"Like the hazel twig.As straight and slender."
"Like the hazel twig.As straight and slender."
"Like the hazel twig.As straight and slender."
"Like the hazel twig.
As straight and slender."
Perhaps her eyes were weak; but no, her eyes were sparkling with the "right Promethean fire." Perhaps she was of weak intellect; but that was ridiculous.
Then the lady who had read the book began to ask more questions. I do not know anything more irritating than to be asked questions about your own book.
"Will you tell us, Mr. Dunquerque, if the story of the bear-hunt is a true one, or did you make it up?"
"We made up nothing. That story is perfectly true. And the man's name was Beck."
"Curious," said Mr. Cassilis. "An American named Beck, Mr. Gilead P. Beck, is in London now, and has been recommended to me. He is extremely rich. I think, my dear, that you invited him to dinner to-day?'
"Yes. He found he could not come at the last moment. He will be here in the evening."
"Then you will see the very man," said Jack, "unless there is more than one Gilead P. Beck, which is hardly likely."
"This man has practically an unlimited credit," said the host.
"And talks, I suppose, like, well, like the stage Americans, I suppose," said his wife.
"You know," Jack explained, "that the stage American is all nonsense. The educated American talks a great deal better than we do. He can string his sentences together; we can only bark."
"Perhaps our bark is better than their bite," Ladds remarked.
"A man who has unlimited credit may talk as he pleases," said Mr. Cassilis dogmatically.
The two solemn young men murmured assent.
"And he always did say that he was going to have luck. He carried about a Golden Butterfly in a box."
"How deeply interesting!" replied the lady who had read the book. "And is that other story true, that you found an English traveller living all alone in a deserted city?"
"Quite true."
"Really. And who was it? Anybody one has met?"
"I do not know whether you have ever met him. His name is Lawrence Colquhoun."
Mrs. Cassilis flushed suddenly, and then her pale face became paler.
"Lawrence Colquhoun, formerly of ours," said Ladds, looking at her.
Mrs. Cassilis read the look to ask what business it was of hers, and why she changed colour at his name.
"Colquhoun!" she said softly. Then she raised her voice and addressed her husband: "My dear, it is an old friend of mine of whom we are speaking, Mr. Lawrence Colquhoun."
"Yes!" he had forgotten the name. "What did he do? I think I remember——" He stopped, for he remembered to have heard his wife's name in connection with this man. He felt a sudden pang of jealousy, a quite new and rather curious sensation. It passed, but yet he rejoiced that the man was out of England.
"He is my guardian," Phillis said to Ladds. "And you actually know him? Will you tell me something about him presently?"
When the men followed, half an hour later, they found the four ladies sitting in a large semi-circle round the fire. The centre of the space so formed was occupied by a gentleman who held a cup of tea in one hand and declaimed with the other. That is to say, he was speaking in measured tones, and as if he were addressing a large room instead of four ladies: and his right hand and arm performed a pump-handle movement to assist and grace his delivery. He had a face so grave that it seemed as if smiles were impossible; he was apparently about forty years of age. Mrs. Cassilis was not listening much. She was considering, as she looked at her visitor, how far he might be useful to her evenings. Phillis was catching every word that fell from the stranger's lips. Here was an experience quite new and startling. She knew of America; Mr. Dyson, born not so very many years after the War of Independence, and while the memory of its humiliations was fresh in the mind of the nation, always thought and spoke of Americans as England's hereditary and implacable enemies. Yet here was one of the race talking amicably, and making no hostile demonstrations whatever. So that another of her collection of early impressions evidently needed reconsideration.
When he saw the group at the door, Mr. Gilead Beck—for it was he—strode hastily across the room, and putting aside Mr. Cassilis, seized Jack Dunquerque by the hand and wrung it for several moments.
"You have not forgotten me!" he said. "You remember that lucky shot? You still think of that Grisly?"
"Of course I do," said Jack; "I shall never forget him."
"Nor shall I, sir; never." And then he went through the friendly ceremony with Ladds.
"You are the other man, sir?"
"I always am the other man," said Ladds, for the second time that evening. "How are you, Mr. Beck, and how is the Golden Butterfly?"
"That Inseck, captain, is a special instrument working under Providence for my welfare. He slumbers at my hotel, the Langham, in a fire-proof safe."
Then he seized Jack Dunquerque's arm, and led him to the circle round the fire.
"Ladies, this young gentleman is my preserver. He saved my life. It is owing to Mr. Dunquerque that Gilead P. Beck has the pleasure of being in this drawing-room."
"O Mr. Dunquerque," said the lady who had read the book, "that is not in the volume!"
"Clawed I should have been, mauled I should have been, rubbed out I should have been, on that green and grassy spot, but for the crack of Mr. Dunquerque's rifle. You will not believe me, ladies, but I thought it was the crack of doom."
"It was a most charming, picturesque spot in which to be clawed," said Jack, laughing. "You could not have selected a more delightful place for the purpose."
"There air moments," said Mr. Beck, looking round the room solemnly, and letting his eyes rest on Phillis, who gazed at him with an excitement and interest she could hardly control—"there air moments when the soul is dead to poetry. One of those moments is when you feel the breath of a Grisly on your cheek. Even you, young lady, would, at such a moment, lose your interest in the beauty of Nature."
Phillis started when he addressed her.
"Did he save your life?" she asked, with flashing eyes.
Jack Dunquerque blushed as this fair creature turned to him with looks of such admiration and respect as the queen of the tournament bestowed upon the victor of the fight. So Desdemona gazed upon the Moor when he spake
"Of most disastrous chances,Of moving accidents by flood and field."
"Of most disastrous chances,Of moving accidents by flood and field."
"Of most disastrous chances,Of moving accidents by flood and field."
"Of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field."
Mrs. Cassilis affected a diversion by introducing her husband to Mr. Beck.
"Mr. Cassilis, sir," he said, "I have a letter for you from one of our most prominent bankers. And I called in the City this afternoon to give it you. But I was unfortunate. Sir, I hope that we shall become better acquainted. And I am proud, sir, I am proud of making the acquaintance of a man who has the privilege of life partnership with Mrs. Cassilis. That is a great privilege, sir, and I hope you value it."
"Hum—yes; thank you, Mr. Beck," replied Mr. Cassilis, in a tone which conveyed to the sharp-eared Phillis the idea that he thought considerable value ought to be attached to the fact of having a life partnership withhim. "And how do you like our country?"
The worst of going to America, if you are an Englishman, or of crossing to England, if you are an American is that you can never escape that most searching and comprehensive question.
Said Mr. Gilead Beck:
"Well, sir, a dollar goes a long way in this country—especially in cigars and drinks."
"In drinks!" Phillis listened. The other ladies shot glances at each other.
"Phillis, my dear"—Mrs. Cassilis crossed the room and interrupted her rapt attention—"let me introduce Mr. Ronald Dunquerque. Do you think you could play something?"
She bowed to the young hero with sparkling eyes and rose to comply with the invitation. He followed her to the piano. She played in that sweet spontaneous manner which the women who have only beentaughthear with despair; she touched the keys as if she loved them and as if they understood her; she played one or two of the "Songs without Words;" and then, starting a simple melody, she began to sing, without being asked, a simple old ballad. Her tone was low at first, because she did not know the room, not because she was afraid; but it gradually rose as she felt her power, till the room filled with the volumes of her rich contralto voice. Jack Dunquerque stood beside her. She looked up in his face with eyes that smiled a welcome while she went on singing.
"You told us you could not read," said the young man when she finished.
"It is quite true, Mr. Dunquerque. I cannot."
"How, then, can you play and sing?"
"Oh, I play by ear and by memory. That is nothing wonderful."
"Won't you go on playing?"
She obeyed, talking in low, measured tones, in time with the air.
"I think you know my guardian, Mr. Lawrence Colquhoun. Will you tell me all about him? I have never seen him yet."
This unprincipled young man saw his chance, and promptly seized the opportunity.
"I should like to very much, but one cannot talk here before all these people. If you will allow me to call to-morrow, I will gladly tell you all I know about him."
"You had better come at luncheon-time," she replied, "and then I shall be very glad to see you."
Mr. Abraham Dyson usually told his friends to come at luncheon-time, so she could not be wrong. Also, she knew by this time that the Twins were always asleep at two o'clock, so that she would be alone; and it was pleasant to think of a talk,sola cum solo, with this interesting specimen of newly-discovered humanity—a young man who had actually saved another man's life.
"Is she an outrageous flirt?" thought Jack, "or is she deliciously and wonderfully simple?"
On the way home he discussed the problem with Ladds.
"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 andgracieuse. 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 sweetThat the sense aches at thee!'
"'O thou weed,Who art so lovely fair, and smell'st so sweetThat the sense aches at thee!'
"'O thou weed,Who art so lovely fair, and smell'st so sweetThat the sense aches at thee!'
"'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."
"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."
"If this Golden Butterfly fall and break,Farewell the Luck of Gilead P. Beck."
"If this Golden Butterfly fall and break,Farewell the Luck of Gilead P. Beck."
"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."
"What are chores?"
"All sorts. The clocks were out of repair; the handles were coming off the pails; the chairs were without legs; the pump-handle crank; the very bell-rope in the meetin' house was broken. You never saw such a helpless lot. I did not stay among them because I loved them, but because I saw things."
"Ghosts?" asked Ladds, with an eye to the supernatural.
"No, sir. That was what they thought I saw when I went prowling around by myself of an evening. They thought too that I was mad when I began to buy the land. You could buy it for nothing; a dollar an acre; half a dollar an acre; anything an acre. I've mended a cart-wheel for a five-acre lot of swamp. They laughed at me. The children used to cry out when I passed along, 'There goes mad Beck.' But I bought all I could, and my only regret was that I couldn't buy up the hull township—clear off men, women, and children, and start fresh. Some more champagne, Mr. Dunquerque."
"What was the Golden Butterfly doing all this time?" asked Ladds.
"That faithful inseck, sir, was hanging around my neck, as when you were first introduced to him. He was whisperin' and eggin' me on, because he was bound to fulfil the old squaw's prophecy. Without my knowing it, sir, that prodigy of the world, who is as alive as you are at this moment, will go on whisperin' till such time as the rope's played out and the smash comes. Then he'll be silent again."
He spoke with a solemn earnestness which impressed his hearers. They looked at the fire-proof safe with a feeling that at any moment the metallic insect might open the door, fly forth, and, after hovering round the room, light at Mr. Beck's ear, and begin to whisper words of counsel. Did not Mohammed have a pigeon? and did not Louis Napoleon at Boulogne have an eagle? Why should not Mr. Beck have a butterfly.
"The citizens of Limerick, gentlemen, in that dismal part of Canada where they bewail their miserable lives, air not a people who have eyes to see, ears to hear, or brains to understand. I saw that they were walking—no, sleeping—over fields of incalculable wealth, and they never suspected. They smoked their pipes and ate their pork. But they never saw and they never suspected. Between whiles they praised the Lord for sending them a fool like me, something to talk about, and somebody to laugh at. They wanted to know what was in the little box; they sent children to peep in at my window of an evening and report what I was doing. They reported that I was always doing the same thing; always with a map of Limerick City and its picturesque and interestin' suburbs, staking out the ground and reckoning up my acres. That's what I did at night. And in the morning I looked about me, and wondered where I should begin."
"What did you see when you looked about?"
"I saw, sir, a barren bog. If it had been a land as fertile as the land of Canaan, that would not have made my heart to bound as it did bound when I looked across that swamp; for I never was a tiller or a lover of the soil. A barren bog it was. The barrenest, boggiest part of it all was my claim; when the natives spoke of it they called it Beck's Farm, and then the poor critturs squirmed in their chairs and laughed. Yes, they laughed. Beck's Farm, they said. It was the only thing they had to laugh about. Wal, up and down the face of that almighty bog there ran creeks, and after rainy weather the water stood about on the morasses. Plenty of water, but a curious thing, none of it fit to drink. No living thing except man would set his lips to that brackish, bad-smelling water. And that wasn't all; sometimes a thick black slime rose to the surface of the marsh and lay there an inch thick; sometimes you came upon patches of 'gum-beds,' as they called them, where the ground was like tar, and smelt strong. That is what I saw when I looked around, sir. And to think that those poor mean pork raisers saw it all the same as I did and never suspected! Only cursed the gifts of the Lord when they weren't laughing at Beck's Farm."
"And you found—what? Gold?"
"No. I found what I expected. And that was better than gold. Mind, I say nothing against gold. Gold has made many a pretty little fortune——"
"Little!"
"Little, sir. There's no big fortunes made out of gold. Though many a pretty villa-location, with a tidy flower-garden up and down the States, is built out of the gold-mines. Diamonds again. One or two men likes the name of diamonds; but not many. There's the disadvantage about gold and diamonds that you have to dig for them, and to dig durned hard, and to dig by yourself mostly. Americans do not love digging. Like the young gentleman in the parable, they cannot dig, and to beg they air ashamed. It is the only occupation that they air ashamed of. Then there's iron, and there's coals; but you've got to dig for them. Lord! Lord! This great airth holds a hundred things covered up for them who know how to look and do not mind digging. But, gentlemen, the greatest gift the airth has to bestow she gave to me—abundant, spontaneous, etarnal, without bottom, and free."
"And that is——"
"It isIle."
Mr. Beck paused a moment. His face was lit with a real and genuine enthusiasm, a pious appreciation of the choicer blessings of life; those, namely, which enable a man to sit down and enjoy the proceeds of other men's labour. No provision has been made in the prayer-book of any Church for the expression of this kind of thankfulness. Yet surely there ought to be somewhere a clause for the rich. No more blissful repose can fall upon the soul than, after long years of labour and failure, to sit down and enjoy the fruits of other men's labour. A Form of Thanksgiving for publishers, managers of theatres, owners of coal-mines, and such gentlemen as Mr. Gilead P. Beck, might surely be introduced into our Ritual with advantage. It would naturally be accompanied by incense.
"It is Ile, sir."
He opened another bottle of champagne and took a glass.
"Ile. Gold you have to dig, to pick, to wash. Gold means rheumatism and a bent back. Ile flows, and you become suddenly rich. You make all the loafers around fill your pails for you. And then your bankers tell you how many millions of dollars you are worth."
"Millions!" repeated Jack. "The word sounds very rich and luxurious."
"It is so, sir. There's nothing like it in the Old Country. England is a beautiful place, and London is a beautiful city. You've got many blessin's in this beautiful city. If you haven't got Joe Tweed, you've got——"
"Hush!" said Jack; "it's libellous to give names."
"And if you haven't got Erie stock and your whiskey-rings, you've got your foreign bonds to take your surplus cash. No, gentlemen; London is not, in some respects, much behind New York. But one thing this country has not got, and that is—Ile.
"It is nearly a year since I made up my mind to begin my well. Iknewit was there, because I'd been in Pennsylvania and learned the signs; it was only the question whether I should strike it, and where. The neighbours thought I was digging for water, and figured around with their superior intellecks, because they were certain the water would be brackish. Then they got tired of watching, and I worked on. Boring a well is not quite the sort of work a man would select for a pleasant and variegated occupation. I reckon it's monotonous; but I worked on. I knew what was coming; I thought o' that Indian squaw, and I always had my Golden Butterfly tied in a box at my back. I bored and I bored. Day after day I bored. In that lonely miasmatic bog I bored all day and best part of the night. For nothing came, and sometimes qualms crossed my mind that perhaps there would never be anything. But always there was the gummy mud, smelling of what I knew was below, to lead me on.
"It was the ninth day, and noon. I had a shanty called the farmhouse, about a hundred yards from my well. And there I was taking my dinner. To you two young English aristocrats——"
"Ladds' Cocoa, the only perfect fragrance."
"Shut up, Ladds," growled Jack; "don't interrupt."
"I say, to you two young aristocrats a farmer's dinner in that township would not sound luxurious. Mine consisted, on that day and all days, of cold boiled pork and bread."
"Ah, yah!" said Jack Dunquerque, who had a proud stomach.
"Yes, sir, my own remark every day when I sat down to that simple banquet. But when you are hungry you must eat, murmur though you will for Egyptian flesh-pots. Cold pork was my dinner, with bread. And the watter to wash it down with was brackish. In those days, gentlemen, I said no grace. It didn't seem to me that the most straight-walking Christian was expected to be more than tolerably thankful for cold pork. My gratitude was so moderate that it wasn't worth offering."
"And while you were eating the pork," said Ladds, "the Golden Butterfly flew down the shaft by himself, and struck oil of his own accord."
"No, sir; for once you are wrong. That most beautiful creation of Nature in her sweetest mood—she must have got up with the sun on a fine summer morning—was reposing in his box round my neck as usual. He did not go down the shaft at all. Nobody went down. But something came up—up like a fountain, up like the bubbling over of the airth's eternal teapot; a black muddy jet of stuff. Great sun! I think I see it now."
He paused and sighed.
"It was nearly all Ile, pure and unadulterated, from the world's workshop. Would you believe it, gentlemen? There were not enough bar'ls, not by hundreds, in the neighbourhood all round Limerick City, to catch that Ile. It flowed in a stream three feet down the creek; it was carried away into the lake and lost; it ran free and uninterrupted for three days and three nights. We saved what we could. The neighbours brought their pails, their buckets, their basins, their kettles; there was not a utensil of any kind that was not filled with Ile, from the pig's trough to the child's pap-bowl. Not one. It ran and it ran. When the first flow subsided we calculated that seven million bar'ls had been wasted and lost. Seven millions! I am a Christian man, and grateful to the Butterfly, but I sometimes repine when I think of that wasted Ile. Every bar'l worth nine dollars at least, and most likely ten. Sixty-three millions of dollars. Twelve millions of pounds sterling lost in three days for want of a few coopers. Did you ever think, Mr. Dunquerque, what you could do with twelve millions sterling?"
"I never did," said Jack. "My imagination never got beyond thousands."
"With twelve millions I might have bought up the daily press of England, and made you all republicans in a month. I might have made the Panama Canal; I might have bought Palesteen and sent the Jews back; I might have given America fifty ironclads; I might have put Don Carlos on the throne of Spain. But it warn't to be. Providence wants no rivals, meddling and messing. That was why the Ile ran away and was lost while I ate the cold boiled pork. Perhaps it's an interestin' fact that I never liked cold boiled pork before, and I have hated it ever since.
"The great spurt subsided, and we went to work in earnest. That well has continued to yield five hundred bar'ls daily. That is four thousand five hundred dollars in my pocket every four and twenty hours."
"Do you mean that your income is nine hundred pounds a day?" asked Jack.
"I do, sir. You go your pile on that. It is more, but I do not know how much more. Perhaps it's twice as much. There are wells of mine sunk all over the place; the swamp is covered with Gilead P. Beck's derricks. The township of Limerick has become the city of Rockoleaville—my name, that was—and a virtuous and industrious population are all engaged morning, noon, and night in fillin' my pails. There's twenty-five bars, I believe, at this moment. There are three meetin'-houses and two daily papers, and there air fifteen lawyers."
"It seems better than Cocoa Nibs," said Ladds.
"But the oil may run dry."
"Ithasrun dry in Pennsylvania. That is so, and I do not deny it. But Ile will not run dry in Rockoleaville. I have been thinking over the geological problem, and I have solved it, all by myself."
"What is this world, gentlemen?"
"A round ball," said Jack, with the promptitude of a Board schoolboy and the profundity of a Woolwich cadet.
"Sir, it is like a great orange. It has its outer rind, what they call the crust. Get through that crust and what do you find?"
"More crust," replied Ladds, who was not a competition-wallah.
"Did you ever eat pumpkin-pie, sir?" Mr. Beck replied,more Socratico, by asking another question. "And if you did, was your pie all crust? Inside that pie, sir, was pumpkin, apple, and juice. So inside the rind of the earth there may be all sorts of things: gold and iron, lava, diamonds, coals; but the juice, the pie-juice, is Ile. You tap the rind and you get the Ile. This Ile will run, I calculate, for five thousand and fifty-two years, if they don't sinfully waste it, at an annual consumption of eighteen million bar'ls. Now that's a low estimate when you consider the progress of civilisation. When it is all gone, perhaps before, this poor old airth will crack up like an empty egg."
This was an entirely new view of geology, and it required time for Mr. Beck's hearers to grasp the truth thus presented to their minds. They were silent.
"At Rockoleaville," he went on, "I've got the pipe straight into the middle of the pie, and right through the crust. There's no mistake about that main shaft. Other mines may give out, but my Ile will run for ever."
"Then we may congratulate you," said Jack, "on the possession of a boundless fortune."
"You may, sir."
"And what do you intend to do?"
"For the present I shall stay in London. I like your great city. Here I get invited to dinner and dancin', because I am an American and rich. There they won't have a man who is not thoroughbred. Your friend Mrs. Cassilis asks me to her house—a first-rater. A New York lady turns up her pretty nose at a man who's struck Ile. 'Shoddy,' she says, and then she takes no more notice. Shoddy it may be. Rough my manners may be. But I don't pretend to anything, and the stamps air real."
"We always thought ourselves exclusive," said Jack.
"Did you, sir? Wall——" He stopped, as if he had intended to say something unpleasantly true. "I shall live in London for the present. I've got a big income, and I don't rightly know what to do with it. But I shall find out some time.
"That was a lovely young thing with Mrs. Cassilis the other night," he went on meditatively. "A young thing that a man can worship for her beauty while she is young, and her goodness all her life. Not like an American gal. Ours are prettier, but they look as if they would blow away. And their voices are not so full. Miss Fleming is flesh and blood. Don't blush, Mr. Dunquerque, because it does you credit."
Jack did blush, and they took their departure.
"Mr. Dunquerque," whispered Gilead P. Beck when Ladds was through the door, "think of what I told you; what is mine is yours. Remember that. If I can do anything for you, let me know. And come to see me. It does me good to look at your face. Come here as often as you can."
Jack laughed and escaped.
"By my modesty,The jewel in my dower, I would not wishAny companion in the world but you."
"By my modesty,The jewel in my dower, I would not wishAny companion in the world but you."
"By my modesty,The jewel in my dower, I would not wishAny companion in the world but you."
"By my modesty,
The jewel in my dower, I would not wish
Any companion in the world but you."
Jack Dunquerque was no more remarkable for shrinking modesty than any other British youth of his era; but he felt some little qualms as he walked towards Bloomsbury the day after Mrs. Cassilis's dinner to avail himself of Phillis's invitation.
Was it coquetry, or was it simplicity?
She said she would be glad to see him at luncheon. Who else would be there?
Probably a Mrs. Jagenal—doubtless the wife of the heavy man who brought Miss Fleming to the party; herself a solid person in black silk and a big gold chain; motherly with the illiterate Dryad.
"Houses mighty respectable," he thought, penetrating into Carnarvon Square. "Large incomes; comfortable quarters; admirable port, most likely, in most of them; claret certainly good, too—none of your Gladstone tap; sherry probably rather coarse. Must ask for Mrs. Jagenal, I suppose."
He did ask for Mrs. Jagenal, and was informed by Jane that there was no such person, and that, as she presently explained with warmth, no such person was desired by the household. Jack Dunquerque thereupon asked for Mr. Jagenal. The maid asked which Mr. Jagenal. Jack replied in the most irritating manner possible—the Socratic—by asking another question. The fact that Socrates went about perpetually asking questions is quite enough to account for the joy with which an exasperated mob witnessed his judicial murder. The Athenians bore for a good many years with his maddening questions—as to whether this way or that way or how—and finally lost patience. Hence the little bowl of drink.
Quoth Jack, "How many are there of them?"
Jane looked at the caller with suspicion. He seemed a gentleman, but appearances are deceptive. Suppose he came for what he could pick up? The twins' umbrellas were in the hall, and their great-coats. He laughed, and showed an honest front; but who can trust a London stranger? Jane remembered the silver spoons now on the luncheon-table, and began to think of shutting the door in his face.
"You can't be a friend of the family," she said, "else you'd know the three Mr. Jagenals by name, and not come here showing your ignorance by asking for Mrs. Jagenal. Mrs. Jagenal indeed! Perhaps you'd better call in the evening and see Mr. Joseph."
"I am not a friend of the family," he replied meekly. "I wish I was. But Miss Fleming expects me at this hour. Will you take in my card?"
He stepped into the hall, and felt as if the fortress was won. Phillis was waiting for him in the dining-room, where, he observed, luncheon was laid for two. Was he, then, about to be entertained by the young lady alone?
If she looked dainty in her white evening dress, she was far daintier in her half-mourning grey frock, which fitted so tightly to her slender figure, and was set off by the narrow black ribbon round her neck which was her only ornament; for she carried neither watch nor chain, and wore neither ear-rings nor finger-rings. This heiress was as innocent of jewelry as any little milliner girl of Bond Street, and far more happy, because she did not wish to wear any.
"I thought you would come about this time," she said, with the kindliest welcome in her eyes; "and I waited for you here. Let us sit down and take luncheon."
Mr. Abraham Dyson never had any visitors except for dinner or luncheon; so that Phillis naturally associated an early call with eating.
"I always have luncheon by myself," explained the young hostess; "so that it is delightful to have some one who can talk."
She sat at the head of the table, Jack taking his seat at the side. She looked fresh, bright, and animated. The sight of her beauty even affected Jack's appetite, although it was an excellent luncheon.
"This curried fowl," she went on. "It was made for Mr. Jagenal's brothers; but they came down late, and were rather cross. We could not persuade them to eat anything this morning."
"Are they home for the holidays?"
Phillis burst out laughing—such a fresh, bright, spontaneous laugh. Jack laughed too, and then wondered why he did it.
"Home for the holidays! They are always home, and it is always a holiday with them."
"Do you not allow them to lunch with you?"
She laughed again.
"They do not breakfast till ten or eleven."
Jack felt a little fogged, and waited for further information.
"Will you take beer or claret? No, thank you; no curry for me. Jane, Mr. Dunquerque will take a glass of beer. How beautiful!" she went on, looking steadily in the young man's face, to his confusion—"how beautiful it must be to meet a man whose life you have saved! I should like—once—just once—to do a single great action, and dream of it ever after."
"But mine was not a great action. I shot a bear which was following Mr. Beck and meant mischief; that is all."
"But you might have missed," said Phillis, with justice. "And then Mr. Beck would have been killed."
Might have missed! How many V.C.'s we should have but for that simple possibility! Might have missed! And then Gilead Beck would have been clawed, and the Golden Butterfly destroyed, and this history never have reached beyond its first chapter. Above all, Phillis might never have known Jack Dunquerque.
"And you are always alone in this great house?" he asked, to change the subject.
"Only in the day-time. Mr. Joseph and I breakfast at eight. Then I walk with him as far as his office in Lincoln's Inn-Fields, now that I know the way. At first he used to send one of his clerks back with me, for fear of my being lost. But I felt sorry for the poor young man having to walk all the way with a girl like me, and so I told him, after the second day, that I was sure he longed to be at his writing, and I would go home by myself."
"No doubt," said Jack, "he was rejoiced to go back to his pleasant and exciting work. All lawyers' clerks are so well paid, and so happy in their occupation, that they prefer it even to walking with a—a—a Dryad."
Phillis was dimly conscious that there was more in these words than a literal statement. She was as yet unacquainted with the figures of speech which consist of saying one thing and meaning another, and she made a mental note of the fact that lawyers' clerks are a happy and contented race. It adds something to one's happiness to know that others are also happy.
"And the boys—Mr. Jagenal's brothers?"
"They are always asleep from two to six. Then they come down to dinner, and talk of the work they have done. Don't you know them? Oh, they are not boys at all! One is Cornelius. He is a great poet. He is writing a long epic poem called theUpheaving of Ælfred. Humphrey, his brother, says it will be the greatest work of this century. But I do not think very much is done. Humphrey is a great artist, you know. He is engaged on a splendid picture—at least it will be splendid when it is finished. At present nothing is on the canvas. He says he is studying the groups. Cornelius says it will be the finest artistic achievement of the age. Will you have some more beer? Jane, give Mr. Dunquerque a glass of sherry. And now let us go into the drawing-room, and you shall tell me all about my guardian, Lawrence Colquhoun."
In the hall a thought struck the girl.
"Come with me," she said; "I will introduce you to the Poet and the Painter. You shall see them at work."
Her eyes danced with delight as she ran up the stairs, turning to see if her guest followed. She stopped at a door, the handle of which she turned with great care. Jack mounted the stairs after her.
It was a large and well-furnished room. Rows of books stood in order on the shelves. A bright fire burned on the hearth. A portfolio was on the table, with a clean inkstand and an unsullied blotting-pad. By the fire sat, in a deep and very comfortable easy-chair, the poet, sound asleep.
"There!" she whispered. "In the portfolio is the great poem. Look at it."
"We ought not to look at manuscripts, ought we?"
"Not if there is anything written. But there isn't. Of course, I may always turn over any pages, because I cannot read."
She turned them over. Nothing but blank sheets, white in virgin purity.
Cornelius sat with his head a little forward, breathing rather noisily.
"Isn't it hard work?" laughed the girl. "Poor fellow, isn't it exhaustive work? Let me introduce you. Mr. Cornelius Jagenal, Mr. Ronald Dunquerque." Jack bowed to the sleeping bard. "Now you know each other. That is what Mr. Dyson used always to say. Hush! we might wake him up and interrupt—the Work. Come away, and I will show you the Artist."
Another room equally well furnished, but in a different manner. There were "properties": drinking-glasses of a deep ruby red, luminous and splendid, standing on the shelves; flasks of a dull rich green; a model in armour; a lay figure, with a shawl thrown over the head and looped up under the arm; a few swords hanging upon the walls; curtains that caught the light and spread it over the room in softened colouring; and by the fire a couch, on which lay, sleeping, Humphrey with the wealth of silky beard.
There was an easel, and on it a canvas. This was as blank as Cornelius's sheets of paper.
"Permit me again," said the girl. "Mr. Humphrey Jagenal, Mr. Ronald Dunquerque. Now you know each other."
Jack bowed low to the genius.
Phillis, her eyes afloat with fun, beckoned the young man to the table. Pencil and paper lay there. She sat down and drew the sleeping painter in a dozen swift strokes. Then she looked up, laughing:
"Is that like him?"
Jack could hardly repress a cry of admiration.
"I am glad you think it good. Please write underneath, 'The Artist at work.' Thank you. Is that it? We will now pin it on the canvas. Think what he will say when he wakes up and sees it."
They stole out again as softly as a pair of burglars.
"Now you have seen the Twins. They are really very nice, but they drink too much wine, and sit up late. In the morning they are sometimes troublesome, when they won't take their breakfast; but in the evening, after dinner, they are quite tractable. And you see how they spend their day."
"Do they never do any work at all?"
"I will tell you what I think," she replied gravely. "Mr. Dyson used to tell me of men who are so vain that they are ashamed to give the world anything but what they know to be the best. And the best only comes by successive effort. So they wait and wait, till the time goes by, and they cannot even produce second-rate work. I think the Twins belong to that class of people."
By this time they were in the drawing-room.
"And now," said Phillis, "you are going to tell me all about my guardian."
"Tell me something more about yourself first," said Jack, not caring to bring Mr. Lawrence Colquhoun into the conversation just yet. "You said last night that you would show me your drawings."
"They are only pencil and pen-and-ink sketches." Phillis put a small portfolio on the table and opened it. "This morning Mr. Joseph took me to see an exhibition of paintings. Most of the artists in that exhibition cannot draw, but some can—and then—Oh!"
"They cannot draw better than you, Miss Fleming, I am quite sure."
She shook her head as Jack spoke, turning over the sketches.
"It seems so strange to be called Miss Fleming. Everybody used to call me Phillis."
"Was—was everybody young?" Jack asked, with an impertinence beyond his years.
"No; everybody was old. I suppose young people always call each other by their christian names. Yours seems to be rather stiff. Ronald, Ronald—I am afraid I do not like it very much."
"My brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, cousins and kinsfolk—the people who pay my debts and therefore love me most—call me Ronald. But everybody else calls me Jack."
"Jack!" she murmured. "What a pretty name Jack is! May I call you Jack?"
"If you only would!" he cried, with a quick flushing of his cheek. "If you only would! Not when other people are present, but all to ourselves, when we are together like this. That is, if you do not mind."
Could the Serpent, when he cajoled Eve, have begun in a more subtle and artful manner? One is ashamed for Jack Dunquerque.
"I shall always call you Jack, then, unless when people like Mrs. Cassilis are present."
"And what am I to call you?"
"My name is Phillis, you know." But she knew, because her French maid had told her, that some girls have names of endearment, and she hesitated a little, in hope that Jack would find one for her.
He did. She looked him so frankly and freely in the face that he took courage, and said with a bold heart:
"Phillis is a very sweet name. You know the song, 'Phillis is my only joy?' I ought to call you Miranda, the Princess of the Enchanted Island. But it would be prettier to call you Phil."
"Phil!" Her lips parted in a smile of themselves as she shaped the name. It is a name which admits of expression. You may lengthen it out if you like; you may shorten it you like. "Phil! That is very pretty. No one ever called me Phil before."
"And we will be great friends, shall we not?"
"Yes, great friends. I have never had a friend at all."
"Let us shake hands over our promise. Phil, say, 'Jack Dunquerque, I will try to like you, and I will be your friend.'"
"Jack Dunquerque," she placed her hands, both of them, in his and began to repeat, looking in his face quite earnestly and solemnly, "I will try—that is nonsense, because Idolike you very much already; and I will always be your friend, if you will be mine and will let me."
Then he, with a voice that shook a little, because he knew that this was very irregular and even wrong, but that the girl was altogether lovable, and a maiden to be desired, and a queen among girls, and too beautiful to be resisted, said his say:
"Phil, I think you are the most charming girl I have ever seen in all my life. Let me be your friend always, Phil. Let me"—here he stopped, with a guilty tremor in his voice—"I hope—I hope—that you will always go on liking me more and more."
He held both her pretty shapely hands in his own. She was standing a little back, with her face turned up to his, and a bright fearless smile upon her lips and in her eyes. Oh, the eyes that smile before the lips!
"Some people seal a bargain," he went on, hesitating and stammering, "after the manner of the—the—early Christians—with a kiss. Shall we, Phil?"
Before she caught the meaning of his words he stooped and drew her gently towards him. Then he suddenly released her. For all in a moment the woman within her, unknown till that instant, was roused into life, and she shrank back—without the kiss.
Jack hung his head in silence. Phil, in silence, too, stood opposite him, her eyes upon the ground.
She looked up stealthily and trembled.
Jack Dunquerque was troubled as he met her look.
"Forgive me, Phil," he said humbly. "It was wrong—I ought not. Only forgive me, and tell me we shall be friends all the same."
"Yes," she replied, not quite knowing what she said; "I forgive you. But, Jack, please don't do it again."
Then he returned to the drawings, sitting at the table, while she stood over him and told him what they were.
There was no diffidence or mock-modesty at all about her. The drawings were her life, and represented her inmost thoughts. She had never shown them all together to a single person, and now she was laying them all open before the young man whom yesterday she had met for the first time.
It seemed to him as if she were baring her very soul for him to read.
"I like to do them," she said, "because then I can recall everything that I have done or seen. Look! Here is the dear old house at Highgate, where I stayed for thirteen years without once going beyond its walls. Ah, how long ago it seems, and yet it is only a week since I came away! And everything is so different to me now."
"You were happy there, Phil?"
"Yes; but not so happy as I am now. I did not know you then, Jack."
He beat down the temptation to take her in his arms and kiss her a thousand times. He tried to sit calmly critical over the drawings. But his hand shook.
"Tell me about it all," he said softly.
"These are the sketches of my Highgate life. Stay; this one does not belong to this set. It is a likeness of you, which I drew last night when I came home."
"Did you really draw one of me? Let me have it. Do let me have it."
"It was meant for your face. But I could do a better one now. See, this is Mr. Beck, the American gentleman; and this is Captain Ladds. This is Mr. Cassilis."
They were the roughest unfinished things, but she had seized the likeness in every one.
Jack kept his own portrait in his hand.
"Let me keep it."
"Please, no; I want that one for myself."
Once more, and for the last time in his life, a little distrust crossed Jack Dunquerque's mind. Could this girl, after all, be only the most accomplished of all coquettes? He looked up at her face as she stood beside him, and then abused himself for treachery to love.
"It is like me," he said, looking at the pencil portrait; "but you have made me too handsome."
She shook her head.
"Youarevery handsome, I think," she said gravely.
He was not, strictly speaking, handsome at all. He was rather an ugly youth, having no regularity of features. And it was a difficult face to draw, because he wore no beard—nothing but a light moustache to help it out.
"Phil, if you begin to flatter me you will spoil me; and I shall not be half so good a friend when I am spoiled. Won't you give this to me?"
"No; I keep my portfolio all to myself. But I will draw a better one, if you like, of you, and finish it up properly, like this."
She showed him a pencil-drawing of a face which Rembrandt himself would have loved to paint. It was the face of an old man, wrinkled and crows-footed.
"That is my guardian, Mr. Dyson. I will draw you in the same style. Poor dear guardian! I think he was very fond of me."
Another thought struck the young man.
"Phil, will you instead make me a drawing—of your own face?"
"But can you not do it for yourself?"
"I? Phil, I could not even draw a haystack."
"What a misfortune! It seems worse than not being able to read."
"Draw me a picture of yourself, Phil."
She considered.
"Nobody ever asked me to do that yet. And I never drew my own face. It would be nice, too, to think that you had a likeness of me, particularly as you cannot draw yourself. Jack, would you mind if it were not much like me?"
"I should prefer it like you. Please try. Give me yourself as you are now. Do not be afraid of making it too pretty."
"I will try to make it like. Here is Mrs. Cassilis. She did not think it was very good."
"Phil, you are a genius. Do you know that? I hold you to your promise. You will draw a portrait of yourself, and I will frame it and hang it up—no, I won't do that; I will keep it myself, and look at it when no one is with me."
"That seems very pleasant," said Phil, reflecting. "I should like to think that you are looking at me sometimes. Jack, I only met you yesterday, and we are old friends already."
"Yes; quite old familiar friends, are we not? Now tell all about yourself."
She obeyed. It was remarkable how readily she obeyed the orders of this new friend, and told him all about her life with Mr. Dyson—the garden and paddock, out of which she never went, even to church; the pony, the quiet house, and the quiet life with the old man who taught her by talking; her drawing and her music; and her simple wonder what life was like outside the gates.
"Did you never go to church, Phil?"
"No; we had prayers at home; and on Sunday evenings I sang hymns."
Clearly her religions education had been grossly neglected. "Never heard of a Ritualist," thought Jack, with a feeling of gladness. "Doesn't know anything about vestments; isn't learned in school feasts; and never attended a tea-meeting. This girl is a Phænix." Why—why was he a Younger Son?
"And is Mr. Cassilis a relation of yours?"
"No; Mr. Cassilis is Mr. Dyson's nephew. All Mr. Dyson's fortune is left to found an institution for educating girls as I was educated——"
"Without reading or writing?"
"I suppose so. Only, you see, it is most unfortunate that my own education is incomplete, and they cannot carry out the testator's wishes, Mr. Jagenal tells me, because they have not been able to find the concluding chapters of his book. Mr. Dyson wrote a book on it, and the last chapter was called the 'Coping-stone.' I do not know what they will do about it. Mr. Cassilis wants to have the money divided among the relations, I know. Isn't it odd? And he has so much already."
"And I have got none."
"O Jack! take some of mine—do! I know I have such a lot somewhere; and I never spend anything."
"You are very good, Phil; but that will hardly be right. But do you know it is five o'clock? We have been talking for three hours. I must go—alas, I must go!"
"And you have told me nothing at all yet about Mr. Colquhoun."
"When I see you next I will tell you what I know of him. Good-bye, Phil."
"Jack, come and see me again soon."
"When may I come? Not to-morrow—that would be too soon. The day after. Phil, make me the likeness, and send it to me by post. I forgot you cannot write."
He wrote his address on a sheet of foolscap.
"Fold it in that, with this address outside, and post it to me. Come again, Phil? I should like to come every day, and stay all day." He pressed her hand and was gone.
Phillis remained standing where he left her. What had happened to her? Why did she feel so oppressed? Why did the tears crowd her eyes? Five o'clock. It wanted an hour of dinner, when she would have to talk to the Twin brethren. She gathered up her drawings and retreated to her own room. As she passed Humphrey's door, she heard him saying to Jane:
"The tea, Jane? Have I really been asleep? A most extraordinary thing for me."
"Now he will see the drawing of the 'Artist at Work,'" thought Phillis. But she did not laugh at the idea, as she had done when she perpetrated the joke. She had suddenly grown graver.
She began her own likeness at once. But she could not satisfy herself. She tore up half a dozen beginnings. Then she changed her mind. She drew a little group of two. One was a young man, tall, shapely, gallant, with a queer attractive face, who held the hands of a girl in his, and was bending over her. Somehow a look of love, a strange and new expression, which she had never seen before in human eyes, lay in his. She blushed while she drew her own face looking up in that other, and yet she drew it faithfully, and was only half conscious how sweet a face she drew and how like it was to her own. Nor could she understand why she felt ashamed.
"Come again soon, Jack."
The words rang in the young man's ears, but they rang like bells of accusation and reproach. This girl, so sweet, so fresh, so unconventional, what would she think when she learned, as she must learn some day, how great was his sin against her? And what would Lawrence Colquhoun say! And what would the lawyer say? And what would the world say?
The worst was that his repentance would not take the proper course. He did not repent of taking her hands—he trembled and thrilled when he thought of it—he only repented of the swiftness with which the thing was done, and was afraid of the consequences.
"And I am only a Younger Son, Tommy"—he made his plaint to Ladds, who received a full confession of the whole—"only a Younger Son, with four hundred a year. And she's got fifty thousand. They will say I wanted her money. I wish she had nothing but the sweet grey dress——"
"Jack, don't blaspheme. Goodness sometimes palls; beauty always fades; grey dresses certainly wear out; figures alter for the worse; the funds remain. I am always thankful for the thought which inspired Ladds' Perfect Cocoa. The only true Fragrance. Aroma and Nutrition."
Humphrey did not discover the little sketch before dinner, so that his conversation was as animated and as artistic as usual. At two o'clock in the morning he discovered it. And at three o'clock the Twins, after discussing the picture with its scoffing legend in all its bearings, went to bed sorrowful.