The Golden Butterfly

But at Empire City he was all day shooting. That makes a difference to the laziest of men. And he would not have stayed there so long had he not been too lazy to go away. If a man does not mind lonely evenings, the air on the lower slope of the Sierra Nevada is pleasant and the game is abundant. Now, however, he was back in London, where the laziest men live beside the busiest. The sun streamed in at his windows, which were bright with flowers; and he sat in the shade doing nothing. Restless men take cigars; men who find their own thoughts insufficient for the passing hour take books; men who cannot sit still walk about, Lawrence Colquhoun simply lay back in an easy-chair, watching the sunlight upon the flowers with lazy eyes. He had the gift of passive and happy idleness.

To him there came a visitor – a woman whom he did not know.

She was a woman about thirty years of age, a hard-featured, sallow-faced woman. She looked in Lawrence's face with a grim curiosity as she walked across the room and handed him a letter.

"From Mrs. Cassilis, sir."

"Oh!" said Lawrence. "And you are – "

"I am her maid, sir."

"Where is Janet, then?"

"Janet is dead. She died three years ago, before Mrs. Cassilis married."

"Oh, Janet is dead, is she? Ah, that accounts – I mean, where did Janet die?"

"In lodgings at Ventnor, sir. Mrs. Cassilis – Miss Pengelley she was then, as you know, sir," – Lawrence looked up sharply, but there was no change in the woman's impassive face as she spoke, – "Miss Pengelley sent me with her, and Janet died in my arms, sir, of consumption."

"Ah, I am sorry! And so Mrs. Cassilis has sent you to me with this letter, has she?" He did not open it. "Will you tell Mrs. Cassilis that I will send an answer by post, if there is any answer required?"

"I beg your pardon, sir; but Mrs. Cassilis told me expressly that if you were in town I was to wait for an answer, if I had to wait all day."

"In that case I suppose I had better read the letter."

He opened it, and it seemed as if the contents were not pleasant, because he rose from his chair and began to walk about. The sallow-faced woman watched him all the time, as one who has fired 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 position of things on the mantel-shelf, a sign of mental agitation. Then he turned round brusquely and said:

"Tell your mistress that I will call upon her in the afternoon."

"Will you write that, sir?"

"No, I will not," he replied fiercely. "Take your answer and begone."

She went without a word.

"There will be trouble," she said to herself. "Janet said it would all come up again some day. He's a handsome chap, and missus is a fool. She's worse than a fool; she's a hard-hearted creature, with no more blood than a stone statue. If there's to be trouble, it won't fall on his head, but on hern. And if I was him, I'd go away again quiet, and then maybe no one wouldn't find it out. As for her, she'll blow on it herself."

Lawrence's thoughts assumed a form something like the following:

"Three notes from her in rapid succession, each one more vehement than the first. She must see me; she insists on my calling on her; she will see me; she has something important to tell me. It's a marvellous thing, and great proof of the absence of the inventive faculty in all of them, that when they want to see you they invariably pretend that they have something important to tell you. From the duchess to the nursemaid, by Jove, they are all alike! And now she is coming here unless I call upon her to-day.

"It won't do to let her come here. I might go down to the seaside, go into the country, go anywhere, back to America; but what would be the good of that? Besides, I have not done anything to be afraid of or ashamed of, unless a knowledge of a thing is guilt. I have nothing to fear for myself. Remains the question, Ought I not to screen her?

"But screen her from whom? No one knows except Janet, and Janet is dead. Perhaps that woman with a face like a horse knows; that would be awkward for Victoria if she were to offend her, for a more damned unforgiving countenance I never set eyes upon. But Janet was faithful; I am sure Janet would not split even when she was dying. And then there was very little to split about when she died. Victoria hadn't married Mr. Cassilis.

"What the deuce does she want to rake up old things for? Why can't she let things be? It's the way of women. They can't forget; and hang me if I don't think she can't forgive me because she has done me a wrong! Why did I come back from Empire City! There, at all events, one could be safe from annoyance.

"On a day like this, too, the first really fine day of the season; and it's spoiled. I might have dined with cousin Agatha and talked to Phillis – the pretty little Phillis! I might have mooned away the afternoon in the Park and dined at the Club. I might have gone to half-a-dozen places in the evening. I might have gone to Greenwich and renewed my youth at the Ship. I might have gone to Richmond with old Evergreen and his party. But Phillis for choice. But now I must have it out with Victoria Cassilis. There's a fate in it: We can't be allowed to rest and be happy. Like the schoolboy's scrag-end of the rolly-polly pudding, it is helped, and must be eaten."

Philosophy brings resignation, but it does not bring ease of mind. Those unfortunate gentlemen who used to be laid upon the wheel and have their limbs broken might have contemplated the approach of inevitable suffering with resignation, but never with happiness. In Colquhoun's mind, Victoria Cassilis was associated with a disagreeable and painful chapter in his life. He saw her marriage in the fragment of Ladds's paper, and thought the chapter closed. He came home and found her waiting for him ready to open it again.

"I did think," he said, turning over her letter in his fingers, "that for her own sake, she would have let things be forgotten. It's ruin for her if the truth comes out, and not pleasant for me, A pretty fool I should look explaining matters in a witness-box. But I must see her, if only to bring her to reason. Reason? When was a woman reasonable?"

"I am here," he said, standing before Mrs. Cassilis at her own house a few hours later. "I am here."

Athos, Parthos, Arimis, and D'Artagnan would have said exactly the same thing.

"Me voici!"

And they would have folded their arms and thrown back their heads with a preliminary tap at the sword-hilt, to make sure that the trusty blade was loose in the scabbard and easy to draw, in case M. le Mari – whom the old French allegorists called Danger– should suddenly appear.

But Lawrence Colquhoun said it quite meekly, to a woman who neither held out her hand nor rose to meet him, nor looked him in the face, but sat in her chair with bowed head and weeping eyes.

A woman of steel? There are no women of steel.

It was in Mrs. Cassilis's morning-room, an apartment sacred to herself; she used it for letter-writing, for interviews with dressmakers, for tea with ladies, for all sorts of things. And now she received her old friend in it. But why was she crying, and why did she not look up?

"I did want to see you, Lawrence," she murmured. "Can you not understand why?"

"My name is Colquhoun, Mrs. Cassilis. And I cannot understand why – "

"My name, Lawrence, is Victoria. Have you forgotten that?"

"I have forgotten everything, Mrs. Cassilis. It is best to forget everything."

"But if you cannot! O Lawrence!" she looked up in his face – "O Lawrence, if you cannot!"

Her weeping eyes, her tear-clouded face, her piteous gesture, moved the man not one whit. The power which she might once have had over him was gone.

"This is mere foolishness, Mrs. Cassilis. As a stranger, a perfect stranger, may I ask why you call me by my Christian name, and why these tears?"

"Strangers! it is ridiculous!" she cried, starting up and standing before him. "It is ridiculous, when all the world knows that we were once friends, and half the world thought that we were going to be something – nearer."

"Nearer – and dearer, Mrs. Cassilis? What a foolish world it was! Suppose we had become nearer, and therefore very much less dear."

"Be kind to me, Lawrence."

"I will be whatever you like, Mrs. Cassilis – except what I was – provided you do not call me Lawrence any more. Come, let us be reasonable. The past is gone; in deference to your wishes I removed myself from the scene; I went abroad; I transported myself for four years; then I saw the announcement of your marriage in the paper by accident. And I 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 repentance. They are gone. Some ghosts of the past come to me, but they do not take the shape of Victoria Pengelley."

"Suppose we cannot forget?"

"Then we must forget. Victoria – Mrs. Cassilis, rouse yourself. Think of what you are – what you have made yourself."

"I do think. I think every day."

"You have a husband and a child; you have your position in the world. Mrs. Cassilis, you have your honour."

"My honour!" she echoed. "What honour? And if all were known! Lawrence, don't you even pity me?"

"What is the good of pity?" he asked rudely. "Pity cannot alter things. Pity cannot make things which are as if they are not. You seem to me to have done what you have done knowing well what you were doing, and knowing what you were going to get by it. You have got one of the very best houses in London; you have got a rich husband; you have got an excellent position; and you have got – Mrs. Cassilis, you have got a child, whose future happiness depends upon your reticence."

"I will tell you what I have besides," she burst in, with passion. "I have the most intolerable husband, the most maddening and exasperating man in all the world!"

"Is he cruel to you?"

"No; he is kind to me. If he were cruel I should know how to treat him. But he is kind."

"Heroics, Mrs. Cassilis. Most women could very well endure a kind husband. Are you not overdoing it? You almost make me remember a scene – call it a dream – which took place in a certain Glasgow hotel about four years and a half ago."

"In the City he is the greatest financier living, I am told. In the house he is the King of Littleness."

"I think there was – or is – a bishop," said Lawrence meditatively, "who gave his gigantic intellect to a Treatise on the Sinfulness of Little Sins. Perhaps you had better buy that work and study it. Or present it to your husband."

"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? If I ever had a right it is gone now – gone, by your own act, and my silence."

"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? 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! Am I, 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 to see him cold and callous to what they say or think. "It is foolish to quarrel after four years and more of absence."

"Absence makes the heart grow 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 sneers."

"When a woman has nothing else to say, she makes a general statement."

"At all events, Lawrence, you are unchanged since I left you at that hotel to which you refer so often. Are its memories pleasing to you?"

"No; they are not. Are they to you? Come, Mrs. Cassilis, this is foolish. You told me you had something to say to me. What is it?"

"I wanted to say this. When we parted – "

"Oh, hang it!" cried the man, "why go back to that?"

"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-tempered. 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, '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."

"I might 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?"

"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. Hang 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?"

"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 – Oh, 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! 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. Perhaps 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 themselves with a few simple descriptive 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 unhappiness might be saved. Perhaps 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 head be held well back and a little to the side.

"What astonishes me," he said, taking no notice of her remark, "is that you do not at all seem to realise the Thing you have done. Do you?"

"It is no use realising 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. After all, no one has any cause to fear except yourself. For me, I certainly 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 comparatively rare in English society. She was a femme incomprise. 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' – "

Here the door opened, and Mr. Gabriel Cassilis appeared. His wife 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."

"Pray sit down, Mr. Colquhoun, unless you will go on with your description. Mr. Colquhoun, who has just arrived 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 weeping, shamefaced woman who received Lawrence Colquhoun.

Gabriel Cassilis looked at his visitor with a little pang of jealousy. This, 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 himself. 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. Perhaps something had gone wrong.

Lawrence and Mrs. Cassilis, or rather the latter, began talking about days of very long ago, so that her husband found himself 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."

CHAPTER XVII

"Now you set your foot on shoreIn Novo Orbe; here's the rich Peru;And there, within, sir, are the golden mines,Great Solomon's Ophir."

Unlimited 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 realise 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 wished 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 wealth which 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 remember 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 ἃυαξ ὰυδρῶυ. 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 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 archæologist, 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 lay mouldering in front of the marble columns – silent monuments of a wasted enthusiasm – while the fleshless fingers pointed at 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 which 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 would go there, sketch, photograph, and dig.

What could not one do if one had money? 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 save the rest. Happy for this country that Honduras, Turkey, and a few other places exist to plunder the British capitalists, or we should indeed perish of wealth-plethora. Thousands of things all round us wait to be done; things which must be done by rich men, and cannot be done by trading men, because they would not pay.

Exempli gratia; here are a few out of the many.

1. They are always talking of endowment of 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 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 possible, and which should be a school for dramatists as well as actors. A paltry £10,000 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 streets ragged and hungry. Presently they become habitual criminals. Then they cost the country huge sums in goals, policemen, and the like. Philanthropic people catch a few of these boys and send them to places where they are made excellent 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. Everybody who employs those women under-pays them and cheats them. Women cannot form trade-unions – they are without the organ of government; therefore they are downtrodden 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 together; 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 improvement of women's labour.