The Golden Butterfly

"The Clearville Roarer was the property of a Mrs. Scrimmager, widow of the lately defunct editor. She was a fresh buxom widow of thirty-five, with a flow of language that would down a town council or a vestry. I inferred from this 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. Scrimmy (we 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 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?'

"'Ill?' she replied, as if surprised at the question. 'Scrimmy never was ill in his life. He was quite the wrong man for that. Scrimmy was killed.'

"'Was he,' I asked. 'Railway accident, I suppose?'

"Mrs. Scrimmager looked at me resentfully, as if she thought 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 Scalper– 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 on my husband; but Huggins was a trifle handier with his irons. In fact, Huggins has 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 Clearville 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 first chance. I've got the note in my desk there. That was gentlemanlike, so far; but he spoiled it all by the mean sneaking 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'd done it he came upstairs 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? Not by a long chalk,' she replied. 'The Roarer has had six editors in five 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 place 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 great vigor 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 would 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 Washington Irving for my model; it should be my mission to elevate the people.

"Wal, sir, I begun. I wrote for my first number articles as elevating as Kentucky whisky. 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 went and got drunk. And the two apprentices fought over the meaning of a sentence in the backyard. One of those boys is now a cripple for life.

"It would have been better for me, a thousand times better, 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, because it gave them prominence and importance. But my pure style didn't suit them, and 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?'

"He called it mush.

"I asked him what was wrong in it.

"'Wrong? 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?'

"'We all take a hand when it's serious,' he replied; 'but in ordinary cases it's generally understood that I do the municipal fighting myself.'

"'We'll consider this an ordinary case, Mr. Mayor,' I said; and I went 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 foreman, whom the day's proceedings had made young again – such is the effect 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.

"'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 a 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 the term is offensive' —

"'Offensive? 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 a gentleman.'

"He started up like a flash, and moved his hand to his breast-pocket.

"'What do 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 passenger this time, Mr. Huggins. You needn't wriggle. I've been chucking people through the 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 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. We shan'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 could 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 come 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 of two hundred dollars, and we parted with every expression of mutual esteem.

"That is how I came out of the land of Egypt, Mr. Dunquerque; and that is the whole history of my connection with the press."

CHAPTER XIX

"We do not knowHow she may soften at the sight o' the child."

If life was pleasant at 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 straightforward way of speaking remained – the way that reminded one of a very superior schoolboy who had not been made a prig at Rugby – but it was rounded off by something more 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 women 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 temporary home, but none so clever, none so bright, none so entirely 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 compromising 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 purposes which 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.

Of course, Agatha's friends called upon her. Among them were several specimens of the British young lady. Phillis watched them with much curiosity, but she could not get on with them. They seemed mostly to be suffering from feeble circulation of the pulse; they spoke as if they enjoyed nothing; those who were very young kindled into enthusiasm in talking over things which Phillis knew nothing about, such as dancing – Phillis was learning to dance, but did not yet comprehend its fiercer joys – and sports in which the other sex took an equal part. Their interest was small in painting; they cared for nothing very strongly; their minds seemed for the most part as languid as their bodies. This life at low ebb seemed to the 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?" she asked one day, after the departure of two young ladies of the highest type.

"Well, dear, I hardly know. I 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. Oh, 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 differently from all other girls. Phil 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 début to which Agatha looked forward with so much interest and pride.

There remained another kind of education.

Brought up alone, with only her 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 and 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 the 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 Baby.

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, surrounded these two, the principal figures. In the corner, grinning, stood the coachman. And the baby crowed and laughed.

"Oh, the pretty thing! Oh, 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 sympathetic tear. "Dire que ma'amsell n'en a jamais vu? Mais non, mais non – pas memes des poupees!"

CHAPTER XX

"Go seek your fortune farther than at home."

Lawrence Colquhoun returned home to find 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 nomme 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 enjoying his first run, he would have met with much the same success which awaited Lawrence Colquhoun. Harris let his opportunity go, and never showed up; perhaps he is still wandering 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 can 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 advertisement of the book, and if the two Chinamen had been added, probably people might be 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 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, thinking 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, matrimony, good and evil hap, had made havoc among his set; but there was still some left. Club-men come and club-men go; but the club goes on for ever.

Colquhoun had the character of being at once the laziest and the most good-natured of men. A dangerous reputation, because 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 him among them again. 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 them; they only light up with secret joy at a friend's misfortunes; but this 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 Gilead P. Beck. Jack Dunquerque, who forgot at the time to make any mention of Phillis Fleming, informed him of the Golden Butterfly's wonderful Luck. And they all 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 on the two Chinamen; had they known 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 know, 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 dare say. 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 I kept a village school at a dollar a day. That was in Ohio. I've been many things in my pilgrimage and tried to like them all, but that was most too much for me. Boys and 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? Soft as the shell of a clam. And tender? Tender as hickory-nut. Air they gentle, unselfish, and yieldin'? 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.