"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!

"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."