The Golden Butterfly

Presently she laid down her brush, and raised her head. Then she pushed aside the curtains, and looked out upon the gardens. The rain drove against the windows, and the wind beat about the branches of the lilacs on the lawn. She shivered, and pulled the curtains together again.

"I wish Jack were here," she said to herself.

"He is here, Phil," Jack replied.

She looked round, and darted across the room, catching him by both hands.

"Jack! Oh, I am glad! There is nobody at home. Agatha has gone up to town, and I am quite alone. What shall we do this afternoon?"

Clearly the right thing for him to propose was that he should instantly leave the young lady, and row himself back to Richmond. This, however, was not what he did propose. On the contrary, he kept Phillis's hands in his, and held them tight, looking in her upturned face, where he saw nothing but undisguised joy at his appearance.

"Shall we talk? Shall I play to you? Shall I draw you a picture? What shall we do, Jack?"

"Well, Phil, I think – perhaps – we had better talk."

Something in his voice struck her; she looked at him sharply.

"What has happened, Jack? You do not look happy."

"Nothing, Phil – nothing but what I might have expected." But he looked so dismal that it was quite certain he had not expected it.

"Tell me, Jack."

He shook his head.

"Jack, what is the good of being friends if you won't tell me what makes you unhappy?"

"I don't know how to tell you, Phil. I don't see a way to begin."

"Sit down, and begin somehow." She placed him comfortably in the largest chair in the room, and then she stood in front of him, and looked in his face with compassionate eyes. The sight of those deep-brown orbs, so full of light and pity, smote her lover with a kind of madness. "What is it makes people unhappy? Are you ill?"

He shook his head, and laughed.

"No, Phil; I am never ill. You see, I am not exactly unhappy – "

"But Jack, you look so dismal."

"Yes, that is it; I am a little dismal. No. Phil – no. I am really unhappy, and you are the cause."

"I the cause? But, Jack, why?"

"I had a talk with your guardian, Lawrence Colquhoun, yesterday. It was all about you. And he wants me – not to come here so often, in fact. And I musn't come."

"But why not? What does Lawrence mean?"

"That is just what I cannot explain to you. You must try to forgive me."

"Forgive you, Jack?"

"You see, Phil, I have behaved badly from the beginning. I ought not to have called upon you as I did in Carnarvon Square; I ought not to have let you call me Jack, nor should I have called you Phil. It is altogether improper in the eyes of the world."

She was silent for a while.

"Perhaps I have known, Jack, that it was a little unusual. Other girls haven't got a Jack Dunquerque, have they? Poor things! That is all you mean, isn't it, Jack?"

"Phil, don't look at me like that! You don't know – you can't understand – No; it is more than unusual; it is quite wrong."

"I have done nothing wrong," the girl said proudly. "If I had, my conscience would make me unhappy. But I do begin to understand what you mean. Last week Agatha asked me if I was not thinking too much about you. And the curate made me laugh because he said, quite by himself in a corner, you know, that Mr. Dunquerque was a happy man; and when I asked him, why he turned very red, and said it was because I had given to him what all the world would long to have. He meant, Jack – "

"I wish he was here," Jack cried hotly, "for me to wring his neck!"

"And one day Laura Herries – "

"That's the girl who said you were farouche, Phil. Go on."

"Was talking to Agatha about some young lady who had got compromised by a gentleman's attentions. I asked why, and she replied quite sharply that if I did not know, no one could know. Then she got up and went away. Agatha was angry about it, I could see; but she only said something about understanding when I come out."

"Miss Herries ought to have her neck wrung, too, as well as the curate," said Jack.

"Compromise – improper." Phil beat her little foot on the floor. "What does it all mean? Jack, tell me – what is this wrong thing that you and I have done?"

"Not you, Phil; a thousand times not you."

"Then I do not care much what other people say," she replied simply. "Do you know, Jack, it seems to me as if we never ought to care for what people, besides people we love, say about us."

"But it is I who have done wrong," said Jack.

"Have you, Jack? Oh, then I forgive you. I think I know you. You should have come to me with an unreal smile on your face, and pretended the greatest deference to my opinion, even when you knew it wasn't worth having. That is what the curate does to young ladies. I saw him yesterday taking Miss Herries's opinion on Holman Hunt's picture. She said it was 'sweetly pretty.' He said, 'Do you really think so?' in such a solemn voice, as if he wasn't quite sure that the phrase summed up the whole picture, but was going to think it over quietly. Don't laugh, Jack, because I cannot read like other people, and all I have to go by is what Mr. Dyson told me, and Agatha tells me, and what I see – and – and what you tell me, Jack, which is worth all the rest to me."

The tears came into her eyes, but only for a moment, and she brushed them aside.

"And I forgive you, Jack, all the more because you did not treat me as you would have treated the girls who seem to me so lifeless and languid, and – Jack, it may be wrong to say it, but Oh, so small! What compliment could you have paid me better than to single me out for your friend – you who have seen so much and done so much – my friend – mine? We were friends from the first, were we not? And I have never since hidden anything from you, Jack, and never will."

He kept it down still, this mighty yearning that filled his heart, but he could not bear to look her in the face. Every word that she said stabbed him like a knife, because it showed her childish innocence and her utter unconsciousness of what her words might mean.

And then she laid her little hand in his.

"And now you have compromised me, as they would say? What does it matter Jack? We can go on always just the same as we have been doing, can we not?"

He shook his head and answered huskily, "No, Phil. Your guardian will not allow it. You must obey him. He says that I am to come here less frequently; that I must not do you – he is quite right, Phil – any more mischief; and that you are to have your first season in London without any ties or entanglements."

"My guardian leaves me alone here with Agatha. It is you who have been my real guardian, Jack. I shall do what you tell me to do."

"I want to do what is best for you, Phil – but – Child" – he caught her by the hands, and she half fell, half knelt at his feet, and looked up in his eyes with her face full of trouble and emotion – "child, must I tell you? Could not Agatha L'Estrange tell you that there is something in the world very different from friendship? Is it left for me to teach you? They call it Love, Phil."

He whispered the last words.

"Love? But I know all about it, Jack."

"No, Phil, you know nothing. It isn't the love that you bear to Agatha that I mean."

"Is it the love I have for you, Jack?" she asked in all innocence.

"It may be, Phil. Tell me only" – he was reckless now, and spoke fast and fiercely – "tell me if you love me as I love you. Try to tell me. I love you so much that I cannot sleep for thinking of you; and I think of you all day long. It seems as if my life must have been a long blank before I saw you; all my happiness is to be with you; to think of going on without you maddens me."

"Poor Jack!" she said softly. She did not offer to withdraw her hands, but let them lie in his warm and tender grasp.

"My dear, my darling – my queen and pearl of girls – who can help loving you? And even to be with you, to have you close to me, to hold your hands in mine, that isn't enough."

"What more – O Jack, Jack! what more?"

She began to tremble, and she tried to take back her hands. He let them go, but before she could change her position he bent down, threw his arms about her, and held her face close to his while he kissed it a thousand times.

"What more? My darling, my angel, this – and this! Phil, Phil! wake at last from your long childhood; leave the Garden of Eden where you have wandered so many years, and come out into the other world – the world of love. My dear, my dear! can you love me a little, only a little, in return? We are all so different from what you thought us; you will find out some day that I am not clever and good at all; that I have only one thing to give you – my love. Phil, Phil, answer me – speak to me – forgive me!"

He let her go, for she tore herself from him and sprang to her feet, burying her face in her hands and sobbing aloud.

"Forgive me – forgive me!" It was all that he could say.

"Jack, what is it? what does it mean? O Jack!" – she lifted her face and looked about her, with hands outstretched as one who feels in the darkness; her cheeks were white and her eyes wild – "what does it mean? what is it you have said? what is it you have done?"

"Phil!"

"Yes! Hush! don't speak to me – not yet, Jack. Wait a moment. My brain is full of strange thoughts" – she put out trembling hands before her, like one who wakes suddenly in a dream, and spoke with short, quick breath. "Something seems to have come upon me. Help me, Jack! Oh, help me! I am frightened."

He took her in his arms and soothed and caressed her like a child, while she sobbed and cried.

"Look at me, Jack," she said presently. "Tell me, am I the same? Is there any change in me?"

"Yes, Phil; yes, my darling. You are changed. Your sweet eyes are full of tears, like the skies in April; and your cheeks are pale and white. Let me kiss them till they get their own colour again."

He did kiss them, and she stood unresisting. But she trembled.

"I know, Jack, now," she said softly. "It all came upon me in a moment, when your lips touched mine. O Jack, Jack! it was as if something snapped; as if a veil fell from my eyes. I know now what you meant when you said just now that you loved me."

"Do you, Phil? And can you love me, too?"

"Yes, Jack. I will tell you when I am able to talk again. Let me sit down. Sit with me, Jack."

She drew him beside her on the sofa and murmured low, while he held her hands.

"Do you like to sit just so, holding my hands? Are you better now, Jack?

"Do you think, Jack, that I can have always loved you – without knowing it all – just as you love me? O my poor Jack!

"My heart beats so fast. And I am so happy. What have you said to me, Jack, that I should be so happy?

"See, the sun has come out – and the showers are over and gone – and the birds are singing – all the sweet birds – they are singing for me, Jack, for you and me – Oh, for you and me!"

Her voice broke down again, and she hid her face upon her lover's shoulder, crying happy tears.

He called her a thousand endearing names; he told her that they would be always together; that she had made him the happiest man in all the world; that he loved her more than any girl ever had been loved in the history of mankind; that she was the crown and pearl and queen of all the women who ever lived; and then she looked up, smiling through her tears.

Ah, happy, happy day! Ah, day for ever to be remembered even when, if ever, the years shall bring its fiftieth anniversary to an aged pair, whose children and grandchildren stand around their trembling feet? Ah, moments that live for ever in the memory of a life! They die, but are immortal. They perish all too quickly, but they bring forth the precious fruits of love and constancy, of trust, affection, good works, peace, and joy, which never perish.

"Take me on the river, Jack," she said presently. "I want to think it all over again, and try to understand it better."

He fetched cushion and wrapper, for the boat was wet, and placed her tenderly in the boat. And then he began to pull gently up the stream.

The day had suddenly changed. The morning had been gloomy and dull, but the afternoon was bright; the strong wind was dropped for a light cool breeze; the swans were cruising about with their lordly pretence of not caring for things external; and the river ran clear and bright.

They were very silent now; the girl sat in her place, looking with full soft eyes on the wet and dripping branches or in the cool depths of the stream.

Presently they passed an old gentleman fishing in a punt; he was the same old gentleman whom Phillis saw one morning – now so long ago – when he had that little misfortune we have narrated, and tumbled backwards in his ark. He saw them coming, and adjusted his spectacles.

"Youth and Beauty again," he murmured. "And she's been crying. That young fellow has said something cruel to her. Wish I could break his head for him. The pretty creature! He'll come to a bad end, that young man." Then he impaled an immense worm savagely and went on fishing.

A very foolish old gentleman this.

"I am trying to make it all out quite clearly, Jack," Phillis presently began. "And it is so difficult." Her eyes were still bright with tears, but she did not tremble now, and the smile was back upon her lips.

"My darling, let it remain difficult. Only tell me now, if you can, that you love me."

"Yes, Jack," she said, not in the frank and childish unconsciousness of yesterday, but with the soft blush of a woman who is wooed. "Yes, Jack, I know now that I do love you, as you love me, because my heart beat when you kissed me, and I felt all of a sudden that you were all the world to me."

"Phil, I don't deserve it. I don't deserve you."

"Not deserve me? O Jack, you make me feel humble when you say that! And I am so proud.

"So proud and so happy," she went on, after a pause. "And the girls who know all along – how do they find it out? – want every one for herself this great happiness, too. I have heard them talk and never understood till now. Poor girls! I wish they had their – their own Jack, not my Jack."

Her lover had no words to reply.

"Poor boy! And you went about with your secret so long. Tell me how long, Jack?"

"Since the very first day I saw you in Carnarvon Square, Phil."

"All that time? Did you love me on that day – not the first day of all, Jack? Oh, surely not the very first day?"

"Yes; not as I love you now – now that I know you so well, my Phillis – mine – but only then because you were so pretty."

"Do men always fall in love with a girl because she is pretty?"

"Yes, Phil. They begin because she is pretty, and they love her more every day when she is so sweet and so good as my darling Phil."

All this time Jack had been leaning on his oars, and the boat was drifting slowly down the current. It was now close to the punt where the old gentleman sat watching them.

"They have made it up," he said. "That's right." And he chuckled.

She looked dreamy and contented; the tears were gone out of her eyes, and a sweet softness lay there, like the sunshine on a field of grass.

"She is a rose of Sharon and a lily of the valley," said this old gentleman. "That young fellow ought to be banished from the State for making other people envious of his luck. Looks a good-tempered rogue, too."

He observed with delight that they were thinking of each other while the boat drifted nearer to his punt. Presently – bump – bump!

Jack seized his sculls and looked up guiltily. The old gentleman was nodding and smiling to Phillis.

"Made it up?" he asked most impertinently. "That is right, that is right. Give you joy, sir, give you joy. Wish you both happiness. Wish I had it to do all over again. God bless you, my dear!"

His jolly red face beamed like the setting sun under his big straw hat, and he wagged his head and laughed.

Jack laughed too; at other times he would have thought the old angler an extremely impertinent person. Now he only laughed.

Then he turned the boat's head, and rowed his bride swiftly homewards.

"Phil, I am like Jason bringing home Medea," he said, with a faint reminiscence of classical tradition. I have explained that Jack was not clever.

"I hope not," said Phil; "Medea was a dreadful person."

"Then Paris bringing home Helen – No, Phil; only your lover bringing home the sweetest girl that ever was. And worth five and thirty Helens."

When they landed, Agatha L'Estrange was on the lawn waiting for them. To her surprise, Phillis, on disembarking, took Jack by the arm, and his hand closed over hers. Mrs. L'Estrange gasped. And in Phillis's tear-bright eyes, she saw at last the light and glow of love; and in Phillis's blushing face she saw the happy pride of the celestial Venus who has met her only love.

"Children – children!" she said, "what is this?"

Phillis made answer, in words which Abraham Dyson used to read to her from a certain Book, but which she never understood till now – made answer with her face upturned to her lover —

"I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me."

They were a quiet party that evening. Jack did not want to talk. He asked Phillis to sing; he sat by in a sort of rapture while her voice, in the songs she most affected, whispered and sang to his soul not words, but suggestions of every innocent delight. She recovered something of her gaiety, but their usual laughter was hushed as if by some unexpressed thought. It will never come back to her again, that old mirth and light heart of childhood. She felt while she played as if she was in some great cathedral; the fancies of her brain built over her head a pile more mystic and wonderful than any she had seen. Its arches towered to the sky; its aisles led far away into dim space. She was walking slowly up the church hand-in-hand with Jack, towards a great rose light in the east. An anthem of praise and thanksgiving echoed along the corridors, and pealed like thunder among the million rafters of the roof. Round them floated faces which looked and smiled. And she heard the voice of Abraham Dyson in her ear —

"Life should be two-fold, not single. That, Phillis, is the great secret of the world. Every man is a priest; every woman is a priestess; it is a sacrament which you have learned of Jack this day. Go on with him in faith and hope. Love is the Universal Church and Heaven is everywhere. Live in it; die in it; and dying begin your life of love again."

"Phil," cried Jack, "what is it? You look as if you had seen a vision."

"I have heard the voice of Abraham Dyson," she said solemnly. "He is satisfied and pleased with us, Jack."

That was nothing to what followed, for presently there occurred a really wonderful thing.

On Phillis's table – they were all three sitting in the pleasant morning-room – lay among her lesson-books and drawing materials a portfolio. Jack turned it over carelessly. There was nothing at all in it except a single sheet of white paper, partly written over. But there had been other sheets, and these were torn off.

"It is an old book full of writing," said Phillis carelessly. "I have torn out all the leaves to make rough sketches at the back. There is only one left now."

Jack took it up and read the scanty remnant.

"Good heavens!" he cried. "Have you really destroyed all these pages, Phil?"

Then he laughed.

"What is it, Jack? Yes I have torn them all out, drawn rough things on them, and then burnt them, every one."

"Is it anything important?" asked Mrs. L'Estrange.

"I should think it was important!" said Jack. "Ho, ho! Phillis has destroyed the whole of Mr. Dyson's lost chapter on the Coping-stone. And now his will is not worth the paper it is written on."

It was actually so. Bit by bit, while Joseph Jagenal was leaving no corner unturned in the old house at Highgate in search of the precious document, without which Mr. Dyson's will was so much waste paper, this young lady was contentedly cutting out the sheets one by one and using them up for her first unfinished groups. Of course she could not read one word of what was written. It was a fitting Nemesis to the old man's plans that they were frustrated through the very means by which he wished to regenerate the world.

And now nothing at all left but a tag end, a bit of the peroration, the last words of the final summing-up. And this was what Jack read aloud —

"… these provisions and no other. Thus will I have my College for the better Education of Women founded and maintained. Thus shall it grow and develop till the land is full of the gracious influence of womankind at her best and noblest. The Coping-stone of a girl's Education should be, and must be, Love. When Phillis Fleming, my ward, whose example shall be taken as the model for my college, feels the passion of Love, her education is finally completed. She will have much afterwards to learn. But self-denial, sympathy, and faith come best through Love. Woman is born to be loved; that woman only approaches the higher state who has been wooed and who has loved. When Phillis loves, she will give herself without distrust and wholly to the man who wins her. It is my prayer, my last prayer for her, that he may be worthy of her." Here Jack's voice faltered for a moment. "Her education has occupied my whole thoughts for thirteen years. It has been the business of my later years. Now I send her out into the world prepared for all, except treachery, neglect, and ill treatment. Perhaps her character would pass through these and come out the brighter. But we do not know; we cannot tell beforehand. Lord, lead her not into temptation; and so deal with her lover as he shall deal with her."

"Amen," said Agatha L'Estrange.

But Phillis sprang to her feet and threw up her arms.

"I have found it!" she cried. "Oh, how often did he talk to me about the Coping-stone. Now I have nothing more to learn. O Jack, Jack!" she fell into his arms, and lay there as if it was her proper place. "We have found the Coping-stone – you and I between us – and it is here, it is here!"

CHAPTER XXXVIII

"'Tis well to be off with the old love,Though you never get on with a new."

During the two of three weeks following their success with Gilead Beck the Twins were conspicuous, had any one noticed them, for a recklessness of expenditure quite without parallel in their previous history. They plunged as regarded hansoms, paying whatever was asked with an airy prodigality; they dined at the club every day, and drank champagne at all hours; they took half-guinea stalls at theatres: they went down to Greenwich and had fish-dinners; they appeared with new chains and rings; they even changed their regular hours of sleep, and sometimes passed the whole day broad awake, in the pursuit of youthful pleasures. They winked and nodded at each other in a way which suggested all kinds of delirious delights; and Cornelius even talked of adding an episode to the Epic, based on his own later experiences, which he would call, he said, the Jubilee of Joy.

The funds for this fling, all too short, were provided by their American patron. Gilead Beck had no objection to advance them something on account; the young gentlemen found it so pleasant to spend money, that they quickly overcame scruples about asking for more; perhaps they would have gone on getting more, but for a word of caution spoken by Jack Dunquerque. In consequence of this unkindness they met each other one evening in the Studio with melancholy faces.

"I had a letter to-day from Mr. Gilead Beck," said Cornelius to Humphrey.

"So had I," said Humphrey to Cornelius.

"In answer to a note from me," said Cornelius.

"In reply to a letter of mine," said Humphrey.

"It is sometimes a little awkward, brother Humphrey," Cornelius remarked with a little temper, "that our inclinations so often prompt us to do the same thing at the same time."

Said Humphrey, "I suppose then, Cornelius, that you asked him for money?"

"I did, Humphrey. How much has the Patron advanced you already on the great Picture?"

"Two hundred only. A mere trifle. And now he refuses to advance any more until the Picture is completed. Some enemy, some jealous brother artist, must have corrupted his mind."

"My case, too. I asked for a simple fifty pounds. It is the end of May, and the country would be delightful if one could go there. I have already drawn four or five cheques of fifty each, on account of the Epic. He says, this mercenary and mechanical patron, that he will not lend me any more until the Poem is brought to him finished. Some carping critic has been talking to him."