"_What is a butterfly? At best
She's but a caterpillar, drest._"
--_Benjamin Franklin._
The dreams of our youth are long in coming true. When at last they do
arrive we have worked so hard for them, watched them grow from such
humble, unpromising beginnings, come through so much commonplace,
grinding routine, that we do not recognize them as the reality of the
vision that carried us up to the clouds years before.
The more definite Billy's ideal became, the farther it receded, until
at last it seemed so impossible that he said little about it. The
only man whom he hoped to believe in it was the District
Representative. He had helped him in the selection of a flock of
sheep to trim down the rough corners of the neglected farm. He had
used his influence to get him credit on a bunch of shaggy, bony
calves to turn into the waste places in the spring, and had been the
first person to laugh with him over the cheque in the fall. He had
initiated him in the art of mixing cement, with the result that the
stables, the cellar and the porch around the house were made dry and
solid. He had surveyed for drains through a field that had never
grown much but bulrushes, and Billy had another two acres of black
loam added to his tillable area. Oh, he was an all-round man, that
Representative, with the tentacles of his office reaching out to a
thousand sources for help, and placing it to the best of his
knowledge wherever anyone in his territory wanted it.
It was the Representative who revealed to Billy at last that the
thing he needed before he would ever be satisfied with anything else
was more education. Billy knew that he wanted an education, but he
also wanted the fields, the steady quieting toil of seed time and
harvest, the care of the cattle, the directing of life and growth
with all their mysteries and miracles, and their unfailing obediences
to natural laws. He was a born farmer, but he would never be content
to farm blindly, mechanically, as an animal follows prey, for an
existence. The best solution for his case seemed to be the
agricultural college.
A college year leaves considerable free time in the twelve months,
and Billy managed somehow to keep the tillable acres of the farm
under crop and to harvest what he planted. The first year initiated
him into a dozen phases of learning that he had never heard of
before. In the second year, partly by accident, partly through the
insight of a few semi-professionals, it was discovered that he had
some unusual athletic possibilities, and Billy loosened up from his
grind sufficiently to learn the hard, clean strain of rugby and
hockey, and to warm up daily in the gymnasium. It opened up a new
world for him. In his whole life he had never before learned to play,
and as it put a new spring in his muscles, a new physical joy of
living in his existence, it began to clear away the cloud that had
sobered and darkened his outlook. It was in his third year, at the
term's closing dance before Christmas, that he had another awakening.
Up to this time, every attempt of his classmates to draw him across
the girls' campus had failed. The magic force had come to him on the
rink that afternoon. A gay little figure in a white wool skating
outfit, with a brave dash of crimson here and there, chasing a hockey
puck down the ice, skated very close to him, lost the puck around his
skates somehow, and as he returned it, she turned in his direction
for a moment the most naive, childish gaze from a pair of wonderful
blue eyes. At night, to the amazement of his friends, he went to the
dance. The girl might be as unattainable as a royal princess--he was
quite sure she was; yet, as millions of men had done before him, he
took the trail of the impossible with a hope that really promised
nothing.
She made the first picture he saw when he went in, standing like a
rare bit of Italian china on a space of polished floor, the magnet of
a train of sleekly-groomed, linen-bosomed young men. Absently Billy
was having a programme thrust upon him. Dazedly the admonition was
being borne in on him that he would be expected to do his duty to the
end, and distribute himself around well. Already he was entangled,
introduced to a girl wearing a committee badge, and his escort
deserted him.
The committee girl didn't disturb his equilibrium at all. It wasn't
necessary to pay much attention to her; she didn't seem to expect it.
She was there for a purpose, to put people at ease, the rare
individuals of the twentieth century youth who needed this
ministration--and to shuffle them. She handled Billy's case by
reassuring him from the frankest and friendliest eyes he had ever
looked into, then following the direction of his gaze, she led him
directly to the regal little figure with its buzzing circle of
attendants.
Miss Evison's greeting was not so alluring as her wide baby stare in
the afternoon. She turned her meaningless, drawing-room gaze toward
him with the indifference due one of her innumerable courtiers, and
even glanced with immovable correctness at his hand extended half way
across the distance between them. Billy brought the hand back
painfully. He had known better, of course, but it seemed such a
humanly natural thing to do. Come to think of it, he had shaken hands
with the committee girl too, but she must have met him half way, or
something, because he had never thought of it until now. There was
something decidedly chilling, too, in Miss Evison's clear, blase,
very "nice girl," how-do-you-_do_, and not being a connoisseur in
the ways of women, he took it for a dismissal and turned to go.
Miss Evison had not anticipated this danger. He was walking right
away from her, with his rare six feet of athlete, his good looks, and
his whole unique farmerish appearance that would make such a striking
background for the evening.
She had to think quickly and she was not accustomed to the process.
"I--I think I noticed you at the rink this afternoon?" she threw out
desperately.
It was very bad, of course. She should never have admitted that she
ever noticed anyone anywhere. It was a decided compromise from the
standards she upheld so carefully, and the high tint of excitement in
her cheeks deepened and burned at the mistake. Billy sincerely looked
his gratitude for the recognition. It was so much more than he had
expected from this queenly little personage, with the whole of her
narrow little circumscribed world at her feet. He found something
very sweet and womanly in the deepening color, in the maidenly
lifting and lowering of her eyes--very wonderful eyes they seemed,
large and long-lashed, with the beautiful, deep blue and little brown
specks that Nature had given them, and the thousand little tricks,
flashes and mists and a half-closed dreaminess for which Nature was
not responsible at all. They could never be called soft in their
expression, but they could be very mysterious. Yet the girl was only
twenty.
Billy was not a novice at dancing. He had spent many a night gliding
over the candle-waxed floor in the town hall at home. He would never
take Jean to these affairs; he hated their atmosphere himself, but he
was very human in his fondness for the poetry of motion, and there
was very little poetry of anything else in his life. From the time he
entered the ball-room, it was his habit to dance constantly until he
decided to stop--then he went home. Sometimes, for reasons of his
own, he left earlier, but never because he was tired of the dance
itself. Here the tone was different.
Unconsciously he attracted some attention by dancing three times in
succession with the popular Miss Evison. She had demurred playfully
over the second, and seriously over the third, but when Billy
apologized for his selfishness, she gave it to him very sweetly. She
even managed, though he would never have thought of suggesting it, to
give him the second half of an extra, because it does give a certain
prestige to a girl's social standing to have to cut into her
dances--and Billy made such a noticeable figure coming across to
claim this mere fragment of her evening, and covering her with
confusion, in her effort to be nice to everybody.
In the intervals when she was away from him, Billy stood in the
shadows and watched her with a sober tenderness, something akin to
worship. She was as remote as the stars, he knew, yet a moment before
he had felt her soft, clingy scarf blowing against his face. She was
so sort of set apart, so uncertain, so alluringly feminine, from the
transparent drape about her white shoulders, and the American
Beauties trembling against her with every breath, to her frail,
little high-heeled shoes, and he thought happily that she would
always need a man to take care of her, to work for her, and to give
her these things. Then he came back to earth heavily. He thought of
the bleak little, weather-worn house on the Swamp Farm, with the fire
now covered up for the night in the chilly kitchen, and the oil lamp
turned low. To-morrow night he would be back, it would be Christmas
Eve, and until the last few hours the thought of it exalted him. Now
it hovered like the proverbial little cloud darkening his skies.
He began to make his way out of the gymnasium with its confusion of
crashing music, delicate tinted dresses, gay shaded lights and
gliding figures trailing their white shadows after them along the
polished floor. Then it occurred to him that he might see Miss
Evison again on the pretext of saying good-night.
Miss Evison wasn't accustomed to this ceremony from the rank and file
of the college body. She was rather surprised, but she was too much
occupied to be much interested. The diversion was a senior student
who was considered exceedingly "interesting" that term, and who had
been inattentive enough the last while to set a special premium on
his society.
"Oh, going? I'm sorry!" she flipped off in the clear, smooth
_staccato_ that always came when she had no point in particular.
She didn't offer him her hand, of course not--and Billy went out
vaguely unhappy.
The train for home would leave in the afternoon. There were many
things Billy could have done with the morning, but he paced moodily
among the term's wreckage in his room. About ten o'clock a crowd of
girls passed the window and a crimson scarf flying from a white
skating outfit brought him to, suddenly. The next minute he was
unstrapping his trunk and groping for his skates.
Miss Evison in her skating rigs seemed far more of a flesh and blood
creation than when she was made up for the evening. She was less
formal, too, and Billy felt more sure of himself. They had made one
circle of the rink when a new crowd of students came in. Billy didn't
know them; they belonged to a clique by themselves. They could steer
a toboggan down a hill, or balance a tea-cup with the dexterity of
long practice. Why they had chosen agriculture as a profession was a
mystery, but from the standpoint of tearooms, flowers and theatres,
they were very select young men. As she passed them with her new
attendant, Miss Evison observed that their attention was casual and
it set her thinking. She realized that perhaps she had been overdoing
things. It was one thing to let the attentions of a very good-looking
and unknown young man create a sensation at a dance, and quite
another matter to keep up the acquaintance.
After rapid consideration, she cut right into Billy's enthusiastic
account of the carnival after the last hockey match with a sister
college. She didn't interrupt him rudely, of course. If you're just
socially cultivated enough you can do anything without being rude.
"I had almost forgotten," she said, "this is the last skate of the
year. A lot of the people I know are here, and I don't want to
be--exclusive."
"I'm sorry," he apologized. "I should have thought, but it seemed
such a little time."
It had been a little time, scarcely five minutes, and it occurred to
her that possibly he had more intuition than she suspected. It was
not at all what she desired, that this boy from the country, whom she
had chosen to be nice to, should question anything she wanted to do,
whether it was right or not.
"Perhaps the men here are too appreciative of trifles," she remarked
stiffly. "It may be different in the country."
Billy took her back silently. Things _were_ very different in the
country; if she only knew how different, he surmised, she would
despise him even more. Turning dazedly to go off the ice he ran right
into the committee girl.
It was fortunate that the speed of his arms measured up pretty well
with the force of his body, otherwise the girl might have had a bad
fall. As it was, there was a blue mark on her shoulder that she kept
hidden for some days. The fear that it might be there troubled Billy
not a little. He dropped his hand and stood there terrified.
"Thank you," she said, "I was just about gone," and then she laughed,
just naturally laughed at his confusion, laughed with a frank,
reassuring kindness in her friendly eyes, and just as unconcernedly
as he had met her the night before, Billy found himself skating down
the ice with her. He found himself talking to her without restraint
and quite on a level. Then she introduced him to a crowd of the
finest girls he had ever known. Altogether, he was having a very good
time. He had almost forgotten the agony it gave him to see Miss
Evison sweep past, listening with rapt attention, evidently, to the
social oratory of the "interesting" man, when a thin little voice
beside him almost whispered--
"Was I terribly horrid?"
If she had been alluring before in her many variable little moods,
she was irresistible when she put all that childish appeal to be
forgiven into her misty eyes and pouting mouth. Billy looked and
wondered. He couldn't see that she had done much to require
forgiveness, but it made him very happy to have her come back; so he
laughed into her troubled eyes as one does to a penitent child, and
answered:--
"I think you were. How far will you come now to make up for it?"
Considering his inexperience, he was playing up to her lead very
well.
She would go any distance. She would even skate with him a little
while after the others had all gone--if he had time before his train
left. She told him in broken, embarrassed little phrases, that she
was impulsive, that she guessed she was spoiled, but she was always
sorry after she had been rude; she would do anything to make up, she
wanted always to be kind, because she just couldn't stand it not to
have people love her.
And Billy replied gallantly that he didn't see how anyone could help
it.
They had the ice to themselves now, and as they swept down the clear,
wide stretch they were unutterably happy. At least Billy was. He
didn't know that the sudden change in her attitude was due to the
fact that he had established his favor with the best girls of the
college that morning. If he had known he might have appreciated the
kindness of the committee girl even more.
Miss Evison explained her high spirits on the ground that she was
going home that night. Mother and Dad had both written that they were
dying to see her--that was the worst of being an only child. She had
an inkling that Dad was getting her a little runabout for Christmas,
sort of a bribe to keep her from wanting to go back to the city next
year. Oh, yes, they had a farm--just a hobby, of course. Oh, no, they
didn't live on it. They had a house in the nearest town; there were
several congenial families living there, and it was near enough to
the city to go in to a show when there was anything really good. But,
oh, she loved the country--just loved it.
And what did she think of the college? She loved it, too. She would
be sorry when her year was up. She had met some of the _dearest_
girls, and she had had a perfectly _lovely_ time. She hadn't
wanted to come in the first place, but Dad had just insisted; he said
she was going far too fast at home--it really was hard to get an
evening in, because there were some _very_ nice people in the
town, for the size of it, and she was _so_ fond of company and
excitement. She could just live on it. She told him, with the naivete
of a child, of her many amusing culinary disasters, after she had
begun to study household science; how the last time she was at home
she had _insisted_ on getting tea on the maid's afternoon off;
how the souffle had fallen flat and she had forgotten to put the
cream of tartar in the biscuits.
When she suddenly remembered that she had an engagement in the
afternoon, Billy took off her skates something after the manner of a
slave kneeling at the feet of the Queen of Sheba.
"Just to think," she chattered, "our last skate this year, and I've
talked all about myself. The next time you must tell me all about
_your_ affairs, and your holidays, and everything."
Billy smiled and looked away. He realized painfully how difficult it
would be to tell this beautiful, irresponsible, "delicately-reared"
girl anything about himself or his holidays or anything.
When he opened the Hall door for her she drew from her muff her
smooth, supple little hand without even its glove, held it out to him
warmly, and left him thrilling from the contact. She rushed upstairs
glowing; she had had a glorious time and there were a thousand more
glorious times ahead of her--not with Billy--oh, dear no. She
confided to a circle of her dearest girl friends that he was "all
right in an agricultural setting," he was "awfully handsome in his
lumbering yeoman style," he was "splendid to have looking at you with
his sober eyes, as though you were a Madonna, or an actress, or
something," but Billy "transplanted to a circle of the class of
people a girl would want to live with--heavens!"
And Billy, rushing for his train, staring out at the flying white
fields, or figuring on the back of the latest market report of beef
cattle, was possessed of one thought. He must make his plans work
out; he must be ready to turn things into money fast; he must be
successful in some way or other; and he wasn't thinking of the folks
at home this time. He didn't notice the old familiar landmarks until
the train stopped at the home station.
Jean was there to meet him. She had her arms around his neck almost
before he reached the platform, and would not let him go till he had
fairly crushed the breath out of her.
"And how's everything?" he asked.
"Just fine--only Mother!"
"Is anything wrong?"
"No, I guess not. She just doesn't seem very well sometimes."
Somehow the news filled Billy with foreboding; he could only picture
some awful change. He was impatient to get home, yet, so suddenly
awakened from his dream of other things, he felt like a stranger as
they neared the old place. How little and lonely the house looked in
the thickening dusk with the lamplight making red squares of the
windows--the frost already creeping out from the edges of the panes,
and the white smoke floating up from the two little chimneys. There
was a fire in the parlor to-night--a sign of festivity for his
homecoming.
The horse had scarcely turned in at the lane when the kitchen door
opened, and in the light flooding out, Mary stood waiting with the
lantern, on duty as usual. She seemed very frail and little as she
hurried to meet him, very pathetic too, with her face lifted shyly,
not knowing just what to expect, aching to express her love, but
fearful of doing the wrong thing. They grow away from their mothers
so fast, these men-children; they get so involved in things outside
that the mother who stays at home trembles for the time when they
will have ceased to need her.
As she bustled around in happy confusion putting the finishing
touches to the supper, Billy struggled to adjust himself. The ceiling
of the little room seemed very close to his head, the walls very
confining as he paced about, but he noticed that the floor was
scrubbed white, that the curtains had been laundered until they
fairly bristled out into the room. His foot disturbed a rag mat with
some yellow birds hooked into it, and when he got down to straighten
it, some good fortune prompted him to observe:
"This is something new."
"Well, to think you'd notice that! I was afraid I wasn't going to get
it done in time. Do you remember that plaid? It's some of the first
kilts you had. The brighter pieces I've worked into a quilt for you
when you have a house of your own--if you'd want it."
Billy did some quick imagining, then, as if challenging some argument
against the patched quilt.
"Sure I'd want it," he said. "I should think _I would_ want it."
All evening he watched to see whether there was any ground for Jean's
fears. It never occurred to him that his mother, with her tactful
simplicity, might be watching him too. It was not until after Jean
had gone to bed that they came nearer to an understanding. For a few
minutes she knitted while he watched her and listened to the clock
ticking on towards midnight. Then without looking up she asked:
"Did you have any good times this term?"
She had never inquired about his "good times" before, and he
wondered, half pleased, how she knew. He felt a pleasant warmth
covering his face as he answered:
"A few, toward the last."
She didn't seem to notice his embarrassment. She suggested casually:
"Let's move up closer to the stove and open the door. It's as good
as a fireplace when you want to talk."
He knew she hoped he would tell her more, and he wished he could,
but there was nothing to tell. To repeat anything Miss Evison had
said--and heaven knows he remembered every word--wouldn't give a
right impression of her at all. You had to _see_ her to get any
idea of what she was like. Besides there was something about her
whole airy, pleasure-loving, exotic presence that didn't seem to fit
in here. He liked to shut his eyes and picture her as she looked
standing under the cluster of rose-shaded lights in the college
ballroom, but when he opened them on the neat, square little kitchen,
with the wood-box behind the stove and the bleary little lamp
throwing shadows in the corners, the vision tortured him with the
weight of something irreparably wrong. He started from his reverie,
remembering that the last thing his mother had said was to the effect
that the stove with the door open was as good as a fireplace.
"We were going to have a fireplace of our own, weren't we?" he began.
"You must be tired waiting for it, but it won't be long now. If I can
get through next year----"
He thought he saw the patient lines draw across her face, but she
smiled naturally enough.
"It will be fine to be through," she said, "but you mustn't worry
about the fireplace yet. And I must tell you, too, because I have to
bring myself to it, that you're a man now. I want you to have your
house and your fireplace and everything just like you want it; but
you mustn't go putting your mother in your plans; it isn't natural.
I'd like to see it all, and I'd be so pleased about it--to know you
were happy, but young people want their own life. Only there's one
thing I like to feel safe about--you'll always look out for Jean? I'm
glad I can be sure about that."
And for the first time, watching her as she stared into the fire, her
knitting lying forgotten in her lap, Billy saw the change he had been
looking for. He came over and knelt beside her in all a boy's
helplessness, tears swimming unhidden in his eyes.
"What is it?" he asked. "Jean said you were not well. What about it?"
He felt her start, but she smiled back as she had done hundreds of
times before when things disturbed him.
"It's nothing," she said.
"Did you see the doctor?"
"Yes."
"What did he say?"
She had been trying ever since to forget what the doctor said.
"Oh! He said something about a specialist. They have to say
something."
"You--wouldn't mind going to the specialist?"
"No; but we can't think of it now. I don't feel bad at all. You see I
have everything so comfortable since you fixed the house."
Billy had the happy faculty of making his decisions quickly under
pressure.
"But why can't we go to the specialist now?" he persisted quietly.
"I'm not going away again till you're better. There's the money for
the next term; we'll use that. Then I'll be here. I can surely make
things a little better in some ways."
"Oh, no," she protested in alarm. "You mustn't think of that. I want
to see you get through. If it was the money, there's some in the
bank, but----"
"You want to keep that for Jean, don't you?"
"I do want her to go on to school. I want her to learn some way of
making her living. And if Jean should ever get married----"
"Oh, Jove, we'll not let her get married," he exploded with a
determination born of his own limited and bitter observation. "I
certainly don't believe in getting married--for girls."
It took more than Billy's inexperienced force of argument to persuade
his mother that he would not be happy anywhere but at home for the
next few months--that the farm was suffering for his attention
anyway. When she did agree to his plan it was because she found that
in some things he was absolutely immovable. He could be steered
easily enough to a certain point; after that all the winds of heaven
couldn't influence his course. Even the disturbing visitations of the
vision of the satin-shod idol, never once suggested the idea that he
might go back.