Of Moths and Butterflies

CHAPTER nineteen





MOGEN AROSE THE next morning to a house eerily quiet. Her dress, blue as a butterfly’s wing, was rumpled and wrinkled as she examined it in the morning light. She stopped upon catching a glimpse of herself in the half covered mirror and, drawing the shawl aside, she examined the reflection more carefully, recalling all that had transpired the evening previous. It had all been a misunderstanding. That was the only way to explain it. She had made more of it than it was. And even if she had not, Mr. Hamilton’s attentions, whether sincere or in selfish interest, were nonetheless inappropriate. But Claire was very soon to take her away. Glad as she was, her heart yet constricted at the thought. Was she not the utmost of feminine folly?

She arose again, determined to change and prepare herself to face the day ahead, but stopped again upon remembering that her clothes had been removed to Claire’s room. Well then, she would do here what she could and would rely on Claire to help her with the rest. She washed her face, loosened and brushed out her hair, and tied it back before tentatively venturing from her room. After closing the door behind her, she turned to find Becky Winthrop at the other end of the hall, her hands on her hips and staring Imogen out of countenance.

“Good morning, my lady,” she said with a deep and exaggerated curtsy.

Taking a steadying breath, Imogen walked on. She could not blame Becky for her resentment. Having been so abruptly raised from the lowest of servants to the highest, Imogen had rightfully earned her censure.

At Claire’s door, she knocked. There was no answer, and so, uncertain what to do or where to go, she continued downstairs, hoping to find her at breakfast.

Upon entering the breakfast room, she was surprised to find it in a state of disarray. Several crates stood open, their lids unfastened and lying haphazardly on the floor, remnants of the straw which filled them littering the surrounding area. Yet it was the table itself that arrested her attention, for strewn across it were the contents of those crates, Claire’s gift to Mr. Hamilton. Cautiously she approached and, upon observing, marvelled. A vast array of glass boxes lay before her, all neatly framed, and in which were insects carefully preserved. They were butterflies mostly, all with pins stuck through their backs and encased in glass as though there were yet some chance of escape.

She started upon Mr. Hamilton’s entrance. He too stopped. Then smiled and approached her.

“Good morning, Miss Shaw.”

“Mr. Hamilton,” she answered, backing away from the table. “I was just looking for Claire.”

“She’s gone to the post,” he answered. “She hoped to be back before you arose. I expect she’ll return shortly.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said and turned to leave.

“Don’t go,” he said, stopping her, desperate to make the most of this rare opportunity. Her time remaining was woefully short. And with Sir Edmund gone this morning from the Abbey… “Stay. Please.”

Reluctantly, she turned back. Her uncertainty he found encouraging. Eager acquiescence was too much to hope for and so uncertainty would do. He could work with uncertainty. Her gaze shifted once more to the specimens that lay between them.

“Claire has surpassed herself this year,” he said, hoping to encourage her interest, to encourage her, if he could, to return to her former place.

A long silence followed, wherein he observed her. At last she approached once more, her image reflecting off of half a dozen panes of glass. Her gown, so blue, made her eyes seem almost startling in their intensity when at last she looked up at him. Great day, she was breath-taking !

“You collect them?”

Her question awoke him. He blinked. “Yes. Aren’t they wonderful?”

Her brow furrowed. “I don’t know.”

He laughed a little. It was not the answer he had expected. “You don’t know?”

“It seems cruel to me.”

Surprised a moment ago, he was confused now. “Cruel to look at them?”

“To box them. To pin them. Can you not watch them out of doors?”

He quashed the instinct to become defensive. He would educate her instead. And choosing one, he pointed. It was a truly remarkable specimen with its wings coloured in white and brown, the palest shade of blue mixed in amidst the delicate pattern. Sand, earth and sky.

“From India,” he said. “I can’t very well go out into the garden to see this, can I?”

“India?”

He had expected this to impress her and watched with pleasure as she drew nearer that she might see it more clearly.

“No, I suppose not,” she said, and proceeded to study it quite carefully.

As she examined it, he examined her. Her fine head, tilted downward, hid much of her face but he had the advantage still of her profile, or did until she turned her attention from the one to another.

“Hypolimnas Monteirous. From New Guinea,” he offered, and continued his examination as she continued hers. Desirous to hear her conclusion, and equally intent on making her aware of his, he posed his next question carefully. “To appreciate and acknowledge beauty, Miss Shaw, is a rare privilege. Do you not think so?”

Her uncertain gaze met his more determined one. “I suppose so...” The answer was barely above a whisper. She looked away.

His disappointment lasted only a moment.

“This one?” she asked pointing to another, pale white with long pink-tinged tails at the base of the wings.”

Encouraged by her interest, all the more now his attempts to put her at ease were at last succeeding, he smiled. “Actias Selene,” he said. “A Luna moth, from China.”

She contemplated it for a moment and stood straight, her brow furrowed as she looked at him.

“You buy them as they are, then? Boxed and framed and ready to hang on the wall?’

“Yes.”

“You did not kill them yourself?”

“No,” he answered, anxious to relieve her of any anxiety she had in regard to that idea.

“Someone else does it for you, then?”

“Yes.”

“It seems a bit like cheating, doesn’t it?”

Defensive now, caught off guard by her enduring unpredictability—and intrigued by it—he answered. “You would rather I had them shipped alive so that I might do it myself?”

“No, of course not.” she said, and moved away from him to inspect the others.

He watched her in silence as she observed them. Claire had made her selections well. They had been chosen from among the most exotic locales. Not all were Lepidoptera. There were others; large winged insects that looked more like immense flies. Cicadas, they were. And stick insects. A praying mantis. A few beetles. But the most exquisite by far were those like the ones that lay before her now.

“The moths are quite as beautiful as the butterflies,” she said at last and looking up at him from the far end of the table.

“That surprises you?”

“One associates moths with destruction and decay. I had not expected to see them so delicate, even when they are quite large. That Luna, for instance. It’s as fragile and lovely as any butterfly.”

“Yes.” If she thought so highly of this, what would she think of something far more extraordinary yet? “Come. I want to show you something.”

She hesitated, but seemed to be considering.

He held out his hand. “Please?”

To his relief, she followed. He reached out to take her arm, to lead her as he would have done any lady of his acquaintance. And dressed as she was, as she had been the night before, it was no easy feat to remember she was not. Nor did he give it much effort, truly. But upon touching her elbow, she shied and avoided him. Perhaps it was asking too much to expect her to trust him so far. Perhaps she was right not to do it. What would he do with that kind of confidence? He dared not think. And so, with several feet of distance between them, he led her to the small library that was kept for his own use.

* * *

Imogen, upon entering the book room, stopped and looked around. There was no need to ask what it was he had meant for her to see. Lining the walls in every direction was specimen after specimen of glass encased insect. Moths, butterflies, others in various stages of development. A wasp’s nest and a beehive were displayed on a shelf. She looked to him. He had remained just within the door frame, and comforted by his respectful manner, she relaxed a little. He pointed. Just above the mantle, as though it were the crowning specimen of his collection, hung the largest moth she had ever seen. Beautiful rusts and browns rippled over a cream-white background, like a desert after a snow storm. And it was immense, quite easily a foot in breadth.

“What do you call it?” she asked him, amazed and taking no pains to hide it.

“It’s an Atlas moth.” It was then that he entered the room. “This one, I think, is from India.”

“I’ve never seen one before.”

He laughed his gentle, well-bred laugh. “No, I don’t suppose you would.”

“I might have, though,” she said. “I was born in India. I lived there until I was nine.”

“Miss Shaw,” he said, turning from the great moth to her in wonder. “Will you ever cease to amaze me?”

She looked away.

“Tell me more.”

“There isn’t much to tell.” But she did want to tell him. Everything. She wanted him to accept her for what she was, who she was. But no. No, that was quite impossible.

“What you will, then. I’d like to know.”

Hesitantly, she acquiesced. “My father was an officer. He was killed in an uprising near Bombay. In Kattyawar. My mother died a few years before him.”

“How?”

“Cholera, I believe.”

“You were very close to her?”

“Yes. Very.”

“And your father?”

“My father was a busy man,” she said, turning her attention once more to the magnificent moth. “We did not see him much, but when my mother died… Well, he became as good as a stranger to me.”

“And yet you miss them.”

“I miss my mother terribly. I wish I could say I miss my father. I miss knowing him, feeling the love he ought to have had for me.”

Mr. Hamilton offered a sympathetic smile. Yes, he understood. He must, after all.

“How did you end up in England?”

She shook her head. “I had an uncle. He too died, and now…”

“What then would persuade you to go into service…when you are clearly meant for better things?”

She was suddenly angry, though even she didn’t quite understand why. Perhaps for being reminded she was so impossibly far beneath him. Perhaps for his attempts to persuade her to forget the gulf that was meant to be a protection to her. “I’m very well suited to it,” she answered defensively. “Better than you can imagine. This is the life I have chosen. And for good reason.”

“Chosen?”

She had said too much. “You will do well to remember it.”

“You do not make it very easy.”

“You blame me?”

“No, it’s just that—”

“It is impossible for me to forget.” At least it was impossible, as he looked at her in that way, to forget what had brought her to this. And why she could never be quite raised from it. “I cannot be persuaded to forget.”

As if he had read her mind, or perhaps it was the logical response—logic was not her closest ally these days—he replied, “Claire will raise you. I think you mean to let her.”

“A lady’s maid is still a servant, sir. Well beneath your notice.”

“Like now, do you mean?” His gaze swept over her frame, making a point of the gown that Claire had given her, and that she had been persuaded to wear.

Imogen had no answer for this. She moved again toward the centre of the room, and gazed red-faced upon the insect-strewn walls. How had she found herself in such an impossible predicament? Why had she come here, of all places? Here where her uncle’s name had been known? Here, where perhaps the only man on earth existed who could tempt her to regret what she had given up?

“I’m very grateful to her,” Imogen said eventually. “I have my doubts, however, in regard to what she will truly be able to do for me.”

“You underestimate her power of influence.”

She looked to him. “No. I believe in it wholeheartedly.”

“It’s yourself you doubt, then?”

She did not answer this, and found, as he persisted in examining her so, that she must look away.

“Miss Shaw,” he said, placing his hand on her arm, very near her wrist. “If there’s any way I can help you…”

What was he saying? How had her words, the words meant to discourage him, to remind him of his place—and hers—how had these drawn him on to this?

“Will you tell me, please, if there is any way I can be of service to you? If there is anything I might do to relieve you of your present distress?”

His hand met hers. For only an instant. She stepped away from him, her heart pounding hard and fast. “What are you saying?”

“I think it’s quite plain.”

“No. It isn’t plain at all. You have not thought.”

He did not answer, and she deemed from his silence the confession.

“Are you trying to tell me, Mr. Hamilton,” she asked him, her eyes flashing with the anger and confusion, with the shame and fear she felt, “that you would defy class barriers, defy your uncle, turn your back on everything for a common servant? Or are you suggesting something else, entirely?”

Still he had no answer, and so, interpreting from his silence his uncertainty, she sought for some further objection she might give. She had dared believe in others before and had been wholly disabused of her foolishness. It would not, could not be allowed to happen again. Ever again. She was truly angry now. Angry for allowing herself to feel anything for this man who could not want more from her than Mr. Lionel Osborn had ever wished to gain. Or that others (perhaps poor Charlie’s mother) had ever had any right to hope for.

“I have seen enough Betty Masons in my life to prevent me from being tempted to that fate. Excuse me,” she said at last and moved to the door.

She might have passed through it too, had Claire not blocked her way. The collision brought the package she was carrying crashing to the ground. Imogen stopped and looked.

“I’m so sorry!” she said. “Is it broken?”

Claire picked it up and laid it carefully on a table, where she began to unwrap it. “I think the paper will have protected it,” she said with a smile that was meant to comfort but made Imogen feel all the worse. She remained, trembling and uncertain, grateful for Claire’s intervention and yet desperate to be on her own where she could think.

The package was soon unwrapped, revealing yet another of Mr. Hamilton’s butterflies.

“A Blue Morpho,” he said in wonder, and moved to stand beside his cousin.

“From Brazil. And it took an age to get here.”

Hesitantly, Imogen approached, and peering through the space between them, she observed the insect. For all the excitement, it was rather unimpressive. A brown, drab thing with spotted wing.

“It is not blue?” she asked, confused.

Mr. Hamilton turned to examine her, once more too intently for her comfort. “Why should it be blue, Miss Shaw?” he asked her. “What one appears to be and what one is are very often different things entirely.”

She could not answer him just at first, but at last found it necessary to say something, to break the spell he seemed determined to cast. “Very well, Mr. Hamilton. I will believe you.” And she found it very easy to do. Too easy.

He took up the box, still half wrapped in paper, and placed it into her hands. The insect did not improve upon closer inspection, but there seemed to be a purpose to the gesture, or so she esteemed as she looked up to find him watching her, his grey-blue eyes searching her countenance for something. She handed the package back to him, but instead of taking it from her, he removed the rest of the wrappings and turned it over. It was a special box, this, with glass on both sides so that the wings could be seen from top and bottom. What she had seen before had been the underside. Revealed to her now were wings iridescent blue and framed with a black border. The exact colour of her dress.

“Extraordinary, is it not?” he said, and brushing his warm hands against her cold and trembling ones, he took the box from her before Claire could remark upon the long and ragged crack that ran the length of the glass. The butterfly, though otherwise unharmed, had suffered the loss of some dust from its wings, which now stuck to the ruined glass.

“I am so very sorry,” Imogen said. “I have ruined it.”

“There is no harm done, Miss Shaw.” And with an earnest look, he placed the butterfly, blue side facing, on the mantle just beneath the great moth.

Imogen took a last glimpse around the room. The insects were quite fascinating, beautiful, she could not argue that. And though she could appreciate them now as Mr. Hamilton saw them, still, her eyes could not quite see past the hundreds of pins that held each winged creature to its fixed place within a box made of fragile glass. What was it about these insects that disturbed her so? Why did she feel so threatened by their presence—here?

“Excuse me,” she said again, and without another word, she left the room for the solace of her own.





She gazed upon the insect-strewn walls.