The Golden Butterfly

Sir Benjamin Backbite remarked that though the gentleman was languid, the lady was shaken out of her habitual coldness. She was changed. What could change her, asked the Baronet, but passion for this old friend of her youth? Why, it was only four years since he had followed her, after a London season, down to Scotland, and everybody said it would be a match. She received his attentions coldly then, as she received the attentions of every man. Now the tables were turned; it was the man who was cold.

These social observers are always right. But they never rise out of themselves; therefore their conclusions are generally wrong. Victoria Cassilis was not, as they charitably thought, running after Colquhoun through the fancy of a wayward heart. Not at all. She was simply wondering where it had gone – that old power of hers, by which she once twisted him round her finger – and why it was gone. A woman cannot believe that she has lost her power over a man. It is an intolerable thought. Her power is born of her beauty and her grace; these may vanish, but the old attractiveness remains, she thinks, if only as a tradition. When she is no longer beautiful she loves to believe that her lovers are faithful still. Now Victoria Cassilis remembered this man as a lover and a slave; his was the only pleading she had ever heard which could make her understand the meaning of man's passion; he was the only suitor whom a word could make wretched or a look happy. For he had once loved her with all his power and all his might. Between them there was the knowledge of a thing which, if any knowledge could, should have crushed out and beaten down the memory of this love. She had made it, by her own act and deed, a crime to remember it. And yet, in spite of all, she could not bring herself to remember that the old power was dead. She tried to bring him again under influence. She failed, but she succeeded in making him come back to her as if nothing had ever happened. And then she said to herself that there must be another woman, and she set herself to find out who that woman was.

Formerly many men had hovered – marriageable men, excellent partis– round the cold and statuesque beauty of Victoria Pengelley. She was an acknowledged beauty; she brought an atmosphere of perfect taste and grace into a room with her; men looked at her and wondered; foolish girls, who knew no better, envied her. Presently the foolish girls, who had soft faces and eyes, which could melt in love or sorrow, envied her no longer, because they got engaged and married. And of all the men who came and went, there was but one who loved her so that his pulse beat quicker when she came; who trembled when he took her hand; whose nerves tingled and whose blood ran swifter through his veins when he asked her, down in that quiet Scotch village, with no one to know it but her maid, to be his wife.

The man was Lawrence Colquhoun. The passion had been his. Now love and passion were buried in the ashes of the past. The man was impassable, and the woman, madly kicking against the fetters which she had bound around herself, was angry and jealous.

It is by some mistake of Nature that women who cannot love can yet be jealous. Victoria Pengelley's pulse never once moved the faster for all the impetuosity of her lover. She liked to watch it, this curious yearning after her beauty, this eminently masculine weakness, because it was a tribute to her power; it is always pleasant for a woman to feel that she is loved as women are loved in novels – men's novels, not the pseudo-passionate school-girls' novels, or the calmly respectable feminine tales where the young gentlemen and the young ladies are superior to the instincts of common humanity. Victoria played with this giant as an engineer will play with the wheels of a mighty engine. She could do what she liked with it. Samson was not more pliable to Delilah; and Delilah was not more unresponsive to that guileless strong man. She soon got tired of her toy, however. Scarcely were the morning and the evening of the fifth day, when by pressing some unknown spring she smashed it altogether.

Now, when it was quite too late, when the thing was utterly smashed, when she had a husband and child, she was actually trying to reconstruct it. Some philosopher, probing more deeply than usual the mysteries of mankind, once discovered that it was at all times impossible to know what a woman wants. He laid that down as a general axiom, and presented it as an irrefragable truth for the universal use of humanity. One may sometimes, however, guess what a woman does not want. Victoria Cassilis, one may be sure, did not want to sacrifice her honour, her social standing, or her future. She was not intending to go off, for instance, with her old lover, even if he should propose the step, which seemed unlikely. And yet she would have liked him to propose it, because then she would have felt the recovery of her power. Now her sex, as Chaucer and others before him pointed out, love power beyond all other earthly things. And the history of queens, from Semiramis to Isabella, shows what a mess they always make of it when they do get power.

A curious problem. Given a woman, no longer in the first bloom of youth, married well, and clinging with the instincts of her class to her reputation and social position. She has everything to lose and nothing to gain. She cannot hope even for the love of the man for whom she is incurring the suspicions of the world, and exciting the jealousy of her husband. Yet it is true, in her case, what the race of evil-speakers, liars, and slanderers say of her. She is running after Lawrence Colquhoun. He is too much with her. She has given the enemy occasion to blaspheme.

As for Colquhoun, when he thought seriously over the situation, he laughed when it was a fine day, and swore if it was raining. The English generally take a sombre view of things because it is so constantly raining. We proclaim our impotence, the lack of national spirit, and our poverty, until other nations actually begin to believe us. But Colquhoun, though he might swear, made no effort to release himself, when a word would have done it.

"You may use harsh language to me, Lawrence," said Mrs. Cassilis – he never had used harsh language to any woman – "you may sneer at me, and laugh in your cold and cruelly impassive manner. But one thing I can say for you, that you understand me."

"I have seen all your moods, Mrs. Cassilis, and I have a good memory. If you will show your husband that the surface of the ocean may be stormy sometimes, he will understand you a good deal better. Get up a little breeze for him."

"I am certainly not going to have a vulgar quarrel with Mr. Cassilis."

"A vulgar quarrel? Vulgar? Ah, vulgarity changes every five years or so. What a pity that vulgar quarrels were in fashion six years ago, Mrs. Cassilis!"

"Some men are not worth losing your temper about."

"Thank you. I was, I suppose. It was very kind of you, indeed, to remind me of it, as you then did, in a manner at once forcible and not to be forgotten. Mr. Cassilis gets nothing, I suppose, but east wind, with a cloudless sky which has the sun in it, but only the semblance of warmth. I got a good sou'-wester. But take care, take care, Mrs. Cassilis! You have wantonly thrown away once what most women would have kept – kept, Mrs. Cassilis! I remember when I was kneeling at your feet years ago, talking the usual nonsense about being unworthy of you. Rubbish! I was more than worthy of you, because I could give myself to you loyally, and you – you could only pretend!"

"Go on, Lawrence. It is something that you regret the past, and something to see that you can feel, after all."

She stopped and laughed carelessly.

"Prick me and I sing out. That is natural. But we will have no heroics. What I mean is, that I am well out of it; and that you, Victoria Cassilis, are – forgive the plain speaking – a foolish woman."

"Lawrence Colquhoun has the right to insult me as he pleases, and I must bear it."

It was in her own room. Colquhoun was leaning on the window; she was sitting on a chair before him. She was agitated and excited. He, save for the brief moments when he spoke as if with emotion, was languid and calm.

"I have no right," he replied, "and you know it. Let us finish. Mrs. Cassilis, keep what you have, and be thankful."

"What I have! What have I?"

"One of the best houses in London. An excellent social position. A husband said to be the ablest man in the City. An income which gives you all that a woman can ask for. The confidence and esteem of your husband – and a child. Do these things mean nothing?"

"My husband – Oh, my husband! He is insufferable sometimes, when I remember, Lawrence."

"He is a man who gives his trust after a great deal of doubt and hesitation. Then he gives it wholly. To take it back would be a greater blow, a far greater blow, than it would ever be to a younger man – to such a man as myself."

"Gabriel Cassilis only suffers when he loses money."

"That is not the case. You cannot afford to make another great mistake. Success isn't on the cards after two such blunders, Mrs. Cassilis."

"What do I want with success? Let me have happiness."

"Take it; it is at your feet," said Lawrence. "It is in this house. It is the commonest secret. Every simple country woman knows it."

"No one will ever understand me," she sighed. "No one."

"It is simply to give up for ever thinking about yourself. Go and look after your baby, and find happiness there."

Why superior women are always so angry if they are asked to look after their babies, I cannot understand. There is no blinking the fact that they have them. The maternal instinct makes women who cannot write or talk fine language about the domestic affections, take to the tiny creatures with a passion of devotion which is the loveliest thing to look upon in all this earth. The femme incomprise alone feels no anguish if her baby cries, no joy if he laughs, and flies into a divine rage if you remind her that she is a mother.

"My baby!" cried Victoria, springing to her feet. "You see me yearning for sympathy, looking to you as my oldest – once my dearest – friend, for a little – only a little – interest and pity, and you send me to my baby! The world is all selfish and cold-hearted, but the most selfish man in it is Lawrence Colquhoun!"

He laughed again. After all, he had said his say.

"I am glad you think so, because it simplifies matters. Now, Mrs. Cassilis, we have had our little confidential talk, and I think, under the circumstances, that it had better be the last. So, for a time, we will not meet, if you please. I do take a certain amount of interest in you – that is, I am always curious to see what line you will take next. And if you are at all concerned to have my opinion and counsel, it is this: that you've got your chance; and if you give that man who loves you and trusts you any unhappiness through your folly, you will be a much more heartless and wicked woman than even I have ever thought you. And, by Gad! I ought to know."

He left her. Mrs. Cassilis heard his step in the hall and the door close behind him. Then she ran to the window, and watched him strolling in his leisurely, careless way down the road. It made her mad to think that she could not make him unhappy, and made her jealous to think that she could no longer touch his heart. Not in love with him at all – she never had been; but jealous because her old power was gone.

Jealous! There must be another girl. Doubtless Phillis Fleming. She ordered her carriage and drove straight to Twickenham. Agatha was having one of her little garden-parties. Jack Dunquerque was there with Gilead Beck. Also Captain Ladds. But Lawrence Colquhoun was not. She stayed an hour; she ascertained from Phillis that her guardian seldom came to see her, and went home again in a worse temper than before, because she felt herself on the wrong track.

Tomlinson, her maid, had a very bad time of it while she was dressing her mistress for dinner. Nothing went right, somehow. Tomlinson, the hard-featured, was long suffering and patient. She made no reply to the torrent which flowed from her superior's angry lips. But when respite came with the dinner-bell, and her mistress was safely downstairs, the maid sat down to the table and wrote a letter very carefully. This she read and re-read, and, being finally satisfied with it, she took it out to the post herself. After that, as she would not be wanted till midnight at least, she took a cab and went to the Marylebone Theatre, where she wept over the distresses of a lady, ruined by the secret voice of calumny.

It was at the end of May, and the season was at its height. Mrs. Cassilis had two or three engagements, but she came home early, and was even sharper with the unfortunate Tomlinson than before dinner. But Tomlinson was very good, and bore all in patience. It is Christian to endure.

Next morning Gabriel Cassilis found among his letters another in the same handwriting as that of the three anonymous communications he had already received.

He tore it open with a groan.

"This is the fourth letter. You will have to take notice of my communications, and to act upon them, sooner or later. All this morning Mr. Colquhoun was locked up with your wife in her boudoir. He came at eleven and went away at half-past one. No one was admitted. They talked of many things – of their Scotch secret especially, and how to hide it from you. I shall keep you informed of what they do. At half past two Mrs. Cassilis ordered the carriage and drove to Twickenham. Mr. Colquhoun has got his ward there, Miss Fleming. So that doubtless she went to meet him again. In the evening she came home in a very bad temper, because she had failed to meet him. She had hoped to see him three times at least this very day. Surely, surely even your blind confidence cannot stand a continuation of this kind of thing. All the world knows it except yourself. You may be rich and generous to her, but she doesn't love you. And she doesn't care for her child. She hasn't asked to see it for three days – think of that! There is a pretty mother for you! She ill-treats her maid, who is a most faithful person, and devoted to your interests. She is hated by every servant in the house. She is a cold-hearted, cruel woman. And even if she loves Mr. Colquhoun, it can only be through jealousy, and because she won't let him marry anybody else, even if he wanted to. But things are coming to a crisis. Wait!"

Mr. Mowll came in with a packet of papers, and found his master staring straight before him into space. He spoke to him but received no answer. Then he touched him gently on the arm. Mr. Cassilis started, and looked round hastily. His first movement was to lay his hand upon a letter on the desk.

"What is it, Mowll – what is it? I was thinking – I was thinking. I am not very well to-day, Mowll."

"You have been working too hard, sir," said his secretary.

"Yes – yes. It is nothing. Now, then, let us look at what you have brought."

For two hours Mr. Cassilis worked with his secretary. He had the faculty of rapid and decisive work. And he had the eye of a hawk. They were two hours of good work, and the secretary's notes were voluminous. Suddenly the financier stopped – the work half done. It was as if the machinery of a clock were to go wrong without warning.

"So," he said, with an effort, "I think we will stop for to-day. Put all these matters at work, Mowll. I shall go home and rest."

A thing he had never done before in all his life.

He went back to his house. His wife was at home and alone. They had luncheon together, and drove out in the afternoon. Her calm and stately pride drove the jealous doubts from his troubled mind as the sun chases away the mists of morning.

CHAPTER XXXIII

"An excellent play."

Such things as dinners to Literature were the relaxations of Gilead Beck's serious life. His real business was to find an object worthy of that enormous income of which he found himself the trustee. The most sympathetic man of his acquaintance, although it was difficult to make him regard any subject seriously, was Jack Dunquerque, and to him he confided his anxieties and difficulties.

"I can't fix it," he groaned. "I can't fix it anyhow."

Jack knew what he meant, but waited for further light, like him who readeth an acrostic.

"The more I look at that growin' pile – there's enough now to build the White House over again – the more I misdoubt myself."

"Where have you got it all?"

"In Government Stocks – by the help of Mr. Cassilis. No more of the unholy traffic in shares which you buy to sell again. No, sir. That means makin' the widow weep and the minister swear; an' I don't know which spectacle of those two is the more melancholy for a Christian man. All in stocks – Government Stocks, safe and easy to draw out, with the interest comin' in regular as the chant of the cuckoo-clock."

"Well, can't you let it stay there?"

"No, Mr. Dunquerque, I can't. There's the voice of that blessed Inseck in the box there, night and day in my ears. And it says, plain as speech can make it, 'Do something with the money.'"

"You have bought a few pictures."

"Yes, sir: I have begun the great Gilead P. Beck collection. And when that is finished, I guess there'll be no collection on this airth to show a candle to it. But that's personal vanity. That's not what the Golden Butterfly wants."

"Would he like you to have a yacht? A good deal may be chucked over a yacht. That is, a good deal for what we Englishmen call a rich man."

"When I go home again I mean to build a yacht, and sail her over here and race you people at Cowes – all the same as the America, twenty years ago. But not yet."

"There are a few trifles going about which run away with money. Polo, now. If you play polo hard enough, you may knock up a pony every game. But I suppose that would not be expensive enough for you. You couldn't ride two ponies at once, I suppose, like a circus fellow."

"Selfish luxury, Mr. Dunquerque," said Gilead, with an almost prayerful twang, "is not the platform of the Golden Butterfly. I should like to ride two ponies at once, but it's not to be thought of. And my legs are too long for any but a Kentucky pony."

"Is the Turf selfish luxury, I wonder?" asked Jack. "A good deal of money can be got through on the Turf. Nothing, of course, compared with your pile; but still, you might make a sensible hole in it by judicious backing."

Gilead Beck was as free from ostentation, vanity, and the desire to have his ears tickled as any man. But still he did like to feel that by the act of Providence, he was separated from other men. An income of fifteen hundred pounds a day, which does not depend upon harvests, or on coal, or on iron, or anything to eat and drink, but only on the demand for rock-oil, which increases, as he often said, with the march of civilisation, does certainly separate a man from his fellows. This feeling of division saddened him; it imparted something of the greatness of soul which belongs even to the most unworthy emperors; he felt himself bound to do something for the good of mankind while life and strength were in him. And it was not unpleasant to know that others recognised the vastness of his Luck. Therefore, when Jack Dunquerque spoke as if the Turf were a gulf which might be filled up with his fortune, while it swallowed, without growing sensibly more shallow, all the smaller fortunes yearly shot into it like the rubbish on the future site of a suburban villa, Gilead Beck smiled. Such recognition from this young man was doubly pleasant to him on account of his unbounded affection for him. Jack Dunquerque had saved his life. Jack Dunquerque treated him as an equal and a friend. Jack Dunquerque wanted nothing of him, and, poor as he was, would accept nothing of him. Jack Dunquerque was the first, as he was also the most favourable, specimen he had met of the class which may be poor, but does not seem to care for more money; the class which no longer works for increase of fortune.

"No, sir," said Gilead. "I do not understand the Turf. When I go home I shall rear horses and improve the breed. Maybe I may run a horse in a trotting-match at Saratoga."

In the mornings this American, in search of a Worthy Object, devoted his time to making the round of hospitals, London societies, and charities of all kinds. He asked what they did, and why they did it. He made remarks which were generally unpleasant to the employés of the societies; he went away without offering the smallest donation; and he returned moodily to the Langham Hotel.

"The English," he said, after a fortnight of these investigations, "air the most kind-hearted people in the hull world. We are charitable, and I believe the Germans, when they are not officers in their own army, are a well-disposed folk. But in America, when a man tumbles down the ladder, he falls hard. Here there's every contrivance for makin' him fall soft. A man don't feel handsome when he's on the broad of his back, but it must be a comfort for him to feel that his backbone isn't broke. Lord, Mr. Dunquerque! to look at the hospitals and refuges, one would think the hull Bible had got nothin' but the story of the Prodigal Son, and that every other Englishman was that misbehaved boy. I reckon if the young man had lived in London, he'd have gone home very slow – most as slow as ever he could travel. There'd be the hospitals, comfortable and warm, when his constitootion had broke down with too many drinks: there'd have been the convalescent home for him to enjoy six months of happy meditation by the seaside when he was pickin' up again; and when he got well, would he take to the swine-herdin', or would he tramp it home to the old man? Not he, sir; he would go back to the old courses and become a Roper. Then more hospitals. P'r'aps when he'd got quite tired, and seen the inside of a State prison, and been without his little comforts for a spell, he'd have gone home at last – just as I did, for I was the prodigal son without the riotous livin' – and found the old man gone, leavin' him his blessin'. The elder one would hand him the blessin' cheerfully, and stick to the old man's farm. Then the poor broken down sportsman – he'd tramp it back to London, get into an almshouse, with an allowance from a City charity, and die happy.

"There's another kind o' prodigal," Mr. Beck went on, being in a mood for moralising. "She's of the other sex. Formerly she used to repent when she thought of what was before her. There's a refuge before her now, and kind women to take her by the hand and cry over her. She isn't in any hurry for the cryin' to begin, but it's comfortable to look forward to; and so she goes on until she's ready. Twenty years fling, maybe, with nothing to do for her daily bread; and then to start fair on the same level as the woman who has kept her self-respect and worked.

"I can't see my way clear, Mr. Dunquerque; I can't. It wouldn't do any kind of honour to the Golden Butterfly to lay out all of these dollars in helpin' up them who are bound to fall – bound to fall. There's only two classes of people in this world – those who are goin' up, and those who are goin' down. It's no use tryin' to stop those who are on their way down. Let them go; let them slide; give them a shove down, if you like, and all the better, because they will the sooner get to the bottom, and then go up again till they find their own level."

It was in the evening, at nine o'clock, when Gilead Beck made the oration. He was in his smaller room, which was lit only by the twilight of the May evening and by the gas-lamp in the street below. He walked up and down, talking with his hands in his pockets, and silencing Jack Dunquerque, who had never thought seriously about these or any other things, by his earnestness. Every now and then he went to the window and looked into the street below. The cabs rattled up and down, and on the pavement the customary sight of a West-end street after dark perhaps gave him inspiration.

"Their own level," he repeated it. "Yes, sir, there's a proper level for every one of us somewhere, if only we can find it. At the lowest depth of all, there's the airth to be ploughed, the hogs to be drove, and the corn to be reaped. I read the other day, when I was studying for the great dinner, that formerly, if a man took refuge in a town, he might stay there for a year and a day. If then he could not keep himself, they opened the gates and they ran him out on a plank; same way as I left Clearville City. Back to the soil he went – back to the plough. Let those who are going down hill get down as fast as they can, and go back to the soil.