The Golden Butterfly

Bump! It was the bow of the ship, which knew by experience very well when to stop, and grounded herself without any conscious volition on his part at the accustomed spot.

Jack jumped out, and fastened the painter to the tree to which Phillis had once tied him. Then he strode across the lawns and flower-beds, and made for the little morning-room, where he hoped to find the ladies.

He found one of them. Fortune sometimes favors lovers. It was the younger one – Phillis herself.

She was bending over her work with brush and colour-box, looking as serious as if all her future depended on the success of that particular picture; beside her, tossed contemptuously aside, lay the much-despised Lesson-Book in Reading; for she had done her daily task. She did not hear Jack step in at the open window, and went on with her painting.

She wore a dress made of that stuff which looks like brown holland till you come close to it, and then you think it is silk, but are not quite certain, and I believe they call it Indian tussore. Round her dainty waist was a leathern belt set in silver with a châtelaine, like a small armoury of deadly weapons; and for colour she had a crimson ribbon about her neck. To show that the ribbon was not entirely meant for vanity, but had its uses, Phillis had slung upon it a cross of Maltese silver-work, which I fear Jack had given her himself. And below the cross, where her rounded figure showed it off, she had placed a little bunch of sweet peas. Such a dainty damsel! Not content with the flower in her dress, she had stuck a white jasamine-blossom in her hair. All these things Jack noted with speechless admiration.

Then she began to sing in a low voice, all to herself, a little French ballad which Mrs. L'Estrange had taught her – one of the sweet old French songs.

She was painting in the other window, at a table drawn up to face it. The curtains were partly pulled together, and the blind was half drawn down, so that she sat in a subdued light, in which only her face was lit up, like the faces in a certain kind of photograph, while her hair and figure lay in shadow. The hangings were of some light-rose hue, which tinted the whole room, and threw a warm colouring over the old-fashioned furniture, the pictures, the books, the flowers on the tables, and the ferns in their glasses. Mrs. L'Estrange was no follower after the new school. Neutral tints had small charms for her; she liked the warmth and glow of the older fashion in which she had been brought up.

It looked to Jack Dunquerque like some shrine dedicated to peace and love, with Phillis for its priestess – or even its goddess. Outside the skies were grey; the wind swept down the river with driving rain; here was warmth, colour, and brightness. So he stood still and watched.

And as he waited an overwhelming passion of love seized him. If the world was well lost for Antony when he threw it all away for a queen no longer young, and the mother of one son at least almost grown up, what would it have been had his Cleopatra welcomed him in all the splendour of her white Greek beauty at sweet seventeen? There was no world to be lost for this obscure cadet of a noble house, but all the world to be won. His world was before his eyes; it was an unconscious maid, ignorant of her own surpassing worth, and of the power of her beauty. To win her was to be the lord of all the world he cared for.

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.