"Farewell to all my greatness."
The last day of Gilead Beck's wealth. He rose as unconscious of his
doom as that frolicsome kid whose destiny brought the tear to Delia's
eye. Had he looked at the papers he would at least have ascertained
that Gabriel Cassilis was ruined. But he had a rooted dislike to
newspapers, and never looked at them. He classed the editor of the
_Times_ with Mr. Huggins of Clearville or Mr. Van Cott of Chicago, but
supposed that he had a larger influence. Politics he despised;
criticism was beyond him; with social matters he had no concern; and
it would wound the national self-respect were he to explain how
carelessly he regarded matters which to Londoners seem of world-wide
importance.
On this day Gilead rose early because there was a good deal to look
after. His breakfast was fixed for eleven--a real breakfast. At six he
was dressed, and making, in his mind's eye, the arrangements for
seating his guests. Mr. and Mrs. Cassilis, Mrs. L'Estrange and
Phillis, Lawrence Colquhoun, Ladds, and Jack Dunquerque--all his most
intimate friends were coming. He had also invited the Twins, but a
guilty conscience made them send an excuse. They were now sitting at
home, sober by compulsion and in great wretchedness, as has been seen.
The breakfast was to be held in the same room in which he once
entertained the men of genius, but the appointments were different.
Gilead Beck now went in for flowers, to please the ladies: flowers in
June do not savour of ostentation. Also for fruit: strawberries,
apricots, cherries and grapes in early June are not things quite
beyond precedent, and his conscience acquitted him of display which
might seem shoddy. And when the table was laid, with its flowers and
fruit and dainty cold dishes garnished with all sorts of pretty
things, it was, he felt, a work of art which reflected the highest
credit on himself and everybody concerned.
Gilead Beck was at great peace with himself that morning. He was
resolved on putting into practice at once some of those schemes which
the Golden Butterfly demanded as loudly as it could whisper. He would
start that daily paper which should be independent of commercial
success; have no advertisements; boil down the news; do without long
leaders; and always speak the truth, without evasion, equivocation,
suppression, or exaggeration. A miracle in journalism. He would run
the great National Drama which should revive the ancient glories of
the stage. And for the rest he would be guided by circumstances, and
when a big thing had to be done he would step in with his Pile, and do
that big thing by himself.
There was in all this perhaps a little over-rating the power of the
Pile; but Gilead Beck was, after all, only human. Think what an
inflation of dignity, brother De Pauper-et-egens, would follow in your
own case on the acquisition of fifteen hundred pounds a day.
Another thing pleased our Gilead. He knew that in his own country the
difficulty of getting into what he felt to be the best society would
be insuperable. The society of shoddy, the companionship with the
quickly grown rich, and the friendship of the gilded bladder are in
the reach of every wealthy man. But Gilead was a man of finer
feelings; he wanted more than this; he wanted the friendship of those
who were born in the purple of good breeding. In New York he could not
have got this. In London he did get it. His friends were ladies and
gentlemen; they not only tolerated him, but they liked him; they were
people to whom he could give nothing, but they courted his society,
and this pleased him more than any other part of his grand Luck. There
was no great merit in their liking the man. Rude as his life had been,
he was gifted with the tenderest and kindest heart; lowly born and
roughly bred, he was yet a man of boundless sympathies. And because he
had kept his self-respect throughout, and was ashamed of nothing, he
slipt easily and naturally into the new circle, picking up without
difficulty what was lacking of external things. Yet he was just the
same as when he landed in England; with the same earnest, almost
solemn, way of looking at things; the same gravity; the same twang
which marked his nationality. He affected nothing and pretended
nothing; he hid nothing and was ashamed of nothing; he paraded nothing
and wanted to be thought no other than the man he was--the ex-miner,
ex-adventurer, ex-everything, who by a lucky stroke hit upon Ile, and
was living on the profits. And perhaps in all the world there was no
happier man than Gilead Beck on that bright June morning, which was to
be the last day of his grandeur. A purling stream of content murmured
and babbled hymns of praise in his heart. He had no fears; his nerves
were strong; he expected nothing but a continuous flow of prosperity
and happiness.
The first to arrive was Jack Dunquerque. Now, if this youth had read
the papers he would have been able to communicate some of the fatal
news. But he had not, because he was full of Phillis. And if any
rumour of the Eldorado collapse smote his ears, it smote them
unnoticed, because he did not connect Eldorado with Gilead Beck. What
did it matter to this intolerably selfish young man how many British
speculators lost their money by the Eldorado smash when he was going
to meet Phillis. After all, the round world and all that is therein do
really rotate about a pole--of course invisible--which goes through
every man's own centre of gravity, and sticks out in a manner which
may be felt by him. And the reason why men have so many different
opinions is, I am persuaded, this extraordinary, miraculous,
multitudinous, simultaneous revolution of the earth upon her million
axes. Enough for Jack that Phillis was coming--Phillis, whom he had
not seen since the discovery--more memorable to him than any made by
Traveller or Physicist--of the Coping-stone.
Jack came smiling and bounding up the stairs with agile spring--a
good-half hour before the time. Perhaps Phillis might be before him.
But she was not.
Then came Ladds. Gilead Beck saw that there was some trouble upon him,
but forbore to ask him what it was. He bore his heavy inscrutable
look, such as that with which he had been wont to meet gambling
losses, untoward telegrams from Newmarket, and other buffetings of
Fate.
Then came a letter from Mrs. Cassilis. Her husband was ill, and
therefore she could not come.
Then came a letter from Lawrence Colquhoun. He had most important
business in the City, and therefore he could not come.
"Seems like the Wedding-feast," said Gilead irreverently. He was a
little disconcerted by the defection of so many guests; but he had a
leaf taken out of the table, and cheerfully waited for the remaining
two.
They came at last, and I think the hearts of all three leaped within
them at sight of Phillis's happy face. If it was sweet before, when
Jack first met her, with the mysterious look of childhood on it, it
was far sweeter now with the bloom and blush of conscious womanhood,
the modest light of maidenly joy with which she met her lover. Jack
rushed, so to speak, at her hand, and held it with a ridiculous
shamelessness only excusable on the ground that they were almost in a
family circle. Then Phillis shook hands with Gilead Beck, with a smile
of gratitude which meant a good deal more than preliminary thanks for
the coming breakfast. Then it came to Ladds's turn. He turned very
red--I do not know why--and whispered in his deepest bass--
"Know all about it. Lucky beggar, Jack! Wish you happiness!"
"Thank you, Captain Ladds," Phillis replied, in her fearless fashion.
"I am very happy already. And so is Jack."
"Wanted yesterday," Ladds went on, in the same deep whisper--"wanted
yesterday to offer some slight token of regard--found I couldn't--no
more money--Eldorado smash--all gone--locked in boxes--found
ring--once my mother's. Will you accept it?"
Phillis understood the ring, but she did not understand the rest of
the speech. It was one of those old-fashioned rings set in pearls and
brilliants. She was not by any means above admiring rings, and she
accepted it with a cheerful alacrity.
"Sell up," Ladds growled,--"go away--do something--earn the daily
crust----"
"But I don't understand----" she interrupted.
"Never mind. Tell you after breakfast. Tell you all presently."
And then they went to breakfast.
It was rather a silent party. Ladds was, as might have been expected
of a man who had lost his all, disposed to taciturnity. Jack and
Phillis were too happy to talk much. Agatha L'Estrange and the host
had all the conversation to themselves.
Agatha asked him if the dainty spread before them was the usual method
of breakfast in America. Gilead Beck replied that of late years he had
been accustomed to call a chunk of cold pork with a piece of bread a
substantial breakfast, and that the same luxuries furnished him, as a
rule, with dinner.
"The old life," he said, "had its points, I confess. For those who
love cold pork it was one long round of delirious joy. And there was
always the future to look forward to. Now the future has come I like
it better. My experience, Mrs. L'Estrange, is that you may divide men
into two classes--those who've got a future, and those who haven't. I
belonged to the class who had a future. Sometimes we miss it. And I
feel like to cry whenever I think of the boys with a bright future
before them, who fell in the War at my side, not in tens, but in
hundreds. Sometimes we find it. I found it when I struck Ile. And
always, for those men, whether the future come early or whether it
come late, it lies bright and shinin' before them, and so they never
lose hope."
"And have women no future as well as men, Mr. Beck?" asked Phillis.
"I don't know, Miss Fleming. But I hope you have. Before my Golden
Butterfly came to me I was lookin' forward for my future, and I knew
it was bound to come in some form or other. I looked forward for
thirty years; my youth was gone when it came, and half my manhood. But
it is here."
"Perhaps, Mr. Beck," said Mrs. L'Estrange, who was a little _rococo_
in her morality, "it is well that this great fortune did not come to
you when you were younger."
"You think that, madam? Perhaps it is so. To fool around New York
would be a poor return for the Luck of the Butterfly. Yes; better as
it is. Providence knows very well what to be about; it don't need
promptin' from us. And impatience is no manner of use, not the least
use in the world. At the right time the Luck comes; at the right time
the Luck will go. Yes,"--he looked solemnly round the table,--"some
day the Luck is bound to go. When it goes, I hope I shall be prepared
for the change. But if it goes to-morrow, it cannot take away, Mrs.
L'Estrange, the memory of these few months, your friendship, and
yours, Miss Fleming. There's things which do not depend upon Ile; more
things than I thought formerly; things which money cannot do. More
than once I thought my pile ought to find it easy to do somethin'
useful before the time comes. But the world is a more tangled web than
I used to think."
"There are always the poor among us," said the good Agatha.
"Yes, madam, that is true. And there always will be. More you give to
the poor, more you make them poor. There's folks goin' up and folks
goin' down. You in England help the folks goin' down. You make them
fall easy. I want to help the folks goin' up."
At this moment a telegram was brought for him.
It was from his London bankers. They informed him that a cheque for a
small sum had been presented, but that his balance was already
overdrawn; and that they had received a telegram from New York on
which they would be glad to see him.
Gilead Beck read it, and could not understand it. The cheque was for
his own weekly account at the hotel.
He laid the letter aside, and went on with his exposition of the
duties and responsibilities of wealth. He pointed out to Mrs.
L'Estrange, who alone listened to him--Jack was whispering to Phillis,
and Ladds was absorbed in thoughts of his own--that when he arrived in
London he was possessed with the idea that all he had to do, in order
to protect, benefit, and advance humanity, was to found a series of
institutions; that, in the pursuit of this idea, he had visited and
examined all the British institutions he could hear of; and that his
conclusions were that they were all a failure.
"For," he concluded, "what have you done? Your citizens need not save
money, because a hospital, a church, an almshouse, a dispensary, and a
workhouse stand in every parish; they need not be moral, because
there's homes for the repentant in every other street. All around they
are protected by charity and the State. Even if they get knocked down
in the street, they need not fight, because there's a policeman within
easy hail. You breed your poor, Mrs. L'Estrange, and you take almighty
care to keep them always with you. In my country he who can work and
won't work goes to the wall; he starves, and a good thing too. Here he
gets fat.
"Every way," he went on, "you encourage your people to do nothing.
Your clever young men get a handsome income for life, I am told, at
Oxford and Cambridge, if they pass one good examination. For us the
examination is only the beginning. Your clergymen get a handsome
income for life, whether they do their work or not. Ours have got to
go on preachin' well and livin' well; else we want to know the reason
why. You give your subalterns as much as other nations give their
colonels; you set them down to a grand mess every day as if they were
all born lords. You keep four times as many naval officers as you
want, and ten times as many generals. It's all waste and lavishin'
from end to end. And as for your Royal Family, I reckon that I'd find
a dozen families in Massachusetts alone who'd run the Royal Mill for a
tenth of the money. I own they wouldn't have the same gracious
manners," he added. "And your Princess is--wal, if Miss Fleming were
Princess, she couldn't do the part better. Perhaps gracious manners
are worth paying for."
Here another telegram was brought him.
It was from New York. It informed him in plain and intelligible terms
that his wells had all run dry, that his credit was exhausted, and
that no more bills would be honoured.
He read this aloud with a firm voice and unfaltering eye. Then he
looked round him, and said solemnly----
"The time has come. It's come a little sooner than I expected. But it
has come at last."
He was staggered, but he remembered something which consoled him.
"At least," he said, "if the income is gone, the Pile remains. That's
close upon half a million of English money. We can do something with
that. Mr. Cassilis has got it all for me."
"Who?" cried Ladds eagerly.
"Mr. Gabriel Cassilis, the great English financier."
"He is ruined," said Ladds. "He has failed for two millions sterling.
If your money is in his hands----"
"Part of it, I believe, was in Eldorado Stock."
"The Eldoradians cannot pay their interest. And the stock has sunk to
nothing. Gabriel Cassilis has lost all my money in it--at least, I
have lost it on his recommendation."
"Your money all gone, Tommy?" cried Jack.
"All, Jack--Ladds' Aromatic Cocoa--Fragrant--Nutritious--no use
now--business sold twenty years ago. Proceeds sunk in Eldorado Stock.
Nothing but the smell left."
And while they were gazing in each other's face with mute
bewilderment, a third messenger arrived with a letter.
It was from Mr. Mowll the secretary. It informed poor Gilead that Mr.
Gabriel Cassilis had drawn, in accordance with his power of attorney,
upon him to the following extent. A bewildering mass of figures
followed, at the bottom of which was the total--Gilead Beck's two
million dollars. That, further, Gabriel Cassilis, always, it appeared,
acting on the wishes of Mr. Beck, had invested the whole sum in
Eldorado Stock. That, &c. He threw the letter on the table half
unread. Then, after a moment's hesitation, he rose solemnly, and
sought the corner of the room in which stood the safe containing the
Emblem of his Luck. He opened it, and took out the box of glass and
gold which held it. This was covered with a case of green leather. He
carried it to the table. They all crowded round while he raised the
leathern cover and displayed the Butterfly.
"Has any one," he lifted his head and looked helplessly round,--"has
any one felt an airthquake?"
For a strange thing had happened The wings of the insect were lying
on the floor of the box; the white quartz which formed its body had
slipped from the gold wire which held it up, and the Golden Butterfly
was in pieces.
He opened the box with a little gold key and took out the fragments of
the two wings and the body.
"Gone!" he said. "Broken!
"'If this golden Butterfly fall and break,
Farewell the Luck of Gilead P. Beck.'
"Your own lines, Mr. Dunquerque. Broken into little bits it is. The
Ile run dry, the credit exhausted, and the Pile fooled away."
No one spoke.
"I am sorry for you most, Mr. Dunquerque. I am powerful sorry, sir. I
had hoped, with the assistance of Miss Fleming, to divide that Pile
with you. Now, sir, I've got nothing. Not a red cent left to divide
with a beggar.
"Mrs. L'Estrange," he went on, "those last words of mine were
prophetic. When I am gone back to America--I suppose the odds and ends
here will pay my passage--you'll remember that I said the Luck would
some day go."
It was all so sudden, so incomprehensible, that no one present had a
word to say, either of sympathy or of sorrow.
Gilead Beck proceeded with his soliloquy:
"I've had a real high time for three months; the best three months of
my life. Whatever happens more can't touch the memory of the last
three months. I've met English ladies and made friends of English
gentlemen. There's Amer'can ladies and Amer'can gentlemen, but I can't
speak of them, because I never went into their society You don't find
ladies and gentlemen in Empire City. And in all the trades I've turned
my attention to, from school-keepin' to editing, there's not been one
where Amer'can ladies cared to show their hand. That means that the
Stars and Stripes may be as good as the Union Jack--come to know
them."
He stopped and pulled himself together with a laugh.
"I can't make it out,--somehow. Seems as if I'm in a dream. Is it
real? Is the story of the Golden Butterfly a true story, or is it made
up out of some man's brain?"
"It is real, Mr. Beck," said Phillis, softly putting her hand in his.
"It is real. No one could have invented such a story. See, dear Mr.
Beck, you that we all love so much, there is you in it, and I am in
it--and--and the Twins. Why, if people saw us all in a book they would
say it was impossible. I am the only girl in all the civilised world
who can neither read nor write--and Jack doesn't mind it--and you are
the only man who ever found the Golden Butterfly. Indeed it is all
real."
"It is all real, Beck," Jack echoed. "You have had the high time, and
sorry indeed we are that it is over. But perhaps it is not all over.
Surely something out of the two million dollars must have remained."
Mr. Beck pointed sorrowfully to the three pieces which were the
fragments of the Butterfly.
"Nothing is left," he said. "Nothing except the solid gold that made
his cage. And that will go to pay the hotel-bill."
Mrs. L'Estrange looked on in silence. What was this quiet lady, this
woman of even and uneventful life, to say in the presence of such
misfortune?
Ladds held out his hand.
"Worth twenty of any of us," he said. "We are in the same boat."
"And you, too, Captain Ladds!" Gilead cried. "It is worse than my own
misfortune, because I am a rough man and can go back to the rough
life. No, Mrs. L'Estrange--no, my dear young lady--I can't--not with
the same light heart as before--you've spoiled me. I must strike out
something new--away from Empire City and Ile and gold. I'm spoiled.
It's not the cold chunk of pork that I am afraid of; it is the
beautiful life and the sweetness that I'm going to lose. I said I
hoped I should be prepared to meet the fall of my Luck--when it came.
But I never thought it would come like this."
"Stay with us, Mr. Beck," said Phillis. "Don't go back to the old
life."
"Stay with us," said Jack. "We will all live together."
"Do not leave us, Mr. Beck," said Mrs. L'Estrange. (Women can blush,
although they may be past forty.) "Stay here with your friends."
He looked from one to the other, and something like a tear glittered
in his eye. But he shook his head.
Then he took up the wings of the Butterfly, the pretty golden
_laminæ_ cut in the perfect shape of a wing, marked and veined by
Nature as if, for once she was determined to show that she too could
be an Artist and imitate her self. They lay in her hands, and he
looked fondly at them.
"What shall I do with these?" he said softly. "They have been very
good to me. They have given me the pleasantest hours of my life. They
have made me dream of power as if I was Autocrat of All the Russians.
Say, Mrs. L'Estrange--since my chief pleasure has come through Mr.
Dunquerque--may I offer the broken Butterfly to Miss Fleming?"
He laid the wings before her with a sweet sad smile. Jack took them up
and looked at them. In the white quartz were the little holes where
the wings had fitted. He put them back in their old place--the wings
in the quartz. They fitted exactly, and in a moment the butterfly was
as it had always been.
Jack deftly bent round it again the golden wire which held it to the
golden flower. Singular to relate, the wire fitted like the wings just
the same as before, and the Butterfly vibrated on its perch again.
"It's wonderful!" cried Gilead Beck. "It's the Luck I've given away.
It's gone to you, Miss Fleming. But it won't take the form of Ile."
"Then take it back, Mr. Beck," cried Phillis.
"No, young lady. The Luck left me of its own accord. That was shown
when the Butterfly fell off the wires. It is yours now, yours; and you
will make a better use of it.
"I think," he went on, with his hand upon the golden case,--"I think
there's a Luck in the world which I never dreamed of, a better Luck
than Ile. Mrs. L'Estrange, you know what sort of Luck I mean?"
"Yes, Mr. Beck, I know," she replied.
Phillis laid her hands on Jack's shoulder, while his arm stole round
her waist.
"It is Love. Mr. Beck," said the girl. "Yes; that is the best Luck in
all the world, and I am sure of it."
Jack stooped and kissed her. The simplicity and innocence of this
maiden went to Gilead Beck's heart. They were a religion to him, an
education. In the presence of that guileless heart all earthly
thoughts dropped from his soul, and he was, like the girl before him,
pure in heart and clean in memory. That is indeed the sweet
enchantment of innocence; a bewitchment out of which we need never
awake unless we like.
"Take the case and all, Miss Fleming," said Gilead Beck.
But she would not have the splendid case with its thick plate glass
and solid gold pillars.
Then Gilead Beck brought out the little wooden box, the same in which
the Golden Butterfly lay when he ran from the Bear on the slopes of
the Sierra Nevada. And Phillis laid her new treasure in the
cotton-wool and slung the box by its steel chain round his neck,
laughing in a solemn fashion.
While they talked thus sadly, the door opened, and Lawrence Colquhoun
stood before them.
Agatha cried out when she saw him, because he was transformed. The
lazy insouciant look was gone; a troubled look was in its place. Worse
than a troubled look--a look of misery; a look of self-reproach; a
look as of a criminal brought to the bar and convicted.
"Lawrence!" cried Mrs. L'Estrange.
He came into the room in a helpless sort of way, his hands shaking
before him like those of some half-blind old man.
"Phillis," he said, in hoarse voice, "forgive me!"
"What have I to forgive, Lawrence?"
"Forgive me!" he repeated humbly. "Nay, you do not understand.
Dunquerque, it is for you to speak--for all of you--you all love
Phillis. Agatha--you love her--you used to love me too. How shall I
tell you?"
"I think we guess," said Gilead.
"I did it for the best, Phillis. I thought to double your fortune.
Cassilis said I should double it. I thought to double my own. I put
all your money, child, every farthing of your money, in Eldorado Stock
by his advice, and all my own too. And it is all gone--every penny of
it gone."
Jack Dunquerque clasped Phillis tighter by the hand.
She only laughed.
"Why, Lawrence," she said, "what if you have lost all my money? Jack
doesn't care. Do you Jack?"
"No, darling, no," said Jack. And at the moment--such was the
infatuation of this young man--he really did not care.
"Lawrence," said Agatha, "you acted for the best. Don't dear Lawrence,
don't trouble too much. Captain Ladds has lost all his fortune,
too--and Mr. Beck has lost all his--and we are all ruined together."
"All ruined together!" echoed Gilead Beck, looking at Mrs. L'Estrange.
"Gabriel Cassilis is a wonderful man. I always said he was a wonderful
man."
In the evening the three ruined men sat together in Gilead's room.
"Nothing saved, Colquhoun?" asked Ladds, after a long pause.
"Nothing, The stock was 70 when I bought in: 70 at 10 percent. It is
now anything you like--4, 6, 8, 16--what you please--because no one
will buy it."
"Wal," said Gilead Beck, "it does seem rough on us all, and perhaps
it's rougher on you two than it is on me. But to think, only to think,
that such an almighty Pile should be fooled away on a darned
half-caste State like Eldorado! And for all of us to believe Mr.
Gabriel Cassilis a whole-souled, high toned speculator.
"Once I thought," he continued, "that we Amer'cans must be the Ten
Tribes; because, I said, nobody but one out of the Ten Tribes would
get such a providential lift as the Golden Butterfly. Gentlemen, my
opinions are changed since this morning. I believe we're nothing
better, not a single cent better, than one of the kicked-out Tribes. I
may be an Amalekite, or I may be a Hivite; but I'm darned if I ever
call myself again one of the children of Abraham."
CHAPTER THE LAST.
"Whisper Love, ye breezes; sigh
In Love's content, soft air of morn;
Let eve in brighter sunsets die,
And day with brighter dawn be born."
It is a week since the disastrous day. Gilead Beck has sold the works
of art with which he intended to found his Grand National Collection;
he has torn up his great schemes for a National Theatre, a Grand
National Paper; he has ceased to think, for the delectation of the
Golden Butterfly, about improving the human race. His gratitude to
that prodigy of Nature has so far cooled that he now considers it more
in the light of a capricious sprite, a sort of Robin Good-fellow, than
as a benefactor. He has also changed his views as to the construction
of the round earth, and all that is therein. Ile, he says, may be
found by other lucky adventures; but Ile is not to be depended on for
a permanence. He would now recommend those who strike Ile to make
their Pile as quickly as may be, and devote all their energies to the
safety of that pile. And as to the human race, it may slide.
"What's the good," he says to Jack Dunquerque, "of helpin' up those
that are bound to climb? Let them climb. And what's the good of tryin'
to save those that are bound to fall? Let them fall. I'm down myself;
but I mean to get up again."
It is sad to record that Mr. Burls, the picture-dealer, refused to buy
back again the great picture of "Sisera and Jael." No one would
purchase the work at all. Mr. Beck offered it to the Langham Hotel as
a gift. The directors firmly declined to accept it. When it was
evident that this remarkable effort of genius was appreciated by no
one, Gilead Beck resolved on leaving it where it was. It is rumoured
that the manager of the hotel bribed the owner of a certain Regent
Street restaurant to take it away; and I have heard that it now hangs,
having been greatly cut down, on the wall of that establishment,
getting its tones mellowed day by day with the steam of roast and
boiled. As for the other pictures, Mr. Burls expressed his extreme
sorrow that temporary embarrassment prevented him purchasing them back
at the price given for them. He afterwards told Mr. Beck that the
unprincipled picture-dealer who did ultimately buy them, at the price
of so much a square foot, and as second-rate copies, was a disgrace to
his honourable profession. He, he said, stood high in public
estimation for truth, generosity, and fair dealing. None but genuine
works came from his own establishment; and what he called a Grooze was
a Grooze, and nothing but a Grooze.
As for the Pile, Gilead's power of attorney had effectually destroyed
that. There was not a cent left; not one single coin to rub against
another. All was gone in that great crash.
He called upon Gabriel Cassilis. The financier smiled upon him with
his newly-born air of sweetness and trust; but, as we have seen, he
could no longer speak, and there was nothing in his face to express
sorrow or repentance.
Gilead found himself, when all was wound up, the possessor of that
single cheque which Joseph Jagenal had placed in his hands, and which,
most fortunately for himself, he had not paid into the bank.
Four hundred pounds. With that, at forty-five, he was to begin the
world again. After all, the majority of mankind at forty five have
much less than four hundred pounds.
He heard from Canada that the town he had built, the whole of which
belonged to him, was deserted again. There was a quicker rush out of
it than into it. It stands there now, more lonely than Empire
City--its derricks and machinery rusting and dropping to pieces, the
houses empty and neglected, the land relapsing into its old condition
of bog and marsh. But Gilead Beck will never see it again.
He kept away from Twickenham during this winding-up and settlement of
affairs. It was a week later when, his mind at rest and his conscience
clear of bills and doubts, because now there was nothing more to lose,
he called at the house where he had spent so many pleasant hours.
Mrs. L'Estrange received him. She was troubled in look, and the traces
of tears were on her face.
"It is a most onfortunate time," Gilead said sympathetically; "a most
onfortunate time."
"Blow after blow, Mr. Beck," Agatha sobbed. "Stroke upon stroke."
"That is so, madam. They've got the knife well in, this time, and when
they give it a twist we're bound to cry out. You've thought me
selfish, I know, not to inquire before."
"No, Mr. Beck; no. It is only too kind of you to think of us in your
overwhelming disaster. I have never spent so wretched a week. Poor
Lawrence has literally not a penny left, except what he gets from the
sale of his horses, pictures and things. Captain Ladds is the same;
Phillis has no longer a farthing; and now, Oh dear, Oh dear. I am
going to lose her altogether!"
"But when she marries Mr. Dunquerque you will see her often."
"No, no. Haven't they told you? Jack has got almost nothing--only ten
thousand pounds altogether; and they have made up their minds to
emigrate. They are going to Virginia, where Jack will buy a small
estate."
"Is that so?" asked Gilead meditatively.
"Lawrence says that he and Captain Ladds will go away together
somewhere; perhaps back to Empire City."
"And you will be left alone--you, Mrs. L'Estrange--all alone in this
country, and ruined. It mustn't be." He straightened himself up, and
looked round the room. "It must not be, Mrs. L'Estrange. You know me
partly--that is you know the manner of man I wish to seem and try to
be; you know what I have been. You do not know, because you cannot
guess, the things which you have put into my head."
Mrs. L'Estrange blushed and began to tremble. Could it be possible
that he was actually going to--
He was.
"You and I together, Mrs. L'Estrange, are gone to wreck in this
almighty hurricane. I've got one or two thousand dollars left; perhaps
you will have as much, perhaps _not_. Mrs. L'Estrange, you will think
it presumptuous in a rough American--not an American gentleman by
birth and raising--to offer you such protection and care as he can
give to the best of women? We, too, will go to Virginia with Mr.
Dunquerque and his wife; we will settle near them, and watch their
happiness. The Virginians are a kindly folk, and love the English
people, especially if they are of gentle birth. Say, Mrs. L'Estrange."
"O Mr. Beck! I am forty years of age!"
"And I am five and forty."
Just then Phillis and Jack burst into the room. They did not look at
all like being ruined; they were wild with joy and good spirits.
"And you are going to Virginia, Mr. Dunquerque?" said Gilead. "I am
thinking of going, too, if I can persuade this lady to go with me."
"O Agatha! come with us!"
"Come with me," corrected Gilead.
Then Phillis saw how things lay--what a change in Phillis, to see so
much?--and half laughing, but more in seriousness than in mirth, threw
her arms round Agatha's neck.
"Will you come, dear Agatha? He is a good man, and he loves you; and
we will all live near together and be happy."
Three short scenes to conclude my story.
It is little more than a year since Agatha L'Estrange, as shy and
blushing as any maiden--much more shy than Phillis--laid her hand in
Gilead's, with the confession, half sobbed out, "And it isn't a
mistake you are making, because I am not ruined at all. It is only you
and these poor children and Lawrence."
We are back again to Empire City. It is the early fall, September. The
yellow leaves clothe all the forests with brown and gold; the sunlight
strikes upon the peaks and ridges of the great Sierra, lights up the
broad belt of wood making shadows blacker than night, and lies along
the grass grown streets of the deserted Empire City. Two men in
hunting-dress are making their way slowly through the grass and weeds
that choke the pathway.
"Don't like it, Colquhoun," says one; "more ghostly than ever."
They push on, and presently the foremost, Ladds, starts back with a
cry.
"What is it?" asks Colquhoun.
They push aside the brambles, and behold a skeleton. The body has been
on its knees, but now only the bones are left. They are clothed in the
garb of the celestial, and one side of the skull is broken in, as if
with a shot.
"It must be my old friend Achow," said Colquhoun calmly. "See, he's
been murdered."
In the dead of night Ladds awakened Colquhoun.
"Can't help it," he said; "very sorry. Ghosts walking about the
stairs. Says the ghost of Achow to the shade Leeching, 'No your piecy
pidgin makee shootee me.' Don't like ghosts, Colquhoun."
Next morning they left Empire City. Ladds was firm in the conviction
that he had heard and seen a Chinaman's ghost, and was resolute
against stopping another night in the place.
Just outside the town they made another discovery.
"Good Lord!" cried Ladds, frightened out of sobriety of speech. "It
rains skeletons. Look there; he's beckoning!"
And, to be sure, before them was raised, with finger as of invitation,
a skeleton hand.
This, too, belonged to a complete assortment of human bones clad in
Chinese dress. By its side lay a rusty pistol. Lawrence picked it up.
"By Gad!" he said, "it's the same pistol I gave to Leeching. How do
you read this story, Ladds?"
Ladds sat down and replied slowly. He said that he never did like
reading ghost stories, and since the apparition of the murdered Achow,
the night before, he should like them still less. Ghost stories, he
said, are all very well until you come to see and hear a ghost. Now
that he had a ghost story of his own--an original one in pigeon
English--he did not intend ever to read another. Therefore Colquhoun
must excuse him if he gave up the story of Leeching's skeleton
entirely to his own reading. He then went on to say that he never had
liked skeletons, and that he believed Empire City was nothing but a
mouldy old churchyard without the church, while, as a cemetery, it
wasn't a patch upon Highgate. And the mention of Highgate, he said,
reminded him of Phillis; and he proposed they should both get to
Virginia, and call upon Jack and his wife.
All this took time to explain; and meanwhile Lawrence was poking the
butt end of his gun about in the grass to see if there was anything
more. There was something more. It was a bag of coarse yellow canvas,
tied by a string round what had been the waist of a man. Lawrence cut
the string, and opened the bag.
"We're in luck, Tommy. Look at this."
It was the gold so laboriously scraped together by the two Chinamen,
which had caused, in a manner, the death of both.
"Lift it, Tommy." Colquhoun grew excited at his find. "Lift it--there
must be a hundred and fifty ounces, I should think. It will be worth
four or five hundred pounds. Here's a find!"
To this pair, who had only a year ago chucked away their thousands,
the luck of picking up a bag of gold appeared something wonderful.
"Tommy," said Colquhoun, "I tell you what we will do. We will add this
little windfall to what Beck would call your little pile and my little
pile. And we'll go and buy a little farm in Virginia, too; and we will
live there close to Jack and Phillis. Agatha will like it too. And
there's capital shooting."
Gabriel Cassilis and his wife reside at Brighton. The whole of the
great fortune being lost, they have nothing but Victoria's settlement.
That gives them a small income. "Enough to subsist upon," Victoria
tells her friends. The old man--he looks very old and fragile now--is
wheeled about in a chair on sunny days. When he is not being wheeled
about he plays with his child, to whom he talks; that is, pours out a
stream of meaningless words, because he will never again talk
coherently. Victoria is exactly the same as ever--cold, calm, and
proud. Nor is there anything whatever in her manner to her husband, if
she accidentally meets him, to show that she has the slightest sorrow,
shame, or repentance for the catastrophe she brought about. Joseph
Jagenal is working the great Dyson will case for them, and is
confident that he will get the testator's intentions, which can now be
only imperfectly understood, set aside, when Gabriel Cassilis will
once more become comparatively wealthy.
On a verandah in sunny Virginia, Agatha Beck sits quietly working, and
crooning some old song in sheer content and peace of heart. Presently
she lifts her head as she hears a step. That smile with which she
greets her husband shows that she is happy in her new life. Gilead
Beck is in white, with a broad straw hat, because it is in hot
September. In his hand he has a letter.
"Good news, wife; good news," he says. "Jack and Phillis are coming
here to-day, and will stay till Monday. Will be here almost as soon as
the note. Baby coming, too."
"Of course, Gilead," says Agatha, smiling superior. "As if the dear
girl would go anywhere without her little Philip. And six weeks old
to-morrow."
(Everybody who has appreciated how very far from clever Jack
Dunquerque was will be prepared to hear that he committed an enormous
etymological blunder in the baptism of his boy, whom he named Philip,
in the firm belief that Philip was the masculine form of Phillis.)
"Here they come! Here they are!"
Jack comes rattling up to the house in his American trap, jumps out,
throws the reins to the boy, and hands out his wife with the child.
Kisses and greetings.
Phillis seems at first, unchanged, except perhaps that the air of
Virginia has made her sweet delicacy of features more delicate. Yet
look again, and you find that she is changed. She was a child when we
saw her first; then we saw her grow into a maiden; she is a wife and a
mother now.
She whispers her husband.
"All right, Phil, dear.--Beck, you've got to shut your eyes for just
one minute. No, turn your back so. Now you may look."
Phillis has hung round the neck of her unconscious baby, by a golden
chain, the Golden Butterfly. It seems as strong and vigorous as ever;
and as it lies upon the child's white dress, it looks as if it were
poised for a moment's rest, but ready for flight.
"That Inseck!" said Gilead sentimentally. "Wal, it's given me the best
thing that a man can get"--he took the hand of his wife--"love and
friendship. You are welcome, Phillis, to all the rest, provided that
all the rest does not take away these."
"Nay," she said, her eyes filling with the gentle dew of happiness and
content; "I have all that I want for myself. I have my husband and my
boy--my little, little Philip! I am more than happy; and so I give to
tiny Phil all the remaining Luck of the Golden Butterfly."
THE END.