The Golden Butterfly

"I don't care which it is," he concluded, "I must see her again. Ladds, old man, I believe I could fall in love with that girl. 'Ask me no more, for at a touch I yield.' Did you notice her, Tommy? Did you see her sweet eyes – I must say she has the sweetest eyes in all the world – looking with a pretty wonder at our quaint Yankee friend? Did you see her trying to take an interest in the twaddle of old Cassilis? Did you – "

"Have we eyes?" Ladds growled. "Is the heart at five and thirty a log?"

"And her figure, tall and slender, lissom and gracieuse. And her face, 'the silent war of lilies and of roses.' How I love the brunette faces! They are never insipid."

"Do you remember the half-caste Spanish girl in Manilla?"

"Ladds, don't dare to mention that girl beside this adorable angel of purity. I have found out her Christian name – it is Phillis – rhymes to lilies; and am going to call at her house to-morrow – Carnarvon Square."

"And I am going to have half an hour in the smoking-room," said Ladds, as they arrived at the portals of the club.

"So am I," said Jack. "You know what Othello says of Desdemona:

"'O thou weed,
Who art so lovely fair, and smell'st so sweet
That the sense aches at thee!'

"I mean Phillis Fleming, of course, not your confounded tobacco."

CHAPTER VIII

"They say if money goes before, all ways do lie open."

"I call this kind, boys," said Mr. Gilead P. Beck, welcoming his visitors, Captain Ladds and Jack Dunquerque; "I call this friendly. I asked myself last night, 'Will those boys come to see me, or will they let the ragged Yankee slide?' And here you are."

"Change," said Ladds the monosyllabic, looking round. "Gold looking up?"

There is a certain suite of rooms in the Langham Hotel – there may be a hundred such suites known to the travellers who have explored that mighty hostelry – originally designed for foreign princes, ambassadors, or those wandering kings whom our hospitality sends to an inn. The suite occupied by Mr. Beck consisted of a large reception-room, a smaller apartment occupied by himself, and a bedroom. The rooms were furnished in supposed accordance with the tastes of their princely occupants, that is to say, with solid magnificence. Mr. Beck had been in England no more than a week, and as he had not yet begun to buy anything, the rooms were without those splendid decorations of pictures, plate, and objects of art generally, with which he subsequently adorned them. They looked heavy and rather cheerless. A fire was burning on the hearth, and Mr. Beck was standing before it with an unlighted cigar in his lips. Apparently he had already presented some letters of introduction, for there were a few cards of invitation on the mantelshelf. He was dressed in a black frock-coat, as a gentleman should be, and he wore it buttoned up, so that his tall stature and thin figure were shown off to full advantage. He wore a plain black ribbon by way of necktie, and was modest in the way of studs. Jack Dunquerque noticed that he wore no jewelry of any kind, which he thought unusual in a man of unlimited credit, a new man whose fortune was not two years old. He was an unmistakable American. His chin was now close shaven, and without the traditional tuft; but he had the bright restless eye, the long spare form, the obstinately straight hair, the thin flexible mouth with mobile lips, the delicately shaped chin, and the long neck which seem points characteristic with our Transatlantic brethren. His grave face lit up with a smile of pleasure when he saw Jack Dunquerque. It was a thoughtful face; it had lines in it, such as might have been caused by the buffets of Fate; but his eyes were kindly. As for his speech, it preserved the nasal drawl of his New England birthplace; he spoke slowly, as if feeling for the right words, and his pronunciation was that of a man sprung from the ranks. Let us say at once that we do not attempt to reproduce by an affected spelling, save occasionally, the Doric of the New England speech. He was a typical man of the Eastern Estate – self-reliant, courageous, independent, somewhat prejudiced, roughly educated, ready for any employment and ashamed of none, and withal brave as an Elizabethan buccaneer, sensitive as a Victorian lady, sympathetic as – as Henry Longfellow.

"There is change, sir" – he addressed himself to Ladds – "in most things human. The high tides and the low tides keep us fresh. Else we should be as stagnant as a Connecticut gospel-grinder in his village location."

"This is high tide, I see," said Jack, laughing. "I hope that American high tides last longer than ours."

"I am hopeful, Mr. Dunquerque, that they air of a more abiding disposition. If you should be curious, gentlemen, to know my history since I left you in San Francisco, I will tell you it from the beginning. You remember that blessed inseck, the Golden Butterfly?"

"In the little box," said Ladds. "I asked you after his welfare last night."

Jack began to blush.

"Before you begin," he interposed, "we ought to tell you that since we came home we have written a book, we two, about our travels."

"Is that so?" asked Mr. Beck, with some natural reverence for the author of a book.

"And we have put you into it, with an account of Empire City."

"Me – as I was – in rags and without even a gun?"

"Yes; not a flattering likeness, but a true one."

"And the lucky shot, is that there too?"

"Some of it is there," said Ladds. "Jack would not have the whole story published. Looked ostentatious."

"Gentlemen, I shall buy that book. I shall take five hundred copies of that book for my people in the Dominion. Just as I was, you say – no boots but moccasins; not a dollar nor a cent; running for bare life before a Grisly. Gentlemen, that book will raise me in the estimation of my fellow-countrymen. And if you will allow me the privilege, I shall say it was written by two friends of mine."

Jack breathed freely. He was afraid Mr. Beck might have resented the intrusion of his ragged personality. An Englishman certainly would. Mr. Beck seemed to think that the contrast between present broadcloth and past rags reflected the highest credit on himself.

This part of the work, indeed, which the critics declared to be wildly improbable, was the only portion read by Mr. Beck. And just as he persisted in giving Jack the sole credit of his rescue – perhaps because in his mental confusion he never even heard the second shot which finished the bear – so he steadfastly regarded Jack as the sole author of this stirring chapter, which was Ladd's masterpiece, and was grateful accordingly.

"And now," he went on, "I must show you the critter himself, the Golden Bug."

There was standing in a corner, where it would be least likely to receive any rude shocks or collisions, a small heavy iron safe. This he unlocked, and brought forth with great care a glass case which exactly fitted the safe. The frame of the case was made of golden rods; along the lower part of the front pane, in letters of gold, was the legend:

"If this Golden Butterfly fall and break,
Farewell the Luck of Gilead P. Beck."

"Your poetry, Mr. Dunquerque," said Mr. Beck, pointing to the distich with pride. "Your own composition, sir, and my motto."

Within the case was the Butterfly itself, but glorified. The bottom of the glass box was a thick sheet of pure gold, on which was fixed a rose, the leaves, flower, and stalk worked in dull gold. Not a fine work of art, perhaps, but a reasonably good rose, as good as that Papal rose they show in the Cluny Hotel. The Butterfly was poised upon the rose by means of thin gold wire, which passed round the strip of quartz which formed the body. The ends were firmly welded into the leaves of the flower, and when the case was moved the insect vibrated as if he was in reality alive.

"There! Look at it, gentlemen. That is the inseck which has made the fortune of Gilead P. Beck."

He addressed himself to both, but his eye rested on Jack with a look which showed that he regarded the young man with something more than friendliness. The man who fired that shot, the young fellow who saved him from a cruel death, was his David, the beloved of his soul.

Ladds looked at it curiously, as if expecting some manifestation of the supernatural.

"Is it a medium?" he asked. "Does it rap, or answer questions, or tell the card you are thinking of? Shall you exhibit the thing in the Egyptian Hall as a freak of Nature?"

"No, sir, I shall not. But I will tell you what I did, if you will let me replace him in his box, where he sits and works for Me. No harm will come to him there, unless an airthquake happens. Sit down, general, and you too, Mr. Dunquerque. Here is a box of cigars, which ought to be good, and you will call for your own drink."

It was but twelve o'clock, and therefore early for revivers of any sort. Finally, Mr. Beck ordered champagne.

"That drink," he said, "as you get it here, is a compound calculated to inspirit Job in the thick of his misfortunes. But if there is any other single thing you prefer, and it is to be had in this almighty city, name that thing and you shall have it."

Then he began:

"I went off, after I left you, by the Pacific Railway – not the first time I travelled up and down that line – and I landed in New York. Mr. Colquhoun gave me a rig out, and you, sir," – he nodded to Jack – "you, sir, gave me the stamps to pay the ticket."

Jack, accused of this act of benevolence, naturally blushed a guilty acknowledgment.

Mr. Gilead P. Beck made no reference to the gift either then or at any subsequent period. Nor did he ever offer to repay it, even when he discovered the slenderness of Jack's resources. That showed that he was a sensitive and sympathetic man. To offer a small sum of money in repayment of a free gift from an extraordinarily rich man to a very poor one is not a delicate thing to do. Therefore this gentleman of the backwoods abstained from doing it.

"New York City," he continued, "is not the village I should recommend to a man without dollars in his pocket. London, where there is an institootion, or a charity, or a hospital, or a workhouse, or a hot-soup boiler in every street, is the city for that gentleman. Fiji, p'r'aps, for one who has a yearning after bananas and black civilisation. But not New York. No, gentlemen; if you go to New York, let it be when you've made your pile, and not before. Then you will find out that there air thirty theatres in the city, with lovely and accomplished actresses in each, and you can walk into Delmonico's as if the place belonged to you. But for men down on their luck, New York is a cruel place.

"I left that city, and I made my way North. I wanted to see the old folks I left behind long ago in Lexington; I found them dead, and I was sorry. Then I went farther North. P'r'aps I was driven by the yellow toy hanging at my back. Anyhow, it was only six weeks after I left you that I found myself in the city of Limerick on Lake Ontario.

"You do not know the city of Limerick, I dare say. It was not famous, nor was it pretty. In fact, gentlemen, it was the durndest misbegotten location built around a swamp that ever called itself a city. There were a few delooded farmers trying to persuade themselves that things would look up; there were a few down-hearted settlers wondering why they ever came there, and how they would get out again; and there were a few log-houses in a row which called themselves a street.

"I got there, and I stayed there. Their carpenter was dead, and I am a handy man; so I took his place. Then I made a few dollars doing chores around."