Part 3

Looking long at the picture of the Beautiful Face, he turned--to the Beautiful Face itself; for it had now been silver dust for four years. Drawing the urn to him, he read once more the name upon the little gold plate let into the bronze:

Meriel Wasteneys: Died March 16, 1900.

And underneath the name he read some lines inscribed in gold:

“O Beauty, art thou also dust? These silver ashes--can it be That you, thus silting through my hand, Once made a madman out of me!”

“And a madman still,” he added, laughing sadly to himself.

Then raising the lid of the urn, he looked in. The white ash filled but half the little urn. Gently thrusting in his hand, he let the ashes sift through his long fingers over and over again, and as he did so he gazed at the Beautiful Face upon the wall....

After a while he replaced the lid upon the urn, and lay back with closed eyes--thinking of it all.

Presently the lawyer returned softly into the room, and fancying him asleep, was about to leave again, but Wasteneys had heard him.

“Is that you?” he said. “Come to me. I have said good-bye. You know where my ashes are to lie.”

The lawyer assented, locking the urn once more in the cabinet, and bringing the key back again to Wasteneys. The little urn, as I have said, was as yet only half filled.

The two friends sat silent together for a long time, saying nothing, for there was nothing to say. Both knew all.

After a while the poet turned to his friend. “Will you ask Isabel, my wife, to come to me?” he said. And presently there entered the room a woman so fragilely beautiful that she seemed to be made of moonbeams. She was indeed, compared to the Beautiful Face on the wall, as the moon to the sun. That, alas! had been her place in the poet’s life. She had been the moon to the Beautiful Face. And yet, in his strange way, the poet had always loved her, deep down----

“Very deep down!” she used to say sometimes, with a sad smile.

As she came and sat beside him, he took her face tenderly in his hands, and looked and looked into her fairy blue eyes without a word. A curiously lined face it was for so young a woman--all beautiful silver lines filled with delicate refinements of thought and feeling. “Suffering,” said the ignorant world, attributing these silver lines to the unfaithfulness of the poet. Yet, as a matter of fact, Isabel’s face had been hardly less lined when she was twenty. The poet and the years together had barely added half a dozen lines. In fact, nature had seemed to intend, when making Isabel’s face, to show that beauty is something more than velvet skin and dreamy eyes and rounded contours; to prove that nothing is needed for the making of a beautiful face but--light. Isabel’s face, indeed, seemed made of light. The lines in it were like rays of brightness, and her eyes like deep springs of purest radiance.

There was, after all, something in Isabel’s face that the poet had seen only there, something “fairy” that he had never ceased loving better than anything else in the world. But Life had had its way with them. Strong currents beyond the control of either had torn them apart, brought them together again, and then again torn them apart. Still, they had never really lost faith in each other’s natures, and though an impertinent world had misunderstood their mutual forbearance, they had never misunderstood each other.

“Isabel!” said the poet, still holding her face like a star in his hands, “I am going to die, and I have called you to congratulate me--as I know so wise a girl will. For we both know, better than any one, that it is best.”

Isabel’s eyes filled with tears, and releasing her face from his hands, she buried it in the bedclothes. Presently mastering her feeling, she raised her head again, and looking with infinite pity into the poet’s eyes, she said:

“O my dear boy--cannot you be human at last: just once before you die? I have always thought of you like some Undine, a beautiful, gentle, elemental being--lacking only a human soul. Indeed, sometimes I have thought of you as a god--sitting aloof from our little every day interests--but God knows I have loved you all the time, and you only shall I love in all my life....”

The poet once more took her face in his hands, and looking into her nereid eyes, he said: “Wife, dear wife--forgive the sorrow I have brought you. If there was any joy, remember that. Life is very difficult, very strange. It was all no fault of ours, not even mine. I see it now very clearly--now that I am dying. I see how wrong I have been--I see how right. I see how right you have been--I see how wrong. Let us forgive each other. Let us be in love again before I die. Give me your eyes. Let me kiss them once before I die....”

Then, a sudden thought taking him, “I wonder, dear,” he said, “if you can find my “Euripides.” There is a passage I am thinking of in ‘The Alcestis.’ It would comfort me to hear it again....”

Presently his wife brought him the volume, and turning over the pages, the poet at last found the passage he was in search of.

“Yes! this is it,” he said:

“‘_Now have I moored my bark of life in a happier haven than before, and so will own myself a happy man._’”

Then leaning back on his pillow, “Tell me Isabel,” he said, “why is there so mysterious a comfort in words?”

“Alas! dear, it is for you to tell me,” she said, stroking his hair; “you have loved words so well--and made so many beautiful words.”

“I know you think that I have loved nothing but words,” said the poet; “I wonder if it is true?... I think not.”

“I think you meant to love life as well,” she answered, kissing his brow gently.

She smoothed his hair a long while as they sat in silence together--the past rolling over them like a river.

Presently Wasteneys broke the silence. “I have walked in a vague course!” he said--“walked in a vague course!... if you will forgive,” he added, presently, “my quoting once more. A dying man should not quote. He is expected to say something original. Well, I will try to-morrow....”

Then there fell over him once more that ante-lethal drowsiness of death, and murmuring again, “I have walked in a vague course!” he fell asleep.

When she was sure he was asleep, his wife bent over him and kissed his lips.

“After all,” she said, “he has never grown up. He is a baby still--just a child, that is all....”

Wasteneys awoke after a little while, to find himself alone, save for the silent presence of his lawyer.

“I fell asleep,” he said, “foolishly enough--for I have little time to waste; and I shall soon have all the sleep I want....”

Then, after a pause, he added: “I wish to say good-bye to my little girls. Will you have them brought to me?”

Presently there entered the room two beautiful children, one about twelve years old, and the other five. They came hand in hand, laughing, and ran across to their father’s bed, gleefully ignorant of the significance of the still room, and the purple hangings, and the white figure in the bed.

“Daddy! daddy!” they cried, climbing upon the bed. “What a time it is since we saw you!... Tell us a story right away.”

The father took the long brown-gold curls of the elder girl in his hands, and stroked the sunshine head of the little one. “Kiddies,” he said, after a while, “your daddy is going on a long journey. Will you think of him and love him while he is gone?”

“Where are you going, daddy?” asked the two young voices.

“O ever so far! It’s a country called ‘East of the Sun and West of the Moon.’”

“O take us with you, daddy. It sounds such a lovely place.”

“I cannot take you with me, kiddies--but perhaps mother and you and I will meet there one of these days ... if we’re all very good!”

“I wish we could go with you now, daddy,” said the elder girl; and the younger, out of sheer reverence for her elder sister, repeated her.

“I wish we could go with you now, daddy,” she said.

“No,” said the father; “you must stay behind and look after Little Mother. She would be so lonely without you.”

The children, with the volatility of their age, accepted this explanation, and presently once more turned to their father with a demand for a story.

“No!” he said; “it is your turn to tell me a story. I am tired to-day. You, Pervenche, must say for me ‘The Three Kings,’ and you, Golla, must say ‘The White Bird.’ I haven’t heard you say them for quite a long time. And each standing up in turn, like a corporal saluting his captain, Pervenche and Golla recited their little pieces; and as they recited, the tears rolled down their father’s cheeks.

“You are crying, daddy,” suddenly exclaimed the little one. “What are you crying for?”

The poet was crying because, among all the many human experiences he had missed, he had missed his children too.

Their nurse near at hand rescued him from the dilemma. “Daddy is tired,” she said; “bid him good-bye....”

And, wonderingly, the little creatures obeyed; but the tiny Golla, already a sturdy sceptic, kept asking, when they were once more in the nursery, “I wonder why daddy cried!”

When his little girls had gone, Wasteneys turned to his lawyer.

“What time is high tide to-day?”

He asked the question wearily, almost querulously; for, after all, he was seriously dying.

“I will look in the newspaper,” said the lawyer; and having looked, he answered, “At three minutes past four.”

“When will the tide turn?” asked the dying poet.

“It keeps at full for perhaps a quarter of an hour, and then begins to ebb.”

“That gives us from now about four hours,” said the poet. “Four hours. At the turning of the tide. Four hours ... and then!”

Wasteneys lay still after this, with his eyes closed.

Presently he roused himself. “I have one more farewell to make,” he said; “will you ask them to bring me my children?...”

“Your children?” The lawyer, good friend as he was, did not at first understand.

“Yes! My children. Please have them bring me my children.”

Wasteneys’s servant, happening to come into the room at the moment, beckoned the lawyer, and explained his master’s meaning.

“Yes!” answered the lawyer, soothingly, after this informatory pause, “they shall be brought to you.”

Then presently there entered two men servants carrying two high piles of books. Placing them on a table, they left the room, returning in a few moments with two more piles. Once more they went out and returned, their arms still laden with books.

Meanwhile a new life seemed suddenly to have animated the poet’s frame. His eyes shone, and he struggled to raise himself in the bed. The lawyer packed the pillows at his back, and he sat up.

“Put them at the end of the bed,” he said; “let me see them all, let me touch them....”

When his wish had been carried out, and the servants departed, he leaned over the books and stroked them affectionately again and again.

“So you are really mine--really my children,” he said.

“Did I really write them?” he said, presently, turning to his friend. “So many?”

“Yes! dear friend, you wrote them all,” answered the lawyer, too solemnised to jest; for he saw that it was close on the turning of the tide.

“How many are there?” asked Wasteneys, leaning back, already weary with the excitement.

“I will count them ...” said his friend, and presently announced that there were fifty-three volumes.

“Fifty-three!” exclaimed Wasteneys; “and how old am I?”

“Thirty-nine, next month,” said the lawyer.

“Next month!” said the poet.

Then he turned again to his friend.

“Read me a page here and there,” he said; “I will be my own critic. Even a critic at the point of death may be expected to tell the truth. Read to me that I may know before I die that something in all those fifty-three volumes may perhaps be worth while.”

“What shall I read?” asked the lawyer.

“Read me ‘What of the Darkness?’”

And the lawyer read:

“What of the Darkness? Is it very fair? Are there great calms, and find ye silence there? Like soft-shut lilies, all your faces glow With some strange peace our faces never know, With some great faith our faces never dare, Dwells it in Darkness? Do ye find it there?

“Is it a Bosom where tired heads may lie? Is it a Mouth to kiss our weeping dry? Is it a Hand to still the pulse’s leap? Is it a Voice that holds the runes of sleep? Day shows us not such comfort anywhere-- Dwells it in Darkness? Do ye find it there?

“Out of the day’s deceiving light we call-- Day that shows man so great, and God so small, That hides the stars, and magnifies the grass-- O is the Darkness too a lying glass? Or, undistracted, do ye find truth there? What of the Darkness? Is it very fair?”

“Are you quite sure that I wrote that?” Asked the poet. “Look carefully. Is it really my book?”

“It is, indeed. Printed when you were twenty.”

“I am so happy,” said the poet--“so happy to think I wrote that. Time itself cannot rob me of that.”

Very soon it was plainly to be seen that the poet was on the very border-line of life and death.

“Is there no one you would care to see?” asked the lawyer, gently.

“No, no one,” answered the poet.

“Not your physician?” asked the lawyer.

“O no, indeed,” answered the poet, with a flash of his odd smile. “Give him my love. But tell him that I want to die--not to be killed.”

“What time is it?” he asked, presently.

“Five minutes to four.”

The poet lay silent a while, and then he turned to his lawyer with the look of an old friendship. Indeed, his friendship for his lawyer, was, odd as it may sound, one of the realities of his unearthly life.

“Friend,” he said, “I am afraid it is almost time for us also to say good-bye. God bless you--for all. Look after--them, won’t you?” and he waved his hand toward his wife’s quarters. “Good-bye....”

“But,” said his friend, “will you have no one with you?”

“Don’t you hear the turning of the tide?” answered the poet.

“No one?” reiterated the lawyer, agonised out of his professional demeanour.

“No one!” answered Wasteneys, rising commandingly in his bed, and sweeping his hand across the volumes at its foot--“No one--but my children!”

THE BUTTERFLY OF DREAMS

It was said that a tragic disappointment accounted for young Lord Laleham’s curious passion for butterflies. Actually there was no such explanation, or, of course, any need of it; but pursuits out of the common naturally demand uncommon excuses--for the common mind; and it was evident to the watchful critics of Lord Laleham’s career that nothing short of a great sorrow could have driven him to so trivial a means of alleviation. According to others, this dainty passion--which might well have subjected him to the contempt of his fellows, had he not been able to give a somewhat formidable physical account of himself--was to be put down as due to one of those strains of freakishness liable to break out in old families. No one, of course, dreamed that Laleham could care for butterfly-hunting for its own sake, except those entomologists for whom his collection was famous throughout the world, authoritative, classical; for Lord Laleham was one of the handsomest and richest of young English peers, and as difficult for match-making mothers to catch as one of his own butterflies--surely the last man in the world to seek the humble laurel of the lepidopterist.

And, indeed, it was true that butterflies were something more to Laleham than entomology. They were rather a poetic than a scientific passion. There was a strong vein of the mystic and poetic in his nature to which in some way, mysterious even to himself, these strange little painted things had from childhood appealed. As the smallest boy, he had proved himself a passionist of the solitudes of nature, by lone woodland truancies and long tramps through that gipsy wilderness, which England, with all its lawns and market-gardens and nurseries, has so remarkably preserved. And, from the first moment that he found himself alone, hushed and watching and listening, and a little afraid, in the belt of mighty beeches that was perhaps the chief honour of his pedigree, there had seemed a spell, an enchantment, over these lonely leaves, these gnome-like shapes of mottled bole, and these twisted roots that seemed to have become so through some mysterious agonies of ancient torture--though indeed, to most folk there was nothing there but leaves and the famous Laleham covers.

He had never forgotten the day when that spell of exquisite silence and dappled sunshine--the whole woodland with its finger on its lip--had suddenly become embodied in a tiny shape of coloured velvet wings that came floating zig-zag up the dingle, swift as light, aery as a perfume, soft and silent as the figured carpet in some Eastern palace. With what awe he watched it, as at length it settled near him on a sunlit weed, with what a luxury of observation his eyes noted its sumptuous unearthly markings, and what an image of wonder and exquisite mystery it there and forever left upon his mind. In a moment it was up and away upon its uncharted travel through the wood. Instinctively, he ran in pursuit. But it was too late. He had lost his first butterfly.

For Laleham, from that moment, all the beauty of the world, and the mystery and the elusiveness of it, were symbolised in a butterfly. From that moment it seemed to him that the success of life was--the catching of a certain butterfly.

* * * * *

He was now thirty years old and had caught many butterflies, caught them in every part of the world, and the adventures he had met with in the apparently insignificant chase, were they to be written, would fully justify the defence he sometimes made of what the world called his whimsical hobby. “You must not look upon my butterflies as trivial,” he would say. “The study of much smaller things has made modern science; and a butterfly may well lead you to the ends of the earth--and even lose you among the stars. You never know where it may take you. There is no hunting more full of exciting possibilities. If you dare follow a butterfly, you dare go anywhere; and no quarry will lead you into stranger places, or into such beautiful unexpected adventures.”

At thirty he was still unmarried. Life was still for him a lonely woodland, through which he chased the one butterfly he had never been able to capture. The butterflies of the world were in his marvellously arranged cabinets,--rainbow upon rainbow of classified wings--but one butterfly was not there. The butterfly, indeed, might possibly have been had by exchange with other collectors, though it was one so rare, and so beyond equivalent in any form, that the man who had been fortunate enough to come into possession of it seldom cared to part with it.

Besides, though occasionally Laleham had resorted to this means of supplying a missing species, it was a course he seldom took. Nearly every butterfly in his vast flower-garden of shimmering wings had been caught by his own hand. There was no country in the world he had not visited in his determined dream of being, one might say, the Balzac of the butterfly; and it was only the commoner sort of butterfly he had occasionally obtained by exchange. The butterfly that was missing from his collection he made it a point of honour, and indeed, in course of time, a sort of superstition, to capture for himself. To the ordinary and non-entomological observer, untouched by Laleham’s mystic passion, there would seem little enough to account for his preoccupation in the quite insignificant object of it, a tiny blue butterfly, to ordinary eyes not differing from any other tiny blue butterfly, and in fact only to be known for what it was by a mystic marking almost imperceptible, hidden beneath its wings. Not even the collector himself could be sure of what he was pursuing, on account of the butterfly’s resemblance to another species comparatively common, exactly like, except for that hidden signature, that distinguishing hall-mark. If one were to depreciate the value of this illustrious insect, and say that its sole distinction was that of rarity, the collector would only smile, and could afford to, perhaps. Rarity! only rarity! Was not that enough! Had not mankind agreed, throughout recorded history, that rarity alone, unaccompanied by any other precious characteristic, is of all qualifications, the qualification of immortality; and is not rarity of all values the ideal value, a value not measurable by the eye, or any method of external judgment, a value of the soul. Besides, what are the highest prizes in any chase or contest whatsoever--a simple wreath of laurel, the antlers of a deer, objects in themselves only symbolically valuable. Why, therefore, should not the ambitious pursuing spirit of man stake its fortunes on a butterfly--for what could be more typical of its own wandering course and ever changing goal.

* * * * *

The Laleham butterfly, as it is now called, and as not seldom happens with other rare things in nature--this being, I may add, not the least of nature’s mysterious whims--had never been found except in one remote corner of England, a fenny country producing a hardly less rare variety of flowering rush on which its caterpillar alone could feed. It was a country of boundless marshy levels, and peaty solitudes, a country of herons, and long dark-eyed pools, which, flashing every few yards under the boundless sky, filled the loneliness with magic mirrors. For the gay it was a dreary land, but for those who have found “nought so sweet as melancholy” it was melancholy only as great music is melancholy, and its loneliness was that of some splendid raven-haired widow with her tragic gaze upon the sky. It was a thinly populated region, with here and there an inn and a few cottages taking shelter under the wing of some mouldering grange. It was, in short, one of the sad beautiful ends of the earth. Here it was, and here alone, that Laleham’s butterfly had chosen to dwell, to secret itself, indeed, as though in a place so remote it might hope to preserve its fragile aristocratic race from extinction. Yet, though it was known to inhabit this solitude, not a dozen living people had ever seen it, and only two had caught it for many years; for there again it illustrated another mystery of nature, the persistent survival of a rare type, in such unchangeably small numbers as almost to risk extinction, as it were, for the purpose of aristocracy. For at least two hundred years, as long as it had been known at all, the Laleham butterfly had existed apparently in the same small family, only propagating itself sufficiently to keep its race and name upon the earth, and no more. It had not become rare by process of extinction, but because nature apparently had made few of it from the beginning. Happily this aristocratic law of nature is not only applied to butterflies. In fact one might justly say the same of the family that had dwelt in an old embattled house which had stood here sinking deeper and deeper into the solitude since the days of Richard II. Noctorum, the house was called, as was the cluster of cottages around it--a name appropriately dark and mysterious, like the cry of owls at night across the fen.