The Golden Butterfly

"I've sometimes thought," he went on, "that there's a kind of work lower than agriculture. It is to wear a black coat and do copying. You take a boy and you make him a machine; tell him to copy, that is all. Why, sir, the rustic who feeds the pigs is a Solomon beside that poor critter. Make your poor helpless paupers into clerks, and make the men who've got arms and legs and no brains into farm labourers. Perhaps I shall build a city and conduct it on those principles."

Then he stopped because he had run himself down, and they began to talk of Phillis.

But it seemed to Jack a new and singular idea. The weak must go to the wall; but they might be helped to find their level. He was glad for once that he had that small four hundred a year of his own, because, as he reflected, his own level might be somewhere on the stage where the manufacture by hand, say, of upper leathers, represents the proper occupation of the class. A good many other fellows, he thought, among his own acquaintance, might find themselves accommodated with boards for the cobbling business near himself. And he looked at Gilead Beck with increased admiration as a man who had struck all this, as well as Ile, out of his own head.

Jack Dunquerque suggested educational endowments. Mr. Beck made deliberate inquiries into the endowments of Oxford and Cambridge, with a view of founding a grand National American University on the old lines, to be endowed in perpetuity with the proceeds of his perennial oil-fountains. But there were things about these ancient seats of learning which did not commend themselves to him. In his unscholastic ignorance he asked what was the good of pitting young men against each other, like the gladiators in the arena, to fight, like them, with weapons of no earthly modern use. And when he was told of fellowships given to men for life as a prize for a single battle, he laughed aloud.

He went down to Eton. He was mean enough to say of the masters that they made their incomes by over-charging the butchers' and the grocers' bills, and he said that ministers, as he called them, ought not to be grocers; and of the boys he said that he thought it unwholesome for them that some should have unlimited pocket-money, and all should have unlimited tick. Also some one told him that Eton boys no longer fight, because they funk one another. So that he came home sorrowful and scornful.

"In my country," he said, "we have got no scholarships, and if the young men can't pay their professors they do without them and educate themselves. And in my country the boys fight. Yes, Mr. Dunquerque, you bet they do fight."

It was after an evening at the Lyceum that Gilead Beck hit upon the grand idea of his life.

The idea struck him as they walked home. It fell upon him like an inspiration, and for the moment stunned him. He was silent until he reached the hotel. Then he called a waiter.

"Get Mr. Dunquerque a key," he said. "He will sleep here. That means, Mr. Dunquerque, that we can talk all night if you please. I want advice."

Jack laughed. He always did laugh.

"It is a great privilege," he said, "advising Fortunatus."

"It is a great privilege, Mr. Dunquerque," returned Fortunatus, "having an adviser who wants nothing for himself. See that pile of letters. Every one a begging-letter, except that blue one on the top, which is from a clergyman. He's a powerful generous man, sir. He offers to conduct my charities at a salary of three hundred pounds a year."

Mr. Beck then proceeded to unfold the great idea which had sprung up, full grown, in his brain.

"That man, sir," he said, meaning Henry Irving, "is a grand actor. And they are using him up. He wants rest."

"I was an actor myself once, and I've loved the boards ever since. I was not a great actor. I am bound to say that I did not act like Mr. Henry Irving. Quite the contrary. Once I was the hind legs of an elephant. Perhaps Mr. Irving himself, when he was a 'prentice, was the fore legs. I was on the boards for a month, when the company busted up. Most things did bust up that I had to do with in those days. I was the lawyer in Flowers of the Forest. I was the demon with the keg to Mr. Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle. Once I played Horatio. That was when the Mayor of Constantinople City inaugurated his year of office by playin' Hamlet. He'd always been fond of the stage, that Mayor, but through bein' in the soft-goods line never could find time to go on. So when he got the chance, bein' then a matter of four-and-fifty, of course he took it. And he elected to play Hamlet, just to show the citizens what a whole-souled Mayor they'd got, and the people in general what good play-actin' meant. The corporation attended in a body, and sat in the front row of what you would call the dress circle. All in store clothes and go-to-meetin' gloves. It was a majestic and an imposing spectacle. Behind them was the fire brigade in uniform. The citizens of Constantinople and their wives and daughters crowded out the house.

"Wal, sir, we began. Whether it was they felt jealous or whether they felt envious, that corporation laughed. They laughed at the sentinels, and they laughed at the moon. They laughed at the Ghost, and they laughed at me – Horatio. And then they laughed at Hamlet.

"I watched the Mayor gettin' gradually riz. Any man's dander would. Presently he rose to that height that he went to the footlights, and stood there facin' his own town council like a bull behind a gate.

"They left off laughing for a minute, and then they began again. We are a grave people, Mr. Dunquerque, I am told, and the sight of those town councillors all laughin' together like so many free niggers before the war was most too much for any one.

"The Mayor made a speech that wasn't in the play.

"'Hyar,' he said, lookin' solemn. 'You jest gether up your traps and skin out of this. I've got the say about this house, and I arn't a goin' to have the folks incited to make game of their Mayor. So – you – kin – jist – light.'

"They hesitated.

"The Mayor pointed to the back of the theatre.

"'Git,' he said again.

"One of the town councillors rose and spoke.

"'Mr. Mayor,' he began, 'or Hamlet, Prince of Denmark' —

"'Wal, sir,' said the Mayor, 'didn't Nero play in his own theaytre?'

"'Mr. Mayor, or Hamlet, or Nero,' e went on, 'we came here on the presumption that we were paying for our places, and bound to laugh if we were amused at the performance. Now, sir, this performance does amuse us considerable.'

"'You may presump,' said the Mayor, 'what you dam please. But git. Git at once, or I'll turn on the pumps.'

"It was the Ghost who came to the front with the hose in his hands ready to begin.

"The town council disappeared before he had time to play on them and we went on with the tragedy.

"But it was spoiled, sir, completely spoiled. And I have never acted since then.

"So you see Mr. Dunquerque, I know somethin' about actin. 'Tisn't as if I was a raw youngster starting a theatrical idea all at once. I thought of it to-night, while I saw a man actin who has the real stuff in him, and only wants rest. I mean to try an experiment in London, and if it succeeds I shall take it to New York, and make the American Drama the greatest in all the world."

"What will you do?"

"I said to myself in that theatre: 'We want a place where we can have a different piece acted every week; we want to give time for rehearsals and for alteration; we want to bring up the level of the second-rate actors; we want more intelligence; and we want more care.' Now, Mr. Dunquerque, how would you tackle that problem?"

"I cannot say."

"Then I will tell you, sir. You must have three full companies. You must give up expecting that Theatre to pay its expenses; you must find a rich man to pay for that Theatre; and he must pay up pretty handsome."

"Lord de Molleteste took the Royal Hemisphere last year."

"Had he three companies, sir?"

"No; he only had one; and that was a bad one. Wanted to bring out a new actress, and no one went to see her. Cost him a hundred pounds a week till he shut it up."

"Well, we will bring along new actresses too, but in a different fashion. They will have to work their way up from the bottom of the ladder. My Theatre will cost me a good deal more than a hundred pounds a week, I expect. But I am bound to run it. The idea's in my head strong. It's the thing to do. A year or two in London, and then for the States. We shall have a Grand National Drama, and the Ile shall pay for it."

He took paper and pen, and began to write.

"Three companies, all complete, for tragedy and comedy. I've been to every theatre in London, and I'm ready with my list. Now, Mr. Dunquerque, you listen while I write them down.

"I say first company; not that there's any better or worse, but because one must begin with something.

"In the first I will have Mr. Irving, Mr. Henry Neville, Mr. William Farren, Mr. Toole, Mr. Emery, Miss Bateman, and Miss Nelly Farren.

"In the second, Mr. George Rignold – I saw him in Henry V. last winter in the States – Mr. Hare, Mr. Kendal, Mr. Lionel Brough, Mrs. Kendal, and that clever little lady, Miss Angelina Claude.

"In the third I will have Mr. Phelps, Mr. Charles Matthews, Mr. W. J. Hill, Mr. Arthur Cecil, Mr. Kelly, Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft, and Mrs. Scott-Siddons, if you could only get her.

"I should ask Mr. Alfred Wigan to be a stage-manager and general director, and I would give him absolute power.

"Every company will play for a week and rehearse for a fortnight. The principal parts shall not always be played by the best actors. And I will not have any piece run for more than a week at a time."

"And how do you think your teams would run together?"

"Sir, it would be a distinction to belong to that Theatre. And they would be well paid. They will run together just for the very same reason as everybody runs together – for their own interest."

"I believe," said Jack, "that you have at last hit upon a plan for getting rid even of your superfluous cash."

"It will cost a powerful lot, I believe. But Lord, Mr. Dunquerque! what better object can there be than to improve the Stage? Think what it would mean. The House properly managed; no loafin' around behind the scenes; every actor doing his darn best, and taking time for study and rehearsal; people comin' down to a quiet evening, with the best artists to entertain them, and the best pieces to play. The Stage would revive, sir. We should hear no more about the decay of the Drama. The Drama decay! That's bunkum, sir. That's the invention of the priests and the ministers, who go about down-cryin' what they can't have their own fingers in."

"But I don't see how your scheme will encourage authors."

"I shall pay them too, sir. I should say to Mr. Byron: 'Sir, you air a clever and a witty man. Go right away, sir. Sit down for a twelvemonth, and do nothin' at all. Then write me a play; put your own situations in it, not old jokes; put your own situations in it, not old ones. Give me somethin' better.' Then I should say to Mr. Gilbert: 'Your pieces have got the real grit, young gentleman; but you write too fast. Go away too for six months and do nothin'. Then sit down for six months more, and write a piece that will be pretty and sweet, and won't be thin.' And there's more dramatists behind – only give them a chance. They shall have it at my house."

"And what will the other houses do?"

"The other houses, sir, may go on playing pieces for four hundred nights if they like. I leave them plenty of men to stump their boards, and my Theatre won't hold more than a certain number. I shall only take a small house to begin with, such a house as the Lyceum, and we shall gradually get along. But no profit can be made by such a Stage, and I am ready to give half my Ile to keep it goin'. Of course," he added, "when it is a success in London I shall carry it away, company and all, to New York."

He rose in a burst of enthusiasm.

"Gilead P. Beck shall be known for his collection of pictures. He shall be known for his Golden Butterfly, and the Luck it brought him. But he shall be best known, Mr. Dunquerque, because he will be the first man to take the Stage out of the mud of commercial enterprise, and raise it to be the great educator of the people. He shall be known as the founder of the Grand National American Drama. And his bust shall be planted on the top of every American stage."

CHAPTER XXXIV

"In such a cause who would not give? What heartBut leaps at such a name?"

People of rank and position are apt to complain of begging-letters. Surely England must be a happy country since its rich people complain mostly of begging-letters; for they are so easily dropped into the waste-paper basket. A country squire – any man with a handle to his name and place for a permanent address – is the natural prey and victim of the beggars. The lithographed letter comes with every post, trying in vain to look like a written letter. And though in fervid sentences it shows the danger to your immortal soul if you refuse the pleading, most men have the courage to resist. The fact is that the letter is not a nuisance at all, because it is never read. On the other hand, a new and very tangible nuisance is springing up. It is that of the people who go round and call. Sir Roger de Coverly in his secluded village is free from the women who give you the alternative of a day with Moody and Sankey or an eternity of repentance; he never sees the pair of Sisters got up like Roman Catholic nuns, who stand meekly before you, arms crossed, mutely refusing to go without five shillings at least for their Ritualist hot-house. But he who lives in chambers, he who puts up at a great hotel and becomes known, he who has a house in any address from Chester Square to Notting Hill, understands this trouble.

In some mysterious way Gilead Beck had become known. Perhaps this was partly in consequence of his habit of going to institutions, charities, and the like, and wanting to find out everything. In some vague and misty way it became known that there was at the Langham Hotel an American named Gilead P. Beck, who was asking questions philanthropically. Then all the people who live on philanthropists, with all those who work for their pleasure among philanthropists, began to tackle Gilead P. Beck. Letters came in the morning, which he read but did not answer. Circulars were sent to him, of which he perhaps made a note. Telegrams were even delivered to him – people somehow must read telegrams – asking him for money. Those wonderful people who address the Affluent in the Times and ask for £300 on the security of an honest man's word; those unhappy ladies whose father was a gentleman and an officer, on the strength of which fact they ask the Benevolent to help them in their undeserved distress, poor things; those disinterested advertisers who want a few hundreds, and who will give fifteen per cent. on the security of a splendid piano, a small gallery of undoubted pictures, and some unique china; those tradesmen who try to stave off bankruptcy by asking the world generally for a loan on the strength of a simple reference to the clergyman of St. Tinpot, Hammersmith; those artful dodgers, Mr. Ally Sloper and his friends, when they have devised a new and ingenious method of screwing money out of the rich, – all these people got hold of our Gilead, and pelted him with letters. Did they know, the ingenious and the needy, how the business is overdone, they would change their tactics and go round calling.

It requires a front of brass, entire absence of self-respect, and an epidermis like that of the rhinoceros for toughness, to undertake this work. Yet ladies do it. You want a temperament off which insults, gibes, sneers, and blank refusals fall like water off a nasturtium-leaf to go the begging-round. Yet women do it. They do it not only for themselves, but also for their cause. From Ritualism down to Atheism, from the fashionable enthusiasm to the nihilism which the British workman is being taught to regard as the hidden knowledge, there are women who will brave anything, dare anything, say anything, and endure anything. They love to be martyred, so long especially as it does not hurt; they are angry with the lukewarm zeal of their male supporters, forgetting that a man sees the two sides of a question, while a woman never sees more than one; they mistake notoriety for fame, and contempt for jealous admiration.

And here, in the very heart of London, was a man who seemed simply born for the Polite Beggar. A man restless because he could not part with his money. Not seeking profitable investments, not asking for ten and twenty per cent.; but anxious to use his money for the best purposes; a man who was a philanthropist in the abstract, who considered himself the trustee of a gigantic gift to the human race, and was desirous of exercising that trust to the best advantage.

In London; and at the same time, in the same city, thousands of people not only representing their individual distresses or their society's wants, but also plans, schemes, and ideas for the promotion of civilisation in the abstract. Do we not all know the projectors? I myself know at this moment six men who want each to establish a daily paper; at least a dozen who would like a weekly; fifty who see a way, by the formation of a new society, to check immorality, kill infidelity once for all, make men sober and women clean, prevent strikes and destroy Republicanism. There is one man who would "save" the Church of England by establishing the preaching order; one who knows how to restore England to her place among the nations without a single additional soldier; one who burns to abolish bishops' aprons, and would make it penal to preach in a black gown. The land teems with idea'd men. They yearn, pray, and sigh daily for the capitalist who will reduce their idea to practice.

And besides the projectors, there are the inventors. I once knew a man who claimed to have invented a means for embarking and setting down passengers and goods on a railway without stopping the trains. Think of the convenience. Why no railways have taken up the invention, I cannot explain. Then there are men who have inventions which will reform the whole system of domestic appliances; there are others who are prepared on encouragement to reform the whole conduct of life by new inventions. There are men by thousands brooding over experiments which they have no money to carry out; there are men longing to carry on experiments whose previous failure they can now account for. All these men are looking for a capitalist as for a Messiah. Had they known – had they but dimly suspected – that such a capitalist was in June of last year staying at the Langham Hotel, they would have sought that hotel with one consent, and besieged its portals. The world in general did not know Mr. Beck's resources. But they were beginning to find him out. The voice of rumour was spreading abroad his reputation. And the people wrote letters, sent circulars, and called.

"Twenty-three of them came yesterday morning," Gilead Beck complained to Jack Dunquerque. "Three-and-twenty, and all with a tale to tell. No, sir," – his voice rose in indignation – "I did not give one of them so much as a quarter-dollar. The Luck of the Golden Butterfly is not to be squandered among the well-dressed beggars of Great Britain. Three-and-twenty, counting one little boy, who came by himself. His mother was a widow, he said, and he sat on the chair and sniffed. And they all wanted money. There was one man in a white choker who had found out a new channel for doing good – and one man who wished to recommend a list of orphans. The rest were women. And talk? There's no name for it. With little books, and pencils, and bundles of tracts."

While he spoke there was a gentle tap at the door.

"There's another of them," he groaned. "Stand by me, Mr. Dunquerque. See me through with it. Come in, come in! Good Lord!" he whispered, "a brace this time. Will you tackle the young one, Mr. Dunquerque?"

A pair of ladies. One of them a lady tall and thin, stern of aspect, sharp of feature, eager of expression. She wore spectacles: she was apparently careless of her dress, which was of black silk a little rusty. With her was a girl of about eighteen, perhaps her daughter, perhaps her niece; a girl of rather sharp but pretty features, marked by a look of determination, as if she meant to see the bottom of this business, or know the reason why.

"You are Mr. Beck, sir?" the elder lady began.

"I am Gilead P. Beck, madam," he replied.

He was standing before the fireplace, with his long hands thrust into his pocket, one foot on an adjacent chair, and his head thrown a little back – defiantly.

"You have received two letters from me, Mr. Beck, written by my own hand, and – how many circulars, child?'

"Twenty," said the girl.

"And I have had no answer. I am come for your answer, Mr. Beck. We will sit down, if you please, while you consider your answer."

Mr. Beck took up a waste paper basket which stood at his feet, and tossed out the whole contents upon the table.

"Those are the letters of yesterday and to-day," he said. "What was yours, madam? Was it a letter asking for money?"

"It was."

"Yesterday there were seventy-four letters asking for money. To-day there are only fifty-two. May I ask, madam, if you air the widow who wants money to run a mangle?"

"Sir, I am unmarried. A mangle!"

He dug his hand into the pile, and took out one at random.

"You air, perhaps, the young lady who writes to know if I want a housekeeper, and encloses her carte-de-visite? No; that won't do. Is it possible you are the daughter of the Confederate general who lost his life in the cause?"

"Really, sir!"

"Then, madam, we come to the lady who" – here he read from another letter – "who was once a governess, and now is reduced to sell her last remaining garments."

"Sir!"

There was a withering scorn on the lady's lips.

"I represent a Cause, Mr. Beck. I am not a beggar for myself. My cause is the sacred one of Womanhood. You, sir, in your free and happy Republic – "

Mr. Beck bowed.

"Have seen woman partially restored to her proper place – on a level with man."

"A higher level," murmured the girl, who had far-off eyes and a sweet voice. "The higher level reached by the purer heart."

"Only partially restored at present. But the good work goes on. Here we are only beginning. Mr. Beck, the Cause wants help – your help."

He said nothing and she went on.

"We want our rights; we want suffrage; we want to be elected for the Houses of Parliament; we insist on equality in following the professions and in enjoying the endowments of Education. We shall prove that we are no whit inferior to men. We want no privileges. Let us stand by ourselves."

"Wal, madam, their air helpers who shove up, and I guess there air helpers who shove down."

She did not understand him, and went on with increasing volubility.

"The subjection of the Sex is the most monstrous injustice of all those which blot the fair fame of manhood. What is there in man's physical strength that he should use it to lord over the weaker half of humanity? Why has not our sex produced a Shakespeare?"

"It has, madam," said Mr. Beck gravely. "It has produced all our greatest men."

She was staggered.

"Your answer, if you please, Mr. Beck."

"I have no answer, madam."

"I have written you two letters, and sent you twenty circulars, urging upon you the claims of the Woman's Rights Association. I have the right to ask for a reply. I expect one. You will be kind enough sir, to give categorically your answer to the several heads. This you will do of your courtesy to a lady. We can wait here while you write it. I shall probably, I ought to tell you, publish it."

"We can wait," said the young lady.

They sat with folded hands in silence.

Mr. Beck shifted his foot from the chair to the carpet. Then he took his hands out of his pockets and stroked his chin. Then he gazed at the ladies steadily.

Jack Dunquerque sat in the background, and rendered no help whatever.

"Did you ever, ladies," asked Mr. Beck, after a few moments of reflection, "hear of Paul Deroon of Memphis? He was the wickedest man in that city. Which was allowed. He kept a bar where the whisky was straight and the language was free, and where Paul would tell stories, once you set him on, calculated to raise on end the hair of your best sofa. When the Crusade began – I mean the Whisky Crusade – the ladies naturally began with Paul Deroon's saloon."