The Golden Butterfly

Phillis in the Art Gallery was the next best critic to the calm and impartial Master. She was herself artist enough to understand the difficulties of art; she had that intense and real feeling for form and colour which Humphrey Jagenal 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 is not so.

Time, which ought to be represented as a locomotive engine, moved on, and brought Lawrence Colquhoun at length to London. He went first to Joseph Jagenal's office, and heard that his ward was in safe-keeping with that very safe solicitor.

"It was difficult," Joseph explained, "to know what to do. After the funeral of Mr. Dyson she was left alone in the place, with no more responsible person than a house-keeper. So, as soon as the arrangement could be made, I brought her to my own house. Three old bachelors might safely, I thought, be trusted with the protection of a young lady."

"I am much obliged to you," said Colquhoun. "You have removed a great weight off my mind. What sort of a girl is she?"

Joseph began to describe her. As he proceeded he warmed with his subject, and delineated a young lady of such passing charms of person and mind that Colquhoun was terrified.

"My dear Jagenal, if you were not such a steady old file I should think you were in love with her."

"My love days are over," said the man of conveyances. "That is, I never had any. But you will find Phillis Fleming everything that you can desire. Except, of course," he added, "in respect to her education. It certainly is awkward that she does not know how to read."

"Not know how to read?"

"And so, you see," said the lawyer, completing the story we know already, "Mr. Dyson's property will go into Chancery, because Phillis Fleming has never learnt to read, and because we cannot find that chapter on the Coping-stone."

"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? 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!"

"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 expected, and perhaps I could ask my cousin, Mrs. L'Estrange, to take her into her own house for a time. Poor old Dyson! It is twelve years ago since I saw him last, soon after he took over the child. I remember her then, a solemn little thing, with big eyes, who behaved 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 that I felt sorry for the poor child who was to be an experiment. Perhaps 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 Miss Fleming's fifty thousand pounds. Mr. Dyson left it in the funds, where he found it. As your legal adviser, Mr. Colquhoun, 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 flower in his buttonhole: the other had on a velvet coat, and also had a flower; one was shaven; 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 and beautiful as they seemed to be: there were crowsfeet round the eyes, and their step had lost a little of its youthful buoyancy. He wondered 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.

Instinctively Phillis's first thought was that there would be no 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 which 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, shapely; a girl of fine physique; a girl whose eyes, like her hair, were brown; the former were large and full, but not with the fulness of short-sight; the latter was abundant, and was tossed up in the simplest 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 delicate, and that her head was shaped, save for the forehead, which was low and broad, like that of some Greek statue. The Greeks knew the perfect shape of the head, but they made the forehead too narrow. If you think of it, you will find that the Venus of Milo would have been more divine still had her brows been but 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 quite 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 I am 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.

"Oh!" she cried. "But I am afraid that will not do any more."

"Why, Phillis – I may call you Phillis since I am your guardian, may I not? – did he treat you badly? 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 – Jagenal calls them crotchets – and he 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 cannot 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, poor things." Phillis looked with unutterable sympathy. "Mr. Dyson used to say that the sympathies which could not be quickened by history were so dull that fiction was thrown away upon them."

"Did you never – I mean, did he never read you novels?"

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 master. And then there was something else, about wanting the experience of life necessary to appreciate fiction."

"Abraham Dyson was a wise man, Phillis. But what do you do all day?"

"I draw; I talk to my maid, Antoinette; I give the Twins their breakfast – "

"Those were the Twins – Mr. Jagenal's elder brothers – whom I met on the steps, I suppose? I have heard of them. Après, Phillis?"

"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 I sit and think of what I have seen and heard – put it all away in my memory, or I repeat to my self over again some of the poetry which I learned at Highgate."

"And you know no young ladies?"

"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 compare myself with them, and find out my faults. You will tell me my faults, Lawrence, will you?"

"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."

"Oh, I 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?"

"Anywhere," she replied, "anywhere. Take me into the crowded streets, 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. Colquhoun's practised eye detected that at once. Phillis 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.

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 Abraham Dyson, the trustees of his little girl.

"I have been a poor trustee, Phillis," Lawrence concluded. "But I was certain 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 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 critically.

"Am I poorly dressed?" she asked, with a smile, because she knew that she was perfectly dressed.

At all events, Lawrence thought 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 hesitated no more over it than she did with Jack Dunquerque.

He took her into a jeweler's shop and bought her a few trinkets.

"There, Phillis, you can add those to your jewel-box."

"I have no jewels."

"No jewels! 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, packed away in a box and put into a bank.

"Well, I think you ought to have your jewels out, at any rate. Did Mr. Dyson give you any money to spend?"

"No; and if he had I could not spend 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 sovereigns and a handful of silver.

"Now you are rich, Phillis. What will you buy?"

"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. Proud of her newly-acquired wealth, Phillis selected about twenty of the largest and most expensive. Colquhoun 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 which 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 slender purse will buy all these views?" 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." Her words and action were so childish that Lawrence felt a sort of pity for her. Not to know how to spend money seemed to lazy Lawrence, who had done nothing else all his life, a state of mind really deplorable. It would mean in his own case absolute deprivation of the power of procuring pleasure, either for himself or for any one else.

"Poor little nun! Not to know even the value of money."

"But I do. A sovereign is twenty shillings, and a shilling is twelve pence."

"That is certainly true. Now you shall know the value of money. There is a beggar. He is going to tell us that 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? By this time they were close to the beggar. He was a picturesque rogue in rags and tatters and bare feet. Though it was a warm day he shivered. In his hand he held a single box of lights. But the fellow was young, well fed, and lusty. Lawrence Colquhoun halted on the pavement, 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 sovereign," 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. Come 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 believe it is Mr. Tupper, in his Proverbial Philosophy, who explains 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 who come to look for great people, and like to tell whom they recognised, and who were pointed out to them. There were the pedestrians on either side the road; civilians after office hours; bankers and brokers from the City; men up from Aldershot; busy men hastening home; loungers leaning on the rails; curious colonials gazing at the carriages; Frenchmen trying to think that Hyde Park cannot compare with the Bois de Boulogne; Germans mindful of their mighty army, their great sprawling Berlin, the gap of a century between English prosperity and Teutonic militarism, and as envious as philosophy 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 that 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. He shook hands with one, nodded to another, and made appointments with all at his club. And as each passed, he told something about him to his ward.

"That is my old Colonel – your father's brother officer. The most gallant fellow who ever commanded a regiment. As soon as you are settled, I should like to bring him to see you. That is Macnamara of the London 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 Cashmere. 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?"

"Not 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 her 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.

"How do you do, Phillis dear? 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 immediately.

"Mrs. Cassilis trembled when she spoke to you, Lawrence." It was exactly what a girl of six would have said.

"Did she, Phillis? She was cold perhaps. Or perhaps she was pleased to see old friends again. So you know her?"

"Yes. I have dined at her house; and I have been shopping with her. She does not 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? 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 at 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?"

"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 jackanapes who can read thinks himself qualified to judge the affairs of the nation. Reading, indeed!' But I think I should like, after all, to do what everybody else can do."