The Golden Butterfly

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.