The Golden Butterfly

"How much of the Poem is finished?"

"How much of the Picture is done?"

The questions were asked simultaneously, but no answer was returned by either.

Then each sat for a few moments in gloomy silence.

"The end of May," murmured Humphrey. "We have to be ready by the beginning of October. June – July – only four months. My painting is designed for many hundreds of figures. Your poem for – how many lines, brother?"

"Twenty cantos of about five hundred lines each."

"Twenty times five hundred is ten thousand."

Then they relapsed into silence again.

"Brother Cornelius," the Artist went on, "this has been a most eventful year for us. We have been rudely disturbed from the artistic life of contemplation and patient work into which we had gradually dropped. We have been hurried – hurried, I say, brother – into Action, perhaps prematurely – "

Cornelius grasped his brother's hand, but said nothing.

"You, Cornelius, have engaged yourself to be married."

Cornelius dropped his brother's hand. "Pardon me, Humphrey; it is you that is engaged to Phillis Fleming."

"I am nothing of the sort, Cornelius," the other returned sharply. "I am astonished that you should make such a statement."

"One of us certainly is engaged to the young lady. And as certainly it is not I. 'Let your brother Humphrey hope,' she said. Those were her very words. I do think, brother, that it is a little ungenerous, a little ungenerous of you, after all the trouble I took on your behalf, to try to force this young lady on me."

Humphrey's cheek turned pallid. He plunged his hands into his silky beard, and walked up and down the room gesticulating.

"I went down on purpose to tell Phillis about him. I spoke to her of his ardour. She said she appreciated – said she appreciated it, Cornelius. I even went so far as to say that you offered her a virgin heart – perilling my own soul by those very words – a virgin heart" – he laughed melodramatically. "And after that German milkmaid! Ha, ha! The Poet and the milkmaid!"

Cornelius by this time was red with anger. The brothers, alike in so many things, differed in this, that, when roused to passion, while Humphrey grew white Cornelius grew crimson.

"And what did I do for you?" he cried out. The brothers were now on opposite sides of the table, walking backwards and forwards with agitated strides. "I told her that you brought her a heart which had never beat for another – that, after your miserable little Roman model! An artist not able to resist the charms of his own model!"

"Cornelius!" cried Humphrey, suddenly stopping and bringing his fist with a bang upon the table.

"Humphrey!" cried his brother, exactly imitating his gesture.

Their faces glared into each other's; Cornelius, as usual, wrapped in his long dressing-gown, his shaven cheeks purple with passion; Humphrey in his loose velvet jacket, his white lips and cheeks, and his long silken beard trembling to every hair.

It was the first time the brothers had ever quarrelled in all their lives. And like a tempest on Lake Windermere, it sprang up without the slightest warning.

They glared in a steady way for a few minutes, and then drew back and renewed their quick and angry walk side by side, with the table between them.

"To bring up the old German business!" said Cornelius.

"To taunt me with the Roman girl!" said Humphrey.

"Will you keep your engagement like a gentleman, and marry the girl?" cried the Poet.

"Will you behave as a man of honour, and go to the Altar with Phillis Fleming?" asked the Artist.

"I will not," said Cornelius. "Nothing shall induce me to get married."

"Nor will I," said Humphrey. "I will see myself drawn and quartered first."

"Then," said Cornelius, "go and break it to her yourself, for I will not."

"Break what?" asked Humphrey passionately. "Break her heart, when I tell her, if I must, that my brother repudiates his most sacred promises?"

Cornelius was touched. He relented. He softened.

"Can it be that she loves us both?"

They were at the end of the table, near the chairs, which as usual were side by side.

"Can that be so, Cornelius?"

They drew nearer the chairs; they sat down; they turned, by force of habit, lovingly towards each other; and their faces cleared.

"Brother Humphrey," said Cornelius, "I see that we have mismanaged this affair. It will be a wrench to the poor girl, but it will have to be done. I thought you wanted to marry her."

"I thought you did."

"And so we each pleaded the other's cause. And the poor girl loves us both. Good heavens! What a dreadful thing for her."

"I remember nothing in fiction so startling. To be sure, there is some excuse for her."

"But she can't marry us both?"

"N – n – no. I suppose not. No – certainly not. Heaven forbid! And as you will not marry her – "

Humphrey shook his head in a decided manner.

"And I will not – "

"Marry?" interrupted Humphrey. "What! And give up this? Have to get up early; to take breakfast at nine; to be chained to work; to be inspected and interfered with while at work – Phillis drew me once, and pinned the portrait on my easel; to be restricted in the matter of port; to have to go to bed at eleven; perhaps, Cornelius, to have babies; and beside, if they should be Twins! Fancy being shaken out of your poetic dream by the cries of Twins!"

"No sitting up at night with pipes and brandy-and-water," echoed the Poet. "And, Humphrey" – here he chuckled, and his face quite returned to its brotherly form – "should we go abroad, no flirting with Roman models – eh, eh, eh?"

"Ho, ho, ho!" laughed the Artist melodiously. "And no carrying milk-pails up the Heidelberg hills – eh, eh, eh?"

"Marriage be hanged!" cried the Poet, starting up again. "We will preserve our independence, Humphrey. We will be free to woo, but not to wed."

Was there ever a more unprincipled Bard? It is sad to relate that the Artist echoed his brother.

"We will, Cornelius – we will. Vive la liberté!" He snapped his fingers, and began to sing:

"Quand on est a ParisOn ecrit a son pere,Qui fait reponse, 'Brigand,Tu n'en as – '"

He broke short off, and clapped his hands like a school-boy. "We will go to Paris next week, brother."

"We will, Humphrey, if we can get any more money. And now – how to get out of the mess?"

"Do you think Mrs. L'Estrange will interfere?"

"Or Colquhoun?"

"Or Joseph?"

"The best way would be to pretend it was all a mistake. Let us go to-morrow, and cry off as well as we can."

"We will, Cornelius."

The quarrel and its settlement made them thirsty, and they drank a whole potash-and-brandy each before proceeding with the interrupted conversation.

"Poor little Phillis!" said the Artist, filling his pipe. "I hope she won't pine much."

"Ariadne, you know," said the Poet; and then he forgot what Ariadne did, and broke off short.

"It isn't our fault, after all. Men of genius are always run after. Women are made to love men, and men are made to break their hearts. Law of nature, dear Cornelius – law of Nature. Perhaps the man is a fool who binds himself to one. Art alone should be our mistress – glorious Art!"

"Yes," said Cornelius; "you are quite right. And what about Mr. Gilead Beck?"

This was a delicate question, and the Artist's face grew grave.

"What are we to do, Cornelius?"

"I don't know, Humphrey."

"Will the Poem be finished?"

"No. Will the Picture?"

"Not a chance."

"Had we not better, Humphrey, considering all the circumstances, make up our minds to throw over the engagement?"

"Tell me, Cornelius – how much of your Poem remains to be done?"

"Well, you see, there is not much actually written."

"Will you show it to me – what there is of it?"

"It is all in my head, Humphrey. Nothing is written."

He blushed prettily as he made the confession. But the Artist met him half-way with a frank smile.

"It is curious, Cornelius, that up to the present I have not actually drawn any of the groups. My figures are still in my head."

Both were surprised. Each, spending his own afternoons in sleep, had given the other credit for working during that part of the day. But they were too much accustomed to keep up appearances to make any remark upon this curious coincidence.

"Then, brother," said the Poet, with a sigh of relief, "there really is not the slightest use in leading Mr. Beck to believe that the works will be finished by October, and we had better ask for a longer term. A year longer would do for me."

"A year longer would, I think, do for me," said Humphrey, stroking his beard, as if he was calculating how long each figure would take to put in. "We will go and see Mr. Beck to-morrow."

"Better not," said the sagacious Poet.

"Why not?"

"He might ask for the money back."

"True, brother. He must be capable of that meanness, or he would have given us that cheque we asked for. Very true. We will write."

"What excuse shall we make?"

"We will state the exact truth, Brother. No excuse need be invented. We will tell our Patron that Art cannot – must not – be forced."

This settled, Cornelius declared that a weight was off his mind, which had oppressed him since the engagement with Mr. Beck was first entered into. Nothing, he said, so much obstructed the avenues of fancy, checked the flow of ideas, and destroyed grasp of language, as a slavish time-engagement. Now, he went on to explain, he felt free; already his mind, like a garden in May, was blossoming in a thousand sweet flowers. Now he was at peace with mankind. Before this relief he had been – Humphrey would bear him out – inclined to lose his temper over trifles; and the feeling of thraldom caused him only that very evening to use harsh words even to his twin brother. Here he held out his hand, which Humphrey grasped with effusion.

They wrote their letters next day – not early in the day, because they prolonged their evening parliament till late, and it was one o'clock when they took breakfast But they wrote the letters after breakfast, and at two they took the train to Twickenham.

Phillis received them in her morning-room. They appeared almost as nervous and agitated as when they called a week before. So shaky were their hands that Phillis began by prescribing for them a glass of wine each, which they took, and said they felt better.

"We come for a few words of serious explanation," said the Poet.

"Yes," said Phillis. "Will Mrs. L'Estrange do?"

"On the contrary, it is with you that we would speak."

"Very well," she replied. "Pray go on."

They were sitting side by side on the sofa, looking as grave as a pair of owls. There was something Gog and Magogish, too, in their proximity.

Phillis found herself smiling when she looked at them. So, to prevent laughing in their very faces, she changed her place, and went to the open window.

"Now," she said.

Cornelius, with the gravest face in the world, began again.

"It is a delicate and, I fear, a painful business," he said. "Miss Fleming, you doubtless remember a conversation I had with you last week on your lawn?"

"Certainly. You told me that your brother, Mr. Humphrey, adored me. You also said that he brought me a virgin heart. I remember perfectly. I did not understand your meaning then. But I do now. I understand it now." She spoke the last words with softened voice, because she was thinking of the Coping-stone and Jack Dunquerque.

Humphrey looked indignantly at his brother. Here was a position to be placed in! But Cornelius lifted his hand, with a gesture which meant, "Patience; I will see you through this affair," and went on —

"You see, Miss Fleming, I was under a mistake. My brother, who has the highest respect, in the abstract, for womanhood, which is the incarnation and embodiment of all that is graceful and beautiful in this fair world of ours, does not – does not – after all – "

Phillis looked at Humphrey. He sat by his brother, trembling with a mixture of shame and terror. They were not brave men, these Twins, and they certainly drank habitually more than is good for the nervous system.

She began to laugh, not loudly, but with a little ripple of mirth which terrified them both, because in their vanity they thought it the first symptoms of hysterical grief. Then she stepped to the sofa, and placed both her hands on the unfortunate Artist's shoulder.

He thought that she was going to shake him, and his soul sank into his boots.

"You mean that he does not, after all, adore me. O Mr. Humphrey, Mr. Humphrey! was it for this that you offered me a virgin heart? Is this your gratitude to me for drawing your likeness when you were hard at work in the Studio? What shall I say to your brother Joseph, and what will he say to you?"

"My dear young lady," Cornelius interposed hastily, "there is not the slightest reason to bring Joseph into the business at all. He must not be told of this unfortunate mistake. Humphrey does adore you – speak, brother – do you not adore Miss Fleming?"

Humphrey was gasping and panting.

"I do," he ejaculated, "I do – Oh, most certainly."

Then Phillis left him and turned to his brother.

"But there is yourself, Mr. Cornelius. You are not an artist; you are a poet; you spend your days in the Workshop, where Jack Dunquerque and I found you rapt in so poetic a dream that your eyes were closed and your mouth open. If you made a mistake about Humphrey, it is impossible that he could have made a mistake about you."

"This is terrible," said Cornelius. "Explain, brother Humphrey. Miss Fleming, we – no, you as well – are victims of a dreadful error."

He wiped his brow and appealed to his brother.

Released from the terror of Phillis's hands upon his shoulder, the Artist recovered some of his courage and spoke. But his voice was faltering. "I, too," he said, "mistook the respectful admiration of my brother for something dearer. Miss Fleming, he is already wedded."

"Wedded? Are you a married man, Mr. Cornelius? Oh, and where is the virgin heart?"

"Wedded to his art," Humphrey explained. Then he went a little off his head, I suppose, in the excitement of this crisis, because he continued in broken words, "Wedded – long ago – object of his life's love – with milk-pails on the hills of Heidelberg, and light blue eyes – the Muse of Song. But he regards you with respectful admiration."

"Most respectful," said Cornelius. "As Petrarch regarded the wife of the Count de Sade. Will you forgive us, Miss Fleming, and – and – try to forget us?"

"So, gentlemen," the young lady said, with sparkling eyes, "you come to say that you would rather not marry me. I wonder if that is usual with men?"

"No, no!" they both cried together. "Happy is the man – "

"You may be the happy man, Humphrey," said Cornelius.

"No; you, brother – you."

Never had wedlock seemed so dreadful a thing as it did now, with a possible bride standing before them, apparently only waiting for the groom to make up his mind.

"I will forgive you both," she said; "so go away happy. But I am afraid I shall never, never be able to forget you. And if I send you a sketch of yourselves just as you look now, so ashamed and so foolish, perhaps you will hang it up in the Workshop or the Studio, to be looked at when you are awake; that is, when you are not at work."

They looked guiltily at each other and drew a little apart. It was the most cruel speech that Phillis had ever made; but she was a little angry with this vain and conceited pair of windbags.

"I shall not tell Mr. Joseph Jagenal, because he is a sensible man and would take it ill, I am sure. And I shall not tell my guardian, Lawrence Colquhoun, because I do not know what he might say or do. And I shall not tell Mrs. L'Estrange; that is, I shall not tell her the whole of it, for your sakes. But I must tell Jack Dunquerque, because I am engaged to be married to Jack, and because I love him and must tell him everything."

They cowered before her as they thought of the possible consequences of this information.

"You need not be frightened," she went on; "Jack will not call to see you and disturb you at your work."

Her eyes, that began by dancing with fun, now flashed indignation. It was not that she felt angry at what most girls would have regarded as a deliberate insult, but the unmanliness of the two filled her with contempt. They looked so small and so mean.

"Go," she said, pointing to the door. "I forgive you. But never again dare to offer a girl each other's virgin heart."

They literally slunk away like a pair of beaten hounds. Then Phillis suddenly felt sorry for them as they crept out of the door, one after the other. She ran after them and called them back.

"Stop," she cried; "we must not part like that. Shake hands, Cornelius. Shake hands, Humphrey. Come back and take another glass of wine. Indeed you want it; you are shaking all over; come."

She led them back, one in each hand, and poured out a glass of sherry for each.

"You could not have married me, you know," she said, laughing, "because I am going to marry Jack. There – forgive me for speaking unkindly, and we will remain friends."

They took her hand, but they did not speak, and something like a tear stood in their eyes. When they left her Phillis observed that they did not take each other's arm as usual, but walked separate. And they looked older.

CHAPTER XXXIX

"What is it you see?A nameless thing – a creeping snake in the grass."

Who was the writer of the letters? They were all in one hand, and that a feigned hand. Gabriel Cassilis sat with these anonymous accusations against his wife spread out upon the table before him. He compared one with another; he held them up to the light; he looked for chance indications which a careless moment might leave behind; there were none – not a stroke of the pen; not even the name of the shop where the paper was sold. They were all posted at the same place; but that was nothing.

The handwriting was large, upright, and perhaps designedly ill-formed; it appeared to be the writing of a woman, but of this Mr. Cassilis was not sure.

Always the same tale; always reference to a secret between Colquhoun and his wife. What was that secret?

In Colquhoun's room – alone with him – almost under his hand. But where? He went into the bedroom, which was lighted by the gas of the court; an open room, furnished without curtains; there was certainly no one concealed, because concealment was impossible. And in the sitting-room – then he remembered that the room was dimly lighted; curtains kept out the gas-light of the court; Colquhoun had on his entrance lowered the silver lamp; there was a heavy green shade on this; it was possible that she might have been in the room while he was there, and listening to every word.

The thought was maddening. He tried to put it all before himself in logical sequence, but could not; he tried to fence with the question, but it would not be evaded; he tried to persuade himself that suspicions resting on an anonymous slander were baseless, but every time his mind fell back upon the voice which proclaimed his wife's dishonour.

A man on the rack might as well try to dream of soft beds and luxurious dreamless sleep; a man being flogged at the cart-tail might as well try to transport his thoughts to boyhood's games upon a village green; a man at the stake might as well try to think of deep delicious draughts of ice-cold water from a shady brook. The agony and shame of the present are too much for any imagination.

It was so to Gabriel Cassilis. The one thing which he trusted in, after all the villainies and rogueries he had learned during sixty-five years mostly spent among men trying to make money, was his wife's fidelity. It was like the Gospel – a thing to be accepted and acted upon with unquestioning belief. Good heavens! if a man cannot believe in his wife's honesty, in what is he to believe?

Gabriel Cassilis was not a violent man; he could not find relief in angry words and desperate deeds like a Moor of Venice; his jealousy was a smouldering fire; a flame which burned with a dull fierce heat; a disease which crept over body and mind alike, crushing energy, vitality, and life out of both.

Everything might go to ruin round him; he was no longer capable of thought and action. Telegrams and letters lay piled before him on the table, and he left them unopened.

Outside, his secretary was in dismay. His employer would receive no one, and would attend to nothing. He signed mechanically such papers as were brought him to sign, and then he motioned the secretary to the door.

This apathy lasted for four days – the four days most important of any in the lives of himself, of Gilead Beck, and of Lawrence Colquhoun. For the fortunes of all hung upon his shaking it off, and he did not shake it off.

On the second day, the day when he got the letter telling him that his wife had been in Colquhoun's chambers while he was there, he sent for a private detective.

He put into his hands all the letters.

"Written by a woman," said the officer. "Have you any clue, sir?"

"None – none whatever. I want you to watch. You will watch my wife and you will watch Mr. Colquhoun. Get every movement watched, and report to me every morning. Can you do this? Good. Then go, and spare neither pains nor money."

The next morning's report was unsatisfactory. Colquhoun had gone to the Park in the afternoon, dined at his club, and gone home to his chambers at eleven. Mrs. Cassilis, after dining at home, went out at ten, and returned early – at half-past eleven.

But there came a letter from the anonymous correspondent.

"You are having a watch set on them. Good. But that won't find out the Scotch secret. She was in his room while you were there – hidden somewhere, but I do not know where."

He went home to watch his wife with his own eyes. He might as well have watched a marble statue. She met his eyes with the calm cold look to which he was accustomed. There was nothing in her manner to show that she was other than she had always been. He tried in her presence to realise the fact, if it was a fact. "This woman," he said to himself, "has been lying hidden in Colquhoun's chambers listening while I talked to him. She was there before I went; she was there when I came away. What is her secret?"

What, indeed! She seemed a woman who could have no secrets, a woman whose life from her cradle might have been exposed to the whole world, who would have found nothing but cause of admiration and respect.

In her presence, under her influence, his jealousy lost something of its fierceness. He feared her too much to suspect her while in his sight. It was at night, in his office, away from her, that he gave full swing to the bitterness of his thoughts. In the hours when he should have been sleeping he paced his room, wrapped in his dressing-gown – a long lean figure, with eyes aflame, and thoughts that tore him asunder; and in the hours when he should have been waking he sat with bent shoulders, glowering at the letters of her accuser, gazing into a future which seemed as black as ink.

His life, he knew, was drawing to its close. Yet a few more brief years, and the summons would come for him to cross the River. Of that he had no fear; but it was dreadful to think that his age was to be dishonoured. Success was his; the respect which men give to success was his; no one inquired very curiously into the means by which success was commanded; he was a name and a power. Now that name was to be tarnished; by no act of his own, by no fault of his; by the treachery of the only creature in the world, except his infant child, in whom he trusted.

He would have, perhaps, to face the publicity of an open court; to hear his wrongs set forth to a jury; to read his "case" in the daily papers.

And he would have to alter his will.

Oddly enough, of all the evil things which seemed about to fall on him, not one troubled him more than the last.

His detective brought him no news on the next day. But his unknown correspondent did.

"She is tired," the letter said, "of not seeing Mr. Colquhoun for three whole days. She will see him to-morrow. There is to be a garden-party at Mrs. L'Estrange's Twickenham villa. Mr. Colquhoun will be there, and she is going, too, to meet him. If you dared, if you had the heart of a mouse, you would be there too. You would arrive late; you would watch and see for yourself, unseen, if possible, how they meet, and what they say to each other. An invitation lies for you, as well as your wife upon the table. Go!"