husbaiul, (Jabriel Cassilis.

As he stood in the doorway tiie light of the reading-lamp —
Mrs. Cassilis iji one of her gestures had tilted up the shade -
fell upon his pale face; aiul stoojiing form. Cohjuhoun mtticed
that he stooped more than usual, and that his grave face bore
an anxious look — such a look as one sees sometimes in the
faces of men who have h)ng suffered grievous botlily pain.
He hesitated for a moment, ta|)ping his knuckles with his
double ti^eglasses, his habitual gesture.

" I canu! \\\) this evening, ( 'oiiiuhoun. Are you (piite alone ?"

" As y<)U see, Mr. Ca.ssilis," .said Cohpihoun. He looked
Inistily round the room. In the corner lu^ saw the dim outline
of the riouchin^ form He adjusted the shade, and turned the
lamp a little lower. The gas in the chambers on the other side
of the ruuri)W court was put out, and the room was almost
dark. *'A8}ou see, Mr. Cassili.s. And what gives me the
dleasure of this late, call from you I "

TIIH (JOLDKN IJriTKUIM.V.

369

*' I thought I would come — I ciimv, to say — " he stopped hel p-
lesaly, and throw hims(*lf into a cliair. It was a chair standing;
near the corn(?r in which his wife was crouciini^ ; andhepuslcl
it back until he niii^ht have, h«'ard her hn-athing close to his
ear, ;ind, if he iiad put forth his haiMl, ini;;ht have touched hev,

" (Had to see you always, Mr. Cassilis, You came to sponk
about some moiu^y mattc^rs ? I have, an enj^agement in five
minute^"? ; but \v' shall havt^ tinu', I dare say."

" An engagemeat ? Ah I a lady, pc^'haps." This with a forced
laugh, becaust! he was thinking of his wife.

" A lady ? Yes— yes, a lady,"

" Young men— young men — " said (labriel Cassilis. " Well,
I will not keep you. I came here to spi^ak to you about— about
my wife."

" Lord ! " cried Lawrence. " I beg your pardon — ab jub
Mrs. Cassilis ? "

" Yes ; it is a very stupid business. Y'ou have known her
for a long timn."

" I have, Mr. ('assilis; for imarly eight years."

" Ah, old friends ; and once, I believe, people thought — "

"Once, Mr. ('assilis, I myself thought — I cannot tell you
what I thought Victoria Pengelley might be to me. But that
is over long sin<:e."

" One for htr," thought Lawrence, whose nerves were steady
in danger. His two listeners trembled and shook, but from
different causes.

"(>v<r long since," repeated Gabriel Cassilis. " There was
nothing in it, then 1"

'■ We were two persons entirely dissimilar in disposition,
Mr. Cassilis," Lawrence n^plied evasively. " Perhaps I was
not worthy of her — her calm clear judgment."

" Another for her," hv. thought with a chuckle. The situa-
tion would have pleastjd him but lliat he felt sorry for the poor
man.

" Victoria is outwardly cold, yet cn])able of the deepest emo-
tions. It is on her account, C.»l;|uhonn, that I come here.
Foolish gossip has be«;n at work, connecting your names. I
think the best thing, without sayi.ig anything to Victoria, who
nmst never suspect — "

" Never suspect," echoed Coh^uhoun.
X

370

THK (JOLI)KN mrrrKKKLY.

I
(

" That I ever heard this absurdity. But we must guard her
froiw calumuy, Colquhoun. Caesar's wife, you know ; and —
aiul-r-1 think that, i)erliaj)s, if you were to be a little less fre-
quent in your calls — and — "

" I quite understand, Mr. Cassilis ; and I am not in the least
offended. I assure you, most sincerely — 1 wish Mrs. Cassilis
were here to listen — that I am deeply sorry for having inno-
cently put you to the pain of saying tliis. However, the world
shall have no further cause of go8sii>."

No motion or sign from tlu^ dark corner \vlu>ve the hiding
woman crouched.

Mr. Cassilis rose and tapped his knuckleM with his glasses.
" Thank you, Colquhouti. It is good of you to tak<5 this most
unusual request so kintlly. With such a wife as mine jealousy
wo\dd be absurd. Hut I have to keep her name from even ^
breath- exen a breat)\.**

•'Quite right, Mr. CtyMwilis."

He ltu»ked now ronutl the room.

" Snug ((Wrtvters for a bachelor — ah, I lived in lodgings
always m} self. I thought 1 heard a woman's voice .as 1 camo
up stairs."

'* From 8ir Richard de Counterpane's room down stairs, per-
haps. His nurses, I suppose. The poor old man is getting
intirm."

" Ay — ay ; and your bedroom is there, I suppose? "

Lawrence took the lamp and opened the door. It was a
bare badly-furnished room, with a little camp-bedstead, and
nothing else, hardly. For Lawrence kept his luxurious habits
tor the day. VV^as it pure curiosity that made Gabriel Cassilis
look all round the room 1

'* Ah, hermit-like. Now, 1 like a large bed. However, I
am very glad I came. One word, Colquhoun, is better than
a thousand letters ; and you are sure you do not misunder-
stand me 1 "

"Quite," said Lawrence, taking his hat. '*I am going out
too."

" No jealousy at all," said Gabriel Cassilis, going down the
stairs.

" Certainly not."

" Nothing but a desire to — to — "

" I understand perfectly," said Lawrence.

TIIK (JOLUEN HUTTKIU'I.V,

371

Ah tlu'y descended, Ijsiwieiice lu-ard Hlrps ni\ tlie stairs be-
hind them. They wvw not yr<, thiin, out nt' danger.

" Very odd, suid i\h. I'assilis. " (.'oniiii}^ up 1 heard a
woman's vuiee. N»>nv it seems as if there wert? a woman's
feet."

" Nerves, perhaps," said ('oltpdioun. Tlie steps al)ove tliem
stopped. '' I hear nothing."

" Xor do I. Nerves — all, yes nerves."

Mr. Cassilis turned to tlu' h^ft, ('dlijulutun with idni. He-
liind them he saw the cloaked and hoo(h'(l Hf^uro of N'ictoria
(/'jvssilis. At the Ihirlingtoti-ganh'iis ^ iid a cab was waiting.
Near the horse's h(?ad stood a wt)man's figure whicli Lawrence
thought he knev/^. As they passed her, this woman, whoever
she was, covered her fa(;e witli a handkerchief. An<l at the
same moment the cab drove by rai)idly. Gabriel Cassilis saw
neither woman nor cab. He was too happy to notice any-
thing. There was nothing in it ; nothing at all (except mis-
chievous gossip. And he hiid laid the (ihost.

" Dear me ! " he said to himself presently, " I forgot U^ ask
about the Secret. But of course there is none. How should
there be ? "

Next morning there came another letter.

" Yon have bcv-n fooled worse than ever," it said. " V'our
wife was in Mr. ('ohjuhoun's cluuubers the whole time that
you were there. She came down tluj stairs after you ; she
passed through the gate, almost touching you, and she drove
past you in a hansom cab. / know the. niunbcr, and will give it
to you when the time comes. Mr. Colquhoun lied to you.
How long ? How long 1"

It should have been a busy day in tht^ City. To begin with,
it oidy wanted four days to settling-day. T«'legranjs and let-
ters poured in, and they lay unopened on the desk at which
Gabriel Csissilis sat, with this letter before him, mad with
jealousy and rage.

372

TIIK «J()LUKN miTTKUKI.V.

CffAPTKll XXXVII.

" 'L'oiiK' now,' tlu- Mii>ttT lliiihlfr cricil,
"I'lu- twiiit.v .M'lirs (if wiirK ;iri' (Iniic ;
FIniiiit fortli till! hlutf, mill ithwii willi priiU'
Tlie <tl<iry of the (Nipiii^f-xtoiii'.* "

v^T^AC'K DiiiKpicniUc wiiH to "sbickoff" his visits to Twick
^3\ t'uli.'ini. That is to sr

say, as ho interi)reted t\ui injunc-
tioji, he was not wholly to discontinue them, in order
not to excite suspicion. liut he was not to haunt the house ;
he was to make less frequent voyages up the silver Thames ;
he was not to ride in leafy lanes side by side with Phillis —
without having Phillis by his side he cared little about leafy
lanes, and would rather be at the club ; further, by these ab-
sences he was to leave off being necessary to tht; brightness of
her life.

It was a hard saying. Nevertheless the young man felt that
he had little rejison for complaint. Other ftiUows he knew,
going after other hein;sses, had been quite p«»remptorily sent
about their business for good, particularly needy young men
like himself All that Colquhoun extorted of him was that he
should " slack off." He felt, in a manner, grateful, although
had he been a youth of (piicker percei)tion, he would hav(^ re-
membered that the lover who "slacks off" can be no other
than the lover who wishes he had not begun. But nobody
ever called Jack a clever young man.

He was not to givt her up altogether. He was not even to
give up hoping. He was to have his chance with the rest.
nut he was warned that no chance was to be open to him until
the young lady should enter upon her first season.

Not to give up seeing her. That was everything. Jack
Dunquenjue had hitherto lived the life of all young men, cfire-
less and insouciant, with its little round of daily pleasures. He
was only different from other young m^n that he had learned,
partly from a sympathetic nature and partly by travel, not to
put all his pleasure in that life about town and in country
houses which seems to so many the one thing which the world

TFIK (JOLDKN lUTlTKRKrY.

l\7:^

huH t(» oflVr. \\r wlio Im.s livr<l out on tin; l'r;iiri«'s l'»>r weeks
ha« louml that tlu'i*! ;iio otluT pleaftiires lu-jsides tlie gaslight
joyH of Town. Hut his lil- ha.l been without thought aiul pur-
poseless — a very chaos of a iitt . And now lie felt vaguely that
his whole bring was changed. To he with I'hillis tlay after
day, to listen to the outpourings of Inr freshness and innocence,
brought t«) him the .same .sort of refreshment as sitting uiith-r
the little cataract of a mountain stream brings to one who
rambles in a hot West Indian island. Things for which he
once cared greatly he now cared for no more; the cluii-life.
the cards, and the liilliards ceased to interest him ; he look no
delight in them. Perhaps it was a proof of a certain weakness
of nature in Jack I)un<|uerque that he could ntit at the same
time love things in which Phillis took no j)art and the things
which made the simple pleasures of her every-day life.

He might liavt^ been weak, and yet, whether he was weak
or strong, he knew that she leaned upon him. lie was .so
sympathetic ; lu; seemed to know so much ; he decided so
(juickly ; ho was in his way so masterful, that the girl looked
up to him as a paragon of wisdom and strength.

1 think she will always so regard him, because* the know
ledge of her respect raises Jack daily in moral and spiritual
strength, and so her hero approaches daily to her ideal. VV^hat
is the highest love worth if it have not the power of lifting
man and woman t<»gether up to the higher levels, whert; the
air is purer, the sunshint! brighter, the vision clearer ]

But Colquhoun's commands had wrought a further change in
him ; that ugly good-looking face of his which Agatha L'Kstranpo
admired so much, and which was wont to be wreathed with
a multitudinous smile, was now doleful. To the world of
mankind — male mankind — the chief charm of Jack l)un-
(juerque, the main cause of his popularity — his unvarying
cheerfulness— was vanished.

" You ought to be called Doleful Jack," said Ladds. " Jack
of the Rueful Countenance."

" You don't know, Tommy," replied the lover, sorrowfully
wagging ) is head. "I've seen Colquli.)un ; and he won't have
it. »Says I must wait."

'• He's waited till forty. I've waited to tive-und-thirty, and
we're both pretty jolly. Come, young un, take courage by our
examples."

IMAGE EVALUATION
TEST TARGET (MT-3)

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11.25

HUB

2.2

■UUu

U 11.6

Photographic

Sciences

Corporation

23 WEST MAIN STREET

WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580

(716) 872-4503

;\T

•s?

^^^

'^^:^^

'9>'-

374

THE GOLDEN BUTTERSXY.

" You never met Phil when you were five-aud-twenty," said
Jack. " Nobody ever stiw a girl like Phillis."

Five-and-thirty seems so great an age to five-and twenty.
And at five-and-thirty one feels so young, that it comes upon
the possessor of so many years like a shock of cold water to be
reminded that he is really no longer young.

One good thing — Lawrence Colquhoun did not reproach
him. Partly perhaps because, as a guardian, he did not tho-
roughly realize Jack's flagitious conduct ; partly because he was
an easy-going man, with a notion in his head that he had
nothing to do with the work of Duennas and Keepers of the
GjmsBceum. He treated the confessions of the remorseful lover
Mdth a cheery contempt— passed them by ; no great harm had
been done ; and the girl was but a child.

His own conscience it was which bullied Jack so tremen-
dously. One day he rounded on his accuser like the poor worm
in the proverb, who might perhaps have got safe back to its hole
but for that ill-advised turning. He met the charges like a man.
He pleaded that, criminal as he had been, nefarious* and inex-
cusable as hi: action was, this action had given him a very high
time ; and that, if it was all to do over again, he should pro-
bably alter his conduct only in degree, but not in kind ; that is
to say, he would see Phillis oftener and stay with her longer.
Conscience knocked him out of time in a couple of rounds ; out
still he did have the satisfaction of showing fight.

Of course he would do the same thing again There has
never been found by duenna, by guardian, by despotic parent,
or by interested relation, any law of restraint strong enough to
keep apart two young people of the opposite sex and like age,
after they have once become attracted towards each other.
Prudence and prudery, jealousy and interest, never have much
chance. The ancient dames of duennadom may purse their
withered lips and wrinkle their crow's-footed ayes ; Love, the
unconquered, laughs and conquers again. *

It is of no use to repeat long explanations about Phillis. Such
as she was, we know her — a law unto herself ; careless of pro-
hibitions and unsuspicious of danger. Like Una she wandered
unprotected and fearless among whatever two-legged wolves,
bears, eagles, lions, vultures, ana other beasts and birds of prey
might be anxiously waiting to snap her up. Jack was the great-

^ // •w mWilummmm t ut. e <

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

375

he&rted lion who was to bear her safely through the wistful growls
of the :neaner beasts. The lion is not clever like the fox or the
beaver, but one always conceives of him as a gentleman, and
therefore fit to be intrusted with such a beautiful maiden as
Una or Phillis. And if Jack was quietly allowed to carry off
his treasure it was Agatha L'Estrange who was chiefly to blame;
and she, falling in love with Jack herself, quite in a motherly
way, allowed the wooing to go on under her very nose. " A
bad, bad woman," as Lawrence Colquhoun called her.

But such a wooing ! Miss Ethel Citybredde, when she sees
Amandus making a steady but not an eagerly impetuous
advance in her direction at a ball, feels her languid pulses beat
a little faster. ** He is coming after Me," she says to herself,
with pride. They snatch a few moments to sit together in a
consofvatory. He offers no remark worthy of repetition, nor
does she ; yet she thinks to herself, " He is going to ask me to
marry him ; he will kiss me ; there will be a grand wedding ;
everybody will be pleased ; other girls will be envious ; arid I
shall be delighted. Papa knows that he is well off and #ell
connected. How charming ! "

Now Phillis allowed her lover to woo her without one
thought of love or marriage, of which, indeed, she knew no-
thing. But if the passion was all on one side, the affection Was
equally divided. And v;hen Jack truly said that Phillis did not
love him, he forgot that she had already given him all that she
knew of love ; in that her thoughts, which on her first emanci-
pation leaped forth, bounding and running in all directions,
with a wild yearning to behold the Great Unknown, were now
returning to herself, and mostly flowed steadily^ like streams of
electric influence, in the direction of Jack ; inasmuch as she
referred unconsciously everything to Jack, as she dressed for
him, drew for him, pored diligently over hated reading-books
for him, and told him all her thoughts.

I have not told, nor can tell, of the many walks and tdXka
these two young people had together. Day after day Jack's
boat — that comfortable old tub, in which he could, and oft^n
did, cut a crab without spilling the contents into the river— lay
moored off Agatha's lawn, or rolled slowly up and down the
river, Jack rowiqg, while Phillis steered, sang, talked, and
laughed. This was pleasant in the morning ; bat it was far

37C

THE aOLDEN BUTTEBFLY.

more pleasant in the evening, when the river was so quiet, so
still, and so black, and when thoughts crowded into the girl's
brain, which fled like spirits when she tried to put them into
words.

Or th'^yrode together along the 'leafy roads through Rich-
mond Park, or down by that unknown region far away from
the world, where heron rise up from the water's edge, where
the wild fowl fly above the lake in figures which remind one of
Euclid's definitions, and the deer collect in herds among gre;».t
ferns half as high as themselves. There they would let th .
horses walk, while Phillis, with the slender curving lines of
her figure, her dainty dress which fitted it so well, and her sweet
face, made the heart of her lover hungry ; and when she turned
to speak to him, and he saw in the clear depths of her eyes his
own face reflected, his passion grew almost too much for him
to bear.

A delicate dainty maiden, who was yet of strong and healthy
physique ; one who did not disdain to own a love for cake and
strawberries, cream and ices, and other pleasant things ; who
had no young-ladyish affectations ; who took life eagerly, not
languidly. And not a coward, as many maidens boast to be
she ruled her horse with rein as firm as Jack Dunquerque, and
sat him as steadily ; she clenched her little fingers and set her
lips hard when she heard a tale of wrong ; her eyes lit up and
her bosom heaved when she heard of heroic gest ; she was
strong to endure and to do. Not every girl would, as Phillis
did, rise in the morning at five to train her untaught eyes and
hand over those little symbols by which we read and write ;
not every girl would patiently begin at nineteen the mechan-
ical drudgery of the music-lesson. And she did this in confi-
dence, because Jack asked her every day about her lessons, and
Agatha L'Estrange was pleased.

The emotion which is the next after, and worse than that of,
iove is sympathy. Phillis passed through the stages of curio-
sity and knowledge before she arrived at the age of sympathy.
Perhaps she was not far from the highest stage of all.

She learned something every day, and told Jack what it was.
Sometimes it was an increase in her knowledge of evil. Jack,
who was by no means so clever as his biographer, thought that
a pity. His idea was the common one — that a maiden should

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

377

be kept innocent of the knowledge of evil. I think Jack took
a prejudiced, even a Pliilistine, view of the case. He put him-
self on the same level as the Frenchman who keeps his daugh-
ter out of mischief by locking her up in a convent. It is not
the knowledge of evil that huits, anymore than the knowledge
of blackbeetles, earwigs, slugs, and other crawling things ; the
pure in spirit cast it off, just as the gardener who digs and
delves among his plants washes his hands and is clean. The
thing that hurts is the suspicion and constant thought of evil ;
the loveliest and most divine creature in the world is she who
neither commits any ill nor thinks any, nor suspects others of
ill — who has a perfect pity for backsliders, and a perfect trust
in the people around her. Unfortunate it is that experience of
life turns pity into anger, and trust into hesitation.

Or they would be out upon Agatha's lawn, playing cro
quet, to which that good lady still adhered, or lawn-tennis,
which she tolerated. There would be the curate — he had
abandoned that design of getting up all about Laud, but was
madly, ecclesiastically madly, in love with Phillis ; there would
be occasionally Ladds, who, in his heavy kindly way, pleased
this young May Queen. Besides, Ladds was fond of Jack.
There would be Gilead Beck in the straightest of frock-coats,
and on the most careful behaviour ; there would be also two or
three young ladies, compared with whom Phillis was as Rosa-
lind at the court of her uncle, or as Esther among the damsels
of the Persian king's seraglio, so fresh and so incomparably
fair,

" Mrs. L'Estrange," Jack whispered one day,. " I am -going
to say a rude thing. Did you pick out the other girls on pur-
pose to set off Phillis 1 "

" What a shame, Jack ! " said Agatha, who, like the rest of
the world, called him by what was not his Christian name.

" The girls are very nice — not so pretty as Phillis, but good-
looking, all of them. I call them as pretty a set of girls as you
woiild be likely to see on any lawn this season."

" Yes," said Jack ; " only, you see, they are all alike, and
Phillis is different."

That was it— Phillir, was different. The girls were gra> eful,
pleasant, and well bred. But Phillis was all this, and more.
The others followed the beaten track, in which the strength of

378

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

i ■

life is subdued and its intensity forbidden. Phillis was in
earnest about everything, quietly in earnest ; not openly bent
on enjoyment like tL^ young ladies who run down Greenwich
Hill, for instance, but in her way making others feel something
of what she felt herself. Her intensity was visible in the eager
face, the mobile flashes of her sensitive lips, and her brighten-
ing eyes. And, most unlike her neighbours, she even forgot
her own dress, much as she loved the theory and practice of
dress, when once she was interested, and was careless about
theirs.

It was not pleasant for the minor stars. They felt in a
vague, uncomfortable way that Phillis was far more attractive ;
they said to each other that she was strange ; oiie who pre-
tended to know more French than the others said that she was
farouche.

She was not in the least farouche, and the young lady her
calumniator did not understand the adjective ; but farouche
she continued to be among the maidens of Twickenham and
Richmond.

Jack Dunquerque heard the epithet applied on one occasion,
and burst out laughing.

Phillis farovchef Phillis, without fear and without sus-
picion !

But then they do teach French so badly at girls' schools.
And so poor Phillis remained ticketed with the adjective which
least of any belonged to her.

A pleasant six weeks from April to June, while the late
spring blossomed and flowered into summer ; a time to re-
member all his life afterwards with the saddened joy which,
despite Dante's observation, does still belong to the memory
of past pleasures.

But every pleasant time passes, and the six weeks were over.

Jack was to " slack off"." The phrase struck him, applied
to himself and Phillis, as simply in bad taste ; but the mean-
ing was plain. He was to present himself at Twickenham with
less frequency.

Accordingly he began well by going there the very next day.
Every new regime has to be commenced somehow, and Jack
began his at once. He pulled up in his tub. It was a cloudy
and windy day ; drops of rain fell from time to time ; the river

THE GOLDKN miTTERFLY.

379

was swept l)y sudden gusts wliich

came driving

down the

rhten-

l^re-

sus-

stream, marked by broad l)laek patches ; there were no other
boats out, and Jack struggled upwards against the current :
the exercise at least was a relief to the oppression .of his
thoughts.

What was he to do with himself after the "slacking oflF"
had begun — after that day, in fact 1 The visits might drop to
twice a week, thence once a week, and then 1 But surely Col-
quhoun would be satisfied with such a measure of self-denial.
In the intervals — say from Saturday to Saturday — he could
occupy himself in thinking about her. He might write to her
— would that be against the letter of the law 1 It was clearly
against the spirit. And — another consideration — it was no
use writing unless he wrote in printed characters, and in words
of not more than two syllables. He thought of such a love-
letter, and of Phillis gravely spelling it out word by word to
Mrs. L'Estrange. For poor Phillis had not as yet accustomed
herself to look on the printed page as a vehicle for thought,
although Agatha read to her every day. She regarded it as
the means of conveying to the reader facts such as the ele-
mentary reading-book delights to set forth ; so dry that the
adult reader, if a woman, presently feels the dust in her eyes,
and if a man is fain to get up and call wildly for quarts of
bitter beer. No ; Phillis was not yet educated up to the re-
ception of a letter.

He would, he thought, sit in the least-frequented room of his
club — the drawing-room — and with a book of some kind before
him, just for a pretence, would pass the leaden hours in think-
ing of Phillis's perfections. Heavens ! when was there a mo-
ment, by day or by night, that he did not think of them 1

Bump ! It was the bow of his ship, which knew by experi-
ence very well when to stop, and grounded herself, without
any conscious volition on his part, at the accustomed spot.

Jack jumped out, and fastened the painter to the tree vhere
Phillis had once tied him. Then he strode across the lawns
and flower-beds, and made for the little morning-room, where
he hoped to find the ladies.

He found one of them. Fortune sometimes favours lovers.
It was the youngest one — Phillis herself.

She was bending over her work with brush and colour-box,

[M !l

380

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

looking as serious as if all her future depended on the success
of that particular picture ; beside her, tossed contemptuously
aside, lay the much-despised Lesson-Book in Reading ; for she
had done her daily task. She did not liear Jack stei»in at the
open window, and went on with her painting.

She wore a dress made of that stuff' which looks like brown
holland till you come close to it, and then you think it is silk,
but are not quite certain, and I believe they call it Indian tus-
sore. Kound her dainty waist was a leathern belt set in silver
with a chatelaine, like a small armoury of deadly weapons ; and
for colour she had a crimson ribbon about her neck. To show
that the ribbon was not entirely meant for vanity, but had its
uses, Phillis had slung upon it a cross of Maltese silver-work,
which T fear Jack had ['iven her himself. And below the cross,
where her rounded figure showed it off", she had placed a little
bunch Qf sweet peas. Such a dainty damsel ! Not content
with the flower in her dress, she had stuck a white jasmine-
blossom in her hair. All these things Jack noted with speech-
less admiration.

Then she began to sing in a low voice, all to herself, a little
French ballad which Mrs. L'Estrange had taught her — one of
the sweet old French songs.

She was painting in the other window, at a table drawn up
to face it. The curtains were partly pulled together, and the
blind was half drawn down, so that she sat in a subdued light,
in which only her face was lit up, like the faces in a certain
kind of photograph, while her hair and figure lay in shadow.
The hangings were of soipe light-rose hue, which tinted the
whole room, and threw a warm colouring over the old-fashioned
furniture, the pictures, the books, the flowers on the tables, and
the ferns in their glasses. Mrs. L'Estrange was no follower
after the new school. Neutral tints had small charms for her ;
she liked the warn ih and glow of the older fashion in which
she had been brought up.

It looked to Jack Dunquerque like some shrine dedicated to
peace and love, with Phillis for its priestess — or even its god-
dess. Outside the skies were grey ; the wind swept down the
river with driving rain ; here was warmth, colour, and bright-
ness. So he stood still and watched.

And as he waited an overwhelming passion of love seized

THK UOLDKN BUTTKRFLY.

381

him. If the world was well lost for Anotony when he threw it
all away for a queen no longer young, and the mother of one
son at least almost grown up, what would it have been had his
Cleopatra welcomed him in all the splendour of her white Greek
beauty at sweet seventeen ? There was no world to be lost for
this obscure cadet of a noble house, but all the world to be won.
His world was before his eyes ; it was an unconscious maid,
ignorant of her own surpassing worth and of the power of her
beauty. To win her was to be the lord of all the world he
cared for.

Presently she laid down her brush, and raised her head.
Then she pushed aside the curtains, and looked out upon the
gardens. The rain drove against the windows, and the wind
beat about the branches of the lilacs on the lawn. She shivered,
and pulled the curtains together again.

" I wish Jack were here," she said to herself.

*' He is here, Phil," Jack replied.

She looked around, and darted across the room, catching him
by both hands.

"Jack ! 0, 1 am glad I There is nobody at home. Agatha
has gone up to town, and I am quite alone. What shall we do
this afternoon 1 "

Clearly the right thing forliim to propose was that he should
instantly leave the young lady and row himself back to Rich-
mond. This, however, was not what he did propose. On the
contrary, he kept Phillis's hands in his, and held them tight,
looking in her upturned face, where he saw nothing but undis-
guised-joy at his appearance.

" Shall we talk 1 Shall I play to you 1 Shall I draw you a
picture ? What shall we do, Jack 1 "

" Well, Phil, I think — perhaps — we had better talk."

Something in his voice struck her ; she looked at him sharply.

" What has happened. Jack 1 You do not look happy."

" Nothing, Phil — nothing but what I might have expected."
But he looked so dismal that it was quite certain he had not
expected it.

"Tell me, Jack."

He shook his head,

" Jack, what is the good of being friends if you won't tell
me what makes you unhappy ? "

882

THE UUIJIKN nUTTEKFLY.

;: ■ \"

" I don't know how to tell you, Phil. I don't see a way to
begin."

" Sit down, and begin, somehow." She placed him comfort-
ably in the lai'gest chair in the room, an<l then she stood in
front of him, and looked in his face with compassionate eyes.
The sight of those deep-brown orbs, so full of light and pity,
smote her lover with a kind of madness. " What is it makes
people unhappy 1 Are you ill 1 "

He shook his head, and laughed.

" No, Phil ; I am never ill. You see, I am not exactly un-
happy— "

"But, Jack, you look so dismal."

" Yes, that is it ; I am a little dismal. No, Phil — no. I
am really unhappy, and you are the cause."

" I the cause ? But, Jack, why 1 "

"I had a talk with your guardian, Lawrence Colquhoun,
yesterday. It was all about you. And he wants me —not to
come here so often, in fact. And I mustn't come."

" But why not ? What does Lawrence mean ? "

" That is just what I cannot explain to you. You must try
to forgive me."

" Forgive you. Jack 1 "

" You see, Phil, I have behave'd badly from the beginning.
I ought not to have called upon you as 1 did in Carnarvon-
square ; I ought not to have let you call me Jack, nor should I
have called you Phil. It is altogether improper in the eyes of
the world."

She was silent for a while.

" Perhaps I have known, Jack, that it was a little unusual.
Other girls haven't got a Jack Dunquerque, have they 1 Poor
things ! That is all you mean, isn't it. Jack 1 "

" Phil, don't look at me like that ! You don't know — you
can't understand — No ; it is more than unusual ; it is quite
wrong."

" 1 have done nothing wrong," the girl said proudly. " If I
had, my conscience would make me unhappy. But 1 do begin
to understand what you mean. Last week Agatha asked me if
I was not thinking too much about you. And the curate made
me laugh because he said, quite by himself in a corner, you
know, that Mr. Dunquerque was a happy man ; and when I

Miif'i

THK (JULIJKN lUJTTKJlFI.Y.

383

way to

asked him why, he turned very red, and said it was because I
had given to him what all the world would long to have. He
meant. Jack."

" I wish he was here," Jack cried hotly, " for me to wring
his neck ! "

" And one day Laura Herries — "

"That's the girl who said you were farouche, Phil. Go on."

" Was talking to Agatha about some young lady who had
got compromised by a gentleman's attentions. 1 asked why,
and she replied quite sharply that if 1 did not know, no one
could know. Then she got up and went away. Agatha was
angry about it, I could see ; but she only said something about
understanding when 1 come out."

" Miss Herries ought to have her neck wrung too, as well as
the curate," said Jack.

" Compromise — improper." Phil beat her little foot on the
floor. " What does it all mean ? Jack, tell me — what is this
wrong thing that you and I have done ? "

" Not you, Phil ; a thousand times not you."

*' Then I do not care much what other people say," she re-
plied simply. " Do you know. Jack, it seems to me as if we
never ought to care for what people, besides people we love,
say about us."

" But it is I who have done wrong," said Jack.

" Have you. Jack 1 0, then I forgive you. I think I know
now. You should have come to me with an unreal smile on
your face, and pretended the greatest deference to my opinion,
even v-'hen you knew it wasn't wo:th having. That is what
the curate does to young ladies. I saw him yesterday taking
Miss Herrie's opinion on Holman HanVs picture. She said
it was * sweetly pretty.' He said, ' Do you really think so 1
in such a solemn voice, as if he wasn't quite sure that the
phrase summed up the whole picture, but was going to think it
over quietly. Don't laugh. Jack, because I cannot read like
other people, and all I have to go by is what Mr. Dyson told
me, and Agatha tells me, and what I see — and — and what you
tell me, Jack, which is worth all the rest to me."

The tears came into her eyes, but only for a mi ment and then
she brushed them aside.

" And I forgive you, Jack, all the more Lecause you did not

I 1

;j.s4.

TIIK OOI.DIJN' BIJTTKKKLY.

treat me as you would have treated the girls who seem to me
so lifeless and languid, and — Jack, it may be wrong to say it,
but O, so small. What compliment could you have paid me
better than to single me out for your friejid — you who have
seen so much and done so much — mv friend, mine ? We were
friends from the first, were vve not 1 And I have never since
hidden anything from you, Jack, and never will."

He kept it down still, this mighty yearning Miat filUul h.is
heart, but he could not bear to look her in the face. Every
word that she said stabbed him like a knife, because it showed
her childish innocence and her utter unconsciousness of what
her words might mean.

And then she laid her little hand in his.

" And now you have compromised me, as they would say?
What does it matter, Jack 1 We can go on always just the
same as we have been doing, can we not 1 "

He shookihis head and answered huskily :

" No, Phil. Your guardian will not allow it. You must
obey him. He says that I am to come here less frequently ;
that I must not do you--— he is quite right, Phil — any more
mischief ; and that you are to have your first season in London
without any ties or entanglements."

" My guardian leaves me here alone with Agatha. It is you
who have been my real guardian, Jack. I shall do what you
tell me to do."

" I want to do what is best for you, Phil — but— Child " — he
caught her by the hands, and she half fell, half knelt at his
feet, and looked up in his eyes with her face full of trouble and
emotion — " child, must I tell you ? Could not Agatha
L'Estrange tell you that there is something in the world very
different from friendshiD 1 Is it left for me to teach you 1
They call it Love, Phil."

He whispered the last words.

" Love 1 But I know all about it, Jack."

" No, Phil, you know nothing. It isn't the love that you
bear to Agatha that I mean."

" Is it the love I have for you. Jack 1 " she asked in all inno-
cence.

" It may be, Phil. Tell me only — " he was reckless now,
and spoke fast and fiercely — " tell me if you love me as I love

rilte

THE (JOLDKN IJUTTKUKLY.

;3.S5

you. Try to tell me. I love you so much that I cannot sleep
for thinking of you ; and I thinl: of you all day long. It seems
as if my life must have been a long blank before I saw you ; all
my happiness is to be with you ; to think of going on without
you maddens me."

" Poor Jack ! " she said softly. She did not offer to withdraw
her hands, but let them lie in his warm and tender grasp.

*' My dear, my darling — my queen and pearl of girls — who
can help loving you 1 And even to be with you, to have you
close to me, to hold your hands in mine — that isn't enough."

" What more — Jack, Jack ! what more 1 "

She began to tremble, and she tried to take back her hands.
He let them go, but before she could change her position he
bent down, threw his arms about her, and held her face close
to his while he kissed it a thousand times.

" What more ? My darling, my angel, this — ^and this ! Phil,
Phil, wake at last from your long childhood ; leave the Garden
of Eden where you have wandered so many years, and come
out into the other world — the world of love. My dear, my
dear, can you love me a little, only a little, in return ] We are
all so different from what you thought us ; you will find out
some day that lam not clever and good at all ; that I have only
one thing to give you — my love. Phil, Phil, answer me — speak
to me — forgive me ! "

He let her go, for she tore herself from him and sprang to
her feet, burying her face in her hands and sobbing aloud.

" Forgive me — forgive me ! " It was all that he could say.

" Jack, what is it i what does it mean ? Jack" — she lifted ■
her face and looked about her, with hands outstretched as one
who feels in the darkness ; her cheeks were white and her eyes
were wild — " what does it mean ? what is it you have said ?
what is it you. have done 1 "

" Phil ! "

" Yes ! Hush ! don't speak to me — not yet, Jack. Wait a
moment. My brain is full of strange thoughts" — she put out
trembling hands before her, like one who wakes suddenly in a
dream, and spoke with short quick breath. " Something seems
to have come upon me. Help me. Jack ; 0, heip me ! I am
frightened."

'! I

386

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

He took her in his arms and soothed and caressed her like a
child, while she sobbed and cried.

" Look at me Jack," she said presently. " Tell me, am I the
same 1 Is there any change in me 1 "

** Yes, Phil ; yes, my darling. You are changed. Your
sweet eyes are full of tears, like the skies in April ; and your
cheeks are pale and white. Let me kiss them till they get their
own colour again."

He did kiss them, and she stood unresisting. But she
trembled.

" I know. Jack, now," she said softly. " It all came upon
me in a moment, when your lips touched mine. Jack, Jack !
it was as if something snapped ; as if a veil fell from my eyes.
I know now what you meant when you said just now that you
loved me."

" Do you, Phil 1 And can you love me too 1 "

" Yes, Jack. I will tell you when I am able to talk again.
Let me sit down. Sit with me, Jack."

She drew him beside her on the sofa and murmured low,
while he held her hands.

" Do you like to sit just so, holding my hands ? Are you
better now. Jack ]

" Do you think. Jack, that I can have always loved you —
without knowing it at all — just as you love me 1 O my poor
Jack !

'* My heart beats so fast. And I am so happy. What have
you said to me. Jack, that I should be so happy 1

" See the sun has come out — and the showers are over and
gone — and the birds are singing — all the sweet birds — they are
singing for me, Jack, for you and me— 0, for you and for me ! "

Her voice broke down again, and she hid her face upon her
lover's shoulder, crying happy tears.

He called her a thousand endearing names ; lie told her that
they would be always together ; that she had made him the
happiest man in all the world ; that he loved her more than
any girl ever had been loved in the history of mankind ; that
she was the crown and pearl and queen of all the women who
ever lived ; and then she looked up, smiling through her tears.
• Ah, happy, happy day ! Ah, day for ever to be remembered
even when, if ever, the j'ears shall bring its fiftieth anniversary

msm

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

387

her like a

am I the

d. Your
and your
r get their

But she

ame upon
,ck, Jack !

my eyes.

that you

ilk again.

ured low,

Are you

3d you —
my poor

4iat have

over and
-they are
for me ! "
upon her

I her that
him the
Lore than
nd ; that
men who
her tears,
lembered
uiversary

to an aged pair, whose children and grandchildren stand
around their trembling feet ! Ah, moments that live for ever
in the memory of a life ! They die, but are immortal. They
perish all too quickly, but they bring forth the precious fruits
of love and constancy, of trust, affection, good works, peace,
and joy, which never perish.

" Take me on the river. Jack," she said presently. " I want
to think it all over again, and try to understand it better."

He fetched cushion and wrapper, for the boat was wet, and
placed her tenderly in the boat. And then he began to pull
gently up the stream.

The day had suddenly changed. The morning had been
gloomy and dull, but the afternoon was bright; the strong
wind was dropped for a light cool breeze; the swans were
cruising about with their lordly pretence of not caring for
things external ; and the river ran clear and bright.

They were very silent now ; the girl sat in her place, looking
with full soft eyes on the wet and dripping branches or in the
cool depths of the stream.

Presently they passed an old gentleman fishing in a punt ;
he was the same old gentleman whom Phillis saw one morning
— now so long ago — when he had that little misfortune we have
narrated, and tumbled backwards in his ark. He saw them
coming and adjusted his spectacles.

" Youth and Beauty again," he murmured. " And she's
been crying. That young fellow has said something cruel to
her. Wish I could break his head for him. The pretty crea-
ture ! He'll come to a bad end, that . young man." Then he
impaled an immense worm savagely and went on fishing.
A very foolish old gentleman this.

" I am trying to make it all out quite clearly, Jack," Phillis
presently began. *' And it is so difficult." Her eyes were still
bright with tears, but she did not tremble now, and the
smile was back upon her lips.

" My darling, let it remain difficult. Only tell me now, if
you c.*i,n, that you love me."

" \ es. Jack," she said, not in the frank and childish uncon-
sciousness of yesterday, but with the soft blush of a woman
who is wooed. " Yes, Jack, I know now that I do love yoif,

I ''

388

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

as you love me, because my heart beat when you kissed me,
and I felt all of a sudden that you were all the world to me."

"Phil, I don't deserve it, I. don't deserve you."

" Not deserve me ? O Jack, you make me feel humble when
you say that ! And I am so proud.

" So proud and so happy," she went on, after a pause. " And
the girls who know all along — how do they find it out? —
want every one for herself this great happiness too. I have
heard them talk, and never understood till now. Poor girls !
I wish they had their — their own Jack, not my Jack."

Her lover had no words to reply.

" Poor boy ! And you went about with your secret so long.
Tell me how long, Jack 1 "

" Since the very first day I saw you in Carnarvon-square,
Phil."

"All that time 'i Did you love me on that day — not the first
day of all, Jack 1 O surely not the very first day 1 "

" Yes ; not as I love you now — now that I know you so well,
my Phillis — mine — but only then because you were so pretty."

"Do men always fall in love with a girl because she is
pretty 1 "

" Yes, Phil. They begin because she is pretty, and they
love her more every day when she is so sweet and so good as
my darling Phil."

All this time Jack had been leaning on his oars, and the boat
was drifting slowly down the current. It was now close to the
punt where the old gentleman sat watching them.

" They have made it up," he said. " That's right." And
he chuckled.

She looked dreamy and contented ; the tears \7ere gone out
of her eyes, and a sweet softness lay there like the sunshine on
a field of grass.

" She is a rose of Sharon and a lily of the valley," said this
old gentlemen. " That young fellow ought to be banished
from the State for making other people envious of his luck.
Looks a good-tempered rogue too."

He observed with delight that they were thinking of each
other while the boat drifted nearer to his punt. Presently —
bump — bump !

Jack seized his sculls and looked up guiltily. The old gentle-
man was nodding and smiling to Phillis.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

389

kissed me,
Id to me."

mble when

e. " And
it out? —

o. I have
oor girls !

et so long.

'^on-square,

ot the first

ou SO well,
80 pretty."
use she is

, and they
so good as

d the boat
lose to the

fht." And

e gone out
inshine on

" said this
! banished
■ his luck.

ng of each
restntly —

old gentle-

" Made it up 1

he asked most impertinently. " That is
right, that is right. Give you joy, sir, give you joy. Wish
you both happiness. Wish I had it to do all over again. God
bless you, my dear ! "

His jolly red face beamed like the setting sun under his big
straw hat, and he wagged his head and laughed.

Jack laughed too ; at other times he would have thought the
old angler an extremely impertinent person. Now he only
laughed.

Then he turned the boat's head, and rowed his bride swifty
homewards.

" Phil, I am like Jason bringing home Medea," he said, with
a faint reminiscence of classical tradition. I have explained
that Jack was not clever.

" I hope not," said Phil ; *' Medea was a dreadful person."

"Then Paris bringing home Helen — No, Phil; only your
lover bringing home the sweetest girl that ever was. And
worthy five-and-thirty Helens."

When they landed Agatha L'Estrange was on the lawn wait-
ing for them. To her surprise, Phillis on disembarking took
Jack by the arm, and his hand closed over hers. Mrs.
L'Estrange gasped. And in Phillis's lear-bright eyes she saw
at last the light and glow of love ; and in Phillis's blushing face
she saw the happy pride of the celestial Venus who has met her
only love.

" Children — children ! " she said, " what is this 1 "

Phillis made answer, in words which Abraham Dyson used
to read to her from a certain Book, but which she never under-
stood till now — made answer with her face upturned to her
lover :

" I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me."

They were a quiet party that evening. Jack did not want
io vJxk. He asked Phillis to sing ; he sat by in a sort of rap-
ture while her voice, in the songs she most aifected. whispered
and sang to his soul not words, but suggestions of every inno-
cent delight. She recovered something of her gaiety, but their
usual laughter was hushed as if by some unexpressed thought.
It will never come back to her again, that old mirth and light
heart of childhood. She felt while she played as if she was in

fl! 11

11'

390

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

li It

some great cathedral ; the fancies of her brain built over her
head a pile more mystic and wonderful than any she had seen.
Its arches towered to the sky ; its aisles led far away into dim
space. She was walking slowly up the church, hand-in-hand
with Jack, towards a great rose light. An anthem of praise
and thanksgiving echoed along the corridors, and pealed like
thunder among the million rafters of the roof. Kound them
floated faces which looked and smiled. And she heard the
voice of Abraham Dyson in her ear :

" Life should be twofold not single. That, Phillis, is the
great secret of the world. Every man is a priest ; every won^nn
is a priestess ; it is a sacrament which you have learned of
Jack this day. Go on with him in faith and hope. Love is
the Universal Church and Heaven is everywhere. Live in it ;
die in it ; and dying begin your life of love again."

" Phil," cried Jack, " what is it 1 You look as if you had
seen a vision."

" I have heard the voice of Abraham Dyson," she said
solemnly. " He is satisfied and pleased with us, Jack."

That was nothing to what followed, for presently there
occurred a wonderful thing.

On Phillis's table- they were all three sitting in the pleasant
morning-room — lay among her lesson-books and drawing mate-
rials a portfolio. Jack turned it over carelessly. There was
nothing at all in it except a single sheet of white paper, partly
written over. But there had been other sheets, and these were
torn off.

" It is an old book full of writing," said Phillis carelessly.
" I have torn out all the leaves to make rough sketches at the
back. There is only one left now."

Jack took it up and read the scanty remnant.

" Good heavens ! " he cried. " Have you really destroyed
all these pages, Phil 1 "

Then he laughed.

" WLat is it Jack 1 Sfes I have torn them all out, drawn
rough things on them, and then burnt them, every one."

" Is it any thing important ? " asked Mrs. L'Estrange.

" I should think it was important," said Jack. " Ho, ho !
Phillis has destroyed the whole of Mr. Dyson's lost chapter on
the Coping-stone. And now his will is aot worth the paper it'
was written on."

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

391

)ver lier
ad seen,
nto dim
in-hand
)f praise
lied like
nd them
ard the

is the

^ won~.nn

arned of

Love is

v^e in it ;

you had

she said

ly there

pleasant
ng mate-
lere was
r, partly
ese were

.relessly.
3S at the

?stroyed

drawn

lo, ho !
ipter on
paper it'

It was actually so. Bit by bit, while Joseph

Jagenal

was
leaving no corner unturned in the old house at Highgate in
search of the precious document, without which Mr. Dyson's
will was so much waste paper, this young lady was contentedly
cutting out the siieets one by one, and using them for her
unfinished groups. Of course she could not read one word of
what was writttm. It was a fitting Nemesis to tiie old man's
plans that they were frustrated through the very means by
which he wished to regenerate the world.

And now nothing at all left but a tag end, a bit of the pero-
ration, the last words of the final summing-up. And this was
what Jack read aloud :

"... these provisions and no other. Thus will I have my
College for the better Education- of Women founded and main-
tained. Thus shall it grow and develop till the land is full of
the gracious influence of womankind at her best and noblest.
The Coping-stone of a girl's Education should be, and must be,
Love. When Phillis Fleming, my ward, whose example shall
be taken as the model of my college, feels the passion of Love,
her education is finally completed. She will have much after-
wards to learn. But self-denial, sympathy, and faith come
best through Love, Woman is born to be loved ; that woman
only approaches the higher state who has been wooed and who
has loved. When Phillis loves, she will give herself without
distrust and wholly to the man who wins her. It is my prayer,
my last prayer for her, that he may be worthy of her." Here
Jack's voice faltered for a moment. "Her education has occu-
pied my whole thoughts for thirteen years. It has been the
business of my later years. Now I send her out into the world
prepared for all, except treachery, neglect, and ill-treatment.
Perhaps her character would pass through these and €ome out
the brighter. But we do not know ; we cannot tell before-
hand. Lord, lead her not into temptation ; and so deal with
her lover as he shall deal with her."

" Amen," said Agatha Ii'Estrange.

But Phillis sprang to her feet and threw up her arms.

" I have found it ! " she cried. " O, how often did he talk
to me about the Coping-stone ! Now I have nothing more to
learn. Jack, Jack ! " she fell into his arms, and lay there
. as if it was her proper place. " We have found the Coping-
stone — you and I betweer us — and it is here, it is here ! "

i«

392

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

<< irpjj, ^gji ^Q ije ojp ^.jtj^ (jj^e (,]j love,
Though you never get on with a new."

I URING the two or three weeks following their success
with Gilead Beck the Twins were conspicuous, had any
one noticed them, for a recklessness of expenditure quite
without parallel in their previous history. They plunged as
regards hansoms, paying whatever was asked with an airy
prodigality ; they dined at the club every day, and drank cham-
pagne at all hours ; they took half-guinea stalls at theatres ;
they went down to Greenwich and had fish-dinners ; they ap-
peared with new chains and rings ; they even changed their
regular hours of sleep, and sometimes passed the whole day
broad awake, in the pursuit of youthful pleasures. They winked
and nodded at each other in a way which suggested all kinds
of delirious delights ; and Cornelius even talked of adding an
episode to the Epic, based on his own later experiences, which
he would call, he said, the Jubilee of Joy.

The funds for this fling, all too short, were provided by their
American patron. Gilead Beck had no objection to advance
them something on acconnt ; the young gentlemen found it so
pleasant to spend money, that they quickly overcame scruples
about asking for more ; perhaps they would have gone on get-
ting more, but for a word of caution spoken by Jack Dun-
querque. In consequence of this unkindness they met each other
one evening in the Studio with melancholy faces.

" I had a letter to-day from Mr. Gilead Beck," said Cornelius
to Humphrey.

" So had I," said Humphrey to Cornelius.

" In answer to a note from me," said Cornelius.

" In reply to a letter of mine," said Humphrey.

" It is sometimes a little awkward, brother Humphrey," Cor-
nelius remarked, with a little temper, " that our inclinations so
often prompt us to do the same thing at the same time."

Said Humphrey, " I suppose then, Cornelius, that you asked
him for money ? " .

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

393 -

" 1 did, Humphrey. How much has the Patron advanced
you already on the great Picture 1 "

" Two hundred only. A mere trifle. And now he refuses
to advance any more until the Picture is completed. Some
enemy, some jealons brother artist must have corrupted his
mind."

*' My case too. I asked for a simple fifty pounds. It is the
end of May, and the country would be delightful if one could
go there. I have already drawn four or five cheques of fifty
each, on account of the Epic. He says, this mercenary and
mechanical patron, that he will not lend me any more until the
Poem is brought to him finished. Some carping critic has been
talking to him."

" How much of the Poem is finished 1"

" How much of the Picture is done V

The questions were asked simultaneously, but no answer was
returned by either.

Then each sat for a few moments in gloomy silence.

" The end of May," murmured Humphrey. " We have to be
ready by the beginning of October. June — July — only four
months. My painting is designed for many hundred's of figures.
Your poem for — how many lines, brother V'

** Twenty cantos of about five hundred lines each."

" Twenty times five hundred is ten thousand."

Then they relapsed into silence again.

"Brother Cornelius," the Artist went on, "this has been a
most eventful year for us. We have been rudely disturbed
from the artistic life of contemplation and patient work into
which we had gradually dropped. We have been hurried —
hurried, I say, brother — into Action, perhaps prematurely — "

Cornelius grasped his brother's hand, but said nothing.

" You, Cornelius, have engaged yourself to be married."

Cornelius dropped his brother's hand.

" Pardon me, Humphrey ; it is you that is engaged to Phillis
Fleming."

" I am nothing of the sort, Cornelius," the other returned
sharply. " I am astonished that you should make such a
statement."

" One of us certainly is engaged to the young lady. And as
certainlv it is not I. ' Let your brother Humphrey hope,' she

304

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

said. Those were her very words. I do think, brother, that
it is a little ungenerous, a little ungenerous of you, after all the
trouble I took on your behalf, to try to force this young lady
on me."

Humphrey's cheek turned pallid. He plunged his hands into
his silky beard, and walked up and down the room, gesticulat-
ing,

" I went down on purpose to tell Phillis about him. I spoke
to her of his ardour. She said she appreciated — said she ap-
preciated it, Cornelius. I 'even went so far as to say that you
offered her a virgin heart — perilling my own soul by these very
words — a virgin heart" — he laughed melodramatically. " And
after that German milkmaid ? Ha, ha ! The Poet and the
milkmaid ! "

Cornelius by this time was red with anger. The brothers,
alike in so many things, differed in this, that, when aroused to
passion, while Humphrey grew white, Cornelius grew crimson.
" And what did I do for you ? " he cried out. The brothers
were now on opposite sides of the table, walking back-
wards and forwards with agitated strides. " I told her that
you brought her a heart that had never beat for another —
that, after your miserable little Roman model ! An artist not
able to resist the charms of his own model ! "

" Cornelius ! " cried Humphrey, suddenly stopping and bring-
ing his fist with a bang upon the table.

" Humphrey ! " cried his brother, exactly imitating his
gesture.

Their faces glared into each other's : Cornelius, as usual,
wrapped in his long dressing-gown, his shaven cheeks purple
with passion ; Humphrey in his loose velvet jacket, his white
lips and cheeks, and his long silken beard trembling to every
hair.

It was the first time the brothers had ever quarrelled in all
their lives. And like a tempest on Lake Windermere it sprang
up without the slightest warning.

They glared in a steady way for a few minutes, and then
drew back and renewed their quick and angry waik side by
side, with the table between them.

" To bring up the old German business ! " said Cornelius.
" To taunt me with the Roman girl ! '.' said Humphrey.

^Ld

THE GOLDEN HUTTERFr.V

3i);

"Will you keep your engagement like a gentleman, antl
marry the girl ? " cried the Poet.

" Will you behave as a man of honour, and go to the altar
with Phillis Fleming ? " asked the Artist.

" I will not," said Cornelius. " Nothing shall induce me to
get married."

" Nor will I," said Humphrey. " T will see myself drawn
and quartered first."

"Then," said Cornelius, " go and break it to her yourself,
for I will not."

" Break what 1 " asked Humphrey passionately. " Break her
heart, when I tell her, if I must, that my brother repudiates
his most sacred promises ? "

Cornelius was touched. He relented. He softened.

" Can it be that she loves us both 1 "

They were at the end of the table, near the chairs, which as
usual were side by side.

" Can that be so, Cornelius 1 "

They drew nearer the chairs ; they sat down ; they turned,
by force of habit, lovingly towards each other ; and their faces
cleared.

" Brother Humphrey," said Cornelius, " I see that we have
mismanaged this aifair. It will be a wrench to the poor girl,
but it will have to be done. I thought you loanted to marry
her."

" I thought you did."

" And so we each pleaded the other's cause. And the poor
girl loves us both. Good heavens ! What a dreadful thing
for her ! "

" I remember nothing in fiction so startling. To be sure,
there is some excuse for her."
" But she can't marry us both."

" N — n — no. I suppose not. No — certainly not. Heaven
forbid. And as you will not marry her — "

Humphrey shook his head in a decided manner.
" And I will not—"

" Marry ? " interrupted Humphrey. " What ! And give
up this 1 Have to get up early ; to take breakfast at nine ; to
be chained to work ; to be inspected and interfered with while
at work — Phillis drew me once, and pinned the portrait on my

l! M

1^ :

396

THE GOLDEN RUTTERFLY.

easel ; to bo restricted in the matter of poi i; ; to have to go to
bed at eleven ; perliaps, Cornelius, to have babies ; and beside,
if they should be Twins I Fancy being shaken out of your
poetic dream by the cries of Twins ! "

" No sitting up at night with pipes and brandy-and- water,"
echoed the Poet. "And, Humphrey" — here he chuckled, and
his face quite returned to its brotherly form — " should we go
abroad, no flirting with Roman models — eh, eh, eh 1 "

" Ho, ho, ho ! " laughed the Artist melodiously. " And no
carrying milk-pails up the Heidelberg hill? )h, eh, ehl "

" Marriage be hanged ! " cried the Poet, starting up again.
" We will preserve our independence, Humphrey. We will be
free to woo, but not to wed."

Was there ever a more unprincipled Bard 1 It is sad to re-
late that the Artist echoed his brother.

" We will, Cornelius — we will. Vive la lihertd ! " He snapped
his fingers, and began to sing :

" Quand on est 6, Paris

On 6crit h, son p6re,
Qui fait r6spunso, ' Brigand,
Tu n'en as—' "

He broke short off, and clapped his hands like a schoolboy

We will go to Paris next week, brother."

" We will, Humphrey, if we can get any more money. And
now — how to get out of the mess ? "

" Do you think Mrs. L'Estrange will interfere 1 "

''OrColquhoun?"

" Or Joseph ] "

" The best way would be to pretend it was all a mistake.
Let us go to-morrow, and cry off as well as we can."

" We will, Cornelius."

The quarrel and its settlement made them thirsty, and they
drank a whole potash-and-brandy each before proceeding with
the interrupted conversation.

•* Poor little Phillis ! " said the Artist, filling his pipe. " I
hope she won't pine much."

" Ariadne, you know," said the Poet ; and then he forgot
what Ariadne did, and broke off short.

" It isn't our fault, after all. Men of genius are always run

THE GOLOKN JIUTTKHFLY.

397

ft> go to
besido,
)f your

jvvator,"
id, and
we go

^nd no

again,
will be

to re-

uipped

olboy
And

take.

they
kvith

rgot
run

after. Women are made to love men, and men are made to
break their hearts. Law of Nature, dear Cornelius— law of
Nature. Perhaps the man is a fool who binds himself to one.
Art alone should be our mistress — glorious Art ! "

'*Yes," said Cornelius; "you are quite right. And what
about Mr. Gilead Beck ? "

This was a delicate question, and the Artist's face grew
grave.

" What are we to do, Cornelius 1 "

" I don't know, Humphrey."

" Will the Poem be finished 1 "

" No. Will the Picture ? "

" Not a chance."

' Had we not better, Humphrey, considering all the circum-
stances, make up our minds to throw over the engagement."

'' Tell me, Cornelius — how much of your Poem remains to be
done 'i "

" Well, you see, there is not much actually written."

" Will you show it to me — what there is of it ? "

" It is all in my head, Humphrey. Nothing is written."

He blushed prettil} as he made the confession. But the
Artist met him half-way with a frank smile.

" It is curious, Cornelius, that up to the present I have not
actually drawn any of the groups. My figures are still in my
head."

Both were surprised. Each, spending his own afternoons in
sleep, had given the other credit for working during that part
of the day. But they were too much accustomed to keep up
appearances to make any remark upon this curious coincidence.

" Then, brother." said the Poet, with a sigh of relief, " there
is really not the slightest use in leading Mr. Beck to believe
that the works will be finished by October, and we had better
ask for a longer term. A year longer would do for me."

" A year longer would, I think, do for me," said Hum-
phrey, stroking his beard, as if he was calculating how long
each figure would take to put in.
Beck to-morrow."

" Better not," said the sagacious Poet.

"Why not?"

" He might ask for the money back."

" We will go and see Mr.

a98

TlfK (SOLOKN nUTTKIlKLY.

II !|i

*■ True, brother. He must be capable of that meanness, or
ho would have given us that cheque we asked for. Very true.
Wo will write."

** What excuse shall we make 1 "

" We will state the exact truth, brother. No excuse need
be invented. Wo will tell our Patron that Art cannot — must
not — be forced."

This settled, Cornelius declared that a weight was oft* his
mind, which had oppressed him since the engagement with
Mr. Beck was first entered into. Nothing, he said, so much
obstructed the avenues of fancy, checked the flow of ideas, and
destroyed grasp of language as a slavish time-engagement.
Now, he wont on to explain, he felt free ; already his mind,
like a garden in May, was blossoming in a thousand sweet
flowers. Now he was at peace with mankind. Before this
relief he had been — Humplirey would bear him out — inclined
to lose his temper over trifles ; and the feeling of thraldom
caused him only that very evening to use harsh words even to
his twin brother. Here ho held out his hand, which Humphrey
grasped with eff'usion.

They wrote their letters next day — not early in the day,
because they prolonged their evening parliament till late, and
it was one o'clock when they took breakfast. But they wrote
the letters after breakfast, and at two they took the train to
Twickenham.

Phillis received them in her morning-room. They appeared
almost as nervous and agitated as when they called a week
before. So shaky were their hands that Phillis began by pre-
scribing for them a glass of wine each, which they took, and
said they felt better.

" We come for a few words of serious explanation," said the
Poet.

" Yes," said Phillis. " Will Mrs. L'Estrange do ?"

" On the contrary ; it is with you that we would speak."

" Very well," she replied. " Pray go on."

They were sitting side by side on the sofa, looking as grave
as a pair of owls. There was something Gog and Magogish,
too, in their proximity.

Phillis found herself smiling when she looked at them. So,

TriK oor-nKN buttkhfly.

89f)

iess, or
\y true.

need
-must

to prevent lau^liin^ in their very faces, she changed her phice,
and went to the o})en window.

" Now," she said.

Cornelius, with the gravest face in the world, began again.

" It is a delicate and, I fear, a painful business," he said.
" Miss Fleming, you doubtless remember a conversation I had
with you last week on your lawn."

" Certainly. You told me that your brother. Mr. Humphrey,
adored me. You also said that h«^ brought me a virgin heart. I
remember perfectly. I did not understand your meaning then.
But I do now. I understand it now." She spoke the last words
with softened voice,, because she was thinking of the Coping-
stone and Jack Dunquerque.

Humphrey looked indignantly at his broLher. Here was a
position to be placed in ! But Cornelius lifted his hand, with
a gesture which meant " Patience ; I will see you through this
affair,'* and went on :

" You see. Miss Fleming, I was under a mistake. My
brother, who has the highest respect, in the abstract, for
womanhood, which is the incarnation and embodiment of all thr».t
is graceful and beautiful in this fair M'orld of ours, does not —
does not — after all."

Phillis looked at Humphrey. He sat by his brother, trem-
bling with a mixture of shame and terror. They were not
brave men, these Twins, and they certainly drank habitually
more than is good for the nervous system.

She began to laugh, not loudly, but with a little ripy^ie of
mirth which terrified them both, because in their vanity they
thought it the first symptoms of hysterical grief. Then she
stepped to the sofa, and placed both her hands on the unfortu-
nate artist's shoulder.

He thought that she was going to shako him, and his soul
sank into his boots.

" You mean that he does not, after all, adore me. O Mr.
Humphrey, Mr. Humphrey, was it for this that you offered me
a virgin heart 1 Is this your gratitude to .me for drawing your
likeness when you Avere hard at work in the Studio 1 What
shall I say to your brother Joseph, and what will he say to
you 1 "

" My dear young lady," Cornelius interposed hastily, " there

1
1

«l)

400

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

is not the slightest reason to bring Joseph into the business at
all. He must not be told of this most unfortunate mistake.
Humphrey does adore you — speak, brother — do you not adore
Miss Fleming ? "

Humphrey was gasping and panting.
" I do," he ejaculated, '* I do — 0, most certainly 1 "
Then Phillis left him and turned to his brother.
" But there is yourself, Mr. Cornelius. You are not an
artist ; you are a poet ; you spend your days in the Workshop,
where Jack Dunquerque and 1 found you wrapt in so poetic a
dream that your eyes were closed and your mouth was open.
If you made a mistake about Humphrey, it is impossible that
he could have made a mistake about you."

" This is terrible," said Cornelius. " Explain, brother Hum-
phrey. Miss Fleming, we — no, you as well, are victims of a
dreadful error."

He wiped his brow and appealed to his brother.
Keleased from the terror of Phillis's hands upon his shoulder,
the Artist recovered some of his courage and spoke. But his
voice was faltering.

" I too," lie said, " mistook the respectful admiration of my
brother for something dearer. Miss Fleming, he is already
wedded."

" Wedded ? Are you a married man, Mr. Cornelius ? 0,
and where is the virgin heart ] "

" Wedded to his art," Humphrey explained. Then he went
a little off his head, I suppose, in the excitement of this crisis,
because he continued in broken words, " Wedded — long ago —
object of his life's love — with milk-pails on the hills of Heidel-
berg, and light blue eyes — the Muse of Song. But he regards
you with respectful admiration."

" Most respectful," said Cor- elius. " As Petrarch regarded
the wife of the Count de Sade. Will you forgive us, Miss
Fleming, and — and — try to forget us ? "

" So, gentlemen," the young lady said, with sparkling eyes,
"you come to say, that you would rather not marry me. I
wonder if that is. usual with the men."

" No, no ! " they both cried together. " Happy is the
man — "

" You may be the happy man, Humphrey," gaid Cornelius,
" No ; you, brother — you."

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

401

In ess at

)istake.

adore

the

Never had wedlock seemed so dreadful a thing as it did now,
with a possible bride standing before them, apparently only
waiting for the groom to make up his mind.

" I will forgive you both," she said ; " so go away happy.
But I am afraid I shall never, never be able to forget you. And
if I send you a sketch of yourselves just as you look now, so
ashamed and so foolish, perhaps you will hang it up in the
Workshop or the Studio, to be looked at when you are awake ;
that is, when vou are not at work."

They looked guiltily at each other and drew a little apart.
It was the most cruel speech that Phillis had ever made ; but
she was a little angry with this vain and conceited pair of
windbags.

" I shall not tell Mr. Joseph Jagenal, because he is a sensible
man and would take it ill, I am sure. And I shall not tell my
guardian, Lawrence Colquhoun, because I do not know what he
might say or do. And 1 shall not tell Mrs. L'Estrange ; that
is, I shall not tell her the whole of it, for your sakes. But I
must tell Jack Dunquerque, because I am engaged to be mar-
ried to Jack, and because I love him and must tell him every-
thing."

They cowered before her as they thought of the possible con-
sequences of this information.

" You need not be frightened," she went on ; " Jack will not
call to see you and disturb you at your work."

Her eyes, that began by dancing with fun, now flashed in-
dignation. It was not that she felt angry at what most girla
would have regarded as a deliberate insult, but the unmanliness
of the two filled her with contempt. They looked so small and
so mean.

" Go," she said, pointing to the-door. " I forgive you. But
never again dare to offer a girl each other's virgin heart."

They literally slunk away like a pair of beaten hounds.
Then Phillis suddenly felt sorry for them as they crept out of
the door, one after the other. She ran after them and called
them back.

" Stop," she cried ; " we must not part like that. Shake
hands, Cornelius. Shake hands, Humphrey. Come back and
take another glass of wine. Indeed you want it ; you are
shaking all over ; come."
z

402

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

i I

She led them back, one in each hand, and poured out a glass
of sherry for each.

" You could not have married xne, you know," she said,
laughing, " because I am going to marry Jack. There — forgive
me for speaking unkindly, and we will remain friends."

They took her hand but they did not speak, and something
like a tear stood in their eyes. When they left her Phillis ob-
served that they did not take each other's arm as usual, but
walked separate. And they looked older.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

" What is it you see?
A nameless thing- a creeping snake in the grass."

HO was the writer of the letters ? They were all in
one hand, and that a feigned hand.
Gabriel Cassilis sat with these anonymous accusa-
tions against his wife spread out upon the table before him.
He compared one with the other ; he held them up to the
light ; he looked for chance indications which a careless moment
might leave behind : there were none — not a stroke of the pen ;
not even the name of the shop where the paper was sold. They
were all posted at the same place, but that was nothing.

The handwriting was large, upright, and pierhaps designedly
ill-formed ; it appeared to be the writing of a woman, but of
this Mr. Cassilis was not sure.

Always the same tale ; always reference to a secret between
Colquhoun and his wife. What was that secret ?

In Colquhoun's room — alone with him — almost under his
hand. But where 1 He went into the bedroom, which was
lighted by the gas of the court ; an open room, furnished with-
out curtains ; there was certainly no one concealed, because
concealment was impossible. And in the sitting-room — then
he remembered that the room was dimly lighted ; curtains
kept out the gaslight of the court ; Colquhoun had on his en-

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

403

a glass

trance lowered the silver lamp ; there was a heavy green shade
on this ; it was possible that she might have been in the room
while he was there, and listening to every word.

The thought was maddening. He tried to put it all before
himself in logical sequence, but could not : he tried to fence
with the question, but it would not be evaded ; lie tried to
persuade himself that suspicions resting on an anonymous slan-
der were baseless, but evary time his m.ind fell back upon the
voice which proclaimed his wife's dishonour.

A man on the rack might as well try to dream of soft beds
and luxurious dreamless sleep ; a man being flogged at the
cart-tail might as well try to transport his thoughts to boy-
hood's games upon a village green ; a man at the stake might
as well try to think of deep delicious draughts of ice-cold water
from a shady brook. The agony and shame of the present are
too much for any imagination.

It was so to Gabriel Cassilis. The one thing which he
trusted in, after all the villanies and rogueries he had learned
during sixty-five years mostly spent among men trying to make
money, was his wife's fidelity. It was like the Gospel — a thing
to be accepted and acted upon with unquestioning belief. Good
heavens ! if a man cannot believe in his wife's honesty, in what
is he to believe 1

Gabriel Cassilis was not a violent man ; he could not find
relief in angry words and desperate deeds like a Moor of Venice ;
his jealousy was a smouldering fire ; a flame which burned with
a dull fierce heat ; a disease which crept over body and mind
alike, crushing energy, vitality, and life out of both.

Everything might go to ruin around him ; he was no longer
capable of thought or action. Telegrams and letters lay piled
before him on the table, and he left them unopened.

Outside, his secretary was in dismay. His employer would
receive no one, and would attend to nothing. He signed
mechanically such papers as were brought him to sign, and then
he motioned the secretary to the door.

This apathy lasted for four days — the four days most import-
ant of any in the lives of himself, of Gilead Beck, and of Law-
rence Colquhoun. For the fortunes of all hung upon his
shaking it off", and he did not shake it off.

On the second day, the day when he got the letter telling

V :i

■■ij ii'

" Iff

IV :

404

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

him that his wife had been in Colquhoun's chambers while he
was there, he sent for a private detective.
He ixut into his hands all the letters.

" Written by a woman," said the officer. " Have yon any
clue, sir ] "

" None — none whatever. I want you to watch. You will
watch my wife and you will watch Mr. Colquhoun. Get every
movement watched, and report to me every morning. Can you
do this % Good. Then go, and spare neither pains nor money."
The next morning's report was unsatisfactory. Colquhoun
had gone to the Park in the afternoon, dined at his club, and
gone home to his chambers at eleven. Mrs. Cassilis, after din-
ing at home, went out at ten, and returned early — at half-past
eleven.

But there came a letter from the anonymous correspondent.
"You are having a watch set on them. Good. But that
won't find out the Scotch secret. She was in his room while
vou were there — hidden somewhere, but I do not know where."
He went home to watch his wife with his own eyes. He
might as well have watched a marble statue. She met his eyes
with the calm cold look to which he was accustomed. There
was nothing in her manner to show that she was other than
she had always been. He tried in her presence to realize the
fact, if it was a fact. " This woman," he said to himself,
"has been lying hidden in Colquhoun's chambers listening while
I talked to him. She was there before I went ; she was there
when I came away. What is her secret % "

What, indeed ! She seemed a woman who could have no se-
crets ; a woman whose life from her cradle might have been
exposed to the whole world, who would have found nothing
but cause of admiration and respect.

In her presence, under her influence^ his jealousy lost some-
thing of its fierceness. He feared her too much to suspect her
while in his sight. It was at night, in his office, away from
her, that he gave full swing to the bitterness of his thoughts.
In the hours when he should have been sleeping he paced his
room, wrapped in his dressing-gown — a long lean figure, with
eyes aflame, and thoughts that tore him asunder \ and in the
hours when he should have been v/aking he sat with bent
shoulders, glowering at the letters of her accuser, gazing into
a future which seemed as black as ink.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

405

hile he

nose-

His life, he knew, was drawing to its close. Yet a few
more brief years, and the summons would come for him to
cross the Eiver. Of that he had no fear ; but it was dreadful
to think that his age was to be dishonoured. Success was his ;
the respect which men give to success was his ; no one inquired
very curiously into the means by which success was com-
manded ; he was a name and a power. Now that name was
to be tarnished ; by no act of his own, by no fault of his ; by
the treachery of the only creature in the world, except his in-
fant child, in whom he trusted.

He would have, perhaps, to face the publicity of an open
court ; to hear his wrongs set forth to a jury ; to read his
" case " in the daily papers.

And he would have to alter his will.

Oddly enough, of all the evil things which seemed about to
fall on him, not one troubled him more than the last.

His detective brought him no news on the next day. But
his unknown correspondent did.

" She is tired," the letter said, " of not seeing Mr. Col-
quhoun for three whole days. She will see him to-morrow.
There is to be a garden-party at Mrs. L'Estrange's, Twicken-
ham villa. Mr. Colquhoun will be there, and she is going too
to meet him. If you dared, if you had the heart of a mouse,
you would be there too. You would arrive late ; you would
watch and see for yourself, unseen, if possible, how they meet,
and what they say to each other. An invitation lies for you,
as well as your wife, upon the table. Go ! "

While he was reading this document his secretary came in,
uncalled.

" The Eldorado Stock,'' he said, in his usual whisper. " Have
you decided what to do ? Settling-day on Friday. Have you
forgotten what you hold, sir ? "

" I have forgotten nothing," Gabriel Cassilis replied. " Eldo-
rado Stock 1 I never forget anything. Leave me. I shall see
no one to-day ; no one is to be admitted. I am very busy."

" I don't understand it," the secretary said to himself. " Has
he got information that he keeps to himself? Has he got a
deeper game on than I ever gave him credit for 1 What does
it mean 1 Is he going off hi.o head 1 "

More letters and more telegrams came. They went into the
inner office ; but nothing came out of it.

406

THE UOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

That night Gabriel Cassilis left his chair at ten o'clock. He
had eaten nothing all day. He was faint and weak ; he took
something at a City ^ril way-station, and drove home in a cab.
His wife was out.

In the hall he saw her woman, the tali woman with the un-
prepossessing face.

" You are Mrs. Cassilis's maid 1 " he asked.

" I am, sir."

" Come with me."

He took her to his own study, and sat down. Now he had
the woman with him he did not know what to ask her.

" You called me, sir," she said. " Do you want to know
anything ? "

" How long have you been with your mistress ? '*

"I came to her when her former maid, Janet, died, sir.
Janet was with her for many years before she married."

" Janet — Janet — a Scotch name *'

" Janet was with my mistress in Scotland."

" Yes — Mrs. Cassillis was in Scotland — yes. And — and
Janet war in your confidence."

" We had no secrets from each other, sir. Janet told me
everything."

" What was there to tell 1"

" . ^thing, sir. What should there be ? "

This was idle fencing.

*' You may go," he said. " Stay. Let them send me up
something — a cup of tea, a slice of meat — anything."

Then he recommenced his dreary walk up and down the
room.

Later on a cnrious feeling ;came over him — quite

a strange

and a novel feeling. It was as if, while he thought, or rather
while his fancies like so many devils played riot in his brain,
he could not find the right words in which to clothe his
thoughts. He struggled against the feeling. He tried to talk.
But the wrong words came from his lips. Then he took a
book ; yes — he could read. It was nonsense ; he shook of? the
feeling. But he shrunk from speaking to any servant, and
Avent to bed.

That night he slept better, and in the morning was less agi-
tated. He breakfasted in his ' study, and then went down to
his office.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

407

He
le took
1 a cab.

It was the fourth day since he had opened no letters and
attended to no business. He remembered this, and tried to
shake off the gloomy fit. And then he thought of the coming
coup, and tried to bring his thoughts back to their usual chan-
nel. How much did he hold of Eldorado Stock % Rising
higher day by day. But three days, three short days, before
settling day.

The largest stake he had ever ventured ; a stake so large
then when he thought of it his spirit and nerve came back
to him.

For once — for the last time — he entered his office, holding
himself erect, and looking brighter than he had done for days ,
and he sat down to his letters with an air of resolution.

Unfortunately the first letter was from the anonymous
correspondent.

"She wrote to him to-day ; she told him that she could bear
her life no longer ; she threatened to tell the secret right out ;
she will have an explanation with him to-morrow at Mrs.
L'Estrange's. Do you go down, and you will hear the explana-
tion. Be quiet, and be secret."

He started from his chair, the letter in his hand, and looked
straight before him. Was it, then, all true 1 Would that day
give him a chance of finding out the secret between Lawrence
Colquhoun and his wife 1

He put up his glasses and read the letter — the last of a long
series, every one of which had been a fresh arrow in his heart
— again and again.

Then he sat down and burst into tears.
A young man's tears may be forced from him by many a
passing sorrow, but an old man's only by the reality of a sor-
row which cannot be put aside. The deaths of those who are
dear to the old man fall on him as so many reminders that his
own time will soon arrive ; but it is not for such things as
death that he laments.

" I loved her," moaned Gabriel Cassilis. " I loved her, and
I trusted her ; and this the end ! "

He did not curse her, nor Colquhoun, nor himself. It was
all the hand of Fate. It was hard upon him, harder than he
expected or knew, but he bore it in silence.
He sat so, still and quiet, a long while,

:il

' *

i ■

■ ,;?

408

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

Then he put together all the letters, which the detective had
brought back, and placed them in his pocket. Then he dallied
and played with the paper and pencils before him, just as one
who is restless and uncertain in his mind. Then he looked at
his watch — it was past three ; the garden-party was for four ;
and then he rose suddenly, put on his hat, and passed out. His
secretary asked him, as he went through his office, if he would
return, and at what time.

Mr. Cassilis made a motion with his hand, as if to put the
matter off for a few minutes, and replied nothing. When he
got into the street it occurred to him that he could not answer
the secretary because that same curious feeling was upon him
again, and he had lost the power of speech. It was strange,
and he laughed. Then the power of speech as suddenly re-
t'lrned to him. He called a cab, and told the driver where to
go. It is a long drive to Twickenham. He was absorbed in
his thoughts, and as he sat back, gazing straight before him,
the sensation of not being able to speak kept coming and going
in his brain. This made him uneasy, but not much, because
he had graver things to think about.

At half-past four he arrived within a few yards of Mrs.
L'Estrange's house, where he alighted and dismissed his cab.
The cabman touched his hat and said it was a fine day, and
seasonable weather for the time of the year.

" Ay," replied Gabriel Cassilis mechanically. " A fine day,
and seasonable weather for the time of the year."

And as he walked along under the lime-trees he found him-
self saying over again, as if it was the burden of a song :

" A fine day, and seasonable weather for the time of the
year."

; I

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

409

CHAPTP^R XL.

•' How pfrecn arc jouaiul frusli in tliis old world !"

^N the morning of the garden-party Joseph Jagenal called
on Lawrence Colquhoun.

"I have two or three things to say," he began, "if
you can give me five minutes."

** Twenty," said Lawrence. "Now then."

He threw himself back in his easiest chair and prepared to
listen.

" I am in the way of hearing things sometimes," Joseph
said. " And I heard a good deal yesterday about Mr. Gabriel
Cassilis."

" Whatl" said Lawrence, aghast; "he surely has not been
telling all the world about it ! "

" T think we are talking of different things," Joseph an-
swered after a pause. "Don't tell me what you mean, but
what I mean .is that there is an uneasy feeling about Gabriel
Cassilis."

" Ay 1 In what way ? "

" Well, tliey say he is strange ; does not see people ; does
not open letters ; and is evidently suflFering from some mental
distress."

"Yes."

" And when such a man as Gabriel Cassilis is in mental dis-
tress, money is at the bottom of it."

" Generally. Not always."

" It was against my advice that you invested any of your
money by his direction."

" I invested the whole of it ; and all Phillis's too. Mr.
Cassilis has the investment of our little all," Lawrence added,
laughing.

But the lawyer looked grave.

" Don't do it," he said ; " get it in your own hands again ;
let it lie safely in the three per cents. What has a pigeon like
you to do among the City hawks 1 And Miss Fleming's money

410

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

M U

I i

too. Let it be put away safely, ami give her what she wants,
a modest and sufficient income without risk."

" I believe you are right, Jagenal. In fact I am sure you
are right. But Cassilis would have it. He talked me into an
ambition for good investments which I never felt before. I will
ask him to sell out for me, and go back to the old three per
cents and railway shares — which is what I have been brought
up to. On the other hand, you are quite wrong about his
mental distress. That is — I happen to know — you are a
lawyer and will not talk — it is not due to money matters ; and
Gabriel Cassilis is, for what I know, as keen a hand as ever at
piling up the dollars. The money is all safe ; of that I am
quite certain."

" Well, if you think so — But don't let him keep it," said
Joseph the Doubter.

" After all, why not get eight and nine per cent, if you can ? "

" Because it isn't safe, and because you ought not to expect
it. What do you want with more money than you have got 1
However, I have told you what men say. There is another
thing. I am sorry to say that my brothers have made fools of
themselves, and I am come to apologize for them."

" Don't, if it is disagreeable, my dear fellow."

" It is not very disagreeable, and I would rather. They are
fifty, but they are not wise. In fact they have lived so much
out of the world that they do not understand things. And so
thev went down and proposed for the hand of your ward,
Phillis Fleming."

" O ! Both of them 1 And did she accept 1 "

" The absurd thing is that I cannot discover which of them
wished to be the bridegroom, nor which Phillis thought it was.
She is quite confused about the whole matter. However, they
went away and thought one of them was accepted, which ex-
plains a great deal of innuendo and reicrence to some unknown
subject of mirth which I have observed lately. I say one oi'
them, because I find it impossible to ascertain which of them
was the man. Well, whether they were conscience-stricken or
whether they repented I do not know, but they went back to
Twickenham and solemnly repudiated the engagement."

*' And Phillis r'

*' She laughs at them, of coyrse. Do not fear ; she wasn't

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

411

tvants,

said

in the least annoyed. 1 shall speak to my brothers this
evening."

Colquhoim thought of the small fragile-looking pair, and in-
wardly hoped that their brother would be gentle with them.

" And there is another thing, Colquhoun. Do you want to
see your ward married ? "

" To Jack Dunquerque ? "

« Yes."

" Not yet. I want her to have her little fling first. Why,
the poor child is only just out of the nursery, and he wants to
marry her off-hand — it's cruel. Let her see the world for a
year, and then we will consider it. Jagenal, I wish 1 could
marry the girl myself."

" So do T, ' said Joseph, with a sigh.

" I fell in love with her," said Lawrence, " at first sight.
That is why," he added, in his laziest tones, " I suppose that is
why I told Jack Dunquerque not to go there any more. But
he has gone there again, and he has proposed to her, I hear,
and she has accepted him. So that I can't marry her, and you
can't, and we are a brace of fogies."

" And what have you said to Mr. Dunquerque ? "

" I acted the jealous guardian, and I ordered him not to call
on my ward any more for the present. I shall see how Phil) is
takes it, and give in, of course, if she makes a fuss. Then Beck
has been here offering to hand over all his money to Jack,
because he loves the young man."

" Quixotic," said the lawyer.

" Yes. The end of it will be a wedding, of course. You and
I may shake a leg at it if we like. As for me, I never can
marry any one ; and as for you — "

" As for me, I never thought of marrying her. I only re-
marked that I had fallen in love, as you say, with her. That's
no matter to anybody."

" Well, things go on as they like, not as we like. What
nonsense it is to say that man is master of his fate ! Now what
I should like would be to get rid of the reason that prevents
my marrying ; to put Jack Dunquerque into the water-butt and
sit on the lid ; and then for Phillis to fall in love with me. After
th9,t, strawberries and cream with a little champagne for the

■

412

THE aOI.DEN RUTTERFLY.

rest of my Methusclatn-like career. And 1 can't get any of these
things. Master of his fate ! "

" Have you heard of the Coping-stone chapter 1 It is found."

" Agatha told me something, in a disjointed way. What is
the effect of it T*

Joseph laughed.

'* It is all torn up but the last page. A righteous retribution,
because if Phillis had been taught to read this would not have
happened. Now I suspect the will must be set aside, and the
money will mostly go to Gabriel Cassilis, the nearest of kin,
who doesn't want it."

;

i^!

CHAPTER XLI.

" La languu doH fcinnies est Icur 6p6o, ot cUch iig la laisscnt ])a8 rouillcr."

HE grounds of the house formed a parallelogram, of
which the longer sides were parallel with the river. In
the north-east corner stood the house itself, its front fac-
ing west. It was not a large house, as has been explained. A
conservatory was built against nearly the whole length of the
front. The lawns and flower-beds spread to west and south,
sloping down to the river's edge. The opposite d,ngle was
occupied by stables, kitchen-garden, and boathouse. Gabriel
Cassilis approached it from the east. An iron railing and a low
hedge, along which were planted limes, laburnums, and lilacs,
separated the place from the road. But before reaching the
gate — in fact, at the corner of the kitchen-garden — he could,
himself unseen, look through the trees and observe the party.
They were all there. He saw Mrs. L'Estrange, Phillis, his
own wife, — Heavens ! how calm and cold she looked, and how
beautiful he thought her ! — with a half dozen other ladies.
The men were few. There was the curate. He was dangling
round Phillis, and wore an expression of holiness-out-for-a-hol-
iday, which is always so charming in these young men.

THE aOLDKN HUTTKUFLV.

413

fthpf

mtion,
have
d the
f kin,

Gabriel Cassilis also noticed tliat he was casting eyes of it)ng-
ing at the young hidy. There was Lawrence Cohiuiioun.
Gabriel Cassilis looked everywluue tor him, till he saw him
lying beneath a tree, his head on his h uii . He was not talk-
ing to Victoria, nor was he looking at her. On the contrary,
he was watching Phillis. Tiiere was Captain Ladds. He was
talking to one of the young ladies, and he was looking at
Phillis. The young lady evidently did not like this. And there
was Gilead Beck. He was standing apart, talking to Mrs.
L'Estrange, with his hands in his pockets, leaning against a
tree. But he too was casting furtive glances at Phillis.

They all seemed, somehow, looking at the girl. There was
no special reason why they should look at her, except that she
was so bright, so fresh, and so charming for the eye to rest
upon. The other girls were as well dressed, but they were
nowhere compared with Phillis. The lines of their figures,
perhaps, wei-e not so fine ; the shape of their heads more com-
monplace ; their features not so delicate ; their pose less grace-
ful. There are some girls who go well together. Helena and
Herraia are a foil to each other ; but when Desdemona shows
all other beauties pale like lesser lights. And the other beau-
ties do not like it.

Said one of the fair guests to another,

" What do they see in her 1 "

" I cannot tell," replied her friend. " She seems to me more
/aroMc/ic than ever."

For having decided that farouche was the word to express
poor Phillis's distinguishing quality, there was no longer any
room for question , and farouche she continued to be. If there
is anything that Phillis never was, it is that quality of fierce
shy wildness which requires the adjective /arowcAe. But the
word stuck, because it sounded well. To this day — to be sure
it is only a twelvemonth since — the girls say still, " 0, yes !
Phillis Fleming. She was pretty, but extremely /arowc^e."

Gabriel Cassilis stood by the hedge and looked through the
trees. He was come all the way from town to attend this
party, and now he hesitated at the very gates. For he became
conscious of two things : first, that the odd feeling of not find-
ing his words was upon him again ; and secondly, that he was

<:i

414

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY,

•

not exactly dressed for a festive occasion. Like most City men
who have long remained bachelors, Gabriel Cassilis was care-
ful of his personal appearance. He considered a garden-party
as an occasion demanding something special. Now he not only
wore his habitual pepper-and-salt suit, but the coat in which he
wrote at his office — a comfortable easy old frock, a little baggy
at the elbows. His mind was strung to such an intense pitch,
that such a trifling objection as his dress — because Gabriel
Cassilis never looked other than a gentleman — appeared to him
insuperable. He withdrew from the hedge, and retraced his
steps. Presently he came to a lane. He left the road, and
turned down the path. He found himself by the river. He
sat down under a tree, and began to think.

He thought of the time when his lonely life was wearisome
to him, when he longed for a wife and a house of his own. He
remembered how he pictured a girl who would be his darling,
who would return his caresses and love him for his own sake.
And how, when he met Victoria Pengelley, his thoughts
changed, and he pictured that girl, stately and statuesque, at the
head of his table. There would be no pettings and caressing
from her, that was quite certain. On the other hand, there
would be a woman of whom he would be proud — one who
would wear his wealth properly. And a woman of good family,
well connected all round. There were no caresses, he remem-
bered now ; there was the coldest acceptance of him ; and
there had been no caresses since. But he had been proud
of her ; and as for her honour — how was it possible that the
• doubt should arise 1 That man must be himself distinctly of
the lower order of men who would begin by doubting or sus-
pecting his wife.

To end iu this : doubt so strong as to be almost certainty ; sus-
picion like a knife cutting at his heart; his brain clouded ; and
he himself driven to creep down clandestinely to watch his
wife.

He sat there till the June sun began to sink in the west.
The river was covered with the evening craft. They were
manned by the young City men but just beginning the worship
of Mammon, who would have looked with envy upon the figure
sitting motionless in the shade by the river's edge had they
known who he was. Presently he roused himself, and looked

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

415

ty men

care-

i-party

|ot only
lich he
baggy
pitch,
rabriel

I to him

3ed his
and

•• He

risome

n. He

irJing,

sake.
)ughts

at the
essing

there
e who
imily,
smem-
; and
proud
it the
tly of
rsus-

; sus-
; and
I his

v^est.
were
ship
jure
;hey
ked

at his watch. It was past seven. Perhaps the party would be
over by this time ; he could go home with his wife ; it would
be something, at least, to be with her, to keep her from that
other man. He rose — his brain in a tumult — and repaired
once more to his point of vantage at the hedge. The lawn
was empty ; there was no one there. But he saw his own
carriage in the yard, and therefore his wife was not yet gone.

In the garden, no one. He crept in softly, and looked round
him. No one saw him enter the place ; he felt something like
a burglar as he walked, with a stealthy step which he vainly
tried to make confident, across the lawn.

Two ways of entrance stood open before him. Oue was the
porch of the house, covered with creepers and hung with flow-
ers. The door stood open, and beyond it was the hall, looking
dark from the bright light outside. He heard voices within.
-Another way was the conservatory, the door of which was also
open. He looked in. Amongtheflowers and the vines there stood
a figure he knew — his wife's. But she was alone. And she was
listening. On her face was an expression which he had never
seen there, and never dreamed of Her features were dis-
torted ; her hands were closed in a tight clutch ; her arms were
stiiSFened — but she was trembling. What was she doing 1 To
whom was she listening ?

He hesitated a moment, and then he stepped through the
porch into the hall. The voices came from the right ; in fact,
from the mbrning-room, — Phillis's room, — which opened by its
single window upon the lawn, and by it two doors into the
hall on one side and the conservatory on the other.

And Gabriel Cassilis, like his wife, listened. He put off
his hat, placed his umbrella in the stand, and stood in attitude,
in case he should be observed, to push open the door and step
in. He was so abject in his jealousy, that he actually did not
feel the disgrace and degradation of the act. He was so keen
and eager to lose no word, that he leaned his head to the half-
open door, and stood, his long thin figure trembling with ex-
citement, like some listener in a melodrama of the transpontine
stage.

There were two persons in the room, and one was a woman ;
and they were talking together. One was Lawrence Coiquhoun,
and the other was Phillis Fleming.

416

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

1 t'

^ to his wont, lying on a sofa,
chairs. He was standing, and

Colquhoun was not, according
nor sitting in the easiest of the
he was speaking in an earnest voice.

" When I saw you first," he said, " you were little Phillis —
a wee toddler of six or seven. I went away, and forgot all
about you, — almost forgot your very existence, Phillis, — till
the news of Mr. Dyson's death met me on my way home again.
I fear that I have neglected you since I came home ; but I have
been worried."

" What has worried you, Lawrence ? " asked the girl.
She was sitting op he music-stool before the piano ; and as
she spoke she turned from the piano, her fingers resting silently
on the notes. She was dressed for the party, — which was over
now, and the guests departed, — in a simple muslin costume,
light and airy, which became her well. And in her hair she
had placed a flower. There were flowers all about the room,
flowers at the open window, flowers in the conservatory beyond,
flowers on the bright green lawns beyond.

" How pretty you are, Phillis," answered her guardian.
He touched her cheek with his finger as she sat.
" I am your guardian," he said, as if in apology.
" And you have been worried about things 1 " she persisted.
" Agatha says you never care what happens."

" Agatha is right, as a r. 1'^. In one case, of which she knows
nothing, she is wrong. Tell i-" e, Phillis, is there anything you
want, in the world, that I can . ,ot for you ] "

" I think I have everything," she said, laughing. " And
what you will not give me I shall wait for till I am twenty-
one."

" You mean — " .

" I mean — Jack Dunquerque, Lawrence."
Only a short month ago, and Jack Dunquerque was her
friend. She could speak of him openly and freely, without
change of voice or face. Now she blushed, and her voice
trembled as she uttered his name. That is one of the outward
and visible signs of an inward and spiritual state known to the
most elementary observers.

" I wanted to speak about him. Phillis, you are very
young ; you have seen nothing of the world j you know no
other men. All I ask you is to wait. Do not give your pro-

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

417

a sofa,
ig, and

illis—
got all
s,— till

again.
I have

and as
ilently
as over
)stume,
air she
room,
)eyond,

rsisted.

knows
ngyou

"And
wenty-

as her
dthout
voice
itward
to the

I very
ow no
r pro-

mise to this man till you have, at least, had an opportunity of
— of comparing — of learning your own mind."
She shook her head.

" I have already given my promise," she said.
" But it is a promise that may be recalled," he urged.
" Dunquerque is a gentleman ; he will not hold you to your
word when he feels that he ought not to have taken it from
you. Phillis, you do not know yourself. You have no idea
of what it is that you have given, or its value. How can I tell
you the truth ? "

" I think you mean the best for me, Lawrence," she said.
" But the best is — Jack."

Then she began to speak quite low, so that the listeners
heard nothing.

" See, Lawrence, you are kind, and I can tell you all with-
out being ashamed. I think of Jack all day long and all night.
I pray for him in the morning and in the evening. When he
comes near me I tremble ; I feel that I must obey him if he
were to order me in anything. I have no more command of
myself when he is with me — "

" Stop, Phillis," Lawrence interposed; "you must not tell me
any more. I was trying to act for the best ; but I will make
no further opposition. See, my dear" — he took her hand in
his in a tender and kindly way — " if I write to Jack Dun-
querque to-day, and tell the villain he may come and see you
whenever he likes, and that he shall marry you whenever you
like, will that do for you 1 "

She started to her feet, and threw her left hand — Lawrence
still holding the right — upon his shoulder, looking him full in
the face.

" Will it do ? Lawrence ! Agatha always said you were
the kindest man in the world ; and I— forgive me ! — I did not
believe it, I could not understand it. Jack, Jack, we shall
be 30 happy, so happy ! He loves me, Lawrence, as much as
I love him."

The listeners in the greenhouse and the hall craned their
necks, but they could hear little, because the girl spoke low.

" Does he love you as much as you love him, Phillis 1 Does
he love you a thousand times better than you can understand 1
Why, child, you do not know what love means. Perhaps
AA

418

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

M .■

women never do quite realize what it means. Only go on be-
lieving that he loves you, and love him in return, and all will
be well with you."

" I do believe it, Lawrence ; and I love him too."

Looking through the flowers and the leaves of the conserva-
tory glared a face upon the pair strangely out of harmony with
the peace which breathed in the atmosphere of the place — a
face violently distorted by passion, a face in which every evil
feeling was at work, a face dark with rage. Phillis might have
seen the face had she loolced in that direction, but she did not ;
she held Lawrence's hand, and she was shyly pressing it in
gratitude.

"' Phillis," said Lawrence hoarsely, " Jack Dunquerque is a
lucky man. We all love you, my dear ; and I, almost as much
as Jack. But I am too old for you ; and besides, besides — "
He cleared his throat, and spoke more distinctly. " I ao love
you, however, Phillis ; a man could not be long beside you
without loving you."

There was a movement and a rustle in the leaves.

The man at the door stood bewildered. What was it all
about ? Colquhoun and a woman — not his wife — talking of
love. What love ? what woman ? And his wife in the con-
servatory, looking as he never saw her look before, and listen-
ing. What did it all mean ? what thing was coming over him 1
He pressed his hand to his forehead, trying to make out what it
all meant, for he seemed to be in a dream ; and, as before,
while he tried to shape the words in his mind for some sort of
an excuse, or a reassurance to himself, he found that no words
came, or, if any, then the wrong words.

The house was very quiet ; no sounds came from any part of
it, — the servants were resting in the kitchen, the mistress of
the house was resting in her room, after the party, — no voices
but the gentle talk of the girl and her guardian.

" Kiss me, Phillis," said Lawrence. " Then let me hold you
in my arms for once, because you are so sweet, and — and I am
your guardian, you know, and we all love you."

He drew her gently by the hands. She made no resistance ;
it seemed to her right that her guardian should kiss her if he
wished. She did not know how the touch of her hand, the
light in her eyes, the sound of her voice, were stirring in the

t :

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

419

man before her depths that he thought long ago buried and
put away, awakening once more the possibilities, at forty, of a
youthful love.

His lips were touching her forehead, her face was close to
his, he held her two hands tight, when tlie crash of a falling
flower pot startled him, and Victoria Cassilis stood before him.

Panting, gasping for breath, with hands clenched and eyes
distended — a living statue of the femiua dcmens. For a mo-
ment she paused to take breath, and then, with a wave of her
hand which was grand because it was natural and worthy of
Eachel — because you may see it any day among the untutored
beauties of Whitechapel, among the gipsy camps, or in the vil-
lages where Hindoo women live and quarrel — Victoria Cassilis
for once in her life was herself, and acted superbly, because she
did not act at all.

"Victoria ! " The word came from Lawrence.

Phillis, with a little cry of terror, clung tightly to her guard-
ian's arm.

" Leave him ! " cried the angry woman. " Do you hear 1 —
leave him ! "

" Better go, Phillis," said Lawrence.

At the prospect of battle the real nature of the man asserted
itself. He drew himself erect, and met her wild eyes with a
steady gaze, which had neither terror nor surprise in it — a gaze
such as a mad doctor might practise upon his patients, a look
which calms the wildest outbreaks, because it sees in them no-
thing but what it expected to find, and is only sorry.

" No ! she shall not go," said Victoria, sweeping her skirts
behind her with a splendid movement from her feet ; " she
shall not go until she has heard me firsf. You dare to make
love to this girl, this school-girl, before my very eyes. She
shall know, she shall know our secret ! "

" Victoria," said Lawrence calmly, " you do not understand
what you are saying. Otvr secret 1 Say your secret, and be
careful."

The door moved an inch or two ; the
it was shaking in every limb. " Their
He was going to learn at last ; he was going to find the truth ;
he was going — And here a sudden thought struck him that he
had neglected his aff'airs of late, and that, thi* business once got

man standing behind
secret ? her secret I "

I 1

420

THE GOLDEN BUTTEKFLY.

I hi;

t
.

through, he must look into things again ; a thought without
words, because, somehow, just then he had no words — he had
forgotten them all.

The writer of the anonymous letters had done much mischief,
as she hoped to do. People who write anonymous letters gen-
erally contrive so much. Unhappily, the beginning of mischief
is like the boring of a hole in a dam or dyke, because very
soon, instead of a trickling rivulet of water, you get a gigantic
inundation. Nothing is easier than to have your revenge ;
only it is so very difficult to calculate the after consequences of
revenge. If the writer of the letters had known what was
going to happen in consequence, most likely they would never
have been written.

" Their secret ? her secret ? " He listened with all his might.
But Victoria, his wife Victoria, spoke out clearly ; he could
hear without straining his ears.

" Be careful," repeated Lawrence.

" I shall not be careful ; the time is past for care. You have
sneered and scoifed at me ; you have insulted me ; you have
refused almost to know me, — all that I have borne, but this I
ivill not bear."

" Phillis Fleming." She turned to the girl. Phiiiis did not
shrink or cower before her ; on the contrary, she stood like
Lawrence, calm and quiet, to face the storm, whatever storm
might be brewing. " This man takes you in his arms and
kisses you. He says he loves you : he dares to tell you he
loves you. No doubt you are flattered. You have had the
men round you all day long, and now you have the best of
them at your feet, alone, when they are gone. Well, the man
you want to catch, the excellent parti you and Agatha would
like to trap, the man who stands there "

" Victoria, there is still time to stop," said Lawrence calmly.

" That man is my husband ! "

Phillis looked from one to the other, understanding nothing.
The man stood quietly stroking his great beard with his fingers,
and looking straight at Mrs. Cassilis.

" My husband. We were married six years ago and more.
We were married in Scotland, privately ; but he is my husband,
and five days after our wedding he left me. Is that true 1 "

" Perfectly. You have forgotten nothing, except the reason

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY

421

could

of my departure. If you think it worth while troubling Phil-

lis with that, why "

" We quarrolled ; that was the reasoti. He used cruel and
bitter language. He gave me back my liberty."

*srr

" We separated, Phillis, after a row, the like of which you
may conceive by remembering that Mrs. Cassilis was then six
years younger, and even more ready for such encounters than
at present. We separated ; we agreed that things should go
on as if the marriage, which was no marriage, had never taken
place. Janet, the maid, was to be trusted. She stayed with
her mist: ess ; I went abroad. And then I heard by accident
that my wife had taken the liberty I gave her, in its fullest
sense, by marrying again. Then I came home, because I
thought that chapter was closed ; but it was not, you see ; and
for her sake I wish I had stayed in America."

Mrs. Cassilis listened as if she did not hear a word ; then she
went on.

" He is my husband still. I can claim him when I want
him ; and I claim him now. I say, Lawrence, so long as I live
you shall marry no other woman. You are mine ; whatever hap-
pens, you are mine."

The sight of the man, callous, immovable, suddenly seemed
to terrify her. She sank weeping at his knees.

" Lawrence, forgive me, forgive me ! Take me away. I
never loved any one but you. Forgive me ! "

He made no answer or any sign.

" Let me go with you, somewhere, out of this place ; let us
go away together, we two. I have never loved any one but
you — never any one but you, but you."

She broke into a passion of sobs. When she looked up, it
was to meet the white face of Gabriel Cassilis. He was stoop-
ing over her, his hands spread out helplessly, his form quiver-
ing,his lips trying to utter something, but no sound came through
them. Beyond stood Lawrence, still with the look of watch-
ful determination which had broken down her rage. Then she
sprang to her feet.

•' You here % Then you know all. Tt is true ; that is my
legal husband. For two years and more my life has been a lie.
Stand back, and let me go to my husband ! "

But he stood between Colquhoun and herself. Lawrence saw

422

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

with a suflflon terror th.it something liarl happened to the man.
He expected an outbur.stof wratli, but no wrath came. Gabriel
Cassilis tiiriieil his head from one to the otlier, and presently
said in a trembling voice,

" A fine day, and seasonable weather for the time of year."

" Good God ! " cried Lawrence, *' you have destroyed his
reason ! "

Gabriel Cassilis shook his head, and began again,

" A fine dav, and seasonable — "

Here he threw himself upon the nearest chair, and buried
his face in his hands.

CHAPTER XLH.

"Then a.habbled of preen fields."

ND then there was silence. Which of them was to
speak 1 Not the woman who had wrought this mis-
chief ; not the man who knew of the wickedness but
had not spoken ; not the innocent girl who only perceived that
something dreadful — something beyond the ordinary run of
dreadful events — had happened, and that Victoria Cassilis
looked out of her senses. Lawrence Colquhoun stood unmoved
by her tears ; his face was harden*ed ; it bore a look beneath
which the guilty woman cowered Yet she looked at him, and
not at her husband.

Presently Colquhoun spoke. His voice was harsh, and his
words were a command.

"Go home," he said to Victoria. " There is no more mis-
chief for you to do — go ! "

She obeyed without a word. She threw the light wrapper
which she carried on her arm round her slender neck, and
walked away, restored, to outward seeming, to all her calm
and stately coldness. The coachman and footman noticed no-
thing. If any of her acquaintances passed her on the road,
they saw no change in her. The woman was impassive and
impenetrable.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLr.

423

Did she love Colquhoun ? No one knows. She loved to
feel that she had iiim in her power ; she was driven to a mad
jealousy when that power slipped quite away ; and, although
she had broken the vows which both swore once to keep, she
could not bear even to think that he should do the same. And
she did despise her husband, the man of shares, companies,
and stocks. But could she love Colquhoun ? Such a woman
may feel the passion of jealousy ; she may rejoice in the admira-
tion which gratifies her vanity ; but she is far too cold and
selfish for love. It is an artful fable of the ancients which
makes Narcissus pine away and die hr the loss of his own
image, for thereby they teach the g .eiu lesson that he who loves
himself destroys himself.

The carriage wheels crunched over the gravel, and Gabriel
Cassilis raised a pale and trembling face — a face with so much
desolation and horror, such a piteous gaze of questioning re-
proach at Colquhoun, that the man's heart melted within him.
He seemed to Lave grown old suddenly; his hair looked
whiter ; he trembled as one who has the palsy ; and his eyes
mutely asked the question, " Is this thing true 1 "

Lawrence Colquhoun made answer. His voice was low and
gentle ; his eyes were filled with tears.

" It is true, Mr. Cassilis. God knows I would have spared
you the knowledge. But it is true."

Gabriel Cassilis opened his lips as if to speak. But he re-
frained, stopping suddenly because he recollected that he could
no longer utter what he wished to say. Then he touched his
mouth with his fingers like a dumb man. He was worse than
a dumb man who cannot speak at al!, because his tongue, if he
allowed it. uttered words which had no connection with his
thoughts. Men that have been called possessed of the devil
have knelt at altars, uttering blasphemous impieties when their
souls were full of prayer.

" Do you understand me, Mr. Cassilis ? Do you comprehend
what I am saving 1 "

He nodded his head.

Colquhoun took a piece of notepaper from the writing-table,
and laid it before him with a pencil. Mr. Cassilis grasped the
pencil eagerly, and began to write. From his fingers, as from
his tongue, came the sentence which he did not wish to write :

" A fine day and seasonable weather for the time of year."

424

THE OOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

> i

I %

Hj) lookcHl at this result with sorrowful heart, and showed it
to Colquhouii, shaking his head.

" Good heavens ! " cried Colquhoun, " his mind is gone."

Gabriel Cassilis touched him on the arm and shook his
head.

" He understands you, Lawrence," said Phillis ; " but he
cannot explain himself. Something has gone wrong with him
which we do not know."

Gabriel Cassilis nodded gratefully to Phillis.

*' Then, Mr. Cassilis," Colquhoun began, " it is right that
you should know all. Six years ago I followed Victoria Pen-
gelley into Scotland. We were married privately at a regis-
trar's office, under assumed names. If you ever want to know
where and by what names, you have only to ask me, and I will
tell you. There were reasons, she said, — I never quite under-
stood what they were, but she chose to be a JiUe romanesqiie at
the time, — why the marriage should be kept secret. After the
wedding ceremony — such as it was — she left the office with
her maid, who was the only witness, and returned to the friends
with whom she was staying. I met her every day ; but always
in that house and among other people. A few days passed.
She would not, for some whim of her own, allow the marriage
to be disclosed. We quarrelled for that, and other reasons —
my fault, possibly. Good God ! what a honeymoon ! To meet
the woman you love — your bride — in society; if for half an
hour alone, then in the solitude of open observation ; to quar-
rel like people who have been married for forty years — Well,
perhaps it was my fault. On the fifth day we agreed to let
things be as if they had never been. I left my bride, who was
not my wife, in anger. We used bitter words — perhaps T the
bitterest. And when we parted, I bade her go back to her old
life as if nothing had been promised on either side. I said she
should be free ; that I would never claim the power and the
rights given me by a form of words ; that she might marry
again ; that, to leave her the more free, I would go away and
never return till she was married, or till she gave me leave. I
was away for four years ; and then I saAV the announcement of
her marriage in the paper, and I returned. That is the bare
history, Mr. Cassilis. Since my return, on my honour as a
gentleman, you have had no cause for jealousy in my behaviour

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

425

wed it

fne."
)k his

)ut he
th him

It that
Pen-

towards — your wife, not mine. Remember, Mr. Cassilis, wliat-
ever else *nay be said, she never was n)y wife. And yet, in the
eyes of the law, I suppose, she is my wife still. And, with all
my heart, I pity you."

He stopped, and looked at the victim of the crime. Gabriel
Cassilis was staring helplessly from him to Phillis. Did he
understand 'I Not entirely, I think. Yet the words which he
had heard fell upon his heart softly, and soothed him in his
trouble. At last his eyes rested on Phillis, as if asking, as
men do in times of trouble, for the quick comprehension of a
woman.

" What can I do, Mr. Cassilis 1 " asked the girl. " If you
cannot speak, will you make some sign 1 Any little sign that
I can understand 1"

She remembered that among her lesson-books was a diction-
ar)'. She put that into his hand, and asked him to show her
in the dictionary what he wished to say.

He took the book in his trembling hands, turned over the
leaves, and, presently finding the page he wanted, ran his
fingers down the lines till they rested on a word.

Phillis read it, spelling it out in her pretty little school-girl
fashion.

" S, I, si ; L, E, N, C, E, lence — silence. Is that what you
wish to say, Mr. Cassilis ? "

He nodded.

" Silence," repeated Lawrence. " For all our sakes it is the
best — the only thing. Phillis, tell no one what you have
heard ; not even Agatha ; not even Jack Dunquerque. Or, if
you tell Jack Dunquerque, send him to me directly afterwards.
Do you promise, child 1 "

" I promise, Lawrence. I will tell no one but Jack ; and I
shall ask him first if he thinks I ought to tell him another per-
son's secret."

" Thank you, Phillis. Mr. Cassilis, there are only we three
and — and one more. You may trust Phillis when she promises
a thing ; you may trust me, for my own sake ; you may, I
hope, trust that other person. And as for me, it is my inten-
tion to leave England in a week. I deeply regret that I ever
came back to this country."

A week was too far ahead for Mr. Cassilis to look forward to

426

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

ill

in liis !i<»itation. Clearly the ono thinjo; in his niin<l at tho mo-
ment — the one possible tliin<^ — was concealment, lie took the
dictionary apjain, and found tlie word " Home."

** Will you let me Uiko. you home, sir ? " Lawrence asked.

He nodded again. There was no resentment in his face,
and none in his feeble confiding manner when he took Law-
rence's arm and leaned upon it as he crawled out to the car-
riage.

Only one sign of feeling. He took Phillis by the hand and
kissed her. When he had kissed her, he laid his finger on her
lips. And she understood his wish that no one should learn
this thing.

" Not even Agntha, Phillis," said Lawrence. " Forget, if
you can. And if \ cannot, keep silent."

They drove in ,vn together, these men with a secret be-

tween them. Lawrence made no further explanations. What
was there to explain 1 The one who suffered the most sat up-
right, looking straight before him in mut(! suffering.

It is a long drive from Twickenham to Kensington Palace
Gardens. When they arrived, Mr. Cassilis was too weak to
step out of the carriage. They helped him — Lawrence Col-
quhoun and a footman — into the hall. He was feeble with long
fasting as much as from the effects of this dreadful shock.

They carried him to his study. Among the servants who
looked on was Tomlinson, the middle-aged maid with the harsh
face. She knew that her bolt had fallen at last ; and she saw,
too, that it had fallen upon the wrong person, for upstairs sat
her mistress, calm, cold, and collected. She came home look-
ing pale and a little worn ; fatigued, perhaps, with the constant
round of engagements, though the season was little more than
half over. She dressed in gentle silence, which Tomlinson
could not understand. She went down to dinner alone, and
presently went to her drawing-room, where she sat in the win-
dow, and thought.

There Colquhoun found her.

" I have told him all," he said. " Your words told him
only half, and yet too much. You were never my wife, as you
know, and never will be, though the Law may make you take
my name. Cruel and heartless woman 1 to gratify an insensate
jeaiou.sy you have destroyed your husband."

THE OOLDKN HrTTF.RFLY

42:

|jo mo-
)k tliH

led.
faco,
Law-
10 car-

nl nml
m her

" la ho — ifi lie — 'lend ?" she cried. Mlnif)st as if shr \visl\«Ml
he were.

" No ; lie is not dead ; he is „uiiick witli some tit. lie can-
not speak. Learn, now that yo>'r jealousy was witliout founda-
tion. Phillis will marry Dunq lerque. As for me, I can
never marry, as you know."

'* He is not dead ! " she echoed, taking no notice of the last
words. Indeed, Phillis was quite out of her thou<:hts now.
" Does he wish to see me ? "

" No ; you must not, at present, attempt to see him."

" What will they do to me, Lawrence ?" she asked again.
" What can they do ? 1 did not mean him to hear. It was
all to frighten you."

" To frighten me ! What they can do, Mrs. Cassilis, is to
put you in the prisoner's box and ine in the witness box.
What he wants to do, so far as we can yet understand, is to
keep silence."

" What is the good of that 1 He will cry his wrongs all over
the town, and Phillis will tell everybody."

" Phillis will tell no one, no one — not even Agatha. It was
lucky that Agatha heard nothing ; she was up-stairs, lying down
after her party. Will you keep silence ? "

" Of course I .shall. What else is there /'or m(^ to do 1 "

" For the sake of your husband ; for the sake of your boy — "

" It is for my own sake, Lawrence," she interrupted coldly.

" I beg your pardon. I ought to have known by this time
that you would have acted for your own sake only. Victoria,
it was an evil day for me when I met you ; it was a worse day
when I consented to a secret marriage, which was no marriage,
when there was lo reason for any secrecy ; it was the worst
day of all when I ansvvered your letter, and came here to see
you. Every day we have met has produced more recrimina-
tion. That wou^ "1 not have mattered, but for the mischief our
meeting has wrought upon your husband. I pray that we may
never in this world meet again."

He was gone, and Victoria Cassilis has not met him since,
nor do I think now that she ever will meet him again.

The summer night closed in ; the moonlight came up and
shone upon the Park before her, laying silvery patches of light
in tens of thousands upon the young leaves of the trees, and

i'l

428

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

darkening the shadows a deeper black by way of contrast. They
brought her tea and lights ; then they came for orders. There
were none ; she would not go out that night. At eleven Tom-
linson came. .

" I want nothing, Tomlinson. You need not wait up ; I shall
not want you this evening. "

" Yes, madam ; no, madam. Mr. Oassilis is asleep, madam."

" Let some one sit up with him. See to that, Tomlinson ;
and don't let him be disturbed."

" I will sit ip with him myself, madam." Tomlinson was
anxious to get to the bottom of the thing. What mischief had
been done, and how far was it her own doing ? To persons
who want revenge these are very important questions, when
mischief has actually beer perpetrated.

Then Victoria was left alone. In that great house, with its
troop of servants and nurses, with her husband and child,
there was no one who cared to know what she was doing. The
master was not popular, because he simply regarded every
servant as a machine ; but at least he was just, and he paid well,
and the house, from the point of view likelj'^ to be taken by Mr.
Plush and Miss Hairpin, was a comfortable oue. The mictress
of the house was unpopular. Her temper at times was intoler-
able, her treatment of servants showed no consideration ; and
the womenfolk regarded the neglect of her own child with
the horror of such neglect in which the Englishwoman
of all ranks is trained. So she was alone, and remained alone,
the hands of the clock went round and round ; the moon went
down, and over the garden lay the soft sepia twilight of June ;
the lamp on the little table at her elbow went out ; but she sat
still, hands crossed in her lap, looking out of window, and think-
ing. '

She saw, but sho did not feel the wickedness of it, a cold and
selfish girl ripening into a cold and selfish woman — one
to whom the outer world Was as a panorama of mov-
ing objects, meaning nothing and having no connection
with herself. Like one blind, deaf, and dumb, she moved among
the mobs who danced and sang, or who grovelled and wept.
She had no tears to help the sufferers, and no smiles to encour-
age the happy ; she had never been able to sympathize with the
acting of a theatre or the puppets of a novel ; she was so cold

^■■HIP

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

429

'hey
'here
^oni-

Ishall

[am. '

(son ;

was
had
sons
i^hen

that she was not even critical. It seems odd, but it is really
true, that a critic may be actually too cold. She saw a mind
that, like the Indian devotee, was occupied for ever in con-
templating itself; she saw beauty which would have been
irresistible had there been one gleam, just one gleam, of womanly
tendernesss ; she saw one man after the other, first attracted
and then repelled ; and then she came to the one man who was
not repelled. There was once an unfortunate creature who
dared to make love to Diana. His fate is recorded in Lem-
pri^re's Dictionary ; also in Dr. Smith's later and more expensive
work. Lawrence Colquhoun resembled that swain, and his fate
was not unlike the classical punishment. She went through
the form of marriage with him, and then she drove him from
her by the cold wind of her own intense selfishness — a very
Mistral When he was gone she began to regret a slave of such
uncomplaining slavishness. Well, no one knew except Janet ;
Janet did not talk. It was rather a struggle, she remembered,
to take Gabriel Cassilis — rather a struggle, because Lawrence
Colquhoun might come home and tell the story, not because
there was anything morally wrong. She was most anxious to
see him when he did come home — out of curiosity, out of
jealousy, out of desire to know whether her old power was
gone ; out of fear, out of that reason which makes a criminal
seek out from time to time the scene and accomplices of his
crime, and for the thousand reasons which makes up a selfish
woman's code of conduct. It was three o'clock and daylight
when she discovered that she had really thought the whole
thing over from the beginning, and that there was nothing more
to think about, except the future — a distasteful subject to all
sinners.

" After all," she summed up as she rose to go to bed, " it is
as well. Lawrence and I should never have got along. He
is too selfish, much too selfish."

Down stairs they were watching over the stricken man. The
doctor came and felt his pulse ; he also looked wise, and wrote
things in Latin on a paper, which he gave to a servant. Then
he went away, and said he would come in the morning again.
He was a great doctor, with a title, and quite believed to know
everything; but he did not know what had befallen this
patient.

430

THE GOLDEN BUTTEEFLY.

When Gabriel Cassilis awoke there was some confusion in
his mind, and his brain was wandering — at least it appeared so,
because what he said had nothing to do with any possible wish
or thought. He rambled at large and at length ; and then he
grew angry, and then he became suddenly sorrowful, and
sighed ; then he became perfectly silent. The confused babble
of speech ceased as suddenly as it had come ; and since that
morning Gabriel Cassilis has not spoken.

It was at half-past nine that his secretary called, simul-
taneously with the doctor.

He heard something from the servants, and pushed into the
room where his chief was lying. The eyes of the sick man
opened languidly and fell upon his first officer, but they ex-
pressed no interest and asked no question.

" Ah ! " sighed Mr. Mowll, in the impatience of a sympathy
which has but little time to spare. " Will he recover, doctor 1 "

" No doubt, no doubt. This way, my dear sir." He led
the secretary out of the room. " Hush ! he understands what
is said. This is no ordinary seizure. Has he received any
shock ? "

" Shock enough to kill thirty men," said the secretary.
*' Where was he yesterday ? Why did he not say something
— do something — to avert the disaster 1 "

"0! Then* the shock has been of a financial kind? I
gathered from Mr. Colquhoun that it was of a family nature —
something sudden and distressing."

" Family nature ! " echoed the secretary. " Who ever heard
of Mr. Cassilis worrying himself about family matters ? No,
sir ; when a man is ruined he has no time to bother about family
matters ? "

" Ruined ? The great Mr. Gabriel Cassilis ruii.ed 1 "

*' I should say so, and I ought to know. They say so in the
City ; they will say so to-night in the papers. If he were well
and able to face things, there might be— no, even then there
could be no hope. Settling day this very morning ; and a pretty
settling it is."

"Whatever day it is," saidthedoctor,"No Icannothave himdis-
turbed. You may return in three or four hours if you like, and
then perhaps he may be able to speak to you. Just now, leave
}iim in peace."

What had happened was this :

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

431

\on. m
'd so,

wish
|en he

and
ibbJe

that

liniul-

the
man
y ex-

When Mr. Cassilis caused to be circulated a certain pamphlet
which we have heard of, impugning the resources of the Republic
of Eldorado, he wished the stock to go down. It did go down,
and he bought in — bought in so largely that he held two mil-
lions of the stock. Men in his position do not buy large quanti-
ties of stock without affecting the price — Stock Exchange
transactions are not secret — and Eldorado stock went up. This
was what Gabriel Cassilis naturally desired. Also the letter of
El Senor Don Bellaco de Carambola to the Times, showing the
admirable way in which Eldorado loans were received and
administered, helped. The stock went up from 64, at which
price Gabriel Cassilis bought in, to 75, at which he should
have sold. Had he done so at the right moment, he would
have realized the very handsome sum of two hundred and
sixty thousand pounds ; but the trouble of the letters came, and
prevented him from acting.

While his mind was agitated by these — agitated, as we have
seen, to such an extent that he could no longer think or work,
or attend to any kind of business — there arrived for him tele-
gram after telegram, in his own cipher from America. These
lay unopened. It was disastrous, because they announced
beforehand the fact which only his correspondent knew —
the Eldorado bonds were no longer to be paid.

That fact was now public. It was made known by all the
papers that Eldorado, having paid the interest out of the money
borrowed, had no further resources whatever, and could pay
no more. It was stated in leading articles that England should
have known all along what a miserable country Eldorado is.
The British public were warned too late not to trust in Eldo-
rado promises any more ; and the unfortunates who held Eldo-
rado stock were actuated by one common impulse to sell, and
no one would buy. It was absurd to quote Eldorado bonds at
anything ; and the great financier had to meet his engagements
by finding the difference between stock at 64 and stock at next
to nothing for two millions.

Gabriel Cassilis was consequently ruined. When it became
known that he had some sort of stroke, people said it was the
shock of the fatal news. He made the one mistake of an
otherwise faultless career, they said to each other, in trusting
Eldorado, and his brain could not stand the blow. When the

432

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

secretary, who understood the cipher, came to open the letters
and telegrams, he left oflf talking about the fatal shock of the
news. It must have been something else — something he knew
nothing of, because he saw the blow might have been averted ;
and the man's mind, clear enough when he went in for a great
coup, had become unhinged during the few days before the
smash.

Ruined I Gabriel Cassilis knew nothing about the wreck of
his life, as he lay upon his bed, afraid to speak because he
would only babble incoherently. All was gone from him —
money, reputation, wife. He had no longer anything. The
anonymous correspondent had taken all away.

CHAPTER XLIII.

" This comes of airy Tisions and the whispers
Of demons like to angels. Brother, weep."

ILEAD Beck, returning from the Twickenham party
before the explosion, found Jack Dunquerque waiting
for him. As we have seen, he was not invited.

"Tell me how she was looking," he cried. "DJ'l she ask
after me ? "

" Wal, Mr. Dunquerque, I reckon you the most fortunate in-
dividual in the hull world. She looked like an angel, and she
talked about you like a — like a woman, with pretty blushes ;
and yet she wasn't ashamed neither. Seems as if bein' ashamed
isn't her strong point. And what has she got to be ashamed
of?"

" Did Colquhoun say anything 1 "

" We had already got upon the subject, and I had ventured
to make him a proposition. You see, Mr. Dunquerque " — he
grew confused, and hesitated — " fact is, I want you to look at
things just exactly as I do. I'm rich. I have struck He ;that
He is the mightiest Special Providence ever given to a single

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

433

reck of
ise he
lim —
The

man. But it's given for Purposes. And one of those Purposes
is that some of it's got to go to j'ou."

"To mel"

" To you, Mr, Dunquerque. Who fired that shot 1 Who
delivered me from the Grisly ? "

" Why, Ladds did as much as I." ^ .

Mr. Beck shook his head.

" Captain Ladds is a fine fellow." he said. " Steady as a
rock is Captain Ladds. There's nobody I'd rather march
under if we'd the war to do all over again. But the He isn't
for Captain Ladds. It isn't for him that the Golden Butterfly
fills me with yearnin's. No, sir. I owe it all to you. YouVe
.saved my life ; you've sought me out, and gone about this city
with me ; you've put me up to ropes ; you've taken me to that
sweet creature's house and made her my friend. And Mrs.
L'Estrange my friend too. If I was to turn away and forget
you, I should deserve to lose that precious Inseck."

He paused for a minute.

" I said to Mr. Colquhoun, * Mr. Dunquerque shall have half
of my pile, and more, if he wants it. Only you let him come
back again to Miss Fleming.' And he laughed in his easy
way ; there's no kind of man in the States like that Mr. Col-
quhoun — seems as if he never wants to get anything. He
laughed, and lay back on the grass. And then he said, ' My
dear fellow, let Jack come back if he likes ; there's no fighting
against fate ; only let him have the decency not to announce
his engagement till Phillis has had her first season.' Then he
drank some cider-cup, and lay back again. Mrs. Cassilis —
she's a very superior woman that, but a trifle cold, I should
say — watched him whenever he spoke. She's got a game of
her own, onless I am mistaken."

" But, Beck," Jack gasped, " I can't do this thing ; I can't
take your money,"

" 1 guess, Ar, you can, and I guess you will. Come, Mr.
Dunquerqui, say you won't go against Providence. There's
a sweet ycung lady waiting for you, and a little mountain of
dollars."

But Jack shook his head.

" I thank you all the same," he said " I shall never forget
your generosity — never. But that cannot be."
liB •

434

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

" We will leave it to Miss Fleming." said Gilead. " What
Miss Fleming says is to be, shall be — ''

He was interrupted by the arrival of two letters.
The first was from Joseph Jagenal. It informed him that
he had learned from his brothers that they had received money
from him on account of work which he thought would never
be done. He enclosed a cheque for the full amount, with
many tY ..ks for his kindness, and the earnest hope that he
would advance nothing more.

In the letter was his cheque for 400/., the amount which
the Twins had borrowed during the four weeks of their
acquaintance.

Mr. Beck put the cheque in his pocket, and opened the other
letter. It was from Cornelius, and informed him that the poem
could not possibly be finished in the time ; that it was rapidly
advancing ; but that he could not pledge himself to completing
the work by October. Also that his brother Humphrey found
himself in the same position as regarded the picture. He ended
by the original statement that Art cannot be forced.
Mr. Beck laughed. . .

" Not straight men, Mr. Dunquerque. I suspected it first
when they backed out at the dinner, and left me to do the talk.
Wal, they may be high-toned, whole-souled, and talented ; but
give me the man who works. Now, Mr. Dunquerque, if you
please, we'll go and have some dinner, and you shall talk about
Miss Fleming. And the day after to-morrow — you note that
down — I've asked Mrs. L Estrange and Miss Phillis to breakfast.
Captain Ladds is coming and Mr. Colquhoun. And you shall
sit next to her. Mrs. Cassilis is coming too. When I asked
her she wanted to know if Mr. Colquhoun was to be there. I
said yes. Then she set her lips hard, and said, * I will come,
Mr. Beck.' She isn't happy, that lady ; she's got somethin' on
her mind."

That evening Joseph Jagenal had an unpleasant duty to per-
form. It was at dinner that he spoke. The Twins were just
taking their first glass of port. He had been quite silent
through dinner, eating little. Now he looked from one to the
other without a word.

They changer^ colour. Instinctively they knew what was
coming. He said with a gulp :

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

43o

" I am sorry to find that my brothers have not been acting
honourably."

" What is this, brother Humphrey ? " asked CorneUus.

" I do not know, brother Cornelius," said the Artist.

" I will tell you," said Joseph, " what they have done. They
made a disingenuous attempt to engage the affections of a rich
young lady for the sake of her money."

" If Humphrey loved the girl— " began Cornelius.

" If Cornelius was devoted to Phillis Fleming — " began
Humphrey.

" I was not, Humphrey," said Cornelius. '' No such thing.
And I told you so."

" I never did love her," said Humphrey. " I always said it
was you."

This was undignified.

" I do not care which it was. It belongs to both. Then
you went down to her again, under the belief that she was en-
gaged to — to — the Lord knows which of you — and solemnly
broke it off."

Neither spoke this time.

'* Another thing. I regret to find that my brothers, having
made a contract for certain work with Mr. Gilead Beck, and
having been partly paid in advance, are not executing the
work."

" There, Joseph," said Humphrey, waving his hand as if
this was a matter on quite another footing, *' you must excuse
us. We know what is right in Art, if we know nothing else.
Art, Joseph, cannot be forced."

Cornelius murmured assent.

" We have our dignity to stand upon ; we retreat with dig-
nity. We say, * We will not be forced ; we will give the
world our best.'"

" ( >od," said Joseph. " That is very well ; but where is
the money 1"

Neither answered.

" 1 have returned that money ; but it is a large sum, and
you must repay me in part. Understand me, brothers. You
may stay here as long as I live ; I shall never ask more of you
than to respect the family name. There was a time when you
promised great things, and I believed in you. It is only quite

til

436

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

lately that I have learned to my sorrow that all this promise
has been for years a pretence. You sleep all day — you call it
work. You habitually drink too much at night. You, Cor-
nelius " — the Poet started — " have not put pen to paper for
years. You, Humphrey ' — the Artist hung his head — " have
neither drawn nor painted anything since you came to live
with me. I cannot make either of you work. I cannot re-
trieve the past. I cannot restore lost habits of industry. I
cannot even make you feel your fall from the promise of your
youth, or remember the hopes of our father. What I can do
is to check your intemperate habits by such means as are in
my power."

He stopped ; they were trembling violently.

" Half of the j£400 which you have drawn from Mr. Beck
will Lf> paid by household saving. W ine will disappear from
my table ; brandy -and-soda will have to be bought at your own
expense. I shall order the dinners, and I shall keep the key
of the wine-cellar."

A year has passed. The Twins have had a sad time ; they
look forward with undisguised eagerness to the return of the
years of fatness ; they have exhausted their own little income
in purchasing the means for their midnight siances ; and they
have run up a frightful score at the Carnarvon Arms.

But they still keep up bravely the pretence about their work.

CHAPTER XLIV.

" So, on the ruins he himself had made.
Sat Marius reft of all his fonner glory."

,^ , AN you understand me, sir 1 "

g^ Gabriel Cassilis sat in his own study. It was the
day after the garden-party. He slept through the
night, and in the morning rose and dressed as usual. Then he
took his seat in his customary chair at his table. Before him

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

4^7

»•

promise
call it
>u, Cor-
fper for
-" have
to live
mot re-

)try- I

(of your
can do
are in

r. Beck
r from
ur own
he key

they

of the

income

id they

' work.

3 the

the

nhe

him

lay papers, but he did not read them. He sat upright, his
frock-coat tightly buttoned across his chest, and rapped his
knuckles with his gold eyeglasses as if he was thinking.

They brought him breakfast, and he took a cup of tea. Then
he motioned them to take the things away. They gave him
the Times, and he laid it mechanically at his elbow. But he
did not speak, nor did he seem to attend to what was done
around him. And his eyes had a far-off look in them.

" Can you understand, me, sir ? "

The speaker was his secretary. He came in a cab, panting,
eager, to see if there was still any hope. Somehow or other
it was whispered already in the City that Gabriel Cassilis
had had some sort of stroke. And there was terrible news be-
sides.

Mr. Mowll asked because there was something in his patron's
face which frightened him. His eyes were changed. They
had lost the keen sharp look which in a soldier means victory ;
in a scholar, clearness of purpose ; in a priest, knowledge of
human nature and ability to use that knowledge ; in a finan-
cier, the power and intuition of success. Th?t was gone. In
its place an expression almost of childish sri'tness. And an-
other thing — the lips, once set firm and close, were parted now
and mobile.

The other things were nothing. That a man of sixty-five
should in a single night become a man of eighty ; that the
iron-gray hair should become white ; that a steady hand should
shake and straight shoulders be bent. It was the look in the
face, the far-off look which made the secretary ask that ques-
tion before he went on.

Mr. Cassilis nodded his head gently. He could understand.

" You left the telegrams unopened for a week and more,"
cried the impatient clerk. " Why — why — did you not let
me open them 1 "

There was no reply.

" If I had known, I could have acted. Even the day before
yesterday I could have acted. The news came yesterday
morning. It was all over the City by three. And Eldorados
down to nothing in a moment."

Mr. Cassilis looked a mild inquiry. No anxiety in that look
at all.

438

THE (»OLDEN BUTTEUFLY.

>aiii

" Eldorado won't pay up her interest. It's due next week.
Nothing to pay it with. Your agent in New York telegraphed
this a week ago, He's been confirming the secret every day
since. O Lord ! O Lord ! And you the only man who had
the knowledge, and all that stake in it ! Can't you speak, sir 1 "

For his master's silence was terrible to him.

" Listen, then. Ten days ago Eldorados went down after
Wylie's pamphlet. You told him what to write and you paid
him, just as you did last year. But you tried to hide it from
me. That was wrong, sir. I've served you faithfully for
twenty years. But never mind that. You bought in at 64.
Then the Eldorado minister wrote to the paper. Stock went
np to 75. You stood to win, only the day before yesterday,
260,000/. ; more than a quarter of a million. Yesterday by
three they were down to 16. This morning they are down to
8. And It's settling-day, and you lose — you lose — your all.
O, what a day, what a day ! "

Still no complaint, not even a sigh from the patient man in
the Windsor chair. Only that gentle tapping of the knuckles
and that far-off look.

" The great name of Gabriel Oassilis dragged in the dust !
All your reputation gone — the whole work of your life — 0, sir,
can't you feel even that ? Can't you feel the dreadful end of
it fall — Gabriel Cassilis, the great Gabriel Cassilis, a Lame
Duck ! "

Not even that. The work of his life was forgotten with all
its hopes, and the great financier, listening to his clerk with
the polite impatience of one who listens to a wearisome ser-
mon, was trying to understand what was the meaning of that
black shadow which lay upon his mind and made him uneasy.
For the rest a perfect calm in his brain.

" People will say it was the shock of the Eldorado smash.
Well, sir, it wasn't that ; I know so much ; but it's best to let
people think so. If you haven't a penny left in the world you
have your character, and that's as liigh as ever.

" Fortunately," Mr. MowU went on, " my own little savings
were not in Eldorado stock. But my employment is gone, I
suppose. You will recommend me, I hope, sir. And I do
think that I've got some little reputation in the City."

It was not for want of asserting himself that this worthy

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

4.S9

week,
[raphed
jry (lay
yio had
[, sir ? "

In after
W paid
It from

fly for

"at 64.
went
^erday,

[lay by

•wn to

^ur alJ.

man failed, at any rate, of achieving his reputation. For twenty
years he had magnified his office as confidential adviser of a
great City light ; among his friends and in his usual haunts he
successfully posed as one burdened with the weight of affairs,
laden with responsibility, and at all times oppressed by the im-
portance of his thoughts. He carried a pocket book which shut
with a clasp ; in the midst of a conversation he would stop,
beccjme abstracted, rush at the pocket-book, so to speak, confide
a jotting to its care, shut it with a snap, and then go on with a
smile and an excuse. Some said that he stood in with Gabriel
Cassilis ; all thought that he shared his secrets, and gave advice
when asked for it.

As a matter of fact, he was a clerk, and had always been a
clerk ; but he was a clerk who knew a few things which might
have been awkward. if told generally. He had a fair salary,
but no confidence, no advice, and not much more real know-
ledge of what his chief was doing than any outsider. And in
this tremendous smash it was a great consolation to him to re-
flect that the liabilities represented an amount for which it was
really a credit to fail.

Mr. Mowll has since got another place where the transactions
are not so large, but perhaps his personal emoluments greater.
In the evenings he will talk of the great failure.

" We stood to win," he will say, leaning back with a superior
smile, — " we stood to win 260,000/. We lost a million and a
quarter. I told him not to hang on too long. Against my
advice he did. I remember — ah, only four days before it hap-
pened — he said to me, * Mowll, my boy,' he said, ' I've never
known you wrong yet. But for once I fancy my own opinion.
We've worked together for twenty years,' he said, * and you've
the clearest head of any man I ever saw,' he said. ' But here
I think you're wrong. And I shall hold on for another day or
two,' he said. .Ah, little he knew what Ja day or two would
bring forth ! And he hasn't spoken since. Plays with his
little boy, and goes about in a Bath-chair. What a man he
was ! and what a pair — if I may say so — we made between us
among the bulls and the bears ! Dear me, dear me ! "

It may be mentioned at once that everything was at once
given up ; the house in Kensington-palace-gardens, with its
costly furniture, its carriages, plate, library, and pictures. Mr.

440

THE GOLDEN HUTTEIIFLY.

Cassilis signed whatever documents were brought for signature
without hesitation, provided a copy of his own signature was
placed before him. Otlierwise lie could not write his name.

And never a single word of lamentation, reproach,or sorrow.
The past was, and is still, dead to him ; all the past except one
thing, and that is ever with him.

For sixty years of his life, this man of the City,whose whole
desire was to make money, to win in the game which he
played with rare success and skill, regarded bankruptcy arf the
one thing to be dreaded, or at least to be looked upon, because
it was absurd to dread it, as a thing bringing with it the whole
of dishonour. Not to meet your engagements was to be in
some sort a criminal. And now he was proclaimed as one who
could not meet his engagements.

If he understood what iiad befallen him he did not care about
''. The trouble was slight indeed in comparison with the other
disaster. The honour of his wife and the legitimacy of his
child' — these were gone ; and the man felt what it is that is
greater than money gained or money lost.

The blow which fell upon him left his brain clear while it
changed the whole course of his thoughts and deprived him
partially of memory. But it destroyed his power of speech.
That rare and wonderful disease which seems to attack none
but the strongest, which separates the brain from the tongue,
takes away the knowledge and the sense of language, and kills
the power of connecting words with things, while it leaves that
of understanding what is said — the disease which doctors call
Aphasia — was upon Mr. Gabriel Cassilis.

In old men this is an incurable disease. Gabriel Cassilis
will never speak again. He can read, listen, and understand,
but he can frame no words with his lips nor write them with
his hand. He is a prisoner who has free use of his limbs. He
is separated from the world by a greater gulf than that which
divides the blind and the deaf from the rest of us, because he
cannot make known his thoughts, his wants, or his wishes.

It took some time to discover what was the matter with him.
Patients are not often found suffering from aphasia, and para-
lysis was the first name given to his disease.

But it was very early found out that Mr. Cassilis understood
all that was said to him, and by degrees they learned what he
liked and what he disliked.

THE CJOLDKN BUTTEUFLY.

Victoria Cassilis sat up-stairs, waiting for something — slip
knew not what — to happen. He-r mai(l told her tliat Mr.
Cassilis was ill ; she made no reply ; she did not ask to see
him ; she <lid not ask for any further news of him. She sat in
her own room for two days waitin::;.

Then Joseph Jagenal asked if he might see her.

She refused at first ; but on hearing that he j>roposed to stay
in the house till she could receive him, she gave way.

He came from Lawrence, j)erhaps. Ho would bring her a
message of some kind ; probably a menace.

" You have something to say to me, Mr. Jagenal ] " Her
face was set hard, but her eyes were wistful. Ha saw that she
was afraid. When a woman is afraid, you may make her do
pretty well w'.iat you please.

" 1 have a good deal to tell you, Mrs. Cassilis ; and I am
sorry to say it is of an unpleasant nature.

" I have heard," he went on, '* from Mr. Colquhoun that you
made a remarkable statement in the presence of Miss Fleming,
and in the hearing of Mr. Cassilis."

" Lawrence informed you correctly, I have no doubt," she
replied coldly.

" That statement of course was imtrue," said Joseph, know-
ing that no record ever was more true. " And therefore I
venture to advise — "

" On the part of Lawrence V

" In the name of Mr. Colquhoun partly ; partly in your own
interest — "

"Go on, if you please. Mr. Jagenal."

"Believing that statement to be untrue," he repeated, "for
otherwise I could not give this advice, I reccommend to all
parties concerned — silence. Your husband's paralysis is attri-
buted to the shock of his bankruptcy — "

" His what 1 " cried Victoria, who had heard as yet nothing
of the City disaster.

" His bankruptcy. Mr. Cassilis is ruined."

".Kuined! Mr. Cassilis!"

She was startled out of herself.

Ruined ! The thought of such disaster had never once
crossed her brains. Ruined ! That Colossus of wealth — the
man whom she married for his money, while secretly she des^
pised his power of accumulating money !

> I

11^

442

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

" He is ruined, Mrs. Cassilis, and hopelessly. I have read
certain papers which he put into my hands this morning. It
is clear to me that his mind has been for some weeks agitated by
certain anonymous letters which came to him every day, afid
accused you — pardon me, Mrs. Cassilis — accused you of — of
infidelity. The letters state that there is a secret of some kind
connected with your former acquaintance with Mr. Colquhoun ;
that you have been lately in the habit of receiving him or
meeting him every day ; that you were in his chambers one
evening when Mr. Cassilis called ; with other particulars ex-
tremely calculated to excite jealousy and suspicion. Lastly, he
was sent by the writer to Twickenham. The rest, I believe,
you know."

She made no reply.

" There can be no doubt, not the least doubt, that had your
husband's mind been untroubled, this would never have hap-
pened. The disaster is due to his jealousy."

" I could kill her !" said Mrs. Cassilis, clenching her fist. " I
could kill her ! "

^' Kill whom?"

" The woman who wrote those letters. It was a woman.
No man could have done such a thing. A woman's trick. Go
on.

" There is nothing more to say. How far other people are
involved with your husband, I cannot tell. I am going now
into the City to find out if I can. Your wild words, Mrs. Cas-
silis, and your unguarded conduct have brought about misfor-
tunes on which you little calculated. But I am not here to re-
proach you."

"You are my husband's man of business, I suppose," she re-
plied coldly — " a paid servant of his. What you say has no
importance, nor what you think. What did Lawrence bid you
tell me?"

Joseph Jagenal's face clouded for a moment. But what was
the good of feeling resentment with such a woman, and in such
a miserable business ?

" You have two courses open to you,'' he went on. " You
may, by repeating the confession you made in the hearing of
Mr. Cassilis, draw upon yourself such punishment as the Law,
provided the confession be true, can inflict. That will be ^

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

443

fers one
lars ex-
5tly, he
elieve.

d your
'^e hap-

it.

((

voman.

^. Go

)le are
g now
8. Oas-
nisfor-
to rti-

'lie re-
las no
dyou

'> was
such

You

'g of
Law,
be ft

grievous thin^ to you. It will drive you out of society, and
brand you as a criminal ; it will lock you up for two years in
prison ; it will leave a stigma never to be forgotten or obliter-
ated ; it means ruin far, far worse than what you have brought
on Mr. Cassilis. On the other hand, you may keep silence.
This at least will secure the legitimacy of your boy, and will
keep for you the amount settled on you at your marriage. But
you may choose. If the statement you made is true, of course
I can be no party to compounding a felony "

" And Lawrence," she interposed. " What does Lawrence
say 1 "

"In any case Mr. Colquhoun will leave England at once."

" He will marry that Phillis girl 1 Yoi. may tell him," she
hissed out, " that I will do anything and sv.ifer anything rather
than consent to his marrying her, or any one else."

" Mr. Colquhoun informs me further," pursued the crafty
lawyer, " that, for some reason only known to himself, he will
never marry during the life of a certain })erson. Phillis Flem-
ing will probably marry the Honourable Mr. Ronald Dun-
querque."

She buried her head in her hands, not to hide any emotion,
for there was none to hide, but to think. Presently she rose,
and said,

" Take me to — my husband, if you please."

Joseph Jagenal, as a lawyer, is tolerably well versed in such
wickednesses and deceptions as the human heart is capable of.
At the same time, he acknowledges to himself that the speech
made by Victoria Cassilis to her husband, and the manner in
which it was delivered, surpassed anything he had ever expe-
rienced or conceived.

Gabriel Cassilis was sitting in an arm chair near his table.
In his arms was his infant son, a child of a year olcl, for whose
amusement he was dangling a bunch of keys. The nurse was
standing beside him.

When his wife opened the door he looked up, and there
crossed his face a sudden expression of such repulsion, indigna-
tion, and horror, that the lawyer fairly expected the lady to
give way altgether. But she did not. Then Mrs. Cassilis
motioned the nurse to leave them, and Victoria said what she
had come to say. She stood at the table, in the attitude of

444

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

one who commands respect rather than one who entreats par-
don. Her accentu.ation was precise, and her words as care-
fully chosen as if she had written them down first. But her
husband held his eyes down, as if afraid of meeting her gaze.
You would have called him a culprit waiting for reproof and
punishment.

" t learn to-day for the first time that yon have suffered
from certain attacks made upon me by an anon^ ous writer;
I learn also for the first time, and to my great regiet, that you
have suffered in fortune as well as in liealth. 1 have myself
been too ill in mind and body to be told anything. 1 f»m come to
say at once that lam sorry if any rash words of mine have given
} ou pain, or any foolish actions of mine have given you reason
for jealousy. The exact truth is that Lawrer ce Colquhoun
and I were once engaged. Tlte breaking off of that engage-
ment caused me at the time the greatest unhappiness. I re-
solved then that he should never be engaged to any other girl
if 'j. could prevent it by any means in my power. My whole
action of late, which appeared to you as if I was running after
an old lover, was the prevention of his engagement, which I de-
termined to break off, with Phillis Fleming. In the heat of my
passion I used words which were not true. They occurred to
me at the moment. I said he was my husband. I meant to
have said my promised husband.

" You know now, Mr. Cassilis, the whole secret. I am d«;rj y
humiliated in having to confess my revengeful spirit. I am
})unished in your affliction."

Always herself; always her own punishment.

" We can henceforth, I presume, Mr. Cassilis, resume our
old manner of life."

Mr. Cassilis made no answer, but he patted the head of his
cliild, and Joseph Jagenal saw the tears running down his
cheeks. For h*^ knew that the woman lied to him.

** For the sake of the boy, Mr. Cassilis," the lawyer piea*led,
" let things go on as before."

He made no sign.

" Will you let me say something for you in the interest of
tl>e child ] "

He nodded.

" Then, Mrs. Cassilis, your husband conBeHtt that there shall

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

445

be no separation and no scandal. But it will be advisable for
you both that there shall be as little intercourse as possible.
Your husband will breakfast and dine by himself, and occupy
his own apartments. You are free, provided you live in the
same house and keep up appearances, to do whatever you please.
But you will not obtrude your presence upon your husband."

Mr. Cassilis nodded again. Then he sought his dictionary,
and hunted for a word. It was the word he had first found,
and was " Silence."

" Yes ; you will also observe strict silence on what has passed
at Twickenham, here or elsewhere. Should that silence not be
observed, the advisers of Mr. Cassilis will recommend such legal
measures as may be necessary."

Again Gabriel Cassilis nodded. He had not once looked up
at his wife since that first gaze, in which he concentrated the
hatred and loathing of iiis speechless soul.

" Is that all 1 " asked Victoria Cassilis. " Or have we more
arrangements 1 "

"That is all, .madam," said Joseph, opening the door with
great ceremony.

She went away as she had come, with cold haughtiness.
Nothing seemed to touch her ; not her husband's misery ; not
his ruin ; not the sight of her child. One thing only pleased
her. Lawrence Colquhoun would not marry during her life-
time. Bah ! she would live a hundred years, and he should
never marry at all.

In her own room was her maid.

"Tomlinson, ' said Mrs. Cassilis — in spite of her outward
calm, her nerves were strung to the utmost, and she felt that
sht^ must speak to some one — " Tomlinson, if a woman wrote
anonymous letters about you, if those letters brought misery
and misfortune, what would you do to that woman ? "

* I do not know, ma'am," said Tomlinson, whose cheeks
grew white.

" I will kill her, Tomlinson ! I will kill her ! I will get
those letters and prove the handwriting, and find that woman
out. I will devote my life to it, and I will have no mercy on
her when I have found her. I will kill her — somehow — by
poison — by stabbing — somehow ! Don't tremble, woman ; I
don't mean you. And, Tomlinson, forget what 1 have said."

446

THE GOLDEN BUTTEKFLY,

Tomlinson could not forget. She tottered from the room,
trembling in every limb.

The wretched maid had her revenge. In full and overflow-
ing measure. And yet she was not satisfied. The exasperat-
ing thing about revenge is that it never does satisfy, but leaves
you as at the beginning. Your enemy is crushed ; you have seen
him tied to a stake, as is the pleasant wont of the Red Indian,
and stuck arrows, knives, and red-hot things into him. These
hurt so much that he is glad to die. But he is dead, and you
can do no more to him. And it seems a pity, because if you
had kept him alive, you might have thought of other and more
dreadful ways of revenge. These doubts will occur to the most
revenge-satiated Clhristian, and they lead to self-reproach. After
all, one might just as well forgive a fellow at once.

Mrs. Cassilis was a selfish and heartless woman. All the
harm that was done to her was the loss of her great wealth.
And what had her husband done to Tomlinson that he should
be stricken 1 And what had others done who were involved
with him in the great disaster ?

Tomlinson was so terrified, however, by the look which
crossed her mistress's face tliat she went away that very even-
ing ; pretended to have received a telegram from Liverpool ;
when she got there wrote for boxes and wages, with a letter in
somebody else's writing, foi' a reason, to her mistress, and then
went to America, where she had relations. She lives now in a
city of the Western States, where her brother keeps a store.
She is a leader in her religious circle ; and I think that if she
were to see Victoria Cassilis by any accident in the streets of
that city, she would fly again, and to the farthest corners of the
earth.

So much for revenge ; and I do hope that Tomlinson's ex-
ample will be laid to heart, and pondered by other lady's-maids
whose mistresse^j are selfish and sharp-tempered.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY

447

loom.

CHAPTER XLV.

" Farewell to ull my ^rreatness."

' HE last day of Gilead Beck's wealth. He rose as uncon-
scious of his doom as tliab froHcsorae kid whose destiny
brought the tear to Delia's eye. Had he looked at the
papers he would at least have ascertained tiiat Gabriel Cassilis
was ruined. But he had a rooted dislike to newspapers and
never looked at them. He classed the editor of the Times with
Mr. Huggins of Clearville, or Mr. Van Cott of Chicago, but
supposed that he had a larger influence. Politics he despised ;
criticism was beyond him ; with social matters he had no con-
cern ; and it would wound the national self-respect were we to
explain how carelessly he regarded matters which to London-
ers seem of world-wide importance.

On this day Gilead rose early because there was a good deal
to look after. His breakfast was fixed for eleven — a real break-
fast. At six he was dressed, and making, in his mind's eye,
the arrangements for seating his guests. Mr. and Mrs. Cas-
silis, Mrs. L'Estrange and Phillis, Lawrence Colquhoun, Ladds,
and Jack Dunquerque — all his most intimate friends were com-
ing. He had also invited the Twins, but a guilty conscience
made them send an excuse. They were now sitting at home,
sober by compulsion and in grt 't wretchedness, as has been
seen.

The breakfast was to be held in the same room in which he
once entertained the men of genius, but the appointments were
difF'irent. Gilead Beck now went in for flowers to please the
ladies. Flowers in June do not savour of ostentation. Also
for fruit ; strawberries, apricots, cherries, and grapes in early
June are not things quite beyond precedent, and his conscience
acquitted him of display which might seem shoddy. And when
the table was laid, with its flowers and fruit and dainty cold
dishes garnished with all sorts of pretty things, it w||,s, he felt,
a work jf art which reflected the highest credit on himself and
everybody concerned.

448

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

Gilead Beck was at great peace with himself that morning.
He was resolved on putting into practice at once some of those
schemes which the Golden Butterfly demanded as loudly as it
could whisper. He would start that daily paper which should
be independent of commercial success ; have no advertisements j
boil down the news ; do without long leaders ; and always
speak the truth, without evasion, equivocation, suppression, or
exaggeration. A miracle in journalism. He would run that
Great National Drama which would revive the ancient glories
of the stage. And for the rest he would be guided by circum-
stances, and when a big thing had to be done he would step in
with his Pile, and do that big thing by himself.

There was in all this perhaps a little over-rating the power
of the Pile ; but Gilead Beck was, after all, only human.
Think what an inflation of dignity, brother De Pauper-et-egens,
would follow in your own case on the acquisition of fifteen
hundred pounds a day.

Another thing j^leased our Gilead. He knew that in his own
country the difficulty of getting into what he felt to be the best
society would be insuperable. The society of shoddy, the com-
panionship with the quickly grown rich, and the friendship of
the gilded bladder are in the reach of every wealthy man. But
Gilead was a man of finer feelings ; he wanted more than this ;
he wanted the friendship of those who were born in the purple
of good breeding. In New York he could not have got this.
In London he did get it. His friends were ladies and gentle-
men ; they not only tolerated him, but they liked him ; they
were people to whom he could give nothing, but they courted
his society, and this pleased him more than any other part of
his grand Luck. There was no great merit in their liking the
man. Rude as his life had been, he was gifted with the teiider-
est and kindest heart ; lowly born and roughly bred, he was
yet a man of boundless sympathies. And because he had kept
his self-respect throughout, and was ashamed of nothing, he
slipped easily and naturally into the new circle, picking up
without difficulty what was lacking of external things. Yet he
was just the same as when he landed in England ; with the
same earnest, almost solemn, way of looking ax, things ; the
same gravity ; the same twang which marked his nationality.
He a^ected nothing and pretended nothing ; he hid notliing

THK OOLDEN BUTTKKFLY.

449

rning.
those
as it
Should
lents ;
^Ivvays
\on, or
that
jlories
[rcum-
ptep in

)ower
iraan.
sgens,
ifteen

and was ashamed of nothing ; he paraded nothini?, and wanted
to be thouglit no other than the man lie was — the ex-miner,
ex-adventurer, ex-everything, who, by a hicky stroke, hit upon
He, and was living on the profits. And perhaps in all tht-
world there was no happier man than Gilcad Heck on that
bright June morning, which was to be the last day of his gran-
deur. A purling stream of content murmured and babbled
hymns of praise in his heart. H(i had no fears ; his nerves
were strong; ho expected nothing but a continuous How of
prosperity and happiness.

Tlie first to arrive was Jack Dunquerque. Now if this youth
had read the papers he would have been able to communicate
some of the fatal news. But he had not, because he was full
of Phillis. And if any rumour of the Eldorado collapse smote
his ears, it smote them unnoticed, because he did not connect
F^ldorado with Gilead Beck. What did it matter to this in-
tolerably selfish young man how many British speculators lost
their money by the Eldorado smash when he was going to meet
Phillis 1 After all, the round world and all that is therein do
really rotate about a pole — of course invisible — which goes
through every man's own centre of gravity, and sticks out in a
manner which may be felt by him. And the reason why men
have so many different opinions is, I am persuaded, this extra-
ordinary, miraculous, multitudinous, simultaneous revolution
of the earth upon her million axes. Enough for Jack that
Phillis was coming — Phillis whom he had n()t seen sincc^ tlie
discovery — more memorable to him than any made by Traveller
or Physicist — of the Coping-stone.

Jack came smiling and bounding up the stairs with agile
spring — a good half-hour before the time. Perhaps Phillis
might be before him. But she was not.

Then came Ladds. Gilead Beck saw that there was some
trouble upon him, but forebore to ask him what it was. He
wore his heavy inscrutable look, such as that with which he
had been wont to meet gambling losses, untoward telegrams
from Newmarket, and other buffetings of Fate.

Then came a letter from Mrs. Cassilis. Her husband was
ill, and therefore she could not come.

Then came a letter from Lawrence Colquhoun. He had

;li

'il I

450

THK OOI.DKN BUTTKHFLY.

most important business in the City, and therefore he coulil
not come.

'•Seems like the Wedding-feast," said Gilead irreverently.
He was a little disconcerted by the defection of so many guests ;
but he had a leaf taken out of the table, and cheerfully waited
for the remaining two.

They came at last, and 1 think the hearts of all three leaped
within them at sight of Phillis's happy face. If it was sweet
before, when Jack first met her, v-'itli the mysterious look of
childhood on it, it was far sweeter now with the bloom and
blush of conscious womanhood, the modest light 'f maidenly
joy with which she met her lover. Jack rushed, so to speak,
at her hand, and held it with a ridiculous shamelessness only
excusable on the ground that they were almost in a family
circle. Then Phillis shook hands with Gilead Beck, with a
smile of gratitude which meant a good deal more than pre-
liminary thanks for the coming breakfast. Then it came to
Lad<ls' turn. Ho turned very red — I do not know why — and
whispered in his deepest base

" Kno*v all about it. Lucky beggar, Jack ! Wish you
hapi>iness 1 "

" Thank you, Ca^jtain Ladds," Phillis replied, in her fearless
frifthion. " I am very happy already. And so is Jack."

** Wanted yesterday," Ladds went on, in the same deep
whisper — " wanted yesterday to offer some slight token of
regard — found I couldn't — no more money — Eldorado smash —
all gone — looked in boxes — found ring — once my mother's,
Will you accept it ? "

Phillis understood the ring, but she did not understand the
speech. It was one of those old-fashioned rings set in pearls
and brilliants. She was not by any means above admiring
rings, and she accepted it with a cheerful alacrity.

" Sell up," Ladds growled — " go away — do something —
earn my daily crust — "

'* But I don't understand— '' she interrupted.

" Never mind. Tell you after breakfast. Tell you all pre-
sently."

And then they went to breakfast.

It was rather a silent party. Ladds was, as might have been
expected of a man who had lost his all, disposed to taciturnity.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.

451

Jack and Phillis were too happy to talk mu'.'';. Agatlia
L'Estrange and the host had all the conversation to tliemselves.

Agatha asked him if the dainty spread before tiiom was the
usual method of breakfast in America. Gilead Beck replied
tiiat of late years he had been accustomed to ciii a chunk of
cold pork with a piece of bread a substantial breakfast, and tliat
the same luxuries furnished him, as, a rule v/ith dinner.

•'The old life," he said, "had its poin*:;!, I confess. For
those who love cold pork it was one long rouiul of delirious joy.
And there was always the future to look forward to. Now tlu'
future has come I like it better. My experience, Mrs. L'Estrange,
is that you may divide men into two classes — those who've got
a future, and those who haven't. I belonged to th(> class wlio
had a future. Sometimes we miss it. And 1 feel like to cry
whenever I think of the boys with a bright future before them,
who fell in the War at my side, not in tens, but in hundred^;.
Sometimes v/e find it. I found it when I struck He. And
always, for those men, wluitherthe future come early or whether
it come late, it lies bright and shinin' before them, and so they
never lose hope."

" And have women no future as well as men, Mr. Beck / "
asked Phillis.

" I don't know, Miss Fleming. But 1 hope you have. Be-
fore my Golden Butterfly came to me I was lookin' forward for
my future, and I knew it was bound to come in some form or
other. I looked forward for thirty years ; my youth was gone
when it came, and half my manhood. But it is here."

'• Perhaps, Mr. Beck," said Mrs. L'Estrange, who was a little
rotwo in her morality, " it is well that this great fortune diti
not come to you when you were younger."

" You think that, madam 1 Perhaps it is so. To fool around
New York would bo a poor return for the Luck of the Butter-
fly. Yes ; better as it is. Providence knows very well what
to be abou*- ; it don't need promptin' from us. And impatience
is no manner of use, not the least use in the world. At the
right time the Luck comes ; at the right time the Luck will go.
Yes " — he looked solemnly round the table — " some day the
Luck is bound to go. When it goes, I hope I shall be prepared
for the change. But if it goes to-morrow, it cannot take away,
Mrs. L'Estrange, the memory of these few months, your friend-

4o2

THK GOLDEN lU'TTKHFLY.

ship, and yours, Miss Fleming. There's things which do not
depend upon He : more things than 1 thought formerly ; things
wliich money cannot do. More tlian once 1 thought my pile
ought to find it easy to do sornethin' useful before the time
comes. But the world is a more tangled web than 1 used to
think."

til*

poor

among

us," said the coed

** There are always
Agatha.

."Yes, madam, that is true. And there always will be.
More you give to the poor, more you make them poor. There's
f(»lks goin' up and folks goin' down. Vou in P^ngland help the
folks goin' down. You make th(;m fall ea.sy. 1 want to help
the folks goin' up,"

At this moment a telegram was brought him.

It was from his London banker.*:. They informed him that
a cheque for a small sum had been presented, but that his
l)alance was alread}' overdrawn ; and that they had received ;i
telegram from New York, on which they would be glad to see
him.

Gilead Beck read it, and could not understand it. The checpie
was for his own weekly account at the hotel.

He laid the letter aside, and went on with his exposition of
the duties and responsibilities of wealth. He pointed out to
Mrs. L'Esti ange, who alone listened to him — Jack was whisper-
ing to Phillis, and Ladds was absorbed in thoughts of his own
— that when he airived in London he was possessed with the
idea that all he had to do, in order to ])rotect, benefit, and
.idvance humanity, was to found a series of institutions ; that,
in the pursuit of this idea, he had visited and examined all the
British institutions which he could hear of; and that his con-
clusions were that they were all a failure.

'• For," he concluded, " Avhat have you done 1 Your citizens
need not save money, because a hospital, a church, an alms-
house, a di pensary, and a workhoust stand in every parish
they need not be moral, because there's homes for the repent-
ant ill every other street. All around they are protected by
charity and the State. Even if they gti knocked down in the
street, they need not fight, because there's a policeman within
easy hail. You breed your poor, Mrs. L'E8trange,and you take
almighty care to keep them always with you. In my country

■<_

THK (}<)IJ)EN IIUTTEHFLY.

4.3;i

no not

things

ly pile

le time

Ised to

good

nil be.

'lie re's

^Ip the

o help

lu- wiu) can work and won't work goes to the wall ; lie litarvej*,
an<1 agtHxl thing too. Here he gets fat.

'• Evt*ry way," he went on, "you encourage your people tn
do nothing. Your clever young men get a handsome incoiuf
fur life, I am told, at Oxford and Cambridge, if they pass ont-
good examination. For us the examination is only the begin-
ning. Your cler^^ymen get a handsome income for life, whether
they do their work or no'. Ours have to go on preachin'
well and livin' well ; else we want to know the reason why.
You give your subalterns as much as other nations give their
colonels ; you set them down to a grand mess every day as if
they were l)orn lords. You keep four times as many naval
officers as you want, and ten *imes as many generals. It's all
waste and lavisliin' from end to end. And as for your Royal
Family I reckon that Fd find a dozen fandlies in Massachusetts
alone who'd run the lioyal Mill for a tenth of the money. 1
own they wouldn't have the same gracious niann* is," he added.
"And your Princess is- - wal, if Miss Fleming were Princess, she

l*erhays

gracious

manni rs an-

couldn't do the part better,
worth paying for."

Here another telegram was brought him.

It was from New York. It informed him in plain and intel-
ligible terms that his wells had all run dry, that his
credit was exhausted, and that no more bills would be
honoured.

He read this aloud with a firm voice and unfaltering eye.
Tiieii he looked round him, and said solemnly.

"' The time has come. It's come a little sooner than I ex-
pected. But it has come at last."

He was staggered, but he remembered something which con-
soled him.

" At least," he said, " if the income is gone, the Pile re-
mains. That's close upon half a million of English mon^y.
We can do something with that. Mr. Cassilis has got it all for
me.

'• Who ? " cried Ladds eagerly.

•' Mr. Gabriel Cassilis, the great English financier."

" He is ruined," said Ladds. " He has failed for two millions
sterling. If your money is in his hands — "

" Part of it, 1 believe, was in Eldorado stock."

4-)4

IIIK (JOl.DKN IIITTKHKI.V.

r'*

If'V

"Tlie Kldoijuliiiiis cuiinot j)ay their interest. And tlie
stock has sunk to notliing. (Jabriel Cnssilis has lost sill my
money in it — at least I have lost it on his recommendation. "

" Your money all gone, Tommy?" cried Jack.

" All, .Jack — Ladds' Aromatic Cocoa — Fragrant — Nutritious
— no use now — business sold twenty yejus atjo. I'roceeds >unk
in Eldorado stock. Nothing hut the smell left."

And while they weie gazing in each other's face with mute
hewildcnuent, a third messenger arrived with a letter.

It was from Mowll the secretary. It informed poor Oilead
that Mr. (Jabriel Cassilis had drawn, in accordance with his
l)0wer of attorney, upon him to the following extent. A be-
wildejing mass of figures followed, at the bottom of which was
t!ie total — Gilead Beck's two million dollars. That, further,
(labriel Cassilis always, it appeared, acting on the wishes of
.Mr. Beck, had invested the whole sum in Eldorado stock.
That, tVc. He threw the letter on the table half unread.
Then, after a moment's hesitation, he rose solemnly, and
sought the corner of the room in which stood the safe contain-
ing the Embleuj of his Luck. He opened it, and took out the
box of glass and gold which held it. This was covered with a
c ise of green leather. He carried it to tlie table. They all
crowded round while he raised the leather cover and displayed
t'le Butterfly.

'* Has anyone," he lifted his hea«l and looked helplessly
round, — " has anyone felt an airtlKpiake ?'"

For a strange tiling had happened. The wings of the insect
were lying on the floor of the box ; the white; quartz which
formed its body had slipped from the gold wire which held it
up, and the Golden Butterfly was in pieces.

He opened the box with a little gold key and took out the
fragments of the two wings and the body.

"Gone!" he said. " i^roken !

• If thi.s Ooldon Ruttcrfly fall aiid Itrcuk,
Farewell the luck of (Jilentl 1*. Ikck.'

Your own lines, Mr. Dunquerque. Broken into little bits it is.
The He run dry, the credit exhausted, and the Pile fooled
away."

No one spoke. ,

THK OOLDKN lUTTTKHKLY.

455

the
my

jtioiis
>iuik

Ininttf

ilcad
!i his

|\ Ix-

|i ^^■as
tlier,

ics of

Itock.

" 1 am sorry for you most, Mr. I)uiu|Uerqii('. 1 am i)ow« itul
sorry, sir. I luul lioped, witli tluj assistaiict' of Miss Fleming,
to (livido that Pile witii you. Now, sir, I've g( t nrtliiiig. Not
a red cent to divid«^ with a beggar.

"Mrs. L'Kstrange," he went on, "those last words of mine
were ])ro|)hetic. When [ am gone hack to Ameri<;a — 1 suppose
the odds and ends hen^ will pay my passage -you'll remember
tliat J said the Luck would some day go."

It was 80 sudden, so incomprehensible, that no one pre.sent
had a word to say, either of symp:»thy or of sorrow.

(Jilead Heck proceeded with his soliloquy :

" I've luul a leal high time foi- three months? the best three
months in my life. Whatever happens more can't touch the
memory of the last three months. I've met English ladies
and made friends of Kngli.sh gentlemen. Theie's Amercan
ladies and Anu'r'can gentlemen, but i can't speak of them,
because I never went into their society. You don't Hud ladies
and gentlemen in Empire City. And in all the trades I've
turned my attention to, from .school keepin' to editing, there's
not been one where Amer'can ladies cared to .show their hand.
That means that the Stars and Stripes may be as good as the
Union Jack — come to know them."

He 8toi)ped and pulled hims(df together with a laugh.

" I can't make it out somehow. Seems as if I'm in a dream.
Is it real ? Is the story of the Golden Butterfly a true story,
or is it made up out of some man's l)rain 1 "

"It is real Mr. Beck," said Phillis, softly putting her hand
in his. " It is real. No om* could have invented such a story.
See. dear Mr. Beck, you that we all love so much, there is you
in it and I am in it — and — and the Twins. Why, if people
saw us all in a book they would say it was impossible. T am
the only girl in all the civilized world who can neither read nor
write — and Jack doesn't mind it — and you are the only man
who ever found the (iolden Butterfly. Indeed, it is all real,"

"It is all real," Beck, Jack echoed. "You have had the
high time, and sorry indeed we are that it is over. But per-
haps it is not all over. Surely something out of the two mil-
lion dollars must have remained."

Mr. Beck pointed sorrowfully to tlie tliree pieces which were
the fragments of the Butterfly.

4o(i

THK OOI-DKN Bl'TTERFLY

hi.

" Nothing is left," he said, " Nothing except the solid gold
that made his cage. And that will go to pay the hotel-bill."

Mrs. L'P^strange looked on in silence. What was this quiet
liuly, this woman of even and uneventful life, to say in the
presence of such misfortune 1

Ladds held out his hand.

" Worth twenty of any of us," he said. *' We are in the
same boat."

" And you too. Captain Ladds," Gilead cried. '' It is worse
than my own misfortune, because 1 am a rough man and can go
back to the rough life. No, Mrs. L'Estrange — no, my deal
young lady — 1 can't — not with the same light heart as before
— you've spoiled me. I must strike out something new — away
from Empire City jind He and gold. I'm spoiled, It is not the
coid chunk of pt>rk that I am afraid of; it is the beautiful life
and the sweetness that I'm going to lose. I said I h.oped I
should be prepared to meet the fall of my Luck — when it came.
B'.Jt I never thought it would come like this."

" Stay with us, Mr. Keck," said Phillis. " Don't go back
to the old life."

'• Stay with us," said Jack. " We will all live together."

'• Do not leave us, Mr. Beck," said Mrs. L'Estrange. (Wo-
men can blush, although they may be past forty.) "Stay
here with your friends."

He looked from one to the other, and something like a tear
glittered in his eye. But he shook his head.

Then he took uj) the wings of the Butterfly, the pretty gol
den lamina' cut in the perfect shape of a wing, marked and
veined by Nature as if, for once, she was determined to show
that she too could b».' an Artist and imitate herself. Thev lav
in his hands, and he looked fondly at them.

*• What shall I do with these?" he said softly. "They
have been very good to me. They have given me the pleasant-
est h ours of my life. They have made me dream of ])ower as
if I was autocrat of all the Russias. Say, Mrs. L'Estrange
— sin ce my chief ])leasure has come through Mr. Dunquerque
— may I offer the broken Butterfly to Miss Fleming 1"

He laid the wings before her with a .weet sad smile. Jack
took them up mmI looked at tliem. In the white quartz were
the li ttle holes where the wings had fitted. He put them back

THE nOLDEN BIJTTKUFLY.

457

gold

fhill."

Jquiet

In the

In tJi«'

korsp
m go
dear
)efor('
fa way
•t tli'c
il life
Iped I

back

,n their old place — the wiiig.s in the (jiiartz. They fitted ex-
actly, and in a moment t\w. ButterHy was as it had alway.s
been.

Jack deftly bent round it again the gohh'ii wire wliich lield
it to the golden flower. Singular to relate, the wire fitted likt-
the wings just the same as before, and the l)Utt«'rHy vibrateil
on its perch again.

" It's wonderful ! " cried Gilead IJcck. " It's the l.uck I've
given away. It's gone to you, Miss Fleming. Ihit it won't
take the form of lie."

" Then take it back, Mr. Beck," cried IMiillis.

" No, young lady. The Luck left me of its own accord.
That was shown when the Butterfly fell ofl tln' wins. It i.s
.yours now, yours ; and you will make a bett«'r u.se of it.

" 1 think," he went on, with his hand \\\u)i\ the golden case
— •' I think tiiere's a lAick in the world which I never dreamed
of, a better Luck thai; lie. Mrs. LKstrauiie. vou know what
sort of Luck I mean ] "

•' Yes, Mr. Beck, 1 know," she replied.

Phillis laid her hands on Jack's sluMilder, while his arm stole
round her waist.

" It is Love, Mr. Beck," said the girl. " Ye.s ; that ih the
best Luck in all the world, and I am sure of it."

Jack stooped and kissed her. The simplicity and innocence
of this maiden went to Gilead Beck's heart. Tlufy were a
religion to him, an education. In the presence of that guih*-
less heart all earthly thoughts dropped from his soul, and he
was, like the girl before him, pure in heart and clean in
memory. That is indeed the sweet enchantment of innocence ; a
bewitchment out of which we need never awake unless we like.

'* Take the case and all. Miss Fleming," said Gilead Beck.

But she would not have the sjjlendid case with its thick
plate glass and solid gold pillais.

Then Gilead Beck brought out the little wooden box. the
same in which the Golden I^utteitty lay when lie ran from the
Bear on the slopes of tin; Sierra Nevat^a. And Phillis laid her
new treasure in the cotton wool and slung the l)ox by its steel
chain round her neck, laughing in a solemn fashion.

"While they talked thus sadly, the dooroj)ened and Lawrence
Cohiuhoun .stood before them.

4.jN

TIIK (iOLDKN lUJTTKUFI.Y

Agatlia cried out wlion slio saw him, lu'caiise lie was trans-
tbrrnod. Tlu' lazy insouciant look was gone ; a troubled look
was in its jilaoe. Worse than a tnnibled look— a look ot
misery ; a look of self-reproach ; a look as of a criminal brougiit
to tlie bar and convicted.

"Lawrence!" cried Mrs. Ij'Kstrange.

lie came into the room in a helpless sort of wa}', his haiuU
shaking before him likt' those of some half-blind old man.

'• IMiillis," he .said, in a hoarse voice, "forgive me !"

" What have J to forgive, Lawrence '< "

" Forgive me ? " he i-epeated humbly. ''Nay — you <h» not
undeistand. Duiujuerijue, it is for you to sjjcak — for all of
you — you all love Phillis. Agatha — you love her — you used to
love me too. How shall I tell you] "

** I think we gue.ss.'" said Gilead,

" I did it for the best, Phillis. 1 thought to double your
fortune. Cassilis said I should double it. I thouglit to
double! my own. 1 ])ut all your mont\v, child, every farthing
of your money, in Eldorado stock by his advice, and all my
own too. And all is gone — c^very penny of it gone."

.lack I)un((uerque clasped Phillis tighter by the hand.

She only laughed.

" Why, Lawrence." she said, "what if you have losi all my
nioiu^y 1 Jack doesn't care. Do you, Jack / "

" No, <larling, no," said Jack. And at the mcmient — such
was the infatuation of this young man — he really did not care.

" Lawrence," said Agatha, "you acted i'or the best. Don't,
«h'ar Lawrenci', don't trouble too much, ('aptain Ladds has
lost all his fortune too — and Mr. IJeek has lost his — and we
are all ruined together."

" All ruined together ! " echoed ( Jilead lieck, looking at Mrs.
L'Estrange. " Gabriel Cassilis is a wo; ierfid uuin. 1 always
said he was a womlerful man."

In the evening the three ruined men sat all together in
(liload's room.

"Nothing save^l, Cohpdioun ?" asked Ladds, after along
l>ause.

" Nothing. The stock was 70 when I bought in : 70 at 10
per cent. It is now anything you like — 4, (I, S, IG— what you
please — because no one will buy it."

THK (JOl-lJEiN H'JTTKUFLY.

4oM

tins-
look

inns

[not
1 of
lit,)

'* Wal," said Gilead Keck, " it does seem roui^h on us all. and
perhaps it's rougher on you two than it is on me. But to
tliink, only to think, that such an ahni<<hty Pile should be
fooled away on a darned half-caste State like Eldorado ! And .
for all of us to believe Mr. Gabriel Cassilis a whole-souled high-
toned speculator."

" Orjce I thought," he continued, " that wr Amer'cans must
be the Ten Tribes ; because, I said, nobody but one out of the
Ten Tribes would get such a ])rovidential lift as the Golden
ButterHy. Gentlemen, my opinions are changed since this
morning. 1 believe we're nothing better, not a single cent
better, tiian one of tlu^ kicked-out Tribes. 1 may be an A male-
kite, or I may be a Hivite; but I'm darned if 1 ever call my-
self again one of the childrefi of .\braliaui."

CIIAPTKI: THK LAST.

Wlii'*))!'!' l.'iM', vi' Id'oi'/.r-i ; sij,'li

III l.'ivc'sc'iiiitt'm, scift iiir 'if iiiciri :

lii't I'M' ill liri}.'littT .siiiiscis ilii',
And (lav witli liri),'-|itcr dawn ln' Imrii."

■jT T is a w(!ek since the disasLi'ous ilny. (Jilcad Heck lia.>5h<tl.i
'jjf the works of art with which he intended to found hi?<
*^ (irand National Collection ; he has torn up his great
schemes for a grand National Theatre, a grand National Paper :
iu^ h-'is ceased to think, for the delectation of the Golden Butter-
fly, about improving the human race. His gratitude to that
]»rodii;y of Nature has so far cooled that he now considers it
more in the light of a capricious sprite, a sorb of Robin Good-
fellow, than as a benefactor, lie has also change*! his views
as to the construction of the round earth, and .all that is there-
in, lie, he says, may be found l)y other lucky adventurers ;
but He is not to be depended on for a permanence. He would
now recommend those who strike He to make their Pile as
(piickly as may be, and devote all their energies to the safety
of that Pile. And as to the human race, it may slide.

400

IHli UDLOKS llUTTKltFl.y.

i \

1! i

" What's the good," he says to .lack l)un(|uenjuu, '• of helpiii'
up those win are Wound to climb/ Let them climb. Ami
what's the good oftryiu' to save those what are bound to fall?
Lt't them fall. I'm down myself; but I mean to get up again."

It is sad to record that Mr. Burls, the picture-dealer, refused
to buy back the gnat picture of " Sisera and Jael." No one
wouM ))urchase that work at all. Mr. Heck oft'ered it to the
Langham ^fotel as a gift. The directors firmly declined to
accept ic. "Vhen it was evident that this remarkable elfort of
genius wa. appreciated by no one, Gilead Heck resolved on
h'aving it \ .lere it was. It is rumoured that the lanager of
the hotel bribed the owner of a certain Kogent-stieet restaurant
to take it away : and 1 have heanl that it now hangs, having
bttii greatly cut (louii. on the wall of that establishment, get-
ting iis tones niellt)wed day by day with the steam of roast ami
boiled. As for the other pictures, Mr. Burls exi)re.ssed his ex-
treme sorrow th;'' ^onpoiary embarrassment prevented him
purchasing thfin 1) at the price given for thorn. He after-
wards told Mr. Heck that the unprincipal picture-dealer who
did ultimately buy them, at the ]»ric<' of so much a square foot,
and as second-rate copies, was a disgrace to his honourable i)ro-
fession. This he said, stood high in public tistinuition for truth,
generosity, and fair dealing. None but genuine works came
from his own establislim<iit ; and what he called a (irooze was
a (Jrooze, and nothing but a (Iroozi-.

As foi the rile. (jliK ad'.i power of attorney had eH tually
ilestroyed that. There was not a cent left ; not one single coin
to rub against another. All was g«)nt! in that great crasli.

He call«'(l ii])on (Jabriel Cassilis. The linancer smiled upon
him with his newly-born air of sweetness and trust ; but, as we
have seen, he couhl no longer si)eak, and tli^ie was nothing in
his face to express sorrow or repentance.

(lilead found himself, when all was wound up, the possessor
(»f that single che(|Ue which Joseph .Jagenal ha<l placed in his
hands, and whidi, most fortunately for liim.self, he had not
paifl into the bn .!.

Four hu'Mix ,? I'f. Willi-. With that, at f(»rty-live, he was to
i>egin the wurhl ji^.aifi. .XtUM'all, the majoi'ty of mankind at
forty-fiv:' have muh Kks, ti..in four hundred poun«ls.

He heard froju (.'a' ubi that the town he had built, the whole

THK (JOI.DKN BITTKUKi.V:

4'61'

\Ui\

ill]

of which helonge«l to liiin, was (U'sitUmI again. Tliore wjts a
<iuicker rush out of it than into it. It staiuls t'.uMv now, more
lonely tlian Kmpirc t.'ity — its derricks and machinery rusting
and (iropping to pieces, the houses empty and neglected, the
hand relapsing into its old condition of bog and marsh. l!ut
(J dead J leek will n«'.ver see it again.

He kept away from Twickenham during this wiiiding-up
and settlement of affairs. It was a week later when, his mind
at rest and his con.science clear of hills and douhts, because
now there v/as n(»thing more to lo.se, In* called at the house
where he had spent so many hap|)y hours.

Mrs. L'Kstrange received him. Slu' was troubled in K»ok,
and the traces of tears w<'re on her face.

" It is a mostonfortumite time," (iileadsaid sympathetically :
"a most onfortunat'' ♦ ne."

"Blow after bio., Mr. liock," Agatha sobbed. ".Stroke
upon stroke."

"That is so, nnfdam. They've got the knife well in, this
time, and when they give it a twist we're bound to cry out.
\ ou've thought me .selfish, 1 know, not to in(|uire before."

" No, Mr. Beck ; no. It is only too kiiul of you to think of
us in your own overwhelming disast«'r. 1 have never sjx-nt si'
wretched a week. Poor l^awrence has litorally not a penny
left, excej)t what he gets from the sale of his horses, pictures,
and things. Captain Ladd.s is the .same ; IMiillis has no loiigc!
a faithing and now. () dear. (') dear, I am going to lo.se li<i
altogether."

•• Bui when .she marries Mr. Duufiuenpie vou will .see her
ofi^vj."

" No, no. Haven't they told you I .lack has got almost
nothing — only ten thousand pouiKls altogether ; and they have
made up their miiids to emigrate. They are going to Virginia,
where .lack will buy a small estate."

"Is that 80 '( " said (Jilead meditatively.

" Lawrence says that he and Captain Ladds will go away
together somewhere; j)erhaps back to i'impire City."

"And you will i)e left alone- you, Mrs. L' Estrange -all
alone in this country, and ruined. It mustn't be. " He
stiaightened himself up, and looked round the room. " It
mu«t not be, Mr.s. 1/ Estrange. You know me partly — that iw.

4Ul'

THE GOI.DKX Hl'TTKIU'I.Y.

you know thi' numiier of man 1 wisli to seem and try to be ;
you know what I liave been. You do not know, because you
cannot guess, (lie tilings which you have put into my head."

Mrs. JVEstrange blushed and began to tremble. Could it bi-
jMissible that lie was actually going to —

He was.

'' You and T together, Mrs. I/Kstrange, are gone to wreck in
this almighty liurricanc. I've got one or two thousand dollars
left ; perhaps you will have as much, i>erhaps not. Mrs.
L'Kstrange, will you think it presumptuous in u rough Ameri-
can— not an American gentleman by birth and raising — to oth-r
you such protection and care as he <an give to the best of women \
We, too, will go to Virginia with i\Ir. l)un<|uer(|ue and hi^
wife ; we will settle near them, and watch their liappincsf,.
The Viririnians are a kin<lly folk, and love tin* Kni:lish pj'uplc.
.'Specially if they are of gentle birth. Say, Mrs. ii'Kstrangi'."

'• O, Mr. pK'ck, I am forty years of age ! "

" And I am live-and-forty."

dust Mieu IMiillis and .lack burst into the room. They did
nut look at all like being ruined ; they were wild with Joy and
good spirits.

"And you are going to Virginia, Mr. I)uni|Uer(iue 1 " .said
(lilead. "I am thinking of going too, if I can persuade this
lady to go with me."

•* O, Agatha, conu' with us I "

"Come with me," corrected (lilead.

Then IMiillis saw how things lay— what a change in Phillis
to see so much ! — and half laughing, but more in seriousness
than in mirth, threw her arms round .Agatha's neck.

" Will you come, <lear Agatha 1 lie is a good man and lie
loves you ; and wo will all live near together and 1m^ happy."

Tiirce short scenes to conclude my st(»ry.

It is little more than a year since Agatha L'Fstrange, as shy
an<l blushing as any maiden- much more shy than Philiis —
laid her hand in (lilead's, with the confession half sobbed out,
" And it isn't a 'mistake you are making ; because I am not
ruined at all. It is only you and these poor children and
liawrence."

We are back again in Empire Civy. It is the early fall,

THK <;()!, DKN Ml TTKIIKLY

).>

Soptember. Tho yellow lo/ivos doting nil tlie turcsts witli lirowii
uiul gold ; the sunlight strikes upon the peaks ami ridges of tin
great Sierra, lights up the broad belt of wood, making shadow>
blacker than night, and lies among the grass-grown streets o\'
the <leserted Mmpire ^'ity. Two men in hiitriing-dress are
iKing their way slowly through the grass and weeds thai

nii

"•••••■•■n " J

<;hokc the pathway

< I)oirt like it, tJolrjuhoun," says one; *• more ghostly than

ever.

'riiey push on, and presently the foremost, liadds, starts l»a( 1<
will I a ery.

•' What is it T' asketl ('ol(|nlioun.

They push aside the brambles, and behold a .-.keleton. Tin-
Itody has been on its kne( s, but now only the bones are left.
They are clothed in the garb of the celestial, and one si<le i.f
the >kull is broken in, as if with a ^liot.

'• It nuist be my old friend Achow," sai<l Col<|uhoun calml} .
"See he's been nuirdered."

In the dead of night f.adds awakened Cohpdioun.

" Can't help it," he said ; " vt-ry sorry. (Jhosts walking about
the staii's. Says tin* ghost of Acliow to the slwule of L«e< \tn"j.
' No your piecy [lidgin makee slu)ot«'e nie.' I)(»n't lik«' j^hoyt",
Col(|uhoun.''

Next nu)rning they left Mmpire City. LarhU was firm m
tlu^ conviction that he had heaul and s<'en a Chinaman's
ghost, and was resolute against stopping another night in tlu;
place.

Just outside the town they nuid(! another discovery.

"(}oo(l FiOrd!" cried Ladds, frightened out of sobriety of
speech. " It rains skeletotis. Look there; he's beckoning ! "

And, to be sure, befon- thera was raised, with finger as of in-
vitation, a skeleton hand.

This, too, beh>nge«l to a complet(» assortment of human bones
clad in Chinese dress. \\y its side lay a rusty pistol, naw-
rcnce picked it up.

" \\y gad ! " he; said, " it's the same pistol I gave to Leeching.
How <lo you read this story, f^adds C'

fiadds sat down and replied slowly. He said that he never
<lid like reading ghost stories, and since the apparition of the
munlered Achow, the nigiit before, he should like them still

■WW!' ■■iiiMy.,

4(i4

THE (JOLDKN HUTTKUFLY.

less. (Jh()8t stories, \ui said, are all very well until you come
to see and hear a ^iiost. Now that he had a ghost story of
his own — an original one in pigeon Knglish — he did not intend
ever to read another. Therefore (Jol(|iihoun must exeuHe him
if he gaVc up the story of Leeching's skeleton entirely to his
owd reading. I le tlien went on to .say that he never had liked ske
letons, and that he believed Empire City was nothing but a
mouldy old churchyard witlunit tlu^ church, \shde, us a ceme-
tery, it wasn't a patch upon llighgate .\nd the mention of
Highgate, he .said, remiiuied hiu» of Phillis ; and ht^ pr<»p()sed
they should both ^i tu VlH^UU^ »uid cull upon -lack aud hi»
wife.

All this took tinu> to explaiiv ; and u\eanwhile iiawrenet- was
])oking the h\itt-end of his gin\ al>out in the gra.ss t»» see if
there was anything more, There was souu'thing more. It
was a bag of cvuirse yellow canvas, tied by a string round what
had been the waist uf a man. Lawrence cut the string, atid
opened the bag. .

'* We're in luck, Tommy. Look at this."

It was the gold .so laboriously seraped togetlier l)y the two
thinamen, wbiiih had caused, in a uuuiuer, the tieath of both.

" Lift it, Tommy." CoKiuhoun grew excited at his fiiul.
^^Lift it there must be a hundred aiul fifty ounces, 1 should
think. It will be worth four or fiv<^ hundred pounds. Here's
a find:"

To this pair, who hail only a year ago chucked away their
thou.sands, the luck of picking up a bag of gold appeared
something wonderful.

*' Tommy," .said Cohpihoun, " I tell you what we will do
We will add this little windfall to what lieck would call your
little pile, and my Httlo pile. Ami W(!'li go a:Ml buy a little
farm in Virginia, too; and we will live tluu'e close to Jack and
Phillis. Agatha will like it, too. And tluu-e's capital shooting."

Gabriel Ca.s8ilis and his wife reside atllrighton. The whole
of tin* gnuit fortune being lost, they have nothing but Victoria's
settlement. That 15" "es them a small income. *' Enough to
subsist upon," Victoria tells her friends. The old man — he
looks very old and fragile iu)w — is wheeled about in a chair
on sunny days. Whea he is not being wheeled about heplayswith

THK (JOLDEN lUITTKUFLY.

4G5

|u come
}tory of
intend
l»«e him
to his
Um| sk»-
hut a
[» oeine-
i«tion of
'«>I)o.se(l
[«'i«l liis

|><;<' was

|o 8<u» it'

le, It

j'l what

[lie two
f hoth.
is find,
should
Ilfre'g

'' tlit'ir
»ear(i(i

^ill do
your
littJe

k. and

Ling."

k'hole
Dria's
h to
-he

)h[

air

with

liis child, to v'honi he talks ; that is, pours out a stream of
m(!aningl(!83 words, because he will never again talk coherently.
V^ictoria is exactly the same as ever — eold, calm, ami j)r'>iid.
Nor is there anytl»ii^( whatever in her manner to her husband,
if she Aeeldentidly me«'t him, to show that she has the slightest
MOirow, shame, or repnitance for the catastrophe she brought
about. .loseph dagenal is working thr great Dyson will case
for them, and is c(mfi«lcnt that he will get the testator's inten-
tions, which can now be only imperfectly understood, set aside,
when (Jabrial Cassilis will once more l^^come comparatively
wealthy.

On a V(Ma!ulah in sunny Virginia, Agatha Heck sits (piietly
working, and crooning some old song in shef^r cont<mt and
peace of Imart. PrescMJtly she lifts her head as she hears a
step. That smile with whicii she greets her hu8V>and shows
that she is happy in her new life. Oileiwi Hcick is in white,
with a broad straw iiat, because it is in hot September. In
his hand he has a letter.

"(fOod news, wife; good news," he says, "Jack and Phillis
are coming here to-day, and will stay till .Monday. Will be
here almost Jis soon as the note. Baby < oming, too."

"Of course, Oiload," says Agatha, smiling sup<irior. "As
if the d(^ar girl would go anywhere without her little Philip.
And si.x weeks old to morrow."

(Kverybmly who has api)reciated how very far from clever
Jack l)un([ueniue was will be prepared to hear that he com-
mitted an enormous etymological blunder in tlit; Imptism of his*
boy, whom he named Philip, in the lirm belief that Philip WiW
the masculine form of Phillis.)

" Here they come ! Here they are ! "

Jack comes rattling up to the house in his American trap,
jumps out, throws the reins to the boy, and hands out hi:3 wife
with the child. Kisses and greetings.

Phillis seems, at first, unchanged, except perhaps that the
air of Virginia has made her sweet duiicacy of features more
delicate. Yet look again, and you fitid that she has changed.
She was a child when we saw lu^r first ; then we saw her grow
into a maiden ; she is a wife and a mother now.

yhe whispers her husband.

4GG

THK (JOLHKN HUTTKHFI.Y,

I 1

"All right, Phil <l<'ar. — B<!ck, you've got to shut your oyos
for just one minute. No, turn your Imck, so. Now, you may
look."

rhiilis hn.s hung round the neck of her unconscious bahy,
by ft gohhiii chain, the CJoIden HutterHy. It seems as strong
and vigorous as ever ; and Jis it lies upon tlie child's white
dress, it looks as if it were poised for a moment's rest, but
ready for flight.

•'That Inseck!" said Uilead sentimentally. " \Val, it's
given me one of the -best things that a man can get"— lie took
the hand of his wife — "love and friendship. You are welcome,
Phillis, to all the ntst, provided that all the rest does not take
away these."

" Nay," she said, her eyes filling jwith the gentle dew of
happiness and content, " 1 have all that I want for myself. I
have my husbaiul and my boy — my little, little IMiilip! I am
more than hapi)y; and so I give to tiny Phil all the remaining
Luck of the Uolden ButterHy."

THE END.

Toronto: lYInUxl by Hunter, Ko«o & Co