Walter Besant - The Golden Butterfly

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.

Mr. Gabriel Cassilis, who, like Julius Cæsar and other illustrious men, was always spoken of by both his names, stepped from his carriage at the door of the Langham Hotel and slowly walked up the stairs to Mr. Beck's room. He looked older, longer, and thinner in the morning than in the evening. He carried his hands behind him and bore a look of pre-occupation and care. The man of unlimited credit was waiting for him, and, with his first cigar, pacing the room with his hands in his pockets.