Of Moths and Butterflies

CHAPTER twelve





R. HAMILTON, YOU have come after all!” the evening’s hostess said by way of welcome. “I’m so pleased. And Mrs. Barton,” she added with a forced smile and a tone decidedly cooler. “You are welcome, of course.”

Archer returned the greeting with as much grace as he could affect under the circumstances. How he would prefer to be anywhere but here just now. But he had come—to fulfil his responsibility. To his uncle. To Society. He owed them much, after all. And he was not ungrateful. Sir Edmund had rescued him from orphanhood, had raised him and meant yet to raise him further, to lift him up to that which he might not otherwise have dared to expect. Should Archer only remember his duty, should he manage to live up to the expectations held for him, he would one day inherit all that his uncle possessed. These were great promises, to be sure, for a young man born under the pall of illegitimacy. But there was a price to pay for such privilege, and it was now, and in this way, that he was expected to repay. He was to establish himself in Society, to find himself a bride, and a wealthy one. And to please his uncle, he could not do it too soon. He cast his gaze around the room and felt a wave of repulsion at the idea.

What he wouldn’t give for a quiet card room and a bottle to himself. Mrs. Barton had thankfully moved off. Sir Edmund’s set could do little to help him with his uncle’s mistress on his arm. Society knew well enough when to call a spade a spade. The sham engagement had gone on too long to fool anyone. If only Archer could make his own way. But he must start somewhere. And so, drawing a breath, trying to focus his mind on the task at hand, he once more scanned the crowd. It was not all bad. There were some fine looking women here. Perhaps something might be accomplished after all. Miss Radcliffe was looking particularly well in sapphire blue. He rather liked that colour on the dark-haired beauties. He considered for a moment the idea of approaching her, when he heard his name.

“Hamilton!”

“Roger Barrett,” Archer returned, taking his hand.

“I had not expected to see you here.”

“No, nor had I,” Archer answered.

“To see me, do you mean, or… Oh!” Roger said, laughing as he comprehended the joke. “What was it that tempted you out tonight, then?”

“Curiosity, I suppose,” Archer said in lieu of the truth. “You?” he asked in turn, though he already had a good idea.

Barrett had always been a few rungs higher on the social ladder than his merits should have allowed, but he was not without talent. Their time together at school had proved that. Archer could not begrudge him his success simply because his friend had taken the trouble to earn what he himself had not.

“It’s my occupation, you know,” Barrett answered, “at least at present, until I can find something else more profitable.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“If I want to make anything of myself, I must work at it. Perhaps you understand. No? Well, it’s a job like any other. I must exert every effort, mixing and mingling, and making myself invaluable to those who might help me in my aspirations.”

“Yes, I suppose I see what you mean.”

Barrett took a sip of his drink, and smiled, as if to himself. “It’s merely a dinner party, I suppose you might say, but appearances are so often misleading. In fact, it’s not at all what it appears to be. Of course you know that.”

“Do I?” Archer answered.

Barrett leaned in to speak confidentially. “It looks like a casual evening of innocent diversion, but it isn’t that at all. It’s really much closer to a three ring circus.”

“And how is that?” Archer asked him, curious to hear what promised to be an amusing analogy and finding himself growing in sympathy with his friend the more of it he heard.

“Well, you see over here,” Barrett said, nodding in the direction of a nearby room, through which their host could be seen, leading the discussion amidst a crowd of eager listeners and a cloud of tobacco smoke. “That is where the ringmasters conduct their business, how to run the show, you see, whom to bring into the act. They might cast one of us as acrobat or fire eater, or they might toss us in with the freaks. But most of us, you and I included, are little more than lions, jumping through whatever hoops they should deign to hold before us.”

Archer watched them for a moment, and considered. As much as he regretted to admit it, he and Barrett were in very nearly the same boat.

“Of course they’re not the only ones running the show,” Barrett continued, his gaze moving pointedly in the direction of a group of ladies standing not far off, among whom were Roger’s aunt, Mrs. Julia Barrett, and a striking beauty who made it a habit of glancing in Roger’s direction whenever she happened to have the chance.

“There are the lion tamers,” he went on, lowering his voice slightly, “dressed to the nines in satin and feathers and seductively luring us, the lions, into a sense of false security, placing their own hoops and obstacles in our path. And for whom we gladly perform.

“Of course we cannot forget the clowns,” he added with a sly smile and a nod in the direction of Mrs. Barton and a few dandies, all too colourfully dressed for the occasion and laughing too loudly.

Archer closed his eyes to this and turned his attention back to Barrett.

“We laugh inwardly and sigh,” Barrett said sympathetically, “and yet don’t we envy them their apparent pleasure in everything that goes on around them?” Then he was suddenly serious, almost resentful. “We want it all, really. We want to be the ringmasters, to run the show for ourselves. Or at least to have the privilege of sitting among them, pretending to understand what it is that’s really going on. As is probably the case for most of them, poor fellows.” He nodded once again in the direction of the cloud of smoke. “We want a part in the admiration received from all sides by the lucky few, by the freaks and the dandies and the financiers of the enterprise. Yet we’re trapped at the same time by the overwhelming temptation to devour an occasional lion tamer or two. A dangerous distraction, by all accounts.” Barrett smiled again, that sly, arrogant smile.

“That’s quite an analogy,” Archer said, more impressed than he wished to let on.

“Have you a better one?”

Archer considered carefully for a moment or two. “It seems to me,” he offered at last and cautiously, “that we are all rather a lot like winged insects in various phases of development.”

Barrett looked doubtful. “This is your view of Society?”

“Well, perhaps of life in general.”

“Very well,” Roger answered, eyebrows raised high in anticipation of what was to come.

“In the larval stages it’s impossible to tell which will be moths and which will be butterflies. Even once wings have formed it is sometimes difficult to distinguish one from the other. Some are glorious beings at home in their element, the unwitting target of scores of admirers. Others are merely drab impostors, fluttering and bumping about blindly. How to know which is which, though? And which, by the same token, are we? We all seem to have the common inclination to be drawn to the brightest thing in any room.”

Barrett stared in puzzlement for a minute before a suppressed ripple of laughter burst forth and then grew louder.

“Heaven save us, Hamilton! That’s the worst thing I’ve heard in an age.” He looked Archer over very carefully and then laughed again. “What do you say we find the card room,” he said, clapping his friend on the back.

Archer followed, glad for the diversion if not a little wary of the company. He never could decide what to make of Roger Barrett. It was difficult not to like him, and perhaps that was the reason, more than any other, that he begrudged doing it now.

* * *

An hour or so later—perhaps three—having drunk entirely too much and having lost a good portion of his week’s stipend, Archer quit the game.

“You seem to be in a mood, my friend,” Barrett observed.

“Do I?”

“At least, you seem preoccupied.”

Archer sat back and, with a dry laugh, drew a hand through his hair.

“Your ‘bright thing’, I take it, is not here?”

Archer took hold of his drink and tossed off the last of it, but otherwise did not answer.

“Neither is mine, if you want to know.”

“I would have thought you’d have more than one,” Archer returned. “You usually do.”

A sidelong look served as a confession. “Perhaps I do.”

“Nothing serious, then?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. It is simply that Society provides a wondrous array of possibilities in place of the one impossibility. And it is always the impossibility one yearns for most, is it not?”

Archer, considering another glass, now set his down and pushed it away. “I think you may be right.”

From where they sat, the ballroom could just be seen, and the ladies and gentlemen too, in all their regalia, as they danced and paraded past. The two gentlemen watched in silence for several minutes.

“Tell me, then,” Archer asked eventually, “of this impossibility. Why is it so? And what draws you on in spite?”

Roger shook his head and sighed. “My cousin.”

“Ah.”

“By marriage.”

“That is not the obstacle, then.”

“Her own objections provide for that.”

“Yet you pursue.”

“Or did.”

“Until?”

Roger drummed his fingers against the side of his chair. “She’s run away.”

Archer stifled a laugh. “That is an obstacle, indeed! With?”

“No, no. It’s nothing like that,” Barrett said with a sombre shake of his head. “She’s taken a holiday is all—a rather long one—and we don’t know where she is or when she’ll return.”

“But she will return? You’re sure of it?”

“By her own design or upon being recovered. But it isn’t much of a compliment to myself, you see.”

“She knows of your intentions?”

“Yes. Though it is possible she doubts the sincerity in them.” The furtive look that followed this told Archer he understood it to be his own fault. “So what of you, then? What has persuaded you to make such a rare appearance?”

“I was sent.”

“For?”

Archer wasn’t quite sure how to answer this. There were few, he knew, who would sympathise with his difficulty. That Roger Barrett might, served both as encouragement and warning. He took his chances.

“From, is more to the point, I think.”

Roger waited for the explanation.

“We have a new addition to the staff,” Archer explained.

“And?”

“She is, in a word, remarkable.”

“Dear heaven!” Roger said, and then allowed himself a low, irreverent chuckle. “And what will be the result of that?”

“I hardly know.”

“Don’t you?”

Archer had no answer for this.

“One does not marry one’s servants, you know.”

“No,” Archer said and looked away. “I know.”

“I think you know what you’re about, then.”

Archer rubbed his chin uncomfortably. He wished he’d said nothing of it. “There are objections, of course.”

“I’ve no doubt there are. She won’t object though. They rarely do.”

“In this case, I think you may be wrong.”

“Well, then. It all depends on how determined you mean to be. A little perseverance in such matters is all that’s required. What choice does she really have, after all?”

Archer feared, felt in the hollow pit of his stomach, that Barrett was right, and did not know what he would do about it, though he continued to think it over as he returned Mrs. Barton to her house and then made his way to his club—where he did not sleep.





She returned to the Abbey.