The Golden Butterfly

"Nerves, perhaps," said Colquhoun. The steps above them stopped. "I hear nothing."

"Nor do I. Nerves – ah, yes – nerves."

Mr. Cassilis turned to the left, Colquhoun with him. Behind them he saw the cloaked and hooded figure of Victoria Cassilis. At the Burlington Gardens end a cab was waiting. Near the horse's head stood a woman's figure which Lawrence thought he knew. As they passed her this woman, whoever she was, covered her face with a handkerchief. And at the same moment the cab drove by rapidly. Gabriel Cassilis saw neither woman nor cab. He was too happy to notice anything. There was nothing in it; nothing at all except mischievous gossip. And he had laid the Ghost.

"Dear me!" he said to himself presently, "I forgot to ask about the Secret. But of course there is none. How should there be?"

Next morning there came another letter.

"You have been fooled worse than ever," it said. "Your wife was in Mr. Colquhoun's chambers the whole time that you were there. She came down the stairs after you; she passed through the gate, almost touching you, and she drove past you in a hansom cab. I know the number, and will give it to you when the time comes. Mr. Colquhoun lied to you. How long? How long?"

It should have been a busy day in the City. To begin with, it only wanted four days to settling-day. Telegrams and letters poured in, and they lay unopened on the desk at which Gabriel Cassilis sat, with this letter before him, mad with jealousy and rage.

CHAPTER XXXVII

"'Come now,' the Master Builder cried,
'The twenty years of work are done;
Flaunt forth the Flag, and crown with pride
The Glory of the Coping-Stone.'"

Jack Dunquerque was to "slack off" his visits to Twickenham. That is to say, as he interpreted the injunction, he was not wholly to discontinue them, in order not to excite suspicion. But he was not to haunt the house; he was to make less frequent voyages up the silver Thames; he was not to ride in leafy lanes side by side with Phillis – without having Phillis by his side he cared little about leafy lanes, and would rather be at the club; further, by these absences he was to leave off being necessary to the brightness of her life.

It was a hard saying. Nevertheless, the young man felt that he had little reason for complaint. Other fellows he knew, going after other heiresses, had been quite peremptorily sent about their business for good, particularly needy young men like himself. All that Colquhoun extorted of him was that he should "slack off." He felt, in a manner, grateful, although had he been a youth of quicker perception, he would have remembered that the lover who "slacks off" can be no other than the lover who wishes he had not begun. But nobody ever called Jack a clever young man.

He was not to give her up altogether. He was not even to give up hoping. He was to have his chance with the rest. But he was warned that no chance was to be open to him until the young lady should enter upon her first season.

Not to give up seeing her. That was everything. Jack Dunquerque had hitherto lived the life of all young men, careless and insouciant, with its little round of daily pleasures. He was only different from other young men that he had learned, partly from a sympathetic nature and partly by travel, not to put all his pleasure in that life about town and in country houses which seems to so many the one thing which the world has to offer. He who has lived out on the Prairies for weeks has found that there are other pleasures besides the gas-light joys of Town. But his life had been without thought and purposeless – a very chaos of a life. And now he felt vaguely that his whole being was changed. To be with Phillis day after day, to listen to the outpourings of her freshness and innocence, brought to him the same sort of refreshment as sitting under the little cataract of a mountain stream brings to one who rambles in a hot West Indian island. Things for which he once cared greatly he now cared for no more; the club-life, the cards, and the billiards ceased to interest him; he took no delight in them. Perhaps it was a proof of a certain weakness of nature in Jack Dunquerque that he could not at the same time love things in which Phillis took no part and the things which made the simple pleasures of her every-day life.

He might have been weak, and yet, whether he was weak or strong, he knew that she leaned upon him. He was so sympathetic; he seemed to know so much; he decided so quickly; he was in his way so masterful, that the girl looked up to him as a paragon of wisdom and strength.

I think she will always so regard him, because the knowledge of her respect raises Jack daily in moral and spiritual strength, and so her hero approaches daily to her ideal. What is the highest love worth if it have not the power of lifting man and woman together up to the higher levels, where the air is purer, the sunshine brighter, the vision clearer?

But Colquhoun's commands had wrought a further change in him; that ugly good-looking face of his, which Agatha L'Estrange admired so much, and which was wont to be wreathed with a multitudinous smile, was now doleful. To the world of mankind – male mankind – the chief charm of Jack Dunquerque, the main cause of his popularity – his unvarying cheerfulness – was vanished.

"You ought to be called Doleful Jack," said Ladds. "Jack of Rueful Countenance."

"You don't know, Tommy," replied the lover, sorrowfully wagging his head. "I've seen Colquhoun; and he won't have it. Says I must wait."

"He's waited till forty. I've waited to five and thirty, and we're both pretty jolly. Come, young un, you may take courage by our examples."

"You never met Phil when you were five and twenty," said Jack. "Nobody ever saw a girl like Phillis."

Five and thirty seems so great an age to five and twenty. And at five and thirty one feels so young, that it comes upon the possessor of so many years like a shock of cold water to be reminded that he is really no longer young.

One good thing – Lawrence Colquhoun did not reproach him. Partly perhaps because, as a guardian, he did not thoroughly realize Jack's flagitious conduct; partly because he was an easy-going man, with a notion in his head that he had nothing to do with the work of Duennas and Keepers of the Gynæceum. He treated the confessions of the remorseful lover with a cheery contempt – passed them by; no great harm had been done; and the girl was but a child.

His own conscience it was which bullied Jack so tremendously. One day he rounded on his accuser like the poor worm in the proverb, who might perhaps have got safe back to its hole but for that ill-advised turning. He met the charges like a man. He pleaded that, criminal as he had been, nefarious and inexcusable as his action was, this action had given him a very high time; and that, if it was all to do over again, he should probably alter his conduct only in degree, but not in kind; that is to say, he would see Phillis oftener and stay with her longer. Conscience knocked him out of time in a couple of rounds; but still he did have the satisfaction of showing fight.

Of course he would do the same thing again. There has never been found by duenna, by guardian, by despotic parent, or by interested relation, any law of restraint strong enough to keep apart two young people of the opposite sex and like age, after they have once become attracted towards each other. Prudence and prudery, jealousy and interest, never have much chance. The ancient dames of duennadom may purse their withered lips and wrinkle their crow's-footed eyes; Love, the unconquered, laughs and conquers again.

It is of no use to repeat long explanations about Phillis. Such as she was, we know her – a law unto herself; careless of prohibitions and unsuspicious of danger. Like Una, she wandered unprotected and fearless among whatever two-legged wolves, bears, eagles, lions, vultures and other beasts and birds of prey might be anxiously waiting to snap her up. Jack was the great-hearted lion who was to bear her safely through the wistful growls of the meaner beasts. The lion is not clever like the fox or the beaver, but one always conceives of him as a gentleman, and therefore fit to be entrusted with such a beautiful maiden as Una or Phillis. And if Jack was quietly allowed to carry off his treasure it was Agatha L'Estrange who was chiefly to blame; and she, falling in love with Jack herself, quite in a motherly way, allowed the wooing to go on under her very nose. "A bad, bad woman," as Lawrence Colquhoun called her.

But such a wooing! Miss Ethel Citybredde, when she sees Amandus making a steady but not an eagerly impetuous advance in her direction at a ball, feels her languid pulses beat a little faster. "He is coming after Me," she says to herself, with pride. They snatch a few moments to sit together in a conservatory. He offers no remark worthy of repetition, nor does she; yet she thinks to herself, "He is going to ask me to marry him; he will kiss me; there will be a grand wedding; everybody will be pleased; other girls will be envious; and I shall be delighted. Papa knows that he is well off and well connected. How charming!"

Now Phillis allowed her lover to woo her without one thought of love or marriage, of which, indeed, she knew nothing. But if the passion was all on one side, the affection was equally divided. And when Jack truly said that Phillis did not love him, he forgot that she had given him already all that she knew of love; in that her thoughts, which on her first emancipation leaped forth, bounding and running in all directions with a wild yearning to behold the Great Unknown, were now returning to herself, and mostly flowed steadily, like streams of electric influence, in the direction of Jack; inasmuch as she referred unconsciously everything to Jack, as she dressed for him, drew for him, pored diligently over hated reading-books for him, and told him all her thoughts.

I have not told, nor can I tell, of the many walks and talks these two young people had together. Day after day Jack's boat – that comfortable old tub, in which he could, and often did, cut a crab without spilling the contents into the river – lay moored off Agatha's lawn, or rolled slowly up and down the river, Jack rowing, while Phillis steered, sang, talked, and laughed. This was pleasant in the morning; but it was far more pleasant in the evening, when the river was so quiet, so still and so black, and when thoughts crowded into the girl's brain, which fled like spirits when she tried to put them into words.

Or they rode together along the leafy roads through Richmond Park, and down by that unknown region, far away from the world, where heron rise up from the water's edge, where the wild fowl fly above the lake in figures which remind one of Euclid's definitions, and the deer collect in herds among great ferns half as high as themselves. There they would let the horses walk, while Phillis, with the slender curving lines of her figure, her dainty dress which fitted it so well, and her sweet face, made the heart of her lover hungry; and when she turned to speak to him, and he saw in the clear depths of her eyes his own face reflected, his passion grew almost too much for him to bear.

A delicate dainty maiden, who was yet of strong and healthy physique; one who did not disdain to own a love for cake and strawberries, cream and ices, and other pleasant things; who had no young-ladyish affectations; who took life eagerly, not languidly. And not a coward, as many maidens boast to be; she ruled her horse with a rein as firm as Jack Dunquerque, and sat him as steadily; she clinched her little fingers and set her lips hard when she heard a tale of wrong; her eyes lit up and her bosom heaved when she heard of heroic gest; she was strong to endure and to do. Not every girl would, as Phillis did, rise in the morning at five to train her untaught eyes and hand over those little symbols by which we read and write; not every girl would patiently begin at nineteen the mechanical drudgery of the music-lesson. And she did this in confidence, because Jack asked her every day about her lessons, and Agatha L'Estrange was pleased.

The emotion which is the next after, and worse than that of love, is sympathy. Phillis passed through the stages of curiosity and knowledge before she arrived at the stage of sympathy. Perhaps she was not far from the highest stage of all.

She learned something every day, and told Jack what it was. Sometimes it was an increase in her knowledge of evil. Jack, who was by no means so clever as his biographer, thought that a pity. His idea was the common one – that a maiden should be kept innocent of the knowledge of evil. I think Jack took a prejudiced, even a Philistine, view of the case. He put himself on the same level as the Frenchman who keeps his daughter out of mischief by locking her up in a convent. It is not the knowledge of evil that hurts, any more than the knowledge of black-beetles, earwigs, slugs, and other crawling things; the pure in spirit cast it off, just as the gardener who digs and delves among his plants washes his hands and is clean. The thing that hurts is the suspicion and constant thought of evil; the loveliest and most divine creature in the world is she who neither commits any ill, nor thinks any, nor suspects others of ill – who has a perfect pity for backsliders, and a perfect trust in the people around her. Unfortunate it is that experience of life turns pity to anger, and trust into hesitation.

Or they would be out upon Agatha's lawn, playing croquet, to which that good lady still adhered, or lawn-tennis, which she tolerated. There would be the curate – he had abandoned that design of getting up all about Laud, but was madly, ecclesiastically madly, in love with Phillis; there would be occasionally Ladds, who, in his heavy, kindly way, pleased this young May Queen. Besides, Ladds was fond of Jack. There would be Gilead Beck in the straightest of frock coats, and on the most careful behaviour; there would be also two or three young ladies, compared with whom Phillis was as Rosalind at the court of her uncle, or as Esther among the damsels of the Persian king's seraglio, so fresh and so incomparably fair.

"Mrs. L'Estrange," Jack whispered one day, "I am going to say a rude thing. Did you pick out the other girls on purpose to set off Phillis?"

"What a shame, Jack!" said Agatha, who like the rest of the world called him by what was not his Christian name. "The girls are very nice – not so pretty as Phillis, but good-looking, all of them. I call them as pretty a set of girls as you would be likely to see on any lawn this season."

"Yes," said Jack; "only you see they are all alike, and Phillis is different."

That was it – Phillis was different. The girls were graceful, pleasant, and well bred. But Phillis was all this, and more. The others followed the beaten track, in which the strength of life is subdued and its intensity forbidden. Phillis was in earnest about everything, quietly in earnest; not openly bent on enjoyment, like the young ladies who run down Greenwich Hill, for instance, but in her way making others feel something of what she felt herself. Her intensity was visible in the eager face, the mobile flashes of her sensitive lips, and her brightening eyes. And, most unlike her neighbours, she even forgot her own dress, much as she loved the theory and practice of dress, when once she was interested, and was careless about theirs.

It was not pleasant for the minor stars. They felt in a vague uncomfortable way that Phillis was far more attractive; they said to each other that she was strange; one who pretended to know more French than the others said that she was farouche.

She was not in the least farouche, and the young lady her calumniator did not understand the adjective; but farouche she continued to be among the maidens of Twickenham and Richmond.

Jack Dunquerque heard the epithet applied on one occasion, and burst out laughing.

Phillis farouche! Phillis, without fear and without suspicion!

But then they do teach French so badly at girls' schools. And so poor Phillis remained ticketed with the adjective which least of any belonged to her.

A pleasant six weeks from April to June, while the late spring blossomed and flowered into summer; a time to remember all his life afterwards with the saddened joy which, despite Dante's observation, does still belong to the memory of past pleasures.

But every pleasant time passes, and the six weeks were over.

Jack was to "slack off." The phrase struck him, applied to himself and Phillis, as simply in bad taste; but the meaning was plain. He was to present himself at Twickenham with less frequency.

Accordingly he began well by going there the very next day. The new régime has to be commenced somehow, and Jack began his at once. He pulled up in his tub. It was a cloudy and windy day; drops of rain fell from time to time; the river was swept by sudden gusts which came driving down the stream, marked by broad black patches; there were no other boats out, and Jack struggled upwards against the current; the exercise at least was a relief to the oppression of his thoughts.

What was he to do with himself after the "slacking off" had begun – after that day, in fact? The visits might drop to twice a week, then once a week, and then? But surely Colquhoun would be satisfied with such a measure of self-denial. In the intervals – say from Saturday to Saturday – he could occupy himself in thinking about her. He might write to her – would that be against the letter of the law? It was clearly against the spirit. And – another consideration – it was no use writing unless he wrote in printed characters, and in words of not more than two syllables. He thought of such a love-letter, and of Phillis gravely spelling it out word by word to Mrs. L'Estrange. For poor Phillis had not as yet accustomed herself to look on the printed page as a vehicle for thought, although Agatha read to her every day. She regarded it as the means of conveying to the reader facts such as the elementary reading-book delights to set forth; so dry that the adult reader, if a woman, presently feels the dust in her eyes, and if a man, is fain to get up and call wildly for quarts of bitter beer. No; Phillis was not educated up to the reception of a letter.

He would, he thought, sit in the least-frequented room of his club – the drawing-room – and with a book of some kind before him, just for a pretence, would pass the leaden hours in thinking of Phillis's perfections. Heavens! when was there a moment, by day or by night, that he did not think of them?