The Butterfly House

By
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

Author of
“A Humble Romance,” “A New England Nun,”
“The Winning Lady,” etc.

With illustrations by
Paul Julien Meylan

New York
Dodd, Mead and Company
1912

Chapter I

Fairbridge, the little New Jersey village, or rather city (for it had won municipal government some years before, in spite of the protest of far-seeing citizens who descried in the distance bonded debts out of proportion to the tiny shoulders of the place), was a misnomer. Often a person, being in Fairbridge for the first time, and being driven by way of entertainment about the rural streets, would inquire, “Why Fairbridge?”

Bridges there were none, except those over which the trains thundered to and from New York, and the adjective, except to old inhabitants who had a curious fierce loyalty for the place, did not seemingly apply. Fairbridge could hardly, by an unbiassed person who did not dwell in the little village and view its features through the rosy glamour of home life, be called “fair.” There were a few pretty streets, with well-kept sidewalks, and ambitious, although small houses, and there were many lovely bits of views to be obtained, especially in the green flush of spring, and the red glow of autumn over the softly swelling New Jersey landscape with its warm red soil to the distant rise of low blue hills; but it was not fair enough in a general way to justify its name. Yet Fairbridge it was, without bridge, or natural beauty, and no mortal knew why. The origin of the name was lost in the petty mist of a petty past.

Fairbridge was tragically petty, inasmuch as it saw itself great. In Fairbridge narrowness reigned, nay, tyrannised, and was not recognised as such. There was something fairly uncanny about Fairbridge's influence upon people after they had lived there even a few years. The influence held good, too, in the cases of men who daily went to business or professions in New York. Even Wall Street was no sinecure. Back they would come at night, and the terrible, narrow maelstrom of pettiness sucked them in. All outside interest was as naught. International affairs seemed insignificant when once one was really in Fairbridge.

Fairbridge, although rampant when local politics were concerned, had no regard whatever for those of the nation at large, except as they involved Fairbridge. Fairbridge, to its own understanding, was a nucleus, an ultimatum. It was an example of the triumph of the infinitesimal. It saw itself through a microscope and loomed up gigantic. Fairbridge was like an insect, born with the conviction that it was an elephant. There was at once something ludicrous, and magnificent, and terrible about it. It had the impressiveness of the abnormal and prehistoric. In one sense, it was prehistoric. It was as a giant survivor of a degenerate species.

Withal, it was puzzling. People if pinned down could not say why, in Fairbridge, the little was so monstrous, whether it depended upon local conditions, upon the general population, or upon a few who had an undue estimation of themselves and all connected with them. Was Fairbridge great because of its inhabitants, or were the inhabitants great because of Fairbridge? Who could say? And why was Fairbridge so important that its very smallness overwhelmed that which, by the nature of things, seemed overwhelming? Nobody knew, or rather, so tremendous was the power of the small in the village, that nobody inquired.

It is entirely possible that had there been any delicate gauge of mentality, the actual swelling of the individual in his own estimation as he neared Fairbridge after a few hours' absence, might have been apparent. Take a broker on Wall Street, for instance, or a lawyer who had threaded his painful way to the dim light of understanding through the intricate mazes of the law all day, as his train neared his loved village. From an atom that went to make up the motive power of a great metropolis, he himself became an entirety. He was It with a capital letter. No wonder that under the circumstances Fairbridge had charms that allured, that people chose it for suburban residences, that the small, ornate, new houses with their perky little towers and æsthetic diamond-paned windows, multiplied.

Fairbridge was in reality very artistically planned as to the sites of its houses. Instead of the regulation Main Street of the country village, with its centre given up to shops and post-office, side streets wound here and there, and houses were placed with a view to effect.

The Main Street of Fairbridge was as naught from a social point of view. Nobody of any social importance lived there. Even the physicians had their residences and offices in a more aristocratic locality. Upon the Main Street proper, that which formed the centre of the village, there were only shops and a schoolhouse and one or two mean public buildings. For a village of the self-importance of Fairbridge, the public buildings were very few and very mean. There was no city hall worthy of the name of this little city which held its head so high. The City Hall, so designated by ornate gilt letters upon the glass panel of a very small door, occupied part of the building in which was the post-office. It was a tiny building, two stories high. On the second floor was the millinery shop of Mrs. Creevy, and behind it the two rooms in which she kept house with her daughter Jessy.

On the lower floor was the post-office on the right, filthy with the foot tracks of the Fairbridge children who crowded it in a noisy rabble twice a day, and perpetually red-stained with the shale of New Jersey, brought in upon the boots of New Jersey farmers, who always bore about with them a goodly portion of their native soil. On the left, was the City Hall. This was vacant except upon the first Monday of every month, when the janitor of the Dutch Reformed Church, who eked out a scanty salary with divers other tasks, got himself to work, and slopped pails of water over the floor, then swept, and built a fire, if in winter.

Upon the evenings of these first Mondays the Mayor and city officials met and made great talk over small matters, and with the labouring of a mountain, brought forth mice. The City Hall was closed upon other occasions, unless the village talent gave a play for some local benefit. Fairbridge was intensely dramatic, and it was popularly considered that great, natural, histrionic gifts were squandered upon the Fairbridge audiences, appreciative though they were. Outside talent was never in evidence in Fairbridge. No theatrical company had ever essayed to rent that City Hall. People in Fairbridge put that somewhat humiliating fact from their minds. Nothing would have induced a loyal citizen to admit that Fairbridge was too small game for such purposes. There was a tiny theatre in the neighbouring city of Axminister, which had really some claims to being called a city, from tradition and usage, aside from size. Axminister was an ancient Dutch city, horribly uncomfortable, but exceedingly picturesque. Fairbridge looked down upon it, and seldom patronised the shows (they never said “plays”) staged in its miniature theatre. When they did not resort to their own City Hall for entertainment by local talent, they arrayed themselves in their best and patronised New York itself.

New York did not know that it was patronised, but Fairbridge knew. When Mr. and Mrs. George B. Slade boarded the seven o'clock train, Mrs. Slade, tall, and majestically handsome, arrayed most elegantly, and crowned with a white hat (Mrs. Slade always affected white hats with long drooping plumes upon such occasions), and George B., natty in his light top coat, standing well back upon the heels of his shiny shoes, with the air of the wealthy and well-assured, holding a belted cigar in the tips of his grey-gloved fingers, New York was most distinctly patronised,