DOWN THE SEINE
My daughter Alida and my daughter Dulcima had gone to drive with the
United States Ambassador and his daughter that morning, leaving me at
the Hôtel with instructions as to my behaviour in their absence, and
injunctions not to let myself be run over by any cab, omnibus,
automobile, or bicycle whatever.
Considerably impressed by their solicitude, I retired to the
smoking-room, believing myself safe there from any form of vehicular
peril. But the young man from Chicago sauntered in and took a seat close
beside me, with benevolent intentions toward relieving my isolation.
I preferred any species of juggernaut to his rough riding over the
English language, so I left him murkily enveloped in the fumes of his
own cigar and sauntered out into the street.
The sky was cloudless; the air was purest balm. Through fresh clean
streets I wandered under the cool shadows of flowering chestnuts, and
presently found myself on the quay near the Pont des Arts, leaning over
and looking at the river slipping past between its walls of granite.
In a solemn row below me sat some two dozen fishermen dozing over their
sport. Their long white bamboo poles sagged, their red and white
quill-floats bobbed serenely on the tide. Truly here was a company of
those fabled Lotus-eaters, steeped in slumber; a dreamy, passionless
band of brothers drowsing in the sunshine.
Looking east along the grey stone quays I could see hundreds and
hundreds of others, slumbering over their fishpoles; looking west, the
scenery was similar.
"The fishing must be good here," I observed to an aged man, leaning on
the quay-wall beside me.
"_Comme ça_," he said.
I leaned there lazily, waiting to see the first fish caught. I am an
angler myself, and understand patience; but when I had waited an hour by
my watch I looked suspiciously at the aged man beside me. He was asleep,
so I touched him.
He roused himself without resentment. "Have you," said I, sarcastically,
"ever seen better fishing than this, in the Seine?"
"Yes," he said; "I once saw a fish caught."
"And when was that?" I asked.
"That," said the aged man, "was in 1853."
I strolled down to the lower quay, smoking. As I passed the row of
anglers I looked at them closely. They all were asleep.
Just above was anchored one of those floating _lavoirs_ in which the
washerwomen of Paris congregate to beat your linen into rags with flat
wooden paddles, and soap the rags snow-white at the cost of a few
pennies.
The soapsuds from the washing floated off among the lines of the
slumbering fishermen. Perhaps that was one reason why the fish were
absent from the scenery. On the other hand, however, I was given to
understand that a large sewer emptied into the river near the Pont des
Arts, and that the fishing was best in such choice spots. Still
something certainly was wrong somewhere, for either the sewer and the
soapsuds had killed the fish, or they had all migrated up the sewer on
an inland and subterranean picnic to meet the elite among the rats of
Paris, and spend the balance of the day.
The river was alive with little white saucy steamboats, rushing up and
down the Seine with the speed of torpedo craft. There was a boat-landing
within a few paces of where I stood, so, when a boat came along and
stopped to discharge a few passengers, I stepped aboard, bound for
almost anywhere, and not over-anxious to get there too quickly. Neither
did I care to learn my own destination, and when the ticket agent in
naval uniform came along to inquire where I might be going, I told him
to sell me a pink ticket because it looked pretty. As all Frenchmen
believe that all Americans are a little mad, my request, far from
surprising the ticket agent, simply confirmed his national theory; and
he gave me my ticket very kindly, with an air of protection such as one
involuntarily assumes toward children and invalids.
"You are going to Saint Cloud," he said. "I'll tell you when to get off
the boat."
"Thank you," said I.
"You ought to be going the other way," he added.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because Charenton lies the other way," he replied, politely, and passed
on to sell his tickets.
Now I had forgotten much concerning Paris in my twenty years of absence.
There was a pretty girl sitting on the bench beside me, with elbows
resting on the railing behind. I glanced at her. She was smiling.
"Pardon, madame," said I, knowing enough to flatter her, though she had
"mademoiselle" written all over her complexion of peaches and
cream--"pardon, madame, but may I, a stranger, venture to address you
for a word of information?"
"You may, monsieur," she said, with a smile which showed an edge of
white teeth under her scarlet lips.
"Then, if you please, where is Charenton?"
"Up the river," she replied, smiling still.
"And what," said I, "is the principal feature of the town of Charenton?"
"The Lunatic Asylum, monsieur."
I thanked her and looked the other way.
Our boat was now flying past the Louvre. Above in the streets I could
see cabs and carriages passing, and the heads and shoulders of people
walking on the endless stone terraces. Below, along the river bank, our
boat passed between an almost unbroken double line of dozing fishermen.
Now we shot out from the ranks of _lavoirs_ and bathhouses, and darted
on past the Champ de Mars; past the ugly sprawling Eiffel Tower, past
the twin towers of the Trocadero, and out under the huge stone viaduct
of the Point du Jour.
Here the banks of the river were green and inviting. Cafés, pretty
suburban dance-houses, restaurants, and tiny hotels lined the shores. I
read on the signs such names as "The Angler's Retreat," "At the Great
Gudgeon," "The Fisherman's Paradise," and I saw sign-boards advertising
fishing, and boats to let.
"I should think," said I, turning to my pretty neighbor, "that it would
pay to remove these fisherman's signs to Charenton."
"Why?" she asked.
"Because," said I, "nobody except a Charentonian would ever believe that
any fish inhabit this river."
"Saint Cloud! Saint Cloud!" called out the ticket-agent as the boat
swung in to a little wooden floating pier on the left bank of the river.
The ticket-agent carefully assisted me over the bridge to the
landing-dock, and I whispered to him that I was the Duke of Flatbush and
would be glad to receive him any day in Prospect Park.
Then, made merry at my own wit, I strolled off up the steps that led to
the bank above.
There, perched high above the river, I found a most delightful little
rustic restaurant where I at once ordered luncheon served for me on the
terrace, in the open air.
The bald waiter sped softly away to deliver my order, and I sipped an
Amer-Picon, and bared my head to the warm breeze which swept up the
river from distant meadows deep in clover.
There appeared to be few people on the terrace. One young girl, however,
whom I had seen on the boat, I noticed particularly because she seemed
to be noticing me. Then, fearing that my stare might be misunderstood, I
turned away and soon forgot her when the bald waiter returned with an
omelet, bread and butter, radishes and a flask of white wine.
Such an omelet! such wine! such butter! and the breeze from the west
blowing sweet as perfume from a nectarine, and the green trees waving
and whispering, and the blessed yellow sunshine over all----
"Pardon, monsieur."
I turned. It was my pretty little Parisienne of the steamboat, seated at
the next small table, demurely chipping an egg.
"I beg _your_ pardon," said I, hastily, for the leg of my chair was
pinning her gown to the ground.
"It is nothing," she said brightly, with a mischievous glance under her
eyes.
"My child," said I, "it was very stupid of me, and I am certainly old
enough to know better."
"Doubtless, monsieur; and yet you do not appear to be very, very old."
"I am very aged," said I--"almost forty-five." And I smiled a
retrospective smile, watching the bubbles breaking in my wine-glass.
Memory began to work, deftly, among the debris of past years. I saw
myself a student of eighteen, gayly promenading Paris with my tutor,
living a monotonous colourless life in a city of which I knew nothing
and saw nothing save through the windows of my English pension or in the
featureless streets of the American quarter, under escort of my tutor
and my asthmatic aunt, Miss Janet Van Twiller.
That year spent in Paris, to "acquire the language" in a house where
nothing but English was spoken, had still a vague, tender charm for me,
because in that year I was young. I grew older when I shook the tutor,
side-stepped my aunt, and moved across the river.
Once, only once, had the placid serenity of that year been broken. It
was one day--a day like this in spring--when, for some reason, even now
utterly unknown to me, I deliberately walked out of the house alone in
defiance of my tutor and my aunt, and wandered all day long through
unknown squares and parks and streets intoxicated with my own freedom.
And I remember, that day--which was the twin of this--sitting on the
terrace of a tiny café in the Latin Quarter, I drifted into idle
conversation with a demure little maid who was sipping a red syrup out
of a tall thin glass.
Twenty-seven years ago! And here I was again, in the scented spring
sunshine, with the same west wind whispering of youth and freedom, and
my heart not a day older.
"My child," said I to the little maid, "twenty-seven years ago you drank
pink strawberry syrup in a tall iced glass."
"I do not understand you, monsieur," she faltered.
"You cannot, mademoiselle. I am drinking to the memory of my dead
youth."
And I touched my lips to the glass.
"I wonder," she said, under her breath, "what I am to do with the rest
of the day?"
"I could have told you," said I--"twenty-seven years ago."
"Perhaps you could tell me better now?" she said, innocently.
I looked out into the east where the gold dome of the Tomb rose
glimmering through a pale-blue haze. "Under that dome lies an Emperor in
his crypt of porphyry," said I. "Deeper than his dust, bedded in its
stiff shroud of gold, lies my dead youth, sleeping forever in the heart
of this fair young world of spring."
I touched my glass idly, then lifted it.
"Yet," said I, "the pale sunshine of winter lies not unkindly on snow
and ice, sometimes. I drink to your youth and beauty, my child."
"Is that all?" she asked, wonder-eyed.
I thought a moment: "No, not all. Williams isn't the only autocratic
interpreter of Fate, Chance, and Destiny."
"Williams!" she repeated, perplexed.
"You don't know him. He writes stories for a living. But he'll never
write the story I might very easily tell you in the sunshine here."
After a pause she said: "Are you going to?"
"I think I will," I said. And my eyes fixed smiling upon the sunny
horizon, I began:
* * * * *
Now, part of this story is to be vague as a mirrored face at dusk; and
part is to be as precise as the reflection of green trees in the glass
of the stream; and all is to be as capricious as the flight of that
wonderful butterfly of the South which is called Ajax by the reverent,
and The White Devil by the profane. Incidentally, it is the story of
Jones and the Dryad.
The profession of Jones was derided by the world at large. He collected
butterflies; and it may be imagined what the American public thought of
him when they did not think he was demented. But a large,
over-nourished and blasé millionaire, wearied of collecting pigeon-blood
rubies, first editions and Rembrandts, through sheer _ennui_ one day
commissioned Jones to gather for him the most magnificent and complete
collection of American butterflies that could possibly be secured--not
only single perfect specimens of the two sexes in each species, but
series on series of every kind, showing local varieties, seasonal
variations in size and colour, strange examples of albinism and
polymorphic phenomena--in fact, this large, benevolent and intellectual
capitalist wanted something which nobody else had, so he selected Jones
and damned the expense. Nobody else had Jones: that pleased him; Jones
was to secure specimens that nobody else had: and that would be doubly
gratifying. Therefore he provided Jones with a five-year contract, an
agreeable salary, turned him loose on a suspicious nation, and went back
to hunt up safe investments for an income the size of which had begun to
annoy him.
* * * * *
"This part of the story is clear enough, is it not, my child?"
"Are _you_ Jones?"
"Don't ask questions," I said, seriously.
"The few delirious capers cut by Jones subsequent to the signing of the
contract consisted of a debauch at the Astor Library, a mad evening
with seven aged gentlemen at the Entomological Society, and the purchase
of a ticket to Florida. This last spasm was his undoing; he went for
butterflies, and the first thing he did was to trip over the maliciously
extended foot of Fate and fall plump into the open arms of Destiny. And
in a week he was playing golf. This part is sufficiently vague, I hope.
Is it?"
She said it was; so I continued:
* * * * *
The Dryad, with her sleeves rolled up above her pretty elbows, was
preparing to assault a golf ball; Jones regarded the proceedings with
that inscrutable expression which, no doubt, is bestowed upon certain
creatures as a weapon for self-protection.
"Don't talk to me while I'm driving," said the Dryad.
"No," said Jones.
"Don't even say 'no'!" insisted the Dryad.
A sharp thwack shattered the silence; the golf ball sailed away toward
the fifth green, landing in a gully. "Oh, bother!" exclaimed the Dryad,
petulantly, as the small black caddie pattered forward, irons rattling
in his quiver. "Now, Mr. Jones, it is up to you"--doubtless a
classically mythological form of admonition common to Dryads but now
obsolete.
The Dryad, receiving no reply, looked around and beheld Jones, net
poised, advancing on tiptoe across the green.
"What is it--a snake?" inquired the Dryad in an unsteady voice.
"It is The White Devil!" whispered Jones.
The Dryad's skirts were short enough as it was, but she hastily picked
them up. She had a right to. "Does it bite?" she whispered, looking
carefully around in the grass. But all she could see was a strangely
beautiful butterfly settled on a blue wild blossom which swayed gently
in the wind on the edge of the jungle. So she dropped her skirts. She
had a right to.
Now, within a few moments of the hour when Jones had first laid eyes on
her, and she on Jones, he had confided to her his family history, his
ambitions, his ethical convictions, and his theories concerning the four
known forms of the exquisite Ajax butterfly of Florida. She had been
young enough to listen without yawning--which places her age somewhere
close to eighteen. Besides, she had remembered almost everything that
Jones had said, which confirms a diagnosis of her disease. There could
be no doubt about it; the Dryad was afflicted with extreme Youth, for
she now recognized the butterfly from the eulogy of Jones, and her
innocent heart began a steady tattoo upon her ribs as Jones, on tiptoe,
crept nearer and nearer, net outstretched.
The moment was solemn; breathless, hatless, bare-armed, the Dryad
advanced, skirts spread as though to shoo chickens.
"Don't," whispered Jones.
But the damage had been accomplished; Ajax jerked his pearl and ashen
banded wings, shot with the fiery crimson bar, flashed into the air, and
was gone like the last glimmer of a fading sun-spot.
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" cried the Dryad, clasping her highly ornamental
hands; "what on earth will you think of my stupidity?"
"Nothing," said Jones, resolutely, swallowing hard and gazing at the
tangled jungle.
"It was too stupid," insisted the Dryad; and, as the silence of Jones
assented, she added, "but it is not very nice of you to say so."
"Why, I didn't," cried Jones.
"You did," said the Dryad, tears of vexation in her blue eyes. "And to
pay for your discourtesy you shall make me a silk net and I shall give
up golf and spend my entire time in hunting for White Devils, to make
amends."
The suggested penance appeared to attract Jones.
"Give up golf--which I am perfectly mad about," repeated the Dryad,
"just because you were horrid when I tried to help you."
"That will be delightful," said Jones, naïvely. "We will hunt Ajax
together--all day, every day----"
"Oh, I shall catch--something--the first time I try," observed the
Dryad, airily. She teed up a practice ball, hit it a vicious whack,
followed its flight with narrowing blue eyes, and, turning placidly upon
Jones, smiled a dangerous smile.
"If I don't catch an Ajax before you do I'll forfeit anything you
please," she said.
"I'll take it," said Jones.
"But," cried the Dryad, "what do you offer against it?"
"Whatever I ask from you," he said, deliberately.
"You are somewhat vague, Mr. Jones."
"I won't be when I win."
"Tell me what you want--if you win!"
"What? With this caddie hanging around and listening?" The Dryad,
wide-eyed and flushed, regarded him in amazement.
Jones picked up a pinch of wet sand from the box, moulded it with great
care into a tiny truncated cone, set it on the tee, set his ball on top
of it, whipped the air persuasively with his driver once or twice, and,
settling himself into the attitude popularly attributed to the Colossus
of Rhodes, hit the ball for the longest, cleanest drive he had ever
perpetrated.
"Dryad," he said, politely, "it is now up to you."
* * * * *
Of all the exquisite creatures that float through the winter sunshine of
the semi-tropics this is the most exquisite and spirituelle. Long,
slender, swallow-tailed wings, tinted with pearl and primrose, crossed
with ashy stripes and double-barred with glowing crimson--this is the
shy, forest-haunting creature that the Dryad sought to snare, and sought
in vain.
Sometimes, standing on the long, white shell roads, where myriads of
glittering dragon-flies sailed, far away a pale flash would catch the
sun for an instant; and "Ready! Look out!" would cry the Dryad. Vanity!
Swifter than a swallow the Ajax passed, a pearly blurr against the glare
of the white road; swish! swish! the silken nets swung in vain.
"Oh, bother," sighed the Dryad.
Again, in the dim corridors of the forest, where tall palms clustered
and green live oaks spread transparent shadows across palmetto thickets,
far in some sunlit glade a tiny wing-flash would bring the Dryad's
forest cry: "Quick! Oh, quick!" But the woodland ghost was gone.
"Oh, bother, bother!" sighed the Dryad. "There are flowers--the
sparkleberry is in blossom--there is bloom on the China tree, but this
phantom never stops! Can nothing stop it?"
Day after day, guarding the long, white road, the Dryad saw the phantom
pass--always flying north; day after day in the dim forest, the
hurrying, pale-winged, tireless creatures fled away, darting always
along some fixed yet invisible aërial path. Nothing lured them, neither
the perfumed clusters of the China-berry, nor the white forest flowers;
nothing checked them, neither the woven curtain of creepers across the
forest barrier, nor the jungle walled with palms.
To the net of the Dryad and of Jones had fallen half a thousand jewelled
victims; the exquisite bronzed Berenice, the velvet and yellow
Palamedes, the great orange-winged creatures brilliant as lighted
lanterns. But in the gemmed symmetry of the casket the opalescent heart
was missing; and the Dryad, uncomforted, haunted the woodlands, roaming
in defiance of the turquoise-tinted lizards and the possible serpent
whose mouth is lined with snow-white membranes--prowling in contempt of
that coiled horror that lies waiting, S shaped, a mass of matted grey
and velvet diamond pattern from which two lidless eyes glitter
unwinking.
"How on earth did anybody ever catch an Ajax?" inquired the Dryad at
the close of one fruitless, bootless day's pursuit.
"I suppose," said Jones, "that every year or so the Ajax alights." That
was irony.
"On what?" insisted the Dryad.
"Oh, on--something," said Jones, vaguely. "Butterflies are, no doubt,
like the human species; flowers tempt some butterflies, mud-puddles
attract others. One or the other will attract our Ajax some day."
That night Jones, with book open upon his knees, sat in the lamplight of
the great veranda and read tales of Ajax to the Dryad; how that, in the
tropics, Ajax assumes four forms, masquerading as Floridensis in winter
and as Telamonides in summer, and how he wears the exquisite livery of
Marcellus, too, and even assumes, according to a gentleman named Walsh,
a fourth form. Beautiful pictures of Ajax illumined the page where were
also engraved the signs of Mars and of Venus. The Dryad looked at these;
Jones looked at her; the rest of the hotel looked at them. Jones read
on.
Sleepy-eyed the Dryad listened; outside in the burnished moonlight the
whippoorwill's spirit call challenged the star-set silence; and far away
in the blue night she heard the deep breathing of the sea. Presently the
Dryad slept in her rocking-chair, curved wrist propping her head; Jones
was chagrined. He need not have been, for the Dryad was dreaming of him.
* * * * *
There came a day late in April when, knee deep in palmetto scrub, the
Dryad and Jones stood leaning upon their nets and scanning the
wilderness for the swift-winged forest phantom they had sought so long.
Ajax was on the wing; glimpse after glimpse they had of him, a pale
shadow in the sun, a misty spot in the shadow, then nothing but miles of
palmetto scrub and the pink stems of tall pines.
Suddenly an Ajax darted into the sunny glade where they stood, and a
ragged, faded brother Ajax fluttered up from the ground and, Ajax-like,
defied the living lightning.
Wing beating wing they closed in battle, whirling round and round one
another above the palmetto thicket. The ragged and battered butterfly
won, the other darted away with the speed of a panic-stricken jacksnipe,
and his shabby opponent quietly settled down on a sun-warmed twig.
Then it was that inspiration seized the Dryad: "Mr. Jones, you trick
wild ducks into gunshot range by setting painted wooden ducks afloat
close to the shore where you lie hidden. Catch that ragged Ajax, place
him upon a leaf, and who knows?"
Decoy a butterfly? Decoy the forest phantom drunk with the exhilaration
of his own mad flight! It was the invention of a new sport.
Scarcely appearing to move at all, so cautious was his progress, Jones
slowly drew near the basking and battle-tattered creature that had once
been Ajax. There was a swift drop of the silken net, a flutter, and all
was over. In the palm of Jones's hand, dead, lay the faded and torn
insect with scarce a vestige of former beauty on the motionless wings.
Doubting, yet stirred to hope, he placed the dead butterfly on a
palmetto frond, wings expanded to catch the sun; and then, standing
within easy net-stroke, the excited Dryad and Jones strained their eyes
to catch the first far glimpse of Ajax in the wilderness.
What was that distant flash of light? A dragon-fly sailing? There it is
again! And there again! Nearer, nearer, following the same invisible
aërial path.
"Quick!" whispered the Dryad. A magnificent Ajax flashed across the
glade, turned an acute angle in mid-air, and in an instant hung hovering
over the lifeless insect on the palm leaf.
Swish-h! A wild fluttering in the net, a soft cry of excitement from the
Dryad, and there, dead, in the palm of the hand of Jones, lay the first
perfect specimen, exquisite, flawless, beautiful beyond words.
Before the Dryad could place the lovely creature in safety another Ajax
darted into the glade, sheered straight for the decoy, and the next
instant was fluttering, a netted captive.
Then the excitement grew; again and again Ajax appeared in the vicinity;
and the tension only increased as the forest phantom, unseeing or
unheeding the decoy, darted on in a mad ecstasy of flight.
No hunter, crouched in the reeds, could find keener excitement watching
near his decoys than the Dryad found that April day, motionless, almost
breathless, scanning the forest depths for the misty-winged phantom of
the tropic wilderness. One in six turned to the decoy; there were long,
silent intervals of waiting and of strained expectancy; there were false
alarms as a distant drifting dragon-fly glimmered in the sun; but one by
one the swift-winged victims dashed at the decoy and were taken in their
strength and pride and all their unsullied beauty. And when the sport of
that April morning was over, and when Denis, the Ethiopian, turned the
horses' heads homeward, Ajax Floridensis, Ajax Marcellus and Ajax
Telamonides were no longer mysteries to the Dryad and to Jones.
But there was a deeper mystery to solve before returning to the vast
caravansary across the river; and while they hesitated to attack it, I,
mademoiselle, having met and defeated Ajax in fair and open trial of
cunning and of wit, think fit to throw a ray of modern light upon this
archaic tale.
It is true that Ajax, of the family of Papilio, rivals the wind in
flight, and seldom, in spring and summer, deigns to alight. Yet I have
seen Ajax Telamonides alight in the middle of the roadway, and, netting
him, have found him fresh from the chrysalis, and therefore weak and
inexperienced. Ajax Floridensis I have taken with a net as he feasted on
the bunches of white sparkleberry on the edge of the jungle.
Rarely have I seen Ajax seduced by the wild phlox blossoms, but I have
sometimes caught him sipping there.
As for the decoy, I have used it and taken with it scores and scores of
Ajax butterflies which otherwise I could not have hoped to capture. This
is not all; the great Tiger Swallowtail of the orange groves can be
decoyed by a dead comrade of either sex; so, too, can the royal,
velvet-robed Palamedes butterfly; and when the imperial Turnus sails
high among the magnolias' topmost branches, a pebble cast into the air
near him will sometimes bring him fluttering down, following the stone
as it falls to the ground. These three butterflies, however, are
generally easily decoyed, and all love flowers. Yet, in experimenting
with decoys, I have never seen an Ajax decoy to any dead butterfly
except an Ajax; and the dead butterfly may be of either sex, and as
battered as you please.
It is supposed by some that butterflies can distinguish colour and form
at no greater distance than five feet; and experiments in decoying
appear to bear out this theory. Butterflies decoy to their own species,
even to faded and imperfect ones.
Of half a dozen specimens set out on leaves and twigs, among which were
Papilio Palamedes, Cresphontes, and Turnus, Ajax decoyed only to an
imperfect and faded Ajax, and finally, when among that brilliant array
of specimens a single upper wing of a dead Ajax was placed on a broad
leaf, Ajax came to it, ignoring the other perfect specimens.
Yet Ajax will fight in single combat with any live butterfly, and so
will Palamedes, Turnus, and Cresphontes.
If a female Luna moth is placed in a cage of mosquito netting and hung
out of the window at night she is almost certain to attract all the male
Luna moths in the neighbourhood before morning. In this case, as it is
in the case of the other moths of the same group, it is the odor that
attracts.
But in the case of a dead Ajax butterfly it appears to be colour even
more than form; and it can scarcely be odor, because the Ajax
butterflies of both sexes decoy to a dead and dried butterfly of either
sex. With this abstruse observation, mademoiselle, I, personally, retire
into the jungle to peep out at a passing vehicle driven by an Ethiopian
known as Denis, and containing two young people of sexes diametrically
opposed. And I am pleasantly conscious that I can no longer conceal
their identity from you, mademoiselle.
"No," she said, "I know who they are. Please continue about them."
So I smiled and continued:
"And after all these weeks, during which I have so faithfully
accompanied you, are you actually going to insist that I lost my bet?"
asked the Dryad in a low voice.
"But you didn't, did you?" said the pitiless Jones.
"I let you catch the first Ajax. I might have prevented you; I might
have even caught it myself!"
"But you didn't, did you?" said the pitiless Jones.
"Because," continued the Dryad, flushing, "I was generous enough to
think only of capturing the butterflies, while all the time it appears
_you_ were thinking of something else. How sordid!" she added,
scornfully.
"You admit I won the bet?" persisted that meanest of men.
"I admit nothing, Mr. Jones."
"Didn't I win the bet?"
Silence.
"Didn't I----"
"Goodness, yes!" cried the Dryad. "Now what are you going to do about
it?"
"You said," observed Jones, "that you would forfeit anything I desired.
Didn't you?"
The Dryad looked at him, then looked away.
"Didn't you?"
Silence.
"Di----"
"Yes, I did."
"Then I am to ask what I desire?"
No answer.
"So," continued Jones in a low voice, "I do ask it."
Still no answer.
"Will you----"
"Mr. Jones," she said, turning a face toward him on which was written
utter consternation.
"Will you," continued Jones, "permit me to name the first new butterfly
that I capture, after you?"
Her eyes widened.
"Is--is _that_ all you desire?" she faltered. Suddenly her eyes filled.
"Absolutely all," said Jones simply--"to name a new species of butterfly
after my wife----"
However, that was the simplest part of the whole matter; the trouble was
all ahead, waiting for them on the veranda--two hundred pounds of
wealthy trouble sitting in a rocking-chair, tatting, and keeping tabs
upon the great clock and upon the trolley cars as they arrived in
decorous procession from the golf links.
* * * * *
There was a long, long silence.
"Is--is that all?" inquired my little neighbour.
"Can't you guess the rest?"
But she only sighed, looking down at the lace handkerchief which she had
been absently twisting in her lap.
"You know," said I, "what keys unlock the meaning of all stories?"
She nodded.
"The keys of The Past," I said.
She sighed, looking down into her smooth little empty hands:
"I threw them away, long ago," she said. "For me there remains only one
more door. And that unlocks of itself."
And we sat there, thinking, through the still summer afternoon.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]