The Golden Butterfly

"Shall 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 felt, like a picture? What is it they like so much in dancing and skating-rinks, and they prefer them to music and painting, and – and – the beautiful river?"

"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?

"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 the first of such expeditions. In late May and early June the Greater London, as the Registrar calls it, is a marvel 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 wisteria, 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 blossomed plum-trees as are to be seen around this great city of ours. Colonials 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 River 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 revelation – 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 at 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, buccaneer, 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 countrymen 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, of 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 decorated 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 education did not allow him to speak so well.

His great terror was the word Shoddy. He looked at Shoddy full in the face; he made up his mind what Shoddy was – the thing which pretends to be what it is not, a branch of the great family which has the Prig at one end and the Snob at the other – and he was resolute in avoiding the slightest suspicion of Shoddy.

If he was of obscure birth, with antecedents which left him nothing to boast of but honesty, he was also soft-hearted as a girl, quick 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 Gilead Beck was a record of purity and integrity. Such a man in England would, by the power of circumstances, have been forced into taprooms, and slowly dragged downwards into that beery morass in which, as in another Malebolge, the British workman lies stupefied and helpless. Some wicked cynic – was it Thackeray? – 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 refinement 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 Butterfly, Mrs. L'Estrange," he said, "is more than what the old squaw thought. It began in 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.

"I sometimes think I should like to try," said Gilead Beck. "Poor men have no friends; they have mates on our side of the water, and pals on yours."

"Mates and pals?" cried Phillis, laughing. "Jack, do you know mates and pals?"

"I ought to," said Jack, "because I'm poor enough."

"Friends come to rich folk naturally, like the fruit to the tree, or – or – the flower to the rose," Gilead added poetically.

"Or the mud to the wheel," said Jack.

"Suppose all my dollars were suddenly to vamose – I mean, to vanish away," Gilead Beck went on solemnly; "would the friends vanish away too?"

"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 her greatest 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 outside gardens, parks, castles, and views of London. Of course, they were as new to Jack and Mrs. L'Estrange as they were to Phillis and the American. Jack knew Greenwich, where he had dined; and Richmond, where he had dined; and the Crystal Palace, where 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, insomuch that it was really sad to discover that they were only, so to speak, new ruins.

They went to Hampton Court, where they strolled through the picture galleries and looked at the Lely beauties; walked up the long avenues, and saw that quaint old mediæval garden which lies hidden away at the side of the Palace, marked by few. Gilead Beck said that if he was the Queen and had such a place he should sometimes live in it, if only for the sake of giving a dinner in the great Hall. But Phillis liked best the gardens, with their old-fashioned flowers, and the peace which reigns perpetually in the quaint old courts. And Gilead Beck asked Jack privately if he thought the Palace might be bought, and if so, for how much.

They visited Windsor. Mr. Beck said that if he had such a location he should always live there; he speculated on the probable cost of erecting such a fortress on the banks of the Hudson River; and then he cast his imagination backwards up the stream of time and plunged into history.

Phillis allowed him to go on, while he jumbled kings, mixed up cardinals, and tried, by the recovery of old associations, 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 his face. It was rough on the poor king. Seems to me, kings very often do have a rough time. And perhaps, too, that Cardinal Thomas à Beckett, when he told Henry IV. that he wished he'd served his country as well as he'd loved his God, it was on this very terrace. Perhaps – "

"O 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 history is not so grim as that of the Tower of London, which she had once narrated to Jack Dunquerque; but it has a picturesque 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.

Alas, this is the way with posterity! The dead are to be 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 do 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 humbly. "But I am trying to read, Miss Fleming."

"Are you!" she cried, with a real delight in finding, as she thought, one other person in the world as ignorant of that art as herself. "And how far have you got?"

"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 story without an end, it's a story told upsy-down; it's like wandering in a forest without a path. 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 all 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 not 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 more interesting than hers. She belongs to a part of the country where the common people say clever things! – Oh, 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 is not a young man – "

"Jack not a young man? Why, Mr. Beck – "

"Not what we call a young man. Our young men are sixteen and seventeen. Mr. Dunquerque is five-and-twenty. Our men of five-and-twenty are grave and full of care. Mr. Dunquerque 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 you 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. Dunquerque – who saved my life."

He added these last words as an after-thought, and as if he was reminded of some duty forgotten.

Phillis was silent, because his words fell upon her heart and made her 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 humiliated when she was selfishly enjoying what they could not. Somewhere in the world – and where? 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 sympathy; they were only picturesque.

They went to St. George's Chapel, after over-ruling Gilead Beck's objections to attending divine service – for he said 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 splendor of ornamentation; the banners and heraldry; the surpliced sweet-voiced boys; the dignified white-robed clergy-men; 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 considered 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. The chapel was peopled again with mailed knights; the voices of the anthem sang the greatness and the glory of England; 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.

This too, like everything else, was part of her education. She had learned 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 fabric. What was it?

She had not long to wait.

"I love her, Mrs. L'Estrange," said Jack Dunquerque passionately, 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?"

"Indeed, she is all that you say," Agatha acknowledged.

"And will you be my friend with Colquhoun? I am going to see him to-morrow about it, because I cannot stand it any longer."

"He knows that you visit me; he will be prepared in a way. And – Oh, Mr. Dunquerque, why are you in such a hurry? Phillis is so nice 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 experience 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 a thousand men could make her give you up?"

"You are right: but 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?"

"I am so horribly, so abominably poor. My brother Isleworth 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."

"As you are poor, it will be a great comfort for everybody 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, I will. There! Now let us have no more."

"They will make a pretty pair," said Mr. Gilead Beck presently 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?" Mr. Beck asked eagerly. "Will the young lady's guardian refuse the best man in the world because he is poor? No, Mrs. L'Estrange, there's only one way out of this muss, and perhaps you will 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 Jack 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 best 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 myself, 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 being loved. And they know it, too, all of them, except that pretty creature."