The Golden Butterfly

"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 whisky. But I know your English 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 difficult to spend your income."

Mr. Beck brightened. He sat down and assumed a confidential manner.

"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 people 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 first well, 2,500 dollars, and that's £500 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 £1,300 a day from your rock-oil shafts?"

"That is it, sir – that is the lowest figure. Say £1,500 a day."

"And how long has this been 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."

"Wall, 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 asking 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; armies of servants to maintain; estates to nurse; dilapidations to make good; farmers to satisfy; younger sons to provide 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 London 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 Ile for those who can strike it."

"What an income!" Mr. Cassilis went on. "Nothing to squander it on. No duties and no responsibilities. No tenants; no philanthropy; no frittering away of capital. You can't spend a tenth part of it on yourself. And the rest accumulates and grows – grows – spreads and grows." He spread out his 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 and 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 of making money."

"My sons may take care of themselves," said Mr. Beck; "I 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 whatever. He had his purpose, but it was not the purpose of Mr. Cassilis. To found a family, to become a Rothschild, to contract 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 without his posthumous interference?

"Listen Mr. Beck, for one moment. Your income is £500,000 a year. You may spend on your own simple wants £5,000. Bah! a trifle – not a quarter of the interest. You save the whole; in ten years you have three millions. You are still under fifty?"

"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 worth twelve millions at least. Twelve millions!"

"Nearly as much as ran away and was lost when the Ile was struck," said Mr. Beck. "Hardly worth while to work for five-and-twenty years in order to save what Nature spent in 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 millions 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 established 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."

"The greatest country in the world is the United States of America – that is a fact," said Mr. Beck, laughing; "so the greatest man in it must be the 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. Beck," cried Mr. Cassilis, rising to his feet in an irrepressible burst 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 fortunate 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 upwards 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 Ile."

"You may spend, but your income will always go on increasing."

"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 University, 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. "Suppose, sir, I was to say to you, 'I have more than enough money. 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?"

"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 part of your income. However, let me understand what you want to do, and I will give such advice as I can offer."

"That's kind, sir, and what I expected of you. It is a foolish fancy, and perhaps you'll laugh; but I have heard day and night, ever since the Ile began to run, a voice which says to me always the same thing – I think it is the voice of my Golden Butterfly: 'What you can't spend, give.' 'What you can't spend, give.' That'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 paying 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?"

"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. 'They that go down into the pit cannot hope for the truth.' Do you remember that text, Mr. Cassilis? 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 part of the Bible it came from. But he bowed, and pulled out his handkerchief as if he was at a funeral. In fact, this unexpected hurling of a text at his head floored him for the moment.

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