THE BUTTERFLY.
Well, may there not be butterflies
That lift with weary wings the air;
That loathe the foreign sun, which lies
On all their colors like despair;
That glitter, homesick for the form
And lost sleep of the worm?
--_S. M. B. Piatt._
In these trying days the neighbor who came closest in friendship and
loving service, oddly enough, was the Butterfly of the house, Mrs.
Layton. She and her husband had a richly furnished suite of rooms near
that of the Dorings. They received many calls, went out frequently, and
appeared to find life well worth living. Mrs. Layton was pretty, was
always arrayed as the lilies of the field, and all male humanity bent
the knee before her.
Cartice’s illness had revealed the unsuspected fact that the Butterfly
had a heart as well as a pair of gorgeous wings. She had been
astonishingly faithful and kind in her attentions, and astonishingly
efficient too, so that now, in the dull days of convalescence the two
had become close friends, the formal wall between them having fallen
under the pressure of suffering and sympathy.
It was the Butterfly who had sent for the doctor when Cartice was found
unconscious on the floor, helped him when he came, and kept a watchful
eye on his patient afterward. Nothing makes such close friends as to
help and be helped in suffering. We learn to love those to whom we do
good.
Cartice had always found a strange enjoyment in looking at the
Butterfly since she first saw her, she knew not why. Was she beautiful?
Yes, she had beauty worthy of a higher order of being than a butterfly.
That was the marvel of it, that she could be a butterfly with a classic
profile and the eyes of a mystic--eyes that could see through all masks.
Now that Cartice knew her so well the strange attraction increased,
though she could not determine wherein lay her remarkable power to
charm. This power, however, was acknowledged on all sides, and many
fell under its influence. Even on the street, women as well as men
turned to look after her, though if asked the reason could not have
told it. The inexplicable quality we call magnetism belonged to her to
an extraordinary degree; but who can explain what that is? It attracts;
it compels planets as well as persons to follow after it; but that is
all we know about it.
“Mrs. Doring,” said the Butterfly, one day, “you must cheer up or you
will die. Worse than that, you will make yourself old long before your
time. I know it isn’t a polite thing to say, but you look five years
older than when you came to this house.”
The aching heart of the other swelled almost to bursting. The faculty
of unburdening herself by friendly confidences had never been hers.
Something within her stood like a grim sentinel forbidding all outlet,
and though she yearned for sympathy, could not seek it nor meet it
with loosened tongue when it came. The instinct of repression had been
fostered by a loveless, lonely childhood and lifelong habit. Not a
word could she utter now, but the eyes, with their pitiful, wordless
appeal, their unbearable burden, turned to the Butterfly, and in one
never-to-be-forgotten glance laid bare their owner’s broken heart. Then
with a moan she fell forward, and the long repressed agony burst forth
in sobs.
The Butterfly’s arms clasped her closely, her tears fell over her, and
the words she spoke were wiser than a butterfly ever uttered before.
The greatest mind could not have devised a better method of cure for
the sick soul than the sympathetic instincts of this airy creature
suggested. From that hour between those two no fence or wall, or
barrier of any kind existed. They knew each other as we shall all be
known when the armors and masks our hypocritical social usages have
forced upon us shall be laid aside with our clay garments.
“Dear Mrs. Doring,” said Mrs. Layton, presently, “it is not necessary
to tell me what troubles you. I know it through sympathy. You are
greatly distressed for lack of money. You cannot pay your board, and
you and your husband are strangers here. I dare say you never imagined
it, but my husband and I are almost without a cent in the world, too.
We owe this house an immense bill for board, and I am afraid it will
never be paid, for every day the situation grows gloomier. It half
kills me to go to the table, when I know that we are not paying for
the very food we eat, and I suspect you suffer the same way for the
same reason. Our outlook is as bad as yours, only we are not strangers
here and you are. Yet being known has its disadvantages as well as its
advantages. It is hard to be humiliated in the eyes of one’s friends.
So far our difficulties are not generally known, but things too bad to
think of are ahead of us, I fear. You see I pretend to be sunny and
happy. I sing and dance and affect to be merry all the time--for that
is the best way, though I assure you my heart often weighs a ton.”
“I am astonished,” said Cartice. “I thought you a butterfly out and
out, with no troubles at all.”
“Naturally, I believe I am. I love the beauties and pleasures of life;
but nobody knows what butterflies are thinking about while they are
fluttering around looking so care-free and joyous. I do the butterfly
act now with a fell purpose--two fell purposes in fact. I keep others
from suspecting that things are going wrong, and I keep myself from
dwelling on my troubles. You must learn butterfly philosophy too. You
must go out and meet people and make friends, let yourself out a little
and show what is in you.”
“I can’t, dear, for many reasons,” and Cartice glanced at her well-worn
gown, and thought of the hopeless condition of her wardrobe.
“Clothes, eh?” said the other, going straight to the point. “Don’t
worry on that score, I am handy with a needle and can help you tinker
up some of your things to look quite fine. I can toss up a delicious
little bonnet, too.”
“But I have no heart in anything,” said Cartice. “You don’t know
all--no; you don’t know all.”
“I know more than you think I do. I know precisely what it is to
be pitifully disappointed in one’s husband, to find that he is the
opposite of what one thought him, to lose confidence in his ability,
his manliness, his loyalty and his love.”
“Yes, yes, that is the hardest of all,” wailed Cartice, shaken to the
soul to learn that what she believed hidden was written in big letters
on the outer walls of her life, as it were.
“That, too, you must throw off,” said the philosophic Butterfly. “There
are few wives who haven’t had some of that kind of experience. For the
most part men are abominable wretches, their whole lives made up of
deceit and lies. It hurt me cruelly, cruelly when I found it out and
just had to believe it in the face of not wanting to; but now, well--I
have taught myself not to care very much.”
“It seems to me that a wife only ceases to care when she ceases to
love, and then she ought to give her husband up entirely,” said Mrs.
Doring.
“Yes, it is true; when one doesn’t care it is because one doesn’t love
one’s husband any more. Of course, it would be honester, more moral
and self-respecting to leave him, but we women are mostly tied up by
different kinds of chains, so that no matter how wide our eyes are
opened we usually go right on pretending we don’t see, and so become
hypocrites, too. The whole fabric seems to be pretty much a warp and
woof of lies. But I don’t puzzle much over problems as big and hard as
that. I haven’t the head for it. I just edge along the easiest way I
can, and leave the things I don’t understand, and couldn’t set right if
I did, for others to puzzle over and fix up if they can.”
Cartice was astonished at the Butterfly’s hard trials and airy method
of ignoring them. We are always astonished to learn that another has
had the same kind of a load to carry that we have borne, all the more
if that other has carried it gaily. It is common to believe our own
experiences unique.
“You are ever so much cleverer than I when it comes to things learned
out of books,” Mrs. Layton went on, “I have very little of what they
call learning--too little entirely; but any one can see that you are
well instructed. But when it comes to knowing about people as they are
and not as they ought to be, I am far ahead of you, though I am only a
month or two older. You are a mere baby in all that, absolutely blind
to what I can see across the street; and you are such an earnest,
honest, credulous soul that you are bound to have your heart broken
dozens of times while you are learning what you ought to know already.”
“How did you learn it all so soon?”
“By experience, the only school whose lessons we remember. I was
married at seventeen and am twenty-four now. One can learn a heap of
things in seven years, with so good a chance as I have had.” (Here the
Butterfly’s mouth took on a hard and bitter curve, which told more than
her word of what her sad wisdom had cost.) “That I was romantic goes
without saying. I believed in the foolish love-stories I read and
expected life to be like them. Were I clever like you, I would write
books and tell about life as it is and not as novel writers generally
pretend it is, deluding the ignorant and inexperienced. I actually
believed there was such a thing as happiness, and that I could secure
it in the usual way, by marrying the man I was in love with--otherwise
the man who had succeeded in casting a spell over me that caused me to
see him through a mist of enchantment, for that is what it means. But
my fool’s paradise didn’t last long. I soon learned to my sorrow that a
man out of a book is not at all like a man in a book. One shock after
another came, until at last nothing could surprise me. After a time
my husband began to drink heavily and does yet, and that is what has
brought us to poverty. When he is bad drunk he is ugly and dangerous.
In short, my life is hard and hateful ’way down out of sight.”
“O my friend,” cried Cartice, with glistening eyes, “it is a tragedy,
and I thought nobody suffered as I do.”
Mrs. Layton continued: “When I married I loved him, was proud of him,
believed in him. Now I only pity him, and care for him only as a mother
cares for a child. Could he read my thoughts his vanity, should he have
any left, must suffer. Such men lose far more than we do, after all,
but they are so steeped in selfishness, so besotted in ignorance, they
can’t see it. And he has wretched health, as any one may see. I don’t
know what the end will be, and dare not think of it.”
“I wish we could know what such experiences mean,” said Cartice. “What
is suffering for? Why must it be? We try hard to find the right road;
we do the best we can; the way looks fair and smooth, and then from no
fault of our own that we can see we are plunged into dark depths. I
wish we knew the reason of it, the purpose of it. I wish we knew.”
“It is rather strange, Mrs. Doring, that I tell you everything so
frankly. I have never been so confidential with any one before.
Chatterer as I appear to be I am as proud as Clara Vere de Vere, and
keep my own affairs to myself; but in talking with you everything
bubbles right out, yet you never ask any questions. I shouldn’t mind
telling you anything, even if it wasn’t to my credit, I feel so much
confidence in you, and somehow it helps me to tell you. I was attracted
to you from the first, but you were so reserved and unapproachable
that if it had not been for this illness of yours, I doubt if we ever
should have become so well acquainted. You have a curious effect on
me. I couldn’t tell a fib to you nor to any one in your presence if I
wanted to, and yet it has always been easy to me to tell little bits of
lies about things that couldn’t hurt any one. I never thought there
was any harm in it. But somehow I can’t do it when you are near, nor
even when I think of you, and I shouldn’t wonder if I gave up the habit
altogether. Do you remember one day before you got sick, when several
of us were in the parlor and I had a new fan and the rest were admiring
it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Mrs. Orton asked me how much it cost. Of course it’s the
worst of manners to ask the price of things, but one meets plenty of
impertinent, ill-bred people as one goes along, and must be civil to
them. I was about to tell her that it cost five dollars, though it only
cost two, when I saw you looking at me, and quick as a flash out came
the truth. You didn’t know the price of it, so I wasn’t afraid you
would catch me in a fib; but I was ashamed not to speak the truth in
your presence. Your eyes look into one, deep down inside, and expect
to see everything there sweet and clean and honest, and I could not
disappoint them.”
“You can’t be half so wicked as you represent yourself, for you have
one of the sweetest faces I ever saw, and one of the most beautiful,”
said Mrs. Doring, with fervent admiration.
The Butterfly lilted out a significant little laugh. “Yes, I have been
told that I have an innocent face; but that is a freak of nature, for
I am not innocent. I am tolerably--yes, tolerably well informed on
some subjects, and I do one thing that you will consider abominable, I
flirt.”
“Dear friend, do tell me exactly what it is to flirt,” Cartice asked,
entreatingly. She remembered that her husband had taken refuge in that
word on the occasion of the affair with Mrs. Parker.
The Butterfly looked at her pityingly. “If any other woman asked me
that question,” she said, “I should be sure she was a villain of the
deepest dye, and was affecting ignorance in order to pull the wool over
my eyes; but you are such a muff about such things that I can readily
believe you don’t know. It isn’t very easy to explain. Words can’t
describe it very well. Not mincing matters in my case it’s making a bid
for the attention of men and getting it.”
“Politeness demands that ladies receive attention from gentlemen,” said
the unsophisticated Mrs. Doring, innocently.
“My benighted friend, your name should be Galatea. I don’t mean mere
polite attention, but particular attention, sentimental, lover-like
attention, with a strong flavor of danger in it.”
Cartice began to understand. “What comes of it?” she asked.
A shrug of Mrs. Layton’s graceful shoulders. “Nothing, often.
Sometimes--well, there are extraordinary cases, and at the beginning
it’s best not to think of the end.”
“What do you get out of it?”
Another shrug. “Come to think of it, nothing particular, unless it be
distraction.”
“And those who flirt with you,--how do they come out?”
“Some of them have the bad taste to become serious, which makes it
rather awkward. Then they have to be sent off for good, and perhaps
they wail about bruised hearts and such like, which I don’t mind. They
never get a whack amiss. What I don’t owe them some other woman does. I
only help to even up for women in general.”
“But you might grow serious, too, some time.”
“I am not afraid, because I have no heart any more. It is as dead as
the traditional door-nail. I can dance nearer the edge of a precipice
than anybody else and keep my head.”
“Some do go over, don’t they?”
“Yes; poor fools with hearts who ought not to play in that kind of a
game.”
“It is something I know nothing whatever about, but it appears to be
both perilous and unprofitable,” said Cartice.
“You are quite right in your conclusion. The liquor habit is also
perilous and unprofitable, yet the man addicted to it keeps right on
in it. One must do something to keep from remembering certain other
things. With me it’s a case of keeping my mind off misery. I got into
it because in the first year of my married life my husband neglected
me shamefully, spending most of his time with a mincing little woman
who posed for goodness itself. For a time I broke my heart over it; all
women do. Then I braced up and began to administer his own medicine
to him, only not in such repugnantly large doses. We all do things it
would be better not to do, because somebody else does us an injury. We
get into one trouble in trying to escape from another. It’s merely a
matter of choice between the frying pan and the fire,--a puzzle far too
deep for my light head to work on.”
* * * * *
Nothing is accidental. We meet the people we are destined to meet, and
with their help or hindrance work out our problem, be it hard or easy.
The most feather-weight of mortals may prove our greatest teacher. In
whose keeping we shall find the most precious treasures we know not.
But it was written in the great unopened book that the Butterfly was to
be help and healing to the bruised heart of Cartice Doring, and to bear
a torch which should light for her the very darkest page of life.
When affairs are at their worst a change has to come. Misery itself
does not stand still. It moves slowly, nevertheless it moves.
The finances of the Laytons and Dorings had reached the stage of
desperation. Colonel Layton found the situation too grave to face
without frequent liquefactions. The result was that he escaped facing
it altogether, for he forgot it completely during the day, and at night
went into a stupor too profound for landlords or other monsters to
invade.
The Butterfly and Cartice thought of a means of extricating themselves
at last. They decided to leave the hotel, take lodgings and eat,
Bohemian fashion, when they could pay for it, and fast when they had no
money.
They found furnished rooms, side by side, which they provided with some
tiny traps for cooking, by selling some of the Butterfly’s personal
treasures. To the surprise of the others, Colonel Layton volunteered
to go daily to market and bring in supplies for both families, a task
he performed for some time with a faithfulness not natural to his
character, which was uncertain and ease-loving to the last degree. He
went early and returned loaded like a porter. Among his purchases,
cream cheese in liberal quantities was always a certainty. This was the
bait that lured him to the market. He had a boyish fondness for it, and
like a boy was willing to go out of his way to get it.
Cartice and the Butterfly rejoiced in each other more and more every
day. They shared their money and whatever else they possessed freely,
and the unqualified frankness of their confidences was salvation for
them. To tell a trouble to sympathetic ears is, in a measure, to throw
it off. Repression kills, but expression is life. The seed that sends a
plant upward from the earth expresses itself. Were conditions such that
it could not do so, it would die and rot away in the darkness.
The blessed Butterfly, whose extraordinary baptismal name of
Chrissalyn, fitted her so exquisitely, had a far nobler mission in the
world than she herself dreamed.
Mrs. Doring continued to search for the meaning of things. She had
sought happiness and found wretchedness, and in the first anguish of
disappointment failed to see that she was not the only one who had had
a fruitless quest. There was the Butterfly whose experience was the
same, and many others, now that she thought of it. Perhaps all had more
or less disappointment were their inner lives known.
Dimly she began to see that the pursuit of happiness could not be the
true purpose of life, though all the world assumed that it was. Her
dream of conjugal companionship had vanished altogether. There were
times when she hated her husband, times when she pitied him, times when
she despised him, and times when she tried to believe that she loved
him,--must love him or die. Had any soul in the universe so yearned
for love as she and been from birth so stinted of it? Behind the
immobile mask that hid her proud, suffering heart from other eyes, her
soul cried for it. What could not she have endured, with a laugh on her
face and a song on her lips, had love walked by her side? Could poverty
or any other terror which civilization has nursed daunt her then? No, a
thousand times no, she said.
Her own troubles diminished, however, in the presence of the heavier
ones under which Chrissalyn now staggered.
Colonel Layton was going down hill distressingly fast, and nothing
could be done to save him. His health was broken, his wits muddled and
wandering most of the time, and the end of his resources at hand. He
had let go his anchorage and was drifting to his destruction, careless
of wind or tide.
Meantime the brave Butterfly smiled before the world and chatted
cheerily when her friends called, though with her heart in her mouth,
and her ear ever alert for her husband’s wavering footsteps. When
she heard the unwelcome sound, she made excuse and went outside to
intercept his entrance. Usually at such times he was pathetically
obedient, and sat where she placed him, in some vacant room or dark
corner of the hall, till her visitors left and she came for him. To
be sure he complained and whined and swore in a rambling way without
rage, yet when Chrissalyn came he went with her like a worn out child.
However, he was not always so tractable. There were times when he
blustered and threatened, and his eyes had a light dancing in them that
made one’s blood run cold.
One night Mrs. Doring could not sleep, a sense of impending danger
oppressed her. Getting up and putting on a wrapper, she went to a
window and looked into the street. All was still, and yet somewhere
she fancied she heard mutterings. On going into the hall she saw the
Laytons’ door open, the lights at full flare, and, to her surprise, the
colonel, fully dressed, sitting in the doorway whetting a razor, with a
slow, sibilant stroke, which seemed to give him extraordinary pleasure,
for he smiled in a gratified way and his eyes twinkled like stars.
There was no fury in his face, but something far more dreadful--the
look of a lunatic who meditates a deed he considers delightful. Sitting
by the window, opposite the door, was Chrissalyn, clad only in her
sleeping gown, with a face white and rigid, and a pistol held firmly in
her hand.
At sight of the scene Cartice grew cold with fright; but she went close
to Colonel Layton and was about to speak, when, without pausing in his
razor whetting, he said, gently, “Go away, now, Mrs. Doring, and come
back a little later if you want to.”
In spite of the apparently innocent words, she felt that behind them
lurked some terrible intention. If she called help the arrival of
others might precipitate whatever horror lurked in his mad mind.
Chrissalyn heard everything but said nothing, and her silence was
eloquently ominous.
“Why should I come again if I go away?” she asked, thinking to lead his
mind from the work in hand.
Shrugging his shoulders significantly, he said, “Merely to see sights,”
and then laughed the low satisfied laugh of one who knows and enjoys
things his listener dreams not of.
“What sights?”
Another shrug. His vanity, ever strong, overcame his secretiveness, and
he could not refrain from boasting of his intended exploits. “The last
of Chrissalyn and me,” he said, presently, with a chuckle. “I’m tired
of the whole damned business of living, and shall give it up, but I
shan’t leave her behind me. Oh, no! She goes first.”
Though chilled to the marrow at this cool statement, whose truth the
scene and the hour confirmed, Cartice pretended to put no stress upon
it. Hurriedly racking her brains for some pretence for her call and
pretext for his services, she said, “I’m sorry to trouble you just
now, Colonel, but Louis is very sick, and I want you to go and ring
up Barton’s night clerk and get some whiskey for him as soon as you
can. You are always so kind and obliging; I’m sure you won’t mind my
bothering you.” He was ever the most easily flattered creature. Then,
too, there was magic for him in the word whiskey.
“You’ll go, won’t you?” she asked, entreatingly, as he made no answer.
“Yes, yes, of course,” he replied, absently holding the razor close to
his eyes and looking critically at its edge, but making no move.
“You will excuse me if I beg you to make haste, please,” she continued.
“Poor Louis is in a wretched state.”
He got up slowly, took his hat and began to waver about the room, still
holding the open razor in his hand. As he moved toward Chrissalyn she
raised the hand that clutched the pistol, and her eyes had a steady,
determined look that said she would defend herself to the death.
“Come, Colonel,” cried Cartice, apparently in good-natured haste, “I
hear Louis groaning. Please go as quickly as you can.” He laid the
razor down and went out and down the stairs as docile as a dog.
Chrissalyn fell forward in a dead faint. When she returned to
consciousness, limp and pale, and Cartice suggested taking her into her
apartment, lest the Colonel return, she smiled feebly, saying, “There
is no danger. He will not be back in ten or twelve hours. You probably
think this scene unusual, but its like has occurred several times
before. Once I had to shoot, and the ball went through his hat. The
shock of it was almost too much for me, for I thought I had killed him.”
“My poor Chriss, you must leave him, and not run such risks any more.
One such experience is enough to make you grey-headed.”
“I stay on because I can do no other thing, and if I could I should
stay to take care of him, poor, helpless, wandering soul that he is.
He will come home to-morrow weak as a baby, go to bed and lie there
helpless for weeks.”
She was a true prophet. At midnight of the next day he crept wearily up
the stairs, a feeble, disheveled, miserable figure, with a pale, peaked
face, and faded, watery eyes. Taking refuge in bed, he arose no more
for over a month.
These days of terror and anxiety were telling seriously on the
Butterfly, ever a fragile being, who hung to earth seemingly by the
most delicate thread. The pity of it was that she loved life so. Even
as it had disclosed itself to her, full of disappointment, of tragedy,
heartache and humiliation, with want menacing her daily and trouble
elbowing her at every step, still she loved it. Her ideal was not
particularly exalted. Given pretty clothes and surroundings, a few
pleasant friends, a modest retinue of moths to circle round her and a
few gold pieces to jingle in her purse, and she could squeeze joy out
of life still. But remember she was a butterfly.