She was a true prophet. At midnight of the next day he crept wearily up the stairs, a feeble, disheveled, miserable figure, with a pale, peaked face, and faded, watery eyes. Taking refuge in bed, he arose no more for over a month.
These days of terror and anxiety were telling seriously on the Butterfly, ever a fragile being, who hung to earth seemingly by the most delicate thread. The pity of it was that she loved life so. Even as it had disclosed itself to her, full of disappointment, of tragedy, heartache and humiliation, with want menacing her daily and trouble elbowing her at every step, still she loved it. Her ideal was not particularly exalted. Given pretty clothes and surroundings, a few pleasant friends, a modest retinue of moths to circle round her and a few gold pieces to jingle in her purse, and she could squeeze joy out of life still. But remember she was a butterfly.
CHAPTER VII.
OPPORTUNITY.
“A new friend is a new fortune.”
You have sometimes known happiness, eh? Yes, the happiness of others.
—Aresene Houssaye.
One Sunday morning Mrs. Doring sat at a window, making a sketch of a figure she saw on the opposite side of the street, when Chrissalyn, who had entered by the open door, went near and looked over her shoulder with the familiarity of close friendship.
“Why, how wonderful!” she exclaimed, the most flattering admiration in her voice and face. “That’s Gabriel Norris, the street preacher, a local celebrity. You’ve done him to perfection—even better than he looks himself—that is, I see something in his expression here that I never saw in him, and yet I believe he has it after all. The picture brings it out strong. I can’t tell just what it is, but it makes me want to cry.”
The eyes of the sketcher glowed with an indescribable light—the light which the intangible, potent, holy thing we call appreciation calls from the depths of human souls. To portray nature so that the most heedless and untaught see the soul of the subject and are able for the moment to roam about in that awesome country,—with the artist, and feel his heart-throbs—is ever the dream of art. By the effect of her work on the Butterfly, Cartice realized that in this modest drawing she had accomplished this.
“There, he is moving on and the boys he has been talking to are going with him,” said Chrissalyn, leaning out of the window. “He preaches every Sunday morning at the South Market, and is probably on his way there now. He is a queer fellow, though he belongs to a rich and respectable family who are greatly mortified at his peculiar doings. But he hasn’t lived with them for ten years, nor taken a cent from them. He has a little cobbler’s shop away down town in the very ugliest part of the city, and supports himself making and mending shoes, and does excellent work, they say. On Sundays, and other odd times he preaches to people who are too poor to go to church, and does lots of other things for them besides. You see he is cheaply dressed, though as clean as a pin. He could have better clothes, but doesn’t want them—has views about such things—says he does not want to be separated from the people he tries to help by being better dressed than they are. Of course he is an out-and-out crank, but wasn’t always so. A dozen years ago nobody was fonder of the good things of the world. He was the leader of the very swellest social doings. All at once he took a turn in the opposite direction—said he had been wasting his life, and was going to put what remained of it to some use. Some say an unlucky love affair set him off; others that he had a dream or vision that changed him. At this very moment I dare say his father and family are rolling to church—the swellest church here—in their fine carriage. But Gabriel preaches against the rich—or at least against the selfish use they make of their money, and prophesies no end of difficulty for them here and hereafter if they keep on as they are going. I have always laughed at him, but I never shall again, because your picture of him gives me a queer thrill and lets me see into him as I never did before. But how did you get the features, the expression,—everything so perfect, seeing him only from the window?”