The Butterfly House | Page 2

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, although without knowing it.
It was also patronised, and to a greater extent, by little Mrs. Wilbur
Edes, very little indeed, so little as to be almost symbolic of Fairbridge
itself, but elegant in every detail, so elegant as to arrest the eye of
everybody as she entered the train, holding up the tail of her black lace
gown. Mrs. Edes doted on black lace. Her small, fair face peered with a
curious calm alertness from under the black plumes of her great picture
hat, perched sidewise upon a carefully waved pale gold pompadour,
which was perfection and would have done credit to the best
hairdresser or the best French maid in New York, but which was
achieved solely by Mrs. Wilbur Edes' own native wit and skilful

fingers.
Mrs. Wilbur Edes, although small, was masterly in everything, from
waving a pompadour to conducting theatricals. She herself was the star
dramatic performer