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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the
+Butterfly Man, by Marie Conway Oemler
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man
+
+Author: Marie Conway Oemler
+
+Release Date: May 17, 2005 [EBook #15843]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SLIPPY MCGEE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Janet Kegg, Jeannie Howse and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+     SLIPPY McGEE
+
+     SOMETIMES KNOWN AS
+     THE BUTTERFLY MAN
+
+     BY
+     MARIE CONWAY OEMLER
+
+
+     NEW YORK
+     THE CENTURY CO.
+     1920
+
+
+     1917, by
+     THE CENTURY CO.
+
+
+     Published, April, 1917.
+     Reprinted, August, 1917; February, 1918;
+     August, 1918; March, 1919; August, 1919;
+     November, 1919; February, 1920.
+
+
+     TO
+     ELIZABETH AND ALAN OEMLER
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+    I have known life and love, I have known death and disaster;
+    Foregathered with fools, succumbed to sin, been not unacquainted
+        with shame;
+    Doubted, and yet held fast to a faith no doubt could o'ermaster.
+    Won and lost:--and I know it was all a part of the Game.
+
+    Youth and the dreams of youth, hope, and the triumph of sorrow:
+    I took as they came, I played them all; and I trumped the trick
+        when I could.
+    And now, O Mover of Men, let the end be to-day or to-morrow--
+    I have staked and played for Myself, and You and the Game were good!
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                                      PAGE
+
+    I APPLEBORO                                                 3
+   II THE COMING OF SLIPPY McGEE                               19
+  III NEIGHBORS                                                37
+   IV UNDERWINGS                                               48
+    V ENTER KERRY                                              65
+   VI "THY SERVANT WILL GO AND FIGHT WITH THIS PHILISTINE."
+      1 SAM. 17-32                                             94
+  VII THE GOING OF SLIPPY McGEE                               111
+ VIII THE BUTTERFLY MAN                                       131
+   IX NESTS                                                   145
+    X THE BLUEJAY                                             172
+   XI A LITTLE GIRL GROWN UP                                  189
+  XII JOHN FLINT, GENTLEMAN                                   203
+ XIII "EACH IN HIS OWN COIN"                                  226
+  XIV THE WISHING CURL                                        258
+   XV IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT                              283
+  XVI "WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR"                          302
+ XVII "--SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY--"                        319
+XVIII ST. STANISLAUS CROOKS HIS ELBOW                         343
+  XIX THE I O U OF SLIPPY McGEE                               364
+   XX BETWEEN A BUTTERFLY'S WINGS                             382
+
+
+
+
+SLIPPY McGEE
+
+
+
+
+CHARACTERS
+
+
+FATHER ARMAND JEAN DE RANCÉ, Catholic Priest of Appleboro, South Carolina
+MADAME DE RANCÉ, his Mother
+CLÉLIE, their Servant
+LAURENCE MAYNE, the Boy
+MARY VIRGINIA EUSTIS, the Girl
+JAMES EUSTIS, Man of the New South
+MRS. EUSTIS, a Lady
+DOCTOR WALTER WESTMORELAND, the Beloved Physician
+JIM DABNEY, Editor of the Appleboro "Clarion"
+MAJOR APPLEBY CARTWRIGHT }
+MISS SALLY RUTH DEXTER   } Neighbors
+JUDGE HAMMOND MAYNE      }
+GEORGE INGLESBY, the Boss of Appleboro
+J. HOWARD HUNTER, his Private Secretary
+KERRY, an Irish Setter
+PITACHE, the Parish House Dog
+THE MOTHS AND BUTTERFLIES OF SOUTH CAROLINA
+THE CHILDREN, THE MILL-HANDS, THE FACTORY FOLKS, and
+SLIPPY MCGEE, sometimes known as the Butterfly Man
+
+
+
+
+SLIPPY McGEE
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+APPLEBORO
+
+
+"Now there was my cousin Eliza," Miss Sally Ruth Dexter once said to
+me, "who was forced to make her home for thirty years in Vienna! She
+married an attaché of the Austrian legation, you know; met him while
+she was visiting in Washington, and she was such a pretty girl and he
+was such a charming man that they fell in love with each other and got
+married. Afterward his family procured him a very influential post at
+court, and of course poor Cousin Eliza had to stay there with him.
+Dear mama often said she considered it a most touching proof of
+woman's willingness to sacrifice herself--for there's no doubt it must
+have been very hard on poor Cousin Eliza. She was born and raised
+right here in Appleboro, you see."
+
+Do not think that Miss Sally Ruth was anything but most transparently
+sincere in thus sympathizing with the sad fate of poor Cousin Eliza,
+who was born and raised in Appleboro, South Carolina, and yet
+sacrificed herself by dragging out thirty years of exile in the court
+circles of Vienna! Any trueborn Appleboron would be equally sorry for
+Cousin Eliza for the same reason that Miss Sally Ruth was. Get
+yourself born in South Carolina and you will comprehend.
+
+"What did you see in your travels that you liked most?" I was curious
+to discover from an estimable citizen who had spent a summer abroad.
+
+"Why, General Lee's standin' statue in the Capitol an' his recumbent
+figure in Washington an' Lee chapel, of co'se!" said the colonel
+promptly. "An' listen hyuh, Father De Rancé, I certainly needed him to
+take the bad taste out of my mouth an' the red out of my eye after
+viewin' Bill Sherman on a brass hawse in New York, with an angel
+that'd lost the grace of God prancin' on ahead of him!" He added
+reflectively: "I had my own ideah as to where any angel leadin' _him_
+was most likely headed for!"
+
+"Oh, I meant in Europe!" hastily.
+
+"Well, father, I saw pretty near everything in Europe, I reckon;
+likewise New York. But comin' home I ran up to Washington an' Lee to
+visit the general lyin' there asleep, an' it just needed one glance to
+assure me that the greatest an' grandest work of art in this round
+world was right there before me! What do folks want to rush off to
+foreign parts for, where they can't talk plain English an' a man can't
+get a satisfyin' meal of home cookin', when we've got the greatest
+work of art an' the best hams ever cured, right in Virginia? See
+America first, I say. Why, suh, I was so glad to get back to good old
+Appleboro that I let everybody else wait until I'd gone around to the
+monument an' looked up at our man standin' there on top of it, an' I
+found myself sayin' over the names he's guardin' as if I was sayin' my
+prayers: _our names_.
+
+"Uh huh, Europe's good enough for Europeans an' the Nawth's a God's
+plenty good enough for Yankees, but Appleboro for me. Why, father,
+they haven't got anything like our monument to their names!"
+
+They haven't. And I should hate to think that any Confederate living
+or dead ever even remotely resembled the gray granite one on our
+monument. He is a brigandish and bearded person in a foraging cap,
+leaning forward to rest himself on his gun. His long skirted coat is
+buckled tightly about his waist to form a neat bustle effect in the
+back, and the solidity of his granite shoes and the fell rigidity of
+his granite breeches are such as make the esthetic shudder; one has to
+admit that as a work of art he is almost as bad as the statues
+cluttering New York City. But in Appleboro folks are not critical;
+they see him not with the eyes of art but with the deeper vision of
+the heart. He stands for something that is gone on the wind and the
+names he guards are our names.
+
+This is not irrelevant. It is merely to explain something that is
+inherent in the living spirit of all South Carolina; wherefore it
+explains my Appleboro, the real inside-Appleboro.
+
+Outwardly Appleboro is just one of those quiet, conservative, old
+Carolina towns where, loyal to the customs and traditions of their
+fathers, they would as lief white-wash what they firmly believe to be
+the true and natural character of General William Tecumseh Sherman as
+they would their own front fences. Occasionally somebody will give a
+backyard henhouse a needed coat or two; but a front fence? Never! It
+isn't the thing. Nobody does it. All normal South Carolinians come
+into the world with a native horror of paint and whitewash and they
+depart hence even as they were born. In consequence, towns like
+Appleboro take on the venerable aspect of antiquity, peacefully
+drowsing among immemorial oaks draped with long, gray, melancholy
+moss.
+
+Not that we are cut off from the world, or that we have escaped the
+clutch of commerce. We have the usual shops and stores, even an
+emporium or two, and street lights until twelve, and the mills and
+factory. We have the river trade, and two railroads tap our rich
+territory to fetch and carry what we take and give. And, except in the
+poor parish of which I, Armand De Rancé, am pastor, and some few
+wealthy families like the Eustises, Agur's wise and noble prayer has
+been in part granted to us; for if it has not been possible to remove
+far from us all vanity and lies, yet we have been given neither
+poverty nor riches, and we are fed with food convenient for us.
+
+In Appleboro the pleasant and prejudiced Old looks askance at the
+noisy and intruding New, before which, it is forced to retreat--always
+without undue or undignified haste, however, and always unpainted and
+unreconstructed. It is a town where families live in houses that have
+sheltered generations of the same name, using furniture that was not
+new when Marion's men hid in the swamps and the redcoats overran the
+country-side. Almost everybody has a garden, full of old-fashioned
+shrubs and flowers, and fine trees. In such a place men and women grow
+old serenely and delightfully, and youth flourishes all the fairer for
+the rich soil which has brought it forth.
+
+One has twenty-four hours to the day in a South Carolina town--plenty
+of time to live in, so that one can afford to do things unhurriedly
+and has leisure to be neighborly. For you do have neighbors here. It
+is true that they know all your business and who and what your
+grandfather was and wasn't, and they are prone to discuss it with a
+frankness to make the scalp prickle. But then, you know theirs, too,
+and you are at liberty to employ the same fearsome frankness, provided
+you do it politely and are not speaking to an outsider. It is
+perfectly permissible for _you_ to say exactly what you please about
+your own people to your own people, but should an outsider and an
+alien presume to do likewise, the Carolina code admits of but one
+course of conduct; borrowing the tactics of the goats against the
+wolf, they close in shoulder to shoulder and present to the audacious
+intruder an unbroken and formidable front of horns.
+
+And it is the last place left in all America where decent poverty is
+in nowise penalized. You can be poor pleasantly--a much rarer and far
+finer art than being old gracefully. Because of this, life in South
+Carolina sometimes retains a simplicity as fine and sincere as it is
+charming.
+
+I deplore the necessity, but I will be pardoned if I pause here to
+become somewhat personal, to explain who and what I am and how I came
+to be a pastor in Appleboro. To explain myself, then, I shall have to
+go back to a spring morning long ago, when I was not a poor parish
+priest, no, nor ever dreamed of becoming one, but was young Armand De
+Rancé, a flower-crowned and singing pagan, holding up to the morning
+sun the chalice of spring; joyous because I was of a perishable
+beauty, dazzled because life gave me so much, proud of an old and
+honored name, secure in ancestral wealth, loving laughter so much that
+I looked with the raised eyebrow and the twisted lip at austerities
+and prayers.
+
+If ever I reflected at all, it was to consider that I had nothing to
+pray for, save that things might ever remain as they were: that I
+should remain me, myself, young Armand De Rancé, loving and above all
+beloved of that one sweet girl whom I loved with all my heart. Young,
+wealthy, strong, beautiful, loving, and beloved! To hold all that,
+crowded into the hollow of one boyish hand! Oh, it was too much!
+
+I do not think I had ever felt my own happiness so exquisitely as I
+did upon that day which was to see the last of it. I was to go
+a-Maying with her who had ever been as my own soul, since we were
+children playing together. So I rode off to her home, an old house set
+in its walled inclosure by the river. At the door somebody met me,
+calling me by my name. I thought at first it had been a stranger. It
+was her mother. And while I stood staring at her changed face she took
+me by the hand and began to whisper in my ear ... what I had to know.
+Blindly, like one bludgeoned on the head, I followed her into a
+darkened room, and saw what lay there with closed eyes and hair still
+wet from the river into which my girl had cast herself.
+
+No, I cannot put into words just what had happened; indeed, I never
+really knew all. There was no public scandal, only great sorrow. But I
+died that morning. The young and happy part of me died, and, only
+half-alive I walked about among the living, dragging about with me the
+corpse of what had been myself. Crushed by this horrible burden which
+none saw but I, I was blind to the beauties of earth and deaf to the
+mercies of heaven, until a great Voice called me to come out of the
+sepulcher of myself; and I came--alive again, and free, of a strong
+spirit, but with youth gone from it. Out of the void of an
+irremediable disaster God had called me to His service, chastened and
+humbled.
+
+"_Who is weak and I am not weak? who is offended and I burn not?_"
+
+And yet, although I knew my decision was irrevocable, I did not find
+it easy to tell my mother. Then:
+
+"Little mother of my heart," I blurted, "my career is decided. I have
+been called. I am for the Church."
+
+We were in her pleasant morning room, a beautiful room, and the lace
+curtains were pushed aside to allow free ingress of air and sunlight.
+Between the windows hung two objects my mother most greatly
+cherished--one an enameled Petitot miniature, gold-framed, of a man in
+the flower of his youth. His hair, beautiful as the hair of Absalom,
+falls about his haughty, high-bred face, and so magnificently is he
+clothed that when I was a child I used to associate him in my mind
+with those "_captains and rulers, clothed most gorgeously, all of them
+desirable young men, ... girdled with a girdle upon their loins,
+exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look
+to" ... whom Aholibah "doted upon when her eyes saw them portrayed
+upon the walls in vermilion_."
+
+The other is an Audran engraving of that same man grown old and
+stripped of beauty and of glory, as the leaf that falls and the flower
+that fades. The somber habit of an order has replaced scarlet and
+gold; and sackcloth, satin. Between the two pictures hangs an old
+crucifix. For that is Armand De Rancé, glorious sinner, handsomest,
+wealthiest, most gifted man of his day--and his a day of glorious men;
+and this is Armand De Rancé, become the sad austere reformer of La
+Trappe.
+
+My mother rose, walked over to the Abbé's pictures, and looked long
+and with rather frightened eyes at him. Perhaps there was something in
+the similarity to his of the fate which had come upon me who bore his
+name, which caused her to turn so pale. I also am an Armand De Rancé,
+of a cadet branch of that great house, which emigrated to the New
+World when we French were founding colonies on the banks of the
+Mississippi.
+
+Her hand went to her heart. Turning, she regarded me pitifully.
+
+"Oh, no, not that!" I reassured her. "I am at once too strong and not
+strong enough for solitude and silence. Surely there is room and work
+for one who would serve God through serving his fellow men, in the
+open, is there not?"
+
+At that she kissed me. Not a whimper, although I am an only son and
+the name dies with me, the old name of which she was so beautifully
+proud! She had hoped to see my son wear my father's name and face and
+thus bring back the lost husband she had so greatly loved; she had
+prayed to see my children about her knees, and it must have cost her a
+frightful anguish to renounce these sweet and consoling dreams, these
+tender and human ambitions. Yet she did so, smiling, and kissed me on
+the brow.
+
+Three months later I entered the Church; and because I was the last
+De Rancé, and twenty four, and the day was to have been my
+wedding-day, there fell upon me, sorely against my will, the halo of
+sad romance.
+
+Endeared thus to the young, I suppose I grew into what I might call a
+very popular preacher. Though I myself cannot see that I ever did much
+actual good, since my friends praised my sermons for their "fine
+Gallic flavor," and I made no enemies.
+
+But there was no rest for my spirit, until the Call came again, the
+Call that may not be slighted, and bade me leave my sheltered place,
+my pleasant lines, and go among the poor, to save my own soul alive.
+
+That is why and how the Bishop, my old and dear friend, after long
+argument and many protests, at length yielded and had me transferred
+from fashionable St. Jean Baptiste's to the poverty-stricken
+missionary parish of sodden laboring folk in a South Carolina
+coast-town: he meant to cure me, the good man! I should have the worst
+at the outset.
+
+"And I hope you understand," said he, sorrowfully, "that this step
+practically closes your career. Such a pity, for you could have gone
+so far! You might even have worn the red hat. It is not hoping too
+much that the last De Rancé, the namesake of the great Abbé, might
+have finished as an American cardinal! But God's will be done. If you
+must go, you must go."
+
+I said, respectfully, that I had to go.
+
+"Well, then, go and try it out to the uttermost," said the Bishop.
+"And it may be that, if you do not kill yourself with overwork, you
+may return to me cured, when you see the futility of the task you
+wish to undertake." But I was never again to see his kind face in this
+world.
+
+And then, as if to cut me off yet more completely from all ties, as if
+to render my decision irrevocable, it was permitted of Providence that
+the wheel of my fortune should take one last revolution. Henri Dupuis
+of the banking house which bore his name shot himself through the head
+one fine morning, and as he had been my guardian and was still the
+executor of my father's estate, the whole De Rancé fortune went down
+with him. All of it. Even the old house went, the old house which had
+sheltered so many of the name these two hundred years. If I could have
+grieved for anything it would have been that. Nothing was left except
+the modest private fortune long since secured to my mother by my
+father's affection. It had been a bridal gift, intended to cover her
+personal expenses, her charities, and her pretty whims. Now it was to
+stand between her and want.
+
+Stripped all but bare, and with one servant left of all our staff, we
+turned our backs upon our old life, our old home, and faced the world
+anew, in a strange place where nothing was familiar, and where I who
+had begun so differently was destined to grow into what I have since
+become--just an old priest, with but small reputation outside of his
+few friends and poor working-folks. There! That is quite enough of
+_me_!
+
+There was one pleasant feature of our new home that rejoiced me for my
+mother's sake. From the very first she found neighbors who were
+friendly and charming. Now my mother, when we came to Appleboro, was
+still a beautiful woman, fair and rosy, with a profusion of _blonde
+cendre_ curls just beginning to whiten, a sweet and arch face, and
+eyes of clearest hazel, valanced with jet. She had been perhaps the
+loveliest and most beloved woman of that proud and select circle which
+is composed of families descended from the old noblesse, the most
+exclusive circle of New Orleans society. And, as she said, nothing
+could change nor alter the fact that no matter _what_ happened to us,
+we were still De Rancés!
+
+"Ah! And was it, then, a De Rancé who had the holy Mother of God
+painted in a family picture, with a scroll issuing from her lips
+addressing him as 'My Cousin'?" I asked, slyly.
+
+"If it was, nobody in the world had a better right!" said she stoutly.
+
+Thus the serene and unquestioning faith of their estimate of
+themselves in the scheme of things, as evidenced by these Carolina
+folk around her, caused Madame De Rancé neither surprise nor
+amusement. She understood. She shared many of their prejudices, and
+she of all women could appreciate a pride that was almost equal to her
+own. When they initiated her into the inevitable and inescapable
+Carolina game of Matching Grandfathers, she always had a Roland for
+their Oliver; and as they generally came back with an Oliver to match
+her Roland, all the players retired with equal honors and mutual
+respect. Every door in Appleboro at once opened wide to Madame De
+Rancé. The difference in religion was obviated by the similarity of
+Family.
+
+Fortunately, too, the Church and Parish House were not in the mill
+district itself, a place shoved aside, full of sordid hideousness,
+ribboned with railroad tracks, squalid with boarding-houses never free
+from the smell of bad cooking, sinister with pawnshops, miserable with
+depressingly ugly rows of small houses where the hands herded, and all
+of it darkened by the grim shadow of the great red brick mills
+themselves. Instead, our Church sits on a tree-shaded corner in the
+old town, and the roomy white-piazza'd Parish House is next door,
+embowered in the pleasantest of all gardens.
+
+That garden reconciled my mother to her exile, for I am afraid she had
+regarded Appleboro with somewhat of the attitude of the castaway
+sailor toward a desert island--a refuge after shipwreck, but a desert
+island nevertheless, a place which cuts off one from one's world. And
+when at first the poor, uncouth, sullen creatures who were a part of
+my new charge, frightened and dismayed her, there was always the
+garden to fly to for consolation. If she couldn't plant seeds of order
+and cleanliness and morality and thrift in the sterile soil of poor
+folks' minds, she could always plant seeds of color and beauty and
+fragrance in her garden and be surer of the result. That garden was my
+delight, too. I am sure no other equal space ever harbored so many
+birds and bees and butterflies; and its scented dusks was the paradise
+of moths. Great wonderful fellows clothed in kings' raiment, little
+chaps colored like flowers and seashells and rainbows, there the airy
+cohorts of the People of the Sky wheeled and danced and fluttered. Now
+my grandfather and my father had been the friends of Audubon and of
+Agassiz, and I myself had been the correspondent of Riley and Scudder
+and Henry Edwards, for I love the People of the Sky more than all
+created things. And when I watched them in my garden, I am sure it was
+they who lent my heart their wings to lift it above the misery and
+overwork and grief which surrounded me; I am sure I should have sunk
+at times, if God had not sent me my little friends, the moths and
+butterflies.
+
+Our grounds join Miss Sally Ruth Dexter's on one side and Judge
+Hammond Mayne's are just behind us; so that the Judge's black Daddy
+January can court our yellow Clélie over one fence, with coy and
+delicate love-gifts of sugar-cane and sweet-potato pone in season; and
+Miss Sally Ruth's roosters and ours can wholeheartedly pick each
+other's eyes out through the other all the year round. These are fowls
+with so firm a faith in the Mosaic code of an eye for an eye that when
+Miss Sally Ruth has six blind of the right eye we have five blind of
+the left. We are at times stung by the Mayne bees, but freely and
+bountifully supplied with the Mayne honey, a product of fine flavor.
+And our little dog Pitache made it the serious business of his life to
+keep the Mayne cats in what he considered their proper bounds.
+
+Major Appleby Cartwright, our neighbor to the other side of Miss Sally
+Ruth, has a theory that not alone by our fruits, but by our animals,
+shall we be known for what we are. He insists that Pitache wags his
+tail and barks in French and considers all cats Protestants, and that
+Miss Sally Ruth's hens are all Presbyterians at heart, in spite of the
+fact that her roosters are Mormons. The Major likewise insists that
+you couldn't possibly hope to know the real Judge Hammond Mayne unless
+you knew his pet cats. You admire that calm and imperturbable
+dignity, that sphinxlike and yet vigilant poise of bearing which has
+made Judge Mayne so notable an ornament of the bench? It is purely
+feline: "He caught it from his cats, suh: he caught every God-blessed
+bit of it from his cats!"
+
+As one may perceive, we have delicious neighbors!
+
+When we had been settled in Appleboro a little more than a year, and I
+had gotten the parish wheels running fairly smooth, we discovered that
+by my mother's French house-keeping, that exquisitely careful
+house-keeping which uses everything and wastes nothing, my salary was
+going to be quite sufficient to cover our modest ménage, thus leaving
+my mother's own income practically intact. We could use it in the
+parish; but there was so much to be done for that parish that we were
+rather at a loss where to begin, or what one thing to accomplish among
+so many things crying aloud. But finally, tackling what seemed to us
+the worst of these crying evils, we were able to turn the two empty
+rooms upstairs into what Madame pleasantly called Guest Rooms, thus
+remedying, to the best of our ability, the absolute lack of any
+accommodation for the sick and injured poor. And as time passed, these
+Guest Rooms, so greatly needed, proved not how much but how little we
+could do. We could only afford to maintain two beds on our small
+allowance, for they had to be absolutely free, to help those for whom
+they were intended--poor folks in immediate and dire need, for whom
+the town had no other place except an insanitary room in the jail. You
+could be born and baptized in the Guest Rooms, or shriven and sent
+thence in hope. More often you were coaxed back to health under my
+mother's nursing and Clélie's cooking and the skill of Doctor Walter
+Westmoreland.
+
+No bill ever came to the Parish House from Dr. Walter Westmoreland,
+whom my poor people look upon as a direct act of Providence in their
+behalf. He is an enormous man, big and ruddy and baldheaded and
+clean-shaven, with the shoulders of a coal-heaver and legs like a pair
+of twin oaks. He is rather absent-minded, but he never forgets the
+down-and-out Guest Roomers, and he has a genius for remembering the
+mill-children. These are his dear and special charge.
+
+Westmoreland is a great doctor who chooses to live in a small town; he
+says you can save as many lives in a little town as a big one, and
+folks need you more. He is a socialist who looks upon rich people as
+being merely poor people with money; an idealist, who will tell you
+bluntly that revelations haven't ceased; they've only changed for the
+better.
+
+Westmoreland has the courage of a gambler and the heart of a little
+child. He likes to lay a huge hand upon my shoulder and tell me to my
+teeth that heaven is a habit of heart and hell a condition of liver. I
+do not always agree with him; but along with everybody else in
+Appleboro, I love him. Of all the many goodnesses that God has shown
+me, I do not count it least that this good and kind man was sent in
+our need, to heal and befriend the broken and friendless waifs and
+strays who found for a little space a resting place in our Guest
+Rooms.
+
+And when I look back I know now that not lightly nor fortuitously was
+I uprooted from my place and my people and sent hither to impinge upon
+the lives of many who were to be dearer to me than all that had gone
+before; I was not idly sent to know and love Westmoreland, and Mary
+Virginia, and Laurence; and, above all, Slippy McGee, whom we of
+Appleboro call the Butterfly Man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE COMING OF SLIPPY MCGEE
+
+
+On a cold gray morning in December two members of my flock, Poles who
+spoke but little English and that little very badly, were on their way
+to their daily toil in the canning factory. It is a long walk from the
+Poles' quarters to the factory, and the workpeople must start early,
+for one is fined half an hour's time if one is five minutes late. The
+short-cut is down the railroad tracks that run through the mill
+district--for which cause we bury a yearly toll of the children of the
+poor.
+
+Just beyond the freight sheds, signal tower, and water tank, is a
+grade crossing where so many terrible things have happened that the
+colored people call that place Dead Man's Crossin' and warn you not to
+go by there of nights because the signal tower is haunted and Things
+lurk in the rank growth behind the water tank, coming out to show
+themselves after dark. If you _must_ pass it then you would better
+turn your coat inside out, pull down your sleeves over your hands, and
+be very careful to keep three fingers twisted for a Sign. This is a
+specific against most ha'nts, though by no means able to scare away
+all of them. Those at Dead Man's Crossin' are peculiarly malignant and
+hard to scare. Maum Jinkey Delette saw one there once, coming down the
+track faster than an express train, bigger than a cow, and waving
+both his legs in his hands. Poor old Maum Jinkey was so scared that
+she chattered her new false teeth out of her mouth, and she never
+found those teeth to the day of her death, but had to mumble along as
+best she could without them.
+
+Hurrying by Dead Man's Crossin', the workmen stumbled over a man lying
+beside the tracks; his clothing was torn to shreds, he was wet with
+the heavy night dew and covered with dirt, cinders, and partly
+congealed blood, for his right leg had been ground to pulp. Peering at
+this horrible object in the wan dusk of the early morning, they
+thought he was dead like most of the others found there.
+
+For a moment the men hesitated, wondering whether it wouldn't be
+better to leave him there to be found and removed by folks with more
+time at their disposal. One doesn't like to lose time and be
+consequently fined, on account of stopping to pick up a dead tramp;
+particularly when Christmas is drawing near and money so much needed
+that every penny counts.
+
+The thing on the ground, regaining for a fraction of a second a glint
+of half-consciousness, quivered, moaned feebly, and lay still again.
+Humanity prevailing, the Poles looked about for help, but as yet the
+place was quite deserted. Grumbling, they wrenched a shutter off the
+Agent's window, lifted the mangled tramp upon it, and made straight
+for the Parish House; when accidents such as this happened to men such
+as this, weren't the victims incontinently turned over to the Parish
+House people? Indeed, there wasn't any place else for them, unless one
+excepted the rough room at the jail; and the average small town
+jail--ours wasn't any exception to the rule--is a place where a
+decent veterinary would scruple to put a sick cur. With him the Poles
+brought his sole luggage, a package tied up in oilskin, which they had
+found lying partly under him.
+
+We had become accustomed to these sudden inroads of misfortune, so he
+was carried upstairs to the front Guest Room, fortunately just then
+empty. The Poles turned over to me the heavy package found with him,
+stolidly requested a note to the Boss explaining their necessary
+tardiness, and hurried away. They had done what they had to do, and
+they had no further interest in him. Nobody had any interest in one of
+the unknown tramps who got themselves killed or crippled at Dead Man's
+Crossin'.
+
+The fellow was shockingly injured and we had some strenuous days and
+nights with him, for that which had been a leg had to come off at the
+knee; he had lain in the cold for some hours, he had sustained a
+frightful shock, and he had lost considerable blood. I am sure that in
+the hands of any physician less skilled and determined than
+Westmoreland he must have gone out. But Westmoreland, with his jaw
+set, followed his code and fenced with death for this apparently
+worthless and forfeited life, using all his skill and finesse to
+outwit the great Enemy; in spite of which, so attenuated was the man's
+chance that we were astonished when he turned the corner--very, very
+feebly--and we didn't have to place another pine box in the potter's
+field, alongside other unmarked mounds whose occupants were other
+unknown men, grim causes of Dead Man's Crossin's sinister name.
+
+The effects of the merciful drugs that had kept him quiet in time wore
+away. Our man woke up one forenoon clear-headed, if hollow-eyed and
+mortally weak. He looked about the unfamiliar room with wan curiosity,
+then his eyes came to Clélie and myself, but he did not return the
+greetings of either. He just stared; he asked no questions. Presently,
+very feebly, he tried to move,--and found himself a cripple. He fell
+back upon his pillow, gasping. A horrible scream broke from his
+lips--a scream of brute rage and mortal fear, as of a trapped wild
+beast. He began to revile heaven and earth, the doctor, myself.
+Clélie, clapping her hands over her outraged ears, fled as if from
+fiends. Indeed, never before nor since have I heard such a frightful,
+inhuman power of profanity, such hideous oaths and threats. When
+breath failed him he lay spent and trembling, his chest rising and
+falling to his choking gasps.
+
+"You had better be thankful your life is spared you, young man," I
+said a trifle sharply, my nerves being somewhat rasped; for I had
+helped Westmoreland through more than one dreadful night, and I had
+sat long hours by his pillow, waiting for what seemed the passing of a
+soul.
+
+He glared. "Thankful?" he screamed, "Thankful, hell! I've got to have
+two good legs to make any sort of a getaway, haven't I? Well, have I
+got 'em? I'm down and out for fair, that's what! Thankful? You make me
+sick! Honest to God, when you gas like that I feel like bashing in
+your brain, if you've got any! You and your thankfulness!" He turned
+his quivering face and stared at the wall, winking. I wondered,
+heartsick, if I had ever seen a more hopelessly unprepossessing
+creature.
+
+It was not so much physical, his curious ugliness; the dreadful thing
+was that it seemed to be his spirit which informed his flesh, an
+inherent unloveliness of soul upon which the body was modeled, worked
+out faithfully, and so made visible. Figure to yourself one with the
+fine shape of the welter-weight, steel-muscled, lithe, powerful,
+springy, slim in the hips and waist, broad in the shoulders; the arms
+unusually long, giving him a terrible reach, the head round,
+well-shaped, covered with thick reddish hair; cold, light, and
+intelligent eyes, full of animosity and suspicion, reminding you
+unpleasantly of the rattlesnake's look, wary, deadly, and ready to
+strike. When he thought, his forehead wrinkled. His lips shut upon
+each other formidably and without softness, and the jaws thrust
+forward with the effect as of balled fists. One ear was slightly
+larger than the other, having the appearance of a swelling upon the
+lobe. In this unlovely visage, filled with distrust and concentrated
+venom, only the nose retained an incongruous and unexpected niceness.
+It was a good straight nose, yet it had something of the pleasant
+tiptiltedness of a child's. It was the sort of nose which should have
+complemented a mouth formed for spontaneous laughter. It looked
+lonesome and out of place in that set and lowering countenance, to
+which the red straggling stubble of beard sprouting over jaws and
+throat lent a more sinister note.
+
+We had had many a sad and terrible case in our Guest Rooms, but
+somehow this seemed the saddest, hardest and most hopeless we had yet
+encountered.
+
+For three weary weeks had we struggled with him, until the doctor,
+sighing with physical relief, said he was out of danger and needed
+only such nursing as he was sure to get.
+
+"One does one's duty as one finds it, of course," said the big doctor,
+looking down at the unpromising face on the pillow, and shaking his
+head. "Yes, yes, yes, one must do what's right, on the face of it,
+come what will. There's no getting around _that!_" He glanced at me, a
+shadow in his kind gray eyes. "But there are times, my friend, when I
+wonder! Now, this morning I had to tell a working man his wife's got
+to die. There's no help and no hope--she's got to die, and she a
+mother of young children. So I have to try desperately," said the
+doctor, rubbing his nose, "to cling tooth and claw to the hope that
+there is Something behind the scenes that knows the forward-end of
+things--sin and sorrow and disease and suffering and death things--and
+uses them always for some beneficent purpose. But in the meantime the
+mother dies, and here you and I have been used to save alive a poor
+useless devil of a one-legged tramp, probably without his consent and
+against his will, because it had to be and we couldn't do anything
+else! Now, why? I can't help but wonder!"
+
+We looked down again, the two of us, at the face on the pillow. And I
+wondered also, with even greater cause than the doctor; for I had
+opened the oilskin package the Poles found, and it had given me
+occasion for fear, reflection, and prayer. I was startled and alarmed
+beyond words, for it contained tools of a curious and unusual
+type,--not such tools as workmen carry abroad in the light of day.
+
+There was no one to whom I might confide that unpleasant discovery. I
+simply could not terrify my mother, nor could I in common decency
+burden the already overburdened doctor. Nor is our sheriff one to turn
+to readily; he is not a man whose intelligence or heart one may
+admire, respect, or depend upon. My guest had come to me with empty
+pockets and a burglar's kit; a hint of that, and the sheriff had
+camped on the Parish House front porch with a Winchester across his
+knees and handcuffs jingling in his pockets. No, I couldn't consult
+the law.
+
+I had yet a deeper and a better reason for waiting, which I find it
+rather hard to set down in cold words. It is this: that as I grow
+older I have grown more and more convinced that not fortuitously, not
+by chance, never without real and inner purposes, are we allowed to
+come vitally into each other's lives. I have walked up the steep sides
+of Calvary to find out that when another wayfarer pauses for a space
+beside us, it is because one has something to give, the other
+something to receive.
+
+So, upon reflection, I took that oilskin package weighted down with
+the seven deadly sins over to the church, and hid it under the statue
+of St. Stanislaus, whom my Poles love, and before whom they come to
+kneel and pray for particular favors. I tilted the saint back upon his
+wooden stand, and thrust that package up to where his hands fold over
+the sheaf of lilies he carries. St. Stanislaus is a beautiful and most
+holy youth. No one would ever suspect _him_ of hiding under his brown
+habit a burglar's kit!
+
+When I had done this, and stopped to say three Hail Marys for
+guidance, I went back to the little room called my study, where my
+books and papers and my butterfly cabinets and collecting outfits
+were kept, and set myself seriously to studying my files of
+newspapers, beginning at a date a week preceding my man's appearance.
+Then:
+
+             Slippy McGee
+     Makes Good His Name Once More.
+       Slips One Over On The Police.
+         Noted Burglar Escapes.
+
+said the glaring headlines in the New York papers. The dispatches were
+dated from Atlanta, and when I turned to the Atlanta papers I found
+them, too, headlining the escape of "Slippy McGee."
+
+I learned that "the slickest crook in America" finding himself
+somewhat hampered in his native haunts, the seething underworld of New
+York, because the police suspected him of certain daring and
+mysterious burglaries although they had no positive proof against him,
+had chosen to shift his base of operations South for awhile. But the
+Southern authorities had been urgently warned to look out for him; in
+consequence they had been so close upon his heels that he had been
+surrounded while "on a job." Half an hour later, and he would have
+gotten away with his plunder; but, although they were actually upon
+him, by what seemed a miracle of daring and of luck he slipped through
+their fingers, escaped under their very noses, leaving no clue to his
+whereabouts. He was supposed to be still in hiding in Atlanta, though
+as he had no known confederates and always worked alone and unaided,
+the police were at a loss for information. The man had simply
+vanished, after his wont, as if the earth had opened and swallowed
+him. The papers gave rather full accounts of some of his past
+exploits, from which one gathered that Slippy McGee was a very noted
+personage in his chosen field. I sat for a long time staring at those
+papers, and my thoughts were uneasy ones. What should I do?
+
+I presently decided that I could and must question my guest. So far he
+had volunteered no information beyond the curt statement that his name
+was John Flint and he was a hobo because he liked the trade. He had
+been stealing a ride and he had slipped--and when he woke up we had
+him and he hadn't his leg. And if some people knew how to be obliging
+they'd make a noise like a hoop and roll away, so's other people could
+pound their ear in peace, like that big stiff of a doctor ordered them
+to do.
+
+As I stood by the bed and studied his sullen, suspicious, unfriendly
+face, I came to the conclusion that if this were not McGee himself it
+could very well be some one quite as dangerous.
+
+"Friend," said I, "we do not as a rule seek information about the
+guests in these rooms. We do not have to; they explain themselves. I
+should never question your assertion that your name is Flint, and I
+sincerely hope it is Flint; but--there are reasons why I must and do
+ask you for certain definite information about yourself."
+
+The hand lying upon the coverlet balled into a fist.
+
+"If John Flint's not fancy enough for you," he suggested truculently,
+"suppose you call me Percy? Some peach of a moniker, Percy, ain't it?"
+
+"Percy?"
+
+"Sure, Percy," he grinned impudently. "But if you got a grouch against
+Percy, can it, and make me Algy. _I_ don't mind. It's not _me_
+beefing about monikers; it's you."
+
+"I am also," said I, regarding him steadily and ignoring his
+flippancy, "I am also obliged to ask you what is your occupation--when
+you are not stealing rides?"
+
+"Looks like it might be answering questions just now, don't it? What
+you want to know for? Whatever it is, I'm not able to do it now, am I?
+But as you're so naturally bellyaching to know, why, I've been in the
+ring."
+
+"So I presumed. Thank you," said I, politely. "And your name is John
+Flint, or Percy, or Algy, just as I choose. Percy and Algy are rather
+unusual names for a gentleman who has been in the ring, don't you
+think?"
+
+"I think," he snarled, turned suddenly ferocious, "that I'm named what
+I dam' please to be named, and no squeals from skypilots about it,
+neither. Say! what you driving at, anyhow? If what I tell you ain't
+satisfying, suppose you slip over a moniker to suit yourself--and go
+away!"
+
+"Oh! Suppose then," said I, without taking my eyes from his, "suppose,
+then, that I chose to call you--_Slippy McGee_?"
+
+I am sure that only his bodily weakness kept him from flying at my
+throat. As it was, his long arms with the hands upon them outstretched
+like a beast's claws, shot out ferociously. His face contracted
+horribly, and of a sudden the sweat burst out upon it so blindingly
+that he had to put up an arm and wipe it away. For a moment he lay
+still, glaring, panting, helpless; while I stood and watched him
+unmoved.
+
+"Ain't you the real little Sherlock Holmes, though?" he jeered
+presently. "Got Old Sleuth skinned for fair and Nick Carter eating
+out of your hand! You damned skypilot!" His voice cracked. "You're all
+alike! Get a man on his back and then put the screws on him!"
+
+I made no reply; only a great compassion for this mistaken and
+miserable creature surged like a wave over my heart.
+
+"For God's sake don't stand there staring like a bughouse owl!" he
+gritted. "Well, what you going to do? Bawl for the bulls? What put you
+wise?"
+
+"Help you to get well. No. I opened your bag--and looked up the
+newspapers," I answered succinctly.
+
+"Huh! A fat lot of good it'll do me to get well now, won't it? You
+think I ought to thank you for butting in and keeping me from dying
+without knowing anything about it, don't you? Well, you got another
+think coming. I don't. Ever hear of a pegleg in the ring? Ever hear of
+a one-hoofed dip! A long time I'd be Slippy McGee playing
+cat-and-mouse with the bulls, if I had to leave some of my legs home
+when I needed them right there on the job, wouldn't I? Oh, sure!"
+
+"And was it," I wondered, "such a fine thing to be Slippy McGee,
+flying from the police, that one should lament his--er--disappearance?"
+
+His eyes widened. He regarded me with pity as well as astonishment.
+
+"Didn't you read the papers?" he wondered in his turn. "There don't
+many travel in _my_ class, skypilot! Why, I haven't _got_ any
+equals--the best of them trail a mile behind. Ask the bulls, if you
+want to know about Slippy McGee! And I let the happy dust alone. Most
+dips are dopes, but I was too slick; I cut it out. I knew if the dope
+once gets you, then the bulls get next. Not for Slippy. I've kept my
+head clear, and that's how I've muddled theirs. They never get next to
+anything until I've cleaned up and dusted. Why, honest to God, I can
+open any box made, easy as easy, just like I can put it all over any
+bull alive! That is," a spasm twisted his face and into his voice
+crept the acute anguish of the artist deprived of all power to create,
+"that is, I could--until I made that last getaway on a freight, and
+this happened."
+
+"I am sorry," said I soothingly, "that you have lost your leg, of
+course. But better to lose your leg than your soul, my son. Why, how
+do you know--"
+
+He writhed. "Can it!" he implored. "Cut it out! Ain't I up against
+enough now, for God's sake? Down and out--and nothing to do but have
+my soul curry-combed and mashfed by a skypilot with _both_ his legs
+and _all_ his mouth on him! Ain't it hell, though? Say, you better
+send for the cops. I'd rather stand for the pen than the preaching.
+What'd you do with my bag, anyway?"
+
+"But I really have no idea of preaching to you; and I would rather not
+send for the police--afterwards, when you are better, you may do so if
+you choose. You are a free agent. As for your bag, why--it is--it
+is--in the keeping of the Church."
+
+"Huh!" said he, and twisted his mouth cynically. "Huh! Then it's
+good-bye tools, I suppose. I'm no churchmember, thank God, but I've
+heard that once the Church gets her clamps on anything worth while all
+hell can't pry her loose."
+
+Now I don't know why, but at that, suddenly and inexplicably, as if I
+had glimpsed a ray of light, I felt cheered.
+
+"Why, that's it exactly!" said I, smiling. "Once the Church gets real
+hold of a thing--or a man--worth while, she holds on so fast that all
+hell can't pry her loose. Won't you try to remember that, my son!"
+
+"If it's a joke, suck the marrow out of it yourself," said he sourly.
+"It don't listen so horrible funny to me. And you haven't peeped yet
+about what you're going to do. I'm waiting to hear. I'm real
+interested."
+
+"Why, I really don't know yet," said I, still cheerfully. "Suppose we
+wait and see? Here you are, safe and harmless enough for the present.
+And God is good; perhaps He knows that you and I may need each other
+more than you and the police need each other--who can tell? I should
+simply set myself strictly to the task of getting entirely well, if I
+were you--and let it go at that."
+
+He appeared to reflect; his forehead wrinkled painfully.
+
+"Devil-dodger," said he, after a pause, "are you just making a noise
+with your face, or is that on the level?"
+
+"That's on the level."
+
+His hard and suspicious eyes bored into me. And as I held his glance,
+a hint of wonder and amazement crept into his face.
+
+"God A'mighty! I believe him!" he gasped. And then, as if ashamed of
+that real feeling, he scowled.
+
+"Say, if you're really on the level, I guess you'd better not be
+flashing the name of Slippy McGee around promiscuous," he suggested
+presently. "It won't do either you or me any good, see? And say,
+parson,--forget Percy and Algy. How was I to know you'd be so white?
+And look here: I did know a gink named John Flint, once. Only he was
+called Reddy, because he'd got such a blazing red head and whiskers.
+He's croaked, so he wouldn't mind me using his moniker, seeing it's
+not doing him any good now."
+
+"Let us agree upon John Flint," I decided.
+
+"Help yourself," he agreed, equably.
+
+Clélie, with wrath and disapproval written upon every stiffened line,
+brought him his broth, which he took with a better grace than I had
+yet witnessed. He even added a muttered word of thanks.
+
+"It's funny," he reflected, when the yellow woman had left the room
+with the empty bowl, "it's sure funny, but d'ye know, I'm lots easier
+in my mind, knowing you know, and not having to think up a hard-luck
+gag to hand out to you? I hate like hell to have to lie, except of
+course when I need a smooth spiel for the cops. I guess I'll snooze a
+bit now," he added, as I rose to leave the room. And as I reached the
+door:
+
+"Parson?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Why--er--come in a bit to-night, will you? That is, if you've got
+time. And look here: don't you get the notion in your bean I'm just
+some little old two-by-four guy of a yegg or some poor nut of a dip.
+I'm _not_. Why, I've been the whole show _and_ manager besides. Yep,
+I'm Slippy McGee himself."
+
+He paused, to let this sink into my consciousness. I must confess that
+I was more profoundly impressed than even he had any idea of. And
+then, magnanimously, he added: "You're sure some white man, parson."
+
+"Thank you, John Flint," said I, with due modesty.
+
+Heaven knows why I should have been pleased and hopeful, but I was. My
+guest was a criminal; he hadn't shown the slightest sign of
+compunction or of shame; instead, he had betrayed a brazen pride. And
+yet--I felt hopeful. Although I knew I was tacitly concealing a
+burglar, my conscience remained clear and unclouded, and I had a calm
+intuitive assurance of right. So deeply did I feel this that when I
+went over to the church I placed before St. Stanislaus a small lamp
+full of purest olive oil, which is expensive. I felt that he deserved
+some compensation for hiding that package under his sheaf of lilies.
+
+The authorities of our small town knew, of course, that another
+forlorn wretch was being cared for at the Parish House. But had not
+the Parish House sheltered other such vagabonds? The sheriff saw no
+reason to give himself the least concern, beyond making the most
+casual inquiry. If I wanted the fellow, he was only too glad to let me
+keep him. And who, indeed, would look for a notorious criminal in a
+Parish House Guest Room? Who would connect that all too common
+occurrence, a tramp maimed by the railroad, with, the mysterious
+disappearance of the cracksman, Slippy McGee? So, for the present, I
+could feel sure that the man was safe.
+
+And in the meantime, in the orderly proceeding of everyday life, while
+he gained strength under my mother's wise and careful nursing and
+Westmoreland's wise and careful overseeing, there came to him those
+who were instruments for good--my mother first, whom, like Clélie, he
+never called anything but "Madame" and whom, like Clélie, he presently
+obeyed with unquestioning and childlike readiness. Now, Madame is a
+truly wonderful person when she deals with people like him. Never for
+a moment lowering her own natural and beautiful dignity, but without a
+hint of condescension, Madame manages to find the just level upon
+which both can stand as on common ground; then, without noise, she
+helps, and she conveys the impression that thus noiselessly to help is
+the only just, natural and beautiful thing for any decent person to
+do, unless, perhaps, it might be to receive in the like spirit.
+
+Judge Mayne's son, Laurence, full of a fresh and boyish enthusiasm,
+was such another instrument. He had a handsome, intelligent face, a
+straight and beautiful body, and the pleasantest voice in the world.
+His mother in her last years had been a fretful invalid, and to meet
+her constant demands the judge and his son had developed an angelic
+patience with weakness. They were both rather quiet and
+undemonstrative, this father and son; the older man, in fact had a
+stern visage at first glance, until one learned to know it as the face
+of a man trained to restraint and endurance. As for the boy, no one
+could long resist the shrewd, kind youngster, who could spend an hour
+with the most unlikely invalid and leave him all the better for it. I
+was unusually busy just then, Clélie frankly hated and feared the man
+upstairs, my mother had her hands full, and there were many heavy and
+lonesome hours which Laurence set himself the task of filling. I left
+this to the boy himself, offering no suggestions.
+
+"Padre," said the boy to me, some time later, "that chap upstairs is
+the hardest nut I ever tried to crack. There've been times when I felt
+tempted to crack him with a sledge-hammer, if you want the truth. You
+know, he always seemed to like me to read to him, but I've never been
+able to discover whether or not he liked what I read. He never asked
+me a single question, he never seemed interested enough to make a
+comment. But I think that I've made a dent in him at last."
+
+"A dent! In Flint? With what adamantine pick, oh hardiest of miners!"
+
+"With a book. Guess!"
+
+"I couldn't. I give up."
+
+"The Bible!" said Laurence.
+
+The Bible! Had _I_ chosen to read it to him, he would have resented
+it, been impervious, suspicious, hostile. I looked at the boy's
+laughing face, and wondered, and wondered.
+
+"And how," said I, curious, "did you happen to pitch on the Bible?"
+
+"Why, I got to studying about this chap. I wanted something that'd
+_reach him_. I was puzzled. And then I remembered hearing my father
+say that the Bible is the most interesting book in the world because
+it's the most personal. There's something in it for everybody. So I
+thought there'd be something in it for John Flint, and I tried it on
+him, without telling him what I was giving him. I just plunged right
+in, head over heels. Lord, Padre, it _is_ a wonderful old book, isn't
+it? Why, I got so lost in it myself that I forgot all about John
+Flint, until I happened to glance up and see that he was up to the
+eyes in it, just like I was! He likes the fights and he gloats over
+the spoils. He's asking for more. I think of turning Paul loose on
+him."
+
+"Well, if after the manner of men Paul fought with wild beasts at
+Ephesus," I said hopefully. "I dare say he'll be able to hold his own
+even with John Flint."
+
+"I like Paul best of all, myself," said Laurence. "You see, Padre, my
+father and I have needed a dose of Paul more than once--to stiffen our
+backbones. So I'm going to turn the fighting old saint loose on John
+Flint. 'By, Padre;--I'll look in to-morrow--I left poor old Elijah up
+in a cave with no water, and the ravens overdue!"
+
+He went down our garden path whistling, his cap on the back of his
+head, and I looked after him with the warm and comforting sense that
+the world is just that much better for such as he.
+
+The boy was now, in his last high school year, planning to study
+law--all the Maynes took to law as a duck to water. Brave,
+simple-hearted, direct, clear-thinking, scrupulously honorable,--this
+was one of the diamonds used to cut the rough hard surface of Slippy
+McGee.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+NEIGHBORS
+
+
+On a morning in late March, with a sweet and fresh wind blowing, a
+clear sun shining, and a sky so full of soft white woolly clouds that
+you might fancy the sky-people had turned their fleecy flock out to
+graze in the deep blue pastures, Laurence Mayne and I brought John
+Flint downstairs and rolled him out into the glad, green garden, in
+the comfortable wheel-chair that the mill-people had given us for a
+Christmas present; my mother and Clélie followed, and our little dog
+Pitache marched ahead, putting on ridiculous airs of responsibility;
+he being a dog with a great idea of his own importance and wholly
+given over to the notion that nothing could go right if he were not
+there to superintend and oversee it.
+
+The wistaria was in her zenith, girdling the tree-tops with amethyst;
+the Cherokee rose had just begun to reign, all in snow-white velvet,
+with a gold crown and a green girdle for greater glory; the greedy
+brown grumbling bees came to her table in dusty cohorts, and over her
+green bowers floated her gayer lovers the early butterflies, clothed
+delicately as in kings' raiment. In the corners glowed the
+ruby-colored Japanese quince, and the long sprays of that flower I
+most dearly love, the spring-like spirea which the children call
+bridal wreath, brushed you gently as you passed the gate. I never see
+it deck itself in bridal white, I never inhale its shy, clean scent,
+without a tightening of the throat, a misting of the eyes, a melting
+of the heart.
+
+Across our garden and across Miss Sally Ruth Dexter's you could see in
+Major Appleby Cartwright's yard the peach trees in pink party dresses,
+ruffled by the wind. Down the paths marched my mother's daffodils and
+hyacinths, with honey-breathing sweet alyssum in between. Robins and
+wrens, orioles and mocking-birds, blue jays and jackdaws, thrushes and
+blue-birds and cardinals, all were busy house-building; one heard
+calls and answers, saw flashes of painted wings, followed by outbursts
+of ecstasy. If one should lay one's ear to the ground on such a
+morning I think one might hear the heart of the world.
+
+"_Hallelujah! Risen! Risen!_" breathed the glad, green things, pushing
+from the warm mother-mold.
+
+"_Living! Living! Loving! Loving!_" flashed and fluted the flying
+things, joyously.
+
+We wheeled our man out into this divine freshness of renewed life,
+stopping the chair under a glossy, stately magnolia. My mother and
+Clélie and Laurence and I bustled about to make him comfortable.
+Pitache stood stock still, his tail stuck up like a sternly
+admonishing forefinger, a-bossing everything and everybody. We spread
+a light shawl over the man's knees, for it is not easy to bear a cruel
+physical infirmity, to see oneself marred and crippled, in the growing
+spring. He looked about him, snuffed, and wrinkled his forehead; his
+eyes had something of the wistful, wondering satisfaction of an
+animal's. He had never sat in a garden before, in all his life! Think
+of it!
+
+Whenever we bring one of our Guest Roomers downstairs, Miss Sally Ruth
+Dexter promptly comes to her side of the fence to look him over. She
+came this morning, looked at our man critically, and showed plain
+disapproval of him in every line of her face.
+
+On principle Miss Sally Ruth disapproves of most men and many women.
+She does not believe in wasting too much sympathy upon people either;
+she says folks get no more than they deserve and generally not half as
+much.
+
+Miss Sally Ruth Dexter is a rather important person in Appleboro. She
+is fifty-six years old, stout, brown-eyed, suffers from a congenital
+incapacity to refrain from telling the unwelcome truth when people are
+madly trying to save their faces,--she calls this being frank,--is
+tactless, independent, generous, and the possessor of what she herself
+complacently refers to as "a Figure."
+
+For a woman so convinced we're all full of natural and total
+depravity, unoriginal sinners, worms of the dust, and the devil's
+natural fire-fodder, Miss Sally Ruth manages to retain a simple and
+unaffected goodness of practical charity toward the unelect, such as
+makes one marvel. You may be predestined to be lost, but while you're
+here you shall lack no jelly, wine, soup, chicken-with-cream,
+preserves, gumbo, neither such marvelous raised bread as Miss Sally
+Ruth knows how to make with a perfection beyond all praise.
+
+She has a tiny house and a tiny income, which satisfies her; she has
+never married. She told my mother once, cheerfully, that she guessed
+she must be one of those born eunuchs of the spirit the Bible
+mentions--it was intended for her, and she was glad of it, for it had
+certainly saved her a sight of worry and trouble.
+
+There is a cherished legend in our town that Major Appleby Cartwright
+once went over to Savannah on a festive occasion and was there
+joyously entertained by the honorable the Chatham Artillery. The
+Chatham Artillery brews a Punch; insidious, delectable, deceptive, but
+withal a pernicious strong drink that is raging, a wine that mocketh
+and maketh mad. And they gave it to Major Appleby Cartwright in
+copious draughts.
+
+Coming home upon the heels of this, the major arose, put on his Prince
+Albert, donned his top hat, picked a huge bunch of zinnias, and at
+nine o'clock in the morning marched over to Miss Sally Ruth Dexter's.
+
+We differ as to certain unimportant details of that historic call, but
+we are in the main agreed upon the conversation that ensued.
+
+"Sally Ruth," said the major, depositing his bulky person in a rocking
+chair, his hat upon the floor, and wiping his forehead with a spotless
+handkerchief the size of a respectable sheet, "Sally Ruth, you like
+Old Maids?" Here he presented the zinnias.
+
+"Why, I've got a yard full of 'em myself, Major. Whatever made you
+bother to pick 'em? But to whom much hath more shall be given, I
+suppose," said she, resignedly, and put them on the whatnot.
+
+"Sally Ruth," said the major solemnly, ignoring this indifferent
+reception of his offering. "Sally Ruth, come to think of it, an Old
+Maid's a miserable, stiff, scentless sort of a flower. You might
+think, when you first glance at 'em, that they're just like any other
+flowers, but they're not; they're without one single, solitary
+redeemin' particle of sweetness! The Lord made 'em for a warnin' to
+women.
+
+"What good under God's sky does it do you to be an old maid, Sally
+Ruth? You're flyin' in the face of Providence. No lady should fly in
+the face of Providence--she'd a sight better fly to the bosom of some
+man, where she belongs. This mawnin' I looked out of my window and my
+eye fell upon these unfortunate flowers. Right away I thought of you,
+livin' over here all alone and by yourself, with no man's bosom to
+lean on--you haven't really got anything but a few fowls and the Lord
+to love, have you? And, Sally Ruth, tears came to my eyes. Talk not of
+tears till you have seen the tears of warlike men! I believe it would
+almost scare you to death to see me cryin', Sally Ruth! I got to
+thinkin', and I said to myself: 'Appleby Cartwright, you have always
+done your duty like a man. You charged up to the very muzzle of Yankee
+guns once, and you weren't scared wu'th a damn! Are you goin' to be
+scared now? There's a plain duty ahead of you; Sally Ruth's a fine
+figure of a woman, and she ought to have a man's bosom to lean on. Go
+offer Sally Ruth yours!' So here I am, Sally Ruth!" said the major
+valiantly.
+
+Miss Sally Ruth regarded him critically; then:
+
+"You're drunk, Appleby Cartwright, that's what's the matter with you.
+You and your bosom! Why, it's not respectable to talk like that! At
+your age, too! I'm ashamed of you!"
+
+"I was a little upset, over in Savannah," admitted the major. "Those
+fellows must have gotten me to swallow over a gallon of their infernal
+brew--and it goes down like silk, too. Listen at me: don't you ever
+let 'em make you drink a gallon of that punch, Sally Ruth."
+
+"I've seen its effects before. Go home and sleep it off," said Miss
+Sally Ruth, not unkindly. "If you came over to warn me about filling
+up on Artillery Punch, your duty's done--I've never been entertained
+by the Chatham Artillery, and I don't ever expect to be. I suppose it
+was intended for you to be a born goose, Appleby, so it'd be a waste
+of time for me to fuss with you about it. Go on home, now, do, and let
+Cæsar put you to bed. Tell him to tie a wet rag about your head and to
+keep it wet. That'll help to cool you off."
+
+"Sally Ruth," said the major, laying his hand upon his heart and
+trying desperately to focus her with an eye that would waver in spite
+of him, "Sally Ruth, _somebody's_ got to do something for you, and it
+might as well be me. My God, Sally Ruth, _you're settin' like
+clabber!_ It's a shame; it's a cryin' shame, for you're a fine woman.
+I don't mean to scare or flutter you, Sally Ruth,--no gentleman ought
+to scare or flutter a lady--but I'm offerin' you my hand and heart;
+here's my bosom for you to lean on."
+
+"That Savannah brew is worse even than I thought--it's run the man
+stark crazy," said Miss Sally Ruth, viewing him with growing concern.
+
+"Me crazy! Why, I'm askin' you," said the major with awful dignity,
+"I'm askin' you to marry me!"
+
+"Marry _you_? Marry fiddlesticks! Shucks!" said the lady.
+
+"You won't?" Amazement made him sag down in his chair. He stared at
+her owl-like. "Woman," said he solemnly, "when I see my duty I try to
+do it. But I warn you--it's your last chance."
+
+"I hope," said Miss Sally Ruth tartly, "that it's my last chance to
+make a born fool of myself. Why, you old gasbag, if I had to stay in
+the same house with you I'd be tempted to stick a darning needle in
+you to hear you explode! Appleby, I'm like that woman that had a
+chimney that smoked, a dog that growled, a parrot that swore, and a
+cat that stayed out nights; _she_ didn't need a man--and no more do
+I."
+
+"Sally Ruth," said the major feelingly, "when I came here this mawnin'
+it wasn't for my own good--it was for yours. And to think this is all
+the thanks I get for bein' willin' to sacrifice myself! My God! The
+ingratitude of women!"
+
+He looked at Miss Sally Ruth, and Miss Sally Ruth looked at him. And
+then suddenly, without a moment's warning, Miss Sally Ruth rose, and
+took Major Appleby Cartwright, who on a time had charged Yankee guns
+and hadn't been scared wu'th a damn, by the ear. She tugged, and the
+major rose, as one pulled upward by his bootstraps.
+
+"Ouch! Turn loose! I take it back! The devil! It wasn't intended for
+any mortal man to marry you--Sally Ruth, I wouldn't marry you now for
+forty billion dollars and a mule! Turn loose, you hussy! Turn loose!"
+screeched the major.
+
+Unheeding his anguished protests, which brought Judge Hammond Mayne on
+the run, thinking somebody was being murdered, Miss Sally Ruth marched
+her suitor out of her house and led him to her front gate. Here she
+paused, jaws firmly set, eyes glittering, and, as with hooks of
+steel, took firm hold upon the gallant major's other ear. Then she
+shook him; his big crimson countenance, resembling a huge overripe
+tomato, waggled deliriously to and fro.
+
+"I was born"--_shake_--"an old maid,"--_shake, shake, shake_--"I have
+lived--by the grace of God"--_shake, shake, shake_--"an old maid, and
+I expect"--_shake_--"to die an old maid! I don't propose to
+have"--_shake_--"an old windbag offering _me_ his blubbery old
+bosom"--_shake, shake, SHAKE_--"at this time of my life!--and don't
+you forget it, Appleby Cartwright! _THERE!_ You go back home"--_shake,
+shake, shake_--"and sober up, you old gander, you!"
+
+Major Appleby Cartwright stood not upon the order of his going, but
+went at once, galloping as if a company of those Yankees with whom he
+had once fought were upon his hindquarters with fixed bayonets.
+
+However, they being next-door neighbors and friends of a lifetime's
+standing, peace was finally patched up. In Appleboro we do not mention
+this historic meeting when either of the participants can hear us,
+though it is one of our classics and no home is complete without it.
+The Major ever afterward eschewed Artillery Punch.
+
+This morning, over the fence, Miss Sally Ruth addressed our invalid
+directly and without prelude, after her wont. She doesn't believe in
+beating about the bush:
+
+"The wages of walking up and down the earth and going to and fro in
+it, tramping like Satan, is a lost leg. Not that it wasn't intended
+you should lose yours--and I hope and pray it will be a lesson to
+you."
+
+"Well, take it from me," he said grimly, "there's nobody but me
+collecting my wages."
+
+A quick approval of this plain truth showed in Miss Sally Ruth's
+snapping eyes.
+
+"Come!" said she, briskly. "If you've got sense enough to see _that_,
+you're not so far away from the truth as you might be. Collecting your
+wages is the good and the bad thing about life, I reckon. But
+everything's intended, so you don't need to be too sorry for yourself,
+any way you look at it. And you could just as well have lost _both_
+legs while you were at it, you know." She paused reflectively. "Let's
+see: I've got chicken-broth and fresh rolls to-day--I'll send you over
+some, after awhile." She nodded, and went back to her housework.
+
+Laurence went on to High School, Madame had her house to oversee, I
+had many overdue calls; so we left Pitache and John Flint together,
+out in the birdhaunted, sweet-scented, sun-dappled garden, in the
+golden morning hours. No one can be quite heartless in a green garden,
+quite hopeless in the spring, or quite desolate when there's a dog's
+friendly nose to be thrust into one's hand.
+
+I am afraid that at first he missed all this; for he could think of
+nothing but himself and that which had befallen him, coming upon him
+as a bolt from the blue. He had had, heretofore, nothing but his
+body--and now his body had betrayed him! It had become, not the
+splendid engine which obeyed his slightest wish, but a drag upon him.
+Realizing this acutely, untrained, undisciplined, he was savagely
+sullen, impenetrably morose. He tired of Laurence's reading--I think
+the boy's free quickness of movement, his well-knit, handsome body,
+the fact that he could run and jump as pleased him, irked and chafed
+the man new and unused to his own physical infirmity.
+
+He seemed to want none of us; I have seen him savagely repulse the
+dog, who, shocked and outraged at this exhibition of depravity,
+withdrew, casting backward glances of horrified and indignant
+reproach.
+
+But as the lovely, peaceful, healing days passed, that bitter and
+contracted heart had to expand somewhat. Gradually the ferocity faded,
+leaving in its room an anxious and brooding wonder. God knows what
+thoughts passed through that somber mind in those long hours, when,
+concentrated upon himself, he must have faced the problem of his
+future and, like one before an impassable stone wall, had to fall
+back, baffled. He could be sure of only one thing: that never again
+could he be what he had been once--"the slickest cracksman in
+America." This in itself tortured him. Heretofore, life had been
+exactly what he chose to make it: he had put himself to the test, and
+he had proven himself the most daring, the coolest, shrewdest, most
+cunning, in that sinister world in which he had shone with so evil a
+light. _He had been Slippy McGee_. Sure of himself, his had been that
+curious inverted pride which is the stigmata of the criminal.
+
+More than once I saw him writhe in his chair, tormented, shaken, spent
+with futile curses, impotently lamenting his lost kingdom. He still
+had the skill, the cold calculating brain, the wit, the will; and now,
+by a cruel chance and a stupid accident, he had lost out! The end had
+come for him, and he in his heyday! There were moments when, watching
+him, I had the sensation as of witnessing almost visibly, here in our
+calm sunny garden, the Dark Powers fighting openly for a soul.
+
+_"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against
+principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of
+this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+UNDERWINGS
+
+
+If I have not heretofore spoken of Mary Virginia, it is because all
+that winter she and Mrs. Eustis had been away; and in consequence
+Appleboro was dull enough. For the Eustises are our wealthiest and
+most important family, just as the Eustis house, with its pillared,
+Greek-temple-effect front, is by far the handsomest house in town.
+When we have important folks to entertain, we look to the Eustises to
+save our faces for us by putting them up at their house.
+
+One afternoon, shortly after we had gotten settled in Appleboro, I
+came home to find my mother entertaining no less a personage than Mrs.
+Eustis; she wasn't calling on the Catholic priest and his mother, you
+understand; far from it! She was recognizing Armand De Rancé and Adele
+de Marsignan!
+
+Mrs. Eustis was a fair, plump little partridge of a woman, so
+perfectly satisfied with herself that brains, in her case, would have
+amounted to a positive calamity. She is an instance of the fascination
+a fool seems to have for men of undoubted powers of mind and heart,
+for Eustis, who had both to an unusual degree, loved her devotedly,
+even while he smiled at her. She had, after some years of
+childlessness, laid him under an everlasting obligation by presenting
+him with a daughter, an obligation deepened by the fact that the
+child was in every sense her father's child, not her mother's.
+
+That afternoon she brought the little girl with her, to make our
+acquaintance. When the child, shyly friendly, looked up, it seemed to
+me for an anguished moment as if another little girl had walked out of
+the past, so astonishingly like was she to that little lost playmate
+of my youth. Right then and there Mary Virginia walked into my heart
+and took possession, as of a place swept and garnished and long
+waiting her coming.
+
+When we knew her better my mother used to say that if she could have
+chosen a little girl instead of the little boy that had been I, she
+must have chosen Mary Virginia Eustis out of all the world.
+
+Like Judge Mayne's Laurence, she chose to make the Parish House her
+second home--for indeed my mother ever seemed to draw children to her,
+as by some delightful magic. Here, then, the child learned to sew and
+to embroider, to acquire beautiful housewifely accomplishments, and to
+speak French with flawless perfection; she reaped the benefit of my
+mother's girlhood spent in a convent in France; and Mrs. Eustis was
+far too shrewd not to appreciate the value of this. And so we acquired
+Mary Virginia.
+
+I watched the lovely miracle of her growth with an almost painful
+tenderness. Had I not become a priest, had I realized those spring
+hopes of mine; and had there been little children resembling their
+mother, then my own little girls had been like this one. Even thus had
+been their blue eyes, and theirs, too, such hair of such curling
+blackness.
+
+The hours I spent with the little girl and Laurence helped me as well
+as them; these fresh souls and growing minds freshened and revived
+mine, and kept me young in heart.
+
+"We are all made of dust," said my mother once. "But Mary Virginia's
+is star dust. Star dust, and dew, and morning gold," she added
+musingly.
+
+"She simply cannot imagine evil, much less see it in anything or in
+anybody," I told Madame, for at times the child's sheer innocence
+troubled me for her. "One is puzzled how to bring home to this naïve
+soul the ugly truth that all is not good. Now, Laurence is better
+balanced. He takes people and events with a saving grain of
+skepticism. But Mary Virginia is divinely blind."
+
+My mother regarded me with a tolerant smile. "Do not worry too much
+over that divinely blind one, my son," said she. "I assure you, she is
+quite capable of seeing a steeple in daylight! Observe this: yesterday
+Laurence angered her, and she seized him by the hair and bumped his
+head against the study wall--no mild thump, either! She has in her
+quite enough of the leaven of unrighteousness to save her, at a
+pinch--for Laurence was entirely right, she entirely wrong. Yet--she
+made him apologize before she consented to forgive him, and he did it
+gratefully. She allowed him to understand how magnanimous she was in
+thus pardoning him for her own naughtiness, and he was deeply
+impressed, as men-creatures should be under such circumstances. Such
+wisdom, and she but a child! I was enchanted!"
+
+"Good heavens! Surely, Mother, I misunderstand you! Surely you
+reproved her!"
+
+"Reprove her?" My mother's voice was full of astonishment. "Why should
+I reprove her? She was perfectly right!"
+
+"Perfectly right? Why, you said--indeed, I assure you, you said that
+Laurence had been entirely right, she entirely wrong!"
+
+"Oh, _that!_ I see; well, as for that, she was."
+
+"Then, surely--"
+
+"My son, a woman who is in the wrong is entirely right when she makes
+the man apologize," said my mother firmly. "That is the Law, fixed as
+the Medes' and the Persians', and she who forgets or ignores it is
+ground between the upper and the nether millstones. Mary Virginia
+remembered and obeyed. When she grows up you will all of you adore her
+madly. Why, then, should she be reproved?"
+
+I have never been able to reflect upon Laurence getting his head
+bumped and then gratefully apologizing to the darling shrew who did
+it, without a cold wind stirring my hair. And yet--Laurence, and I,
+too, love her all the more dearly for it! _Miserere, Domine!_
+
+It was May when Mary Virginia came back to Appleboro. She had written
+us a bubbling letter, telling us just when we were to expect her, and
+how happy she was at the thought of being home once more. We, too,
+rejoiced, for we had missed her sadly. My mother was so happy that she
+planned a little intimate feast to celebrate the child's return.
+
+I remember how calm and mild an evening it was. At noon there had been
+a refreshing shower, and the air was deliciously pure and clear, and
+full of wet woodsy scents. The raindrops fringing the bushes became
+prisms, a spiderweb was a fairy foot-bridge; and all our birds,
+leaving for a moment such household torments as squalling insatiable
+mouths that must be filled, became jubilant choristers. "The opulent
+dyepots of the angels" had been emptied lavishly across the sky, and
+the old Parish House lay steeped in a serene and heavenly glow, every
+window glittering diamond-bright to the west.
+
+Next door Miss Sally Ruth was feeding and scolding her cooing pigeons,
+which fluttered about her, lighting upon her shoulder, surrounding her
+with a bright-colored living cloud; the judge's black cat Panch lay
+along the Mayne side of the fence and blinked at them regretfully with
+his slanting emerald eyes. From the Mayne kitchen-steps came, faintly,
+Daddy January's sweet quavering old voice:
+
+    "--Gwine tuh climb up higher 'n' higher,
+         Some uh dese days--"
+
+John Flint, silent, depressed, with folded lips and somber eyes,
+hobbled about awkwardly, savagely training himself to use the crutches
+Westmoreland had lately brought him. Very unlovely he looked, dragging
+himself along like a wounded beast. The poor wretch struck a
+discordant note in the sweet peacefulness of the spring evening; nor
+could we say anything to comfort him, we who were not maimed.
+
+Came a high, sweet, shrill call at the gate; a high yelp of delight
+from Pitache, hurtling himself forward like a woolly white cannonball;
+a sound of light and flying feet; and Mary Virginia ran into the
+garden, the little overjoyed dog leaping frantically about her. She
+wore a white frock, and over it a light scarlet jacket. Her blue eyes
+were dancing, lighting her sweet and fresh face, colored like a rose.
+The gay little breeze that came along with her stirred her skirts, and
+fluttered her scarlet ribbons, and the curls about her temples. You
+might think Spring herself had paused for a lovely moment in the
+Parish House garden and stood before you in this gracious and virginal
+shape, at once delicate and vital.
+
+Miss Sally Ruth, scattering pigeons right and left, dashed to the
+fence to call greetings. My mother, seizing the child by the arms,
+held her off a moment, to look her over fondly; then, drawing her
+closer, kissed her as a daughter is kissed.
+
+I laid my hand on the child's head, happy with that painful happiness
+her presence always occasioned me, when she came back after an
+absence--as if the Other Girl flashed into view for a quick moment,
+and then was gone. Laurence, who had followed, stood looking down at
+her with boyish condescension.
+
+"Huh! I can eat hominy off her head!" said he, aggravatingly.
+
+"Old Mister Biggity!" flashed Mary Virginia. And then she turned and
+met, face to face, the fixed stare of John Flint, hanging upon his
+crutches as one might upon a cross,--a stare long, still, intent,
+curious, speculative, almost incredulous.
+
+"You are the Padre's last guest, aren't you?" her eyes were full of
+gravest sympathy. "I'm so sorry you met with such a misfortune--but
+I'm gladder you're alive. It's so good just to be alive in the spring,
+isn't it?" She smiled at him directly, taking him, as it were, into a
+pleasant confidence. She seemed perfectly unconscious of the evil
+unloveliness of him; Mary Virginia always seemed to miss the evil,
+passing it over as if it didn't exist. Instead, diving into the depths
+of other personalities, always she brought to the surface whatever
+pearl of good might lie concealed at the bottom. To her this sinister
+cripple was simply another human being, with whose misfortune one must
+sympathize humanly.
+
+Clélie, in a speckless white apron and a brand-new red-and-white
+bandanna to do greater honor to the little girl whom she adored, set a
+table under the trees and spread it with the thin dainty sandwiches,
+the delectable little cakes, and the fine bonbons she and my mother
+had made to celebrate the child's return. And we had tea, making very
+merry, for she had a thousand amusing things to tell us, every airy
+trifle informed with something of her own brave bright mirthful
+spirit. John Flint sat nearby in the wheel chair, his crutches lying
+beside it, and looked on silently and ate his cake and drank his tea
+stolidly, as if it were no unusual thing for him to break bread in
+such company.
+
+"Padre," said Mary Virginia with deep gravity. "My aunt Jenny says I'm
+growing up. She says I'll have to put up my hair and let down my
+frocks pretty soon, and that I'll probably be thinking of beaux in
+another year, though she hopes to goodness I won't, until I've got
+through with school at least."
+
+The almost unconscious imitation of Miss Jenny's pecking, birdlike
+voice made me smile.
+
+"Beaux! Long skirts! Put up hair! Great Scott, will you listen to the
+kid!" scoffed Laurence. "You everlasting little silly, you! P'tite
+Madame, these cakes are certainly all to the good. May I have another
+two or three, please!"
+
+"I'm 'most thirteen years old, Laurence Mayne," said Mary Virginia,
+with dignity. "You're only seventeen, so you don't need to give
+yourself such hateful airs. You're not too old to be greedy, anyhow.
+Padre, _am_ I growing up?"
+
+"I fear so, my child," said I, gloomily.
+
+"You're not glad, either, are you, Padre?"
+
+"But you were such a delightful child," I temporized.
+
+"Oh, lovely!" said Laurence, eying her with unflattering
+brotherliness. "And she had so much feeling, too, Mary Virginia! Why,
+when I was sick once, she wanted me to die, so she could ride to my
+funeral in the front carriage; she doted on funerals, the little
+ghoul! She was horribly disappointed when I got better--she thought it
+disobliging of me, and that I'd done it to spite her. Once, too, when
+I tried to reason with her--and Mary Virginia needed reason if ever a
+kid did--she bumped my head until I had knots on it. There's your
+delightful Mary Virginia for you!"
+
+"Anyhow, you didn't die and become an angel--you stayed disagreeably
+alive and you're going to become a lawyer," said Mary Virginia, too
+gently. "And your head was bumpable, Laurence, though I'm sorry to say
+I don't ever expect to bump it again. Why, I'm going away to school
+and when I come back I'll be Miss Eustis, and you'll be Mr. Mayne!
+Won't it be funny, though?"
+
+"I don't see anything funny in calling you Miss Eustis," said
+Laurence, with boyish impatience. "And I'm certainly not going to
+notice you if you're silly enough to call me Mister Mayne. I hope you
+won't be a fool, Mary Virginia. So many girls are fools." He ate
+another cake.
+
+"Not half as big fools as boys are, though," said she,
+dispassionately. "My father says the man is always the bigger fool of
+the two."
+
+Laurence snorted. "I wonder what we'll be like, though--both of us?"
+he mused.
+
+"You? You're biggity now, but you'll be lots worse, then," said Mary
+Virginia, with unflattering frankness. "I think you'll probably strut
+like a turkey, and you'll be baldheaded, and wear double-lensed horn
+spectacles, and spats, and your wife will call you 'Mr. Mayne' to your
+face and 'Your Poppa' to the children, and she'll perfectly _despise_
+people like Madame and the Padre and me!"
+
+"You never did have any reasoning power, Mary Virginia," said
+Laurence, with brotherly tact. "Our black cat Panch would put it all
+over you. Allow me to inform you I'm _not_ biggity, miss! I'm
+logical--something a girl can't understand. And I'd like to know what
+you think _you're_ going to grow up to be?"
+
+"Oh, let's quit talking about it," she said petulantly. "I hate to
+think of growing up. Grown ups don't seem to be happy--and _I_ want to
+be happy!" She turned her head, and met once more the absorbed and
+watchful stare of the man in the wheel-chair.
+
+"Weren't you sorry when you had to stop being a little boy and grow
+up?" she asked him, wistfully.
+
+"Me?" he laughed harshly. "I couldn't say, miss. I guess I was born
+grown up." His face darkened.
+
+"That wasn't a bit fair," said she, with instant sympathy.
+
+"There's a lot not fair," he told her, "when you're born and brought
+up like I was. The worst is not so much what happens to you, though
+that's pretty bad; it's that you don't know it's happening--and
+there's nobody to put you wise. Why," his forehead puckered as if a
+thought new to him had struck him, "why, your very looks get to be
+different!"
+
+Mary Virginia started. "Oh, looks!" said she, thoughtfully. "Now,
+isn't it curious for you to say just that, right now, for it reminds
+me that I brought something to the Padre--something that set me to
+thinking about people's looks, too,--and how you never can tell. Wait
+a minute, and I'll show you." She reached for the pretty crocheted bag
+she had brought with her, and drew from it a small pasteboard box.
+None of us, idly watching her, dreamed that a moment big with fate was
+upon us. I have often wondered how things would have turned out if
+Mary Virginia had lost or forgotten that pasteboard box!
+
+"I happened to put my hand on a tree--and this little fellow moved,
+and I caught him. I thought at first he was a part of the tree-trunk,
+he looked so much like it," said the child, opening the little box.
+Inside lay nothing more unusual than a dark-colored and rather ugly
+gray moth, with his wings folded down.
+
+"One wouldn't think him pretty, would one?" said she, looking down at
+the creature.
+
+"No," said Flint, who had wheeled nearer, and craned his neck over the
+box. "No, miss, I shouldn't think I'd call something like that
+pretty,"--he looked from the moth to Mary Virginia, a bit
+disappointedly.
+
+Mary Virginia smiled, and picking up the little moth, held his body,
+very gently, between her finger-tips. He fluttered, spreading out his
+gray wings; and then one saw the beautiful pansy-like underwings, and
+the glorious lower pair of scarlet velvet barred and bordered with
+black.
+
+"I brought him along, thinking the Padre might like him, and tell me
+something about him," said the little girl. "The Padre's crazy about
+moths and butterflies, you must understand, and we're always on the
+lookout to get them for him. I never found this particular one before,
+and you can't imagine how I felt when he showed me what he had hidden
+under that gray cloak of his!"
+
+"He's a member of a large and most respectable family, the Catocalæ,"
+I told her. "I'll take him, my dear, and thank you--there's always a
+demand for the Catocalæ. And you may call him an Underwing, if you
+prefer--that's his common name."
+
+"I got to thinking," said the little girl, thoughtfully, lifting her
+clear and candid eyes to John Flint's. "I got to thinking, when he
+threw aside his plain gray cloak and showed me his lovely underwings,
+that he's like some people--people you'd think were very common, you
+know. You couldn't be expected to know what was underneath, could you?
+So you pass them by, thinking how ordinary, and matter of fact, and
+uninteresting and even ugly they are, and you feel rather sorry for
+them--because you don't know. But if you can once get close enough to
+touch them--why, then you find out!" Her eyes grew deeper, and
+brighter, as they do when she is moved; and the color came more
+vividly to her cheek. "Don't you reckon," said she naïvely, "that
+plenty of folks are like him? They're the sad color of the
+street-dust, of course, for things do borrow from their surroundings,
+didn't you know that? That's called protective mimicry, the Padre
+says. So you only think of the dust-colored outside--and all the while
+the underwings are right there, waiting for you to find them! Isn't it
+wonderful and beautiful? And the best of all is, it's true!"
+
+The cripple in the chair put out his hand with a hint of timidity in
+his manner; he was staring at Mary Virginia as if some of the light
+within her had dimly penetrated his grosser substance.
+
+"Could I hold it--for a minute--in my own hand?" he asked, turning
+brick-red.
+
+"Of course you may," said Mary Virginia pleasantly. "I see by the
+Padre's face this isn't a rare moth--he's been here all along, only my
+eyes have just been opened to him. I don't want him to go in any
+collection. I don't want him to go anywhere, except back into the
+air--I owe him that for what he taught me. So I'm sure the Padre won't
+mind, if you'd like to set him free, yourself."
+
+She put the moth on the man's finger, delicately, for a Catocala is a
+swift-winged little chap; it spread out its wings splendidly, as if to
+show him its loveliness; then, darting upward, vanished into the cool
+green depth of the shrubbery.
+
+"I remember running after a butterfly once, when I was a kid," said
+he. "He came flying down our street, Lord knows where from, or why,
+and I caught him after a chase. I thought he was the prettiest thing
+ever my eyes had seen, and I wanted the worst way in the world to keep
+him with me. A brown fellow he was, all sprinkled over with little
+splotches of silver, as if there'd been plenty of the stuff on hand,
+and it'd been laid on him thick. But after awhile I got to thinking
+he'd feel like he was in jail, shut up in my hot fist. I couldn't bear
+that, so I ran to the end of the street, to save him from the other
+kids, and then I turned him loose and watched him beat it for the sky.
+They're pretty things, butterflies. Somehow I always liked them better
+than any other living creatures." He was staring after the moth, his
+forehead wrinkled. He spoke almost unconsciously, and he certainly had
+no idea that he had given us cause for a hopeful astonishment.
+
+Now, Mary Virginia's eyes had fallen, idly enough, upon John Flint's
+hands lying loosely upon his knees. Her face brightened.
+
+"Padre," she suggested suddenly, "why don't you let him help you with
+your butterflies? Look at his hands! Why, they're just exactly the
+right sort to handle setting needles and mounting blocks, and to
+stretch wings without loosening a scale. He could be taught in a few
+lessons, and just think what a splendid help he could be! And you do
+so need help with those insects of yours, Padre--I've heard you say
+so, over and over."
+
+The child was right--John Flint did have good hands--large enough,
+well-shaped, steel-muscled, powerful, with flexible, smooth-skinned,
+sensitive fingers, the fingers of an expert lapidary rather than a
+prize-fighter.
+
+"If you think there's any way I could help the parson for awhile, I'd
+be proud to try, miss. It's true," he added casually, with a
+sphinx-like immobility of countenance, "that I'm what might be called
+handy with my fingers."
+
+"We'll call it settled, then," said Mary Virginia happily.
+
+Laurence took her home at dusk; it was a part of his daily life to
+look after Mary Virginia, as one looks after a cherished little
+sister. When they were younger the boy had often complained that she
+might as well be his sister, she quarreled with him so much; and the
+little girl said, bitterly, he was as disagreeable as if he'd been a
+brother. In spite of which the little girl, for all her delicious
+impertinences, looked up to the boy; and the boy had adored her, from
+the time she gurgled at him from her cradle.
+
+My mother left us, and John Flint and I sat outdoors in the pleasant
+twilight, he smoking the pipe Laurence had given him.
+
+"Parson," said he, abruptly, "Parson, you folks are swells, ain't you?
+The real thing, I mean, you and Madame? Even the yellow nigger's a
+lady nigger, ain't she?"
+
+"I am a poor priest, such as you see, my son, Madame is--Madame. And
+Clélie is a good servant."
+
+"But you were born a swell, weren't you?" he persisted. "Old family,
+swell diggings, trained flunkies, and all that?"
+
+"I was born a gentleman, if that is what you mean. Of an old family,
+yes. And there was an old house--once."
+
+"How'd _you_ ever hit the trail for the Church? I wonder! But say,
+you never asked me any more questions than you had to, so you can tell
+me to shut up, if you want to. Not that I wouldn't like to know how
+the Sam Hill the like of you ever got nabbed by the skypilots."
+
+"God called me through affliction, my son."
+
+"Oh," said my son, blankly. "Huh! But I bet you the best crib ever
+cracked you were some peach of a boy before you got that 'S.O.S.'"
+
+"I was, like the young, the thoughtless young, a sinner."
+
+"I suppose," said he tentatively, after a pause, "that _I'm_ one hell
+of a sinner myself, according to Hoyle, ain't I?"
+
+"I do not think it would injure you to change your--course of life,
+nor yet your way of mentioning it," I said, feeling my way cautiously.
+"But--we are bidden to remember there is more joy in heaven over one
+sinner saved than over the ninety-and-nine just men."
+
+"Is that so? Well, it listens like good horse-sense to me," said Mr.
+Flint, promptly. "Because, look here: you can rake in ninety-and-nine
+boobs any old time--there's one born every time the clock ticks,
+parson--but they don't land something like me every day, believe me!
+And I bet you a stack of dollar chips a mile high there was some
+song-and-dance in the sky-joint when they put one over on _you_ for
+fair. Sure!" He puffed away at his pipe, and I, having nothing to say
+to this fine reasoning, held my peace.
+
+"Parson, that kid's a swell, too, ain't she? And the boy?"
+
+"Laurence is the son of Judge Hammond Mayne."
+
+"And the little girl?" Insensibly his voice softened.
+
+"I suppose," I agreed, "that the little girl is what you might call a
+swell, too."
+
+"I never," said he, reflectively, "came what you might call _talking_
+close to real swells before. I've seen 'em, of course--at a distance.
+Some of 'em, taking 'em by and large, looked pretty punk, to me; some
+of 'em was middling, and a few looked as if they might have the goods.
+But none of 'em struck me as being real live breathing _people_, same
+as other folks. Why, parson, some of those dames'd throw a fit,
+fancying they was poisoned, if they had to breathe the same air with
+folks like me--me being what I am and they being--what they think they
+are. Yet here's you and Madame, the real thing--and the boy--and the
+little girl--the little girl--" he stopped, staring at me dumbly, as
+the vision of Mary Virginia rose before him.
+
+"She is, indeed, a dear, dear child," said I. His words stung me
+somewhat, for once upon a time, I myself would have resented that such
+as he should have breathed the same air with Mary Virginia.
+
+"I'd almost think I'd dreamed her," said he, thoughtfully, "that is,
+if I was good enough to have dreams like that," he added hastily, with
+his first touch of shame. "I've seen 'em from the Battery up, and some
+of 'em was sure-enough queens, but I didn't know they came like this
+one. She's bran-new to me, parson. Say, you just show me what she
+wants me to help you with, and I'll do it. She seems to think I can,
+and it oughtn't to be any harder than opening a time-vault, ought it?"
+
+"No," said I gravely, "I shouldn't think it would be. Though I never
+opened a time-vault, you understand, and I hope and pray you'll never
+touch one again, either. I'd rather you wouldn't even refer to it,
+please. It makes me feel, rather--well, let's say _particeps
+criminis_."
+
+"I suppose that's the polite for punching you in the wind," said he,
+just as gravely. "And I didn't think you'd ever monkeyed with a vault;
+why, you couldn't, not if you was to try till Gabriel did his little
+turn in the morning--not unless you'd been caught when you were softer
+and put wise. Man, it's a bigger job than you think, and you've got to
+have the know-how and the nerve before you can put it over. But
+there--I'll keep it dark, seeing you want me to." He stretched out his
+hands, regarding them speculatively. "They _are_ classy mitts," he
+remarked impersonally. "Yep, seemed like they were just naturally made
+to--do what they did. They were built for fine work." At that his jaw
+snapped; a spasm twitched his face; it darkened.
+
+"The work little Miss Eustis suggested for you," I insinuated hastily,
+"is what very many people consider very fine work indeed. About one in
+a thousand can do it properly."
+
+"Lead me to it," said he wearily, and without enthusiasm, "and turn me
+loose. I'll do what I can, to please her. At least, until I can make a
+getaway for keeps."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ENTER KERRY
+
+
+When I was first seen prowling along the roads and about the fields
+stalking butterflies and diurnal moths with the caution of a red
+Indian on the warpath and the stealth of a tiger in the jungle; when
+mystified folk met me at night, a lantern suspended from my neck, a
+haversack across my shoulders, a bottle-belt about my waist, and armed
+with a butterfly net, the consensus of opinion was that poor Father De
+Rancé was stark staring mad. Appleboro hadn't heretofore witnessed the
+proceedings of the Brethren of the Net, and I had to do much patient
+explaining; even then I am sure I must have left many firmly convinced
+that I was not, in their own phrase, "all there."
+
+"Hey, you! Mister! Them worms is pizen! Them's _fever_-worms!" was
+shrieked at me frenziedly by the country-folks, black and white, when
+I was caught scooping up the hairy caterpillars of the tiger moths.
+Even when it was understood that I wished caterpillars, cocoons, and
+chrysalids, for the butterflies and moths they would later make, looks
+of pitying contempt were cast upon me. That a grown man--particularly
+a minister of the gospel, with not only his own but other people's
+souls to save--should spend time hunting for worms, with which he
+couldn't even bait a hook, awakened amazement.
+
+"What any man in his right mind wants with a thing that ain't nothin'
+but wriggles an' hair on the outside an' sqush on the inside, beats
+me!" was said more than once.
+
+"But all of them are interesting, some are valuable, and many grow
+into very beautiful moths and butterflies," I ventured to defend
+myself.
+
+"S'posin' they do? You can't eat 'em or wear 'em or plant 'em, can
+you?" And really, you understand, I couldn't!
+
+"An' you mean to tell me to my face," said a scandalized farmer,
+watching me assorting and naming the specimens taken from my field
+box, "you mean to tell me you're givin' every one o' them bugs a
+_name_, same's a baptized Christian? Adam named every livin' thing,
+an' Adam called them things Caterpillars an' Butterflies. If it suited
+him an' Eve and God A'mighty to have 'em called that an' nothin' else,
+looks to me it had oughter suit anybody that's got a grain o'real
+religion. If you go to call 'em anythin' else it's sinnin' agin the
+Bible. I've heard all my life you Cath'lics don't take as much stock
+in the Scripters as you'd oughter, but this thing o'callin' a wurrum
+Adam named plain Caterpillar a--a--_what'd_ you say the dum beast's
+name was? _My sufferin' Savior!_ is jest about the wust dern
+foolishness yet! I lay it at the Pope's door, every mite o' it, an'
+you'd better believe he'll have to answer for sech carryin's on, some
+o' these days!"
+
+So many other things having been laid at the Pope's door, I held my
+peace and made no futile attempt to clear the Holy Father of the dark
+suspicion of having perpetrated their names upon certain of the
+American lepidoptera.
+
+I had yet other darker madnesses; had I not been seen spreading upon
+trees with a whitewash brush a mixture of brown sugar, stale beer, and
+rum?
+
+Asked to explain this lunatic proceeding I could only say that I was
+sugaring for moths; these airy fairy gentlemen having a very human
+liking for a "wee drappie o't."
+
+"That amiable failin'," Major Appleby Cartwright decided, "is a credit
+to them an' commends them to a respectful hearin'. On its face it
+would seem to admit them to the ancient an' honorable brotherhood of
+convivial man. But, suh, there's another side to this question, an'
+it's this:--a creature that's got six perfectly good legs, not to
+mention wings, an' still can't carry his liquor without bein' caught,
+deserves his fate. It's not in my line to offer suggestions to an
+allwise Providence, or I _might_ hint that a scoop-net an' a killing
+jar in pickle for some two-legged topers out huntin' free drinks
+wouldn't be such a bad idea at all."
+
+But as I pursued my buggy way--and displayed, save in this one
+particular, what might truthfully be called ordinary common
+sense--people gradually grew accustomed to it, looking upon me as a
+mild and harmless lunatic whose inoffensive mania might safely be
+indulged--nay, even humored. In consequence I was from time to time
+inundated with every common thing that creeps, crawls, and flies. I
+accepted gifts of bugs and caterpillars that filled my mother with
+disgust and Clélie with horror; both of them hesitated to come into my
+study, and I have known Clélie to be afraid to go to bed of a night
+because the great red-horned "Hickory devil" was downstairs in a box,
+and she was firmly convinced that this innocent worm harbored a
+cold-blooded desire to crawl upstairs and bite her. That silly woman
+will depart this life in the firm faith that all crawling creatures
+came into the world with the single-hearted hope of biting her, above
+all other mortals; and that having achieved the end for which they
+were created, both they and she will immediately curl up and die.
+
+But alas, I had but scant time to devote to this enchanting and
+engrossing study, which, properly pursued, will fill a man's days to
+the brim. I gathered my specimens as I could and classified and
+mounted them as it pleased God--until the advent of John Flint.
+
+Now, I must, with great reluctance, here set down the plain truth that
+he, too, looked upon me at first with amaze not unmixed with rage and
+contempt. Most caterpillars, you understand, feed upon food of their
+own arbitrary choosing; and when they are in captivity one must
+procure this particular aliment if one hopes to rear them.
+
+_Slippy McGee feeding bugs!_ It was about as hideous and devil-born a
+contretemps as, say, putting a belted earl to peel potatoes or asking
+an archbishop to clean cuspidors. The man boiled with offended dignity
+and outraged pride. One could actually see him swell. He had expected
+something quite different, and this apparently offensive triviality
+disgusted and shocked him. I could see myself falling forty thousand
+fathoms in his esteem, and I think he would have incontinently turned
+his back upon me save for his promise to Mary Virginia.
+
+It is true that many of the caterpillars are ugly and formidable, poor
+things, to the uninitiated eye, which fails to recognize under this
+uncomely disguise the crowned and glorious citizens of the air. I had
+just then a great Cecropia, an able-bodied green gentleman armed with
+twelve thorn-like, sizable horns, and wearing, along with other
+agreeable adornments, three yellow and four red arrangements like
+growths of dwarf cactus plants on the segments behind his hard round
+green head.
+
+Mr. Flint, with an ejaculation of horror, backed off on one crutch and
+clubbed the other.
+
+"My God!" said he, "Kill it! Kill it!" I saved my green friend in the
+nick of time. The man, with staring eyes, looked from me to the
+caterpillar; then he leaned over and watched it, in grim silence.
+
+He knotted his forehead, made slits of his eyes, gulped, screwed his
+mouth into the thin red line of deadly determination, and with every
+nerve braced, even as a martyr braces himself for the stake or the
+sword, put out his hand, up which the formidable-looking worm walked
+leisurely. Death not immediately resulting from this daring act, he
+controlled his shudders and breathed easier. The worm became less and
+less terrifying; no longer appearing, say, the size of the boa
+constrictor. A few moments of this harmless meandering about Mr.
+Flint's hand and arm, and of a sudden he wore his true colors of an
+inoffensive and law-abiding larva, anxious only to attend strictly to
+his own legitimate business, the Gargantuan feeding of himself into
+the pupa from which he would presently emerge one of the most
+magnificent of native moths. Gingerly Mr. Flint picked him up between
+thumb and fore-finger, and as gingerly dropped him back into the
+breeding-cage. He squared his shoulders, wiped his brow, and drew a
+long whistling breath.
+
+"Phe-ew! It took all my nerve to do it!" said he, frankly. "I felt for
+a minute as if a strong-arm cop'd chased me up an alley and pulled his
+gun on me. The feeling of a bug's legs on your bare skin is something
+fierce at first, ain't it? But after _him_ none of 'em can scare me
+any more. I could play tag with pink monkeys with blue tails and green
+whiskers without sending in the hurry-call."
+
+The setting boards and blocks, the arrays of pins, needles, tubes,
+forceps, jars and bottles, magnifying-glasses, microscope, slides,
+drying-ovens, relaxing-box, cabinets, and above all, the mounted
+specimens, raised his spirits somewhat. This, at least, looked
+workman-like; this, at least, promised something better than stoking
+worms!
+
+If not hopefully, at least willingly enough, he allowed himself to be
+set to work. And that work had come in what some like to call the
+psychological moment. At least it came--or was sent--just when he
+needed it most.
+
+He soon discovered, as all beginners must, that there is very much
+more to it than one might think; that here, too, one must pay for
+exact knowledge with painstaking care and patient study and ceaseless
+effort. He discovered how fatally easy it is to spoil a good specimen;
+how fairy-fragile a wee wing is; how painted scales rub, and vanish
+into thin air; how delicate antennæ break, and forelegs will
+fiendishly depart hence; and that proper mounting, which results in a
+perfect insect, is a task which requires practice, a sure eye, and an
+expert, delicate, and dexterous touch. Also, that one must be
+ceaselessly on guard lest the baleful little ant and other tiny curses
+evade one's vigilance and render void one's best work. He learned
+these and other salutary lessons, which tend to tone down an amateur's
+conceit of his half-knowledge; and this chastened him. He felt his
+pride at stake--he who could so expertly, with almost demoniac
+ingenuity, force the costliest and most cunningly constructed
+burglar-proof lock; he whose not idle boast was that he was handy with
+his fingers! Slippy McGee baffled, at bay before a butterfly? And in
+the presence of a mere priest and a girl-child? Never! He'd show us
+what he could do when he really tried to try!
+
+Presently he wanted to classify; and he wanted to do it alone and
+unaided--it looked easy enough. It irked him, pricked his pride, to
+have to be always asking somebody else "what is this?" And right then
+and there those inevitable difficulties that confront every earnest
+and conscientious seeker at the beginning of his quest, arose, as the
+fascinating living puzzles presented themselves for his solving.
+
+To classify correctly is not something one learns in a day, be he
+never so willing and eager; as one may discover who cares to take half
+a dozen plain, obscurely-colored small moths, and attempts to put them
+in their proper places.
+
+Mr. Flint tried it--and those wretched creatures _wouldn't_ stay put.
+It seemed to him that every time he looked at them they ought to be
+somewhere else; always there was something--a bar, a stripe, a small
+distinctive spot, a wing of peculiar shape, antennæ, or palpi, or
+spur, to differentiate them.
+
+"Where the Sam Hill," he blazed, "do all these footy little devils
+come from, anyhow? Where am I to put a beast of a bug when the next
+one that's exactly like it is entirely different the next time you
+look at it? There's too much beginning and no end at all to this
+game!"
+
+For all that, he followed them up. I saw with pure joy that he refused
+to dismiss anything carelessly, while he scorned to split hairs. He
+had a regular course of procedure when he was puzzled. First he turned
+the new insect over and over and glared at it from every possible
+angle; then he rumpled his hair, gritted his teeth, squared his
+shoulders and hurled himself into work.
+
+There was, for instance, the common Dione Vanillæ, that splendid Gulf
+Fritillary which haunts all the highways of the South. She's a
+long-wing, but she's not a Heliconian; she's a silver-spot, but she's
+not an Argynnis. She bears a striking family likeness to her fine
+relations, but she has certain structural peculiarities which
+differentiate her. Whose word should he take for this, and why?
+Wherein lay those differences? He began, patiently, with her
+cylinder-shaped yellow-brown, orange-spotted caterpillar, on the
+purple passion flowers in our garden; he watched it change into a
+dark-brown chrysalis marked with a few pale spots; he saw emerge from
+this the red-robed lady herself, with her long fulvous forewings, and
+her shorter hind wings smocked with black velvet, and her under-frock
+flushed with pinkish orange and spangled with silver. And yet, in
+spite of her long marvelous tongue--he was beginning to find out that
+no tool he had ever seen, and but few that God Himself makes, is so
+wonderful as a butterfly's tongue--she hadn't been able to tell him
+that about herself which he most wished to find out. _That_ called for
+a deeper knowledge than he as yet possessed.
+
+But he knew that other men knew. And he had to know. He meant to know.
+For the work gripped him as it does those marked and foreordained for
+its service. That marvelous world in which the Little People dwell--a
+world so absolutely different from ours that it might well be upon
+another planet--began to open, slowly, slowly, one of its many
+mysterious doors, allowing him just glimpse enough of what magic lay
+beyond to fire his heart and to whet his appetite. And he couldn't
+break into that world with a jimmy. It was burglar-proof. That portal
+was so impervious to even the facile fingers of Slippy McGee, that
+John Flint must pay the inevitable and appropriate toll to enter!
+
+Westmoreland had replaced his crutches with a wooden leg, and you
+might see him stumping about our grounds, minutely examining the
+underside of shrubs and bushes, the bark of trees, poking into corners
+and crannies, or scraping in the mold under the fallen leaves by the
+fences, for things which no longer filled him with aversion and
+disgust, but with the student's interest and pleasure.
+
+"Think of me being in the same world with 'em all these years and not
+knowing a thing about 'em when there's so much to know, and under my
+skin stark crazy to learn it, only I didn't know I even wanted to know
+what I really want to know more than anything else, until I had to
+get dumped down here to find it out! I get the funniest sort of a
+feeling, parson, that all along there's been a Me tucked away inside
+my hide that's been loving these things ever since I was born. Not
+just to catch and handle 'em, and stretch out their little wings, and
+remember the names some bughouse high-brow wished on 'em, though all
+that's in the feeling, too; it's something else, if I could make you
+understand what I mean."
+
+I laughed. "I think I do understand," said I. "I have a Me like that
+tucked away in mine, too, you know."
+
+He looked at me gravely. "Parson," said he, earnestly, "there's times
+I wish you had a dozen kids, and every one of 'em twins! It's a shame
+to think of some poor orphans swindled out of such a daddy as you'd
+have made!"
+
+"Why," said I, smiling, "_You_ are one of my twins."
+
+"Me?" He reflected. "Maybe half of me might be, parson," he agreed,
+"but it's not safe for a skypilot to be caught owning a twin like the
+other half."
+
+"I'm pinning my faith to _my_ half," said I, serenely.
+
+"Now, why?" he asked, with sudden fierceness. "I turn it over and over
+and over: it looks white on the outside, but I can't to save me figure
+out _why_ you're doing it. Parson, _what_ have you got up your
+sleeve?"
+
+"Nothing but my arm. What should you think?"
+
+"I don't know what to think, and that's the straight of it. What's
+your game, anyhow? What in the name of God are you after?"
+
+"Why, I think," said I, "that in the name of God I'm after--that other
+You that's been tucked away all these years, and couldn't get born
+until a Me inside mine, just like himself, called him to come out and
+be alive."
+
+He pondered this in silence. Then:
+
+"I'll take your word for it," said he. "Though if anybody'd ever told
+me I'd be eating out of a parson's hand, I'd have pushed his face in
+for him. Yep, I'm Fido! _Me!_"
+
+"At least you growl enough," said I, tartly.
+
+He eyed me askance.
+
+"Have I got to lick hands?" he snarled.
+
+I walked away, without a reply; through my shoulder-blades I could
+feel him glaring after me. He followed, hobbling:
+
+"Parson!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"If I'm not the sort that licks hands I'm not the sort that bites 'em,
+neither. I'll tell you--it's this way: I--sort of get to chewing on
+that infernal log of wood that's where my good leg used to grow
+and--and splinters get into my temper--and I've _got_ to snarl or
+burst wide open! You'd growl like the devil yourself, if you had to
+try holding down my job for awhile, skypilot or no skypilot!"
+
+"Why--I dare say I should," said I, contritely. "But," I added, after
+a pause, "I shouldn't be any the better for it, should you think?"
+
+"Not so you could notice," shortly. And after a moment he added, in an
+altered voice: "Rule 1: Can the Squeal!"
+
+I think he most honestly tried to. It was no easy task, and I have
+seen the sweat start upon his forehead and his face go pale, when in
+his eagerness he forgot for a moment the cruel fact that he could no
+longer move as lightly as of old--and the crippled body, betraying
+him, reminded him all too swiftly of his mistake.
+
+The work saved him. For it is the heaven-sent sort of work, to those
+ordained for it, that fills one's hours and leaves one eager for
+further tasks. It called for all his oldtime ingenuity. His tools, for
+instance--at times their limitations irked him, and he made others
+more satisfactory to himself; tools adjusted to an insect's frail
+body, not to a time-lock. Before that summer ended he could handle
+even the frailest and tiniest specimen with such nice care that it was
+delightful to watch him at work. The time was to come when he could
+mend a torn wing or fix a broken antennas with such exquisite fidelity
+to detail that even the most expert eye might well be deceived.
+
+I had only looked for a little temporary help, such as any intelligent
+amateur might be able to furnish. But I was not long unaware that this
+was more than a mere amateur. To quote himself, he had the goods, and
+I realized with a mounting heart that I had made a find, if I could
+only hold on to it. For the first time in years I could exchange
+specimens. My cabinets began to fill out--with such perfect insects,
+too! We added several rare ones, a circumstance to make any
+entomologist look upon the world through rosy spectacles. Why, even
+the scarce shy Cossus Centerensis came to our very doors, apparently
+to fill a space awaiting him. Perhaps he was a Buddhist insect
+undergoing reincarnation, and was anxious to acquire merit by
+self-immolation. Anyhow, we acquired him, and I hope he acquired
+merit.
+
+We had scores of insects in the drying ovens. We had more and ever more
+in the breeding cages,--in our case simple home-made affairs of a keg
+or a box with a fine wire-netting over the food plant; or a lamp-chimney
+slipped over a potted plant with a bit of mosquito-netting tied over the
+top, for the smaller forms.
+
+These cages were a never-failing source of delight and interest to the
+children, and at their hands heaven rained caterpillars upon us that
+season. Even my mother grew interested in the work, though Clélie
+never ceased to look upon it as a horrid madness peculiar to white
+people.
+
+"All Buckrahs is funny in dey haids," Daddy January consoled her when
+she complained to him about it. "Dey gets all kind o' fool notions
+'bout all kind o' fool t'ings. You ain't got to feel so bad--de Jedge
+is lots wuss'n yo' boss is. Yo' boss kin see de bugs he run atter, but
+my boss talk 'bout some kind o' bug he call Germ. I ax um what kind o'
+bug is dat; an' he 'low you can't see um wid yo' eye. I ain't say so
+to de Jedge, but _I_ 'low when you see bug you can't see wid yo' eye,
+you best not seem um 'tall--case he must be some kind o' spook, an'
+Gawd knows I ain't want to see no spook. Ef de bug ain't no spook, den
+he mus' be eenside yo' haid, 'stead o' outside um, an' to hab bug on
+de eenside o' yo' haid is de wuss kind o' bad luck. Anyhow, nobody but
+Buckrah talk an' ack like dat, niggers is got mo' sense."
+
+We found, presently, a ready and a steady sale for our extra stock. We
+could supply caterpillars, butterflies and moths, or chrysalids and
+cocoons; we had some rather scarce ones; and then, our unmounted
+specimens were so perfect, and our mounted ones so exquisitely done,
+that we had but little trouble in disposing of them. Under the hand of
+John Flint these last were really works of art. Not for nothing had
+he boasted that he was handy with his fingers.
+
+The pretty common forms, framed hovering lifelike over delicately
+pressed ferns and flowers, found even a readier market, for they were
+really beautiful. Money had begun to come in--not largely, it is true,
+but still steadily and surely. You must know how to handle your stock,
+and you must be in touch with your market--scientists, students,
+collectors,--and this, of course, takes time. We could supply the
+larger dealers, too, although they pay less, and we had a modest
+advertisement in one or two papers published for the profession, which
+brought us orders. But let no one imagine that it is an easy task to
+handle these frail bodies, these gossamer wings, so that naturalists
+and collectors are glad to get them. Once or twice we lost valuable
+shipments.
+
+Long since--in the late spring, to be exact, John Flint had moved out
+of the Guest Room, needed for other occupants, into a two-roomed
+outbuilding across the garden. Some former pastor had had it built for
+an oratory and retreat, but now, covered with vines, it had stood for
+many years unused, save as a sort of lumber room.
+
+When the troublesome question of where we might properly house him had
+arisen, my mother hit upon these unused rooms as by direct
+inspiration. She had them cleaned, repainted, scoured, and turned into
+a pleasant well-lighted, airy workroom and living-room combined, and a
+smaller and rather austere bedroom, with an inexpensive but very good
+head of Christ over the mantel, and an old, old carved crucifix on the
+wall beside the white iron bed. Laurence took from his own room a
+Morris chair, whose somewhat frayed cushions my mother neatly
+re-covered. Mary Virginia contributed a rug, as well as dressing-gown
+and slippers. Miss Sally Ruth gave him outright a brand-new Bible, and
+loaned him an old cedar-wood wardrobe which had been her
+great-grandmother's, and which still smelt delicately of generations
+of rose-leaved and lavendered linen.
+
+"All I ask," said Miss Sally Ruth sharply, "is that you'll read Paul
+with your eyes open and your mouth shut, and that you'll keep your
+clothes in that wardrobe and your moths out of it. If it was intended
+for anybody to teach you anything, then Paul will teach you; but it
+_wasn't_ intended for a cedar-wood wardrobe to hold moths, and I hope
+you won't forget it!"
+
+Major Cartwright sent over a fishing-rod, a large jar of tobacco, and
+a framed picture of General Lee.
+
+"Because no man, suh, could live under the same roof with even his
+pictured semblance, and not be the bettah fo' it," said the major
+earnestly. "I know. I've got to live with him myself. When I'm fair to
+middlin' he's in the dinin' room. When I've skidded off the straight
+an' narrow path I lock him up in the parlor, an' at such times I sleep
+out on the po'ch. But when I'm at peace with man an' God I take him
+into my bedroom an' look at him befo' retirin'. He's about as easy to
+live with as the Angel Gabriel, but he's mighty bracin', Marse Robert
+is: mighty bracin'!"
+
+Thus equipped, John Flint settled himself in his own house. It had
+been a wise move, for he had the sense of proprietorship, privacy, and
+freedom. He could come and go as he pleased, with no one to question.
+He could work undisturbed, save for the children who brought him such
+things as they could find. He put his breeding cages out on the
+vine-covered piazzas surrounding two-sides of his house, arranged the
+cabinets and boxes which had been removed from my study to his own,
+nailed up a few shelves to suit himself, and set up housekeeping.
+
+My mother had been frankly delighted to have my creeping friends moved
+out of the Parish House, and Clélie abated in her dislike of the
+one-legged man because he had, in a way, removed from her a heretofore
+never-absent fear of waking up some night and finding a caterpillar
+under her bed. More yet, he entailed no extra work, for he flatly
+refused to have her set foot in his rooms for the purpose of cleaning
+them. He attended to that himself. The man was a marvel of neatness
+and order. Mesdames, permit me to here remark that when a man is neat
+and orderly no woman of Eve's daughters can compare with him. John
+Flint's rooms would arouse the rabid envy of the cleanest and most
+scourful she in Holland itself.
+
+Now as the months wore away there had sprung up between him, and Mary
+Virginia and Laurence, one of those odd comradely friendships which
+sometime unite the totally unlike with bonds hard to break. His
+spotless workroom had a fascination for the youngsters. They were
+always in and out, now with a cocoon, now an imago, now a larva, and
+then again to see how those they had already brought were getting
+along.
+
+The lame man was an unrivaled listener--a circumstance which endeared
+him to youthful Laurence, in whom thoughts and the urge to express
+these thoughts in words rose like sap. This fresh and untainted
+confidence, poured out so naïvely, taught John Flint more than any
+words or prayers of mine could have done. It opened to him a world
+into which, his eyes had not heretofore been permitted to look; and
+the result was all the more sure and certain, in that the children had
+no faintest idea of the effect they were producing. They had no end to
+gain, no ax to grind; they merely spoke the truth as they knew it, and
+this unselfish and hopeful truthfulness aroused his interest and
+curiosity; it even compelled his admiration. He couldn't dismiss
+_this_ as "hot air"!
+
+I was more than glad to have him thus taught. It was a salutary
+lesson, tending to temper his overweening confidence and to humble his
+contemptuous pride. In his own world he had been supreme, a figure of
+sinister importance. Brash had been crook or cop who had taught or
+caught Slippy McGee! But in this new atmosphere, in which he breathed
+with difficulty, the young had been given him for guides. They led
+him, where a grownup had failed.
+
+Mary Virginia was particularly fond of him. He had as little to say to
+her as to Laurence, but he looked at her with interested eyes that
+never lost a movement; she knew he never missed a word, either; his
+silence was friendly, and the little girl had a pleasant fashion of
+taking folk for granted. Hers was one of those large natures which
+give lavishly, shares itself freely, but does not demand much in
+return. She gave with an open hand to her quiet listener--her books,
+her music, her amusing and innocent views, her frank comments, her
+truthfulness, her sweet brave gaiety; and he absorbed it like a
+sponge. It delighted her to find and bring the proper food-plants for
+his cages. And she being one of those who sing while they work, you
+might hear her caroling like a lark, flitting about the old garden
+with her red setter Kerry at her heels.
+
+Laurence no longer read aloud to him, but instead gave Flint such
+books as he could find covering his particular study, and these were
+devoured and pored over, and more begged for. Flint would go without
+new clothes, neat as he was, and without tobacco, much as he liked to
+smoke,--to buy books upon lepidoptera.
+
+He helped my mother with her flowers and her vegetables, but refused
+to have anything to do with her chickens, remarking shortly that hens
+were such fools he couldn't help hating them. Madame said she liked to
+have him around, for he was more like some unobtrusive jinnee than a
+mere mortal. She declared that John Flint had what the negroes call a
+"growing hand"--he had only to stick a bit of green in the ground and
+it grew like Jonah's gourd.
+
+Since he had begun to hobble about, he had gradually come to be
+accepted by the town in general. They looked upon him as one who
+shared Father De Rancé's madness, a tramp who was a hunter of bugs. It
+explained his presence in the Parish House; I fancy it also explained
+to some why he had been a tramp!
+
+Folks got used to him, as one does to anything one sees daily. The
+pleasant conservative soft-voiced ladies who liked to call on Madame
+of an afternoon and gossip Christianly, and drink tea and eat Clélie's
+little cakes on our broad shady verandah, only glanced casually at the
+bent head and shoulders visible through the screened window across the
+garden. They said he was very interesting, of course, but painfully
+shy and bashful. As for him, he was as horribly afraid of them as they
+would have been of him, had they known. I could not always save
+myself from the sin of smiling at an ironic situation.
+
+Judge Mayne had at first eyed the man askance, watching him as his own
+cats might an interloping stray dog.
+
+"The fellow's not very prepossessing," he told me, of an evening when
+he had dined with us, "but I've been on the bench long enough to be
+skeptical of any fixed good or bad type--I've found that the criminal
+type is any type that goes wrong; so I shouldn't go so far as to call
+this chap a bad egg. But--I hope you are reasonably sure of him,
+father?"
+
+"Reasonably," said I, composedly.
+
+"Laurence tells me Madame and Mary Virginia _like_ the fellow. H'm!
+Well, I've acquired a little faith in the intuition of women--some
+women, understand, and some times. And mark you, I didn't say
+_judgment_. Let us hope that this is one of the times when faith in
+intuition will be justified."
+
+Later, when he had had time to examine the work progressing under the
+flexible fingers of the silent workman, he withdrew with more respect.
+
+"I suppose he's all right, if you think so, father. But I'd watch out
+for him, anyway," he advised.
+
+"That is exactly what I intend to do."
+
+"Rather he fell into your hands than mine. Better for him," said the
+judge, briefly. Then he launched into an intimate talk of Laurence,
+and in thus talking of the boy's future, forgot my helper.
+
+That was it, exactly. The man was so unobtrusive without in the least
+being furtive. Had so little to say; attended so strictly to his own
+business, and showed himself so utterly and almost inhumanly
+uninterested in anybody else's, that he kept in the background. He
+was there, and people knew it; they were, in a sense, interested in
+him, but not curious about him.
+
+One morning in early autumn--he had been with us then some eight or
+nine months--I went over to his rooms with a New York newspaper in my
+hand. It had news that set my heart to pounding sickeningly--news that
+at once simplified and yet complicated matters. I hesitated as to
+whether or not I should tell him, but decided that whatever effect
+that news might produce, I would deal with him openly, above board,
+and always with truth. He must act and judge for himself and with his
+eyes open. On my part there should be no concealment.
+
+The paper stated that the body of a man found floating in the East
+River had been positively identified by the police as that of Slippy
+McGee. That the noted crook had gotten back into New York through the
+cunning dragnet so carefully spread for him was another proof of his
+daring and dexterity. How he met the dark fate which set him adrift,
+battered and dreadful, in the East River, was another of those
+underworld crimes that remain unsolved. Cunning and dangerous,
+mysterious in his life, baffling all efforts to get at him, he was as
+evilly mysterious in his death. There was only one thing sure--that
+this dead wretch with the marks of violence upon him was Slippy McGee;
+and since his breath had ceased, the authorities could breathe easier.
+
+He read it deliberately; then re-read it, and sat and stared at the
+paper. A slow grim smile came to his lips, and he took his chin in his
+hand, musingly. The eyes narrowed, the face darkened, the jaw thrust
+itself forward.
+
+"Dead, huh?" he grunted, and stared about him, with a slow, twisting
+movement of the head. "Well--I might just as well be, as buried alive
+in a jay-dump at the tail-end of all creation!" Once again the Powers
+of Darkness swooped down and wrestled with and for him; and knowing
+what I knew, sick at heart, I trembled for him.
+
+"What am _I_ doing here, anyhow?" he snarled with his lips drawn back
+from his teeth. "Piddling with bugs--_Me!_ Patching up their dinky
+little wings and stretching out their dam' little legs and feelers--me
+being what I am, and they being what they are! Say, I've got to quit
+this, once for all I've got to quit it. I'm not a _man_ any more. I'm
+a dead one, a he-granny cutting silo for lady-worms and drynursing
+their interesting little babies. My God! _Me!_" And he threw his hands
+above his head with a gesture of rage and despair.
+
+"Hanging on here like a boob--no wonder they think I'm dead! If I
+could just make a getaway and pull off one more good job and land
+enough--"
+
+"You couldn't keep it, if you did land it--your sort can't. You know
+how it went before--the women and the sharks got it. There'd be always
+that same incentive to pull off just one more to keep you going--until
+you'd pulled yourself behind bars, and stayed there. And there's the
+drug-danger, too. If you escaped so far, it was because so far you had
+the strength to let drugs alone. But the drugs get you, sooner or
+later, do they not? Have you not told me over and over again that
+'nearly all dips are dopes'? That first the dope gets you--and then
+the law? No. You can't pull off anything that won't pull you into
+hell. We have gone over this thing often enough, haven't we?"
+
+"No, we haven't. And I haven't had a chance to pull off
+anything--except leaves for bugs. _Me!_ I want to get my hand in once
+more, I tell you! I want to pull off a stunt that'll make the whole
+bunch of bulls sit up and bellow for fair--and I can do it, easy as
+easy. Think I've croaked, do they? And they can all snooze on their
+peg-posts, now I'm a stiff? Well, by cripes, I just want half of a
+half of a chance, and I'll show 'em Slippy McGee's good and plenty
+alive!"
+
+"Come out into the garden, my son, and feel that you are good and
+plenty alive. Come out into the free air. Hold on tight, a little
+while longer!"
+
+I laid my hand upon his shoulder compellingly, and although he glared
+at me, and ground his teeth, and lifted his lip, he came; unwillingly,
+swearing under his breath, he came. We tramped up and down the garden
+paths, up and down, and back again, his wooden peg making a round
+hole, like a hoofmark, in the earth. He stared down at it, spat
+savagely upon it, and swore horribly, but not too loudly.
+
+"I want to feel like a live man!" he gritted. "A live man, not a
+one-legged mucker with a beard like a Dutch bomb-thrower's, puttering
+about a skypilot's backyard on the wrong side of everything!"
+
+"Stick it out a little longer, John Flint; hold fast!"
+
+"Hold fast to what?" he demanded savagely. "To a bug stuck on a
+needle?"
+
+"Yes. And to me who trusts you. To Madame who likes you. To the dear
+child who put bug and needle into your hand because she knew it was
+good work and trusted your hand to do it. And more than all, to that
+other Me you're finding--your own true self, John Flint! Hold fast,
+hold fast!"
+
+He stopped and stared at me.
+
+"I'm believing him again!" said he, grievously. "I've been sat on
+while I was hot, and my number's marked on me, 23. I'm hoodooed,
+that's what!"
+
+Tramp, tramp, stump, stump, up and down, the two of us.
+
+"All right, devil-dodger," said he wearily, after a long sullen
+silence. "I'll stick it out a bit longer, to please you. You've been
+white--the lot of you. But look here--if I beat it some night ... with
+what I can find, why, I'm warning you: don't blame _me_--you're
+running your risks, and it'll be up to _you_ to explain!"
+
+"When you want to go, John Flint--when you really and truly want to
+go, why, take anything I have that you may fancy, my son. I give it
+you beforehand."
+
+"I don't want anything given to me beforehand!" he growled. "I want to
+take what I want to take without anybody's leave!"
+
+"Very well, then; take what you want to take, without anybody's leave!
+I shall be able to do without it, I dare say."
+
+He turned upon me furiously:
+
+"Oh, yes, I guess you can! You'd do without eating and breathing too,
+I suppose, if you could manage it! You do without too blamed much
+right now, trying to beat yourself to being a saint! Of course I'd
+help myself and leave you to go without--you're enough to make a man
+ache to shoot some sense into you with a cannon! And for God's sake,
+_who_ are you pinching and scraping and going without _for_? A bunch
+of hickey factory-shuckers that haven't got sense enough to talk
+American, and a lot of mill-hands with beans on 'em like bone buttons!
+They ain't worth it. While I'm in the humor, take it from me there
+ain't anybody worth anything anyhow!"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Flint! What a shame and a sin!" called another voice. "Oh,
+Mr. Flint, I'm ashamed of you!" There in the freedom of the Saturday
+morning sunlight stood Mary Virginia, her red Irish setter Kerry
+beside her.
+
+"I came over," said she, "to see how the baby-moths are getting on
+this morning, and to know if the last hairy gentleman I brought spins
+into a cocoon or buries himself in the ground. And then I heard Mr.
+Flint--and what he said is unkind, and untrue, and not a bit like him.
+Why, everybody's worth everything you can do for them--only some are
+worth more."
+
+The wild wrath died out of his face. As usual, he softened at sight of
+her.
+
+"Oh, well, miss, I wasn't thinking of the like of you--and him," he
+jerked his head at me, half apologetically, "nor young Mayne, nor the
+little Madame. You're different."
+
+"Why, no, we aren't, really," said Mary Virginia, puckering her brows
+adorably. "We only _seem_ to be different--but we are just exactly
+like everybody else, only _we_ know it, and some people never can seem
+to find it out--and there's the difference! You see?" That was the
+befuddled manner in which Mary Virginia very often explained things.
+If God was good to you, you got a little glimmer of what she meant and
+was trying to tell you. Mary Virginia often talked as the alchemists
+used to write--cryptically, abstrusely, as if to hide the golden truth
+from all but the initiate.
+
+"Come and shake hands with Mr. Flint, Kerry," said she to the setter.
+"I want you to help make him understand things it's high time he
+should know. Nobody can do that better than a good dog can."
+
+Kerry looked a trifle doubtful, but having been told to do a certain
+thing, he obeyed, as a good dog does. Gravely he sat up and held out
+an obedient paw, which the man took mechanically. But meeting the
+clear hazel eyes, he dropped his hand upon the shining head with the
+gesture of one who desires to become friends. Accepting this, Kerry
+reached up a nose and nuzzled. Then he wagged his plumy tail.
+
+"There!" said Mary Virginia, delightedly. "Now, don't you see how
+horrid it was to talk the way you talked? Why, Kerry _likes_ you, and
+Kerry is a sensible dog."
+
+"Yes, miss," and he looked at Mary Virginia very much as the dog did,
+trustingly, but a little bewildered.
+
+"Aren't you sorry you said that?"
+
+"Y-e-s, seeing you seem to think it was wrong."
+
+"Well, you'll know better from now on," said Mary Virginia,
+comfortingly. She looked at him searchingly for a minute, and he met
+her look without flinching. That had been the one hopeful sign, from
+the first--that he never refused to meet your glance, but gave you
+back one just as steady, if more suspicious.
+
+"Mr. Flint," said Mary Virginia, "you've about made up your mind to
+stay on here with the Padre, haven't you? For a good long while, at
+any rate? You wouldn't like to leave the Padre, would you?"
+
+He stiffened. One could see the struggle within him.
+
+"Well, miss, I can't see but that I've just got to stay on--for
+awhile. Until he's tired of me and my ways, anyhow," he said gloomily.
+
+Mary Virginia dismissed my tiredness with an airy wave of her hand.
+She smiled.
+
+"Do you know," said she earnestly, "I've had the funniest idea about
+you, from the very first time I saw you? Well, I have. I've somehow
+got the notion that you and the Padre _belong_. I think that's why you
+came. I think you belong right here, in that darling little house,
+studying butterflies and mounting them so beautifully they look alive.
+I think you're never going to go away anywhere any more, but that
+you're going to stay right here as long as you live!"
+
+His face turned an ugly white, and his mouth fell open. He looked at
+Mary Virginia almost with horror--Saul might have looked thus at the
+Witch of Endor when she summoned the shade of Samuel to tell him that
+the kingdom had been rent from his hand and his fate was upon him.
+
+Mary Virginia nodded, thoughtfully.
+
+"I feel so sure of it," said she, confidently, "that I'm going to ask
+you to do me a favor. I want you to take care of Kerry for me. You
+know I'm going away to school next week, and--he can't stay at home
+when I'm not there. My father's away frequently, and he couldn't take
+Kerry about with him, of course. And he couldn't be left with the
+servants--somehow he doesn't like the colored people. He always growls
+at them, and they're afraid of him. And my mother dislikes dogs
+intensely--she's afraid of them, except those horrible little
+toy-things that aren't _dogs_ any more." The scorn of the real
+dog-lover was in her voice. "Kerry's used to the Parish House. He
+loves the Padre, he'll soon love you, and he likes to play with
+Pitache, so Madame wouldn't mind his being here. And--I'd be more
+satisfied in my mind if he were with somebody that--that needed
+him--and would like him a whole lot--somebody like you," she finished.
+
+Now, Mary Virginia regarded Kerry even as the apple of her eye. The
+dog was a noble and beautiful specimen of his race, thoroughbred to
+the bone, a fine field dog, and the pride of the child's heart. He was
+what only that most delightful of dogs, a thoroughbred Irish setter,
+can be. John Flint gasped. Something perplexed, incredulous, painful,
+dazzled, crept into his face and looked out of his eyes.
+
+"_Me_?" he gasped. "You mean you're willing to let me keep your dog
+for you? Yours?"
+
+"I want to _give_ him to you," said Mary Virginia bravely enough,
+though her voice trembled. "I am perfectly sure you'll love
+him--better than any one else in the world would, except me myself. I
+don't know why I know that, but I do know it. If you wanted to go
+away, later on, why, you could turn him over to the Padre, because of
+course you wouldn't want to have a dog following you about everywhere.
+They're a lot of bother. But--somehow, I think you'll keep him. I
+think you'll love him. He--he's a darling dog." She was too proud to
+turn her head aside, but two large tears rolled down her cheeks, like
+dew upon a rose.
+
+John Flint stood stock-still, looking from her to the dog, and back
+again. Kerry, sensing that something was wrong with his little
+mistress, pawed her skirts and whined.
+
+"Now I come to think of it," said John Flint slowly, "I never had
+anything--anything alive, I mean--belong to me before."
+
+Mary Virginia glanced up at him shrewdly, and smiled through her
+tears. Her smile makes a funny delicious red V of her lower lip, and
+is altogether adorable and seductive.
+
+"That's just exactly why you thought nobody was worth anything," she
+said. Then she bent over her dog and kissed him between his beautiful
+hazel eyes.
+
+"Kerry, dear," said she, "Kerry, dear Kerry, you don't belong to me
+any more. I--I've got to go away to school--and you know you wouldn't
+be happy at home without me. You belong to Mr. Flint now, and I'm sure
+he needs you, and I know he'll love you almost as much as I do, and
+he'll be very, very good to you. So you're to stay with him,
+and--stand by him and be his dog, like you were mine. You'll remember,
+Kerry? Good-by, my dear, dear, darling dog!" She kissed him again,
+patted him, and thrust his collar into his new owner's hand.
+
+"Go--good-by, everybody!" said she, in a muffled voice, and ran. I
+think she would have cried childishly in another moment; and she was
+trying hard to remember that she was growing up!
+
+John Flint stood staring after her, his hand on the dog's collar,
+holding him in. His face was still without a vestige of color, and his
+eyes glittered. Then his other hand crept out to touch the dog's
+head.
+
+"It's wet--where she dropped tears on it! Parson ... she's given me
+her dog ... that she loves enough to cry over!"
+
+"He's a very fine dog, and she has had him and loved him from his
+puppyhood," I reminded him. And I added, with a wily tongue: "You can
+always turn him over to me, you know--if you decide to take to the
+road and wish to get rid of a troublesome companion. A dog is bad
+company for a man who wishes to dodge the police."
+
+But he only shook his head. His eyes were troubled, and his forehead
+wrinkled.
+
+"Parson," said he, hesitatingly, "did you ever feel like you'd been
+caught by--by Something reaching down out of the dark? Something big
+that you couldn't see and couldn't ever hope to get away from, because
+it's always on the job? Ain't it a hell of a feeling?"
+
+"Yes," I agreed. "I've felt--caught by that Something, too. And it is
+at first a terrifying sensation. Until--you learn to be glad."
+
+"You're caught--and you know under your hat you're never going to be
+able to get away any more. It'll hold you till you die!" said he, a
+little wildly. "My God! I'm caught! First It bit off a leg on me, so I
+couldn't run. Then It wished you and your bugs on me. And now--Yes,
+sir; I'm done for. That kid got my goat this morning. My God, who'd
+believe it? But it's true: I'm done for. She gave me her dog and she
+got my goat!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+"THY SERVANT WILL GO AND FIGHT WITH THIS PHILISTINE"
+    1 Sam. 17: 32.
+
+
+Mary Virginia had gone, weeping and bewept, and the spirit of youth
+seemed to have gone with her, leaving the Parish House darkened
+because of its absence. A sorrowful quiet brooded over the garden that
+no longer echoed a caroling voice. Kerry, seeking vainly for the
+little mistress, would come whining back to John Flint, and look up
+mutely into his face; and finding no promise there, lie down,
+whimpering, at his feet. The man seemed as desolate as the dog,
+because of the child's departure.
+
+"When I come back," Mary Virginia said to him at parting, "I expect
+you'll know more about moths and butterflies than anybody else in the
+world does. You're that sort. I'd love to be here, watching you grow
+up into it, but I've got to go away and grow up into something myself.
+I'm very glad you came here, Mr. Flint. You've helped me, lots."
+
+"Me?" with husky astonishment.
+
+"You, of course," said the child, serenely. "Because you are such a
+good man, Mr. Flint, and so patient, and you stick at what you try to
+do until you do it better than anybody else does. Often and often when
+I've been trying to do sums--I'm frightfully stupid about
+arithmetic--and I wanted to give up, I'd think of you over here just
+trying and trying and keeping right on trying, until you'd gotten what
+you wanted to know; and then _I'd_ keep on trying, too. The funny part
+is, that I like you for making me do it. You see, I'm a very, very bad
+person in some things, Mr. Flint," she said frankly. "Why, when my
+mother has to tell me to look at so and so, and see how well they
+behave, or how nicely they can do certain things, and how good they
+are, and why don't I profit by such a good example, a perfectly horrid
+raging sort of feeling comes all over me, and I want to be as naughty
+as naughty! I feel like doing and saying things I'd never want to do
+or say, if it wasn't for that good example. I just can't seem to
+_bear_ being good-exampled. But you're different, thank goodness. Most
+really good people are different, I guess."
+
+He looked at her, dumbly--he had no words at his command. She missed
+the irony and the tragedy, but she sensed the depths of feeling under
+that mute exterior.
+
+"I'm glad you're sorry I'm going away," said she, with the directness
+that was so engaging. "I perfectly love people to feel sorry to part
+with me. I hope and _hope_ they'll keep on being sorry--because
+they'll be that much gladder when I come back. I don't believe there's
+anything quite so wonderful and beautiful as having other folks like
+you, except it's liking other folks yourself!"
+
+"I never had to be bothered about it, either way," said he dryly. His
+face twitched.
+
+"Maybe that's because you never stayed still long enough in any one
+place to catch hold," said she, and laughed at him.
+
+"Good-by, Mr. Flint! I'll never see a butterfly or a moth, the whole
+time I'm gone, without making believe he's a messenger from Madame,
+and the Padre, and you, and Kerry. I'll play he's a carrier-butterfly,
+with a message tucked away under his wings: 'Howdy, Mary Virginia!
+I've just come from flying over the flowers in the Parish House
+garden; and the folks are all well, and busy, and happy. But they
+haven't forgotten you for a single solitary minute, and they miss you
+and wish you'd come back; and they send you their dear, dear love--and
+I'll carry your dear, dear love back to them!' So if you see a big,
+big, beautiful, strange fellow come sailing by your window some
+morning, why, that's mine, Mr. Flint! Remember!"
+
+And then she was gone, and he had his first taste of unselfish human
+sorrow. Heretofore his worries had been purely personal and
+self-centered: this was different, and innocent. It shocked and
+terrified him to find out how intensely he could miss another being,
+and that being a mere child. He wasn't used to that sort of pain, and
+it bewildered him.
+
+Eustis himself had wanted the little girl sent to a preparatory school
+which would fit her for one of the women's colleges. He had visions of
+the forward sweep of women--visions which his wife didn't share. Her
+daughter should go to the Church School at which she herself had been
+educated, an exclusive and expensive institution where the daughters
+of the wealthy were given a finishing hand-polish with ecclesiastical
+emery, as a sort of social hall-mark. Mrs. Eustis had a horror of what
+she called, in quotation-marks, the modern non-religious method of
+educating young ladies.
+
+The Eustis house was closed, and left in charge of the negro
+caretakers, for Mrs. Eustis couldn't stand the loneliness of the place
+after the child's departure, and Eustis himself found his presence
+more and more necessary at the great plantation he was building up.
+Mrs. Eustis left Appleboro, and my mother missed her. There was a vein
+of pure gold underlying the placid little woman's character, which the
+stronger woman divined and built upon.
+
+Laurence, too, entered college that Fall. I had coached him, in such
+hours as I could spare. He was conscientious enough, though his Greek
+was not the Greek of Homer and he vexed the soul of my mother with a
+French she said was spoke
+
+    full fair and fetisly
+    After ye schole of Strattford atte Bowe.
+
+But if he hadn't Mary Virginia's sensitiveness to all beauty, nor her
+playful fancy and vivid imagination, he was clear-brained and
+clean-thinking, with that large perspective and that practical
+optimism which seem to me so essentially American. He saw without
+confusion both the thing as it was and as it could become. With only
+enough humor to save him, he had a sternness more of the puritan than
+of the cavalier blood from which he had sprung. Above all was he
+informed with that new spirit brooding upon the face of all the
+waters, a spirit that for want of a better name one might call the
+Race Conscience.
+
+It was this last aspect of the boy's character that amazed and
+interested John Flint, who was himself too shrewd not to divine the
+sincerity, even the commonsense, of what Laurence called "applied
+Christianity." Altruism--and Slippy McGee! He listened with a puzzled
+wonder.
+
+"I wish," he grumbled to Laurence, "that you'd come off the roof. It
+gives a fellow stiff neck rubbering up at you!"
+
+"I'd rather stay up--the air's better, and you can see so much
+farther," said Laurence. And he added hospitably: "There's plenty of
+room--come on up, yourself!"
+
+"With one leg?" sarcastically.
+
+"And two eyes," said the boy. "Come on up--the sky's fine!" And he
+laughed into the half-suspicious face.
+
+The gimlet eyes bored into him, and the frank and truthful eyes met
+them unabashed, unwavering, with a something in them which made the
+other blink.
+
+"When I got pitched into this burg," said the lame man thoughtfully,
+"I landed all there--except a leg, but I never carried my brains in my
+legs. I hadn't got any bats in my belfry. But I'm getting 'em. I'm
+getting 'em so bad that when I hear some folks talk bughouse these
+days it pretty near listens like good sense to me. Why, kid, I'm nut
+enough now to dangle over the edge of believing you know what you're
+talking about!"
+
+"Fall over: I _know_ I know what I'm talking about," said Laurence
+magnificently.
+
+"I'm double-crossed," said John Flint, soberly and sadly, "Anyway I
+look at it--" he swept the horizon with a wide-flung gesture, "it's
+bugs for mine. I began by grannying bugs for _him_," he tossed his
+head bull-like in my direction, "and I stand around swallowing hot
+air from _you_--" He glared at Laurence, "and what's the result? Why,
+that I've got bugs in the bean, that's what! Think of me licking an
+all-day sucker a kid dopes out! _Me!_ Oh, he--venly saints!" he
+gulped. "Ain't I the nut, though?"
+
+"Well, supposing?" said Laurence, laughing. "Buck up! You _could_ be a
+bad egg instead of a good nut, you know!"
+
+John Flint's eyes slitted, then widened; his mouth followed suit
+almost automatically. He looked at me.
+
+"Can you beat it?" he wondered.
+
+"Beating a bad egg would be a waste of time I wouldn't be guilty of,"
+said I amusedly. "But I hope to live to see the good nut grow into a
+fine tree."
+
+"Do your damnedest--excuse me, parson!" said he contritely. "I mean,
+don't stop for a little thing like _me_!"
+
+Laurence leaned forward. "Man," said he, impressively, "he won't have
+to! You'll be marking time and keeping step with him yourself before
+you know it!"
+
+"Huh!" said John Flint, non-committally.
+
+
+
+Laurence came to spend his last evening at home with us.
+
+"Padre," said he, when we walked up and down in the garden, after an
+old custom, after dinner, "do you really know what I mean to do when
+I've finished college and start out on my own hook?"
+
+"Put 'Mayne & Son' on the judge's shingle and walk around the block
+forty times a day to look at it!" said I, promptly.
+
+"Of course," said he. "That first. But a legal shingle can be turned
+into as handy a weapon as one could wish for, Padre, and _I'm_ going
+to take that shingle and spank this sleepy-headed old town wide awake
+with it!" He spoke with the conviction of youth, so sure of itself
+that there is no room for doubt. There was in him, too, a hint of
+latent power which was impressive. One did not laugh at Laurence.
+
+"It's my town," with his chin out. "It could be a mighty good town.
+It's going to become one. I expect to live all my life right here,
+among my own people, and they've got to make it worth my while. I
+don't propose to cut myself down to fit any little hole: I intend to
+make that hole big enough to fit my possible measure."
+
+"May an old friend wish more power to your shovel?"
+
+"It'll be a steam shovel!" said he, gaily. Then his face clouded.
+
+"Padre! I'm sick of the way things are run in Appleboro! I've talked
+with other boys and they're sick of it, too. You know why they want to
+get away? Because they think they haven't got even a fighting chance
+here. Because towns like this are like billion-ton old wagons sunk so
+deep in mudruts that nothing but dynamite can blow them out--and they
+are not dealers in dynamite. If they want to do anything that even
+_looks_ new they've got to fight the stand-patters to a finish, and
+they're blockaded by a lot of reactionaries that don't know the
+earth's moving. There are a lot of folks in the South, Padre, who've
+been dead since the civil war, and haven't found it out themselves,
+and won't take live people's word for it. Well, now, I mean to _do_
+things. I mean to do them right here. And I certainly shan't allow
+myself to be blockaded by anybody, living or dead. You've got to fight
+the devil with fire;--I'm going to blockade those blockaders, and see
+that the dead ones are decently buried."
+
+"You have tackled a big job, my son."
+
+"I like big jobs, Padre. They're worth while. Maybe I'll be able to
+keep some of the boys home--the town needs them. Maybe I can keep some
+of those poor kids out of the mills, too. Oh, yes, I expect a right
+lively time!"
+
+I was silent. I knew how supinely Appleboro lay in the hollow of a
+hard hand. I had learned, too, how such a hand can close into a
+strangling fist.
+
+"Of course I can't clean up the whole state, and I can't reorganize
+the world," said the boy sturdily. "I'm not such a fool as to try. But
+I can do my level best to disinfect my own particular corner, and make
+it fit for men and safe for women and kids to live and breathe in.
+Padre, for years there hasn't been a rotten deal nor a brazen steal in
+this state that the man who practically owns and runs this town hadn't
+a finger in, knuckle-deep. _He's got to go_."
+
+"Goliath doesn't always fall at the hand of the son of Jesse, my
+little David," said I quietly. I also had dreamed dreams and seen
+visions.
+
+"That's about what my father says," said the boy. "He wants me to be a
+successful man, a 'safe and sane citizen.' He thinks a gentleman
+should practise his profession decently and in order. But to believe,
+as I do, that you can wipe out corruption, that you can tackle poverty
+the same as you would any other disease, and prevent it, as smallpox
+and yellow fever are prevented, he looks upon as madness and a waste
+of time."
+
+"He has had sorrow and experience, and he is kind and charitable, as
+well as wise," said I.
+
+"That's exactly where the hardest part comes in for us younger
+fellows. It isn't bucking the bad that makes the fight so hard: it's
+bucking the wrong-idea'd good. Padre, one good man on the wrong side
+is a stumbling-block for the stoutest-hearted reformer ever born. It's
+men like my father, who regard the smooth scoundrel that runs this
+town as a necessary evil, and tolerate him because they wouldn't soil
+their hands dealing with him, that do the greatest injury to the
+state. I tell you what, it wouldn't be so hard to get rid of the
+devil, if it weren't for the angels!"
+
+"And how," said I, ironically, "do you propose to set about smoothing
+the rough and making straight the crooked, my son?"
+
+"Flatten 'em out," said he, briefly. "Politics. First off I'm going to
+practice general law; then I'll be solicitor-general for this county.
+After that, I shall be attorney-general for the state. Later I may be
+governor, unless I become senator instead."
+
+"Well," said I, cautiously, "you'll be so toned down by that time that
+you might make a very good governor indeed."
+
+"I couldn't very well make a worse one than some we've already had,"
+said the boy sternly. There was something of the accusing dignity of a
+young archangel about him. I caught a glimpse of that newer America
+growing up about us--an America gone back to the older, truer,
+unbuyable ideals of our fathers.
+
+"I guess you'd better tell me good-by now, Padre," said he, presently.
+"And bless me, please--it's a pretty custom. I won't see you again,
+for you'll be saying mass when I'm running for my train. I'll go tell
+John Flint good-by, too."
+
+He went over and rapped on the window, through which we could see
+Flint sitting at his table, his head bent over a book.
+
+"Good-by, John Flint" said Laurence. "Good luck to you and your leggy
+friends! When I come back you'll probably have mandibles, and you'll
+greet me with a nip, in pure Bugese."
+
+"Good-by," said John Flint, lifting his head. Then, with unwonted
+feeling: "I'm horrible sorry you've got to go--I'll miss you something
+fierce. You've been very kind--thank you."
+
+"Mind you take care of the Padre," said the boy, waiving the thanks
+with a smile. "Don't let him work too hard."
+
+"Who, me?" Flint's voice took the knife-edge of sarcasm. "Oh, sure! It
+don't need but one leg to keep up with a gent trying to run a
+thirty-six hour a day job with one-man power, does it? Son, take it
+from me, when a man's got the real, simonpure, no-imitation,
+soulsaving bug in his bean, a forty-legged cyclone couldn't keep up
+with him, much less a guy with one pedal short." He glared at me
+indignantly. From the first it has been one of his vainest notions
+that I am perversely working myself to death.
+
+"There's nothing to be done with the Padre, then, I'm afraid," said
+Laurence, chuckling.
+
+"I _might_ soak him in the cyanide jar for ten minutes a day without
+killing him," mused Mr. Flint. "But," disgustedly, "what'd be the use?
+When he came to and found he'd been that long idle he'd die of
+heart-failure." He pushed aside the window screen, and the two shook
+hands heartily. Then the boy, wringing my hand again, walked away
+without another word. I felt a bit desolate--there are times when I
+could envy women their solace of tears--as if he figured in his
+handsome young person that newer, stronger, more conquering generation
+which was marching ahead, leaving me, older and slower and sadder,
+far, far behind it. Ah! To be once more that young, that strong, that
+hopeful!
+
+When I began to reflect upon what seemed visionary plans, I was
+saddened, foreseeing inevitable disillusion, perhaps even stark
+failure, ahead of him. That he would stubbornly try to carry out those
+plans I did not doubt: I knew my Laurence. He might accomplish a
+certain amount of good. But to overthrow Inglesby, the Boss of
+Appleboro--for he meant no less than this--why, that was a horse of
+another color!
+
+For Inglesby was our one great financial figure. He owned our bank;
+his was the controlling interest in the mills; he owned the factory
+outright; he was president of half a dozen corporations and chairman
+and director of many more.
+
+Did we have a celebration? There he was, in the center of the stage,
+with a jovial loud laugh and an ultra-benevolent smile to hide the
+menace of his little cold piglike eyes, and the meaning of his heavy
+jaw. Will the statement that he had a pew in every church in town
+explain him? He had one in mine, too; paid for, which many of them are
+not.
+
+At the large bare office in the mill he was easy of access, and would
+listen to what you had to say with flattering attention and sympathy.
+But it was in his private office over the bank that this large spider
+really spun the web of our politics. Mills, banks, churches, schools,
+lights, railroads, stores, heating, water-power--all these juicy flies
+apparently walked into his parlor of their own accord. He had made and
+unmade governors; he had sent his men to Washington. How? We
+suspected; but held our peace. If our Bible had bidden us Americans to
+suffer rascals gladly--instead of mere fools--we couldn't be more
+obedient to a mandate.
+
+Men like James Eustis and Judge Mayne despised Inglesby--but gave him
+a wide berth. They wouldn't be enmeshed. It was known that Major
+Appleby Cartwright had blackballed him.
+
+"I can stand a man, suh, that likes to get along in this world--within
+proper bounds. But Inglesby hasn't got any proper bounds. He's a--a
+cross between a Republican mule and a party-bolting boa-constrictor,
+an' a hybrid like that hasn't got any place in nature. On top of that
+he drinks ten cents a bottle grape juice and smokes five cent cigars.
+And he's got the brazen and offensive effrontery to offer 'em to
+self-respectin' men!"
+
+And here was Laurence, our little Laurence, training himself to
+overthrow this overgrown Goliath! Well, if the boy could not bring
+this Philistine to the earth, he might yet manage to give him a few
+manful clumps on the head; perhaps enough to insure a chronic
+headache.
+
+So thinking, I went in and watched John Flint finish a mounting-block
+from a plan in the book open upon the table, adding, however, certain
+improvements of his own.
+
+He laid the block aside and then took a spray of fresh leaves and fed
+it to a horned and hungry caterpillar prowling on a bit of bare stem
+at the bottom of his cage.
+
+"Get up there on those leaves, you horn-tailed horror! Move on,--you
+lepidopterous son of a wigglejoint, or I'll pull your real name on you
+in a minute and paralyze you stiff!" He drew a long breath. "You know
+how I'm beginning to remember their real names? I swear 'em half an
+hour a day. Next time you have trouble with those hickeys of yours,
+try swearing caterpillar at 'em, and you'll find out."
+
+I laughed, and he grinned with me.
+
+"Say," said he, abruptly. "I've been listening with both my ears to
+what that boy was talking to you about awhile ago. Thinks he can buck
+the Boss, does he?"
+
+"Perhaps he may," I admitted.
+
+"Nifty old bird, the Big Un," said Mr. Flint, squinting his eyes.
+"And," he went on, reflectively, "he's sure got your number in this
+burg. Take you by and large, you lawabiders are a real funny sort,
+ain't you? Now, there's Inglesby, handing out the little kids their
+diplomas come school-closing, and telling 'em to be real good, and
+maybe when they grow up he'll have a job in pickle for 'em--work like
+a mule in a treadmill, twelve hours, no unions, _and_ the coroner to
+sit on the remains, free and gratis, for to ease the widow's mind.
+Inglesby's got seats in all your churches--first-aid to the parson's
+pants-pockets.
+
+"Inglesby's right there on the platform at all your spiel-fests,
+smirking at the women and telling 'em not to bother their nice little
+noddles about anything but holding down their natural jobs of being
+perfect ladies--ain't he and other gents just like him always right
+there holding down _their_ natural jobs of protecting 'em and being
+influenced to do what's right? Sure he is! And nobody howls for the
+hook! You let him be It--him with a fist in the state's jeans up to
+the armpit!
+
+"Look here, that Mayne kid's dead right. It's you good guys that are
+to blame. We little bad ones see you kowtowing to the big worse ones,
+and we get to thinking _we_ can come in under the wires easy winners,
+too. However, let me tell you something while I'm in the humor to gas.
+It's this: _sooner or later everybody gets theirs_. My sort and
+Inglesby's sort, we all get ours. Duck and twist and turn and sidestep
+all we want, at the end it's right there waiting for us, with a loaded
+billy up its sleeve: _Ours!_ Some fine day when we're looking the
+other way, thinking we've even got it on the annual turnout of the
+cops up Broadway for class, why, Ours gets up easy on its hind legs,
+spits on its mitt, and hands us exactly what's coming to us, biff! and
+we wake up sitting on our necks in the middle of day-before-yesterday
+and year-after-next. I got mine. If I was you I wouldn't be too
+cock-sure that kid don't give Inglesby his, some of these days, good
+and plenty."
+
+"Maybe so," said I, cautiously.
+
+"Gee, that'd be fly-time for all the good guys in this tank, wouldn't
+it?" he grinned. "Sure! I can see 'em now, patting the bump on their
+beams where they think the brain-patch sprouts, and handing out hunks
+of con to the Lord about his being right on his old-time job of
+swatting sinners in their dinners. Yet they'll all of them go right on
+leading themselves up to be trimmed by the very next holdup that's got
+the nerve to do them! Friend, believe a goat when he tells you that
+you stillwater-and-greenpasture sheep are some bag of nuts!"
+
+"Thank you," said I, with due meekness.
+
+"Keep the change," said he, unabashed. "I wasn't meaning _you_,
+anyhow. I've got more manners, I hope, than to do such. And, parson,
+you don't need to have cold feet about young Mayne. If you ask me,
+_I'd_ bet the limit on him. Why, I think so much of that boy that if
+he was a rooster I'd put the gaffs and my last dollar on him, and back
+him to whip everything in feathers clean up to baldheaded eagles.
+Believe me, he'd do it!" he finished, with enthusiasm.
+
+Bewildered by a mental picture of a Laurence with ruffled
+neck-feathers and steel spurs, I hurriedly changed the subject to the
+saner and safer one of our own immediate affairs.
+
+"Yep, ten orders in to-day's mail and seven in yesterday's; and good
+orders for the wasp-moths, single or together, and that house in New
+York wants steady supplies from now on. And here's a fancy shop wants
+a dozen trays, like that last one I finished. We're looking up," said
+he, complacently.
+
+
+
+The winter that followed was a trying one, and the Guest Rooms were
+never empty. I like to record that John Flint put his shoulder to the
+wheel and became Madame's right hand man and Westmoreland's faithful
+ally. His wooden leg made astonishingly little noise, and his entrance
+into a room never startled the most nervous patient. He went on
+innumerable errands, and he performed countless small services that in
+themselves do not seem to amount to much, but swell into a great
+total.
+
+"He may have only one leg," said Westmoreland, when Flint had helped
+him all of one night with a desperately ill millworker, "but he
+certainly has two hands; he knows how to use his ears and eyes, he's
+dumb until he ought to speak, and then he speaks to the point. Father,
+Something knew what It was about when you and I were allowed to drag
+that tramp out of the teeth of death! Yes, yes, I'm certainly glad and
+grateful we were allowed to save John Flint."
+
+From that time forth the big man gave his ex-patient a liking which
+grew with his years. Absent-minded as he was, he could thereafter
+always remember to find such things as he thought might interest him.
+Appleboro laughs yet about the day Dr. Westmoreland got some small
+butterflies for his friend, and having nowhere else to put them,
+clapped them under his hat, and then forgot all about them; until he
+lifted his hat to some ladies and the swarm of insects flew out.
+
+Without being asked, and as unostentatiously as he did everything
+else, Flint had taken his place in church every Sunday.
+
+"Because it'd sort of give you a black eye if I didn't," he explained.
+"Skypiloting's your lay, father, and I'll see you through with it as
+far as I can. I couldn't fall down on any man that's been as white to
+me as you've been."
+
+I must confess that his conception of religion was very, very hazy,
+and his notions of church services and customs barbarous. For
+instance, he disliked the statues of the saints exceedingly. They
+worried him.
+
+"I can't seem to stand a man dolled-up in skirts," he confessed. "Any
+more than I'd be stuck on a dame with whiskers. It don't somehow look
+right to me. Put the he-saints in pants instead of those brown kimonas
+with gold crocheting and a rope sash, and I'd have more respect for
+'em."
+
+When I tried to give him some necessary instructions, and to penetrate
+the heathen darkness in which he seemed immersed, he listened with the
+utmost respect and attention--and wrinkled his brow painfully, and
+blinked, and licked his lips.
+
+"That's all right, father, that's all right. If you say it's so, I
+guess it's so. I'll take your word for it. If it's good enough for you
+and Madame, there's got to be something in it, and it's sure good
+enough for me. Look here: the little girl and young Mayne have got a
+different brand from yours, haven't they?"
+
+"Neither of them is of the Old Faith."
+
+"Huh! Well, I tell you what you do: you just switch me in somewhere
+between you and Madame and him and her. That'll give me a line on all
+of you--and maybe it'll give all of you a line on me. See?"
+
+I saw, but as through a glass darkly. So the matter rested. And I must
+in all humility set down that I have never yet been able to get at
+what John Flint really believes he believes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE GOING OF SLIPPY MCGEE
+
+
+Little by little, so quietly as to be unnoticeable in the working, but
+with, cumulative effect; built under the surface like those coral
+reefs that finally rear themselves into palm-crowned peaks upon the
+Pacific, during the years' slow upward march had John Flint grown.
+
+Nature had never meant him for a criminal. The evil conditions that
+society saddles upon the slums had set him wrong because they gave him
+no opportunity to be right. Now even among butterflies there are
+occasional aberrants, but they are the rare exceptions. Give the grub
+his natural food, his chance to grow, protect him from parasites in
+the meanwhile, and he will presently become the normal butterfly. That
+is the Law.
+
+At a crucial phase in this man's career his true talisman--a gray
+moth--had been put into his hand; and thereby he came into his
+rightful heritage.
+
+I count as one of my red-letter days that on which I found him
+brooding over the little gray-brown chrysalis of the Papilio
+Cresphontes, that splendid swallowtail whose hideous caterpillar we in
+the South call the orange puppy, from the fancied resemblance the hump
+upon it bears to the head of a young dog. Its chrysalis looks so much
+like a bit of snapped-off twig that the casual eye misses it,
+fastened to a stem by a girdle of silk or lying among fallen leaves.
+
+"I watched it ooze out of an egg like a speck of dirty water. I
+watched it eat a thousand times its own weight and grow into the
+nastiest wretch that crawls. I saw it stop eating and spit its stomach
+out and shrivel up, and crawl out of its skin and pull its own head
+off, and bury itself alive in a coffin made out of itself, a coffin
+like a bit of rotting wood. Look at it! There it lies, stone-dead for
+all a man's eyes can see!
+
+"And yet this thing will answer a call no ears can hear and crawl out
+of its coffin something entirely different from what went into it!
+I've seen it with my own eyes, but how it's done I don't know; no, nor
+no man since the world was made knows, or could do it himself. What
+does it? What gives that call these dead-alive things hear in the
+dark? What makes a crawling ugliness get itself ready for what's
+coming--how does it _know_ there's ever going to be a call, or that
+it'll hear it without fail?"
+
+"Some of us call it Nature: but others call it God," said I.
+
+"Search me! I don't know what It is--but I do know there's got to be
+Something behind these things, anyhow," said he, and turned the
+chrysalis over and over in his palm, staring down at it thoughtfully.
+He had used Westmoreland's words, once applied to his own case! "Oh,
+yes, there's Something, because I've watched It working with grubs,
+getting 'em ready for five-inch moths and hand-colored butterflies,
+Something that's got the time and the patience and the know-how to
+build wings as well as worlds." He laid the little inanimate mystery
+aside.
+
+"It's come to the point, parson, where I've just _got_ to know more. I
+know enough now to know how much I don't know, because I've got a peep
+at how much there is to know. There's a God's plenty to find out, and
+it's up to me to go out and find it."
+
+"Some of the best and brightest among men have given all the years of
+their lives to just that finding out and knowing more--and they found
+their years too few and short for the work. But such help as you need
+and we can get, you shall have, please God!" said I.
+
+"I'm ready for the word to start, chief." And heaven knows he was.
+
+His passion transformed him; he forgot himself; took his mind off
+himself and his affairs and grievances and hatreds and fears; and thus
+had chance to expand and to grow, in those following years of
+patientest effort, of untiring research and observance, of lovingest
+study. Days in the open woods and fields burned his pale skin a good
+mahogany, and stamped upon it the windswept freshness of out of doors.
+The hunted and suspicious glance faded from his eyes, which took on
+more and more the student's absorbed intensity; the mouth lost its
+sinister straightness; and while it retained an uncompromising
+firmness, it learned how to smile. He was a familiar figure, tramping
+from dawn to dusk with Kerry at his heels, for the dog obeyed Mary
+Virginia's command literally. He looked upon John Flint as his special
+charge, and made himself his fourlegged red shadow. I am sure that if
+we had seen Kerry appear in the streets of Appleboro without John
+Flint, we would have incontinently stopped work, sounded a general
+alarm, and gone to hunt for his body. And to have seen John Flint
+without Kerry would have called forth condolences.
+
+Sometimes--when I had time--I went with him moth-hunting at night; and
+never, never could either of us forget those enchanted hours under the
+stars!
+
+We moved in a quiet fresh and dewy, with the night wind upon us like a
+benediction. Sometimes we skirted a cypress swamp and saw the shallow
+black water with blacker trees reflected upon its bosom, and heard the
+frogs' canorous quarrelings, and the stealthy rustlings of creatures
+of the dark. We crossed dreaming fields, and smelt leaves and grasses
+and sleeping flowers. We saw the heart of the wood bared to the magic
+of the moon, which revealed a hidden and haunting beauty of places
+commonplace enough by day; as if the secret souls of things showed
+themselves only in the holy dark.
+
+For the world into which we stepped for a space was not our world, but
+the fairy world of the Little People, the world of the Children of the
+Moon. And oh, the moths! Now it was a tiger, with his body banded with
+yellow and his white opaque delicate wings spotted with black; now the
+great green silken Luna with long curved tails bordered with lilac or
+gold, and vest of ermine; now some quivering Catocala, with afterwings
+spread to show orange and black and crimson; now the golden-brown Io,
+with one great black velvet spot; and now some rarer, shyer fellow
+over which we gloated.
+
+How they flashed and fluttered about the lantern, or circled about the
+trees upon which the feast had been spread! The big yellow-banded
+sphinx whirred hither and thither on his owl-like wings, his large
+eyes glowing like rubies, hung quivering above some flower for a
+moment, and then was off again as swift as thought. The light drew the
+great Regalis, all burnished tawny brown, striped and spotted with raw
+gold; and the Cynthia, banded with lilac, her heavy body tufted with
+white. The darkness in which they moved, the light which, for a moment
+revealed them, seemed to make their colors _alive_; for they show no
+such glow and glory in the common day; they pale when the moon pales,
+and when the sun is up they are merely moths; they are no longer the
+fantastic, glittering, gorgeous, throbbing Children of the Dark.
+
+Home we would go, at an hour when the morning star blazed like a
+lighted torch, and the pearl-gray sky was flushing with pink. No haul
+he had ever made could have given him such joy as the treasures
+brought home in dawns like these, so free of evil that his heart was
+washed in the night dew and swept by the night wind.
+
+My mother, after her pleasant, housewifely fashion, baked a big iced
+cake for him on the day he replaced his clumsy wooden peg with the
+life-like artificial limb he himself had earned and paid for. I had
+wished more than once to hasten this desirable day; but prudently
+restrained myself, thinking it best for him to work forward unaided.
+It had taken months of patient work, of frugality, and planning, and
+counting, and saving, to cover a sum which, once on a time, he might
+have gotten in an hour's evil effort. And it represented no small
+achievement and marked no small advance, so that it was really the
+feast day we made of it. That limb restored him to a dignity he seemed
+to have abdicated. It hid his obvious misfortune--you could not at
+first glance tell that he was a cripple, a something of which he had
+been morbidly conscious and savagely resentful. He would never again
+be able to run, or even to walk rapidly for any length of time,
+although he covered the ground at a good and steady gait; and as he
+grew more and more accustomed to the limb there was only a slight limp
+to distinguish him. The use of the stick he thought best to carry
+became perfunctory. I have seen Kerry carrying that stick when his
+master had forgotten all about it.
+
+Meeting him now upon the streets, plainly but really well-dressed,
+scrupulously brushed, his linen immaculate, and with his trimmed red
+beard, his eyeglasses, and his soft hat, he conveyed the impression of
+being a professional man--say a pleasantly homely and scholarly
+college professor. There was a fixed sentiment in Appleboro that I
+knew very much more about Mr. Flint's past than I would tell--which
+was perfectly true, and went undenied by me; that he had seen better
+days; that he had been the black sheep of a good family, gotten into a
+scrape of some sort, and had then taken to traveling a rough road into
+a far country, eating husks with the swine, like many another
+prodigal; and that aware of this I had kept him with me until he found
+himself again.
+
+So when folks met him and Kerry they smiled and spoke, for we are
+friendly people and send no man to Coventry without great cause. And
+there wasn't a child, black or white, who didn't know and like the
+man with the butterfly net.
+
+The country people for miles around knew and loved him, too; for he
+walked up and down the earth and went to and fro in it, full of
+curious and valuable knowledge shared freely as the need arose. He
+would glance at your flower-garden, for instance, and tell you what
+insect visitors your flowers had, and what you should do to check
+their ravages. He'd walk about your out-buildings and commend
+white-wash, and talk about insecticides; and you'd learn that bees are
+partial to blue, but flies are not; and that mosquitoes seem to
+dislike certain shades of yellow. And then he'd leave you to digest
+it.
+
+He was a quiet evangelist, a forerunner of that Grand Army which will
+some day arise, not to murder and maim men, but to conquer man's
+deadliest foe and greatest economic menace--the injurious insect.
+
+It was he who spread the tidings of Corn and Poultry and Live Stock
+Clubs, stopping by many a lonely farm to whisper a word in the ears of
+discouraged boys, or to drop a hint to unenlightened fathers and
+mothers.
+
+He carried about in his pockets those invaluable reports and bulletins
+which the government issues for the benefit and enlightenment of
+farmers; and these were left, with a word of praise, where they would
+do the most good.
+
+Those same bulletins from the Bureau of Entomology had planted in John
+Flint's heart the seed which bore such fruit of good citizenship. The
+whole course of his early years had tended to make him suspicious of
+government, which spelt for him police and prison, the whole grim
+machinery which threatened him and which he in turn threatened. He had
+feared and hated it; it caught men and shut them up and broke them. If
+he ever asked himself, "What can my government do for me?" he had to
+answer: "It can put me in prison and keep me there; it can even send me
+to the Chair." Wherefore government was a thing to hate, to injure--and
+to escape from.
+
+The first thing he had ever found worthy of respect and admiration in
+this same government was one of its bulletins.
+
+"Where'd you get this?"
+
+"I asked for it, and the Bureau sent it."
+
+"Oh! You've got a friend there!"
+
+"No. The bulletins are free to any one interested enough to ask for
+them."
+
+"You mean to say the government gets up things like this--pays men to
+find out and write 'em up--pays to have 'em printed--and then gives
+'em away to _anybody_? Why, they're valuable!"
+
+"Yes; but they are nevertheless quite free. I have a number, if you'd
+like to go over them. Or you can send for new ones."
+
+"But why do they do it? Where's the graft?" he wondered.
+
+"The graft in this case is common sense in operation. If farms can be
+run with less labor and loss and more profit and pleasure, why, the
+whole country is benefited, isn't it? Don't you understand, the
+government is trying to help those who need help, and therefore is
+willing to lend them the brains of its trained and picked experts? It
+isn't selfish thwart that aim, is it?"
+
+He said nothing. But he read and re-read the bulletins I had, and sent
+for more, which came to him promptly. They didn't know him, at the
+Bureau; they asked him no questions; he wasn't going to pay anybody so
+much as a penny. They assumed that the man who asked for advice and
+information was entitled to all they could reasonably give him, and
+they gave it as a matter of course. That is how and why he found
+himself in touch with his Uncle Sam, a source hitherto disliked and
+distrusted. This source was glad to put its trained intelligence at
+his service and the only reward it looked to was his increased
+capacity to succeed in his work! He simply couldn't dislike or
+distrust that which benefited him; and as his admiration and respect
+for the Department of Agriculture grew, unconsciously his respect and
+admiration for the great government behind it grew likewise. After
+all, it was _his_ government which was reaching across intervening
+miles, conveying information, giving expert instruction, telling him
+things he wanted to know and encouraging him to go right on and find
+out more for himself!
+
+_Now_ if he had asked himself what his government could do for him, he
+had to answer: "It can help me to make good."
+
+And he began to understand that this was possible because he obeyed
+the law, and that only in intelligent obedience and co-operation is
+there any true freedom. The law no longer meant skulking by day and
+terror by night; it was protection and peace, and a chance to work in
+the open, and the sympathy and understanding and comradeship of
+decent folks. The government was no longer a brute force which
+arbitrarily popped men into prison; it was the common will of a free
+people, just as the law was the common conscience.
+
+I dare not say that he learned all this easily, or all at once, or
+even willingly. None of us learns our great lessons easily. We have to
+live them, breathe them, work them out with sweat and tears. That we
+do learn them, even inadequately, makes the glory and the wonder of
+man.
+
+And so John Flint went to school to the government of the United
+States, and carried its little text-books about with him and taught
+them to others in even more need that he; and heckled hopeless boys
+into Corn Clubs; and coaxed sullen mothers and dissatisfied girls into
+Poultry and Tomato Clubs; and was full of homely advice upon such
+living subjects as the spraying of fruit trees, and how to save them
+from blight and scale-insects, and how to get rid of flies, and
+cut-worms, and to fight the cattle-tick, which is our curse; and the
+preservation of birds, concerning which he was rabid. His liking for
+birds began with Miss Sally Ruth's pigeons and the friendly birds in
+our garden. And as he learned to know them his love for them grew. I
+have seen him daily visit a wren's nest without once alarming the
+little black-eyed mother. I have heard him give the red-bird's call,
+and heard that loveliest of all birds answer him. And I have seen the
+impudent jays, within reach of his hand, swear at him unabashed and
+unafraid, because he fed a vireo first.
+
+I like to think of his intimate friendship with the wholesome country
+children--not the least of his blessings. He was their chief visitor
+from the outside world. He knew wonderful secrets about things one
+hadn't noticed before, and he could make miracles with his quick
+strong fingers. He'd sit down, his stick and knapsack beside him, his
+glamorous dog at his feet, and while you and your sisters and brothers
+and friends and neighbors hung about him like a cluster of tow-headed
+bees, he'd turn a few sticks and bits of cloth and twine and a tack or
+two, and an old roller-skate wheel he took out of his pocket, into an
+air-ship! He could go down by your little creek and make you a
+water-wheel, or a windmill. He could make you marvelous little men,
+funny little women, absurd animals, out of corks or peanuts. He knew,
+too, just exactly the sort of knife your boy-heart ached for--and at
+parting you found that very knife slipped into your enraptured palm.
+You might save the pennies you earned by picking berries and gathering
+nuts, but you could never, never find at any store any candy that
+tasted like the sticks that came out of his pockets, and you needn't
+hope to try. He had the inviolable secret of that candy, and he
+imparted to it a divine flavor no other candy ever possessed. If you
+were a little doll-less girl, he didn't leave you with the provoking
+promise that Santa Claus would bring you one if you were good. He was
+so sure you were good that he made you right then and there a
+wonderful doll out of corn-husks, with shredded hair, and a frock of
+his own handkerchief. When he came again you got another doll--a store
+doll; but I think your child-heart clung to the corn-baby with the
+handkerchief dress. I have often wondered how many little cheeks
+snuggled against John Flint's home-made dollies, how many innocent
+breasts cradled them; how many a little fellow carried his knife to
+bed with him, afraid to let it get out of reach of a hard little hand,
+because he might wake up in the morning and find he had only dreamed
+it! No, I hardly think the country children were the least of John
+Flint's blessings. They would run to meet him, hold on to his hands,
+drag him here and there to show him what wonders their sharp eyes had
+discovered since his last visit; and give him, with shining eyes, such
+cocoons and caterpillars, and insects as they had found for him. It
+was they who called him the Butterfly Man, a name which spread over
+the whole country-side. If you had asked for John Flint, folks would
+have stared. And if you described him--a tall man in a Norfolk suit,
+with a red beard and a red dog, and an insect case:
+
+"Oh, you mean the Butterfly Man! Sure. You'll find him about somewhere
+with the kids." If there was anything he couldn't have, in that
+county, it was because folks hadn't it to give if he should ask.
+
+At home his passion for work at times terrified me. When I protested:
+
+"I was twenty-five years old when I landed here," he reminded me. "So
+I've got twenty-five years' back-work to catch up with."
+
+He had taken over a correspondence that had since become voluminous,
+and which included more and more names that stood for very much.
+Sometimes when I read aloud a passage from a letter that praised him,
+he turned red, and writhed like a little boy whose ears are being
+relentlessly washed by his elders.
+
+By this time he had learned to really classify; heavens, how
+unerringly he could place an insect in its proper niche! It was a sort
+of sixth sense with him. That cold, clear, incisive power of brain
+which on a time had made Slippy McGee the greatest cracksman in
+America, was, trained and disciplined in a better cause, to make John
+Flint in later years an international authority upon lepidoptera, an
+observer to whom other observers deferred, a naturalist whose dictum
+settled disputed points. And I knew it, I foresaw it!
+
+_Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_ I grew as vain over his enlarging
+powers as if I had been the Mover of the Game, not a pawn. I felt,
+gloriously, that I had not lived for nothing. A great naturalist is
+not born every day, no, nor every year, nor even every century. And I
+had caught me a great burglar and I had hatched me a great naturalist!
+My Latin soul was enraptured with this ironic anomaly. I could not
+choose but love the man for that.
+
+I really had some cause for vanity. Others than myself had been
+gradually drawn to the unassuming Butterfly Man. Westmoreland loved
+him. A sympathetic listener who seldom contradicted, but often
+shrewdly suggested, Flint somehow knew how to bring out the big
+doctor's best; and in consequence found himself in contact with a mind
+above all meanness and a nature as big and clean as a spray-swept
+beach.
+
+"Oh, my, my, my, what a surgeon gone to waste!" Westmoreland would
+lament, watching the long, sure fingers at work. "Well, I suppose it's
+all for the best that Father De Rancé beat me to you--at least you've
+done less damage learning your trade." So absorbed would he become
+that he sometimes forget cross patients who were possibly fuming
+themselves into a fever over his delay.
+
+Eustis, who had met the Butterfly Man on the country roads and had
+stopped his horse for an informal chat, would thereafter go out of his
+way for a talk with him. These two reticent men liked each other
+immensely. At opposite poles, absolutely dissimilar, they yet had odd
+similarities and meeting-points. Eustis was nothing if not practical;
+he was never too busy to forget to be kind. Books and pamphlets that
+neither Flint nor I could have hoped to possess found their way to us
+through him. Scientific periodicals and the better magazines came
+regularly to John Flint's address. That was Eustis's way. This
+friendship put the finishing touch upon the Butterfly Man's repute. He
+was my associate, and my mother was devoted to him. Miss Sally Ruth,
+whose pet pear-tree he had saved and whose pigeons he had cured,
+approved of him, too, and said so with her usual openness.
+Westmoreland was known to be his firm friend; nobody could forget the
+incident of those butterflies in the doctor's hat! Major Cartwright
+liked him so much that he even bore with the dogs, though Pitache in
+particular must have sorely strained his patience. Pitache cherished
+the notion that it was his duty to pass upon all visitors to the
+Butterfly Man's rooms. For some reason, known only to himself, the
+little dog also cherished a deep-seated grudge against the major, the
+very sound of whose voice outside the door was enough to send him
+howling under the table, where he lay with his head on his paws, a
+wary eye cocked balefully, and his snarls punctuating the Major's
+remarks.
+
+"He smells my Unitarian soul, confound him!" said the major. "An' he's
+so orthodox he thinks he'll get chucked out of dog-heaven, if he
+doesn't show his disapproval."
+
+The little dog did finally learn to accept the major's presence
+without outward protest; though the major declared that Pitache always
+hung down his tail when he came and hung it up when he left!
+
+The Butterfly Man accepted whatever friendliness was proffered without
+diffidence, but with no change in his natural reserve. You could tell
+him anything: he listened, made few comments and gave no advice, was
+absolutely non-shockable, and never repeated what he heard. The
+unaffected simplicity of his manner delighted my mother. She said you
+couldn't tell her--there was good blood in that man, and he had been
+more than any mere tramp before he fell into our hands! Why, just
+observe his manner, if you please! It was the same to everybody; he
+had, one might think, no sense whatever of caste, creed, age, sex, or
+color; and yet he neither gave offense nor received it.
+
+Those outbursts which had so terrified me at first came at rare and
+rarer intervals. If I were to live for a thousands years I should
+never be able to forget the last and worst; which fell upon him
+suddenly and without warning, on a fine morning while he sat on the
+steps of his verandah, and I beside him with my Book of Hours in my
+hand. In between the Latin prayers I sensed pleasantly the light wind
+that rustled the vines, and how the Mayne bees went grumbling from
+flower to flower, and how one single bird was singing to himself over
+and over the self-same song, as if he loved it; and how the sunlight
+fell in a great square, like a golden carpet, in front of the steps.
+It was all very still and peaceful. I was just turning a page, when
+John Flint jerked his pipe out of his mouth, swung his arm back, and
+hurled the pipe as far as he could. I watched it, involuntarily, and
+saw where it fell among our blue hydrangeas; from which a thin spiral
+of smoke arose lazily in the calm air. But Flint shoved his hat back
+on his head, sat up stiffly, and swore.
+
+He had been with me then nearly four years, and I had learned to know
+the symptoms:--restlessness, followed by hours of depressed and sullen
+brooding. So I had heretofore in a sense been forewarned, though I
+never witnessed one of these outbursts without being shaken to the
+depths. This one was different--as if the evil force had invaded him
+suddenly, giving him no time to resist. A glance at his face made me
+lay aside the book hurriedly; for this was no ordinary struggle. The
+words that had come to me at first came back now with redoubled
+meaning, and rang through my head like passing-bells:
+
+"_For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood but against ... the
+rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of
+wickedness_."
+
+He tilted his head, looked upward, and swore steadily. As for me, my
+throat felt as if it had been choked with ashes. I could only stare at
+him, dumbly. If ever a man was possessed, he was. His voice rose,
+querulously:
+
+"I get up in the morning, and I catch bugs, and I study them, and I
+dry them--and I go to bed. I get up in the morning, and I catch bugs,
+and I study them, and I dry them--and I go to bed. I get up _every_
+morning, and I do the same damn thing, over and over and over and
+over, day in, day out, day in, day out. Nothing else.... No drinks, no
+lights, no girls, no sprees, no cards, no gang, no risks, no jobs, no
+bulls, no anything! God! I could say my prayers to Broadway, anywhere
+from the Battery up to Columbus Circle! I want it all so hard I could
+point my nose like a lost dog and howl for it!
+
+"... There is a Dutchman got a restaurant down on Eighth Avenue, and I
+dream at nights about the hotdog-and-kraut, and the ham-and that they
+give you there, and the jane that slings it. Hips on her like a horse,
+she has, and an arm that shoves your eats under your nose in a way
+you've got to respect. I smell those eats in my sleep. I want some
+more Childs' bucks. I want to see the electrics winking on the roofs.
+I want to smell wet asphalt and see the taxis whizzing by in the rain.
+I want to see a seven-foot Mick cop with a back like a piano-box and a
+paw like a ham and a foot like a submarine with stove-polish on it. I
+want to see the subway in the rush hour and the dips and mollbuzzers
+going through the crowd like kids in a berry patch. I want to see a
+ninety-story building going up, and the wops crawling on it like ants.
+I want to see the breadline, and the panhandlers, and the bums in
+Union Square. I want a bellyful of the happy dust the old town hands
+out--the whole dope and all there is of it! My God! I want everything
+I haven't got!"
+
+He looked at me, wildly. He was trembling violently, and sweat poured
+down his face.
+
+"Parson," he rasped, "I've bucked this thing for fair, but I've got to
+go back and see it and smell it and taste it and feel it and know it
+all again, or I'll go crazy. You're all of you so good down here
+you're too much for me. _I'm home-sick for hell_. It--it comes over
+me like fire over the damned. You don't fool yourself that folks who
+know what it is to be damned can stay on in heaven without freezing,
+do you? Well, they can't. I can't help it! I can't! I've got to
+go--this time I've got to go!"
+
+I sat and stared at him. Oh, what was it Paul had said we were to pray
+for, at such a time as this?
+
+"_And for me, that speech may be given to me ... that I may open my
+mouth with confidence_..."
+
+But the words wouldn't come.
+
+"I've got to go! I've got to go, and try myself out!" he gritted.
+
+"You--understand your risks," I managed to say through stiff lips. I
+had always, in my secret heart, been more or less afraid of this.
+Always had I feared that the rulers of the world of darkness, swooping
+down and catching him unaware, might win the long fight in the end.
+
+"Here you are safe. You are building up an honored name. You are
+winning the respect and confidence of all decent people--and you wish
+to undo it all. You wish to take such desperate chances--now!" I
+groaned.
+
+"I've got to go!" he burst forth, white-lipped. "You've never seen a
+dip cut off from his dope, have you? Well, I'm it, when the old town
+calls me loud enough for me to hear her plain. I've stood her off as
+long as I could--and now I'm that crazy for her I could wallow in her
+dust. Besides, there's not such a lot of risks. I don't have to leave
+my card at the station-house to let 'em know I'm calling, do I? They
+haven't been sitting on what they think is my grave to keep me from
+getting up before Gabriel beats 'em to it, have they? No, they're not
+expecting _me_. What I could do to 'em now would make the Big Uns look
+like a bunch of pikers--and their beans would have to turn inside out
+before they fell for it that _I'd_ come back to my happy home and was
+on the job again."
+
+"If--if you hadn't been so white, I'd have cut and run for it without
+ever putting you wise. But I want to play fair. I'd be a hog if I
+didn't play fair, and I'm trying to do it. I'm going because I can't
+stay. I've got enough of my own money, earned honest, saved up, to pay
+my way. Let me take it and go. And if I can come back, why, I'll
+come."
+
+He was stone deaf to entreaties, prayers, reasoning, argument. The
+four years of his stay with me, and all their work, and study, and
+endeavor, and progress, seemed to have slipped from him as if they had
+never been. They were swept aside like cobwebs. He broke away from me
+in the midst of my pleading, hurried into his bedroom, and began to
+sort into a grip a few necessities.
+
+"I'll leave on the three-o'clock," he flung over his shoulder to me,
+standing disconsolate in the door. "I'll stop at the bank on my way."
+I could do nothing; he had taken the bit between his teeth and was
+bolting. I had for the time being lost all power of control over him,
+and before I might hope to recover it he would be out of my reach.
+Perhaps, I reflected wretchedly, the best thing to do under the
+circumstances, would simply be to give him his head. I had seen horses
+conquered like that. But the road before John Flint was so dark and so
+crooked--and at the end of it waited Slippy McGee!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE BUTTERFLY MAN
+
+
+It was just one-thirty by the placid little clock on his mantel. The
+express was due at three.
+
+"Very well," said I, forcing myself to face the inevitable without
+noise, "you are free. If you must go, you must go."
+
+"I've got to go! I've got to go!" He repeated it as one repeats an
+incantation. "I've got to go!" And he went on methodically assorting
+and packing. Even at this moment of obsession his ingrained
+orderliness asserted itself; the things he rejected were laid back in
+their proper place with, the nicest care.
+
+I went over to tell my mother that John Flint had suddenly decided to
+go north. She expressed no surprise, but immediately fell to counting
+on her fingers his available shirts, socks, and underwear. She rather
+hoped he would buy a new overcoat in New York, his old one being
+hardly able to stand the strain of another winter. She was pleasantly
+excited; she knew he had many northern correspondents, with whom he
+must naturally be anxious to foregather. There was much to call him
+thither.
+
+"He really needs the change. A short trip will do him a world of
+good," she concluded equably. "He is still quite a young man, and I'm
+sure it must be dull for him here at times, in spite of his work.
+Why, he hasn't been out of this county for over three years, and just
+think of the unfettered life he must have led before he came here!
+Yes, I'm sure New York will stimulate him. A dose of New York is a
+very good tonic. It regulates one's mental liver. Don't look so
+worried, Armand--you remind me of those hens who hatch ducklings. I
+should think a duckling of John Flint's size could be trusted to swim
+by himself, at his time of life!"
+
+She had not my cause for fear. Besides, in her secret heart, Madame
+was convinced that, rehabilitated, reclaimed, having more than proven
+his intrinsic worth, John Flint went to be reconciled with and
+received into the bosom of some preeminently proper parent, and to be
+acclaimed and applauded by admiring and welcoming friends. For
+although she had once heard the Butterfly Man gravely assure Miss
+Sally Ruth Dexter that the only ancestor his immediate Flints were
+sure of was Flint the pirate, my mother still clung firmly to the
+illusion of Family. Blood will tell!
+
+As for me, I was equally sure that blood was telling now; and telling
+in the atrocious tongue of the depths. I felt that the end had come.
+Vain, vain, all the labor, all the love, all the hope, the prayers,
+the pride! The submerged voice of his old life was calling him; the
+vampire extended her white and murderous arms in which many and many
+had died shamefully; she lifted to his her insatiable lips stained
+scarlet with the wine of hell. Against that siren smile, those
+beckoning hands, I could do nothing. The very fact that I was what I
+am, was no longer a help, but rather a hindrance; he recognized in the
+priest a deterring and detaining influence against which he rebelled,
+and which he wished to repudiate. He was, as he had said so terribly,
+"home-sick for hell." He would go, and he would most inevitably be
+caught in the whirlpools; the naturalist, the scientist, the Butterfly
+Man, would be sucked into that boiling vortex and drowned beyond all
+hope of resuscitation; but from it the soul of Slippy McGee would
+emerge, with a larger knowledge and a clearer brain, a thousand-fold
+more deadly dangerous than of old; because this time he knew better
+and had deliberately chosen the evil and rejected the good. By the law
+of the pendulum he must swing as far backward into wrong as he had
+swung forward into right.
+
+I could not bring myself to speak to him, I dared not bid him the
+mockery of a Godspeed upon his journey, dreading as I did that
+journey's end. So I stood at a window and watched him as with suitcase
+in hand he walked down our shady street. At the corner he turned and
+lifted his hat in a last farewell salute to my mother, standing
+looking after him in the Parish House gate. Then he turned down the
+side-street, and so disappeared.
+
+From his closed rooms came a long wailing howl. For the first time
+Kerry might not follow his master; more yet, the master had thrust the
+astonished dog into his bedroom and shut the door upon him. He had
+refused to recognize the scratch at the door, the snuffling whine
+through the keyhole. The outer door had slammed. Kerry raced to the
+window. And the master was going, and going without him! He had
+neither net, knapsack, nor bottle-belt, but he carried a suitcase. He
+did not look back, nor whistle: he _meant_ to leave him behind.
+Sensing that an untoward thing was occurring, a thing that boded no
+good to himself or his beloved, the red dog lifted his voice and
+howled a piercing protest.
+
+The sash was down, but the blinds had not yet been closed to. One saw
+Kerry standing with his forepaws on the window-sill, his nose against
+the glass, his ears lifted, his eyes anxious and distressed, his lip
+caught in his teeth. At intervals he threw back his head, and then
+came the howls.
+
+The catastrophe--for to me it was no less a thing--had come upon me so
+suddenly that I was fairly stunned. From sheer force of habit I went
+over to the church and knelt before the altar; but I could not pray; I
+could only kneel there dumbly. I heard the screech of the three
+o'clock express coming in, and, a few minutes later, its longer
+screech as it departed. He had gone, then! I was not dreaming it: it
+was true. Down and down and down went my heart. And down and down and
+down went my head, humbled and prostrate. Alas, the end of hope, the
+fall of pride! Alas and alas for the fair house built upon the sand,
+wrecked and scattered!
+
+When I rose from my knees I staggered. I walked draggingly, as one
+walks with fetters upon the feet. Oh, it was a cruel world, a world in
+which nothing but inevitable loss awaited one, in which one was
+foredoomed to disappointment; a world in which one was leaf by leaf
+stripped bare.
+
+I could not bear to look at his closed rooms, but turned my head aside
+as I passed them. Disconsolate Kerry barked at my passing step, and
+pawed frantically at the window, but I made no effort to release him.
+What comfort had I for the faithful creature, deserted by what he most
+loved?
+
+His dismal outcries rasped my nerves raw; it was exactly as if the dog
+howled for the dead. And that John Flint was dead I had no reasonable
+cause to doubt. _He was dead because Slippy McGee was alive_. That
+thought drove me as with a whip out into the garden, for as black an
+hour as I have ever lived through--the sort of hour that leaves a scar
+upon the soul. The garden was very still, steeped and drowsing in the
+bright clear sunlight; only the bees were busy there, calling from
+flower-door to flower-door, and sometimes a vireo's sweet whistle
+fluted through the leaves. Pitache lay on John Flint's porch, and
+dozed with his head between his paws; Judge Mayne's Panch sat on the
+garden fence, and washed his black face, and watched the little dog
+out of his emerald eyes. All along the fences the scarlet salvia shot
+up its vivid spikes, and when the wind stirred, the red petals fell
+from it like drops of blood.
+
+It seemed to me incongruous and cruel that one should suffer on such a
+day; grief is for gray days; but the sunlight mocks sorrow, the soft
+wind makes light of it. I was out of tune with this harmony, as I
+walked up and down with my rosary in my hand. I knew that every flying
+minute took him farther and farther away from me and from hope and
+happiness and honor, and brought him nearer and nearer to the
+whirlpool and the pit. I beat my hands together and the crucifix cut
+into my palms. I walked more rapidly, as if I could get away from the
+misery within. My heart ached intolerably, a mist dimmed my sight, and
+a hideous choking lump rose in my throat; and it seemed to me that,
+old and futile and alone, I was set down, not in my garden, but in the
+midst of the abomination of desolation.
+
+Through this aching desolation Kerry's cries stabbed like
+knife-thrusts.... And then little Pitache lifted his head, cocked a
+listening ear and an alert eye, perked up his black nose, thumped an
+expressive tail, and barked. It was a welcoming bark; Kerry, hearing
+it, stiffened statue-like at the window and fell to whining in his
+throat. The garden gate had clicked.
+
+Dreading that any mortal eye should see me thus in my grief, knowing
+it was beyond my power of endurance to meet calmly or to speak
+coherently with any human being at that moment, I turned, with the
+instinct of flight strong upon me. I knew I must be alone, to face
+this thing in its inevitableness, to fight it out, to get my bearings.
+The gate was turning upon its hinges; I could hear it creak.
+
+Hesitating which way to turn, I looked up to see who it was that was
+coming into the Parish House garden. And I fell to trembling, and
+rubbed my eyes, and stared again, unbelievingly. There had been plenty
+of time for him to have visited the bank and withdrawn his account;
+there had been plenty of time for him then to have caught the
+three-o'clock express. I had heard the train come and go this full
+hour since. Surely my wish was father to the thought that I saw him
+before me--my old eyes were playing me a trick--for I thought I saw
+John Flint walking up the garden path toward me! Pitache barked again,
+rose, stretched himself, and trotted to meet him, as he always did
+when the Butterfly Man came home.
+
+He walked with the limp most noticeable when he tried to hurry. He was
+flushed and perspiring and rumpled and well-nigh breathless; his coat
+was wrinkled, his tie awry, his collar wilted, and bits of grass and
+twigs and a leaf or so clung to his dusty clothes. The afternoon sun
+shone full on his thick, close-cropped hair, for he carried his hat in
+his hands, gingerly, carefully, as one might carry a fragile treasure;
+a clean pocket handkerchief was tied over it.
+
+He was making straight for his workroom. I do not think he saw me
+until I stepped into the path, directly in front of him. Then,
+stopping perforce, he looked at me with dancing eyes, wiped his red
+perspiring face with one hand, and nodded to the hat, triumphantly.
+
+"Such an--aberrant!" he panted. He was still breathing so rapidly he
+had to jerk his words out. "I've got the--biggest, handsomest--most
+perfect and wonderful--specimen of--an aberrant swallow-tail--any man
+ever laid--his eyes on! I thought at first--I wasn't seeing things
+right. But I was. Parson, parson, I've seen many--butterflies--but
+never--another one like--this!" He had to pause, to take breath. Then
+he burst out again, unable to contain his delight.
+
+"Oh, it was the luckiest chance! I was standing on the end platform of
+the last car, and the train was pulling out, when I saw her go sailing
+by. I stared with all my eyes, shut 'em, stared again, and there she
+was! I knew there was never going to be such another, that if I lost
+her I'd mourn for the rest of my days. I knew I had to have her. So I
+measured my distance, risked my neck, and jumped for her. Game leg and
+all I jumped, landed in the pit of a nigger's stomach, went down on
+top of him, scrambled up again and was off in a jiffy, with the darky
+bawling he'd been killed and the station buzzing like the judge's bees
+on strike, and people hanging out of all the car windows to see who'd
+been murdered.
+
+"She led me the devil's own chase, for I'd nothing but my hat to net
+her with. A dozen times I thought I had her, and missed. It was
+heart-breaking. I felt I'd go stark crazy if she got away from me. I
+had to get her. And the Lord was good and rewarded me for my patience,
+for I caught her at the end of a mile run. I was so blown by then that
+I had to lie down in the grass by the roadside and get my wind back.
+Then I slid my handkerchief easy-easy under my hat, tilted it up, and
+here she is! She hasn't hurt herself, for she's been quiet. She's
+perfect. She hasn't rubbed off a scale. She's the size of a bat. Her
+upper wings, and one lower wing, are black, curiously splotched with
+yellow, and one lower wing is all yellow. She's got the usual orange
+spots on the secondaries, only bigger, and blobs of gold, and the
+purple spills over onto the ground-color. She's a wonder. Come on in
+and let's gloat at our ease--I haven't half seen her yet! She's the
+biggest and most wonderful Turnus ever made. Why, Gabriel could wear
+her in his crown to make himself feel proud, because there'd be only
+one like her in heaven!"
+
+He took a step forward; but I could only stand still and blink,
+owlishly. My heart pounded and the blood roared in my ears like the
+wind in the pinetrees. My senses were in a most painful confusion,
+with but one thought struggling clear above the turmoil: that _John
+Flint had come back_.
+
+"But you didn't go!" I stammered. "Oh, John Flint, John Flint, you
+didn't go!"
+
+He snorted. "Catch me running away like a fool when a six-inch
+off-color swallow-tail flirts herself under my nose and dares me to
+catch her! You'd better believe I didn't go!"
+
+And then I knew with a great uprush of joy that Slippy McGee himself
+had gone instead, and the three-o'clock express was bearing him away,
+forever and forever, beyond recall or return. Slippy McGee had gone
+into the past; he was dead and done with. But John Flint the
+naturalist was vibrantly and vitally alive, built upon the living
+rock, a house not to be washed away by any wave of passion.
+
+This reaction from the black and bitter hour through which I had just
+passed, this turbulent joy and relief, overcame me. My knees shook and
+gave way; I tottered, and sank helplessly into the seat built around
+our great magnolia. And shaken out of all self-control I wept as I had
+not been permitted to weep over my own dead, my own overthrown hopes.
+Head to foot I was shaken as with some rending sickness. The sobs were
+torn out of my throat with gasps.
+
+He stood stone still. He went white, and his nostrils grew pinched,
+and in his set face only his eyes seemed alive and suffering. They
+blinked at me, as if a light had shone too strongly upon them. A sort
+of inarticulate whimper came from him. Then with extreme care he laid
+the handkerchief-covered hat upon the ground, and down upon his knees
+he went beside me, his arms about my knees. He, too, was trembling.
+
+"Father! ... _Father!_"
+
+"My son ... I was afraid ... you were lost ... gone ... into a far
+country.... It would have broken my heart!"
+
+He said never a word; but hung his head upon his breast, and clung to
+my knees. When he raised his eyes to mine, their look was so piteous
+that I had to put my hand upon him, as one reassures one's child. So
+for a healing time we two remained thus, both silent. The garden was
+exquisitely still and calm and peaceful. We were shut in and canopied
+by walls and roof of waving green, lighted with great cream-colored
+flowers with hearts of gold, and dappled with sun and shadow. Through
+it came the vireo's fairy flute.
+
+God knows what thoughts went through John Flint's mind; but for me, a
+great peace stole upon me, mixed with a greater, reverent awe and
+wonder. Oh, heart of little faith! I had been afraid; I had doubted
+and despaired and been unutterably wretched; I had thought him lost
+whom the Powers of Darkness swooped upon, conquered, and led astray.
+And God had needed nothing stronger than a butterfly's fragile wing to
+bear a living soul across the abyss!
+
+We went together, after a while, to his rooms, and when he had
+submitted to Kerry's welcome, we carefully examined the beautiful
+insect he had captured. As he had said, she had not lost a scale; and
+she was by far the most astonishing aberrant I have ever seen, before
+or since. The Turnus is perhaps the most beautiful of our butterflies,
+and this off-color was larger than the normal, and more irregularly
+and oddly and brilliantly colored. Their natural coloring is gorgeous
+enough; but hers was like a seraph's head-jewels.
+
+I have her yet, with the date of her capture written under her. She is
+the only one of all our butterflies I claim personally. The gold has
+never been minted that could buy that Turnus.
+
+"I had the station agent wire for my grip," said Flint casually. "And
+I gave the darky I knocked down fifty cents to soothe his feelings. He
+offered to let me do it again for a quarter." His eyes roved over the
+pleasant workroom with its books and cabinets, its air of homely
+comfort; through the open door one glimpsed the smaller bedroom, the
+crucifix on the white wall. He dropped his hand on Kerry's head, close
+against his knee, and drew a sharp breath.
+
+"Father," said he, quietly, and looked at me with steady eyes, "you
+don't need to be afraid for me any more as you had to be to-day.
+To-day's the last of my--my dumfoolishness." After a moment he added:
+
+"Remember what that little girl said when she gave me her dog? Well, I
+reckon she was right. I reckon I'm here for keeps. I reckon, father,
+that you and I do belong."
+
+"Yes," said I; and looked over the cases of our butterflies, and the
+books we had gathered, and the table where we worked and studied
+together. "Yes; you and I belong." And I left him with Kerry's head on
+his knees, and Kerry's eyes adoring him, and went over to the Parish
+House to tell Madame that John Flint had changed his mind and wouldn't
+go North just now, because an aberrant Turnus had beguiled him.
+
+For a moment my mother looked profoundly disappointed.
+
+"Are you sure," she asked, "that this doesn't mean a loss to him,
+Armand?"
+
+"Yes, I am sure."
+
+She watched my eyes, and of a sudden she reached out, caught my hand,
+and squeezed it. Her face softened with sympathetic and tolerant
+understanding, but she asked no questions, made no comment. If Solomon
+had been lucky enough to marry my mother, I am sure he would never
+have plagued himself with the nine hundred and ninety-nine. But then,
+neither would he have written Proverbs.
+
+Neither the Butterfly Man nor I have ever referred to that morning's
+incident; the witness of it we cherish; otherwise it pleases us to
+ignore it as if it had never happened. It had, of course, its results,
+for with a desperate intensity of purpose he plunged back into study
+and research; and as the work was broadening, and called for all his
+skill and patience, the pendulum swung him far forward again.
+
+I had been so fascinated, watching that transformation, even mere
+wonderful than any butterfly's, going on before my eyes; I was so
+enmeshed in the web of endless duties spun for me by my big poor
+parish that I did not have time to miss Mary Virginia as poignantly as
+I must otherwise have done, although my heart longed for her.
+
+My mother never ceased to mourn her absence; something went away from
+us with Mary Virginia, which could only come back to us with her. But
+it so happened that the ensuing summers failed to bring her back. The
+little girl spent her vacations with girl friends of whose standing
+her mother approved, or with relatives she thought it wise the child
+should cultivate. For the time being, Mary Virginia had vanished out
+of our lives.
+
+Laurence, however, spent all his vacations at home; and of Laurence we
+were immensely proud. Most of his holidays were spent, not with
+younger companions, but oddly enough with John Flint. That old
+friendship, renewed after every parting, seemed to have grown stronger
+with the boy's growth; the passing years deepened it.
+
+"My boy's forever boasting of your Butterfly Man," said the judge,
+falling into step with me one morning on the street. "He tells me
+Flint's been made a member of several learned societies; and that he's
+gotten out a book of sorts, telling all there is to tell about some
+crawling plague or other. And it seems this isn't all the wonderful
+Mr. Flint is capable of: Laurence insists that biologists will have to
+look Flintward pretty soon, on account of observations on what he
+calls insect allies--whatever _they_ are."
+
+"Well, you see, his work on insect allies is really unique and
+thorough, and it opens a door to even more valuable research," said I,
+as modestly as I could. "Flint is one of its great pioneers, and he's
+blazing the way. Some day when the real naturalist comes into his own,
+he will rank far, far above tricky senators and mutable governors!"
+
+The judge smiled. "Spoken like a true bughunter," said he. "As a
+matter of fact, this fellow is a remarkable man. Does he intend to
+remain here for good?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "I think he intends to remain here--for good." I could
+not keep the pride out of my voice and eyes. Let me again admit my
+grave fault: I am a vain and proud old man, God forgive me!
+
+"Your goose turned out a butterfly," said the judge. "One may well be
+pardoned a little natural vanity when one has engineered a feat like
+that! Common tramp, too, wasn't he?"
+
+"No, he wasn't. He was a most uncommon one."
+
+"I could envy the man his spontaneity and originality," admitted the
+judge, rubbing _his_ nose. "Well, father, I'm perfectly satisfied, so
+far, to have my only son tramp with him."
+
+"So is my mother," said I.
+
+At that the judge lifted his hat with a fine old-fashioned courtesy
+good to see in this age when a youth walks beside a maid and blows
+cigarette smoke in her face upon the public streets.
+
+"When such a lady approves of any man," said he, gallantly, "it
+confers upon him letters patent of nobility."
+
+"We shall have to consider John Flint knighted, then," said my mother
+merrily, when I repeated the conversation. "Let's see," she continued
+gaily. "We'll put on his shield three butterflies, or, rampant on a
+field, azure; in the lower corner a net, argent. Motto, '_In Hoc Signo
+Vinces_.' There'll be no sign of the cyanide jar. I'll have nothing
+sinister shadowing; the Butterfly Man's escutcheon!"
+
+She knew nothing about the trust St. Stanislaus kept; she had never
+met Slippy McGee.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+NESTS
+
+
+Laurence at last hung out that shingle which was to tingle Appleboro
+into step with the Time-spirit. It was a very happy and important day
+for the judge and his immediate friends, though Appleboro at large
+looked on with but apathetic interest. One more little legal light
+flickering "in our midst" didn't make much difference; we literally
+have lawyers to burn. So we aren't too enthusiastic over our
+fledglings; we wait for them to show us--which is good for them, and
+sometimes better for us.
+
+This fledgling, however, was of the stuff which endures. Laurence was
+one of those dynamic and dangerous people who not only think
+independently themselves, but have the power to make other people
+think. No one who came in contact with him escaped this; it seemed to
+crackle electrically in the air around him; he was a sort of human
+thought-conductor, and he shocked many a smug and self-satisfied
+citizen into horrific life before he had done with him.
+
+If this young man had not been one of the irreproachable Maynes
+Appleboro might have set him down as a pestilent and radical theorist
+and visionary. But fortunately for us and himself he was a Mayne; and
+the Maynes have been from the dawn of things Carolinian "a good
+family."
+
+I don't think I have ever seen two people so mutually delight in each
+other's powers as did John Flint and Laurence Mayne. The Butterfly Man
+was immensely proud of Laurence's handsome person and his grace of
+speech and manner; he had even a more profound respect for his more
+solid attainments, for his own struggle upward had deepened his regard
+for higher education. As for Laurence, he thought his friend
+marvelous; what he had overcome and become made him in the younger
+man's eyes an incarnate proof of the power of will and of patience.
+The originality and breadth of his views fired the boy's imagination
+and broadened his personality. The two complemented each other.
+
+The Butterfly Man's workroom had a fascination for others than
+Laurence. It was a sort of Open Question Club. Here Westmoreland came
+to air his views with a free tongue and to ride his hobbies with a
+gallant zest; here the major, tugging at his goatee, his glasses far
+down on his nose, narrated in spicy chapters the Secret Social History
+of Appleboro. Here the judge--for he, too, had fallen into the habit
+of strolling over of an evening--sunk in the old Morris chair, his
+cigar gone cold in his fingers, reviewed great cases. And sometimes
+Eustis stopped by, spoke in his modest fashion of his experiments, and
+left us all the better for his quiet strength. And Flint, with his
+eyes alive and watchful behind his glasses, listened with that air
+which made one like to tell him things. Laurence declared that he got
+his post-graduate course in John Flint's workroom, and that the
+Butterfly Man wasn't the least of his teachers.
+
+I should dearly like to say that the Awakening of Appleboro began in
+that workroom; and in a way it did. But it really had its inception in
+a bird's nest John Flint had discovered and watched with great
+interest and pleasure. The tiny mother had learned to accept his
+approach, without fear; he said she knew him personally. She allowed
+him to approach close enough to touch her; she even took food out of
+his fingers. He had worked toward that friendliness with great skill
+and patience, and his success gave him infinite pleasure. He had a
+great tenderness for the little brown lady, and he looked forward to
+her babies with an almost grandfatherly eagerness. The nest was over
+in a corner of our garden, in a thick evergreen bush big enough to be
+called a young tree.
+
+Now on a sunny morning Laurence and I and the Butterfly Man walked in
+our garden. Laurence had gotten his first brief, and we two older
+fellows were somewhat like two old birds fluttering over an
+adventurous fledgling. I think we saw the boy sitting on the Supreme
+Court bench, that morning!
+
+As we neared the evergreen tree the Butterfly Man raised his hand to
+caution us to be silent. He wanted us to see his wee friend's
+reception of him, and so he went on a bit ahead, to let her know she
+needn't be afraid--we, too, were merely big friends come a-calling.
+And just then we heard shrill cries of distress, and above it the
+louder, raucous scream of the bluejay.
+
+The bluejay was entirely occupied with his own business of breaking
+into another bird's nest and eating the eggs. He scolded violently
+between mouthfuls; he had finished three eggs and begun on the fourth
+and last when we came upon the scene. He had no fear of us; he had
+seen us before, and he knew very well indeed that the red-bearded
+creature with the cane was a particular and peculiar friend of
+feathered folks. So he cocked a knowing head, with a cruel beak full
+of egg, and flirted a splendid tail at his friend; then swallowed the
+last morsel and rowed viciously with Laurence and me; for the bluejay
+is wholly addicted to billingsgate. He paid no attention to the
+distraught mother-bird, fluttering and crying on a limb nearby.
+
+"Gosh, pal, I've sure had some meal!" said the bluejay to John Flint.
+"Chase that skirt, over there, please--she makes too much noise to
+suit me!"
+
+But for once John Flint wasn't a friend to a bluejay--he uttered an
+exclamation of sorrow and dismay.
+
+"My nest!" he cried tragically. "My beautiful nest with the four eggs,
+that I've been watching day by day! And the little mother-thing that
+knew me, and let me touch her, and feed her, and wasn't afraid of me!
+Oh, you blue devil! You thief! You murderer!" And in a great gust of
+sorrow and anger he lifted his stick to hurl it at the criminal.
+Laurence caught the upraised arm.
+
+"But he doesn't know he's a thief and a murderer," said he, and looked
+at the handsome culprit with unwilling admiration. The jay, having
+finished the nest to his entire satisfaction, hopped down upon a limb
+and turned his attention to us. He screamed at Laurence, thrusting
+forward his impudent head; while the poor robbed mother, with
+lamentable cries, watched him from a safe distance. Full of his
+cannibal meal, Mister Bluejay callously ignored her. He was more
+interested in us. Down he came, nearer yet, with a flirt of fine
+wings, a spreading of barred tail, just above Flint's head, and
+talked jocularly to his friend in jayese.
+
+"You're a thief and a robber!" raged the Butterfly Man. "You're a damn
+little bird-killer, that's what you are! I ought to wring your neck
+for you, and I'd do it if it would do the rest of your tribe any good.
+But it wouldn't. It wouldn't bring back the lost eggs nor the spoiled
+nest, either. Besides, you don't know any better. You're what you are
+because you were hatched like that, and there wasn't Anything to tell
+you what's right and wrong for a decent bird to do. The best one can
+do for you is to get wise to your ways and watch out that you can't do
+more mischief."
+
+The bluejay, with his handsome crested head on one side, cocked his
+bright black eye knowingly, and passed derisive remarks. Any one who
+has listened attentively to a bluejay must be deeply grateful that the
+gift of articulate speech has been wisely withheld from him; he is a
+hooligan of a bird. He lifted his wings like half-playful fists. If he
+had fingers, be sure a thumb had been lifted profanely to his nose.
+
+The Butterfly Man watched him for a moment in silence; a furrow came
+to his forehead.
+
+"Damn little thief!" he muttered. "And you don't even have to care!
+No! It's not right. There ought to be some way to save the mothers and
+the nests from your sort--without having to kill you, either. But good
+Lord, how? That's what I want to know!"
+
+"Beat 'em to it and stand 'em off," said Laurence, staring at the
+ravaged nest, the unhappy mother, the gorged impenitent thief. "'Git
+thar fustest with the mostest men.' Have the nests so protected the
+thief can't get in without getting caught. Build Better Bird Houses,
+say, and enforce a Law of the Garden--Boom and Food for all, Pillage
+for None. You'd have to expect some spoiled nests, of course, for you
+couldn't be on guard all the time, and you couldn't make all the birds
+live in your Better Bird Houses--they wouldn't know how. But you'd
+save some of them, at any rate."
+
+"Think so?" said John Flint. "Huh! And what'd you do with _him_?" And
+he jerked his head at the screaming jay.
+
+"Let him alone, so long as he behaved. Shoo him outside when he
+didn't--and see that he kept outside," said Laurence. "You see, the
+idea isn't so much to reform bluejays--it's to save the other birds
+from them."
+
+John Flint's face was troubled. "It's all a muddle, anyhow," said he.
+"You can't blame the bluejay, because he was born so, and it's
+bluejay nature to act like that when it gets the chance. But there's
+the other bird--it looks bad. It is bad. For a thief to come into a
+little nest like that, that she'd been brooding on, and twittering to,
+and feeling so good and so happy about--Man, I'd have given a month's
+work and pay to have saved that nest! It's not fair. God! Isn't there
+_some_ way to save the good ones from the bad ones?"
+
+There he stood, in the middle of the path, staring ruefully at the
+wrecked bit of twigs and moss and down that had been a wee home; and
+with more of sorrow than anger at the feathered crook who had done the
+damage. The thing was slight in itself, and more than common--just one
+of the unrecorded humble tragedies which daily engulf the Little
+Peoples. But I had seen a butterfly's wing save him alive; and so I
+did not doubt now that a little bird's nest could weigh down the
+balance which would put him definitely upon the side of good and of
+God.
+
+"I think there is a way," said Laurence, gravely, "and that is to beat
+them to it and stand them off. All the rest is talk and piffle--the
+only way to save is to save. There are no halfway measures; also, it's
+a lifetime job, full of kicks and cuffs and ingratitude and
+misunderstanding and failure and loneliness, and sometimes even worse
+things yet. But you do manage to sometimes save the nests and the
+fledglings, and you do sometimes escape the pain of hearing the
+mothers lamenting. And that's the only reward a decent mortal ought to
+hope for. I reckon it's about the best reward there is, this side of
+heaven."
+
+The Butterfly Man swallowed this a bit ungraciously.
+
+"You've got a devil of a way of twisting things into parables. I'm
+talking birds and thinking birds, and here you must go and make my
+birds people! I wasn't thinking about people--that is, I wasn't, until
+you have to go and put the notion into my head. It's not fair. The
+thing's bad enough already, without your lugging folks into it and
+making it worse!"
+
+Laurence looked at him steadily. "You've got to think of people, when
+you see things like that," said he, slowly; "otherwise you only
+half-see. I have to think of people--of kids, particularly--and their
+mothers." He turned as he spoke, and stared out over our garden, with
+its sunny spaces, and its shrubs and flowers, and trees, to where,
+over in the sky a pillar of smoke rose steadily, endlessly, and
+merged into a cloud overhanging the quiet little town.
+
+"The pillar of cloud by day," said he "that leads the children--" He
+stopped, and the whimsical smile faded from his face; his jaw set.
+
+The bluejay, having exhausted his vocabulary of jay-ribaldry,
+screeched one last outrageous bit of billingsgate into Flint's ears,
+shut up his tail like a fan, and darted off, a streak of blue and
+gray. The Butterfly Man's eyes followed him smilelessly; then they
+came back and dwelt for a moment upon the ruined nest and the
+fluttering mother-bird, still vexing the ear with her shrill
+lamentable futile protests. From her his eyes went, out over the trees
+and flowers to that pillar mounting lazily and inevitably into the
+sky. For a long moment he stared at that, too, fixedly. After an
+interval he clenched his hand upon his stick and struck the ground.
+
+"_Nothing's_ got any business to break up a nest! I'd rather sit up
+all night and watch than see what I've just seen and listen to that
+mother-thing calling to Something that's far-off and stone deaf and
+can't hear nor heed. Why, the little birds haven't got even the chance
+to get themselves born, much less grow up and sing! I--Say, you two go
+on a bit. I feel mighty bad about this. I'd been watching her. She
+knew me. She let me feed her. If only I'd thought about the jay, why,
+I might have saved her. But just when she needed me I wasn't there!"
+He turned abruptly, and strode off toward his own rooms. Kerry
+followed with a drooping head and tail. But Laurence looked after him
+hopefully.
+
+"Padre, the Butterfly Man's seen something this morning that will
+sink to the bottom of his soul and stay there: didn't you see his
+eyes? Now, which of those two have taught him the most--the happy
+thief and murderer, or the innocent unhappy victim? The bluejay's not
+a whit the worse for it, remember; in fact, he's all the better off,
+for his stomach is full and his mischief satisfied, and that's all
+that ever worries a bluejay. And there isn't any redress for the
+mother-bird. The thing's done, and can't be undone. But between them
+they've shown John Flint something that forces a man to take sides.
+Doesn't the bluejay deserve some little credit for that? And is there
+_ever_ any redress for the mother-bird, Padre?"
+
+"Why, the Church teaches--" I began.
+
+Laurence nodded. "Yes, Padre, I know all that. But it can't teach away
+what's always happening here and now. At least not to the Butterfly
+Man and me, ... nor yet the mother-birds, Padre. No. We want to be
+shown how to head off the bluejays."
+
+We walked along in silence, his hand upon my arm. His eyes were
+clouded with the vision that beckoned him. As for me, I was wondering
+just where, and how far, that bluejay was going to lead John Flint.
+
+It led him presently to my mother. All men learn their great lessons
+from women and in stress the race instinctively goes back to be taught
+by the mothers of it. There were long intimate talks between herself
+and the Butterfly Man, to which Laurence was also called. In her quiet
+way Madame knew by heart the whole mill district, good, bad and
+indifferent, for she was a woman among the women. She had supported
+wives parting from dying husbands; she had hushed the cries of
+frightened children, while I gave the last blessings to mothers whose
+feet were already on the confines of another world; she had taken dead
+children from frenzied women's arms. Just as the Butterfly Man had
+shown the country folks to Laurence, so now Madame showed them both
+the mill folks, the poor folks, the foreigners in a small town
+disdainful of them; and she did it with the added keenness of her
+woman's eyes and the diviner kindness of her woman's heart.
+
+The little lady had enormous influence in the parish. And as
+Laurence's plans and hopes and ambitions unfolded before her, she
+threw this potent influence, with all it implied, in the scale of the
+young lawyer's favor. They began their work at the bottom, as all
+great movements should begin. What struck me with astonishment was
+that so many quiet women seemed to be ready and waiting, as for a
+hoped for message, a bugle-call in the dawn, for just that which
+Laurence had to tell them.
+
+"A fellow with pull behind him," said John Flint, "is what you might
+call a pretty fair probability. But a fellow with the women behind him
+is a steam-roller. There's nothing to do but clear the road and keep
+from under." And when he went on his rounds among the farm houses now
+it wasn't only the men and children he talked to. There was a message
+for the overworked women, the wives and daughters who had all the
+pains and none of the profits. Westmoreland, who had been a rather
+lonesome evangelist for many years, of a sudden found himself backed
+and supported by younger and stronger forces.
+
+The work was done very noiselessly; there was no outward
+disturbances, yet; but the women were in deadly earnest; there were
+far, far too many small graves in our cemetery, and they were being
+taught to ask why the children who filled them hadn't had a fair
+chance? The men might smile at many things, but fathers couldn't smile
+when mothers of lost children wanted to know why Appleboro hadn't
+better milk and sanitation. And there, under their eyes bulked the
+huge red mills, and every day from the bosom of this Moloch went up
+the smoke of sacrifice.
+
+Behind all this gathering of forces stood an almost unguessed figure.
+Not the lovely white-haired lady of the Parish House; not big
+Westmoreland; not handsome Laurence, nor outspoken Miss Sally Ruth
+with a suffrage button on her black basque; but a limping man in gray
+tweeds with a soft felt hat pulled down over his eyes and a butterfly
+net in his hand. That net was symbolic. With trained eye and sure hand
+the naturalist caught and classified us, put each one in his proper
+place.
+
+Keener, shrewder far than any of us, no one, save I alone, guessed the
+part it pleased him to play. Laurence was hailed as the Joshua who was
+to lead all Appleboro into the promised land of better paving, better
+lighting, better schools, better living conditions, better city
+government--a better Appleboro. Behind Laurence stood the Butterfly
+Man.
+
+He seldom interfered with Laurence's plans; but every now and then he
+laid a finger unerringly upon some weak point which, unnoticed and
+uncorrected, would have made those plans barren of result. He amended
+and suggested. I have seen him breathe upon the dry bones of a
+project and make it live. It satisfied that odd sardonic twist in him
+to stand thus obscurely in the background and pull the strings. I
+think, too, that there must have been in his mind, since that morning
+he had watched the bluejay destroy his nest, some obscure sense of
+restitution. Once, in the dark, he had worked for evil. Still keeping
+himself hidden, it pleased him now to work for good. So there he sat
+in his workroom, and cast filaments here and there, and spun a web
+which gradually netted all Appleboro.
+
+There was, for instance, the _Clarion_. We had had but that one
+newspaper in our town from time immemorial. I suppose it might have
+been a fairly good county paper once,--but for some years it had
+spluttered so feebly that one wondered how it survived at all. In
+spite of this, nobody in our county could get himself decently born or
+married, or buried, without a due and proper notice in the _Clarion_.
+To the country folks an obituary notice in its columns was as much a
+matter of form as a clergyman at one's obsequies. It simply wasn't
+respectable to be buried without proper comment in the _Clarion_.
+Wherefore the paper always held open half a column for obituary
+notices and poetry.
+
+These dismal productions had first brought the _Clarion_ to Mr.
+Flint's notice. He used to snigger at sight of the paper. He said it
+made him sure the dead walked. He cut out all those lugubrious and
+home-made verses and pasted them in a big black scrapbook. He had a
+fashion of strolling down to the paper's office and snipping out all
+such notices and poems from its country exchanges. A more ghoulish and
+fearsome collection than he acquired I never elsewhere beheld. It was
+a taste which astonished me. Sometimes he would gleefully read aloud
+one which particularly delighted him:
+
+    "A Christian wife and offspring seven
+     Mourn for John Peters who has gone to heaven.
+     But as for him we are sure he can weep no more,
+     He is happy with the lovely angels on that bright shore."†
+
+† Heaven.
+
+My mother was horrified. She said, severely, that she couldn't to save
+her life see why any mortal man should snigger because a Christian
+wife and children seven mourned for John Peters who had gone to
+heaven. The Butterfly Man looked up, meekly. And of a sudden my mother
+stopped short, regarded him with open mouth and eyes, and retired
+hastily. He resumed his pasting.
+
+"I've got a hankering for what you might call grave poetry," said he,
+pensively. "Yes, sir; an obituary like that is like an all-day sucker
+to me. Say, don't you reckon they make the people they're written
+about feel glad they're dead and done for good with folks that could
+spring something like that on a poor stiff? Wait a minute, parson--you
+can't afford to miss Broken-hearted Admirer:
+
+    "Miss Matty, I watched thee laid in the gloomy grave's embrace,
+    Where nobody can evermore press your hand or your sweet face.
+    When you were alive I often thought of thee with fond pride,
+    And meant to call around some night & ask you to be my loving Bride.
+    "But alas, there is a sorrowful sadness in my bosom to-day,
+    For I never did it & now can never really know what you would say.
+
+    Miss Matty, the time may come when I can remember thee as a brother,
+    And lay my fond true heart at the loving feet of another.
+    For though just at present I can do nothing but sigh & groan,
+    The Holy Bible tells us it is not good for a man to dwell alone.
+    But even though, alas, I'm married, my poor heart will still be true,
+    And oft in the lone night I will wake & weep to think she never
+        can be you."
+           --"A BROKEN-HEARTED ADMIRER."
+
+"Ain't that sad and sweet, though?" said the Butterfly Man admiringly.
+"Don't you hope those loving feet will be extra loving when
+Broken-hearted makes 'em a present of his fond heart, parson? Wouldn't
+it be something fierce if they stepped on it! Gee, I cried in my hat
+when I first read that!" Now wasn't it a curious coincidence that,
+even as Madame, I regarded John Flint with open mouth and eyes, and
+retired hastily?
+
+For some time the _Clarion_ had been getting worse and worse; heaven
+knows how it managed to appear on time, and we expected each issue to
+be its last. It wasn't news to Appleboro that it was on its last legs.
+I was not particularly interested in its threatened demise, not having
+John Flint's madness for its obituaries; but he watched it narrowly.
+
+"Did you know," he remarked to Laurence, "that the poor old _Clarion_
+is ready to bust? It will have to write a death-notice for itself in a
+week or two, the editor told me this morning."
+
+"So?" Laurence seemed as indifferent as I.
+
+The Butterfly Man shot him a freighted glance. "Folks in this county
+will sort of miss the _Clarion_," he reflected. "After all, it's the
+one county paper. Seems to me," he mused, "that if _I_ were going in
+head, neck and crop for the sweet little job of reformer-general, I'd
+first off get me a grappling-hook on my town's one newspaper.
+Particularly when grappling-hooks were going cheap."
+
+"Hasn't Inglesby got a mortgage on it?"
+
+"If he had would he let it die in its bed so nice and ladylike? Not
+much! It'd kick out the footboard and come alive. Inglesby must be
+getting rusty in the joints not to reach out for the _Clarion_
+himself, right now. Maybe he figures it's not worth the price. Maybe
+he knows this town so well he's dead sure nobody that buys a newspaper
+here would have the nerve to print anything or think anything he
+didn't approve of. Yes, I guess that's it."
+
+"Which is your gentle way," cut in Laurence, "of telling me I'd better
+hustle out and gather in the _Clarion_ before Inglesby beats me to it,
+isn't it?"
+
+"Me?" The Butterfly Man looked pained. "I'm not telling you to buy
+anything. _I'm_ only thinking of the obituaries. Ask the parson.
+I'm--I'm addicted to 'em, like some people are to booze. But if you'd
+promise to keep open the old corner for them, why, I might come out
+and _beg_ you to buy the _Clarion_, now it's going so cheap. Yep--all
+on account of the obituaries!" And he murmured:
+
+    "_Our dear little Johnny was left alive
+       To reach the interesting age of five
+     When_--"
+
+"That's just about as much as I can stand of that, my son!" said I,
+hastily.
+
+"The parson's got an awful tender heart," the Butterfly Man explained
+and Laurence was graceless enough to grin.
+
+"Well, as I was about to say: I happened to think Inglesby would be
+brute enough to choke out my pet column, or make folks pay for it, and
+things like that haven't got any business to have price tags on 'em.
+So I got to thinking of you. You're young and tender; also a college
+man; and you're itching to wash and iron Appleboro--" he took off his
+glasses and wiped them delicately and deliberately.
+
+"Did you also get to thinking," said Laurence, crisply, "that I'm just
+about making my salt at present, and still you're suggesting that I
+tie a dead old newspaper about my neck and jump overboard? One might
+fancy you hankered to add my obituary to your collection!" he finished
+with a touch of tartness.
+
+The Butterfly Man smiled ever so gently.
+
+"The _Clarion_ is the county paper," he explained patiently. "It was
+here first. It's been here a long time, and people are used to it. It
+knows by heart how they think and feel and how they want to be told
+they think and feel. And you ought to know Carolina people when it
+comes right down to prying them loose from something they're used to!"
+He paused, to let that sink in.
+
+"There's no reason why the _Clarion_ should keep on being a dead one,
+is there? There's plenty room for a live daily right here and now, if
+it was run right. Why, this town's blue-molded for a live paper! Look
+here: You go buy the _Clarion_. It won't cost you much. Believe me,
+you'll find it mighty handy--power of the press, all the usual guff,
+you know! I sha'n't have to worry about obituaries, but I bet you
+dollars to doughnuts some people will wake up some morning worrying a
+whole lot about editorials. Mayne--people like to think they think
+what they think themselves. They don't. They think what their home
+newspapers tell them to think. And this is your great big chance to
+get the town ear and shout into it good and loud."
+
+A week or so later Mayne & Son surprised Appleboro by purchasing the
+moribund _Clarion_. They didn't have to go into debt for it, either.
+They got it for an absurdly low sum, although folks said, with sniffs,
+that anything paid for that rag was too much.
+
+"Nevertheless," said the Butterfly Man to me, complacently, "that's
+the little jimmy that's going to grow up and crack some fat cribs.
+Watch it grow!"
+
+I watched; but, like most others, I was rather doubtful. It was true
+that the _Clarion_ immediately showed signs of reviving life. And that
+Jim Dabney, a college friend from upstate, whom Laurence had induced
+to accept the rather precarious position of editor and manager, wrote
+pleasantly as well as pungently, and so set us all to talking.
+
+I suppose it was because it really had something to say, and that
+something very pertinent to our local interests and affairs, that we
+learned and liked to quote the _Clarion_. It made a neat appearance in
+new black type, and this pleased us. It had, too, a newer, clearer,
+louder note, which made itself heard over the whole county. The county
+merchants and farmers began once more to advertise in its pages, as
+John Flint, who watched it jealously--feeling responsible for
+Laurence's purchase of it--was happy to point out.
+
+One thing, too, became more and more evident. The women were behind
+the _Clarion_ in a solid phalanx. They knew it meant for them a voice
+which spoke articulately and publicly, an insistent voice which must
+be answered. It noticed every Mothers' Meeting, Dorcas activity,
+Ladies' Aid, Altar Guild, temperance gathering; spoke respectfully of
+the suffragists and hopefully of the "public-spirited women" of the
+new Civic League. And never, never, never omitted nor misplaced nor
+misspelled a name! The boy from up-state saw to that. He was wily as
+the serpent and simple as the dove. Over the local page appeared
+daily:
+
+          "LET'S GET TOGETHER!"
+
+After awhile we took him at his word and tried to ... and things began
+to happen in Appleboro.
+
+"Here," said the Butterfly Man to me, "is where the bluejay begins to
+get his."
+
+For in most Appleboro houses insistent women were asking harassed and
+embarrassed men certain questions concerning certain things which
+ladies hadn't been supposed to know anything about, much less worry
+their heads over, since the state was a state. So determined were the
+women to have these questions fairly answered that they presently
+asked them in cold print, on the front page of the town paper. And
+Laurence told them. He had appalling lists and figures and names and
+dates. The "chiel among us takin' notes" printed them. Dabney's
+editorial comments were barbed.
+
+Now there are mills in the South which do obey the state laws and
+regulations as to hours, working conditions, wages, sanitation, safety
+appliances, child labor. But there are others which do not. Ours
+notoriously didn't.
+
+John Flint and my mother had had many a conference about deplorable
+cases which both knew, but were powerless to change. The best they had
+been able to do was to tabulate such cases, with names and facts and
+dates, but precious little had been accomplished for the welfare of
+the mill people, for those who might have helped had been too busy, or
+perhaps unwilling, to listen or to act.
+
+But, as Flint insisted, the new Civic League was ready and ripe to
+hear now what Madame had to tell. At one meeting, therefore, she took
+the floor and told them. When she had finished they named a committee
+to investigate mill conditions in Appleboro.
+
+That work was done with a painstaking thoroughness, and the
+committee's final report was very unpleasant reading. But the names
+signed to it were so unassailable, the facts so incontrovertible, that
+Dabney thought best to print it in full, and later to issue it in
+pamphlet form. It has become a classic for this sort of thing now, and
+it is always quoted when similar investigations are necessary
+elsewhere.
+
+It was the Butterfly Man who had taken that report and had rewritten
+and revised it, and clothed it with a terrible earnestness and force.
+Its plain words were alive. It seemed to me, when I read them that I
+heard ... a bluejay's ribald screech ... and the heart-rending and
+piercing cries of a little brown motherbird whose nest had been
+ravaged and destroyed.
+
+Appleboro gasped, and sat up, and rubbed its eyes. That such things
+could be occurring here, in this pleasant little place, in the shadow
+of their churches, within reach of their homes! No one dared to even
+question the truth of that report, however, and it went before the
+Grand Jury intact. The Grand Jury very promptly called Mr. Inglesby
+before it. They were polite to him, of course, but they did manage to
+ask him some very unpleasant and rather personal questions, and they
+did manage to impress upon him that certain things mentioned in the
+Civic League's report must not be allowed to reoccur. One juror--he
+was a planter--had even had the temerity to say out loud the ugly word
+"penetentiary."
+
+Inglesby was shocked. He hadn't known. He was a man of large interests
+and he had to leave a great deal to the discretion of superintendents
+and foremen. It might be, yes, he could understand how it might very
+well be--that his confidence had been abused. He would look into these
+things personally hereafter. Why, he was even now busily engaged
+compiling a "Book of Rules for Employees." He deplored the almost
+universal unrest among employees. It was a very bad sign. Very. Due
+almost entirely to agitators, too.
+
+He didn't come out of that investigation without some of its slime
+sticking to him, and this annoyed and irritated and enraged him more
+than we guessed, for we hadn't as yet learned the man's ambition.
+Also, the women kept following him up. They meant to make him comply
+with the strict letter of the law, if that were humanly possible.
+
+He was far too shrewd not to recognize this; for he presently called
+on my mother and offered her whatever aid he could reasonably give.
+Her work was invaluable; his foremen and superintendents had
+instructions to give her any information she asked for, to show her
+anything in the mills she wished to see, and to report to headquarters
+any suggestions as to the--er--younger employees, she might be kind
+enough to make. If that were not enough she might, he suggested, call
+on him personally. Really, one couldn't but admire the _savoir faire_
+of this large unctious being, so fluent, so plausible, until one
+happened to catch of a sudden that hard and ruthless gleam which, in
+spite of all his caution, would leap at times into his cold eyes.
+
+"Is he, or isn't he, a hypocrite pure and simple, or are such men
+self-deceived?" mused my mother, puckering her brows. "He will do
+nothing, I know, that he can well avoid. But--he gave me of his own
+accord his personal check for fifty dollars, for that poor consumptive
+Shivers woman."
+
+"She contracted her disease working in his mill and living in one of
+his houses on the wages he paid her," said I, "I might remind you to
+beware of the Greeks when they come bearing gifts."
+
+"Proverb for proverb," said she. "The hair of the dog is good for its
+bite."
+
+"Fifty dollars isn't much for a woman's life."
+
+"Fifty dollars buys considerable comfort in the shape of milk and ice
+and eggs. When it's gone--if poor Shivers isn't--I shall take the
+Baptist minister's wife and Miss Sally Ruth Dexter with me, and go and
+ask him for another check. He'll give it."
+
+"You'll make him bitterly repent ever having succumbed to the
+temptation of appearing charitable," said I.
+
+We were not left long in doubt that Inglesby had other methods of
+attack less pleasant than offering checks for charity. Its two largest
+advertisers simultaneously withdrew their advertisements from the
+_Clarion_.
+
+"Let's think this thing out," said John Flint to Laurence. "Cutting
+out ads is a bad habit. It costs good money. It should be nipped in
+the bud. You've got to go after advertisers like that and make 'em see
+the thing in the right light. Say, parson, what's that thing you were
+saying the other day--the thing I asked you to read over, remember?"
+
+_"When the scorner is punished, the simple is made wise; and when the
+wise is instructed, he receiveth knowledge,"_ I quoted Solomon.
+
+"That's it, exactly. You see," he explained, "there's always the right
+way out, if you've got sense enough to find it. Only you mustn't get
+rattled and try to make your getaway out the wrong door or the front
+window--that spoils things. The parson's given you the right tip. That
+old chap Solomon had a great bean on him, didn't he?"
+
+A few days later there appeared, in the space which for years had been
+occupied by the bigger of the two advertisements, the following
+pleasant notice:
+
+       People Who Disapprove of
+         Civic Cleanliness,
+           A Better Town,
+          Better Kiddies,
+                and
+     A Square Deal for Everybody,
+             _Also_
+            Disapprove of
+     Advertising in the Clarion.
+
+And the space once occupied by the other advertiser was headed:
+
+          OBITUARIES
+
+That ghastly poetry in which the soul of the Butterfly Man reveled
+appeared in that column thereafter. It was a conspicuous space, and
+the horn of rural mourning in printer's ink was exalted among us. It
+was not very hard to guess whose hand had directed those
+counter-blows.
+
+When we met those two advertisers on the street afterward we greeted
+them with ironical smiles intended to enrage. They had at Inglesby's
+instigation been guilty of a tactical blunder of which the men behind
+the _Clarion_ had taken fiendish and unexpected advantage. It had
+simply never occurred to either that a small town editor might dare to
+"come back." The impossible had actually happened.
+
+I think it was this slackening of his power which alarmed Inglesby
+into action.
+
+"Mr. Inglesby," said the Butterfly Man to me one night, casually, "has
+got him a new private secretary. He came this afternoon. His name's
+Hunter--J. Howard Hunter. He dresses as if he wrote checks for a
+living and he looks exactly like he dresses. Honest, he's the original
+he-god they use to advertise suspenders and collars and neverrips and
+that sort of thing in the classy magazines. I bet you Inglesby's got
+to fork over a man-sized bucket of dough per, to keep _him_. There'll
+be a flutter of calico in this burg from now on, for that fellow
+certainly knows how to wear his face. He's gilt-edged from start to
+finish!"
+
+Laurence, lounging on the steps, looked up with a smile.
+
+"His arrival," said he, "has been duly chronicled in to-day's press.
+Cease speaking in parables, Bughunter, and tell us what's on your
+mind."
+
+The Butterfly Man hesitated for a moment. Then:
+
+"Why, it's this way," said he, slowly. "I--hear things. A bit here and
+there, you see, as folks tell me. I put what I've heard together, and
+think it over. Of course I didn't need anybody to tell me Inglesby was
+sore because the _Clarion_ got away from him. He expected it to die.
+It didn't. He thought it wouldn't pay expenses--well, the sheriff
+isn't in charge yet. And he knows the paper is growing. He's too wise
+a guy to let on he's been stung for fair, once in his life, but he
+don't propose to let himself in for any more body blows than he can
+help. So he looks about a bit and he gets him an agent--older than
+you, Mayne, but young enough, too--and even better looking. That agent
+will be everywhere pretty soon. The town will fall for him. Say, how
+many of you folks know what Inglesby really wants, anyhow?"
+
+"Everything in sight," said Laurence promptly.
+
+"And something around the corner, too. He wants to come out in the
+open and be IT. He intends to be a big noise in Washington. Gentlemen,
+Senator Inglesby! Well, why not?"
+
+"He hasn't said so, has he?" Laurence was skeptical.
+
+"He doesn't have to say so. He means to be it, and that's very much
+more to the point. However, it happens that he did peep, once or
+twice, and it buzzed about a bit--and that's how I happened to catch
+it in my net. This Johnny he's just got to help him is the first move.
+Private Secretary now. Campaign manager and press agent, later.
+Inglesby's getting ready to march on to Washington. You watch him do
+it!"
+
+"Never!" said Laurence, and set his mouth.
+
+"No?" The Butterfly Man lifted his eyebrows. "Well, what are you going
+to do about it? Fight him with your pretty little _Clarion_? It's not
+big enough, though you could make it a handy sort of brick to paste
+him in the eye with, if you aim straight and pitch hard enough. Go up
+against him yourself? You're not strong enough, either, young man,
+whatever you may be later on. You can prod him into firing some poor
+kids from his mills--but you can't make him feed 'em after he's fired
+'em, can you? And you can't keep him from becoming Senator Inglesby
+either, unless," he paused impressively, "you can match him even with
+a man his money and pull can't beat. Now think."
+
+The young man bit his lip and frowned. The Butterfly Man watched him
+quizzically through his glasses.
+
+"Don't take it so hard," he grinned. "And don't let the whole
+salvation of South Carolina hang too heavy on your shoulders. Leave
+_something_ to God Almighty--He managed to pull the cocky little brute
+through worse and tougher situations than Inglesby! Also, He ran the
+rest of the world for a few years before you and I got here to help
+Him with it."
+
+"You're a cocky brute yourself," said Laurence, critically.
+
+"I can afford to be, because I can open my hand this minute and show
+you the button. Why, the very man you need is right in your reach! If
+you could get _him_ to put up his name against Inglesby's, the Big Un
+wouldn't be in it."
+
+Laurence stared. The Butterfly Man stared back at him.
+
+"Look here," said he slowly. "You remember my nest, and what that
+bluejay did for it? And what you said? Well, I've looked about a bit,
+and I've seen the bluejay at work.... Oh, hell, I can't talk about
+this thing, but I've watched the putty-faced, hollow-chested,
+empty-bellied kids--that don't even have guts enough left to laugh....
+Somebody ought to sock it to that brute, on account of those kids. He
+ought to be headed off ... make him feel he's to be shoo'd outside!
+And I think I know the one man that can shoo him." He paused again,
+with his head sunk forward. This was so new a John Flint to me that I
+had no words. I was too lost in sheer wonder.
+
+"The man I mean hates politics. I've been told he has said openly it's
+not a gentleman's game any more. You've got to make him see it can be
+made one. You've got to make him see it as a duty. Well, once make him
+see _that_, and he'll smash Inglesby."
+
+"You can't mean--for heaven's sake--"
+
+"I do mean. James Eustis."
+
+Laurence got up, and walked about, whistling.
+
+"Good Lord!" said he, "and I never even thought of him in that light.
+Why ... he'd sweep everything clean before him!"
+
+I am a priest. I am not even an Irish priest. Therefore politics do
+not interest me so keenly as they might another. But even to my slow
+mind the suitability of Eustis was apparent. Of an honored name, just,
+sure, kind, sagacious, a builder, a teacher, a pioneer, the plainer
+people all over the state leaned upon his judgment. A sane shrewd man
+of large affairs, other able men of affairs respected and admired him.
+The state, knowing what he stood for, what he had accomplished for her
+farmers, what he meant to her agricultural interests, admired and
+trusted him. If Eustis wanted any gift within the power of the people
+to give, he had but to signify that desire. And yet, it had taken my
+Butterfly Man to show us this!
+
+"Bughunter," said Laurence, respectfully. "If you ever take the notion
+to make me president, will you stand behind and show me how to run the
+United States on greased wheels?"
+
+"I?" John Flint was genuinely astounded. "The boy's talking in his
+sleep: turn over--you 're lying on your back!"
+
+"You won't?"
+
+"I will not!" said the Butterfly Man severely. "I have got something
+much more important on my hands than running states, I'll have you
+know. Lord, man, I'm getting ready some sheets that will tell pretty
+nearly all there is to tell about Catocala Moths!"
+
+I remembered that sunset hour, and the pretty child of James Eustis
+putting in this man's hand a gray moth. I think he was remembering,
+too, for his eyes of a sudden melted, as if he saw again her face that
+was so lovely and so young. Glancing at me, he smiled fleetingly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE BLUEJAY
+
+
+When Mary Virginia was graduated, my mother sent her, to commemorate
+that very important and pleasant occasion, one of her few remaining
+treasures--a carved ivory fan which Le Brun had painted out of his
+heart of hearts for one of King Louis' loveliest ladies. It still
+exhaled, like a whiff of lost roses, something of her vanished grace.
+
+  "I have a fancy," wrote my mother to Mary Virginia, "that having
+  been pressed against women's bosoms and held in women's hands,
+  having been, as it were, symbols which expressed the hidden
+  emotions of the heart, these exquisite toys have thus been
+  enabled to gain a soul, a soul composed of sentience and of
+  memory. I think that as they lie all the long, long years in
+  those carved and scented boxes which are like little tombs, they
+  remember the lights and the flowers and the perfumes, the glimmer
+  and gleam of jewels and silks, the frothy fall of laces, the
+  laughter and whispers and glances, the murmured word, the stifled
+  sigh: and above all, the touch of soft lips that used to brush
+  them lightly; and the poor things wonder a bit wistfully what has
+  become of all that gay and lovely life, all that perished bravery
+  and beauty that once they knew. So I am quite sure this
+  apparently soulless bit of carved ivory sighs inaudibly to feel
+  again the touch of a warm and young hand, to be held before gay
+  and smiling eyes, to have a flower-fresh face bent over it once
+  more.
+
+  "Accept it, then, my child, with your old friend's love. Use it in
+  your happy hours, dream over it a little, sigh lightly; and then
+  smile to remember that this is your Hour, that you are young, and
+  life and love are yours. It is in such youthful and happy smiles
+  that we whose day declines may relive for a brief and bright space
+  our golden noon. Shall I tell you a secret, before your time to
+  know it? _Youth alone is eternal and immortal!_ How do I know?
+  _'Et Ego in Arcadia vixi!'_"
+
+Mary Virginia showed me that letter, long afterward, and I have
+inserted it here, although I suppose it really isn't at all relevant.
+But I shall let it stand, because it is so like my mother!
+
+John Flint made for the schoolgirl a most wonderful tray with handles
+and border of hammered and twisted copper. The tray itself was covered
+with a layer of silvery thistle-down; and on this, hovering above
+flowers, some of his loveliest butterflies spread their wings. So
+beautifully did their frail bodies fit into this airy bed, so
+carefully was the work done, that you might fancy only the glass which
+covered them kept them from escaping.
+
+  "You will remember telling me, when you were going away to grow
+  up," wrote John Flint, "to watch out for any big fine fellows
+  that came by of a morning, because they'd be messengers from you
+  to the Parish House people. Big and little they've come, and
+  I've played like they were all of them your carriers. So you see
+  we had word of you every single day of all these years you've
+  been gone! Now I'm sending one or two of them back to you. Please
+  play like my tray's a million times bigger and finer and that
+  it's all loaded down with good messages and hopes; and believe
+  that still it wouldn't be half big enough to hold all the good
+  wishes the Parish House folks (you were right: I belong, and so
+  does Kerry) send you to-day by the hand of your old friend,
+
+             THE BUTTERFLY MAN.
+
+Mary Virginia showed me that letter, too, because she was so delighted
+with it, and so proud of it. I like its English very well, but I like
+its Irishness even better.
+
+But, although she had at last finished and done with school, Mary
+Virginia didn't come home to us as we had hoped she would. Her mother
+had other plans, which failed to include little Appleboro. Why should
+a girl with such connections and opportunities be buried in a little
+town when great cities waited for just such with open and welcoming
+arms? The best we got then was a photograph of our girl in her
+graduation frock--slim wistful Mary Virginia, with much of her dear
+angular youthfulness still clinging to her.
+
+It was Mrs. Eustis herself who kept us posted, after awhile, of the
+girl's later triumphant progress; the sensation she created, the bored
+world bowing to her feet because she brought it, along with name and
+wealth, so fresh a spirit, so pure a beauty. There was a certain
+autocratic old Aunt of her mother's, a sort of awful high priestess in
+the inmost shrine of the sacred elect; this Begum, delighted with her
+young kinswoman, ordered the rest of her world to be likewise
+delighted, and the world agreeing with her verdict, Mary Virginia
+fared very well. She was fêted, photographed, and paragraphed. Her
+portrait, painted by a rather obscure young man, made the painter
+famous. In the hands of the Begum the pretty girl blossomed into a
+great beauty. The photograph that presently came to us quite took our
+breath away, she was so regal.
+
+"She will never, never again be at home in little Appleboro," said my
+mother, regretfully. "That dear, simple, passionate, eager child we
+used to know has gone forever--life has taken her. This beautiful
+creature's place is not here--_she_ belongs to a world where the women
+wear titles and tiaras, and the men wear kings' orders. No, we could
+never hope to hold her any more."
+
+"But we could love her, could we not? Perhaps even more than those
+fine ladies with tiaras and titles and those fine gentlemen with
+orders, whom your fancy conjures up for her," said I crisply, for her
+words stung. They found an echo in my own heart.
+
+"Love her? Oh, but of course! But--love counts for very, very little
+in the world which claims Mary Virginia now, Armand. Ambition stifles
+him." I was silent. I knew.
+
+As for John Flint, he looked at that photograph and turned red.
+
+"Good Lord! To think I had nerve to send _her_ a few butterflies last
+year ... told _her_ to play like they meant more! I somehow couldn't
+get the notion in my head that she'd grown up.... I never could think
+of her except as a sort of kid-angel, because I couldn't seem to bear
+the idea of her ever being anything else but what she was. Well ...
+she's not, any more. And I've had the nerve to give a few insects to
+the Queen of Sheba!"
+
+"Bosh!" said Laurence, sturdily. "She ought to be glad and proud to
+get that tray, and I'll bet you Mary Virginia's delighted with it.
+She's her father's daughter as well as her mother's, please. As for
+Appleboro not being good enough for her, that's piffle, too, p'tite
+Madame, and I'm surprised at you! Her own town is good enough for any
+girl. If it isn't, let her just pitch in and help make it good enough,
+if she's worth her salt. Not that Mary Virginia isn't scrumptious,
+though. Lordy, who'd think this was the same kid that used to bump my
+head?"
+
+"She turns heads now, instead of bumping them," said my mother.
+
+"Oh, she's not the only head-turner Appleboro can boast of!" said the
+young man grandly. "We've always been long on good-lookers in
+Carolina, whatever else we may lack. They're like berries in their
+season."
+
+"But the berry season is short and soon over, my son: and there are
+seasons when there are no berries at all--except preserved ones,"
+suggested my mother, with that swift, curious cattiness which so often
+astounds me in even the dearest of women.
+
+"Dare you to tell that to the Civic League!" chortled Laurence. "I'll
+grant you that Mary Virginia's the biggest berry in the patch, at the
+height of a full season. But look at her getup! Don't doodads and
+fallals, and hen-feathers in the hair, and things twisted and tied,
+and a slithering train, and a clothesline length of pearls and such,
+count for something? How about Claire Dexter, for instance? She mayn't
+have a Figure like her Aunt Sally Ruth, but suppose you dolled Claire
+up like this? A flirt she was born and a flirt she will die, but isn't
+she a perfect peach? That reminds me--that ungrateful minx gave two
+dances rightfully mine to Mr. Howard Hunter last night. I didn't raise
+any ructions, because, to tell you the truth, I didn't much blame her.
+That fellow really knows how to dance, and the way he can convey to a
+girl the impression that he's only alive on her account makes me gnash
+my teeth with green-and-blue envy. No wonder they all dote on him! No
+home complete without this handsome ornament!" he added.
+
+My mother's lips came firmly together.
+
+"It is a great mistake to figure Mephistopheles as a rather blasé
+brunette," she remarked crisply. "I am absolutely certain that if you
+could catch the devil without his mask you'd find him a perfect
+blonde."
+
+"Nietzsche's blonde beast, then?" suggested Laurence, amused at her
+manner.
+
+"That same blonde beast is perhaps the most magnificent of animals," I
+put in. For alone of my household I admired immensely Mr. Inglesby's
+secretary. He was the only man I have ever known to whom the term
+'beautiful' might be justly applied, and at the word's proper worth.
+Such a man as this, a two-handed sword gripped in his steel fists, a
+wolfskin across his broad shoulders and eagle-wings at either side the
+helmet that crowns his yellow hair, looks at one out of many a red,
+red page of the past with just such blue, dangerous, and cloudless
+eyes. Rolling and reeking decks have known him, and falling walls,
+and shrieks, and flames mounting skyward, and viking sagas, and
+drinking-songs roared from brass throats, and terrible hymns to Odin
+Allfather in the midwatches of Northern nights.
+
+He had called upon me shortly after his arrival, his ostensible reason
+being my work among his mill-people. I think he liked me, later. At
+any rate, I had seen much of him, and I was indebted to him for more
+than one shrewd and practical suggestion. If at times I was chilled by
+what seemed to me a ruthless and cold-blooded manner of viewing the
+whole great social question I was nevertheless forced to admire the
+almost mathematical perfection to which he had reduced his system.
+
+"But you wish to deal with human beings as with figures in a sum," I
+objected once.
+
+"Figures," he smiled equably, "are only stubborn--on paper. When
+they're alive they're fluid and any clever social chemist can reduce
+them to first principles. It's really very simple, as all great things
+are: _When in doubt, reach the stomach!_ There you are! That's the
+universal eye-opener."
+
+"My dear friend," he added, laughing, "don't look so horrified. _I_
+didn't make things as they are. Personally, I might even prefer to
+say, like Mr. Fox in the old story, _'It was not so. It is not so. And
+God forbid it should be so!'_ But I can't, truthfully, and
+therefore--I don't. I accept what I can't help. Self-preservation, we
+all admit, is the first law of nature. Now I consider myself, and the
+class I represent, as beings much more valuable to the world than,
+let's say, your factory-hands, your mill-workers, your hewers of wood
+and drawers of water. Thus, should the occasion arise, I should most
+unhesitatingly use whatever weapons law, religion, civilization
+itself, put into my hands, without compunction and possibly what some
+cavilers might call without mercy; having at stake a very vital
+issue--the preservation of my kind, the protection of my class against
+Demos."
+
+He spoke without heat, calmly, looking at me smilingly with his fine
+intelligent eyes: there was even much of truth in his frank statement
+of his case. Always has Dives spoken thus, law-protected, dining
+within; while without the doors of the sick civilization he has
+brought about, Lazarus lies, licked by the dogs of chance. No, this
+man was advocating no new theory; once, perhaps, I might have argued
+even thus myself, and done so with a clean conscience. This man was
+merely an opportunist. I knew he would never "reach their stomachs"
+unless he thought he had to. Indeed, since his coming, things had
+changed greatly at the mills, and for the better.
+
+"The day of the great god Gouge," he had said to Inglesby, "is
+passing. It's bad business to overwork and underpay your hands into a
+state of chronic insurrection. That means losing time and scamping
+work. The square deal is not socialism nor charity nor a matter of any
+one man's private pleasure or conscience--it's cold hard common sense
+and sound scientific business. You get better results, and that's what
+you're after."
+
+Perhaps it was because Appleboro offered, at that time, very little to
+amuse and interest that keen mind of his, that the Butterfly Man
+amused and interested Hunter so much. Or perhaps, proud as he was,
+even he could not wholly escape that curious likableness which drew
+men to John Flint.
+
+He was delighted with our collection. He could appreciate its scope
+and value, something to which all Appleboro else paid but passing
+heed. John Flint declared that most folks came to see our butterflies
+just as they would have run to see the dog-faced boy or the bearded
+lady--merely for something to see. But this man's appreciation and
+praise were both sincere and encouraging. And as he never allowed
+anything or anybody unusual or interesting to pass him by without at
+least sampling its savor, he formed the habit of strolling over to the
+Parish House to talk with the limping man who had come there a dying
+tramp, was now a scientist, with the manner and appearance of a
+gentleman, and who spoke at will the language of two worlds. That this
+once black sheep had strayed of his own will and pleasure from some
+notable fold Hunter didn't for a moment doubt. Like all Appleboro, he
+wouldn't have been at all surprised to see this prodigal son welcomed
+into the bosom of some Fifth Avenue father, and have the fatted calf
+dressed for him by a chef whose salary might have hired three college
+professors. Hunter had known one or two such black sheep in his time;
+he fancied himself none too shrewd in thus penetrating Flint's rather
+obvious secret.
+
+My mother watched the secretary's comings and goings at the Parish
+House speculatively. Not even the fact that he quoted her adored La
+Rochefoucauld, in flawless French, softened _her_ estimate.
+
+"If he even had the semblance of a heart!" said she, regretfully. "But
+he is all head, that one."
+
+Now, I am a simple man, and this cultivated and handsome man of the
+world delighted me. To me immured in a mill town he brought the modern
+world's best. He was a window, for me, which let in light.
+
+"That great blonde!" said Madame, wonderingly. "He is so designedly
+fascinating I wonder you fail to see the wheels go 'round. However,
+let me admit that I thank God devoutly I am no longer young and
+susceptible. Consider the terrible power such a man might exert over
+an ardent and unsophisticated heart!"
+
+It was Hunter who had brought me a slim book, making known to me a
+poet I had otherwise missed.
+
+"You are sure to like Bridges," he told me, "for the sake of one
+verse. Have you ever thought _why_ I like you, Father De Rancé?
+Because you amuse me. I see in you one of life's subtlest ironies: A
+Greek beauty-worshiper posing as a Catholic priest--in Appleboro!" He
+laughed. And then, with real feeling, he read in his resonant voice:
+
+    "I love all beautiful things:
+    I seek and adore them.
+    God has no better praise,
+    And man in his hasty days,
+    Is honored for them."
+
+When at times the secretary brought his guests to see what he
+pleasingly enough termed Appleboro's one claim to distinction, the
+Butterfly Man did the honors to the manner born. Drawer after drawer
+and box after box would he open, patiently answering and explaining.
+And indeed, I think the contents were worth coming far to see. Some of
+them had come to us from the ends of the earth; from China and Japan
+and India and Africa and Australia, from the Antilles and Mexico and
+South America and the isles of the Pacific; from many and many a
+lonely missionary station had they been sent us. Even as our
+collection grew, the library covering it grew with it. But this was
+merely the most showy and pleasing part of the work. That which had
+the greatest scientific worth and interest, that upon which John
+Flint's value and reputation were steadily mounting, was in less
+lovely and more destructive forms of insect life. Beside this last, a
+labor calling for the most unremitting, painstaking, persevering
+research, observation, and intelligence, the painted beauties of his
+butterflies were but as precious play. For in this last he was
+wringing from Nature's reluctant fingers some of her dearest and most
+deeply hidden secrets. He was like Jacob, wrestling all night long
+with an unknown angel, saying sturdily:
+
+"I will not let thee go except thou tell me thy name!" Like Jacob, he
+paid the price of going halt for his knowledge.
+
+I like to think that Hunter understood the enormous value of the
+naturalist's work. But I fancy the silent and absorbed student himself
+was to his mind the most interesting specimen, the most valuable
+study. It amused him to try to draw his reticent host into familiar
+and intimate conversation. Flint was even as his name.
+
+Oddly enough, Hunter shared the Butterfly Man's liking for that
+unspeakable Book of Obituaries, and I have seen him take a batch of
+them from his pocket as a free-will offering. I have seen him, who had
+all French, Russian and English literature at his fingers' ends, sit
+chuckling and absorbed for an hour over that fearful collection of
+lugubrious verse and worse grammar; pausing every now and then to cast
+a speculative and curious glance at his impassive host, who, paying
+absolutely no attention to him, bent his whole mind, instead, upon
+some tiny form in a balsam slide mount under his microscope.
+
+"Why don't you admire Mr. Hunter?" I was curious to know.
+
+"But I do admire him." Flint was sincere.
+
+"Then if you admire him, why don't you like him?"
+
+He reflected.
+
+"I don't like the expression of his teeth," he admitted. "They're too
+pointed. He looks like he'd bite. I don't think he'd care much who he
+bit, either; it would all depend on who got in his way."
+
+Seeing me look at him wonderingly, he paused in his work, stretched
+his legs under the table, and grinned up at me.
+
+"I'm not saying he oughtn't to put his best foot foremost," he agreed.
+"We'd all do that, if we only knew how. And I'm not saying he ought to
+tell on himself, or that anybody's got any business getting under his
+guard. I don't hanker to know anybody's faults, or to find out what
+they've got up their sleeves besides their elbows, unless I have to.
+Why, I'd as soon ask a fellow to take off his patent leathers to prove
+he hadn't got bunions, or to unbutton his collar, so I'd be sure it
+wasn't fastened onto a wart on the back of his neck. Personally I
+don't want to air anybody's bumps and bunions. It's none of my
+business. I believe in collars and shoes, myself. _But_ if I see
+signs, I can believe all by my lonesome they've got 'em, can't I?"
+
+"Exactly. Your deductions, my dear Sherlock, are really marvelous. A
+gentleman wears good shoes and clean collars--wherefore, you don't
+like the expression of his teeth!" said I, ironically.
+
+"Slap me on the wrist some more, if it makes you feel good," he
+offered brazenly. "For he may--and I sure don't." His grin faded, the
+old pucker came to his forehead.
+
+"Parson, maybe the truth is I'm not crazy over him because people like
+him get people like me to seeing too plainly that things aren't fairly
+dealt out. Why, think a minute. That man's got about all a man can
+have, hasn't he? In himself, I mean. And if there's anything more he
+fancies, he can reach out and get it, can't he? Well, then, some folks
+might get to thinking that folks like him--get more than they deserve.
+And some ... don't get any more than they deserve," he finished, with
+grim ambiguity.
+
+"Do you like him yourself?" he demanded, as I made no reply.
+
+"I admire him immensely."
+
+"Does Madame like him?" he came back.
+
+"Madame is a woman," I said, cautiously. "Also, you are to remember
+that if Madame doesn't, she is only one against many. All the rest of
+them seem to adore him."
+
+"Oh, the rest of them!" grunted John Flint, and scowled. "Huh! If it
+wasn't for Madame and a few more like her, I'd say women and hens are
+the two plum-foolest things God has found time to make yet. If you
+don't believe it, watch them stand around and cackle over the first
+big dunghill rooster that walks on his wings before them! There are
+times when I could wring their necks. Dern a fool, anyhow!" He
+wriggled in his chair with impatience.
+
+"Liver," said I, outraged. "You'd better see Dr. Westmoreland about
+it. When a man talks like you're talking now, it's just one of two
+things--a liver out of whack, or plain ugly jealousy."
+
+"I do sound like I've got a grouch, don't I?" he admitted, without
+shame. "Well ... maybe it's jealousy, and maybe it's not. The truth
+is, he rubs me rather raw at times, I don't know just how or why.
+Maybe it's because he's so sure of himself. He can afford to be sure.
+There isn't any reason why he shouldn't be. And it hurts my feelings."
+He looked up at me, shrewdly. "He looks all right, and he sounds all
+right, and maybe he might be all right--but, parson, I've got the
+notion that somehow he's not!"
+
+"Good heavens! Why, look at what the man has done for the mill folks!
+Whatever his motives are, the result is right there, isn't it? His
+works praise him in the gates!"
+
+"Oh, sure! But he hasn't played his full hand out yet, friend. You just
+give him time. His sort don't play to lose; they can't afford to lose;
+losing is the other fellow's job. Parson, see here: there are two sides
+to all things; one of 'em's right and the other's wrong, and a man's got
+to choose between 'em. He can't help it. He's got to be on one side or
+the other, if he's a _man_. A neutral is a squashy It that both sides do
+right to kick out of the way. Now you can't do the right side any good
+if you're standing flatfooted on the wrong side, can you? No; you take
+sides according to what's in you. You know good and well one side is
+full of near-poors, and half-ways, and real-poors--the downandouters,
+the guys that never had a show, ditchers and sewercleaners and
+sweatshoppers and mill hands and shuckers, and overdriven mutts and
+starved women and kids. It's sure one hell of a road, but there's got to
+be a light somewhere about it or the best of the whole world wouldn't
+take to it for choice, would they? Yet they do! Like Jesus Christ, say.
+They turn down the other side cold, though it's nicer traveling. Why,
+you can hog that other road in an auto, you can run down the beggars and
+the kids, you can even shoot up the cops that want to make you keep the
+speed laws. You haven't _got_ any speed laws there. It's your road. You
+own it, see? It's what it is because you've made it so, just to please
+yourself, and to hell with the hicks that have to leg it! But--you lose
+out on that side even when you think you've won. You get exactly what
+you go after, but you don't get any more, and so you lose out. Why?
+Because you're an egg-sucker and a nest-robber and a shrike, and a
+four-flusher and a piker, that's why!
+
+"The first road don't give you anything you can put your hands on;
+except that you think and hope maybe there's that light at the end of
+it. But, parson, I guess if _you're_ man enough to foot it without a
+pay-envelope coming in on Saturdays, why, it's plenty good enough for
+_me_--and Kerry. But while I'm legging it I'll keep a weather eye
+peeled for crooks. That big blonde he-god is one of 'em. You soak that
+in your thinking-tank: he's one of 'em!"
+
+"But look at what he's doing!" said I, aghast. "What he's doing is
+_good_. Even Laurence couldn't ask for more than good results, could
+he?"
+
+The Butterfly Man smiled.
+
+"Don't get stung, parson. Why, you take me, myself. Suppose, parson,
+you'd been on the other side, like Hunter is, when I came along? Suppose
+you'd never stopped a minute, since you were born, to think of anything
+or anybody but yourself and your own interests--where would I be to-day,
+parson? Suppose you had the utility-and-nothing-but-business bug biting
+you, like that skate's got? Why, what do you suppose you'd have done
+with little old Slippy? I was considerable good business to look at
+then, wasn't I? No. You've got to have something in you that will let
+you take gambler's chances; you've got to be willing to bet the limit
+and risk your whole kitty on the one little chance that a roan will come
+out right, if you give him a fair show, just because he _is_ a man; or
+you can't ever hope to help just when that help's needed. Right there is
+the difference between the Laurence-and-you sort and the Hunter-men,"
+said John Flint, obstinately.
+
+As for Laurence, he and Hunter met continually, both being in constant
+social demand. If Laurence did not naturally gravitate toward that
+bright particular set of rather rapid young people which presently
+formed itself about the brilliant figure of Hunter, the two did not
+dislike each other, though Hunter, from an older man's sureness of
+himself, was the more cordial of the two. I fancy each watched the
+other more guardedly than either would like to admit. They represented
+opposite interests; one might at any moment become inimical to the
+other. Of this, however, no faintest trace was allowed to appear upon
+the calm unruffled surface of things.
+
+If Inglesby had chosen this man by design, it had been a wise choice.
+For he was undoubtedly very popular, and quite deservedly so. He had
+unassailable connections, as we all knew. He brought a broader
+culture, which was not without its effect. And in spite of the fact
+that he represented Inglesby, there was not a door in Appleboro that
+was not open to him. Inglesby himself seemed a less sinister figure in
+the light of this younger and dazzling personality. Thus the secretary
+gradually removed the thorns and briars of doubts and prejudices,
+sowing in their stead the seeds of Inglesby's ambition and
+rehabilitation, in the open light of day. He knew his work was well
+done; he was sure of ultimate success; he had always been successful,
+and there had been, heretofore, no one strong enough to actively
+oppose him. He could therefore afford to make haste slowly. Even had
+he been aware of the Butterfly Man's acrid estimate of him, it must
+have amused him. When all was said and done, what did a Butterfly
+Man--even such a one as ours--amount to, in the world of Big Business
+_He_ hadn't stocks nor bonds nor power nor pull. He hadn't anything
+but a personality that arrested you, a setter dog, a slowly-growing
+name, a room full of insects in an old priest's garden. Of course
+Hunter would have smiled! And there wasn't a soul to tell him anything
+of Slippy McGee!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A LITTLE GIRL GROWN UP
+
+
+Summer stole out a-tiptoe, and October had come among the live-oaks
+and the pines, and touched the wide marshes and made them brown, and
+laid her hand upon the barrens and the cypress swamps and set them
+aflame with scarlet and gold. October is not sere and sorrowful with
+us, but a ruddy and deep-bosomed lass, a royal and free-hearted
+spender and giver of gifts. Asters of imperial purple, golden rod fit
+for kings' scepters, march along with her in ever thinning ranks; the
+great bindweed covers fences and clambers up dying cornstalks; and in
+many a covert and beside the open ditches the Gerardia swings her pink
+and airy bells. All down the brown roads white lady's-lace and yarrow
+and the stiff purple iron-weed have leaped into bloom; under its faded
+green coat the sugar-cane shows purple; and sumac and sassafras and
+gums are afire. The year's last burgeoning of butterflies riots, a
+tangle of rainbow coloring, dancing in the mellow sunshine. And day by
+day a fine still deepening haze descends veil-like over the landscape
+and wraps it in a vague melancholy which most sweetly invades the
+spirit. It is as if one waits for a poignant thing which must happen.
+
+Upon such a perfect afternoon, I, reading my worn old breviary under
+our great magnolia, heard of a sudden a voice of pure gold call me,
+very softly, by my name; and looking up met eyes of almost
+unbelievable blue, and the smile of a mouth splendidly young and red.
+
+I suppose the tall girl standing before me was fashionably and
+expensively clad; heaven knows _I_ don't know what she wore, but I do
+know that whatever it was it became her wonderfully; and although it
+seemed to me very simple, and just what such a girl ought to wear, my
+mother says you could tell half a mile away that those clothes smacked
+of super-tailoring at its costliest. Hat and gloves she held in her
+slim white ringless hand. One thus saw her waving hair, framing her
+warm pale face in living ebony.
+
+"Padre!" said she. "Oh, dear, dear, Padre!" and down she dropped
+lightly beside me, and cradled her knees in her arms, and looked up,
+with an arch and tender friendliness. That childish action, that
+upward glance, brought back the darling child I had so greatly loved.
+This was no Queen-of-Sheba, as John Flint had thought. This was not
+the regal young beauty whose photograph graced front pages. This was
+my own girl come back. And I knew I hadn't lost Mary Virginia.
+
+"I remembered this place, and I knew--I just knew in my heart--you'd
+be sitting here, with your breviary in your hand. I knew just how
+you'd be looking up, every now and then, smiling at things because
+they're lovely and you love them. So I stole around by the back
+gate--and there you were!" said she, her eyes searching me. "Padre,
+Padre, how more than good to see you again! And I'm sure that's the
+same cassock I left you wearing. You could wear it a couple of
+lifetimes without getting a single spot on it--you were always such a
+delightful old maid, Padre! Where and how is Madame? Who's in the
+Guest Rooms? How is John Flint since he's come to be a Notable? Has
+Miss Sally Ruth still got a Figure? How are the judge's cats, and the
+major's goatee? How is everything and everybody?"
+
+"Did you know you'd have to make room for me, Padre? Well, you will. I
+picked up and fairly ran away from everything and everybody, because
+the longing for home grew upon me intolerably. When I was in Europe,
+and I used to think that three thousand miles of water lay between me
+and Appleboro, I used to cry at nights. I hope John Flint's
+butterflies told him what I told them to tell him for me, when they
+came by! How beautiful the old place looks! Padre, you're _thin_. Why
+will you work so hard? Why doesn't somebody stop you? And--you're
+gray, but how perfectly beautiful gray hair is, and how thick and wavy
+yours is, too! Gray hair was invented and intended for folks with
+French blood and names. Nobody else can wear it half so gracefully.
+Now tell me first of all you're glad as glad can be to see me, Padre.
+Say you haven't forgotten me--and then you can tell me everything
+else!"
+
+She paused, fanned herself with her hat, and laughed, looking up at me
+with her blue, blue eyes that were so heavily fringed with black.
+
+I was so startled by her sudden appearance--as if she had walked out
+of my prayers, like an angel; and, above all, by that resemblance to
+the one long since dust and unremembered of all men's hearts save
+mine, that I could hardly bear to look upon her. That other one seemed
+to have stepped delicately out of her untimely grave; to sit once more
+beside me, and thus to look at me once more with unforgotten eyes.
+Thou knowest, my God, before whom all hearts are bare, that I could
+not have loved thee so singly nor served thee without fainting, all
+these years, if for one faithless moment I could have forgotten her!
+
+My mother came out of the house with a garden hat tied over her white
+hair, and big garden gloves on her hands. At sight of the girl she
+uttered a joyful shriek, flung scissors and trowel and basket aside,
+and rushed forward. With catlike quickness the girl leaped to her feet
+and the two met and fell into each other's arms. I wished when I saw
+the little woman's arms close so about the girl, and the look that
+flashed into her face, that heaven had granted her a daughter.
+
+"Mother complained that I should at least have the decency to wire you
+I was coming--she said I was behaving like a child. But I wanted to
+walk in unannounced. I was so sure, you see, that there'd be welcome
+and room for me at the Parish House."
+
+"The little room you used to like so much is waiting for you," said my
+mother, happily.
+
+"Next to yours, all in blue and white, with the Madonna of the Chair
+over the mantelpiece and the two china shepherdesses under her?"
+
+"Then you shall see the new baby in the bigger Guest Room, and the
+crippled Polish child in the small one," said my mother. "The baby's
+name is Smelka Zurawawski, but she's all the better for it--I never
+saw a nicer baby. And the little boy is so patient and so intelligent,
+and so pretty! Dr. Westmoreland thinks he can be cured, and we hope to
+be able to send him on to Johns Hopkins, after we've got him in good
+shape. Where is your luggage? How long may we keep you? But first of
+all you shall have tea and some of Clélie's cakes. Clélie has grown
+horribly vain of her cakes. She expects to make them in heaven some of
+these days, for the most exclusive of the cherubim and seraphim, and
+the lordliest of the principalities and powers."
+
+Mary Virginia smiled at the pleased old servant. "I've half a dozen
+gorgeous Madras head-handkerchiefs for you, Clélie, and a perfect duck
+of a black frock which you are positively to make up and wear now--you
+are _not_ to save it up to be buried in!"
+
+"No'm, Miss Mary Virginia. I won't get buried in it. I'll maybe get
+married in it," said Clélie calmly.
+
+"Married! Clélie!" said my mother, in consternation. "Do you mean to
+tell me you're planning to leave me, at this time of our lives?"
+
+Clélie was indignant. "You think I have no mo'sense than to leave you
+and M'sieu Armand, for some strange nigger? Not me!"
+
+"Who are you going to marry, Clélie?" Mary Virginia was delighted.
+"And hadn't you better let me give you another frock? Black is hardly
+appropriate for a bride."
+
+"I'm not exactly set in my mind who he's going to be yet, Miss Mary
+Virginia, but he's got to be somebody or other. There's been lots
+after me, since it got out I'm such a grand cook and save my wages.
+But I've got a sort of taste for Daddy January. He's old, but he's
+lively. He's a real ambitious old man like that. Besides, I'm sure of
+his family,--I always did like Judge Mayne and Mister Laurence, and I
+do like 'ristocratic connections, Miss Mary Virginia. That big nigger
+that drives one of the mill trucks had the impudence to tell me he'd
+give me a church wedding and pay for it himself, but I told him I was
+raised a Catholic; and what you think he said? He said, 'Oh, well,
+you've been christened in the face already. We can dip the rest of you
+easy enough, and then you'll be a real Christian, like me!' I'd just
+scalded my chickens and was picking them, and I was that mad I upped
+and let him have that dish pan full of hot water and wet feathers in
+his face. 'There,' says I, 'you're christened in the face now
+yourself,' I says. 'You can go and dip the rest of yourself,' says I,
+'but see you do it somewhere else besides my kitchen,' I says. I don't
+think he's crazy to marry me any more, and Daddy January's sort of
+soothing to my feelings, besides being close to hand. Yes'm, I guess
+you'd better give me the black dress, Miss Mary Virginia, if you don't
+mind: it'd come in awful handy if I had to go in mourning."
+
+"The black dress it shall be," said Mary Virginia, gaily. She turned
+to my mother. "And what do you think, p'tite Madame? I've a rare
+butterfly for John Flint, that an English duke gave me for him! The
+duke is a collector, too, and he'd gotten some specimens from John
+Flint. The minute he learned I was from Appleboro he asked me all
+about him. He said nobody else under the sky can 'do' insects so
+perfectly, and that nobody except the Lord and old Henri Fabre knew as
+much about certain of them as John Flint does. Folks thought the duke
+was taken up with _me_, of course, and I was no end conceited! I
+hadn't the ghost of an idea you and John Flint were such astonishingly
+learned folks, Padre! But of course if a duke thought so, I knew I'd
+better think so, too--and so I did and do! Think of a duke knowing
+about folks in little Appleboro! And he was such a nice old man, too.
+Not a bit dukey, after you knew him!"
+
+"We come in touch with collectors everywhere," I explained.
+
+"And so John Flint has written some sort of a book, describing the
+whole life history of something or other, and _you've_ done all the
+drawings! Isn't it lovely? Why, it sounds like something out of a
+pleasant book. Mayn't I see collector and collection in the morning?
+And oh, where's Kerry?"
+
+"Kerry," said my mother gravely, "is a most important personage. He's
+John Flint's bodyguard. He doesn't actually sleep in his master's bed,
+because he has one of his own right next it. Clélie was horrified at
+first. She said they'd be eating together next, but the Butterfly Man
+reminded her that Kerry likes dog-biscuit and he doesn't. I figure
+that in the order of his affections the Butterfly Man ranks Kerry
+first, Armand and myself next, and Laurence a close third."
+
+"Oh, Laurence," said Mary Virginia. "I'll be so glad to see Laurence
+again, if only to quarrel with him. Is he just as logical as ever? Has
+he given the sun a black eye with his sling-shot? My father's always
+praising Laurence in his letters."
+
+Now my mother adores Laurence. She patterns upon this model every
+young man she meets, and if they are not Laurence-sized she does not
+include them in her good graces. But she seldom lifts her voice in
+praise of her favorite. She is far, far too wise.
+
+"Laurence generally looks in upon us during the evening, if he is not
+too busy," she said, non-committally. "You see, people are beginning
+to find out what a really fine lawyer Laurence is, so cases are coming
+to him steadily."
+
+The trunks had arrived, and Mary Virginia changed into white, in which
+she glowed and sparkled like a fire opal. We three dined together, and
+as she became more and more animated, a pink flush stole into her
+rather pale cheeks and her eyes deepened and darkened. She was vividly
+alive. One could see why Mary Virginia was classed as a great beauty,
+although, strictly speaking, she was no such thing. But she had that
+compelling charm which one simply cannot express in words. It was
+there, and you felt it. She did not take your heart by storm,
+willynilly. You watched her, and presently you gave her your heart
+willingly, delighted that a creature so lovely and so unaffected and
+worth loving had crossed your path.
+
+She chatted with my mother about that world which the older woman had
+once graced, and my mother listened without a shade to darken her
+smooth forehead. But I do not think I ever so keenly appreciated the
+many sacrifices she had made for me, until that night.
+
+The autumn evening had grown chilly, and we had a fire in the
+clean-swept fireplace. The old brass dogs sparkled in the blaze, and
+the shadows flickered and danced on the walls, and across the faces of
+De Rancé portraits; the pleasant room was full of a ruddy, friendly
+glow. My mother sat in her low rocker, making something or other out
+of pink and white wools for the baby upstairs. Mary Virginia, at the
+old square piano, sang for us. She had a charming voice, carefully
+cultivated and sweet, and she played with great feeling.
+
+Kerry barked at the gate, as he always does when home is reached. My
+mother, dropping her work, ran to the window which gives upon the
+garden, and called. A moment later the Butterfly Man, with Laurence
+just back of him, and Kerry squeezing in between them, stood in the
+door. Mary Virginia, lips parted, eyes alight, hands outstretched,
+arose. The light of the whole room seemed not so much to gather upon
+her, as to radiate from her.
+
+The dog reached her first. Outdoor exercise, careful diet, perfect
+grooming, had kept Kerry in fine shape. His age told only in an added
+dignity, a slower movement.
+
+The girl went down on her knees, and hugged him. Pitache, aroused by
+Kerry's unwonted demonstrations, circled about them, rushing in every
+now and then to bestow an indiscriminate lick.
+
+"Why, it's Mary Virginia!" exclaimed Laurence, and helped her to her
+feet. The two regarded each other, mutually appraising. He towered
+above her, head and shoulders, and I thought with great satisfaction
+that, go where she would, she could nowhere find a likelier man than
+this same Laurence of ours. Like David in his youth, he was ruddy and
+of a beautiful countenance.
+
+"Why, Laurence! What a Jack-the-Giant-killer! Mercy, how big the boy's
+grown!"
+
+"Why, Mary Virginia! What a heart-smasher! Mercy, how pretty the
+girl's grown!" he came back, holding her hand and looking down at her
+with equally frank delight. "When I remember the pigtailed, leggy,
+tonguey minx that used to fetch me clumps over the head--and then
+regard this beatific vision--I'm afraid I'll wake up and you'll be
+gone!"
+
+"If you'll kindly give me back my hand, I might be induced to fetch
+you another clump or two, just to prove my reality," she suggested,
+with a delightful hint of the old truculence.
+
+"'T is she! This is indeed none other than our long-lost child!"
+burbled Laurence. "Lordy, I wish I could tell her how more than good
+it is to see her again--and to see her as she is!"
+
+Now all this time John Flint had stood in the doorway; and when my
+mother beckoned him forward, he came, I fancied, a bit unwillingly.
+His limp was for once painfully apparent, and whether from the
+day-long tramp, or from some slight indisposition, he was very pale;
+it showed under his deep tan.
+
+But I was proud of him. His manner had a pleasant shyness, which was a
+tribute to the young girl's beauty. It had as well a simple dignity.
+And one was impressed by the fine and powerful physique of him, so
+lean and springy, so boyishly slim about the hips and waist, so deeply
+stamped with clean living of days in the open, of nights under the
+stars. The features had thinned and sharpened, and his red beard
+became him; the hair thinning on the temples increased the breadth of
+the forehead, and behind his glasses the piercing blue eyes--something
+like an eagle's eyes--were clear, direct, and kind. He wore his
+clothes well, with a sort of careless carefulness, more like an
+Englishman than an American, who is always welldressed, but rather
+gives the impression of being conscious of it.
+
+Mary Virginia's lips parted, her eyes widened, for a fraction of a
+second. But if, remembering him as she had first seen and known him,
+she was astonished to find him as he was now, she gave no further
+outward sign. Instead, she gave him her hand as to an equal, and in a
+few gracious words let him know that she knew and was proud of what he
+had done and what he was yet to do. She repeated, too, with a pretty
+air of personal triumph, the old nobleman's praise. Indeed, it had
+been he who had told her of the book, which he had lately purchased
+and studied, she said. And oh, hadn't she just _swelled_ with pride!
+She had been that conceited!
+
+"You don't know how much obliged to you I should be, for if he hadn't
+accidentally learned I was from Appleboro, the town in which dwelt his
+most greatly prized correspondent--that's what he said, Mr.
+Flint!--why, I'm sure he wouldn't have noticed me any more than he
+noticed any other girl--which is, not at all; he being a toplofty and
+serious Personage addicted to people who do things and write things,
+particularly things about things that crawl and fly. And if he hadn't
+noticed me so pointedly--he actually came to see us!--why, I shouldn't
+have had such a perfectly gorgeous time. It was a great feather in my
+cap," she crowed. "Everybody envied me desperately!" She managed to
+make us understand that this was really a compliment to the Butterfly
+Man, not to herself.
+
+"If the little book served you for one minute it was well worth the
+four years it took me to gather the materials together and write it,"
+said he, pleasantly. And even the courtly Hunter couldn't have said it
+with a manlier grace.
+
+"Mary Virginia," said Laurence slyly, "when you've had your fill of
+bugs, make him show you the Book of Obituaries. He thereby stands
+revealed in his true colors. Why, he made me buy the old _Clarion_ and
+hire Jim Dabney to run it, so his supply of mortuary gems shouldn't be
+cut off untimely. To-day he culled this one:
+
+    Phileola dear, we cry because thou hast gone and left us,
+    But well we know it is a merciful heaven which has bereft us.
+    We tried five doctors and everything else we knew of you to save,
+    But alas, nothing did you any good, and to-day you are in your grave!
+
+He's got it in his pocket now. Dabney calls him Mister Bones," grinned
+Laurence.
+
+My mother looked profoundly uncomfortable. The Butterfly Man reddened
+guiltily under her reproachful glance, but Mary Virginia giggled
+irrepressibly.
+
+"I choose the Book of Obituaries first!" said she promptly, with
+dancing eyes. Flint drew a breath of relief.
+
+He sat by silently enough, while Laurence and Madame and Mary Virginia
+talked of everything under heaven. His whole manner was that of an
+amused, tolerant, sympathetic listener--a manner which spurs
+conversation to its happiest and best. Not for nothing had Major
+Cartwright called him the most discriminatin' listener in Carolina.
+
+"Oh, by the way, Flint! Hunter came by this morning to see Dabney. He
+is going to give a series of Plain Talks to Workingmen this winter,
+and of course he wants the _Clarion_ to cover them. What do you think,
+Padre?"
+
+"I think they will be eminently sensible talks and well worth
+listening to," said I promptly.
+
+The Butterfly Man smiled crookedly, and shot me a freighted glance.
+
+"Of course," said Laurence, easily. "Where's your father these days,
+Mary Virginia?"
+
+"He was at the plantation this morning, but he'll be here to-morrow,
+because I wired him to come. I've just got to have him for awhile,
+business or no business."
+
+"You did me a favor, then. I want to see him, too."
+
+"Anything very particular?"
+
+"Politics."
+
+"How silly! You know very well he never meddles with politics, thank
+goodness! He thinks he has something better to do."
+
+"That's just what I want to see him about," said Laurence.
+
+"You mentioned a--a Mr. Hunter." Mary Virginia spoke after a short
+pause. "This is the first time I've heard of any Mr. Hunter in
+Appleboro. Who is Mr. Hunter?"
+
+"Inglesby's right-bower, and the king-card of the pack," said Laurence
+promptly.
+
+"One of them which set up golden images in high places and make all
+Israel for to sin," said my mother. "_That's_ what Howard Hunter is!"
+
+"Oh, ... Howard Hunter!" said she. "What sort of a person may he be?
+And what is he doing here in Appleboro?"
+
+We told her according to our lights. Only the Butterfly Man sat silent
+and imperturbable.
+
+"And you'll meet him everywhere," finished my mother. "He's
+everything a man should be to the naked eye, and I sincerely hope,"
+she added piously, "that you won't like him at all."
+
+Mary Virginia leaned back in her chair, and glanced thoughtfully down
+at the slim ringless hands clasped in her white lap.
+
+"No," said she, as if to herself. "There couldn't by any chance be two
+such men in this one world. That is he, himself." And she lifted her
+head, and glanced at my mother, with a level and proud look. "I think
+I have met this Mr. Hunter," said she, smiling curiously. "And if that
+is true, your hope is realized, p'tite Madame. I shan't."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+JOHN FLINT, GENTLEMAN
+
+
+Almost up to Christmas the weather had been so mild and warm that
+folks lived out of doors. Girls clothed like the angels in white
+raiment fluttered about and blessed the old streets with their fresh
+and rosy faces. In the bright sunshine the flowers seemed to have lost
+all thought of winter; they forgot to fade; and roses rioted in every
+garden as if it were still summer. Nobody but the Butterfly Man
+grumbled at this springlike balminess, and he only because he was
+impatient to resume experiments carried over from year to year--the
+effect of varying degrees of natural cold upon the colors of
+butterflies whose chrysalids were exposed to it. He generally used the
+chrysalids of the Papilio Turnus, whose females are dimorphic, that
+is, having two distinct forms. He did not care to resort to artificial
+freezing, preferring to allow Nature herself to work for him. And the
+jade repaid him, as usual, by showing him what she could do but
+refusing to divulge the moving why she did it. She gave him for his
+pains sometimes a light, and sometimes a dark butterfly, with
+different degrees of blurred or enlarged and vivid markings, from
+chrysalids subjected to exactly the same amount of exposure.
+
+The Butterfly Man was burning to complete his notes, already assuming
+the proportions of that very exact and valuable book they were
+afterward to become. He chafed at the enforced delay, and wished
+himself at the North Pole.
+
+In the meantime, having nothing else on hand just then, it occurred to
+him to put some of these notes, covering the most interesting and
+curious of the experiments, into papers which the general run of folks
+might like to read. Dabney had been after him for some time to do some
+such work as this for the _Clarion_.
+
+I think Flint himself was genuinely surprised when he read over those
+enchanting papers, though he did not then and never has learned to
+appreciate their unique charm and value. Instead, however, of sending
+them to Dabney, he thought they might possibly interest a somewhat
+wider public, and with great diffidence, and some misgivings, he sent
+one or two of them to certain of the better known magazines. They did
+not come back. He received checks instead, and a request for more.
+
+Now the book and the several monographs he had already gotten out had
+been, although very interesting, strictly scientific; they could
+appeal only to students and scholars. But these papers were entirely
+different. Scientific enough, very clear and lucid and most quaintly
+flavored with what Laurence called Flintishness, they were so well
+received, and the response of the reading public to this fresh and new
+presentment of an ever-fascinating subject was so immediate and so
+hearty, that the Butterfly Man found himself unexpectedly confronting
+a demand he was hard put to it to supply.
+
+He was very much more modest about this achievement than we were. My
+mother's pride was delicious to witness. You see, it also invested
+_me_ with a very farsighted wisdom! Here was it proven to all that
+Father De Rancé had been right in holding fast to the man who had come
+to him in such sorry plight.
+
+I suppose it was this which moved Madame to take the step she had long
+been contemplating. Knowing her Butterfly Man, she began with infinite
+wile.
+
+"Armand," said she, one bright morning in early November, "_I_ am
+going to entertain, too--everybody else has done so, and now it's my
+turn. The weather is so ideal, and my garden so gorgeous with all
+those chrysanthemums and salvias and geraniums and roses, that it
+would be sinful not to take advantage of such conditions.
+
+"I have saved enough out of my house-money to meet the expenses--and I
+am _not_ going to be charitable and do my Christian duty with that
+money! I'm going to entertain. I really owe that much attention to
+Mary Virginia." She laid her hand on my arm. "I must see John Flint;
+go over to his rooms, and bring him back with you."
+
+I thought she merely needed his help and counsel, for she is always
+consulting him; she considers that whatever barque is steered by John
+Flint must needs come home to harbor. He obeyed her summons with
+alacrity, for it delights him to assist Madame. He did not know what
+fate overshadowed him!
+
+My mother sat in her low rocker, a lace apron lending piquancy to her
+appearance. She looked unusually pretty--there wasn't a girl in
+Appleboro who didn't envy Madame De Rancé's complexion.
+
+"Well," said the Butterfly Man cheerfully, unconsciously falling under
+the spell of this feminine charm, "the Padre tells me there's a party
+in the wind. Good! Now what am I to do? How am I to help you out?"
+
+My mother leaned forward and compelled him to meet direct her eyes
+that were friendly and clear and candid as a child's.
+
+"Mr. Flint," said she artlessly, ignoring his questions, "Mr. Flint,
+you've been with Armand and me quite a long time now, have you not?"
+
+"A couple of lifetimes," said he, wonderingly.
+
+"A couple of lifetimes," she mused, still holding his eyes, "is a
+fairly long time. Long enough, at least, to know and to be known,
+shouldn't you think?"
+
+He awaited enlightenment. He never asks unnecessary questions.
+
+"I am going," said my mother, with apparent irrelevance, "to entertain
+in honor of Mary Virginia Eustis. I shall probably have all Appleboro
+here. I sent for you to explain that you and Armand are to be present,
+too."
+
+The Butterfly Man almost fell out of his chair.
+
+"Me?" he gasped.
+
+"You," with deadly softness. "You."
+
+Horror and anguish encompassed him. Perspiration appeared on his
+forehead, and he gripped the arms of his chair as one bracing himself
+for torture. He looked at the little lady with the terror of one to
+whom the dentist has just said: "That jaw tooth must come out at once.
+Open your mouth wider, please, so I can get a grip!"
+
+My mother regarded this painful emotion heartlessly enough. She said
+coolly:
+
+"You don't need to look as if I were sentencing you to be hanged
+before sundown. I am merely inviting you to be present at a very
+pleasant affair." But the Butterfly Man, with his mouth open, wagged
+his head feebly.
+
+"And this," said my mother, turning the screw again, "is but the
+beginning. After this, I shall manage it so that all invitations to
+the Parish House include Mr. John Flint. There is no reason under
+heaven why you should occupy what one might call an ambiguous
+position. I am determined, too, that you shall no longer rush away to
+the woods like a scared savage, the minute more than one or two ladies
+appear. No, nor have Armand hurrying away as quickly as he can,
+either, to bury or to marry somebody. All feminine Appleboro shall be
+here at once, and you two shall be here at the same time!
+
+"John Flint, regard me: if the finest butterfly that ever crawled a
+caterpillar on this earth has the impertinence to fly by my garden the
+afternoon I'm entertaining for Mary Virginia, it can fly, but you
+shan't.
+
+"Armand: nobody respects Holy Orders more than I do: but there isn't
+anybody alive going to get born or baptized or married or buried, or
+anything else, in this parish, on that one afternoon. If they are
+selfish enough to do it anyhow, why, they can do it without your
+assistance. You are going to stay home with me: both of you."
+
+"My _dear_ mother--"
+
+"Good Lord! Madame--"
+
+"I am not to be dearmothered nor goodlorded! Heaven knows I ask little
+enough of either of you. _I_ am at _your_ beck and call, every day in
+the year. It does seem to me that when I wish to be civilized, and
+return for once some of the attentions I have received from my
+friends, I might at least depend upon you two for one little
+afternoon!" Could anything be more artfully unanswerable?
+
+"Oh, but Madame--" began Flint, horrified by such an insinuation as
+his unwillingness to do anything at any time for this adored lady.
+
+"Particularly," continued my mother, inexorably, "when I have your
+best interest at heart, too, John Flint! Monsieur the Butterfly Man,
+you will please to remember that you are a member of my household. You
+are almost like a son to me. You are the apple of that foolish
+Armand's eye--do not look so astounded, it is true! Also, you will
+have a great name some of these days. So far, so good. But--you are
+making the grievous error of shunning society, particularly the
+society of women. This is wrong; it makes for queerness, it evolves
+the 'crank,' it spoils many an otherwise very nice man."
+
+Flint sagged in his chair, and clasped and unclasped his hands, which
+trembled visibly. Madame regarded him without pity, with even a touch
+of scorn.
+
+"Yes, it is indeed high time to reclaim you!" she decided, with the
+fearsome zeal of the female reformer of a man. "You silly man, you!
+Have you no proper pride? Have you absolutely no idea of your own
+worth? Well, then, if you haven't, _I_ have. You _shall_ take your
+place and play your part!"
+
+"But," said Flint, and a gleam of hope irradiated his stricken face,
+"but I don't think I've got the clothes to wear to parties. And I
+really can't afford to spend any more money right now, either. I spent
+a lot on that old 1797 Abbot & Smith's 'Natural History of the Rarer
+Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia.' It cost like the dickens, although
+I really got it for about half what it's worth. I had to take it when
+I got the chance, and I'd be willing to wear gunny-sacking for a year
+to pay for those plates! I need them: I want them. But I don't need a
+party. I don't want a party! Madame, don't, don't make me go to any
+party!"
+
+"Nonsense!" said my mother. "Clothes, indeed! I shouldn't worry about
+clothes, if I were you, John Flint. You came into this world knowing
+exactly what to wear and how to wear it. Why, you have an air! That is
+a very great mercy, let me tell you, and one not always vouchsafed to
+the deserving, either."
+
+"I have a cage full of grubs--most awfully particular grubs, and
+they've got to be watched like a sick kid with the--with the whatever
+it is sick kids have, anyhow. Why, if I were to leave those grubs one
+whole afternoon--"
+
+"You just let me see a single solitary grub have the temerity to hatch
+himself out that one afternoon, that's all! They have all the rest of
+their nasty little lives to hatch out!"
+
+"Besides, there's a boy lives about five miles from here, and he's
+likely to bring me word any minute about something I simply have to
+have--"
+
+"I want to see that boy!" She pointed her small forefinger at him,
+with the effect of a pistol leveled at his head.
+
+"You are coming to my affair!" said she, sternly. "If you have no
+regard whatsoever for Mary Virginia and me, you shall have some for
+yourself; if you have none for yourself, then you shall have some for
+_us!_"
+
+This took the last puff of wind from the Butterfly Man's sails.
+
+"All right!" he gulped, and committed himself irremediably. "I--I'll
+be right here. You say so, and of course I've got to!"
+
+"Of course you will," said my mother, smiling at him charmingly. "I
+knew I had only to present the matter in its proper light, and you'd
+see it at once. You are so sensible, John Flint. It's such a comfort,
+when the gentlemen of one's household are so amenable to reason, and
+so ready to stand by one!"
+
+Having said her say, and gotten her way--as she was perfectly sure she
+would--Madame left the gentlemen of her household to their own
+reflections and devices.
+
+"Parson!" The Butterfly Man seemed to come out of a trance. "Remember
+the day you made me let a caterpillar crawl up my hand?"
+
+"Yes, my son."
+
+"Parson, there's a horrible big teaparty crawling up my pants' leg
+this minute!"
+
+"Just keep still," I couldn't help laughing at him, "and it will come
+down after awhile without biting you. Remember, you got used to the
+others in no time."
+
+"Some of 'em stung like the very devil," he reminded me, darkly.
+
+"Oh, but those were the hairy fellows. This is a stingless, hairless,
+afternoon party! It won't hurt you at all!"
+
+"It's walking up my pants' leg, just the same. And I'm scared of it:
+I'm horrible scared of it! My God! _Me!_ At a jane-junket! ... all the
+thin ones diked out with doodads where the bones come through ...
+stoking like sailors on shore leave ... all the fat ones grouchy about
+their shapes and thinking it's their souls. ..." And he broke out, in
+a fluttering falsetto:
+
+"'Oh, Mr. Flint, do please let us see your lovely butterflies! Aren't
+they just too perfectly sweet for anything! I wonder why they don't
+trim hats with butterflies? Do you know _all_ their names, you awfully
+clever man? Do _they_ know their names, too, Mr. Flint? Butterflies
+must be so very interesting! And so decorative, particularly on china
+and house linen! How you have the heart to kill them, I can't imagine.
+Just think of taking the poor mother-butterflies away from the dear
+little baby-ones!' ...--and me having to stand there and behave like a
+perfect gentleman!" He looked at me, scowling:
+
+"Now, you look here: I can stand 'em single-file, but if I'm made to
+face 'em in squads, why, you blame nobody but yourself if I foam at
+the mouth and chase myself in a circle and snap at legs, you hear me?"
+
+"I hear you," said I, coldly. "You didn't get your orders from _me_.
+_I_ think your proper place is in the woods. You go tell Madame what
+you've just told me--or should you like me to warn her that you're
+subject to rabies?"
+
+"For the love of Mike, parson! Have a heart! Haven't I got troubles
+enough?" he asked bitterly.
+
+"You are behaving more like an unspanked brat than a grown man."
+
+"I wasn't weaned on teaparties," said he, sulkily, "and it oughtn't
+to be expected I can swallow 'em at sight without making a face and--"
+
+"Whining," I finished for him. And I added, with a reminiscent air:
+"Rule 1: Can the Squeal!"
+
+He glared at me, but as I met the glare unruffled, his lip presently
+twisted into a grin of desperate humor. His shoulders squared.
+
+"All right," said he, resignedly. And after an interval of dejected
+silence, he remarked: "I've sort of got a glimmer of how Madame feels
+about this. She generally knows what's what, Madame does, and I
+haven't seen her make a mistake yet. If she thinks it's my turn to
+come on in and take a hand in any game she's playing, why, I guess I'd
+better play up to her lead the best I know how ... and trust God to
+slip me over an ace or two when I need them. You tell her she can
+depend on me not to fall down on her ... and Miss Eustis."
+
+"No need to tell Madame what she already knows."
+
+"Huh!" With his chin in his hand and his head bent, he stared out over
+the autumn garden with eyes which did not see its flaming flowers. Of
+a sudden his shoulders twitched; he laughed aloud.
+
+"What are you laughing at?" I was startled out of a revery of my own.
+
+"Everything," said the Butterfly Man, succinctly, and stood up and
+shook himself. "And everybody. And me in particular. _Me!_ Oh, good
+Lord, think of _Me!_" He whistled for Kerry, and took himself off. I
+watched him walk down the street, and saw Judge Mayne's familiar
+greeting; and Major Cartwright stop him, and with his hand on the
+Butterfly Man's arm, walk off with him. Major Cartwright had kept
+George Inglesby out of two coveted clubs, for all his wealth; he was
+stiff as the proverbial poker to Howard Hunter, for all that
+gentleman's impeccable connections; he met John Flint, not as through
+a glass darkly, but face to face.
+
+My mother, coming out of the house with her cherished manuscript
+cookbook in her hand, looked after them thoughtfully:
+
+"Yes; it is high time for that man to know his proper place!"
+
+"And does he not?"
+
+"Oh, I suppose so, Armand. In a man's way, though--not a woman's. It's
+the woman's way that really matters, you see. When women acknowledge
+that man socially--and I mean it to happen--his light won't be hidden
+under a bushel basket. He will climb up into his candlestick and
+shine."
+
+That sense of bewilderment which at times overwhelmed me when the case
+of John Flint pressed hard, overtook me now, with its ironic humor. As
+he himself had expressed it, I felt myself caught by a Something too
+big to withstand. I was afraid to do anything, to say anything, for or
+against, this launching of his barque upon the social sea. I felt that
+the affair had been once more lifted out of my power; that my serving
+now was but to stand and wait.
+
+And in the meanwhile my mother, with her own hands, washed and darned
+the priceless old lace that was her chiefest pride; had something done
+to a frock; got out her sacredest treasures of linen and china and
+silver; requisitioned the Mayne and the Dexter spoons as well; had the
+Parish House scoured until it glittered; did everything to the garden
+but wash and iron it; spent momentous and odorous hours with Clélie
+over the making of toothsome delights; and on a golden afternoon gave
+a tea on the flower-decked verandahs and in the glorious garden, to
+which all Appleboro, in its best bib and tucker, came as one. And
+there, in the heart and center of it, cool, calm, correct, collected,
+hiding whatever mortal qualms he might have felt under a demeanor as
+perfect as Hunter's own, apparently at home and at ease, behold the
+Butterfly Man!
+
+Everybody seemed to know him. Everybody had something pleasant to say
+to him. Folks simply accepted him at sight as one of themselves. And
+the Butterfly Man accepted them quite as simply, with no faintest
+trace of embarrassment.
+
+If Appleboro had cherished the legend that this was a prodigal well on
+his way home, that afternoon settled it for them into a positive fact.
+His manner was perfect. It was as if one saw the fine and beautiful
+grain of a piece of rare wood come out as the varnish that disfigured
+it was removed. Here was no veneer to scratch and crack at a touch,
+but the solid, rare thing itself. My mother had been right, as always.
+John Flint stepped into his proper place. Appleboro was acknowledging
+it officially.
+
+The garden was full of laughter and chatter and perfumes, and women in
+pretty clothes, and young girls dainty as flowers, and the smiling
+faces of men. But I am no longer of the party age. I stole away to a
+favorite haunt of mine at the back of the garden, behind the spireas
+and the holly tree, where there is a dilapidated old seat we have been
+threatening to remove any time this five years. Here, some time
+later, the Butterfly Man himself came stealthily, and seemed
+embarrassed to find the place preëmpted.
+
+"Well," said I, making room for him beside me, "it isn't so bad after
+all, is it?"
+
+"No. I'm glad I was let in for it," he admitted frankly, "though I'd
+hate to have to come to parties for a living. Still, this afternoon
+has nailed down a thought that's been buzzing around loose in my mind
+this long time. It's this: people aren't anything but people, after
+all. Men and women and kids, the best and the worst of 'em, they're
+nothing but people, the same as everybody else. No, I'll never be
+scared to meet anybody, after this. _I'm_ people, too!"
+
+"The same as everybody else."
+
+"The same as everybody else," he repeated, soberly. "Not but what
+there's lots of difference between folks. And there are things it's
+good to know, too ... things that women like Madame ... and Miss Mary
+Virginia Eustis ... expect a man to know, if they're not going to be
+ashamed of him." He thought about this awhile, then:
+
+"I tell you what, father," he remarked, tentatively, "it must be a
+mighty fine thing to know you've got the right address written on you,
+good and plain, and the right number of stamps, and the sender's name
+somewhere on a corner, to keep you from going astray or to the Dead
+Letter Office; and not to be scrawled in lead-pencil, and misspelt,
+and finger-smutched, and with a couple of postage-due stamps stuck on
+you crooked, and the Lord only knows who and where from."
+
+"Why, yes," said I, "that's true, and one does well to consider it.
+But the main thing, the really important thing, is the letter
+itself--what's written inside, John Flint."
+
+"But what's written inside wouldn't be any the worse if it was written
+clearer and better, and the outside was cleaner and on nice paper? And
+in pen-and-ink, not lead-pencil scratches?" he insisted earnestly.
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"That's what I've been thinking lately, father. Somehow, I always did
+like things to have some class to 'em. I remember how I used to lean
+against the restaurant windows when I was a kid, and watch the folks
+inside, how they dressed and acted, and the way the nicest of 'em
+handled table-tools. They weren't swells, of course, and plenty of 'em
+made plenty of mistakes--I've seen stunts done with a common
+table-knife that had the best of the sword-swallowing gents skinned a
+mile--but I wasn't a fool, and I learned some. Then when I--er--began
+to make real money (parson, I made it in wads and gobs and lumps those
+days!) why, I got me the real thing in glad rags from the real thing
+in tailors, and I used to blow a queen that'd been a swell herself
+once, to the joint where the gilt-edged bunch eat and show off their
+clothes and the rest of themselves. My jane looked the part to the
+life, I had the kale and the clothes and was chesty as a head-waiter,
+being considerably stuck on yours truly along about then, so we put it
+over. I had the chance to get hep to the last word in clothes and
+manners; that's what I'd gone for, though I didn't tell that to the
+skirt I was buying the eats for. And it was good business, too, for
+more than once when some precinct bonehead that pipe-dreamed he was a
+detective was pussy-catting some cold rat-hole, there was me
+vanbibbering in the white light at the swellest joints in little old
+New York! Funny, wasn't it? And handy! And I was learning,
+too--learning things worth good money to know. I saw that the best
+sort didn't make any noise about anything. They went about their
+business, whatever it was, easy-easy, same as me in my line. But,
+parson, though I'd got hep to the outside, and had sense enough to
+copy what I'd seen, I wasn't wise to the inside difference--the things
+that make the best what it is, I mean--because I'd never been close
+enough to find out that there's more to it than looks and duds and
+manners. It took the Parish House people to soak that into me. People
+aren't anything but people--but the best are--well, different."
+
+We fell silent; a happy silence, into which, as from another planet,
+there drifted light laughter, and sweet gay voices of girls, and the
+stir and rustle of many people moving about. On the Mayne fence the
+judge's black Panch sat, neck outstretched, emerald eyes aslant, ears
+cocked uneasily at these unwonted noises. At a little distance a
+bluejay watched him with bright malevolent eyes, every now and then
+screaming insults at the whole tribe of cats, and black Panch in
+particular. Flint snapped his fingers, and Panch, with a spring, was
+off the fence and on his friend's knees. It seemed to me it had only
+needed the sleek beastie to make that hour perfect;--for cats in the
+highest degree make for a sense of homely, friendly intimacy. Flint,
+feeling this, stroked the black head contentedly. Panch purred for the
+three of us.
+
+Into this presently broke Miss Sally Ruth Dexter, and bore down on
+John Flint like a frigate with all sails spread. At sight of her Panch
+spat and fled, and took the happy spell with him.
+
+"Here you are, cuddling that old pirate of a black cat!" said she,
+briskly. "I told Madame you'd be mooning about somewhere. Here's some
+cocoanut cake for you both. Father, Madame's been looking for you. Did
+you know," she sank her voice to a piercing whisper, "that George
+Inglesby's here? Well, he is! He's talking to Mary Virginia Eustis,
+this very minute! They do say he's running after Mary Virginia, and
+I'm sure I wouldn't be surprised, for if ever a mortal man had the
+effrontery of Satan that man's George Inglesby! I must admit he's
+improved since Mr. Hunter took him in hand. He's not nearly so stout
+and red-faced, and he hasn't half the jowl, though Lord knows he'll
+have to get rid of a few tons more of his blubber" (Miss Sally Ruth
+has a free and fetterless tongue) "if he wants to look _human_. As I
+say, what's the use of being a millionaire if you've got a shape like
+a rainbarrel? I often tell myself, 'Maybe you haven't been given such
+a lot of this world's goods as some, Sally Ruth Dexter, but you can
+thank your sweet Redeemer you've at least got a Figure!"
+
+The Butterfly Man cast a speculative eye over her generous
+proportions.
+
+"Yes'm, you certainly have a whole lot to be thankful for," he agreed,
+so wholeheartedly that Miss Sally Ruth laughed.
+
+"Get along with you, you impudent fellow!" said she, in high good
+humor. "Go and look at that old scamp of an Inglesby making eyes at a
+girl young enough to be his daughter! I heard this morning that Mr.
+Hunter has orders to get him, by hook or crook, an invitation to
+anything Mary Virginia goes to. I declare, it's scandalous! Come to
+think of it, though, I never saw any man yet, no matter how old or
+ugly or outrageous he might be, who didn't really believe he stood a
+perfectly good chance to win the affections of the handsomest young
+woman alive! If you ask _me_, _I_ think George Inglesby had better
+join the church and get himself ready to meet his God, instead of
+gallivanting around girls. If he feels he has to gallivant, why don't
+he pick out somebody nearer his own age?"
+
+"Why should you make him choose mutton when he wants lamb?" asked the
+Butterfly Man, unexpectedly.
+
+"Because he's an old bellwether, that's why!" snapped Miss Sally Ruth,
+scandalized. "I wonder at Annabelle Eustis allowing him to come near
+Mary Virginia, millionaire or no millionaire. I bet you James Eustis
+will have something to say, if Mary Virginia herself doesn't!" And she
+sailed off again, leaving us, as the saying is, with a bug in the ear.
+
+"Now what in the name of heaven," I wondered, "can Miss Sally Ruth
+mean? Mary Virginia ... Inglesby. ... The thing's sacrilegious."
+
+The Butterfly Man rose abruptly. "Suppose we stroll about a bit?" he
+suggested.
+
+"I thought," said my mother, when we approached her, "that you had
+disobeyed orders, and run away!"
+
+"We were afraid to," said John Flint. "We knew you'd make us go to bed
+without supper."
+
+"Did you know," said my mother, hurriedly, for Clélie was making signs
+to her, "that George Inglesby is here? The invitation was merely
+perfunctory, just sent along with Mr. Hunter's. I never dreamed the
+man would accept it. You can't imagine how astonished I was when he
+presented himself!"
+
+A few moments later, the Butterfly Man said in a low voice: "Look
+yonder!" And turning, I saw Hunter. He was for the moment alone, and
+stood with his head bent slightly forward, his bright cold glance
+intent upon the two persons approaching--Mary Virginia and George
+Inglesby. His white teeth showed in a smile. I remembered,
+disagreeably, Flint's "I don't like the expression of his teeth: he
+looks like he'd bite."
+
+Until that afternoon I had not seen the secretary for some time, for
+he had been kept unusually busy. Those eminently sensible talks to the
+mill workers had been well received, and were to be followed by others
+along the same line. He had done even more: he had induced the owners
+to recognize the men's Union, and all future complaints and demands
+were to be submitted to arbitration. Inglesby had undoubtedly gained
+ground enormously by that move. Hunter had done well. And
+yet--catching that sharp-toothed smile, I felt my faith in him for the
+first time shaken by one of those unaccountable uprushes of intuition
+which perplex and disturb.
+
+I knew, too, that Laurence had had several long and serious
+conferences with Eustis, and I could well imagine the arguments he had
+brought to bear, the rousing of a sense of duty, and of state pride.
+
+Eustis was obstinate. He had many interests. He was a very, very busy
+man. He didn't want to be a Senator; he wanted to be let alone to
+attend to his own business in his own way. But, insisted Laurence,
+when a thing must be done, and you can do it in a manner which
+benefits all and injures none; when your own people ask you to do it
+for them, isn't _that_ your business?
+
+A cold damning resume of Inglesby's entire career made Eustis
+hesitate. A vivid picture of what the state might expect at Inglesby's
+hands roused him to just anger. Such as this fellow represent
+Carolina? Never! When Inglesby's name should be put up, Eustis
+unwillingly agreed to oppose him.
+
+And here was Inglesby, in my garden, making himself agreeable to
+Eustis's daughter! He was so plainly desirous to please her, that it
+troubled me, although it made his secretary smile.
+
+The Mary Virginia walking beside Inglesby was not the Mary Virginia
+_we_ knew: this was the regal one, the great beauty. Her whole manner
+was subtly charged with a sort of arrogant hauteur; her fairness
+itself changed, tinged with pride as with an inward fire, until she
+glowed with a cold, jewel-like brightness, hard and clear. Her very
+skirts rustled pridefully. Her glance at the man beside her was
+insulting in its disdainful indifference.
+
+What would have saddened a nobler spirit enchanted Inglesby. He was
+dazzled by her. Her interest in what he was saying was coolly
+impersonal, the fixed habit of trained politeness. He could even
+surmise that she was mentally yawning behind her hand. When she looked
+at him her eyes under her level brows held a certain scornfulness. And
+this, too, delighted him. He groveled to it. His red face glowed with
+pleasure; he swelled with a pride very different from Mary Virginia's.
+I thought he had an upholstered look in his glossy clothes, reminding
+me unpleasantly of horsehair furniture.
+
+"He looks like a day coach in July," growled the Butterfly Man in my
+ear, disgustedly.
+
+Inglesby at this moment perceived Hunter and beamed upon him, as well
+he might! Who but this priceless secretary had pulled the strings
+which set him beside this glorious creature, in the Parish House
+garden? He turned to the girl, with heavy jauntiness:
+
+"My good right hand, Miss Eustis, I assure you!" he beamed. "But I am
+sure you two need no dissertations upon each other's merits!"
+
+"None whatever," said Miss Eustis, and looked over Mr. Hunter's head.
+
+"Oh, Miss Eustis and I are really old acquaintances!" smiled the
+secretary. "We know each other very well indeed."
+
+Mary Virginia made no reply. Instead, she looked about her,
+indifferently enough, until her glance encountered the Butterfly
+Man's. What he saw in her's I do not know. But he instantly moved
+toward her, and swept me with him.
+
+"Father De Rancé and I," said he, easily, "haven't had chance to speak
+to you all afternoon, Miss Eustis." He acknowledged Hunter's friendly
+greeting pleasantly enough.
+
+"And I've been looking for you both." The hauteur faded from the young
+face. Our own Mary Virginia appeared, changed in the twinkling of an
+eye.
+
+Inglesby favored me with condescending effusiveness. Flint got off
+with a smirking stare.
+
+"And this," said Inglesby in the sort of voice some people use in
+addressing strange children to whom they desire to be patronizingly
+nice and don't know how, "this is the Butterfly Man!" Out came the
+jovial smile in its full deadliness. The Butterfly Man's lips drew
+back from his teeth and his eyes narrowed to gimlet points behind his
+glasses. "I have heard of you from Mr. Hunter. And so you collect
+butterflies! Very interesting and active occupation for any one
+that--ahem! likes that sort of thing. Very."
+
+"He collects obituaries, too," said Hunter, immensely amused. "You
+mustn't overlook the obituaries, Mr. Inglesby."
+
+Mr. Inglesby favored the collector of butterflies _and_ obituaries
+with another speculative, piglike stare. You could see the thought
+behind it: "Trifling sort of fellow! Idiotic! Very." Aloud he merely
+mumbled:
+
+"Singular taste. Very. Collecting obituaries, eh?"
+
+"Fascinating things to collect. Very," said the Butterfly Man,
+sweetly. "Not to be laughed at. I might add yours to 'em, too, you
+know, some of these fine days!"
+
+"Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed!" murmured Hunter. Mr. Inglesby,
+however, was visibly ruffled and annoyed. Who was this fellow braying
+of obituaries as if he, Inglesby, were on the highroad to oblivion
+already, when he was, in reality, still quite a young man? And right
+before Miss Eustis! He turned purple.
+
+"My obituary?" he spluttered. "_Mine_? Mine?"
+
+"Sure, if it's worth while," said the Butterfly Man, amiably. Mary
+Virginia barely suppressed a smile.
+
+"Madame would like to see you, Miss Eustis," he told her.
+
+Mary Virginia, bowing distantly to the millionaire and his secretary,
+walked off with him, I following.
+
+Once free of them, her spirits rose soaringly.
+
+"It's been a lovely afternoon, and I've enjoyed it all--except Mr.
+Inglesby. I don't _like_ Mr. Inglesby, Padre. He's amusing enough, I
+suppose, at times, but one can't seem to get rid of him--he's a
+perfect Old Man of the Sea," she told us, confidentially. "And you
+can't imagine how detestably youthful he is, Mr. Flint! He told me
+half a dozen times this afternoon that after all, years don't
+matter--it is the heart which is young. And he takes cold tubs and is
+proud of himself, and plays golf--for exercise!" The scorn of the
+lithe and limber young was in her voice.
+
+"What's the use of being a millionaire, if you have a shape like the
+rainbarrel?" I quoted pensively.
+
+Later that night, when "the lights were fled, the garlands dead, and
+all but me departed," I went over for my usual last half-hour with
+John Flint. Very often we have nothing whatever to say, and we are
+even wise enough not to say it. We sit silently, he with Kerry's noble
+old head against his foot, each busy with his own thoughts and
+reflections, but each conscious of the friendly nearness of the other.
+You have never had a friend, if you have never known one with whom you
+might sit a silent, easy hour. To-night he sucked savagely at his old
+pipe, and his eyes were somber.
+
+"You got the straight tip from Miss Sally Ruth, father," he said,
+coming out of a brown study. "What do you suppose that piker's trying
+to crawl out of his cocoon for? He never wanted to caper around
+Appleboro women before, did he? No. And here he's been muldooning to
+get some hog-fat off and some wind and waistline back. Now, why? To
+please himself? _He_ don't have to care a hoot what he looks like. To
+please some girl? That's more likely. Parson: that girl's Mary
+Virginia Eustis." He added, through his teeth: "Hunter knows. Hunter's
+steering." And then, with quiet conviction: "They're both as crooked
+as hell!" he finished.
+
+"But the thing's absurd on the face of it! Why, the mere notion is
+preposterous!" I insisted, angrily.
+
+"I have seen worse things happen," said he, shortly. "But there,--keep
+your hair on! Things don't happen unless they're slated to happen, so
+don't let it bother you too much. You go turn in and forget everything
+except that you need a night's sleep."
+
+I tried to follow his sound advice, but although I needed a night's
+sleep and there was no tangible reason why I shouldn't have gotten it,
+I didn't. The shadow of Inglesby haunted my pillow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+"EACH IN HIS OWN COIN"
+
+
+With the New Year had descended upon John Flint an obsessing and
+tormenting spirit which made him by fits and starts moody, depressed,
+nervous, restless, or wholly silent and abstracted. I have known him
+to come in just before dawn, snatch a few hours' sleep, and be off
+again before day had well set in, though he must already have been far
+afield, for Kerry heeled him with lagging legs and hanging head. Or he
+would shut himself up, and refusing himself to all callers, fall into
+a cold fury of concentrated effort, sitting at his table hour after
+hour, tireless, absorbed, accomplishing a week's overdue work in a day
+and a night. Often his light burned all night through. Some of the
+most notable papers bearing his name, and research work of
+far-reaching significance, came from that workroom then--as if lumps
+of ambergris had been tossed out of a whirlpool.
+
+All this time, too, he was working in conjunction with the Washington
+Bureau, experimenting with remedies for the boll-weevil, and fighting
+the plague of the cattle-tick. This, and the other outside work in
+which he was so immensely interested, could not be allowed to hang
+fire. Like many another, he found himself for his salvation caught in
+the great human net he himself had helped to spin. It was not only
+the country people who held him. Gradually, as he passed to and from
+on his way among them, and became acquainted with their children,
+there had sprung up a most curious sort of understanding between the
+Butterfly Man on the one side, and the half-articulate foreigners in
+the factory and the sly secretive mill-workers on the other.
+
+People I had never been able to get at humanly, people who resisted
+even Madame, not only chose to open their doors but their mouths, to
+Meester Fleent. Uncouth fumbling men, slip-shod women, dirty-faced
+children, were never dumb and suspicious or wholly untruthful and
+evasive, where the Butterfly Man was concerned. He was one to whom
+might be told, without shame, fear, or compunction, the plain, blunt,
+terrible truth. _He understood._
+
+"I wish you'd look up Petronovich's boy, father," he might tell me,
+or, "Madame, have a woman-talk with Lovena Smith's girl at the mills,
+will you? Lovena's a fool, and that girl's up against things." And we
+went, and wondered, afterwards, what particularly tender guardian
+angels kept close company with our Butterfly Man.
+
+Then occurred the great event which put Meester Fleent in a place
+apart in the estimation of all Appleboro, forever settled his status
+among the mill-hands and the "hickeys," and incidentally settled a
+tormenting doubt of himself in his own mind. I mean the settling of
+the score against Big Jan.
+
+Half-Russian Jan was to the Poles what a padrone too often is to the
+Italian laborers, a creature who herded them together and mercilessly
+worked them for the profit of others, and incidentally his own, an
+exacting tyrant against whose will it was useless to rebel. He had a
+little timid wife with red eyes--perhaps because she cried so much
+over the annual baby which just as annually died. He made a good deal
+of money, but the dark Slav passion for whisky forced him to spend
+what he earned, and this increased a naturally sullen temper. He was
+the thorn in the Parish side; that we could do so little for the Poles
+was due in a large measure to Jan's stubborn hindering.
+
+His people lived in terror of him. When they displeased him he beat
+them. It was not a light beating, and once or twice we had in the
+Guest Rooms nursed its victims back into some semblance of humanity.
+But what could we do? Jan was so efficient a foreman that Inglesby's
+power was always behind him. So when Jan chose to get very drunk, and
+sang long, monotonous songs, particularly when he sang through his
+teeth, lugubriously:
+
+    "_Yeszeze Polska nie Zginela
+     Poki my Zygemy_ ..."
+
+men and women trembled. Poland might not be lost, but somebody's skin
+always paid for that song.
+
+In passing one morning--it was a holiday--through the Poles' quarters,
+an unpleasant enough stretch which other folks religiously avoided,
+the Butterfly Man heard shrieks coming from Michael Karski's back
+yard. It was Michael's wife and children who screamed.
+
+"It is the Boss who beats Michael, Meester Fleent," a man volunteered.
+"The Boss, he is much drunk. Karski's woman, she did not like the ways
+of him in her house, and Michael said, 'I will to send for the
+police.' So Big Jan beats Michael, and Michael's woman, she hollers
+like hell."
+
+John Flint knew inoffensive, timid Michael; he knew his broad-bosomed,
+patient, cowlike wife, and he liked the brood of shockheaded
+youngsters who plodded along patient in old clothes, bare-footed, and
+with scanty enough food. He had made a corn-cob doll for the littlest
+girl and a cigar-box wagon with spool wheels for the littlest boy.
+Perhaps that is why he turned and went with the rest to Michael's yard
+where Big Jan was knocking Michael about like a ten-pin, grunting
+through his teeth: "Now! Sen' for those policemens, you!"
+
+Michael was no pretty thing to look upon, for Jan was in an uglier
+mood than usual, and Michael had greatly displeased him; therefore it
+was Michael's turn to pay. Nobody interfered, for every one was
+horribly afraid Big Jan would turn upon _him_. Besides, was not he the
+Boss, and could he not say Go, and then must not a man go, short of
+pay, and with his wife and children crying? Of a verity!
+
+The Butterfly Man slipped off his knapsack and laid his net aside.
+Then he pushed his way through the scared onlookers.
+
+"Meester Fleent! For God's love, save my man, Meester Flint!"
+Michael's wife Katya screamed at him.
+
+By way of answer Meester Fleent very deliberately handed her his
+eye-glasses. Then one saw that his eyes, slitted in his head, were
+cold and bright as a snake's; his chin thrust forward, and in his red
+beard his lips made a straight line like a clean knife-cut. Two
+bright red spots had jumped into his tanned cheeks. His lean hands
+balled.
+
+He said no word; but the crumpled thing that was Michael was of a
+sudden plucked bodily out of Big Jan's hands and thrust into the
+waiting woman's. The astonished Boss found himself confronting a pale
+and formidable face with a pair of eyes like glinting sword-blades.
+
+Kerry had followed his master, and was now close to his side. For the
+moment Flint had forgotten him. But Big Jan's evil eyes caught sight
+of him. He knew the Butterfly Man's dog very well. He snickered. A
+huge foot shot out, there was a howl of anguish and astonishment, and
+Kerry went flying through the air as if shot from a catapult.
+
+"So!" Jan grunted like a satisfied hog, "I feex _you_ like that in one
+meenute, me."
+
+The red jumped from John Flint's cheeks to his eyes, and stayed there.
+Why, this hulking brute had hurt _Kerry!_ His breath exhaled in a
+whistling sigh. He seemed to coil himself together; with a tiger-leap
+he launched himself at the great hulk before him. It went down. It had
+to.
+
+I know every detail of that historic fight. Is it not written large in
+the Book of the Deeds of Appleboro, and have I not heard it by word of
+mouth from many a raving eye-witness? Does not Dr. Walter Westmoreland
+lick his lips over it unto this day?
+
+A long groaning sigh went up from the onlookers. Meester Fleent was a
+great and a good man; but he was a crippled man. Death was very close
+to him.
+
+Big Jan was not too drunk to fight savagely, but he was in a most
+horrible rage, and this weakened him. He meant to kill this impudent
+fellow who had taken Michael away from him before he had half-finished
+with him. But first he would break every bone in the crippled man's
+body, take him in his hands and break his back over one knee as one
+does a slat. A man with one leg to balk him, Big Jan? That called for
+a killing. Jan had no faintest idea he might not be able to make good
+this pleasant intention.
+
+It was a stupendous fight, a Homeric fight, a fight against odds,
+which has become a town tradition. If Jan was formidable, a veritable
+bison, his opponent was no cringing workman scared out of his wits and
+too timid to defend himself. John Flint knew his own weakness, knew
+what he could expect at Jan's hands, and it made him cool, collected,
+wary, and deadly. He was no more the mild-mannered, soft-spoken
+Butterfly Man, but another and a more primal creature, fighting for
+his life. Big Jan, indeed, fancied he had nobody but the Butterfly Man
+to deal with; as a matter of fact he was tackling Slippy McGee.
+
+Skilled, watchful, dangerous, that old training saved him. Every time
+Jan came to his feet, roaring, thrashing his arms like flails, making
+head-long, bull-like rushes, the Butterfly Man managed to send him
+sprawling again. Then he himself caught one well-aimed blow, and went
+staggering; but before slow-moving and raging Jan could follow up his
+advantage, with a lightning-like quickness the Butterfly Man made a
+battering ram of his head, caught Jan in the pit of the stomach, and
+even as he fell Jan went down, too, and went down underneath.
+Desperately, fighting like a fiend, John Flint kept him down. And
+presently using every wrestler's trick that he knew, and bringing to
+bear every ounce of his saved and superb strength, in a most orderly,
+businesslike, cold-blooded manner he proceeded to pound Big Jan into
+pulp. The devil that had been chained these seven years was a-loose at
+last, rampant, fully aroused, and not easily satisfied. Besides, had
+not Jan most brutally and wantonly tried to kill Kerry!
+
+If it was a well deserved it was none the less a most drastic
+punishment, and when it was over Big Jan lay still. He would lie prone
+for many a day, and he would carry marks of it to his grave.
+
+When the tousled victor, with a reeling head, an eye fast closing, and
+a puffed and swollen lip, staggered upright and stood swaying on his
+feet, he found himself surrounded by a great quiet ring of men and
+women who regarded him with eyes of wonder and amaze. He was
+superhuman; he had accomplished the impossible; paid the dreaded Boss
+in his own coin, yea, given him full measure to the running over
+thereof! No man of all the men Jan had beaten in his time had received
+such as Jan himself had gotten at this man's hands to-day. The reign
+of the Boss was over: and the conqueror was a crippled man! A great
+sighing breath of sheer worshipful admiration went up; they were too
+profoundly moved to cheer him; they could only stand and stare. When
+they wished, reverently, to help him, he waved them aside.
+
+"Where's my dog?" he demanded thickly through his swollen lips.
+"Where's Kerry? If he's dead--" he cast upon fallen Jan a menacing
+glare.
+
+"Your dog's in bed with the baby, and Ma's give him milk with brandy
+in it, and he drank it and growled at her, and the boys is holding
+him down now to keep him from coming out to you, and he ain't much
+hurt nohow," squealed one of Michael's big-eyed children.
+
+John Flint, stretching his arms above his head, drew in a great
+gulping mouthful of air, exhaled it, and laughed a deepchested,
+satisfied laugh, for all he was staggering like a drunken man. Here
+Michael's wife Katya came puffing out of her house like a traction
+engine--such was the shape in which nature formed her--and falling on
+her knees, caught his hand to her vast bosom, weeping like the
+overflowing of a river and blubbering uncouth sounds.
+
+"Get up, you crazy woman!" snarled John Flint, his face going
+brick-red. "Stop licking my hand, and get up!" Although he did not
+know it, Katya symbolized the mental attitude of every laborer in
+Appleboro toward him from that hour.
+
+"Here's Doctor Westmoreland! And here comes the po-lice!" yelled a
+boy, joyous with excitement.
+
+Westmoreland cast one by no means sympathetic glance at the wreck on
+the ground, and his big arms went about John Flint; his fingers flew
+over him like an apprehensive father's.
+
+"What's all this? Who's been fighting here, you people?" demanded the
+town marshal's brisk voice. "Big Jan? And--good Lord! _Mister Flint!_"
+His eyes bulged. He looked from Big Jan on the ground to the Butterfly
+Man under Westmoreland's hands, with an almost ludicrous astonishment.
+
+"I'm sure sorry, Mr. Flint, if I have to give you a little trouble for
+awhile, but--"
+
+"But you'll be considerably sorrier if you do it," said Dr. Walter
+Westmoreland savagely. "You take that hulk over there to the jail,
+until I have time to see him. I can't have him sent home to his wife
+in that shape. And look here, Marshal: Jan got exactly what he
+deserved; it's been coming to him this long time. If Inglesby's bunch
+tries to take a hand in this, _I'll_ try to make Appleboro too hot to
+hold somebody. Understand?"
+
+The marshal was a wise enough man, and he understood. Inglesby's pet
+foreman had been all but killed, and Inglesby would be furiously
+angry. But--Mr. Flint had done it, and behind Mr. Flint were powers
+perhaps as potent as Inglesby's. One thing more may have influenced
+the marshal: The hitherto timid and apathetic people had merged into a
+compact and ominous ring around the Butterfly Man and the doctor. A
+shrill murmur arose, like the wind in the trees presaging a storm.
+There would be riot in staid Appleboro if one were so foolish as to
+lay a detaining hand upon John Flint this day. More yet, the beloved
+Westmoreland himself would probably begin it. Never had the marshal
+seen Westmoreland look so big and so raging.
+
+"All right, Doctor," said he, hastily backing off. "I reckon you're
+man enough to handle this."
+
+Some proud worshiper brought Mr. Flint his hat, knapsack, and net, and
+the mountainous Katya insisted upon tenderly placing his glasses upon
+his nose--upside down. Westmoreland used to say afterward that for a
+moment he feared Flint was going to bite her hand! Then man and dog
+were placed in the doctor's car and hurried home to my mother; who
+made no comment, but put both in the larger Guest Room, the whimpering
+dog on a comfort at the foot of his master's bed. Kerry had a broken
+rib, but outside of this he was not injured. He would be out and all
+right again in a week, Westmoreland assured his anxious master.
+
+"Oh, you _man_, you!" crowed Westmoreland. "John, John, if anything
+were needed to make me love you, this would clinch it! Prying open
+nature's fist, John, having butterflies bear your name, working hand
+in glove with your government, boosting boys, writing books, are all
+of them fine big grand things. But if along with them one's man enough
+to stand up, John, with the odds against him, and punish a bully and a
+scoundrel, the only way a bully and a scoundrel can feel punishment,
+that's a heart-stirring thing, John! It gets to the core of my heart.
+It isn't so much the fight itself, it's being able to take care of
+oneself and others when one has to. Yes, yes, yes. A fight like that
+is worth a million dollars to the man who wins it!"
+
+Westmoreland may be president of the Peace League, and tell us that
+force is all wrong. Nevertheless, his great-grandmother was born in
+Tipperary.
+
+We kept the Butterfly Man indoors for a week, while Westmoreland
+doctored a viciously black eye and sewed up his lip. Morning and
+afternoon Appleboro called, and left tribute of fruit and flowers.
+
+"Gad, suh, he behaved like one of Stonewall Jackson's men!" said Major
+Cartwright, pridefully. "No yellow in _him_; he's one of _us_!"
+
+At nights came the Polish folks, and these people whom he had once
+despised because they "hadn't got sense enough to talk American," he
+now received with a complete and friendly understanding.
+
+"I just come by and see how you make to feel, Meester."
+
+"Oh, I feel fine, Joe, thank you."
+
+There would be an interval of absolute silence, which, did not seem to
+embarrass either visited or visitor. Then:
+
+"Baby better now?" Meester would ask, interestedly.
+
+"That beeg doctor, he oil heem an' make heem well all right."
+
+After awhile: "I mebbe go now, Meester."
+
+"Good-night," said the host, briefly.
+
+At the door the Pole would turn, and look back, with the wistfully
+animal look of the Under Dog.
+
+"Those cheeldren, they make to get you the leetle bug. You mebbe like
+that, Meester, yes? They make to get you plenty much bug, those
+cheeldren. We _all_ make to get you the bug, Meester, thank you."
+
+"That's mighty nice of you folks." Then one felt the note in the quiet
+voice which explained his hold upon people.
+
+"Hell, no. We _like_ to do that for you, Meester. Thank you." And
+closing the door gently after him, he would slink off.
+
+"They don't need to be so allfired grateful," said John Flint frankly.
+"Parson, I'm the guy to be grateful. I got a whole heap more out of
+that shindy than a black eye and a pretty mouth. I was bluemolding for
+a man-tussle, and that scrap set me up again. You see--I wasn't sure
+of myself any more, and it was souring on my stomach. Now I know I
+haven't lost out, I feel like a white man. Yep, it gives a fellow the
+holiday-heart to be dead sure he's plenty able to use his fists if
+he's got to. Westmoreland's right about that."
+
+I was discreetly silent. God forgive me, in my heart I also was most
+sinfully glad my Butterfly Man could and would use his fists when he
+had to. I do not believe in peace at any price. I know very well that
+wrong must be conquered before right can prevail. But I shouldn't have
+been so set up!
+
+"Here," said he one morning. "Ask Madame to give this to Jan's wife.
+And say, beg her for heaven's sake to buy some salve for her eyelids,
+will you?" "This" was a small roll of bills. "I owe it to Jan," he
+explained, with his twistiest smile.
+
+Westmoreland's skill removed all outward marks of the fray, and the
+Butterfly Man went his usual way; but although he had laid at rest one
+cruel doubt, he was still in deep waters. Because of his stress his
+clothes had begun to hang loosely upon him.
+
+Now the naturalist who knows anything at all of those deep mysterious
+well-springs underlying his great profession, understands that he is a
+'prentice hand learning his trade in the workshop of the Almighty;
+wherein "_the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world
+are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made_." As
+Paul on a time reminded the Romans.
+
+Wherefore I who had learned somewhat from the Little Peoples now
+applied what they had taught me, and when I saw my man grow restless,
+move about aimlessly, withdraw into himself and become as one blind
+and dumb and unhearing, I understood he was facing a change, making
+ready to project himself into some larger phase of existence as yet in
+the womb of the future. So I did not question what wind drove him
+forth before it like a lost leaf. The loving silent companionship of
+red Kerry, the friendly faces of young children to whom he was kind,
+the eyes of poor men and women looking to him for help, these were
+better for him now than I.
+
+But my mother was not a naturalist, and she was provoked with John
+Flint. He ate irregularly, he slept as it pleased God. He was "running
+wild" again. This displeased her, particularly as Appleboro had at her
+instigation included Mr. John Flint in its most exclusive list, and
+there were invitations she was determined he should accept. She had
+put her hand to the social plow in his behalf, and she had no faintest
+notion of withdrawing it. Once fairly aroused, Madame had that
+able-bodied will heaven seems to have lavished so plenteously upon
+small women: In recompense, I dare say, for lack of size.
+
+Therefore Mr. Flint duteously appeared at intervals among the elect,
+and appeared even to advantage. And my mother remarked, complacently,
+that blood will tell: he had the air! He was not expected to dance,
+but he was a superb cardplayer. He never told jokes, and so avoided
+deadly repetition. He had in a large measure that virtue the Chinese
+extol--the virtue of allowing others to save their faces in peace. Was
+it any wonder Mr. Flint's social position was soon solidly
+established?
+
+He played the game as my mother forced it upon him, though at times, I
+think, it bored and chafed him sorely. What chafed him even more
+sorely was the unprecedented interest many young ladies--and some old
+enough to know better--suddenly evinced in entomology.
+
+Mr. Flint almost overnight developed a savage cunning in eluding the
+seekers of entomological lore. One might suppose a single man would
+rejoice to see his drab workroom swarm with these brightly-colored
+fluttering human butterflies; he bore their visits as visitations,
+displaying the chastened resignation Job probably showed toward the
+latest ultra-sized carbuncle.
+
+"Cheer up!" urged Laurence, who was watching this turn of affairs with
+unfeeling mirth. "The worst is yet to come. These are only the
+chickens: wait until the hens get on your trail!"
+
+"Mr. Flint," said Mary Virginia one afternoon, rubbing salt into his
+smarting wounds, "Mr. Flint, I am so glad all the girls like you so
+much. You fascinate them. They say you are such a profoundly clever
+and interesting man, Mr. Flint! Why, some of those girls are perfectly
+demented about you!"
+
+"Demented," said he, darkly, "is the right word for them when it comes
+down to fussing about _me_." Now Laurence had just caught him in his
+rooms, and, declaring that he looked overworked and pale, had dragged
+him forcibly outside on the porch, where we were now sitting. Mary
+Virginia, in a white skirt, sport coat, and a white felt hat which
+made her entrancingly pretty, had been visiting my mother and now
+strolled over to John Flint's, after her old fashion.
+
+"I feel like making the greatest sort of a fuss about you myself," she
+said honestly. "Anyhow, I'm mighty glad girls like you. It's a good
+sign."
+
+"If they do--though God knows I can't see why--I'm obliged to them,
+seeing it pleases _you_!" said Flint, without, however, showing much
+gratitude in eyes or voice. "To tell you the truth, it looks to me at
+times as if they were wished on me."
+
+Mary Virginia tried to look horrified, and giggled instead.
+
+"If I could only make any of them understand anything!" said the
+Butterfly Man desperately, "but I can't. If only they really wanted to
+know, I'd be more than glad to teach them. But they don't. I show them
+and show them and tell them and tell them, over and over and over
+again, and the same thing five minutes later, and they haven't even
+listened! They don't care. What do they take up my time and say they
+like my butterflies for, when they don't like them at all and don't
+want to know anything about them? That's what gets me!"
+
+Laurence winked at Mary Virginia, shamelessly.
+
+"Bugs!" said he, inelegantly. "That's what's intended to get you, you
+old duffer!"
+
+"Mr. Flint," said Mary Virginia, with dancing eyes. "I don't blame
+those girls one single solitary bit for wanting to know all
+about--butterflies."
+
+"But they don't want to know, I tell you!" Mr. Flint's voice rose
+querulously.
+
+"My dear creature, I'd be stuck on you myself if I were a girl," said
+Laurence sweetly. "Padre, prepare yourself to say, 'Bless you, my
+children!' I see this innocent's finish." And he began to sing, in a
+lackadaisical manner, through his nose:
+
+    "Now you're married you must obey,
+     You must be true to all you say,
+     Live together all your life--"
+
+No answering smile came to John Flint's lips. He made no reply to the
+light banter, but stiffened, and stared ahead of him with a set face
+and eyes into which crept an expression of anguish. Mary Virginia,
+with a quick glance, laid her hand on his arm.
+
+"Don't mind Laurence and me, we're a pair of sillies. You and the
+Padre are too good to put up with us the way you do," she said,
+coaxingly. "And--we girls do like you, Mr. Flint, whether we're wished
+on you or not."
+
+That seductive "we" in that golden voice routed him, horse and foot.
+He looked at the small hand on his arm, and his glance went swiftly to
+the sweet and innocent eyes looking at him with such frank
+friendliness.
+
+"It's better than I deserve," he said, gently enough. "And it isn't
+I'm not grateful to the rest of them for liking me,--if they do. It's
+that I want to box their ears when they pretend to like my insects,
+and don't."
+
+"Being a gentleman has its drawbacks," said I, tentatively.
+
+"Believe _me_!" he spoke with great feeling. "It's nothing short of
+doing a life-stretch!"
+
+The boy and girl laughed gaily. When he spoke thus it added to his
+unique charm. So profoundly were they impressed with what he had
+become, that even what he had been, as they remembered it, increased
+their respect and affection. That past formed for him a somber
+background, full of half-lights and shadows, against which he stood
+out with the revealing intensity of a Rembrandt portrait.
+
+"What I came over to tell you, is that Madame says you're to stay home
+this evening, Mr. Flint," said Mary Virginia, comfortably. "I'm
+spending the night with Madame, you're to know, and we're planning a
+nice folksy informal sort of a time; and you're to be home."
+
+"Orders from headquarters," commented Laurence.
+
+"All right," agreed the Butterfly Man, briefly.
+
+Mary Virginia shook out her white skirts, and patted her black hair
+into even more distractingly pretty disorder.
+
+"I've got to get back to the office--mean case I'm working on,"
+complained Laurence. "Mary Virginia, walk a little way with me, won't
+you? Do, child! It will sweeten all my afternoon and make my work
+easier."
+
+"You haven't grown up a bit--thank goodness!" said Mary Virginia. But
+she went with him.
+
+The Butterfly Man looked after them speculatively.
+
+"Mrs. Eustis," he remarked, "is an ambitious sort of a lady, isn't
+she? Thinks in millions for her daughter, expects her to make a great
+match and all that. Miss Sally Ruth told me she'd heard Mrs. Eustis
+tried once or twice to pull off a match to suit herself, but Miss Mary
+Virginia wouldn't stand for it."
+
+"Why, naturally, Mrs. Eustis would like to see the child well settled
+in life," said I.
+
+"Oh, you don't have to be a Christian _all_ the time," said he calmly.
+"I know Mrs. Eustis, too. She talked to me for an hour and a half
+without stopping, one night last week. See here, parson: Inglesby's
+got a roll that outweighs his record. Suppose he wants to settle down
+and reform--with a young wife to help him do it--wouldn't it be a real
+Christian job to lady's-aid him?"
+
+I eyed him askance.
+
+"Now there's Laurence," went on the Butterfly Man, speculatively.
+"Laurence is making plenty of trouble, but not so much money. No, Mrs.
+Eustis wouldn't faint at the notion of Inglesby, but she'd keel over
+like a perfect lady at the bare thought of Laurence."
+
+"I don't see," said I, crossly, "why she should be called upon to
+faint for either of them. Inglesby's--Inglesby. That makes him
+impossible. As for the boy, why, he rocked that child in her cradle."
+
+"That didn't keep either of them from growing up a man and a woman.
+Looks to me as if they were beginning to find it out, parson."
+
+I considered his idea, and found it so eminently right, proper, and
+beautiful, that I smiled over it. "It would be ideal," I admitted.
+
+"Her mother wouldn't agree with you, though her father might," he said
+dryly. And he asked:
+
+"Ever had a hunch?"
+
+"A presentiment, you mean?"
+
+"No; a hunch. Well, I've got one. I've got a hunch there's trouble
+ahead for that girl."
+
+This seemed so improbable, in the light of her fortunate days, that I
+smiled cheerfully.
+
+"Well, if there should be,--here are you and I to stand by."
+
+"Sure," said he, laconically, "that's all we're here for--to stand
+by."
+
+Although it was January, the weather was again springlike. All day the
+air was like a golden wine, drenched in a golden sun. All day in the
+cedars' dark and vivid green the little wax-wings flew in and out, and
+everywhere the blackberry bramble that "would grace the parlors of
+heaven" was unfolding its crisp red leaves and white buds; and all the
+roads and woods were gay with the scarlet berries of the casida, which
+the robins love. And the nights were clear and still and starry,
+nights of a beauty so vital one sensed it as something alive.
+
+Because Mary Virginia was to spend that night at the Parish House,
+Mrs. Eustis having been called away and the house for once free of
+guests, my mother had seized the occasion to call about her the youth
+in which her soul delighted. To-night she was as rosy and bright-eyed
+as any one of her girl-friends. She beamed when she saw the old rooms
+alive and alight with fresh and laughing faces and blithe figures.
+There was Laurence, with that note in his voice, that light in his
+eyes, that glow and glory upon him, which youth alone knows; and
+Dabney, with his black hair, as usual, on end, and his intelligent
+eyes twinkling behind his glasses; and Claire Dexter, colored like a
+pearl set in a cluster of laughing girls; and Mary Virginia, all in
+white, so beautiful that she brought a mist to the eyes that watched
+her. All the other gay and charming figures seemed but attendants for
+this supremer loveliness, snow-white, rose-red, ebony-black, like the
+queen's child in the fairy-tale.
+
+The Butterfly Man had obediently put in his appearance. With the
+effect which a really strong character produces, he was like an
+insistent deep undernote that dominates and gives meaning to a lighter
+and merrier melody. All this bright life surged, never away from, but
+always toward and around him. Youth claimed him, shared itself with
+him, gave him lavishly of its best, because he fascinated and ensnared
+its fresh imagination. Though he should live to be a thousand it would
+ever pay homage to some nameless magic quality of spirit which was
+his.
+
+"Are you writing something new? Have you found another butterfly?"
+asked the young things, full of interest and respect.
+
+Well, he _had_ promised a certain paper by a certain time, though what
+people could find to like so much in what he had to say about his
+insects--
+
+"Because," said Dabney, "you create in us a new feeling for them.
+They're living things with a right to their lives, and you show us
+what wonderful little lives most of them are. You bring them close to
+us in a way that doesn't disgust us. I guess, Butterfly Man, the truth
+is you've found a new way of preaching the old gospel of One Father
+and one life; and the common sense of common folks understands what
+you mean, thanks you for it, likes you for it, and--asks you to tell
+us some more."
+
+"Whenever a real teacher appears, always the common people hear him
+gladly," said I, reflectively.
+
+"Only," said Mary Virginia, quickly, "when the teacher himself is just
+as uncommon as he can be, Padre." She smiled at John Flint with a
+sincerity that honored him.
+
+He stood abashed and silent before this naïve appreciation. It was at
+once his greatest happiness and his deepest pain--that open admiration
+of these clean-souled youngsters.
+
+When he had gone, I too slipped away, for the still white night
+outside called me. I went around to that favorite retreat of mine, the
+battered seat shut in among spireas and syringas. I like to say my
+rosary out of doors. The beads slipping through my fingers soothed me
+with their monotonous insistent petition. Prayer brought me closer to
+the heart of the soft and shining night, and the big still stars.
+
+     _They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; yea, all of them
+     shall wax old as a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change
+     them, and they shall be changed; but thou art the same and
+     thy years shall have no end_.
+
+The surety of the beautiful words brought the great overshadowing
+Presence near me. And I fell into a half-revery, in which the
+hailmarys wove themselves in and out, like threads in a pattern.
+
+Dreamily enough, I heard the youthful guests depart, in a gale of
+laughter and flute-like goodnights. And I noted, too, that no light as
+yet shone in the Butterfly Man's rooms. Well--he would hurl himself
+into the work to-morrow, probably, and clear it up in an hour or two.
+He was like that.
+
+My retreat was just off the path, and near the little gate between our
+grounds and Judge Mayne's. Thus, though I was completely hidden by the
+screening bushes and the shadow of the holly tree as well, I could
+plainly see the two who presently came down the bright open path. Of
+late it had given me a curious sense of comfort to see Laurence with
+Mary Virginia, and, I reflected, he had been her shadow recently. I
+liked that. His strength seemed to shield her from Hunter's ambiguous
+smile, from Inglesby's thoughts, even from her own mother's ambition.
+
+I could see my girl's dear dark head outlined with a circle of
+moonlight as with a halo, and it barely reached my tall boy's
+shoulder. Her hand lay lightly on his arm, and he bent toward her,
+bringing his close-cropped brown head nearer hers. I couldn't have
+risen or spoken then, without interrupting them. I merely glanced out
+at them, smilingly, with my rosary in my finger.
+
+I reached the end of a decade: "_As it was in the beginning, is now,
+and ever shall be_--"
+
+They stopped at the gate, and fell silent for a space, the girl with
+her darling face uplifted. The fleecy wrap she wore fell about her
+slim shoulders in long lines, glinting with silver. She did not give
+the effect of remoteness, but of being near and dear and desirable and
+beautiful. The boy, looking upon her with his heart in his eyes, drew
+nearer.
+
+"Mary Virginia," said he, eagerly and huskily and passionately and
+timidly and hopefully and despairingly, "Mary Virginia, are you going
+to marry anybody?"
+
+Mary Virginia came back from the stars in the night sky to the stars
+in the young man's eyes. "Why, yes, I hope I am," said she lightly
+enough, but one saw she had been startled. "What a funny boy you are,
+Laurence, to be sure! You don't expect me to remain a spinster, do
+you?"
+
+"You are going to be married?" This time despair was uppermost.
+
+"I most certainly am!" said Mary Virginia stoutly. "Why, I confided
+_that_ to you years and years and years ago! Don't you remember I
+always insisted he should have golden hair, and sea-blue eyes, and a
+classic brow, and a beautiful willingness to go away somewhere and die
+of a broken heart if I ordered him to?"
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"Who is who?" she parried provokingly.
+
+"The chap you're going to marry?"
+
+Mary Virginia appeared to reflect deeply and anxiously. She put out a
+foot, with the eternal feminine gesture, and dug a neat little hole in
+the graveled walk with her satin toe.
+
+"Laurence," said she. "I'm going to tell you the truth. The truth is,
+Laurence, that I simply hate to have to tell you the truth."
+
+"Mary Virginia!" he stammered wretchedly. "You hate to have to tell
+_me_ the truth? Oh, my dear, why? Why?"
+
+"Because."
+
+"But because why?"
+
+"Because," said the dear hussy, demurely, "I don't know."
+
+Laurence's arms fell to his sides, helplessly; he craned his neck and
+stared.
+
+"Mary Virginia!" said he, in a breathless whisper.
+
+Mary Virginia nodded. "It's really none of your business, you know,"
+she explained sweetly; "but as you've asked me, why, I'll tell you.
+That same question plagues and fascinates me, too, Laurence. Why, just
+consider! Here's a whole big, big world full of men--tall men, short
+men, lean men, fat men, silly men, wise men, ugly men, handsome men,
+sad men, glad men, good men, bad men, rich men, poor men,--oh, all
+sorts and kinds and conditions and complexions of men: any one of whom
+I might wake up some day and find myself married to: and I don't know
+which one! It delights and terrifies and fascinates and amuses and
+puzzles me when I begin to think about it. Here I've got to marry
+Somebody and I don't know any more than Adam's housecat who and where
+that Somebody is, and he might pop from around the corner at me, any
+minute! It makes the thing so much more interesting, so much more like
+a big risky game of guess, when you don't know, don't you think?"
+
+"No: it makes you miserable," said Laurence, briefly.
+
+"But I'm not miserable at all!"
+
+"You're not, because you don't have to be. But I am!"
+
+"You? Why, Laurence! Why should _you_ be miserable?" Her voice lost
+its blithe lightness; it was a little faint. She said hastily, without
+waiting for his reply: "I guess I'd better run in. It was silly of me
+to walk to the gate with you at this hour. I think Madame's calling
+me. Goodnight, Laurence."
+
+"No, you don't," said he. "And it wasn't silly of you to come, either;
+it was dear and delightful, and I prayed the Lord to put the notion
+into your darling head, and He did it. And now you're here you don't
+budge from this spot until you've heard what I've got to say.
+
+"Mary Virginia, I reckon you're just about the most beautiful girl in
+the world. You've been run after and courted and flattered and
+followed until it was enough to turn any girl's head, and it would
+have turned any girl's head but yours. You could say to almost any man
+alive, Come, and he'd come--oh, yes, he'd come quick. You've got the
+earth to pick and choose from--but I'm asking you to pick and choose
+_me_. I haven't got as much to offer you as I shall have some of these
+days, but I've got me myself, body and brain and heart and soul,
+sound to the core, and all of me yours, and I think that counts most,
+if you care as I do. Mary Virginia, will you marry me?"
+
+"Oh, but, Laurence! Why--Laurence--I--indeed, I didn't know--I didn't
+think--" stammered the girl. "At least, I didn't dream you cared--like
+that."
+
+"Didn't you? Well, all I can say is, you've been mighty blind, then.
+For I do care. I guess I've always cared like that, only, somehow,
+it's taken this one short winter to drive home what I'd been learning
+all my life?" said he, soberly. "I reckon I've been just like other
+fool-boys, Mary Virginia. That is, I spooned a bit around every good
+looking girl I ran up against, but I soon found out it wasn't the real
+thing, and I quit. Something in me knew all along I belonged to
+somebody else. To you. I believe now--Mary Virginia, I believe with
+all my heart--that I cared for you when you were squalling in your
+cradle."
+
+"Oh! ... Did I squall, really?"
+
+"_Squall?_ Sometimes it was tummy and sometimes it was temper. Between
+them you yelled like a Comanche," said this astonishing lover.
+
+Mary Virginia tilted her head back, adorably.
+
+"It was very, very noble of you to mind me--under the circumstances,"
+she conceded, graciously.
+
+"Believe me, it was," agreed Laurence. "I didn't know it, of course,
+but even at that tender age my fate was upon me, for I _liked_ to mind
+you. Even the bawling didn't daunt me, and I adored you when you
+resembled a squab. Yes, I was in love with you then. I'm in love with
+you now. My girl, my own girl, I'll go out of this world and into the
+next one loving you."
+
+"Then why," she asked reproachfully, "haven't you said so?"
+
+"Why haven't I said what?"
+
+"Why, you know. That you--loved me, Laurence." Her rich voice had sunk
+to a whisper.
+
+"Good Lord, haven't I been saying it?"
+
+"No, you haven't! You've been merely asking me to marry you. But you
+haven't said a word about loving me, until this very minute!"
+
+"But you must know perfectly well that I'm crazy about you, Mary
+Virginia!" said the boy, and his voice trembled with bewilderment as
+well as passion. "How in heaven's name could I help being crazy about
+you? Why, from the beginning of things, there's never been anybody
+else, but just you. I never even pretended to care for anybody else.
+No, there's nobody but you. Not for me. You're everything and all,
+where I'm concerned. And--please, please look up, beautiful, and tell
+me the truth: look at me, Mary Virginia!"
+
+The white-clad figure moved a hair's breadth nearer; the uplifted
+lovely face was very close.
+
+"Do I really mean that to you, Laurence? All that, really and truly?"
+she asked, wistfully.
+
+"Yes! And more. And more!"
+
+"I'll be the unhappiest girl in the world: I'll be the most miserable
+woman alive--if you ever change your mind, Laurence," said she.
+
+There was a quivering pause. Then:
+
+"You care?" asked the boy, almost breathlessly. "Mary Virginia, you
+care?" He laid his hands upon her shoulders and bent to search the
+alluring face.
+
+"Laurence!" said Mary Virginia, with a tremulous, half-tearful laugh,
+"Laurence, it's taken this one short winter to teach me, too. And--you
+were mistaken, utterly mistaken about those symptoms of mine. It
+wasn't tummy, Laurence. And it wasn't temper. I think--I am sure--that
+what I was trying so hard to squall to you in my cradle was--that I
+cared, Laurence."
+
+The young man's arms closed about her, and I saw the young mouths
+meet. I saw more than that: I saw other figures steal out into the
+moonlight and stand thus entwined, and one was the ghost of what once
+was I. That other, lost Armand De Rancé, looked at me wistfully with
+his clear eyes; and I was very, very sorry for him, as one may be
+poignantly sorry for the innocent, beautiful dead. My hand tightened
+on my beads, and the feel of my cassock upon me, as a uniform,
+steadied and sustained me.
+
+Those two had drawn back a little into the shadows as if the night had
+reached out its arms to them. Such a night belonged to such as these;
+they invest it, lend it meaning, give it intelligible speech. As for
+me, I was an old priest in an old cassock, with all his fond and
+foolish old heart melting in his breast. Youth alone is eternal and
+immortal. And as for love, it is of God.
+
+"_As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without
+end, Amen_." I had finished the decade. And then as one awakes from a
+trance I rose softly and as softly crept back to the Parish House,
+happy and at peace, because I had seen that which makes the morning
+stars rejoice when they sing together.
+
+"Armand," said my mother, sleepily, "is that you, dear? I must have
+been nodding in my chair. Mary Virginia's just walked to the gate with
+Laurence."
+
+"My goodness," said she, half an hour later. "What on earth can that
+child mean? Hadn't you better call her in, Armand?"
+
+"No," said I, decidedly.
+
+Laurence brought her back presently. There must have been something
+electrical in the atmosphere, for my mother of a sudden sat bolt
+upright in her chair. Women are like that. That is one of the reasons
+why men are so afraid of them.
+
+"Padre, and p'tite Madame," began Laurence, "you've been like a father
+and mother to me--and--and--"
+
+"And we thought you ought to know," said Mary Virginia.
+
+"My children!" cried my mother, ecstatically, "it is the wish of my
+heart! Always have I prayed our good God to let this happen--and you
+see?"
+
+"But it's a great secret: it's not to be _breathed_, yet," said Mary
+Virginia.
+
+"Except, of course, my father--" began Laurence.
+
+"And the Butterfly Man," I added, firmly. Well knowing none of us
+could keep such news from _him_.
+
+"As for me," said my mother, gloriously reckless, "I shall open one of
+the two bottles of our great-grandfather's wine!" The last time that
+wine had been opened was the day I was ordained. "Armand, go and bring
+John Flint."
+
+When I reached his rooms Kerry was whining over a huddled form on the
+porch steps. John Flint lay prone, his arms outstretched, horribly
+suggestive of one crucified. At my step he struggled upright. I had my
+arms about him in another moment.
+
+"Are you hurt? sick? John, John, my son, what is it? What is it?"
+
+"No, no, I'm all right. I--was just a little shaky for the minute.
+There, there, don't you be scared, father." But his voice shook, and
+the hand I held was icy cold.
+
+"My son, my dear son, what is wrong with you?"
+
+He controlled himself with a great effort. "Oh, I've been a little off
+my feed of late, father, that's all. See, I'm perfectly all right,
+now." And he squared his shoulders and tried to speak in his natural
+voice.
+
+"My mother wanted you to come over for a few minutes, there's
+something you're to know. But if you don't feel well enough--"
+
+He seemed to brace himself. "Maybe I know it already. However, I'm
+quite able to walk over and hear--anything I'm to be told," he said,
+composedly.
+
+In the lighted parlor his face showed up pale and worn, and his eyes
+hollow. But his smile was ready, his voice steady, and the hand which
+received the wine Mary Virginia herself brought him, did not tremble.
+
+"It is to our great, great happiness we wish you to drink, old
+friend," said Laurence. Intoxicated with his new joy, glowing,
+shining, the boy was magnificent.
+
+The Butterfly Man turned and looked at him; steadily, deliberately, a
+long, searching, critical look, as if measuring him by a new standard.
+Laurence stood the test. Then the man's eyes came back to the girl,
+rose-colored, radiant, star-eyed, and lingered upon her. He arose, and
+held up the glass in which our old wine seemed to leap upward in
+little amber-colored flames.
+
+"You'll understand," said the Butterfly Man, "that I haven't the
+words handy to my tongue to say what's in my heart. I reckon I'd have
+to be God for awhile, to make all I wish for you two come true." There
+was in look and tone and manner something so sweet and reverent that
+we were touched and astonished.
+
+When my mother had peremptorily sent Laurence home to the judge, and
+carried Mary Virginia off to talk the rest of the night through, I
+went back to his rooms with John Flint, in spite of the lateness of
+the hour: for I was uneasy about him.
+
+I think my nearness soothed him. For with that boyish diffident
+gesture of his he reached over presently and held me by the sleeve.
+
+"Parson," he asked, abruptly, "is a man born with a whole soul, or
+just a sort of shut-up seed of one? Is one given him free, or has he
+got to earn and pay for one before he gets it, parson? I want to
+know."
+
+"We all want to know that, John Flint. And the West says Yes, and the
+East, No."
+
+"I've been reading a bit," said he, slowly and thoughtfully. "I wanted
+to hear what both sides had to say. Paul is pretty plain, on his side
+of the fence. But, parson, some chaps that talk as if they knew quite
+as much as Paul does, say you don't get anything in this universe for
+nothing; you have to pay for what you get. As near as I can figure it
+out, you land here with a chance to earn yourself. You can quit or you
+can go on--it's all up to you. If you're a sport and play the game
+straight, why, you stand to win yourself a water-tight fire-proof
+soul. Because, you see, you've earned and paid for it, parson. That
+sounded like good sense to me. Looked to me as if I was sort of doing
+it myself. But when I began to go deeper into the thing, why, I got
+stuck. For I can't deny I'd been doing it more because I had to than
+because I wanted to. But--which-ever way it is, I'm paying! Oh, yes,
+I'm paying!"
+
+"Ah, but so is everybody else, my son," said I, sadly. "... each in
+his own coin. ... But after all isn't oneself worth while, whatever
+the cost?"
+
+"I don't know," said he. "That's where I'm stuck. Is the whole show a
+skin game or is it worth while? But, parson, whatever it is, you pay a
+hell of a price when you buy yourself on the instalment plan, believe
+me!" his voice broke, as if on a suppressed groan. "If I could get it
+over and done with, pay for my damned little soul in one big gob, I
+wouldn't mind. But to have to buy what I'm buying, to have to pay what
+I'm paying--"
+
+"You are ill," said I, deeply concerned. "I was afraid of this."
+
+He laughed, more like a croak.
+
+"Sure I'm sick. I'm sick to the core of me, but you and Westmoreland
+can't dose me. Nobody can do anything for me, I have to do it myself
+or go under. That's part of paying on the instalment plan, too,
+parson."
+
+"I don't think I exactly understand--"
+
+"No, you wouldn't. _You_ paid in a lump sum, you see. And you got what
+you got. Whatever it was that got _you_, parson, got the best of the
+bargain." His voice softened.
+
+"You are talking in parables," said I, severely.
+
+"But I'm not paying in parables, parson. I'm paying in _me_," said he,
+grimly. And he laughed again, a laugh of sheer stark misery that
+raised a chill echo in my heart. His hand crept back to my sleeve.
+
+"I--can't always can the squeal," he whispered.
+
+"If only I could help you!" I grieved.
+
+"You do," said he, quickly. "You do, by being you. I hang on to you,
+parson. And say, look here! Don't you think I'm such a hog I can't
+find time to be glad other folks are happy even if I'm not. If there's
+one thing that could make me feel any sort of way good, it's to know
+those two who were made for each other have found it out. It sort of
+makes it look as if some things do come right, even if others are
+rotten wrong. I'm glad till it hurts me. I'd like you to believe
+that."
+
+"I do believe it. And, my son! if you can find time to be glad of
+others' happiness, without envy, why, you're bound to come right,
+because you're sound at the core."
+
+"You reckon I'm worth my price, then, parson?"
+
+"I reckon you're worth your price, whatever it is. I don't worry about
+you, John Flint."
+
+And somehow, I did not. I left him with Kerry's head on his knee. His
+hand was humanly warm again, and the voice in which he told me
+goodnight was bravely steady. He sat erect in his doorway, fronting
+the night like a soldier on guard. If he were buying his soul on the
+instalment plan I was sure he would be able to meet the payments,
+whatever they were, as they fell due.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE WISHING CURL
+
+
+With February the cold that the Butterfly Man had wished for came with
+a vengeance. The sky lost its bright blue friendliness and changed
+into a menacing gray, the gray of stormy water. Overnight the flowers
+vanished, leaving our gardens stripped and bare, and our birds that
+had been so gay were now but sorry shivering balls of ruffled
+feathers, with no song left in them. When rain came the water froze in
+the wagon-ruts, and ice-covered puddles made street-corners dangerous.
+
+This intense cold, damp, heavy, penetrating, coming upon the heels of
+the unseasonably warm weather, seemed to bring to a head all the
+latent sickness smoldering in the mill-parish, for it suddenly burst
+forth like a conflagration. If the Civic League had not already done
+so much to better conditions in the poorer district, we must have had
+a very serious epidemic, as Dr. Westmoreland bluntly told the Town
+Council.
+
+As it was, things were pretty bad for awhile, and the inevitable white
+hearse moved up and down, stopping now at this door, now at that. In
+one narrow street, I remember, it moved in the exact shape of a figure
+eight within the week. I do not like to recall those days. I buried
+the children with the seal of Holy Mother Church upon their innocence;
+I repeated over them "The Lord hath given, the Lord hath taken
+away"--and knew in my heart that it was man-made want, the greed of
+money-madness, that had taken them untimely out of their mothers'
+laps. And the earth was like iron; it opened unwillingly to receive
+the babes of the poor.
+
+In and out of stricken mill-houses and shabby shacks, as regularly as
+Westmoreland and I, whose business and duty lay there, came John
+Flint. He made no effort to comfort parents, although these seemed to
+derive a curious consolation from his presence. He did not even come
+because he wanted to; he came because the children begged to see the
+Butterfly Man and one may not refuse a sick child. He had made friends
+with them, made toys for them; and now he saw dull eyes brighten at
+his approach and pale faces try to smile; languid and fever-hot hands
+were held out to him. All the force of the affection of young
+children, their dazzling faith, the almost unthinkable power upon
+their plastic minds of those whom they trust, came home to him. He
+could not, in such an hour, accept lightly, with a careless smile, the
+fact that children loved him. And once or twice a small hand that
+clung to him grew cold in his clasp, and under his eyes a child's
+closed to this world.
+
+Now, something that saw straight, thought like a naked sword-blade,
+ate like a testing acid into shams and hated evasions and half-truths
+and subterfuges, had of late been showing more and more behind John
+Flint's reserve; and I think it might have hardened into a mentality
+cold and bright and barren, hard and cutting as a diamond, had it not
+been for the children whom he had to see suffer and die.
+
+There was one child of whom he was particularly fond--a child with
+the fairest of fair hair, deep and sweet blue eyes, and the quickest,
+shyest, most fleeting of smiles to lighten flashingly her small pale
+serious face. She had been one of the first of the mill folks'
+children to make friends with the Butterfly Man. She used to watch for
+him, and then, holding on to one of his fingers, she liked to trot
+sedately down the street beside him.
+
+This child's going was sudden and rather painful. Westmoreland did
+what he could, but there was no stamina in that frail body, so her's
+had been one of the small hands to fall limp and still out of John
+Flint's. The doll he had made for her lay in the crook of her arm; it
+had on a red calico dress, very garish in the gray room, and against
+the child's whiteness.
+
+Westmoreland stood, big and compassionate, at the foot of the bed. His
+ruddy face showed wan and behind his glasses his gray tired eyes
+winked and blinked.
+
+"There must be," said the Doctor, as if to himself, "some eternal vast
+reservoir somewhere, that stores up all this terrible total of
+unnecessary suffering--the cruel and needless suffering inflicted upon
+children and animals, in particular. Perhaps it's a spiritual serum
+used for the saving of the race. Perhaps races higher up than we use
+it--as _we_ use rabbits and guinea-pigs. No, no, nothing's wasted;
+there's a forward end to pain, somewhere." He looked down at the child
+and shook his head doubtfully:
+
+"But when all is said and done," he muttered, "what do such as these
+get out of it? Nothing--so far as we can see. They're victims, they
+and the innocent beasts, thrust into a world which tortures and
+devours them. Why? Why? Why?"
+
+"There is nothing to do but leave that everlasting Why to God," said
+I, painfully.
+
+The Butterfly Man looked up and one saw that cold sword-straight,
+diamond-hard something in his eyes:
+
+"Parson," said he, grimly, "you're a million miles off the right
+track--and you know it. Leaving things to God--things like poor kids
+dying because they're gouged out of their right to live--is just about
+as rotten stupid and wrong as it can well be. God's all right; he does
+his part of the job. You do yours, and what happens? Why, my
+butterflies answer that! I'm punk on your catechism, and if _this_ is
+all it can teach I hope I die punk on it; but as near as I can make
+out, original sin is leaving things like this"--and he looked at his
+small friend with her doll on her arm--"to God, instead of tackling
+the job yourself and straightening it out."
+
+The child's mother, a gaunt creature without a trace of youth left in
+her, although she could not have been much more than thirty, shambled
+over to a chair on the other side of the bed. She wore a faded red
+calico wrapper--a scrap of it had made the doll's frock--and a
+blue-checked apron with holes in it. Her hair was drawn painfully back
+from her forehead, and there was a wispy fringe of it on the back of
+her scraggy neck. In her dull eyes glimmered nothing but the innate
+uneasiness of those who are always in need, and her mouth had drawn
+itself into the shape of a horseshoe. There is no luck in a horseshoe
+hung thus on a woman's face. One might fancy she felt no emotion, her
+whole demeanor was so apathetic; but of a sudden she leaned over and
+took up one of the thick shining curls; half smiling, she began to
+wrap it about her finger.
+
+"I useter be right smart proud o' Louisa's hair," she remarked in a
+drawling, listless voice. "She come by it from them uppidy folks o'
+her pa's. I've saw her when she wasn't much more 'n hair an' eyes,
+times her pa was laid up with the misery in his chest, an' me with
+nothin' but piecework weeks on end.
+
+"... She was a cu'rus kind o' child, Louisa was. She sort o'
+'spicioned things wasn't right, but you think that child ever let a
+squeal out o' her? Not her! Lemme tell you-all somethin', jest to show
+what kind o' a heart that child had, suhs."
+
+With a loving and mothering motion she moved the bright curl about and
+about her hard finger. She spoke half intimately, half garrulously;
+and from the curl she would lift her faded eyes to the Butterfly
+Man's.
+
+"'T was a Sarrerday night, an' I was a-walkin' up an' down, account o'
+me bein' awful low in the mind.
+
+"'Ma,' says Louisa, 'I'm reel hungry to-night. You reckon I could have
+a piece o' bread with butter on it? I wisht I could taste some bread
+with butter on it,' says she.
+
+"'Darlin',' says I, turrible sad, 'Po' ma c'n give yo' the naked bread
+an' thanks to God I got even that to give,' I says. 'But they ain't a
+scrap o' butter in this house, an' no knowin' how to git any. Oh,
+darlin', ma's so sorry!'
+
+"She looks up with that quick smile o' her'n. Yes, suh, Mr. Flint, she
+ups and smiles. 'You don't belong to be sorry any, ma,' says she,
+comfortin'. 'Don't you mind none at all. Why, ma, darlin', _I just
+love naked bread without no butter on it_!' says she. My God, Mr.
+Flint, I bust out a-cryin' in her face. Seemed like I natchelly
+couldn't stand no mo'!" And smiling vaguely with her poor old
+down-curved mouth, she went on fingering the curl.
+
+"Will you-all look a' that!" she murmured, with pride. "Even her
+hair's lovin', an' sort o' holds on like it wants you should touch it.
+My Lord o' glory, I'm glad her pa ain't livin' to see this day! He had
+his share o' misery, po' man, him dyin' o' lung-fever an' all....
+
+"Six head o' young ones we'd had, me an' him. An' they'd all dropped
+off. Come spring, an' one'd be gone. I kep' a-comfortin' that man best
+I could they was better off, angels not bein' pindlin' an' hungry an'
+barefoot, an' thanks be, they ain't no mills in heaven. But their pa
+he couldn't see it thataway nohow. He was turrible sot on them
+children, like us pore folks gen'rally is. They was reel fine-lookin'
+at first.
+
+"When all the rest of 'em had went, her pa he sort o' sot his heart on
+Louisa here. 'For we ain't got nothin' else, ma,' says he. 'An' please
+the good Lord, we're a-goin' to give this one book-learnin' an' sich,
+an' so be she'll miss them mills,' he says. 'Ma, less us aim to make a
+lady o' our Louisa. Not that the Lord ain't done it a'ready,' says her
+pa, 'but we got to he'p Him keep on an' finish the job thorough.' An'
+here's him an' her both gone, an' me without a God's soul belongin' to
+me this day! My God, Mr. Flint, ain't it something turrible the things
+happens to us pore folks?"
+
+The Butterfly Man looked from her to Westmoreland and me: doctor of
+bodies, doctor of souls, naturalist, what had we to say to this woman
+stripped of all? But she, with the greater wisdom of the poor, spoke
+for herself and for us. A sort of veiled light crept into her sodden
+face.
+
+"It ain't I ain't grateful to you-all," said she. "God knows I be. You
+was good to Louisa. Doctor, you remember that day you give her a ride
+in your ottermobile an' forgot to bring her home for more 'n a hour?
+My, but that child was happy!"
+
+"'Ma,' says she when I come home that night, 'you know what heaven
+is?'
+
+"'Child,' says I, 'folks like me mostly knows what it ain't.'
+
+"'I beat you, ma!' says she, clappin' her hands. 'Heaven ain't nothin'
+much but country an' roads an' trees an' butterflies, an' things like
+that,' says she. 'An' God's got ottermobiles, plenty an' plenty
+ottermobiles, an' you ride free in 'em long's you feel like it, 'cause
+that's what they's _for_. An', ma,' says she, 'God's, showfers is all
+of 'em Dr. Westmorelands and Mr. Flints.' Yea, suh, you-all been
+mighty kind to Louisa. But I reckon," she drawled, "it was Mr. Flint
+Louisa loved best, him bein' a childern's kind o' man, an' on account
+o' Loujaney." She laid a hand upon the rag doll lying on the little
+girl's arm.
+
+"From the first day you give her that doll, Mr. Flint--which she named
+Loujaney, for her an' me both--that child ain't been parted from it."
+She smiled down at the two. I could almost have prayed she would weep
+instead. It would have been easier to bear.
+
+"The King's Daughters, they give her a mighty nice doll off their
+Christmas tree last year, but Louisa, she didn't take to it like she
+done to Loujaney.
+
+"'_That_ doll's jest a visitin' lady,' says she, 'but Loujaney, she's
+_my child_. Mr. Flint made her a-purpose for me, same's God made me
+for you, ma, an' she's mine by bornation. I can live with Loujaney. I
+ain't a mite ashamed afore her when we ain't got nothin', but I turn
+'tother's face to the wall so she won't know. Loujaney's pore folks
+same's you an' me, an' she knows prezac'ly how 't is. That's why I
+love her so much.
+
+"An' day an' night," resumed the drawling voice, "them two's been
+together. She jest lived an' et an' slept with that doll. If ever a
+doll gits to grow feelin's, Loujaney's got 'em. I s'pose I'd best give
+that visitin' doll to some child that wants it bad, but I ain't got
+the heart to take Loujaney away from her ma. I'm a-goin' to let them
+two go right on sleepin' together.
+
+"Mr. Flint, suh, seein' Louisa liked you so much, an' it's you she'd
+want to have it--" she leaned over, pushed the thick fair hair aside,
+and laid her finger upon a very whimsy of a curl, shorter, paler,
+fairer than the others, just above the little right ear.
+
+"Her pa useter call that the wishin' curl," said she, half
+apologetically. "You see, suh, he was a comical sort of man, an' a great
+hand for pertendin' things. I never could pertend. Things is what they
+is an' pertendin' don't change 'em none. But him an' her was different.
+That's how come him to pertend the Lord'd put the rainbow's pot o' gold
+in Louisa's hair with a wish in it, an' that ridic'lous curl one side
+her head, like a mark, was the wishin' curl. He'd pertend he could pull
+it twict an' say whisperin', '_Bickery-ickery-ee--my wish is comin' to
+me_,' an' he'd git it. An' she liked to pertend 'twas so an' she could
+wish things on it for me an' git 'em.... Clo'es an' shoes an' fire an'
+cake an' beefsteak an' butter an' stayin' home.... Just pertendin', you
+see.
+
+"Mr. Flint, suh, _I_ ain't got a God's thing any more to wish for, but
+you bein' the sort o' man you are, I'd rather 'twas you had Louisa's
+wishin' curl, to remember her by." Snip! went the scissors; and there
+it lay, pale as the new gold of spring sunlight, curling as young
+grape-tendrils, in the Butterfly Man's open palm.
+
+"_Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee_," said
+the great Apostle to the lame man who lay beside the gate of the
+temple that is called, Beautiful.
+
+"I ain't got nothin' else," said the common mill-woman; and laid in
+John Flint's hand Louisa's wishing-curl.
+
+He stared at it, and turned as pale as the child on her pillow. The
+human pity of the thing, its sheer stark piercing simplicity, squeezed
+his heart as with a great hand.
+
+"My God!" he choked. "My--God!" and a rending sob tore loose from his
+throat. For the first time in his life he had to weep; uncontrolled,
+unashamed, childlike, fatherly, brotherly. For he had experienced,
+unselfishly, on account of one of the humblest of God's creatures, one
+of the great divine emotions. And when that happens to a man it is as
+if his soul were winnowed by the wind of an archangel's wings.
+
+Westmoreland and I slipped out and left him with the woman. She would
+know what further thing to say to him.
+
+Outside in the bleak bitter street, the Doctor laid his hand on my
+shoulder. He winked his eyes rapidly. "Father," said he, earnestly,
+"when I witness such a thing as we've seen this morning, I do not lose
+faith. I gain it." And he gripped me heartily with his big gloved
+hand. "Tell John Flint," he added, "that sometimes a rag doll is a
+mighty big thing for a man to have to his credit." Then he was gone,
+with a tear freezing on his cheek.
+
+"Angels," John Flint had said more than once, "are not middle-aged
+doctors with shoulders on them like a barn-door, and ribs like a dray;
+angels don't have bald heads and wear a red tie and tan shoes. But I'd
+pass them all up, from Gabriel down, wings and tailfeathers, for one
+Walter Westmoreland."
+
+I would, too. And I walked along, thinking of what I had just
+witnessed; sensing its time value. To those slight and fragile things
+which had, for John Flint, outweighed the scales of evil--a gray moth,
+a butterfly's wing, a bird's nest--I added a child's fair hair, and a
+rag doll that was going to sleep with its ma.
+
+There were but few people on the freezing streets, for folks preferred
+to stay indoors and hug the fire. Fronting the wind, I walked with a
+lowered head, and thus collided with a lady who turned a corner at the
+same time I did.
+
+"Don't apologize, Padre," said Mary Virginia, for it was she. "It was
+my fault--I wasn't looking where I was going."
+
+"Are you by any chance bound for the Parish House? Because my mother
+will be on her way to a poor thing that's just lost her only child.
+Where have you been these past weeks? I haven't seen you for ages."
+
+"Oh, I've been rather busy, too, Padre. And I haven't been quite
+well--" she hesitated. I thought I understood. For, possibly from some
+servant who had overheard Mrs. Eustis expostulating with her daughter,
+the news of Mary Virginia's unannounced engagement had sifted pretty
+thoroughly throughout the length and breadth of Appleboro; a town
+where an unfledged and callow rumor will start out of a morning and
+come home to roost at night with talons and tailfeathers.
+
+That Mary Virginia had all James Eustis's own quiet will-power,
+everybody knew. She would not, perhaps, marry Laurence in the face of
+her mother's open opposition. Neither would she marry anybody else to
+please her mother in defiance of her own heart. There was a pretty
+struggle ahead, and Appleboro took sides for and against, and settled
+itself with eager expectancy to watch the outcome.
+
+So I concluded that Mary Virginia had not been having a pleasant time.
+Indeed, it struck me that she was really unwell. One might even
+suspect she had known sleepless nights, from the shadowed eyes and the
+languor of her manner.
+
+Just then, swinging down the street head erect, shoulders square, the
+freezing weather only intensifying his glowing fairness, came Howard
+Hunter. The man was clear red and white. His gold hair and beard
+glittered, his bright blue eyes snapped and sparkled. He seemed to
+rejoice in the cold, as if some Viking strain in him delighted in its
+native air.
+
+As he paused to greet us a coldness not of the weather crept into Mary
+Virginia's eyes. She did not speak, but bowed formally. Mr. Hunter,
+holding her gaze for a moment, lifted his brows whimsically and
+smiled; then, bowing, he passed on. She stood looking after him, her
+lips closed firmly upon each other.
+
+Tucking her hand in my arm, she walked with me to the Parish House
+gate. No, she said, she couldn't come in. But I was to give her
+regards to the Butterfly Man, and her love to Madame.
+
+"Parson," the Butterfly Man asked me that night, "have you seen Mary
+Virginia recently?"
+
+"I saw her to-day."
+
+"I saw her to-day, too. She looked worried. She hasn't been here
+lately, has she?"
+
+"No. She hasn't been feeling well. I hear Mrs. Eustis has been very
+outspoken about the engagement, and I suppose that's what worries Mary
+Virginia."
+
+"I don't think so. She knew she had to go up against that, from the
+first. She's more than a match for her mother. There's something else.
+Didn't I tell you I had a hunch there was going to be trouble? Well,
+I've got a hunch it's here."
+
+"Nonsense!" said I, shortly.
+
+"I know," said he, stubbornly. And he added, irrelevantly: "It's
+generally known, parson, that Eustis will be nominated. Inglesby's
+managed to gain considerable ground, thanks to Hunter, and folks say
+if it wasn't for Eustis he'd win. As it is, he'll be swamped. I hear
+he was thunderstruck when he got wind of what Mayne was going to play
+against him--for he knows Laurence brought Eustis out. Inglesby's
+mighty sore. He's the sort that hates to have to admit he can't get
+what he wants."
+
+"Then he'd better save himself the trouble of having to put it to the
+test," said I.
+
+"I'm wondering," said John Flint. "I wish I hadn't got that hunch!"
+
+I did not see Mary Virginia again for some time. Just then I moved
+breathlessly in a horrid round of sickbeds, for the wave had reached
+its height; already it had swept seventeen of my flock out of time
+into eternity.
+
+I came home on one of the last of those heavy evenings, to find
+Laurence waiting for me in my study. He was standing in the middle of
+the room, his hands clasped behind his back.
+
+"Padre," said he by way of greeting, "have you seen Mary Virginia
+lately? Has Madame?"
+
+"No, except for a chance meeting one morning on the street. But she
+has been sending me help right along, bless her."
+
+"Has Madame heard anything from her, Padre?"
+
+"No, I don't think so. But we've been frightfully busy of late, you
+understand."
+
+"No, neither of you know," said Laurence, in a low voice. "You
+wouldn't know. Padre, I--don't look at me like that, please; I'm not
+ill. But, without reason--swear to you before God, without any reason
+whatever, that I can conjure up--she has thrown me over, jilted
+me--Mary Virginia, Padre! And I'm to forget her. _I'm to forget her,
+you understand?_ Because she can't marry me." He spoke in a level,
+quiet, matter of fact voice. Then laughter shook him like a nausea.
+
+I laid my hand upon him. "Now tell me," said I, "what you have to tell
+me."
+
+"I've really told you all I know," said Laurence. "Day before
+yesterday she sent for me. You can't think how happy it made me to
+have her send for me, how happy I've been since I knew she cared! I
+felt as if there wasn't anything I couldn't do. There was nothing too
+great to be accomplished--
+
+"Well, I went. She was standing in the middle of the long
+drawing-room. There was a fire behind her. She was so like ice I
+wonder now she didn't thaw. All in white, and cold, and frozen. And
+she said she couldn't marry me. That's why she had sent for me--to
+tell me that she meant to break our engagement: _Mary Virginia_!
+
+"I wanted to know why. I was within my rights in asking that, was I
+not? And she wouldn't let me get close to her, Padre. She waved me
+away. I got out of her that there were reasons: no, she wouldn't say
+what those reasons were; but there were reasons. Her reasons, of
+course. When I began to talk, to plead with her, she begged me not to
+make things harder for her, but to be generous and go away. She just
+couldn't marry me, didn't I understand? So I must release her."
+
+He hung his head. The youth of him had been dimmed and darkened.
+
+"And you said--?"
+
+"I said," said Laurence simply, "that she was mine as much as I was
+hers, and that I'd go just then because she asked me to, but I was
+coming back. I tried to see her again yesterday. She wouldn't see me.
+She sent down word she wasn't at home. But I knew all along she was.
+Mary Virginia, Padre!
+
+"I tried again. I haven't got any pride where she's concerned. Why
+should I? She's--she's my soul, I think. I can't put it into words,
+because you can't put feelings into words, but she's the pith of life.
+Then I wrote her. Half a dozen times I wrote her. I got down to the
+level of bribing the colored maid to take the notes to her, one every
+hour, like a medicine, and slip them under her door. I know she
+received them. I repeated it again to-day. It's Mary Virginia at
+stake, and I can't take chances, can I? And this afternoon she sent
+this.
+
+     "Oh, Laurence, be generous and spare me the torment of
+     questions. So far you have not reproached me; spare me that,
+     too! Don't you understand? I cannot marry you. Accept the
+     inevitable as I do. Forgive me and forget me. M.V.E."
+
+The writing showed extreme nervousness, haste, agitation.
+
+"Well?" said Laurence. But I stood staring at the crumpled bit of
+paper. I knew what I knew. I knew what my mother had thought fit to
+reveal to me of the girl's feelings: Mary Virginia had been very sure.
+I remembered what my eyes had seen, my ears heard. I was sure she was
+faithful, for I knew my girl. And yet--
+
+There came back to me a morning in spring and I riding gaily off in
+the glad sunshine, full of faith and of hope. To find what I had
+found. I handed the note back, in silence.
+
+"Oh, why, why, why?" burst out the boy, in a gust of acute torment.
+"For God's sake, why? Think of her eyes and her mouth, Padre--and her
+forehead like a saint's--No, she's not false. God never made such eyes
+as hers untruthful. I believe in her. I've got to believe in her. I
+tell you, I belong to her, body and soul." He began to walk up and
+down the room, and his shoulders twitched, as if a lash were laid over
+them. "I could forgive her for not loving me, if she doesn't love me
+and found it out, and said so. Women change, do they not? But--to
+take a man that loves her--and tear his living soul to shreds and
+tatters--
+
+"If _she's_ a liar and a jilt, who and what am I to believe? Why
+should she do it, Padre--to me that love her? Oh, my God, think of it:
+to be betrayed by the best beloved! No, I can't think it. This isn't
+just any light girl: this is Mary Virginia!"
+
+I put my hand on his shoulder. He is a head over me, and once again as
+broad, perhaps. We two fell into step. I did not attempt to counsel or
+console.
+
+"Here I come like a whining kid, Padre," said he, remorsefully,
+"piling my troubles upon your shoulders that carry such burdens
+already. Forgive me!"
+
+"I shouldn't be able to forgive you if you didn't come," said I. Up
+and down the little room, up and down, the two of us.
+
+Came a light tap at the door. The Butterfly Man's head followed it.
+
+"Didn't I hear Laurence talking?" asked he, smiling. The smile froze
+at sight of the boy's face. He closed the door, and leaned against it.
+
+"What's wrong with her?" he asked, quickly. It did not occur to us to
+question his right to ask, or to wonder how he knew.
+
+In a dull voice Laurence told him. He held out his hand for the note,
+read it in silence, and handed it back.
+
+"What do you make of it?" I asked.
+
+"Trouble," said he, curtly; and he asked, reproachfully, "Don't you
+know her, both of you, by this time?"
+
+"I know," said Laurence, "that she has sent me away from her."
+
+"Because she wants to, or because she thinks she has to?" asked John
+Flint.
+
+"Why should she do so unless it pleased her?" I asked sorrowfully.
+
+His eyes flashed. "Why, she's _herself!_ A girl like her couldn't play
+anybody false because there's no falseness in her to do it with. What
+are you going to do about it?"
+
+"There is nothing to do," said Laurence, "but to release her; a
+gentleman can do no less."
+
+John Flint's lips curled. "Release her? I'd hang on till hell froze
+over and caught me in the ice! I'd wait. I'd write and tell her she
+didn't need to make herself unhappy about me, I was unhappy enough
+about her for the two of us, because she didn't trust me enough to
+tell me what her trouble was, so I could help her. That first and
+always I was her friend, right here, whenever she needed me and
+whatever she needed me for. And I'd stand by. What else is a man good
+for?"
+
+"I believe," said I, "that John Flint has given you the right word,
+Laurence. Just hold fast and be faithful."
+
+Laurence lifted his haggard face. "There isn't any question of my
+being faithful to her, Padre. And I couldn't make myself believe that
+she's less so than I. What Flint says tallies with my own intuition.
+I'll write her to-night." He laid his hand on John Flint's arm.
+"You're all right, Bughunter," said he, earnestly. "'Night, Padre."
+Then he was gone.
+
+"Do you think," said John Flint, when he had rejected every conjecture
+his mind presented as the possible cause of Mary Virginia's action,
+"that Inglesby could be at the bottom of this?"
+
+"I think," said I, "that you have an obsession where that man is
+concerned. He is a disease with you. Good heaven, what could Inglesby
+possibly have to do with Mary Virginia's affairs?"
+
+"That's what I'm wondering. Well, then, who is it?"
+
+"Perhaps," said I, unwillingly, "it is Mary Virginia herself."
+
+"Forget it! She's not that sort."
+
+"She is a woman."
+
+"Ain't it the truth, though?" he jeered. "What a peach of a reason for
+not acting like herself, looking like herself, being like herself!
+She's a woman! So are all the rest of the folks that weren't born men,
+if you'll notice. They're women; we're men: and both of us are people.
+Get it?"
+
+"I get it," said I, annoyed. "Your attitude, John Flint, is a vulgar
+platitude. And permit me to--"
+
+"I'll permit you to do anything except get cross," said he, quickly.
+The ghost of a smile touched his face. "Being bad-tempered, parson,
+suits you just about as well as plaid pants and a Hello Bill button."
+
+"I am a human being," I began, frigidly.
+
+"And I'm another. And so is Mary Virginia. And there we are, parson.
+I'm troubled. I don't like the looks of things. It's no use telling
+myself this is none of my business; it is very much my business. You
+remember ... when I came here ..." he hesitated, for this is a subject
+we do not like to discuss, "what you were up against ... parson, I've
+thought you must have been caught and crucified yourself, and learned
+things on the cross, and that's why you held on to me. But with the
+kids, it was different--particularly the little girl. The first thing
+I ever got from her was a lovely look, the first time ever I set eyes
+on her she came with an underwing moth. I'd be a poor sort that
+wouldn't be willing to be spilt like water and scattered like dust, if
+she needed me now, wouldn't I?"
+
+"But," said I, perplexed, "what can you do? A young lady has seen fit
+to break her engagement; young ladies often see fit to do that, my
+dear fellow. This isn't an uncommon case. Also, one doesn't interfere
+in a lady's private affairs, not even when one is an old priest who
+has loved her since her childhood, nor yet a Butterfly Man who is her
+devoted friend. Don't you see?"
+
+"I see there's something wrong," said he, doggedly.
+
+"Perhaps. But that doesn't give one the right to pry into something
+she evidently doesn't wish to reveal," I told him.
+
+"I suppose," said he, heavily, "you are right. But if you hear
+anything, let me know, won't you?"
+
+I promised; but I found out nothing, save that it had not been Mrs.
+Eustis who influenced her daughter's action. This came out in a call
+Mrs. Eustis made at the Parish House.
+
+"My dear," she told my mother, "when she told me she had broken that
+engagement, I was astounded! But I can't say I wasn't pleased.
+Laurence is a dear boy; and his family's as good as ours--no one can
+take that away from the Maynes. But Mary Virginia should have done
+better.
+
+"I quarreled with her, argued with her, pleaded with her. I cried and
+cried. But she's James Eustis to the life--you might as well try to
+move the Rock of Gibraltar. Then one morning she came to my room and
+told me she found she couldn't marry Laurence! And she had already
+told him so, and broken her engagement, and I wasn't to ask her any
+questions. I didn't. I was too glad."
+
+"And--Laurence--?" asked my mother, ironically.
+
+"Laurence? Laurence is a _man_. Men get over that sort of thing. I've
+known a man to be perfectly mad over his wife--and marry, six months
+after her death. They're like that. They always get over it. It's
+their nature."
+
+"Let us hope, then, for Laurence's peace of mind," said my mother,
+"that he'll get over it--like all the rest of his sex. Though I
+shouldn't call Laurence fickle, or faithless, if you ask me."
+
+"He is a very fine boy. I always liked him myself and James adores
+him. If I had two or three daughters, I'd be willing to let one of
+them marry Laurence--after awhile. But having only one I must say I
+want her to do better."
+
+"I see," said my mother. To me she said later:
+
+"And yet, Armand, although I condemn it, I can quite appreciate Mrs.
+Eustis's point of view. I was somewhat like that myself, once upon a
+time."
+
+"You? Never!"
+
+My mother smiled tolerantly.
+
+"Ah, but you never offered me a daughter-in-law I did not relish. It
+was much easier for me to bear the Church!"
+
+That night I went over to John Flint's, for I thought that the fact
+of Mary Virginia's deliberately choosing to act as she had done would
+in a measure settle the matter and relieve his anxiety.
+
+There was a cedar wood fire before which Kerry lay stretched; little
+white Pitache, grown a bit stiff of late, occupied a chair he had
+taken over for his own use and from which he refused to be dislodged.
+Major Cartwright had just left, and the room still smelt of his cigar,
+mingling pleasantly with the clean smell of the burning cedar.
+
+On the table, within reach of his hand, was ranged the Butterfly Man's
+entire secular library: Andrew Lang's translation of Homer; Omar;
+Richard Burton's Kasidah; Saadi's Gulistan, over which he chuckled;
+Robert Burns; Don Quixote; Joan of Arc, and Huckleberry Finn; Treasure
+Island; the Bible Miss Sally Ruth had given him--I never could induce
+him to change it for my own Douai version--; one or two volumes of
+Shakespeare; the black Obituary Book, grown loathsomely fat; and the
+"Purely Original Verse of James Gordon Coogler," which a light-minded
+professor of mathematics at the University of South Carolina had given
+him, and in which he evilly delighted. Other books came and went, but
+these remained. To-night it was the Bible which lay open, at the Book
+of Psalms.
+
+"Look at this." He laid his finger on a verse of the nineteenth: "The
+testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple."
+
+"The times I've turned that over in my mind, out in the woods by night
+and the fields by day!" said the Butterfly Man, musingly. "The simple
+is _me_, parson, and the testimony is green things growing, and
+butterflies and moths, and Kerry, and people, and trouble, and
+Louisa's hair, and--well, about everything, I reckon.
+
+"Yes, everything's testimony, and it can make wise the simple--if he's
+not too simple. I reckon, parson, the simple is lumped in three
+lots--the fool for a little while, the fool for half the day, and the
+life-everlasting twenty-four-hours-a-day, dyed-in-the-wool damn-fool.
+
+"Some of us are the life-everlasting kind, the kind that used to make
+old man Solomon wall his eyes and throw fits and then get busy and
+hatch out proverbs with stings in their tails. A lot of us are
+half-the-day fools; and all the rest are fools for a little while.
+There's nobody born that hasn't got his times and seasons for being a
+fool for a while. But that's the sort of simple the testimony slams
+some sense into. Like _me_," he added earnestly, and closed the great
+Book.
+
+I told him presently what I had heard; that, as he surmised, Mrs.
+Eustis was not responsible for Mary Virginia's change of mind--or
+perhaps of heart. He nodded. But he offered no comment. Now, since I
+had come in, he had been from time to time casting at me rather
+speculative and doubtful glances. He drummed on the table, smiled
+sheepishly, and presently reached for a package, unwrapped it, and
+laid before me a book.
+
+'"The Relation of Insect Life to Human Society,'" I read, "By John
+Flint and Rev. Armand Jean De Rancé. With notes and drawings by Father
+De Rancé." It bore the imprint of a great publishing house.
+
+"You suggested it more than once," said John Flint. "Off and on, these
+two years, I've been working on it. All the notes I particularly asked
+you for were for this. Mighty fine and acute notes they are,
+too--you'd never have been willing to do it if you'd known they were
+for publication--I know you. And I saved the drawings. I'm vain of
+those illustrations. Abbot's weren't in it, next to yours."
+
+As a matter of fact I have a pretty talent for copying plant and
+insect. I have but little originality, but this very limitation made
+the drawings more valuable. They were almost painfully exact, the
+measurements and coloration being as approximately perfect as I could
+get them.
+
+Now that the book has been included in all standard lists I needn't
+speak of it at length--the reviewers have given it what measure of
+bricks and bouquets it deserved. But it is a clever, able,
+comprehensive book, and that is why it has made its wide appeal.
+
+Every least credit that could possibly be given to me, he had
+scrupulously rendered. He had made full use of note and drawing. He
+made light enough of his own great labor of compilation, but his
+preface was quick to state his "great indebtedness to his patient and
+wise teacher."
+
+One sees that the situation was not without irony. But I could not
+cloud his pleasure in my co-authorship nor dim his happiness by
+disclaiming one jot or tittle of what he had chosen to accredit me
+with. It is more blessed to give than to receive, but much more
+difficult to receive than to give.
+
+"Do you like it?" he asked, hopefully.
+
+"I am most horribly proud of it," said I, honestly.
+
+"Sure, parson? Hand on your heart?"
+
+"Sure. Hand on my heart."
+
+"All right, then," said he, sighing with relief.
+
+"Here's your share of the loot," and he pushed a check across the
+table.
+
+"But--" I hesitated, blinking, for it was a check of sorts.
+
+"But nothing. Blow it in. Say, I'm curious. What are you going to do
+with yours?"
+
+"What are you going to do with yours?" I asked in return.
+
+He reddened, hesitated; then his head went up.
+
+"I figure it, parson, that by way of that rag-doll I'm kin to Louisa's
+ma. As near as I can get to it, Louisa's ma's my widow. It's a devil
+of a responsibility for a live man to have a widow. It worries him.
+Just to get her off my mind I'm going to invest my share of this book
+for her. She'll at least be sure of a roof and fire and shoes and
+clothes and bread with butter on it and staying home sometimes. She'll
+have to work, of course; anyway you looked at it, it wouldn't be right
+to take work away from her. She'll work, then; but she won't be
+worked. Louisa's managed to pull something out of her wishin' curl for
+her ma, after all. I'm sure I hope they'll let the child know."
+
+I could not speak for a moment; but as I looked at him, the red in his
+tanned cheek deepened.
+
+"As a matter of fact, parson," he explained, "somebody ought to do
+something for a woman that looks like that, and it might just as well
+be me. I'm willing to pay good money to have my widow turn her mouth
+the other way up, and I hope she'll buy a back-comb for those bangs on
+her neck."
+
+"And all this," said I, "came out of one little wishin' curl,
+Butterfly Man?"
+
+"But what else could I do?" he wondered, "when I'm kin to Loujaney by
+bornation?" and to hide his feeling, he asked again:
+
+"Now what are you going to do with yours?"
+
+I reflected. I watched his clever, quizzical eyes, out of which the
+diamond-bright hardness had vanished, and into which I am sure that
+dear child's curl had wished this milder, clearer light.
+
+"You want to know what I am going to do with mine?" said I, airily.
+"Well; as for me, the very first thing I am going to do is to
+purchase, in perpetuity, a fine new lamp for St. Stanislaus!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
+
+
+Timid tentative rifts and wedges of blue had ventured back into the
+cold gray sky, and a stout-hearted robin or two heralded spring. One
+morning coming from mass I saw in the thin watery sunshine the painted
+wings of the Red Admiral flash by, and I welcomed him as one welcomes
+the long-missed face of a friend. I cannot choose but love the Red
+Admiral. He has always stirred my imagination, for frail as his gay
+wings are they have nevertheless borne this dauntless small Columbus
+of butterflies across unknown seas and around uncharted lands, until
+like his twin-sister the Painted Lady he has all but circled the
+globe. A few days later a handful of those gold butterflies that
+resemble nothing so much as new bright dandelions in the young grass,
+dared the unfriendly days before their time as if to coax the lagging
+spring to follow.
+
+The sad white streamers disappeared from doors and for a space the
+little white hearse ceased to go glimmering by. Then at many windows
+appeared small faces bearing upon them the mark of the valley of the
+shadow through which they had just passed. Although they were on side
+streets in the dingy mill district, far removed from our pleasant
+windows that looked out upon trees and flowers, all Appleboro was
+watching these wan visages with wiser and kinder eyes.
+
+Perhaps the most potent single factor in the arousing of our civic
+conscience was a small person who might have justly thought we hadn't
+any: I mean Loujaney's little ma, whose story had crept out and gone
+from lip to lip and from home to home, making an appeal to which there
+could be no refusal.
+
+When Major Cartwright heard it, the high-hearted old rebel hurried
+over to the Parish House and thrust into my hand a lean roll of bills.
+And the major is by no means a rich man.
+
+"It's not tainted money," said the major, "though some mighty good
+Bourbon is goin' to turn into pap on account of it. However, it's an
+ill wind that doesn't blow somebody good--Marse Robert can come on
+back upstairs now an' thaw himself out while watchin' me read the
+Lamentations of Jeremiah--who was evidently sufferin' from a dry spell
+himself."
+
+On the following Sunday the Baptist minister chose for his text that
+verse of Matthew which bids us take heed that we despise not one of
+these little ones because in heaven their angels do always behold the
+face of our Father. And then he told his people of that little one who
+had pretended to love dry bread when she couldn't get any butter--in
+Appleboro. And who had gone to her rest holding to her thin breast a
+rag-doll that was kin to her by bornation, Loujaney being poor folks
+herself and knowing prezactly how't was.
+
+Over the heads of loved and sheltered children the Baptist brethren
+looked at each other. Of course, it wasn't their fault any more than
+anybody else's.--In a very husky voice their pastor went on to tell
+them of the curl which the woman who hadn't a God's thing left to
+wish for had given as a remembrance to "that good and kind man, our
+brother John Flint, sometimes known as the Butterfly Man."
+
+Dabney put the plain little discourse into print and heightened its
+effect by an editorial couched in the plainest terms. We were none of
+us in the humor to hear a spade called an agricultural implement just
+then, and Dabney knew it; particularly when the mill dividends and the
+cemetery both showed a marked increase.
+
+Something had to be done, and quickly, but we didn't exactly know how
+nor where to begin doing it. Laurence, insisting that this was really
+everybody's business, called a mass-meeting at the schoolhouse, and
+the _Clarion_ requested every man who didn't intend to bring his
+women-folks to that meeting to please stay home himself. Wherefore
+Appleboro town and county came with the wife of its bosom--or maybe
+the wife came and fetched it along.
+
+Laurence called the meeting to order, and his manner of addressing the
+feminine portion of his audience would have made his gallant
+grandfather challenge him. He hadn't a solitary pretty phrase to
+tickle the ears of the ladies--he spoke of and to them as women.
+
+"And did you see how they fell for him?" rejoiced the Butterfly Man,
+afterward. "From the kid in a middy up to the great old girl with
+three chins and a prow like an ocean liner, they were with him. When
+you're in dead earnest, can the ladies; just go after women as women
+and they're with you every time. They know."
+
+A Civic Leaguer followed Laurence, then Madame, and after her a girl
+from the mills, whose two small brothers went in one night. There
+were no set speeches. Everybody who spoke had something to say; and
+everybody who had something to say spoke. Then Westmoreland, who like
+Saul the king was taller by the head and shoulders than all Israel,
+bulked up big and good and begged us to remember that we couldn't do
+anything of permanent value until we first learned how to reach those
+folks we had been ignoring and neglecting. He said gruffly that
+Appleboro had dumped its whole duty in this respect upon the frail
+shoulders of one old priest, and that the Guest Rooms were overworked.
+Didn't the town want to do its share now? The town voted, unanimously,
+that it did.
+
+There was a pause. Laurence asked if anybody else had anything to say?
+Apparently, anybody else hadn't.
+
+"Well, then," said Laurence, smiling, "before we adjourn, is there
+anybody in particular that Appleboro County here assembled wants to
+hear?"
+
+And at that came a sort of stir, a murmur, as of an immense multitude
+of bees:
+
+"_The Butterfly Man!_" And louder: "The Butterfly Man!"
+
+Followed a great hand-clapping, shrill whistles, the stamping of feet.
+And there he was, with Westmoreland and Laurence behind him as if to
+keep him from bolting. His face expressed a horrified astonishment.
+Twice, thrice, he opened his lips, and no words came. Then:
+
+"_I?_" in a high and agonized falsetto.
+
+"You!" Appleboro County settled back with rustles of satisfaction.
+"Speech! Speech!" From a corn-club man, joyfully.
+
+"Oh, marmar, look! It's the Butterfly Man, marmar!" squealed a child.
+
+"A-a-h! Talk weeth us, Meester Fleent!" For the first time a "hand"
+felt that he might speak out openly in Appleboro.
+
+John Flint stood there staring owlishly at all these people who ought
+to know very well that he hadn't anything to say: what should he have
+to say? He was embarrassed; he was also most horribly frightened. But
+then, after all, they weren't anything but people, just folks like
+himself! When he remembered that his panic subsided. For a moment he
+reflected; as if satisfied, he nodded slightly and thrust his hand
+into his breast pocket.
+
+"Instead of having to listen to me you'd better just look at this,"
+said the Butterfly Man. "Because this can talk louder and say more in
+a minute than I could between now and Judgment." And he held out
+Louisa's dear fair whimsy of a curl; the sort of curl mothers tuck
+behind a rosy ear of nights, and fathers lean to and kiss. "_I_
+haven't got anything to say," said the Butterfly Man. "The best I can
+do is just to wish for the children all that Louisa pretended to pull
+out of her wishin' curl--and never got. I wish on it that all the kids
+get a square deal--their chance to grow and play and be healthy and
+happy and make good. And I wish again," said the Butterfly Man,
+looking at his hearers with his steady eyes, "I wish that you folks,
+every God-blessed one of you, will help to make that wish come true,
+so far as lies in your power, from now until you die!" His funny,
+twisty smile flashed out. He put the fairy tress back into his breast
+pocket, made a casual gesture to imply that he had concluded his
+wishes for the present; and walked off in the midst of the deepest
+silence that had ever fallen upon an Appleboro audience.
+
+But however willing we might be, we discovered that we could not do
+things as quickly or as well as might be wished. People who wanted to
+help blundered tactlessly. People who wanted to be helped had to be
+investigated. People who ought to be helped were suspicious and
+resentful, couldn't always understand or appreciate this sudden
+interest in their affairs, were inclined to slam doors, or, when
+cornered, to lie stolidly, with wooden faces and expressionless eyes.
+
+Ensued an awkward pause, until the Butterfly Man came unobtrusively
+forward, discovering in himself that amazing diplomacy inherent in the
+Irish when they attend to anybody's business but their own. It was
+amusing to watch the only democrat in a solidly Democratic county
+infusing something of his own unabashed humanness into proceedings
+which but for him might have sloughed into
+
+    Organized charity, carefully iced,
+    In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ.
+
+Having done what was to be done, he went about his own affairs. Nobody
+gushed over him, and he escaped that perilous popularity which is as a
+millstone around a man's neck. Nevertheless the Butterfly Man had
+stumbled upon the something divine in his fellows, and they
+entertained for him a feeling that wasn't any more tangible, say, than
+pure air, and no more emotional than pure water, but was just about as
+vital and life-giving.
+
+I was enchanted to have a whole county endorse my private judgment. I
+rose so in my own estimation that I fancy I was a bit condescending to
+St. Stanislaus! I was vain of the Butterfly Man's standing--folks
+couldn't like him too much, to please me. And I was greatly interested
+in the many invitations that poured in upon him, invitations that
+ranged all the way from a birthday party at Michael Karski's to a
+state dinner at the Eustis's.
+
+From Michael's he came home gaily, a most outrageous posy pinned upon
+him by way of honor, and whistling a Slavic love song so dismal that
+one inferred love must be something like toothache for painfulness. He
+had had such a bully time, he told me. Big Jan had been there with his
+wife, an old friend of Michael's Katya. Although pale, and still
+somewhat shaky as to legs, Jan had willingly enough shaken hands with
+his conqueror.
+
+It seemed quite right and natural that he and Jan should presently
+enter into a sort of Dual Alliance. Meester Fleent was to be
+Arbitrator Extraordinary. When he stipulated that thereafter Big Jan
+was only to tackle a man his own size, everybody cheered madly, and
+Mrs. Jan herself beamed red-eyed approval. She said her prayers to the
+man who had trounced Jan into righteousness.
+
+But from the Eustis dinner, to which he went with my mother, he came
+home somber and heavy-hearted. Laurence was conspicuously absent; it
+is true he was away, defending his first big case in another part of
+the State. But Mr. George Inglesby was just as conspicuously present,
+apparently on the best of all possible terms with himself, the world
+in general, and Mrs. James Eustis in particular. His presence in that
+house, in the face of persistent rumors, made at least two guests
+uneasy. Mrs. Eustis showed him a most flattering attention. She was
+deeply impressed by him. He had just aided her pet mission in
+China--what he had given the heathen would have buttered my children's
+bread for many a day. Also, he was all but lyrical in his voicing of
+the shibboleth that Woman's Sphere is the Home, wherein she should be
+adored, enshrined, and protected. Woman and the Home! All the innate
+chivalry of Southern manhood--
+
+I don't know that Louisa's Ma was ever enshrined or protected by the
+chivalry of any kind of manhood, no, nor any of the mill women. Their
+kind don't know the word. But Mrs. Eustis was, and she agreed with Mr.
+Inglesby's noble sentiments.
+
+"Parson, you should have heard him!" raved the Butterfly Man. "There's
+a sort of man down here that's got chivalry like another sort's got
+hookworm, and he makes the man that hasn't got either want to set up
+an image to the great god Dam!
+
+"You'd think being chivalrous would be enough for him, wouldn't you?"
+continued the Butterfly Man, bitterly. "Nix! What's he been working
+the heavy charity lay for, except that it's his turn to be a
+misunderstood Christian? Doesn't charity cover a multitude of skins,
+though? And doesn't it beat a jimmy when it comes to breaking into
+society!"
+
+Mary Virginia, he added in an altered voice, had been exquisite in a
+frock all silver lace and shimmery stuffs like moonbeams, and with a
+rope of pearls about her throat, and in her black hair. Appleboro
+folks do not affect orchids, but Mary Virginia wore a huge cluster of
+those exotics. She had been very gracious to the Butterfly Man and
+Madame. But only for a brief bright minute had she been the Mary
+Virginia they knew. All the rest of the evening she seemed to grow
+statelier, colder, more dazzlingly and imperially regal. And her eyes
+were like frozen sapphires under her level brows, and her mouth was
+the red splendid bow of Pride.
+
+Watching her, my mother was pained and puzzled; as for the Butterfly
+Man, his heart went below zero. Those who loved Mary Virginia had
+cause for painful reflections.
+
+Blinded by her beauty, were we judging her by the light of affection,
+instead of the colder light of reason? We couldn't approve of her
+behavior to Laurence, nor was it easy to refrain from disapproval of
+what appeared to be a tacit endurance of Inglesby's attention. She
+couldn't plead ignorance of what was open enough to be town talk--the
+man's shameless passion for herself, a passion he seemed to take
+delight in flaunting. And she made no effort to explain; she seemed
+deliberately to exclude her old friends from the confidence once so
+freely given. She hadn't visited the Parish House since she had broken
+her engagement.
+
+
+And all the while the spring that hadn't time for the little concerns
+of mortals went secretly about her immortal business of rejuvenation.
+The blue that had been so timid and so tentative overspread the sky;
+more robins came, and after them bluebirds and redbirds and
+Peterbirds, and the impudent screaming robber jay that is so beautiful
+and so bold, and flute-voiced vireos, and nuthatches, and the darling
+busybody wren fussing about her house-building in the corners of our
+piazzas. The first red flowers of the Japanese quince opened
+flame-like on the bare brown bushes. When the bridal-wreath by the
+gate saw that, she set industriously to work upon her own
+wedding-gown. The yellow jessamine was full of waxy gold buds; and
+long since those bold frontiersmen of the year, the Judas-trees, had
+flaunted it in bravest scarlet, and the slim-legged scouts of the
+pines showed shoulder-straps and cockades of new gay green above
+gallant brown leggings.
+
+One brand new morning the Butterfly Man called me aside and placed in
+my hands a letter. The American Society of Natural History invited Mr.
+John Flint, already a member of the Entomological Society of France, a
+Fellow of the Entomological Society of London, and a member of the
+greatest of Dutch and German Associations, to speak before it and its
+guests, at a most notable meeting to be held in the Society's splendid
+Museum in New York City. Not to mention two mere ex-Presidents, some
+of the greatest scientific names of the Americas were included in that
+list. And it was before such as these that my Butterfly Man was to
+speak. Behold me rocking on my toes!
+
+The first effect of this invitation was to please me immensely, I
+being a puffed-up old man and carnal-minded at times; nor do I seem to
+improve with age. The plaudits of the world, for anybody I admire and
+love, ring most sweetly in my foolish ears. Now the honors he had
+gotten from abroad were fine and good in their way, but this meant
+that the value of his work was recognized and his position
+established in his own country, in his own time. It meant a widening
+of his horizon, association with clever men and women, ennobling
+friendships to broaden his life. A just measure of appreciation from
+the worthwhile sweetens toil and encourages genius. And yet--our eyes
+met, and mine had to ask an old question.
+
+"Would you better accept it?" I wondered.
+
+"I can't afford not to," said he resolutely. "The time's come for me
+to get out in the open, and I might just as well face the music, and
+Do it Now. Risks? I hardly think so. I never hunted in couples,
+remember--I always went by my lonesome and got away with it. Besides,
+who's remembering Slippy? Nobody. He's drowned and dead and done with.
+But, however, and nevertheless, and because, I shall go."
+
+Again we looked at each other; and his look was untroubled.
+
+"The pipe-dreams I've had about slipping back into little old New
+York! But if anybody had told me I'd go back like I'm going, with the
+sort of folks waiting for me that will be waiting now, I'd have passed
+it up. Well, you never can tell, can you? And in a way it's funny--now
+isn't it?"
+
+"No, you never can tell," said I, soberly. "But I do not think it at
+all funny. Quite the contrary." Suppose, oh, suppose, that after all
+these years, when a well-earned success was in his grasp, it should
+happen--I turned pale. He read my fear in my face and his smile might
+have been borrowed from my mother's mouth.
+
+"Don't you get cold feet, parson," he counseled kindly. "Be a sport!
+Besides, it's all in the Game, you know."
+
+"Is it?"
+
+"Sure!"
+
+"And worth while, John?"
+
+He laughed. "Believe me! It's the worthwhilest thing under the sun to
+sit in the Game, with a sport's interest in the hands dealt out,
+taking yours as it comes to you, bluffing all you can when you've got
+to, playing your cards for all they're worth when it's your turn. No
+reneging. No squealing when you lose. No boasting how you did it when
+you win. There's nothing in the whole universe so intensely and
+immensely worth while as being _you_ and alive, with yourself the
+whole kitty and the sky your limit! It's one great old Game, and I'm
+for thanking the Big Dealer that I'da whack at playing it." And his
+eyes snapped and his lean brown face flushed.
+
+"And you are really willing to--to stake yourself now, my son?"
+
+"Lord, parson, you ought to know! And you a dead ringer for the real
+thing in a classy sport yourself!"
+
+"My _dear_ son--!"
+
+My dear son waved his fine hand, and chuckled in his red beard.
+
+"Would _you_ back down if this was your call? Why, you're the sort
+that would tackle the biggest noise in the ring, even if you knew
+you'd be dragged out on your pantry in the first half of the first
+round, if you thought you'd got holy orders to do it! If you saw me
+getting jellyfish of the spine now, you'd curl up and die--wouldn't
+you, honest Injun?" His eyes crinkled and he grinned so infectiously
+that my fears subsided. I had an almost superstitious certainty that
+nothing really evil could happen to a man who could grin like that.
+Fate and fortune are perfectly powerless before the human being who
+can meet them with the sword of a smile.
+
+"Well," I admitted cautiously, "jellyfish of the spine must be an
+unlovely ailment; not that I ever heard of it before."
+
+"You're willing for me to go, then?"
+
+"You'd go anyhow, would you not?"
+
+"Forget it!" said he roughly. "If you think I'd do anything I knew
+would cause you uneasiness, you've got another thing coming to you."
+
+"Oh, go, for heaven's sake!" said I, sharply.
+
+"All right. I'll go for heaven's sake," he agreed cheerfully. "And now
+it's formally decided I'm to go, and talk, the question arises--what
+they really want me to talk about? _I_ don't know how to deal in
+glittering generalities. A chap on the trail of truth has got to let
+generalities go by the board. The minute he tackles the living Little
+People he chucks theories and bucks conditions.
+
+"Suppose I tell the truth as I see it: that most so-called authorities
+are like cats chasing their tails--because they accept theories that
+have never been really proven, run after them, and so never get
+anywhere? And that facts dug up in the open under the sunlight don't
+always fit in with notions hatched out in libraries under the electric
+light?
+
+"Suppose I say that after they've run everything down to that plasma
+they're so fond of beginning and ending with, there is still something
+behind it all their theories can't explain away? Protoplasm doesn't
+explain Life any more than the battery explains electricity. Instinct?
+Evolution? The survival of the fittest? Well, nothing is tagged for
+fair, and I'm more than willing to be shown. For the more I find out
+from the living things themselves,--you can't get truth from death,
+you've got to get it from life--the more self-evident it seems to me
+that to exist at all insects must have arrived on the scene complete,
+handfinished, with the union label of the Great Workshop on them by
+way of a trade-mark."
+
+"As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, one God, world
+without end, Amen!" said I, smiling. I have never thought it necessary
+to explain or excuse the Creator. God is; things are.
+
+But he shook his head, wrinkling his forehead painfully. "I wish I
+_knew_," said he, wistfully. "You're satisfied to believe, but I have
+got to know. Oh, great Power behind Things, I want to know! I want to
+_know_!"
+
+Ah, but I also do most passionately wish to know! If, however, the
+Insect has taught me anything in my lifelong study of it, it is to
+recognize the Unknowable, to know there is that which I cannot hope to
+know. But if under the law of its world, so different from ours and
+yet so alike because so inevitable, the Insect must move in a fixed
+circle within which it is safe, a circle whose very limitation
+preserves it from error and thus from destruction, may not a like
+fixed circle beyond which _we_ may not penetrate preserve us, too? Are
+these mountain peaks of the Unknowable, the Impassable, which
+encompass the skyline of our humanity, these heights so mysterious and
+so unscalable, not rather bulwarks between man's pride and the abyss?
+
+Something of this I said to the Butterfly Man, and he nodded, but did
+not answer. He fell into a brown study; then plunged from the room
+without further look or word and made for his own desk. I was not
+afraid of what the Butterfly Man, fresh from little Appleboro's woods
+and fields, would have to say to the scholars and scientists gathered
+to hear him!
+
+Apparently he was not either, for after he had gotten a few notes
+together he wisely turned the whole affair over to that mysterious
+Self that does our work and solves our problems for us. On the surface
+he busied himself with a paper setting forth the many reasons why the
+County of Appleboro should appropriate adequate funds for a common
+dipping vat, and hurried this to Dabney, who was holding open a space
+in the _Clarion_ for it. Then there were new breeding cages to be
+made, for the supply of eggs and cocoons on hand would require
+additional quarters, once they began to emerge.
+
+By the Saturday he had finished all this; and as I had that afternoon
+free we spent some beautiful hours with the microscope and slide
+mounts. I completed, too, the long delayed drawings of some diurnal
+wasp-moths and their larvæ. We worked until my mother interrupted us
+with a summons to an early dinner, for Saturday evening belongs to the
+confessional and I was shortly due at the church.
+
+I left Flint with Madame and Miss Sally Ruth, who had run over after
+the neighborly Appleboro wont with a plate of fresh sponge-cake and a
+bowl of fragrant custard. Miss Sally Ruth is nothing if not generous,
+but there are times when one could wish upon her the affliction of
+dumbness. As I slipped into my cassock in the study, I could hear her
+uplifted voice, a voice so insistent and so penetrating that it can
+pierce closed doors and come through a ceiling:
+
+"I declare to goodness, I don't know what to believe any more! She's
+got money enough in her own right, hasn't she? For heaven's sake,
+then, why should she marry for more money? But you never really know
+people, do you? Why, folks say--"
+
+I hurried out of the house and ran the short distance to the church. I
+wished I hadn't heard; I wished Miss Sally Ruth, good as she is, would
+sometimes hold her tongue. She will set folks by the ears in heaven
+some of these days if she doesn't mend her ways before she gets there.
+
+It must have been all of ten o'clock when I got back to the Parish
+House. Madame had retired; John Flint's rooms were dark. The night
+itself was dark, though in between the clouds that a brisk wind
+pulleyhauled about the skies, one saw many stars.
+
+Too tired to sleep, I sat beside my window and breathed the repose
+that lay like a benediction upon the little city. I found myself
+praying; for Mary Virginia, whom I loved and over whom I was sorely
+troubled; for Laurence, even now walking such a road as I also once
+had to travel with feet as young but no more steadfast; and then with
+a thankfulness too deep for words, I thought a prayer for the
+Butterfly Man. So thinking and so praying, with a glow in my heart
+because of him, I closed my window, and crept into bed and into
+sleep.
+
+I awoke with a start. Somebody was in the room. There was an urgent
+voice whispering my name, an urgent hand upon me. A pocket light
+flashed, and in its pale circle appeared the face of John Flint.
+
+"Get up!" said he in an intense whisper. "And come. Come!"
+
+"Why, what in the name of heaven--"
+
+"Don't make a row!" he snarled, and brought his face close. "Here--let
+me help you. Heaven, man, how slow you are!" With furious haste he
+forced my clothes upon me and even as I mechanically struggled to
+adjust them he was hustling me toward the door, through the dark hall,
+and down the stairs.
+
+"Easy there--careful of that step!" he breathed in my ear, guiding me.
+
+"But what is the matter?" I whispered back impatiently. I do not
+relish mystery and I detest being led willynilly.
+
+"In my rooms," said he briefly, and hustled me across the garden on
+the double run, I with my teeth chattering, for I had been dragged out
+of my sleep, and the night air was cold.
+
+He fairly lifted me up his porch-steps, unlocked his door, and pushed
+me inside. With the drawn shades and the flickering firelight, the
+room was peaceful and pleasant enough. Then Kerry caught my astonished
+gaze, for the dog stood statue-like beside the Morris chair, and when
+I saw what Kerry guarded I crossed myself. Sunk into the chair, the
+Butterfly Man's old gray overcoat partly around her, was Mary
+Virginia.
+
+At my involuntary exclamation she raised her head and regarded me. A
+great sigh welled from her bosom and I could see her eyes dilate and
+her lips quiver.
+
+"Padre, Padre!" Down went her head, and she began to cry childishly,
+with sobs.
+
+I watched her helplessly, too bewildered to speak. But the other man's
+face was the face of one crucified. I saw his eyes, and something I
+had been all too blind to rushed upon me overwhelmingly. This, then,
+was what had driven him forth for a time, this was what had left its
+indelible imprint upon him! He had hung upon his cross and I had not
+known. Oh, Butterfly Man, I had not known!
+
+"She'll be able to talk to you in a few minutes now, parson." He was
+so perfectly unconscious of himself that he had no idea he had just
+made mute confession. He added, doubtfully: "She said she had to come
+to you, about something--I don't know what. It's up to you to find
+out--she's got to talk to you, parson."
+
+"But--I wanted to talk to you, Padre. That's why I--ran away from home
+in the middle of the night." She sat suddenly erect. "I just couldn't
+stand things, any more--by myself--"
+
+Gone was the fine lady, the great beauty, the proud jilt who had
+broken Laurence's heart and maddened and enslaved Inglesby. Here was
+only a piteous child with eyes heavy from weeping, with a pale and sad
+face and drooping childish lips. And yet she was so dear and so
+lovely, for all her reddened eyelids and her reddened little nose,
+that one could have wept with her. The Butterfly Man, with an intake
+of breath, stood up.
+
+"I shall leave you with the Padre now," he said evenly, "to tell him
+what you wanted to tell him. Father, understand: there's something
+rotten wrong, as I've been telling you all along. Now she's got to
+tell you what it is and all about it. Everything. Whether she likes to
+or not, and no matter what it is, she's got to tell you. You
+understand that, Mary Virginia?"
+
+She fixed him with a glance that had in it something hostile and
+oblique. Even with those dearest of women whom I adore, there are
+moments when I have the impression that they have, so to speak, their
+ears laid back flat, and I experience what I may justly term cat-fear.
+I felt it then.
+
+"Oh, don't have too much consideration for my feelings, Mr. Flint!"
+said she, with that oblique and baffling glance, and the smile Old
+Fitz once likened to the Curve in the Cat's Tail. "Indeed, why should
+you go? Why don't you stay and find out _why_ I wanted to run to the
+Padre--to beg him to find some way to help me, since I can't fall like
+a plum into Mr. Inglesby's hand when Mr. Hunter shakes the Eustis
+family tree!"
+
+His breath came whistlingly between his teeth.
+
+"Parson! You hear?" he slapped his leg with his open palm. "Oh, I knew
+it, I knew it!" And he turned upon her a kindling glance:
+
+"I knew all along it was never in you to be anything but true!" said
+the Butterfly Man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+"WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR"
+
+
+It is impossible for me to put down in her own words what Mary
+Virginia told the Butterfly Man and me. Also, I have had to fill in
+gaps here and there, supplying what was lacking, from my intimate
+knowledge of the actors and from such chance words and hints and bits
+of detail as came to me afterward. But what I have added has been
+necessary, in order to do greater justice to everybody concerned.
+
+If it be true that the boy is father to the man, it is even more
+tritely true that the girl is mother to the woman, there being here
+less chance for change. So it was with Mary Virginia. That gracious
+little girlhood of hers, lived among the birds and bees and blossoms
+of an old Carolina garden, had sent her into the Church School with a
+settled and definite idealism as part of her nature. Her creed was
+simple enough: The world she knew was the best of all possible worlds,
+its men good, its women better; and to be happy and loved one had only
+to be good and loving.
+
+The school did not disabuse her of this pleasing optimism. It was a
+very expensive school and could afford to have optimisms of its own.
+For one thing, it had no pupils poor enough to apply the acid test.
+
+When Mary Virginia was seventeen, Mrs. Eustis perceived with dismay
+that her child who had promised beauty was instead become angular,
+awkward, and self-conscious; and promptly packed the unworldly one off
+to spend a saving summer with a strenuously fashionable cousin, a
+widow, of whom she herself was very fond. She liked the idea of
+placing the gauche girl under so vigorous and seasoned a wing as
+Estelle Baker's. As for Mrs. Baker herself, that gay and good-humored
+lady laughed at the leggy and serious youngster and promptly took her
+education in hand along lines not laid down in Church Schools.
+
+Mrs. Baker was delighted with her own position--the reasonably young,
+handsome, and wealthy widow of a man she had been satisfied to marry
+and later to bury. She had an unimpaired digestion and no illusions, a
+kind heart, and the power of laughter. Naturally, she found life
+interesting. A club-woman, an ultra-modernist, vitally alive, she was
+fully abreast of her day. Her small library skimmed the cream of the
+insurgents and revolutionaries of genius; and here the shy and
+reticent schoolgirl with the mark of the churchly checkrein fresh upon
+her, was free to browse, for her cousin had no slightest notion of
+playing censor. Mrs. Baker thought that the sooner one was allowed to
+slough off the gaucheries of the Young Person, the better. She did not
+gauge the real and tumultuous depths of feeling concealed under the
+young girl's simplicity.
+
+The revolutionaries and the insurgent and free poets didn't trouble
+Mary Virginia very much. Although she sensed that something was wrong
+with somebody somewhere--hence these lyrical lamentations--she could
+not, to save her, tell what all the pother was about, for as yet she
+saw the world _couleur de rose_. Some one or two of the French and
+Germans pleased her; she fell into long reveries over the Gael, who
+has the sound of the sea in his voice and whose eyes are full of a
+haunting light, as of sunsets upon graves. But it was the Russians who
+electrified and dazzled her. When she glimpsed with her eyes of a
+young girl those strange souls simple as children's and yet mosaiced
+with unimaginable and barbarous splendors, she stood blinking and half
+blinded, awed, fascinated, and avid to know more of that sky-scaling
+passion with which they burned.
+
+And in that crucial moment she chanced upon the "Diary of Marie
+Bashkirtseff," so frank and so astounding that it took her breath away
+and swept her off her feet. She was stirred into a vague and trembling
+expectancy; she had the sense of waiting for something to happen. Life
+instantly became more colorful and more wonderful than she had dreamed
+could be possible, and she wished passionately to experience all these
+emotions, so powerful and so poignant. The Russian's morbid and
+disease-bright genius acted upon her as with the force and intensity
+of a new and potent toxin. She could not lay the book aside, but
+carried it up to her room to be pored and pondered over. She failed to
+understand that, untried as she was, it was impossible for her to
+understand it. Had the book come later, it had been harmless enough;
+but it came at a most critical moment of that seething period when
+youth turns inward to question the universe, and demands that the
+answer shall be personal to itself. The first long ground-swell of
+awakening emotion swept over her, sitting in the pleasant chintz-hung
+room, with the Russian woman's wild and tameless heart beating through
+the book open upon her knees. And these waves of emotion that at
+recurrent intervals surge over the soul, come from the shores of a
+farther country than any earthly seas have touched, and recede to
+depths so profound that only the eyes of God may follow their ebb and
+flow.
+
+Mrs. Baker, however, saw nothing about which to give herself any
+concern. If she perceived the girl intense and preoccupied, she smiled
+indulgently--at Mary Virginia's age one is apt to be like that, and
+one recovers from that phase as one gets over mumps and measles. Mrs.
+Baker did think it advisable, though, to subtly detach the girl from
+books for awhile. She amused herself by allowing her wide-eyed
+glimpses of the larger life of grown-ups, by way of arousing and
+initiation. Thus it happened that one afternoon at the country-club,
+where Mary Virginia, at the green-fruit stage, found herself playing
+gooseberry instead of golf, Mrs. Baker sauntered up with a tall and
+very blonde man.
+
+"Here," said she gaily, indicating with a wave of her hand her
+sulky-eyed young cousin, "is a marvel and a wonder--a girl who accepts
+on faith everything and everybody! My dear Howard, in all probability
+she will presently even believe in _you_!" With that she left them,
+whisked off by a waiting golfer.
+
+The man and the girl appraised each other. The man saw young
+bread-and-butter with the raw sugar of beauty sprinkled upon it
+promisingly. What the girl saw was not so much a faultlessly groomed
+and handsome man as the most beautiful person in the world. And
+suddenly she was aware that that for which she had been waiting had
+come. Something divine and wonderful was happening, and there was fire
+before her eyes and the noise of unloosed winds and great waters in
+her ears, and her knees trembled and her heart fluttered. A vivid red
+flamed into her pale cheeks, a soft and trembling light suffused her
+blue eyes. That happens when the sweet and virginal freshness of youth
+is brought face to face with the bright shadow of love.
+
+He drew her out of her shyness and made her laugh, and after awhile,
+when there was dancing, he danced with her. He did not behave to her
+as other men of Estelle's acquaintance had more than once behaved--as
+though they bestowed the lordly honor of their society upon her out of
+the sheer goodness of their hearts and their desire to please Mrs.
+Baker. Mary Virginia was uncompromising and stiff-necked enough then,
+and she bored most of her cousin's friends unconsciously. Now this
+man, as much their superior as the sun is to farthing dips, was
+exerting himself to please her. That was the one thing Mary Virginia
+needed to arouse her.
+
+Mrs. Baker admired Mr. Hunter for a grace of manner almost Latin in
+its charm. If at times he puzzled her, he at least never bored her or
+anybody else, and for this she praised him in the gates. Her respect
+for him deepened when she perceived that he never allowed himself to
+be absorbed or monopolized.
+
+The pleasant widow did not take him too seriously. She only asked that
+he amuse and interest her. He did both, to a superlative degree. That
+is why and how he saw so much of the school-girl cousin whose naïvete
+made him smile, it was so absurdly sincere.
+
+Mrs. Baker was glad enough to have Howard take her charge off her
+hands occasionally. She thought contact with this fine pagan an
+excellent thing for the girl who took herself so seriously. She was
+really fond of Mary Virginia, but she must have found her hand-grenade
+directness a bit disconcerting at times. She wanted the child's visit
+to be pleasant, and she considered it very amiable of Howard to help
+her make it so. She had no faintest notion of danger--to her Mary
+Virginia was nothing but a child, a little girl one indulged with
+pickles and pound-cake and the bliss of staying up later than the
+usual bedtime. As for Hunter, his was the French attitude toward the
+Young Person; she had heard him say he preferred his flowers in full
+bloom and his fruit ripe--one then knows what one is getting; one
+isn't deceived by canker in the closed bud and worm in the green
+fruit. No, Howard wasn't the sort that hankered for verjuice.
+
+None the less, although Mrs. Baker didn't know it, Mary Virginia was
+engaged to the godlike Howard when she returned to school. It was to
+be a state secret until after she was graduated, and in the meantime
+he was to "make himself worthier of her love." She hadn't any notion
+he could be improved upon, but it pleased her to hear him say that.
+Humility in the superman is the ultimate proof of perfection.
+
+The maid who attended her room at school arranged for the receipt of
+his letters and mailed Mary Virginia's. The maid was sentimental, and
+delighted to play a part smacking of those dime novels she spoiled her
+brains with.
+
+The little schoolgirl who was in love with love, and secretly
+betrothed to a man who had stepped alive out of old knightly romance,
+walked in the Land of April Rainbows and felt the whole joyous
+universe suffused with a delicious and quivering glow of light and
+sound and scent. Surcharged with an emotion that she was irresistibly
+urged to express, and unable to do so by word of mouth, she was driven
+to the necessity of putting it down on paper for him. And she put it
+down in the burning words, the fiery phrases, of those anarchists of
+art who had intoxicated and obsessed her.
+
+Just a little later,--even a year later--and Mary Virginia could never
+have written those letters. But now, very ignorant, very innocent,
+very impassioned, she accomplished a miracle. She was like one
+speaking an unknown tongue, perfectly sure that the spirit moved her,
+but quite unable to comprehend what it was that it moved her to say.
+
+When Mrs. Baker insisted that her young cousin should come back to her
+for the Christmas holidays, the girl was more than eager to go. Seeing
+him again only deepened her infatuation.
+
+That holiday visit was an unusually gay one, for Mrs. Baker was really
+fond of Mary Virginia--the young girl's tenderness and simplicity
+touched the woman of the world. She gave a farewell dance the night
+before Mary Virginia was to return to school. It was an informal
+affair, with enough college boys and girls to lend it a junior air,
+but there was a goodly sprinkling of grown-ups to deepen it, for the
+hostess said frankly that she simply couldn't stand the Very Young
+except in broken doses and in bright spots.
+
+Hunter, of course, was to be one of the grownups. He had sent Mary
+Virginia the flowers she was to wear. And she had a new dancing frock,
+quite the loveliest and fluffiest and laciest she had ever worn.
+
+He was somewhat late. And so engrossed with him were all her thoughts,
+so eager was she to see him, that she was a disappointing companion
+for anybody else. She couldn't talk to anybody else. She flitted in
+and out of laughing groups like a blue-and-silver butterfly, and
+finally managed to slip away to the stair nook behind what Mrs. Baker
+liked to call the conservatory. This was merely a portion of the big
+back hall glassed in and hung with a yellow silk curtain; it had a
+tiny round crystal fountain in the center and one or two carved seats,
+but one wouldn't think so small a space could hold so much bloom and
+fragrance. From the nook where Mary Virginia sat, one could hear every
+word spoken in the flower-room, though the hearer remained hidden by
+the paneled stairway.
+
+Hands in her lacy lap, eyes abstracted, she fell into the dreams that
+youth dreams; in which a girl--one's self, say,--walks hand in hand
+through an enchanted world with a being very, very little lower than
+the angels and twice as dear. They are such innocent dreams, such
+impossible dreams, so untouched of all reality; but I wonder, oh I
+wonder, if life can ever give us anything to repay their loss!
+
+Somebody spoke in the conservatory and she looked up, startled.
+Through a parting in the silk curtain she glimpsed the woman and
+recognized one of Estelle's friends, handsome and fashionable, but a
+woman she had never liked.
+
+"You provoke me. You try my patience too much!" she was saying, in a
+tone of suppressed anger. "People are beginning to say that you have a
+serious affair with that sugar-candy chit. I want to know if that is
+true?"
+
+The man laughed, a lazy, pleasant, disarming laugh. She knew that
+laugh among a million, and her heart began to beat, but not with doubt
+or distrust. She wondered how she had missed him, and if he had been
+looking for her; she thought of the exquisite secret that bound them
+together, and wondered how he was going to protect it without evasions
+or untruthfulness. And she thought the woman abominable.
+
+"You're so suspicious, Evie!" he said smilingly. "Why bother about
+what can give you no real concern? Why discuss it here, at all? It's
+not the thing, really."
+
+The woman stamped her foot. She had an able-bodied temper.
+
+"I will know, and I will know now. I have to know," said she, and her
+voice shook. Mary Virginia would have coughed then, would have made
+her presence known had she been able; but something held her silent.
+"Remember, you're not dealing with a love-sick school-girl now,
+Howard: you are dealing with _me_. Have you made that little fool
+think you're in love with her?"
+
+"Why, and what then?" he asked coolly. "I like the child. Of course
+she is without form and void as yet, but there's quite a lot to that
+girl."
+
+"Oh, yes! Quite a lot!" said she, with sarcasm. "That's what made me
+take notice. James Eustis's girl--and barrels of money. She'll be a
+catch. You are clever, Howard! But what of _me_?"
+
+Mary Virginia's heart fluttered. Indeed, what of this other woman?
+
+"Oh, well, there's nothing definite yet, Evie," said he soothingly. A
+hint of impatience was betrayed in his voice. Plainly, it irked him to
+be held up and questioned point-blank, at such a time and place. Just
+as plainly, he wished to conciliate his jealous questioner. "My dear
+girl, it would be all of two or three years before the affair could be
+considered. Let well enough alone, Evie. Let's talk about something
+else."
+
+"No. We will talk about this. You are offering me a two or three
+years' reprieve, are you not? Well, and then?"
+
+"Well, and then suppose I do marry the little thing,--if she hasn't
+changed her little mind?" said he, exasperated into punishing her. "It
+wouldn't be a bad thing for me, remember, and she's temptingly easy to
+deal with--that girl has more faith than the twelve apostles. Heavens,
+Evie, don't look like that! My dearest girl, _you_ don't have to
+worry, anyhow. If your--er--impediment hasn't stood in my way, why
+should mine in yours?"
+
+He spoke with a half-impatient, half-playful reproach. The woman
+uttered a little cry. To soothe and silence her, he kissed her. It was
+very risky, of course, but then the whole situation was risky, and he
+took his chance like the bold player he was. The girl crouching behind
+the paneled wall clenched her hands in her lap, felt her heart and
+brain on fire, and wondered why the sky did not fall upon the world
+and blot it out.
+
+When those two had left the conservatory and she could command her
+trembling limbs and whip her senses back into some semblance of order,
+she went upstairs and got his letters. When she came downstairs again
+he was standing in the hall, and he came forward eager, smiling,
+tender, as if his heart welcomed her; as perhaps it did, men having
+catholic hearts. She put her hand on his arm and whispered: "Come
+into the conservatory."
+
+The hall was quite empty. From drawing-room and library and
+dining-room came the laughter and chatter of many people. Then the
+music struck up a gay and popular air. The lilt and swing of it made
+her giddy. But the little flower-room was cool and sweet, and she drew
+a breath of relief.
+
+Hunter bent his fair head, but she pushed him away with her hands
+against his chest. A horror of his beauty, his deliberate fascination,
+the falseness of him, came over her. For the first time she had been
+brought face to face with sin and falsehood, and hers was the
+unpardoning white condemnation of an angel to whom sin is unknown and
+falsehood impossible. That such knowledge should have come through him
+of all men made the thing more unbearable. Surprised and irritated by
+the pale tragedy of her aspect, Hunter stared, waiting for her to
+speak.
+
+"I was on the stairs. I heard you--and that woman," said she with the
+directness that was sometimes so appalling. "And I _know_." Her face
+turned burning red before it paled again. She was ashamed for him with
+the noble shame of the pure in heart.
+
+His face, too, went red and white with rage and astonishment. It was a
+damnable trap for a man to be caught in, and he was furious with the
+two women who had pushed him into it--he could have beaten them both
+with rods. Innocent as this girl was, he could not hope to deceive her
+as to the real truth. She had heard too much. But he thought he could
+manage her; women were as wax in Hunter's hands. To begin with, they
+_wanted_ to believe him.
+
+"I hate to have to say it--but the lady is jealous," he said frankly
+enough, with a disarming smile; and shrugged his shoulders, quite as
+if that simple statement explained and excused everything.
+
+"Oh, she need not be afraid--of me!" said the girl, with white-hot
+scorn. "I'd rather die by inches of leprosy than belong to you now.
+You are clever, though. And I _was_ easy to deal with, wasn't I? And I
+cared so much! I dare say it was really your hair and beard, but I
+honestly thought you a sort of Archangel! Well, you're not. You're not
+anything I thought you--not good nor kind nor honorable nor
+truthful--not anything but just a rather paltry sort of liar. You're
+not even loyal to _her_. I think I could respect you more if you were.
+But I _am_ James Eustis's girl--and that's my salvation, Mr. Hunter.
+Please take your letters. You will send me back mine to-morrow."
+
+He stroked his short gold beard. The color had come back into his face
+and a new light flashed into his cold blue eyes. He laughed. "Why, you
+game little angel!" he said delightedly. "Gad, I never thought you had
+it in you--never. I begin to adore you, Mary Virginia, upon my soul I
+do! Now listen to reason, my too-good child, and don't be so
+puritanical. You've got to take folks as they are and not as you'd
+like them to be, you know. Men are not angels, no, nor women, either.
+You must learn to be charitable--a virtue very good people seldom
+practice and never properly appreciate." And he added, leaning lower:
+"Mary Virginia! Give me another chance ... you won't be sorry,
+Ladybird."
+
+But she stood unmoved, stonily silent, holding out the letters. And
+when he still ignored this silent insistence, she thrust them into his
+hands and left him.
+
+Mary Virginia was to go back to school the next night. All day she
+waited for her letters. Instead came a note and a huge bunch of
+violets. The note said he couldn't allow those precious letters which
+meant so much to him to pass even into her hands who had written them.
+When he could summon up the courage, he would presently destroy them
+himself. And she had treated him with great harshness, and wouldn't
+she be a good little girl and let him see her, if only for a few
+minutes, before she went away?
+
+Mary Virginia tore up the note and returned the violets by way of
+answer.
+
+When she returned to school, the superioress regretted that she had
+been allowed to visit Mrs. Baker again, because too much gaiety wasn't
+good for her, and she was falling off in her studies. The other girls
+said she had lost all her looks, for in truth she was wan and peaked
+and hollow-eyed. Seventeen suffers frightfully, when it suffers at
+all. Eighteen enjoys its blighted affection, revels in its broken
+heart, would like to crochet a black edging on its immortal soul, and
+wouldn't exchange its secret sorrow for a public joy. Nineteen is
+convalescent--pride would come to its rescue even if life itself did
+not beguile it into being happy.
+
+Mary Virginia got back her color and her appetite and forgot to
+remember that her heart was incurably broken and that she could never
+love again. She liked to think her painful experience had made her
+very wise. Then she went abroad, and her cure was complete. The result
+of it all was that poise and pride which had so greatly delighted the
+autocratic old kinswoman whose fiat had set the last seal of social
+success upon her.
+
+When one of life's little jokes flung Hunter into Appleboro and she
+had to observe him with impartial and less ingenuous eyes, she forgave
+the simple schoolgirl's natural mistake. He had not changed, and she
+perceived his effect upon others older and wiser than herself. And her
+pride chose neither to slight nor to ignore him now, but rather to
+meet him casually, with indifference, as a stranger in whom she was
+not at all interested.
+
+Mr. Inglesby she did not take seriously. She did not dream that a
+possible menace to herself lay in this stout man whom she considered
+fatuous and absurd, when she thought of him at all. That her mother
+should be completely taken in by his specious charity and his
+plausible presentment of himself, did not surprise her. She was
+inclined to smile scornfully and so dismiss him.
+
+She underestimated Inglesby.
+
+The very fact that there was such an obstacle in the way as a young
+fellow with whom she fancied herself in love only deepened Inglesby's
+passion for Mary Virginia. She was in her proper person all that he
+coveted and groveled to. To possess her in addition to his own
+wealth--what more could a man ask? Let Eustis become senator,
+governor, president, anything he chose. But let Inglesby have Mary
+Virginia by way of fair exchange.
+
+Mr. Inglesby was well aware that Miss Eustis would not for one moment
+consider him--unless she had to. He proposed to so arrange affairs
+that she had to. Naturally, he looked to his private secretary to help
+him bring about this desirable end. And at this opportune moment fate
+played into his hands in a manner that left Mr. Hunter's assent a
+matter of course.
+
+Mr. Hunter had very expensive tastes which his salary was not always
+sufficient to cover. Wherefore, like many another, he speculated. When
+he was lucky, it was easy money; but it was never enough. Of late he
+had not been fortunate, and he found himself confronted by the high
+cost of living as he chose to live. This annoyed him. So when there
+came his way what appeared to be an absolute certainty of not only
+recouping all his losses but of making some real money as well, Hunter
+plunged, with every dollar he could manage to get hold of. But Wall
+Street is a lane that has many crooked and devious turnings, and Mr.
+Hunter's investments took a very wrong turn. And this time it was not
+only all his own money that had been lost. The bottom might have
+dropped out of things then, except for Inglesby.
+
+When Hunter had to tell him the truth the financier listened with an
+unmoved face. Then he swung around in his chair, lifted an eyebrow,
+grunted, and remarked briefly: "Very unsafe thing to do, Hunter.
+Very." And shoved his personal check across the desk. Nobody knew
+anything about it, except the head bookkeeper of the bank.
+
+Inglesby had no illusions, however. He understood that to have in his
+power an immensely clever man who knew as much about his private
+affairs as Hunter did, was good business, to say the least. He simply
+invested in Mr. Hunter's brains and personality for his own immediate
+ends, and he expected his brilliant and expensive secretary to prove
+the worth of the investment.
+
+Inglesby had not risen to his present heights by beating about the
+bush in his dealings with others. He had seized Success by the
+windpipe and throttled it into obedience, and he ruthlessly bent
+everything and everybody to his own purposes. The task he set before
+Hunter now was to steer the Inglesby ship through a perilous passage
+into the matrimonial harbor he had in mind. Let Hunter do that--no
+matter how--and the pilot's future was assured. Inglesby would be no
+niggardly rewarder. But let the venture come to shipwreck and Hunter
+must go down with it. Hunter was not left in any doubt upon that
+score.
+
+Brought face to face with the situation as it affected his fortune and
+misfortune, Hunter must have had a very bad half an hour. I am sure he
+had not dreamed of such a contretemps, and he must have been startled
+and amazed by the cold calculation and the raw fury of passion he had
+to deal with. I do not think he relished his task. His was the sort of
+conscience that would dislike such a course, not because it was
+dishonorable or immoral in itself, but because its details offended
+his fastidiousness. I think he would have extricated himself honorably
+if he could. It just happened that he couldn't.
+
+Give a sufficient shock to a man's pocket-nerve and you electrify his
+brain-cells, which automatically receive orders to work overtime.
+Hunter's brain worked then because it had to, self-preservation being
+the first law of nature. And this service for Inglesby not only spelt
+safety; it meant the golden key to the heights, the power to gratify
+those fine tastes which only a rich and able man can afford. Inglesby
+had promised that, and he had just had a fair example of what
+Inglesby's support meant.
+
+One must try to consider the case from Mr. Hunter's point of view. To
+refuse Inglesby meant disaster. And who was Laurence, who was Mary
+Virginia, that he should quixotically wreck his prospects for them?
+Why should he lose Inglesby's goodwill or gain Inglesby's enmity for
+them or anybody else? Forced to choose, Hunter made the only choice
+possible to him.
+
+_Voe victis!_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+"--SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY--"
+
+
+Now I am only an old priest and no businessman, so of course I do not
+know just how Hunter was set like a hound upon the track of those
+circumstances that, properly manipulated, helped him toward a solution
+of his problem--the getting of a girl apparently as unreachable as
+Mary Virginia Eustis.
+
+To start with, he had two assets, the first being Eustis pride.
+Shrewdly working upon that, Hunter played with skill and finesse.
+
+When he was ready, it was easy enough to meet Miss Eustis on the
+street of an afternoon. Although her greeting was disconcertingly
+cold, he fell into step beside her. And presently, in a low and
+intimate voice, he began to quote certain phrases that rang in her
+astonished ears with a sort of hateful familiarity.
+
+A glance at her face made him smile. "I wonder," he questioned, "if
+you have changed, dear puritan? You are engaged to Mayne now, I hear.
+Very clever chap, Mayne. The moving power behind your father, I
+understand. And engaged to you! You're so intense and interesting when
+you're in love that one is tempted to envy Mayne. Do you write _him_
+letters, too?"
+
+Mary Virginia's level eyes regarded him with haughty surprise. The
+situation was rather unbelievable.
+
+"Miss Eustis--" he paused to bow and smile to some passing girls who
+plainly envied Mary Virginia, "Miss Eustis, you must come to my
+office, say to-morrow afternoon. We must have a heart-to-heart talk. I
+have something you will find it to your interest to discuss with me."
+
+She disdained to reply, to ask him to leave her; her attitude did not
+even suggest that he should explain himself. Seeming to be perfectly
+content with this attitude, he sauntered along beside her.
+
+"Do you know," he smiled, "that with you the art of writing genuine
+love-letters amounts to a gift? I am sure your father--and let's say
+Mayne--would be astonished and delighted to read the ones I have. They
+are unequaled. Human documents, heart-interest, delicate and piquant
+sex-tang--the very sort of thing the dear public devours. I told you
+once they meant a great deal to me, remember? They're going to mean
+more. Come about four, please." He lifted his hat, bowed, and was
+gone.
+
+Mary Virginia went to his office at four o'clock the next afternoon,
+as he had planned she should. She wanted to know exactly what he
+meant, and she fancied he meant to make her buy back the letters he
+claimed not to have destroyed. The bare idea of anybody on earth
+reading those insane vaporings sickened her.
+
+Hunter's manner subtly allowed her to understand that he had known she
+would come, and this angered her inexpressibly; it gave him an
+advantage.
+
+"Instead of wasting time in idle persiflage," he said when he had
+handed her a chair, "let's get right down to brass tacks. You
+naturally desire to know why I kept your letters? For one reason,
+because they are a bit of real literature. However, I propose to
+return them now--for a consideration."
+
+He leaned forward, idly drumming on the polished desk, and regarded
+her with a sort of impersonal speculation. A little smile crept to his
+lip.
+
+"The whirligig of time does bring in its revenges, doesn't it?" he
+mused aloud. Mary Virginia's lips curled.
+
+"I do not follow you," she said coldly. "I am not even sure you have
+the letters--that is why I am here. I must see them with my own eyes
+before I agree to pay for them. That is what you expect me to do, is
+it not?"
+
+"Oh, I have them all right--that is very easily proven," said he,
+unruffled. "Now listen carefully, please, while I explain the real
+reason for your presence here this afternoon. Mr. Inglesby, for
+reasons of his own, desires to don the senatorial toga; why not? Also,
+even more vehemently, Mr. Inglesby desires to lead to the altar Miss
+Mary Virginia Eustis: yourself, dear lady, your charming self: again,
+why not? Who can blame him for so natural and laudable an ambition?
+
+"As to his ever persuading you to become Mrs. Inglesby, without
+some--ah--moral suasion, why, you know what his chance would be better
+than I do. As to his persuading the state to send him to Washington,
+it would have been a certainty, a sure thing, if our zealous young
+friend Mayne hadn't egged your father into the game. How Mayne managed
+that, heaven knows, particularly with your father's affairs in the
+condition they are. Now, Eustis is a fine man. Far too fine to be lost
+in the shuffle at Washington, where he'd be a condemned
+nuisance--just as he sometimes is here at home. Do you begin to
+comprehend?"
+
+"Why, no," said she, blankly. "And I certainly fail to see where my
+silly letters--"
+
+"Let me make it plainer. You and your silly letters put the game into
+Mr. Inglesby's hands, swing the balance in his favor. _You_ pay _me_?
+Heavens, no! _We_ pay _you_--and a thumping price at that!"
+
+For a long moment they looked at each other.
+
+"My dear Miss Eustis," he put the tips of his fine fingers together,
+bent forward over them, and favored her with a white-toothed smile,
+"behold in me Mr. Inglesby's ambassador--the advocate of Cupid. Plainly,
+I am authorized to offer you Mr. Inglesby's heart, his hand, and--his
+check-book. Let us suppose you agree to accept--no, don't interrupt me
+yet, please. And keep your seat, Miss Eustis. You may smile, but I would
+advise you to consider very seriously what I am about to say to you, and
+to realize once for all that Mr. Inglesby is in dead earnest and
+prepared to go to considerable lengths. Well, then, as I was about to
+say: suppose you agree to accept his proposal! Being above all things a
+business man, Mr. Inglesby realizes that gilt-edged collateral should be
+put up for what you have to offer--youth, beauty, charm, health,
+culture, family name, desirable and influential connections, social
+position of the highest. In exchange he offers the Inglesby millions,
+his absolute devotion to yourself, and his hearty support to all your
+father's plans and interests. Observe the last, please; it is highly
+important. Besides this, Mayne and Eustis want reform, progress,
+Demos-with-a-full-dinner-pail, all the wearisome rest of that uplift
+stuff? Inglesby will see that they get an undiluted dose of it. More
+yet: if you have any scruples about Mayne, Inglesby will get behind that
+young man and boost him until he can crow on the weathervane--when you
+are Mrs. Inglesby. A chap like Mayne would be valuable, properly
+expurgated. Come, Miss Eustis, that's fair enough. If you refuse--well,
+it's up to you to make Eustis understand that he must eliminate himself
+from politics--and look out for himself," he finished ominously.
+
+Mary Virginia rose impetuously.
+
+"I am no longer seventeen, Mr. Hunter. What, do you honestly think you
+can frighten a grown woman into believing that a handful of silly
+letters could possibly be worth all that? Well, you can't. And--let me
+remind you that blackmailing women isn't smiled upon in Carolina. A
+hint of this and you'd be ostracized."
+
+"So would you. And why use such an extreme term as blackmailing for
+what really is a very fair offer?" said he, equably. "The letters are
+not the only arrows in my quiver, Miss Eustis. But as you are more
+interested in them than anything else just now, suppose we run over a
+few, just to remind you of their amazing nature?" He rose leisurely,
+opened the safe in a corner of the room, took from the steel
+money-vault a package, and Mary Virginia recognized her own writing.
+Always keeping them under his own hand, he yet allowed her to lean
+forward and verify what he chose to read.
+
+Her face burned and tears of mortification stung her eyes. Good
+heavens, had she been as silly and as sentimental as all that? But as
+she listened to his smooth remorseless voice, mortification merged
+into amazement and amazement into consternation. Older and wiser now,
+she saw what ignorance and infatuation had really accomplished, and
+she realized that a fool can unwittingly pull the universe about her
+ears.
+
+She was appalled. It was as if her waking self were confronted by an
+incredible something her dreaming self had done. She knew enough of
+the world now to realize how such letters would be received--with
+smiles intended to wound, with the raised eyebrow, the shrugged
+shoulder. She wondered, with a chill of panic, how she could ever hope
+to make anybody understand what she admitted she herself couldn't
+explain. For heaven's sake, _what_ had she been trying to tell this
+man? She didn't know any more, except that it hadn't been what these
+letters seemed to reveal.
+
+"Well?" said the lazy, pleasant voice, "don't you agree with me that
+it would have been barbarous to destroy them? Wonderful, aren't they?
+Who would credit a demure American schoolgirl with their supreme art?
+A French court lady might have written them, in a day when folks made
+a fine art of love and weren't afraid nor ashamed."
+
+"I must have been stark mad!" said she, twisting her fingers. "How
+could I ever have done it? Oh, how?"
+
+"Oh, we all have our moments of genius!" said he, airily.
+
+As he faced her, smiling and urbane, she noted woman-fashion the
+superfine quality of his linen, the perfection of every detail of his
+appearance, the grace with which he wore his clothes. His manner was
+gracious, even courtly. Yet there was about him something so
+relentless that for the first time she felt a quiver of fear.
+
+"If my father--or Mr. Mayne--knew this, you would undoubtedly be
+shot!" said she, and her eyes flashed.
+
+"Unwritten law, chivalry, all the rest of that rot? I am well aware
+that the Southern trigger-finger is none too steady, where lovely
+woman is concerned," he admitted, with a faint sneer. "But when one
+plays for high stakes, Miss Eustis, one runs the risks. Granted I do
+get shot? That wouldn't give you the letters: it would simply hand
+them over to prosecuting attorneys and the public press, and they'd be
+damning with blood upon them. No, I don't think there'll be any
+fireworks--just a sensible deal, in which everybody benefits and
+nobody loses."
+
+"The thing is impossible, perfectly impossible."
+
+"I don't see why. Everything has its price and I'm offering you a
+pretty stiff one."
+
+"I would rather be burned alive. Marry Mr. Inglesby? _I_? Why, he is
+impossible, perfectly impossible!"
+
+"He is nothing of the kind. And he is very much in love with you--you
+amount to a grand passion with Inglesby. Also, he has twenty
+millions." He added dryly: "You are hard to please."
+
+Mary Virginia waved aside grand passion and twenty millions with a
+gesture of ineffable disdain.
+
+"Even if I were weak and silly enough to take you seriously, do you
+imagine my father would ever consent? He would despise me. He would
+rather see me dead."
+
+"Oh, no, he wouldn't. Nobody can afford to despise a woman with twenty
+millions. It isn't in human nature. Particularly when you save Mr.
+James Eustis himself from coming a breakneck cropper, to say the very
+least."
+
+For the moment she missed the significance of that last remark.
+
+"I repeat that I would rather be burned alive. I despise the man!"
+said she, passionately.
+
+"Oh, no, you wouldn't." His manner was a bit contemptuous. "And you'd
+soon get used to him. Women and cats are like that. They may squall
+and scratch a bit at first, but the saucer of cream reconciles them,
+and presently they are quite at home and purring, the sensible
+creatures! You'll end by liking him very well."
+
+The girl ignored this Job's comforting.
+
+"What shall I say to my father?" she asked directly. "Tell him you
+kept the foolish letters written you by an ignorant child--and the
+price is either his or my selling out to Mr. Inglesby?"
+
+"That is your lookout. You can't expect us to let your side whip us,
+hands down, can you? Mr. Inglesby does not propose to submit tamely to
+_everything_." His face hardened, a glacial glint snapped into his
+eyes. "Inglesby's no worse than anybody else would be that had to hold
+down his job. He's got virtues, plenty of solid good-citizen,
+church-member, father-of-a-family virtues, little as you seem to
+realize it. Also, let me repeat--he has twenty millions. To buy up a
+handful of letters for twenty million dollars looks to me about the
+biggest price ever paid since the world began. Don't be a fool!"
+
+"I refuse. I refuse absolutely and unconditionally. I shall
+immediately send for my father--and for Mr. Mayne--"
+
+"I give you credit for better sense," said he, with a razor-edged
+smile. "Eustis is honorable and Mayne is in love with you, and when
+you spring this they'll swear they believe you: _but will they_? Do
+men ever believe women, without the leaven of a little doubt? Speaking
+as a man for men, I wouldn't put them to the test. No, dear lady, I
+hardly think you are going to be so silly. Now let us pass on to
+something of greater moment than the letters. Did you think I had
+nothing else to urge upon you?"
+
+"What, more?" said she, derisively. "I don't think I understand."
+
+"I am sure you don't. Permit me, then, to enlighten you." He paused a
+moment, as if to reflect. Then, impressively:
+
+"Hitherto, Miss Eustis, you have had the very button on Fortune's
+cap," he told her. "Suppose, however, that fickle goddess chose to
+whisk herself off bodily, and left you--_you_, mind you! to face the
+ugly realities of poverty, and poverty under a cloud?" And while she
+stared at him blankly, he asked: "What do you know of your father's
+affairs?"
+
+As a matter of fact she knew very little. But something in the deadly
+pleasantness of his voice, something in his eyes, startled her.
+
+"What do you mean, Mr. Hunter?"
+
+"Ah, now we get down to bedrock: your father's affairs," he said evenly.
+"Your father, Miss Eustis, is a very remarkable man, a man with one
+idea. In other words, a fanatic. Only a fanatic could accomplish what
+Eustis has accomplished. His one idea is the very sound old idea that
+people should remain on the land. He starts in to show his people how to
+do it successfully. Once started, the work grows like Jonah's gourd. He
+becomes a sort of rural white hope. So far, so good. But reclamation
+work, experimenting, blooded stock, up-to-the-minute machinery,
+labor-saving devices, chemicals, high-priced experts, labor itself, all
+that calls for money, plenty of money. Your father's work grew to its
+monumental proportions because he'd gotten other men interested in
+it--all sorts and conditions of men, but chiefly--and here's at once his
+strength and weakness--farmers, planters, small-town merchants and
+bankers. They backed him with everything they had--and they haven't
+lost--yet.
+
+"However, there are such things as bad seasons, labor troubles,
+boll-weevil, canker, floods, war. He lost ship-loads of cotton. He
+lost heavily on rice. Remember those last floods? In some of his
+places they wiped the work of years clean off the map. He had to begin
+all over, and he had to do it on borrowed money; which in lean and
+losing years is expensive. Floods may come and crops may go, but
+interest on borrowed money goes on forever. He mortgaged all he could
+mortgage, risked everything he could risk, took every chance--and now
+everything is at stake with him.
+
+"Do you realize what it would mean if Eustis went under? A smash to
+shake the state! Consider, too, the effect of failure upon the man
+himself! He can't fail, though--_if Mr. Inglesby chooses to lend a
+hand_. Now do you begin to comprehend?"
+
+In spite of her distrust, he impressed her profoundly. He did not
+over-estimate her father's passionate belief in himself and the value
+of his work. If anything, Hunter had slurred the immense influence
+Eustis exerted, and the calamitous effect his failure would have upon
+the plain people who looked up to him with such unlimited trust. They
+would not only lose their money; they would lose something no money
+could pay for--their faith.
+
+"Oh, but that just simply couldn't happen!" said Mary Virginia, and
+her chin went up.
+
+"It could very easily happen. It may happen shortly," he contradicted
+politely. "Heavens, girl, don't you know that the Eustis house is
+mortgaged to the roof, that Rosemount Plantation is mortgaged from the
+front fences to the back ditches? No, I suppose he wouldn't want his
+women-folks to know. He thinks he can tide it over. They always
+believe they can tide it over, those one-idea chaps. And he could,
+too, for he's a born winner, is Eustis. Give him time and a good
+season and he'd be up again, stronger than ever." While he spoke he
+was taking from a drawer a handful of papers, which he spread out on
+the desk. She could see upon all of them a bold clear "_James
+Eustis_."
+
+"One place mortgaged to prop up another, and that in turn mortgaged to
+save a third. Like links in a chain. Any chain is only as strong as
+its weakest link, remember. And we've got the links. Look at these,
+please." He laid before her two or three slips of paper. Mary
+Virginia's eyes asked for enlightenment.
+
+"These," explained Hunter, "are promissory notes. You will see that
+some of them are about due--and the amounts are considerable."
+
+"Oh! And _he_ had to do that?"
+
+"Of course. What else could he do? We kept a very close watch since we
+got the first inkling that things were not breaking right for him. Mr.
+Inglesby's own interests are pretty extensive--and we set them to
+work. It wasn't hard to manage, after things began to shape: a word
+here, a hint there, an order somewhere else; and once or twice, of
+course, a bit of pressure was brought to bear, in obdurate instances.
+But the man with money is always the man with the whip hand. Eustis
+got the help he had to have--and presently we got these. All perfectly
+legitimate, all in the course of the day's work.
+
+"Now, promissory notes are dangerous instruments should a holder
+desire to use them dangerously. Mr. Inglesby could give Eustis an
+extension of time, or he could demand full payment and immediately
+foreclose. You see, it's entirely optional with Mr. Inglesby." And he
+leaned back in his chair, perfectly self-possessed, entirely at his
+ease, and waited for her to speak.
+
+"You could do that--anybody could do that--to my father?" she was
+only half-convinced.
+
+"I assure you we can send him under--with a lot of other men's money
+tied around his neck to keep him down."
+
+"But even you would hesitate to do a thing like that!"
+
+"All is fair," said Hunter, "in love and war."
+
+"_Fair_?"
+
+"Legitimate, then."
+
+"But if he is in Mr. Inglesby's way and in his power at the same time,
+why not remove him in the ordinary course of business? Why drag in me
+and my letters?"
+
+"Why? Because it's the letters that enable us to reach _you_. My dear
+girl, Mr. Inglesby doesn't really give a hang whether Eustis sinks or
+swims. He'd as lief back him as not, for in the long run it's good
+business to back a winner. But it's _you_ he's playing for, and on
+that count all is fish that comes to his net. _Now_ do you begin to
+see?"
+
+Mary Virginia began to see. She looked at the unruffled man before her
+a bit wonderingly.
+
+"And what do _you_ get out of this?" she asked, unexpectedly. "Mr.
+Inglesby is to get me, I am to get his money and a package of letters,
+my father is to get time to save himself; well then, what do _you_
+get? The pleasure of doing something wrong? Revenge?"
+
+But Hunter looked at her with cold astonishment. "You surprise me," he
+said. "You talk as if you'd been going to see too many of those
+insufferable screen-plays that make the proletariat sniffle and the
+intelligent swear. I am merely a business man, Miss Eustis, and
+attending to this particular affair for my employer is all in the
+course of the day's work. I--er--am not in a position to refuse to
+obey orders or to be captious, particularly since Mr. Inglesby has
+agreed to double my present salary. That in itself is no light
+inducement--but I get more. I get Mr. Inglesby's personal backing,
+which means an assured future to me; as it will mean to you and your
+father, if you have got the sense you were born with. This is
+business. Kindly omit melodrama--crude, and not at all your style,
+really," he finished, critically.
+
+"This is nothing short of villainy. And not at all too crude for
+_your_ style," said Mary Virginia.
+
+He laughed good-humoredly. "Bad temper is vastly becoming to you," he
+told her. "It gives you a magnificent color."
+
+And at that Mary Virginia looked at him with eyes in which the shadow
+of fear was deepening. Hard as nails, cold as ice, to him she was
+merely a means to an end. He did not even hate her. The guillotine
+does not hate those whom it decapitates, either; none the less it
+takes off their heads once they get in the way of the descending
+knife.
+
+"I suggest," said Hunter, rising, "that you go home now and think the
+matter over carefully. Weigh what you and your father stand to gain
+against what you stand to lose. I do not press you for an immediate
+decision. You shall have a reasonable time for consideration." It was
+a threat and a command, thinly veiled.
+
+All that night, unable to sleep, she did think the matter over
+carefully; she turned and twisted it about and about and saw it now
+from this angle and now from that; and the more she studied it in all
+its bearings the worse it grew. There was no escape from it.
+
+Suppose, although she knew she could never, never hope to
+satisfactorily explain them, she nevertheless told her father about
+those letters and the part they were to be made play, now that his own
+affairs had reached a crisis? She could fancy herself telling him that
+he must shield himself behind her skirts if he would save himself from
+ruin. That ... to James Eustis!
+
+Suppose that the Carolina trigger-finger slipped, as Hunter had
+nonchalantly admitted might happen: what then? But it is the woman in
+the case who always suffers the most and the longest; it is the woman,
+always, who pays the greater price. Her fears magnified the imagined
+evil, her pride was crucified.
+
+What tortured her most was that they were actually making her party to
+a wreck that could easily be averted. Hunter had admitted that Eustis
+could weather the storm, if he were given time. Oh, to gain time for
+him, then! And she lay there, staring into the dark with wet eyes. How
+could she help him, she who was also snared?
+
+And in desperation she hit upon a forlorn hope. She dared not speak
+out openly to anybody, she dared not flatly refuse Inglesby's
+pretensions, for that would be to invite the avalanche. What she
+proposed to herself was to hold him off as long as she could. She
+would not be definite until the last possible minute. Always there was
+the chance that by some miracle of mercy Eustis might be able to meet
+those notes when they fell due. Let him do that, and she would then
+tell him everything. But not now. He was bearing too much, without
+that added burden.
+
+It cost her a supreme effort to face the situation as it affected
+herself and Laurence. Life without Laurence! The bare thought of it
+tested her heart and showed her how inalienably it belonged to him.
+But under all his lovingness and his boyishness, Laurence had a
+sternness, a ruggedness as adamantine as one of Cromwell's Iron-sides.
+With him to know would be to act. Well--he mustn't know. It terrified
+her to think of just what might happen, if Laurence knew.
+
+Under the circumstances there seemed but one course open to her--to
+give up Laurence, and that without explanations. For his own sake she
+had to keep silent--just as Hunter had known she would. What Laurence
+must think of her, even the loss of his affection and respect, would
+be part of the price paid for having been a fool.
+
+In the most unobtrusive manner they kept in touch with her. Hunter had
+so adroitly wirepulled, and so deftly softened and toned down
+Inglesby's crudities, that Mrs. Eustis had become the latter's open
+champion. Condescending and patronizing, she liked the importance of
+lending a very rich man her social countenance. She insisted that he
+was misunderstood. Men of great fortunes are always misunderstood.
+Nobody considers it a virtue to be charitable to the rich--they save
+all their charity for the poor, who as often as not are undeserving,
+and are generally insanitary as well. Mrs. Eustis thanked her heavenly
+Father she was a woman of larger vision, and never thought ill of a
+man just because he happened to be a millionaire. Millionaires have
+got souls, she hoped? And hearts? Mrs. Eustis said she knew Mr.
+Inglesby's noble heart, my dear, whether others did or not.
+
+Compelled to apparently jilt Laurence, Mary Virginia sank deeper and
+deeper into the slough of despond. A terror of Inglesby's power, as of
+something supernatural, was growing upon her, a terror almost childish
+in its intensity. He had begun to occupy the niche vacated by the
+Boogerman her Dah had threatened her with in her nursery. She could
+barely conceal this terror, save that an instinct warned her that to
+let him know she feared him would be fatal. And she felt for him a
+physical repulsion strong enough to be nauseating.
+
+The fact that she disdained and perhaps even disliked him and made no
+effort to conceal her feelings, did not in the least ruffle his bland
+complacency nor affront his pride. He knew that not even an Inglesby
+could hope to find a Mary Virginia more than once in a lifetime, and
+the haughtier she was the more she pleased him; it added to his
+innate sense of power, and this in itself endeared her to him
+inexpressibly.
+
+But as the girl still held out stubbornly, trying to evade the final
+word that would force a climax disastrous any way she viewed it,
+Inglesby's patience was exhausted. He was determined to make her come
+to terms by the word of her own mouth, and he had no doubt that her
+final word must be Yes; perhaps a Yes reluctant enough, but
+nevertheless one to which he meant to hold her.
+
+To make that final demand more impressive, Hunter was not entrusted
+with the interview. Hunter may have been doubtful as to the wisdom of
+this, but Inglesby could no longer forego the delight of dealing with
+Mary Virginia personally. On the Saturday night, then, Mrs. Eustis
+being absent, Mr. Inglesby, manicured, massaged, immaculate, shaven
+and shorn, called in person; and not daring to refuse, Mary Virginia
+received him, wondering if for her the end of the world had not come.
+
+He made a mistake, for Mary Virginia had her back against the wall,
+literally waiting for the Eustis roof to fall. But he could not forego
+the pleasure of witnessing her pride lower its crest to him. He did
+not relish a go-between, even such a successful one as his secretary.
+He had made up his mind that she should have until to-morrow night,
+Sunday, to come to a decision--just that long, and not another hour.
+He was not getting younger; he wanted to marry, to found a great
+establishment as whose mistress Mary Virginia should shine. And she
+was making him lose time.
+
+What Inglesby succeeded in doing was to bring her terror to a head,
+and to fill her with a sick loathing of him. Under the smooth
+protestations, the promises, the threats veiled with hateful and oily
+smiles, the man himself was revealed: crude, brutal, dominant,
+ruthless, a male animal bull-necked and arrogant, with small eyes,
+wide nostrils, cruel moist lips, sensual fat white hands she hated.
+And he was so sure of her! Mary Virginia found herself smarting under
+that horrible sureness.
+
+Perfectly at his ease, inclined to be familiar and jocose, he looked
+insolently about the lovely old room that had never before held such a
+suitor for a daughter of that house. Watching her with the complacent
+eyes of an accepted lover, assuming odious airs of proprietorship such
+as made one wish to throttle him, he was in no hurry to go. It seemed
+to her that black and withering years rolled over her head before he
+could bring himself to rise to take his departure. Death could hardly
+be colder to a mortal than she had been to this man all the evening,
+and yet it had not disconcerted him in the least!
+
+He stood for a moment regarding her with the eyes of possession. "And
+to think that to-morrow night I shall have the right to openly claim
+you as my promised wife!" he exulted. "You can't realize what it means
+to a man to be able to say to the world that the most beautiful woman
+in it is his!"
+
+Directly in front of her hung the portrait of the founder of the house
+in Carolina, the cavalier who had fled to the new world when Charles
+Stuart's head fell in the old one. It was a fine and proud face, the
+eyes frank and brave, the mouth firm and sweet. The girl looked from
+it to George Inglesby's, and found herself unable to speak. But as she
+stood before him, tall and proud and pale, the loveliness, the
+appealing charm of her, went like a strong wine to the man's head.
+With a quick and fierce movement he seized her hand and covered it
+with hot and hateful kisses.
+
+At the touch of his lips cold horror seized her. She dragged her hand
+free and waved him back with a splendid indignation. But Inglesby was
+out of hand; he had taken the bit between his teeth, and now he
+bolted.
+
+"Do you think I'm made of stone?" he bellowed, and the mask slipped
+altogether. There was no hypocrisy about Inglesby now; this was
+genuine. "Well, I'm not! I'm a man, a flesh-and-blood man, and I'm
+crazy for you--and you're _mine_! You're _mine_, and you might just as
+well face the music and get acquainted with me, first as last.
+Understand?
+
+"I'm not such a bad sort--what's the matter with me, anyhow? Why ain't
+I good enough for you or any other woman? Suppose I'm not a young
+whippersnapper with his head full of nonsense and his pockets full of
+nothing, can the best popinjay of them all do for you what _I_ can?
+Can any of 'em offer you what _I_ can offer? Let him try to: I'll
+raise his bid!
+
+"Here--don't you stand there staring at me as if I'd tried to slit
+your throat just because I've kissed your hand. Suppose I did? Why
+shouldn't I kiss your hand if I want to? It's my hand, when all's said
+and done, and I'll kiss it again if I feel like it. No, no, beauty, I
+won't, not if it's going to make you look at me like that! Why, queen,
+I wouldn't frighten you for worlds! I love you too much to want to do
+anything but please you. I'd do anything, everything, just to please
+you, to make you like me! You'll believe that, won't you?" And he
+held out his hands with a supplicating and impassioned gesture.
+
+"Why can't we be friends? Try to be friends with me, Mary Virginia!
+You would, if you only knew how much I love you. Why, I've loved you
+ever since that first day I saw you, after you'd come back home. I was
+going into the bank, and I turned, and there you were! You had on a
+gray dress, and you wore violets, a big bunch of them. I can smell
+them yet. God! It was all up with me! I was crazy about you from the
+start, and it's been getting worse and worse ... worse and worse!
+
+"You don't know all I mean to do for you, beauty! I'm going to give
+you this little old world to play with. Nothing's too good for _you_.
+Look at me! I'm not an old man yet--I've only just _begun_ to make
+money for you. Now be a little kind to me. You've got to marry me, you
+know. Look here: you kiss me good-night, just once, of your own free
+will, and I swear you shall have anything under the sky you ask me
+for. Do you want a string of pearls that will make yours look like a
+child's playpretty? I'll hang a million dollars around that white
+throat of yours!"
+
+But there came into the girl's eyes that which gave him pause. They
+stood staring at each other; and slowly the wine-dark flush faded from
+his face and left him livid. Little dents came about his nose, and his
+lips puckered as if the devil had pinched them together.
+
+"No?" said he thickly, and his jaw hardened, and his eyes narrowed
+under his square forehead. "No? You won't, eh? Too fine and proud? My
+lady, you'll learn to kiss me when I tell you to, and glad enough of
+the chance, before you and I finish with each other! Why, you--I--Oh,
+good God! Why do you rouse the devil in me, when I only want to be
+friends with you?"
+
+But she, with a ghastly face, turned swiftly and with her head held
+high walked out of the room, passed through the wide hall, and
+ascended the stairs, without even bidding him goodnight. Let him take
+his dismissal as he would--she could stand no more!
+
+Once in her own room, Mary Virginia dismissed Nancy for the night. She
+had to be alone, and the colored woman was an irrepressible magpie.
+Furiously she scrubbed her hands, as if to remove the taint of his
+touch. That he had dared! Her teeth chattered. She could barely save
+herself from screaming aloud. She bathed her face, dashed some toilet
+water over herself, and fell into a chair, limp and unnerved.
+
+_One day!_
+
+She was facing the end and she knew it. Because she had to say No. She
+had never for one minute admitted to herself the possibility of her
+own surrender. She could give up Laurence, since she had to; but she
+could not accept Inglesby. Anything rather than that! At the most, all
+she had hoped was to evade that final No until the last moment, in
+order to give Eustis what poor respite she could. Only her great love
+for him had enabled her to do that much. And it had not helped. When
+she thought of the wreck that must come, she beat her hands together,
+softly, in sheer misery. It was like standing by and watching some
+splendid ship being pounded to pieces on the rocks.
+
+Only her innate bravery and her real and deep religious instinct saved
+her from altogether sinking into inertia and despair. She _had_ to
+arouse herself. Other women had faced situations equally as impossible
+and unbearable as hers, and the best of them had not allowed
+themselves to be whipped into tame and abject submission. Even at the
+worst they had snatched the great chance to live their own lives in
+their own way. As for her, surely there must be some way out of this
+snarl, some immediate way that led to honorable freedom, even without
+hope. But how and where was she to find any way open to her, between
+now and to-morrow night?
+
+On her dressing table, with a handful of trinkets upon it, lay the
+tray that the Butterfly Man had sent her when she was graduated. Chin
+in hands, Mary Virginia stared absently enough at the brightly colored
+butterflies she had been told to remember were messengers bearing on
+their wings the love of the Parish House people. Why--why--of course!
+The Parish House people! They had blamed her, because they hadn't
+understood. But if she were to ask the Parish House people for any
+help within their power, she could be sure of receiving it without
+stint.
+
+If she could get to the Parish House without anybody knowing where she
+was, Inglesby and Hunter would be balked of that interview to-morrow
+night. The worst was going to happen anyhow, but if she couldn't save
+herself from anything else, at least she could save herself from
+facing them alone. To be able to do that, she would go now, in the
+middle of the night, and tell the Padre everything. Unnerved as she
+was, she couldn't face the hours between now and to-morrow morning
+here, by herself. She had to get to the Parish House.
+
+It was then after eleven. Nancy having been dismissed for the night,
+she had no fear of being interrupted. She made her few preparations,
+switched off the light, and sat down to wait until she could be sure
+that all the servants were abed, and the streets deserted. She felt as
+if she were a forlorn castaway upon a pinpoint of land, with
+immeasurable dark depths upon either side.
+
+The midnight express screeched and was gone. She switched on the light
+for a last look about her pretty, pleasant room. There was a snapshot
+of the Parish House people upon her mantel, and she nodded to it,
+gravely, before she once more plunged the room into darkness.
+
+Noiselessly she slipped downstairs and let herself out. The midnight
+air was bitingly cold, but she did not feel it. With one handsatchel
+holding all she thought she could honestly lay claim to, Mary Virginia
+turned her back upon the home that had sheltered her all her life, but
+that wouldn't be able to shelter its own people much longer, because
+Inglesby was going to take it away from them. It made her wince to
+think of him as master under that roof. The old house deserved a
+happier fate.
+
+At best the Parish House could be only a momentary stopping-place.
+What lay beyond she didn't know. What her fate held further of evil
+she couldn't guess. But at least, she thought, it would be in her own
+hands. It wasn't. Unexpectedly and mercifully was it put into the
+abler and stronger hands of the Butterfly Man.
+
+
+Now, that night Flint had found himself unable to work. He was
+unaccountably depressed. He couldn't read; even the Bible, opened at
+his favorite John, hadn't any comfort for him. He shoved the book
+aside, snatched hat and overcoat, and fled to his refuge the healing
+out-of-doors.
+
+He trudged the country roads for awhile, then turned toward town,
+intending to pass by the Eustis house. It wasn't the first time he had
+passed the Eustis house at night of late, and just to see it asleep in
+the midst of its gardens steadied him and made him smile at the vague
+fears he entertained.
+
+He was almost up to the gate when a girl emerged from it, and he
+stiffened in his tracks, for it was Mary Virginia. A second later, and
+they stood face to face.
+
+"Don't be alarmed, it is I, Flint," he said in his quiet voice. And
+then he asked directly: "Why are you out alone at this hour? Where are
+you going?"
+
+"To--to the Parish House," she stammered. She was greatly startled by
+his sudden appearance.
+
+"Exactly," said the Butterfly Man, with meaning, and relieved her of
+her satchel. He asked no questions, offered no comments; but as
+quickly as he could he got her to his own rooms, put Kerry on guard,
+and ran for help.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+ST. STANISLAUS CROOKS HIS ELBOW
+
+
+Mary Virginia's voice trailed into silence and she sank back into her
+chair, staring somberly at the fire. Her face marked with tears, the
+long braids of her hair over her shoulders, she looked so like a sad
+and chidden child that the piteousness of her would have moved and
+melted harder hearts than ours.
+
+The Butterfly Man had listened without an interruption. He sat leaning
+slightly forward, knees crossed, the left arm folded to support the
+elbow of the right, and his chin in his cupped right hand. His eyes
+had the piercing clear directness of an eagle's; they burned with an
+unwavering pale flame. Shrewder far than I, he saw the great advantage
+of knowing the worst, of at last thoroughly understanding Hunter and
+Inglesby and the motives which moved them. He had, too, a certain
+tolerance. These two had merely acted according to their lights; he
+had not expected any more or less, therefore he was not surprised now
+into an undue condemnation.
+
+But the fighting instinct rose rampant in me. My hands are De Rancé
+hands, the hands of soldiers as well as of priests, and they itched
+for a weapon, preferably a sword. Horrified and astonished,
+suffocating with anger, I had no word at command to comfort this
+victim of abominable cunning. Indeed, what could I say; what could I
+do? I looked helplessly at the Butterfly Man, and the stronger man
+looked back at me, gravely and impassively.
+
+"But what is to be done?" I groaned.
+
+He seemed to know, for he said at once:
+
+"Call Madame. Tell her to bring some extra wraps. I am going to take
+Mary Virginia home, and Madame will go with us."
+
+"But why shouldn't she stay here?"
+
+"Because she'd better be at home to-morrow morning, parson. We're not
+supposed to know anything of her affairs, and I'd rather she didn't
+appear at the Parish House. Also, she needs sleep right now more than
+she needs anything else, and one sleeps better in one's own bed.
+Madame will see that she goes to hers and stays there."
+
+I was perfectly willing to commit the affair into John Flint's hands.
+But Mary Virginia demurred.
+
+"No. I want to stay here! I don't want to go home, Padre."
+
+Flint shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said mildly, "but I'm going to
+take you home." He looked so inexorable that Mary Virginia shrugged
+her shoulders.
+
+"Oh, all right, Mr. Flint, I'll go," said she. "What difference does
+it make? I'll even go to bed--as I'm told." And she added in a tone of
+indescribable bitterness: "I have read that men lie down and sleep
+peacefully the night before they are hanged. Well, I suppose they
+could: they hadn't anything but death to face on the morrow, but I--"
+and she caught her breath.
+
+"Why not take it for granted to-night that you'll be looked after
+to-morrow?" suggested Flint. "Mary Virginia, nothing's ever so bad as
+it's going to be."
+
+"Oh, yes, I'll be looked after to-morrow!" said she, bitingly. "Mr.
+Inglesby will see to that!" She covered her face with her hands.
+
+"Oh, I don't know!" The Butterfly Man shut his mouth on the words like
+a knife. "Inglesby may think he's going to, but somehow _I_ think he
+won't."
+
+"Ah!" said she scornfully. "Perhaps _you'll_ be able to stop him?"
+
+"Perhaps," he agreed. "If I don't, somebody or something else will.
+It's very unlucky to be too lucky too long. You see, everybody's got
+to get what's coming to them, and it generally comes hardest when
+they've tied themselves up to the notion they're It. Somehow I fancy
+Mr. Inglesby's due to come considerable of a cropper around about
+now."
+
+"Between now and to-morrow night?" she wondered, with sad contempt.
+
+"Why not? Anything can happen between a night and a night." He looked
+at her with shrewd appreciation: "You have taken yourself so
+seriously," said he, "that you've pretty nearly muddled yourself into
+being tragic. Those fellows knew who they were dealing with when they
+tackled _you_. They could bet the limit you'd never tell. So long as
+you didn't tell, so long as they had nobody but you to deal with, they
+had you where they wanted you. But now maybe things might happen that
+haven't been printed in the program."
+
+"What things?" she mocked somberly.
+
+"I don't know, yet," he admitted, "But I do know there is always a
+way out of everything except the grave. The thing is to find the right
+way. That's up to the Padre and me. Parson, would you mind going after
+Madame now, please? The sooner we go the better."
+
+Have I not said my mother is the most wonderful of women? I waked her
+in the small hours with the startling information that Mary Virginia
+was downstairs in John Flint's workroom, and that she herself must
+dress and accompany her home. And my mother, though she looked her
+stark bewilderment, plagued me with no questions.
+
+"She is in great trouble, and she needs you. Hurry."
+
+Madame slid out of her bed and reached for her neatly folded garments.
+
+"Wait in the hall, Armand; I will be with you in ten minutes." And she
+was, wrapped and hatted.
+
+Once in the workroom, she cast a deep and searching woman-glance at
+the pale girl in the chair. Her face was so sweet with motherliness
+and love and pity, and that profound comprehension the best women show
+to each other, that I felt my throat contract. Gathered into Madame's
+embrace, Mary Virginia clung to her old friend dumbly. Madame had but
+one question:
+
+"My child, have you told John Flint and my son what this trouble of
+yours is?"
+
+"Yes; I had to, I had to!"
+
+"Thank the good God for that!" said my mother piously. "Now we will go
+home, dearest, and you can sleep in peace--you have nothing more to
+worry about!"
+
+The clasp of the comforting arms, the sweet serenity of the mild eyes,
+and above all the little lady's perfect confidence, aroused Mary
+Virginia out of her torpor. She felt that she no longer stood alone
+at the mercy of the merciless. Bundled in the wraps my mother had
+provided, she paused at the door.
+
+"I think you will forgive me any trouble I may cause you, because I am
+sure all of you love me. And whatever comes, I will be brave enough to
+face and to bear it. Padre, dear Padre, you understand, don't you?"
+
+"My child, my darling child, I understand."
+
+"I'll be back in half an hour, parson," the Butterfly Man remarked
+meaningly. Then the three melted into the night.
+
+Left alone, I was far from sharing Madame's simple faith in our
+ability to untangle this miserable snarl. I knew now the temper of the
+men we had to deal with. I also understood that in cases like this the
+Southern trigger-finger is none too steady. Seen from a certain point
+of view, if ever men deserved an unconditional and thorough killing,
+these two did. Yet this homicidal specter turned me cold, for Mary
+Virginia's sake.
+
+For Eustis himself I could see nothing but ruin ahead, but I wished
+passionately to help the dear girl who had come to me in her stress.
+But what was one to do? How should one act?
+
+I sat there dismally enough, my chin sunk upon my breast; for as a
+plotter, a planner, a conspirator, I am a particularly hopeless
+failure. I have no sense of intrigue, and the bare idea of plotting
+reduces me to stupefaction.
+
+Perhaps because I am a priest by instinct, I always discover in myself
+the instant need of prayer when confronted by the unusual and the
+difficult. I have prayed over seemingly hopeless problems in my time
+and I think I have been led to a clear solution of many of them.
+Major Cartwright insists that this is merely because I bring desire
+and will to bear upon a given point and so release an irresistible
+natural force. He says prayer is as much a science as, say,
+mathematics--such and such its units, and such and such its fixed
+results. Well, maybe so. All I know is that when I beseech aid I think
+I receive it.
+
+So I ran over to the church and let myself in. I felt that at least
+for a few minutes I must kneel before the altar and implore help for
+her who was like my own child to me.
+
+The empty church was quite black save for the sanctuary lamp and the
+little red votive lights burning before the statues of the saints and
+of our Lady. All these many little lights only cast the veriest ghosts
+of brightness upon the darkness, but the white altar was revealed by
+the larger glow of the sanctuary lamp. There it shone with a mild and
+pure luster, unfailing, calm, steady, burning through the night, the
+sign and symbol of that light of Love which cannot fail, but burns and
+burns and burns forever and forever before an altar that is the
+infinite universe itself.
+
+My little-faith, my ready-to-halt faith, raised its head above the
+encompassing waters; the wild turmoil and torment died away: ... after
+the earthquake and the fire and the whirlwind, the still small
+voice....
+
+Then I, to whom life at best can only be working and waiting, was for
+a space able to pray for her to whom life should be "_as the light of
+the morning, when the sun riseth, even a clear morning without clouds;
+and as the tender grass by clear shining after rain_." I remembered
+her as she had first come to me, a little loving child to fill my
+empty heart, the poor clay heart that cannot even hold fast to the
+love of God but by these frail all-powerful ties of simple human
+affection. And when I thought of her now, so young and so sore-beset,
+a bird caught in the snare of the fowler, I beat my breast for pity
+and for grief. Oh, how should I help her, how!
+
+I turned my head, and there stood St. Stanislaus upon his pedestal,
+the memorial lights flickering upon his long robe, his smooth boy's
+face, his sheaf of lilies. I regarded him rather absently. Something
+stirred in my consciousness; something I always had to remember in
+connection with St. Stanislaus....
+
+Across my mind as across a screen flashed a series of pictures--a
+mangled tramp carried into the Parish House, my mother watching with a
+concerned and shocked face, and the hall mud-stained by the trampling
+feet of the clumsy bearers; the shaggy Poles, caps off, turning over
+to me as to high authority the heavy oilskin package they had found; I
+opening that package later and standing amazed and startled before its
+contents; and that same package, hidden under my cassock, carried over
+to the church and placed for security and secrecy in the keeping of
+the little saint. Well, that had been quite right; there had been
+nothing else to do; one had to be secret and careful when one had in
+one's keeping the tools of that notorious burglar, Slippy McGee.
+
+Small wonder that I did not connect those pictures with the fate of
+Mary Virginia Eustis! No, I did not immediately grasp their tremendous
+bearing upon the petitions I was repeating. And all the while, with a
+dull insistence, an enraging persistence, they flickered before the
+eyes of my memory--the Poles, the screaming cursing tramp;
+Westmoreland pondering aloud as to why he had been permitted to save
+so apparently worthless a life; and the little saint hiding from the
+eyes of men all traces of lost Slippy McGee. Nor, more curiously yet,
+did I connect them with the Butterfly Man. The Butterfly Man was
+somebody else altogether, another and a different person, a man of
+whom even one's secretest thoughts were admiring and respectful. He
+was so far removed from the very shadow of such things as these, that
+it did one's conscience a sort of violence to think of him in
+connection with them. I tried to dismiss the memories from my mind. I
+wished to concentrate wholly upon the problem of Mary Virginia.
+
+And then that mysterious, hidden self-under-self that lives in us far,
+far beneath thought and instinct and conscience and heredity and even
+consciousness itself, rose to the surface with a message:
+
+_Slippy McGee had been the greatest cracksman in all America...._
+"Honest to God, skypilot, I can open any box made, easy as easy!" ...
+_And even as his tools were hidden in St. Stanislaus, Slippy McGee
+himself was hidden in John Flint_.
+
+Recoiling, I clung to the altar railing. What dreadful thing was I
+contemplating, what fearful temptation was assailing me, here under
+the light of the sanctuary lamp? I looked reproachfully at St.
+Stanislaus, as if that seraphic youth had betrayed my confidence. I
+suspected him of being too anxious to rid himself of the ambiguous
+trust imposed upon him without so much as a by-your-leave. Perhaps he
+was secretly irked at the use to which his painted semblance had been
+put, and seized this first opportunity to extricate himself from a
+position in which the boldest saint of them all might well hesitate to
+find himself.
+
+I began to consider John Flint as he was, the work he had
+accomplished, the splendid structure of that life slowly and
+laboriously made over and lived so cleanly in the light of day. Not
+only had that old evil personality been sloughed off like a larval
+skin; he had come forth from it another creature, a being lovable,
+wise, tender, full of charm. Even the hint of melancholy that was
+becoming more and more a part of him endeared him to others, for the
+broader and brighter the light into which he was steadily mounting,
+the more marked and touching was this softening shadow.
+
+And I who had been the _accoucheur_ of his genius, I who had watched
+and prayed and ministered beside the cradle of his growth, was I of
+all men to threaten his overthrow? Alas, what madness was upon me that
+I was evoking before the very altar the grim ghost of Slippy McGee?
+
+There passed before me in procession the face of Laurence with all its
+boyish bloom stripped from it and the glory of its youth vanished; and
+the bowed and humbled head of James Eustis, one of the large and noble
+souls of this world; and the innocent beauty of Mary Virginia,
+wistfully appealing; followed them the beautiful ruthless face of
+Hunter, dazzlingly blonde, gold-haired as Baldur; and the piglike eyes
+and heavy jowl of Inglesby, brutally dominant; and then the dear
+whimsical visage of the Butterfly Man himself. They passed; and I fell
+to praying, with a sort of still desperation, for all of us.
+
+And all the while the steady and rosy light of the sanctuary lamp fell
+upon me, and the little lights flickered before the silent saints. I
+took myself in hand, forced myself into self-control. I did not
+minimize one risk nor slur one danger. I knew exactly what was at
+stake. And having done this, I decided upon my course:
+
+"If he has thought of this himself, then I will help. But if he has
+not, I will not suggest it, no, no matter what happens."
+
+I told myself I would say ten more Hailmarys, and I said them, with an
+Ourfather at the end. And without further praying I got to my feet.
+The church seemed to be full of breathless whisperings, as if it
+watched and listened while I moved over to Stanislaus and tipped him
+backward. He is a rather heavy and sizable boy for all his saintly
+slimness. Up in the hollow inside, in the crook of his arm, lay the
+oilskin package he had kept these long years through, waiting for
+to-night.
+
+"If ever you prayed for mortals in peril, pray, for the love of God,
+for all of us this night!" I told him. And with the package in a fold
+of my cassock I went back across the dark garden and let myself into
+the Butterfly Man's rooms, and was hardly inside the door when he
+himself returned.
+
+"Didn't meet a soul. And they got in without waking anybody in the
+house," said he complacently, rubbing his hands before the fire. "I
+waited until they showed a light upstairs. She's all right, now
+Madame's with her."
+
+"Have you--have you thought of anything--any way, John?" I quavered,
+and wondered if he heard my heart dunting against my ribs.
+
+"Why, I've thought that she's got until to-morrow night to come to
+terms," said he, and turned to face me. "And she can't accept them.
+Nobody could--that is, not a girl like her. As for Inglesby, he might
+push Eustis under, but he wouldn't have been so cocksure of _her_ if
+it wasn't for those letters. She's been afraid of what might happen if
+Eustis or Laurence found out about them--somebody ran the risk of
+being put to bed with a shovel. There's where they had her. A bit
+unbearable to think of, isn't it?" He spoke so mildly that I looked up
+with astonishment and some disappointment.
+
+"Why," said I, ruefully, "if that's as far as you've gone, we are
+still at the starting point."
+
+"No need to go farther and fare worse, parson," said he, equably. "I
+saw that the first minute I could see anything but red. Yet do you
+know, when she was telling us about it, I thought like a fool of
+everything but the right thing, from sandbagging and shanghaing
+Inglesby, down to holding up Hunter with an automatic?
+
+"When I got my reason on straight, I went back to the starting
+point--the letters, parson, the letter in the safe in Hunter's office.
+Given the letters she'd be free--the one thing Inglesby doesn't want
+to happen. We've got to have those letters."
+
+My mouth was parched as with fever and I saw him through a blur.
+
+"I don't know," he went on, "if you agree with me, parson, but to my
+mind the best way to fight the devil is with fire. What did you do
+with those tools?"
+
+"_Tools?_" in a dry whisper. "_Tools_, John?"
+
+"Tools. Kit. Layout. You had them. Could you put your hand on them in
+a hurry to-night? Don't stare so, man! And for the Lord's love don't
+you tell me you destroyed them! What did you do with my tools?"
+
+The four winds roared in my ears, and one lifted the hair on my scalp,
+as if the Rider on the Pale Horse had passed by. By way of reply I
+placed a heavy package on the table before him, slumped into my chair,
+and covered my face with my hands. Oh, Stanislaus, little saint, what
+had we done between us to-night to the Butterfly Man?
+
+When I looked up again he had risen. With his hands gripping the edge
+of the table until the knuckles showed white, and his neck stretched
+out, he was staring with all his eyes. A low whistle escaped him.
+Wonder, incredulity, a sort of ironic amusement, and a growing,
+iron-jawed determination, expressed themselves in his changing
+countenance. Once or twice he wet his lips and swallowed. Then he sat
+down again, deliberately, and fixed upon me a long and somewhat
+disconcerting stare, as if he were rearranging and tabulating his
+estimate of Father Armand Jean De Rancé. He took his head in his
+hands, and with slitted eyes considered the immediate course of action
+to which the possession of that package committed him. One surmised
+that he was weighing and providing for every possible contingency.
+
+Tentatively he spread out his fine hands, palms uppermost, and flexed
+them; then, turning them, he laid them flat upon the table and again
+spread out his fingers. They were notable hands--shapely, supple,
+strong as steel, the thin-skinned fingertips as delicate and sensitive
+of touch as the antennæ he was used to handling. They were even more
+capable than of old, because of the exquisite work they had been
+trained to accomplish, work to which only the most skilled lapidary's
+is comparable. Apparently satisfied, he drew the bundle toward him.
+Before he opened it he lifted those cool, blue, and ironic eyes to
+mine; and I am sure I was by far the paler and more shaken of the two.
+
+"They were in the crook of St. Stanislaus' arm." I tried to keep my
+voice steady. "I was praying--when you were gone." Somehow, I did not
+find it easy to explain to him. "And ... I remembered.... And I
+brought them with me ... so in case you also ... remembered--" I could
+go no further. I broke into a sort of groaning cry: "Oh, John, John!
+My son, my son!"
+
+"Steady!" said he. "Of course you remembered, parson. It's the only
+way. Didn't I tell her there's always a way out? Well, here it is!"
+His funny, twisted smile came to his lips; it twisted the heart in my
+breast. No thought of himself, of what this thing might mean to him,
+seemed to cross his mind.
+
+"I prayed," said I, almost sobbing, "I prayed. And, John, there stood
+St. Stanislaus--" I stopped again, choking.
+
+He nodded, understandingly. He was methodically spreading out the not
+unbeautiful instruments. And as he picked them up one by one, handling
+them with his strong and expert fingers and testing each with a
+hawk-eyed scrutiny, a most curious and subtle change stole over the
+Butterfly Man.
+
+I felt as if I were witnessing the evocation of something superhuman.
+Horrified and fascinated, I saw what might be called the apotheosis
+of Slippy McGee, so far above him was it, come back and subtly and
+awfully blend with my scientist. It was as if two strong and powerful
+individualities had deliberately joined forces to forge a more vital
+being than either, since the training, knowledge, skill and intellect
+of both would be his to command. If such a man as _this_ ever stepped
+over the deadline he would not be merely "the slickest cracksman in
+America"; he would be one of the master criminals of the earth. I
+fancy he must have felt this intoxicating new access of power, for
+there emanated from him something of a fierce and exalted delight. A
+potentiality, as yet neither good nor evil, he suggested a spiritual
+and physical dynamo.
+
+He gave a tigerish purr of pleasure over the tools, handling them with
+the fingers of the artist and admiring them with the eyes of the
+connoisseur. "The best I could get. All made to order. Tested blue
+steel. I never kicked at the price, and you wouldn't believe me if I
+told you what this layout cost in cold cash. But they paid. Good stuff
+always pays in the long run. It was lucky I winded the cops on that
+last job, or I'd have had to leave them. As it was, I just had time to
+grab them up before I hit the trail for the skyline. They don't need
+anything but a little rubbing--a saint's elbow must be a snug berth. I
+wish I had some juice, though."
+
+"Juice?"
+
+"Nitroglycerine," very gently, as to a child. "It does not make very
+much noise and it saves time when you're in a hurry--as you generally
+are, in this business," he smiled at me quizzically. "Not that one
+can't get along without it." The swift fingers paused for a fraction
+of a second to give a steel drill an affectionate pat. "I used to know
+one of the best ever, who never used anything but a particular drill,
+a pet bit, and his ear. Somebody snitched though, so the last I heard
+of him he was doing a twenty-year stretch. Pity, too. He was an artist
+in his line, that fellow. And his taste in neckties I have never seen
+equaled." The Butterfly Man's voice, evenly pitched and pleasantly
+modulated, a cultivated voice, was quite casual.
+
+He gathered his tools together and replaced them in the old worn case.
+"Wonder if that safe is a side-bolt?" he mused. "Most likely. I dare
+say it's only the average combination. A one-armed yegg could open
+most of the boxes in this town with a tin button-hook. Anyhow, it
+would have to be a new-laid lock _I_ couldn't open. If he's left the
+letters in the safe we're all right--so here's hoping he has. I
+certainly don't want to go to his room unless I have to. Hunter's not
+the sort to sit on his hands, and I'm not feeling what you'd call real
+amiable."
+
+A glance at his face, with little glinting devil-lights shining far
+back in his eyes, set me to babbling:
+
+"Oh, no, no, no, no, that would never do! God forbid that you should
+go to his rooms! He must have left them in the safe! He had to leave
+them in the safe!"
+
+"Sure he's left them in the safe: why shouldn't he?" he made light of
+my palpable fears. Slipping into his gray overcoat, he pulled on his
+felt hat, thrust his hands into his wellworn dogskin gloves, and
+picked up the package. Nobody in the world ever looked less like a
+criminal than this brown-faced, keen-eyed man with his pleasant
+bearing. Why, this was John Flint, the kindly bug-hunter all Appleboro
+loved, "that good and kind and Christian man, our brother John Flint,
+sometimes known as the Butterfly Man."
+
+"Now, don't you worry any at all, parson," he was saying. "There's
+nothing to be afraid of. I'll take care of myself, and I'll get those
+letters if they're in existence. I've got to get them. What else was I
+born for, I'd like to know?"
+
+The question caught me like a lash across the face.
+
+"You were born," I said violently, "to win an honored name, to do a
+work of inestimable value. And you are deliberately and quixotically
+risking it, and I allow you to risk it, because a girl's happiness
+hangs in the balance! If you are detected it means your own ruin, for
+you could never explain away those tools. Yes! You are facing possible
+ruin and disgrace. You might have to give up your work for years--have
+you considered that? Oh, John Flint, stop a moment, and reflect! There
+is nothing in this for you, John, nothing but danger. No, there's
+nothing in it for you, except--"
+
+He held up his hand, with a gesture of dignity and reproach.
+
+"--except that I get my big chance to step in and save the girl I
+happen to love, from persecution and wretchedness, if not worse," said
+he simply. "If I can do that, what the devil does it matter what
+happens to _me_? You talk about name and career! Man, man, what could
+anything be worth to me if I had to know she was unhappy?"
+
+The tides of emotion rushed over him and flooded his face into a
+shining-eyed passion nakedly unashamed and beautiful. And I had
+thought him casual, carelessly accepting a risk!
+
+"Parson," he wondered, "didn't you _know_? No, I suppose it wouldn't
+occur to anybody that a man of my sort should love a girl of hers. But
+I do. I think I did the first time I ever laid eyes on her, and she a
+girl-kid in a red jacket, with curls about her shoulders and a face
+like a little new rose in the morning. Remember her eyes, parson, how
+blue they were? And how she looked at me, so friendly--_me_, mind you,
+as I was! And she handed me a Catocala moth, and she gave me Kerry.
+'You're such a good man, Mr. Flint!' says she, and by God, she meant
+it! Little Mary Virginia! And she got fast hold of something in me
+that was never anybody's but hers, that couldn't ever belong to
+anybody but her, no, not if I lived for a thousand years and had the
+pick of the earth.
+
+"It wasn't until she came back, though, that I knew I belonged to her
+who could never belong to me. If I was dead at one end of the world
+and she dead at the other, we couldn't be any farther apart than life
+has put us two who can see and speak to each other every day!"
+
+"And yet--" he looked at me now and laughed boyishly, "and yet it
+isn't for Mayne, that she loves, it isn't for you, nor Eustis, nor any
+man but me alone to help her, by being just what I am and what I have
+been! Risks? Fail her? _I?_ I couldn't fail her. I'll get those
+letters for her to-night, if Hunter has hidden them in the beam of his
+eye!" He turned to me with a sudden white glare of ferocity that
+appalled me. "I could kill him with my hands," said he, with a quiet
+cold deadliness to chill one's marrow, "and Inglesby after him, for
+what they've made her endure! When I think of to-night--that brute
+daring to touch _her_ with his swine's mouth--I--I--"
+
+His face was convulsed; but after a moment's fierce struggle the
+disciplined spirit conquered.
+
+"No, there's been enough trouble for her without that, so they're safe
+from me, the both of them. I wouldn't do anything to imperil her
+happiness to save my own life. She was born to be happy--and she's
+going to have her chance. _I'll_ see to that, Mary Virginia!"
+
+The man seemed to grow, to expand, to tower giant-like before me. Next
+to the white heat of this lava-flow of pure feeling, all other loves
+lavished upon Mary Virginia during her fortunate life seemed dwarfed
+and petty. Beside it Inglesby's furious desire shrunk into a loathsome
+thing, small and crawling; and my own affection was only an old
+priest's; and even the strong and faithful love of Laurence appeared
+pale and boyish in the light of this majestic passion which gave all
+and in return asked only the right to serve and to save.
+
+"_Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm; for
+love is strong as death_ ...
+
+"_Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if
+a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would
+utterly be contemned_."
+
+Trying desperately to cling to such rags and tatters of common sense
+as I could lay hold upon:
+
+"There is your duty to yourself," I managed to say. "Yes, yes, one
+owes a great duty to oneself and one's work, John. You are risking too
+much--name, friends, honor, work, freedom. For God's sake, John, do
+not underestimate the danger. You have not had time to consider it."
+
+"Ho! Listen to the parson preaching self-interest!" he mocked. "He's a
+fine one to do that--at this hour of his life!"
+
+"I tell you you endanger everything," I insisted. I might bring that
+package, but at least he shouldn't rush upon the knife unwarned.
+
+"I know that--I'm no fool. And _I_ tell _you_ it's worth while.
+To-night makes me and my whole life worth while, the good and the bad
+of it together. Risks? I'll take all that's coming. You stay here and
+say some prayers for me, parson, if it makes you feel any better. As
+for me, I'm off."
+
+At that I lost my every last shred of commonplace everyday sanity, and
+let myself swing without further reserve into the wild current of the
+night.
+
+"Oh, very well!" said I shrilly. "You will take chances, you will run
+risks, _hein?_ My friend, you do not stir out of this house this night
+without _me_!" He stared, as well he might, but I folded my arms and
+stared back. Let him leave me, bent on such an errand? I to sit at
+home idly, awaiting the issue, whatever it might be?
+
+"I mean it, John Flint. I am going with you. Was it not I, then, who
+saved those tools and had them ready to your hand? Whatever happens to
+you now happens to me as well. It is quite useless for you to argue,
+to scowl, to grind the teeth, to swear like that. And it will be
+dangerous to try to trick me: I am going!"
+
+For he was protesting, violently and profanely. His profanity was so
+sincere, so earnest, so heartfelt, that it mounted into heights of
+real eloquence. Also, he did everything but knock me down and lock me
+indoors.
+
+"Whatever happens to you happens to me," I repeated doggedly, and I
+was not to be moved. I had a hazy notion that somehow my being with
+him might protect him in case of any untoward happening, and minimize
+his risks.
+
+I ran into his bedroom and clapped his best hat on my head, leaving my
+biretta on his bed; and I put on his new dark overcoat over my
+cassock. Both the borrowed garments were too big for me, the hat
+coming down over my ears, the coat-sleeves over my hands. I being as
+thin as a peeled willow-wand, and the clothes hanging upon me as on a
+clothes-rack, I dare say I cut a sad and ludicrous figure enough.
+Flint, standing watching me with his burglarious bundle under his arm,
+gave an irrepressible chuckle and his eyes crinkled.
+
+"Parson," said he solemnly, "I've seen all sorts and sizes and colors
+and conditions of crooks, up and down the line, in my time and
+generation, but take it from me you're a libel and an outrage on the
+whole profession. Why, you crazy he-angel, you'd break their hearts
+just to look at you!" And he grinned. At a moment like that, he
+grinned, with a sort of gay and light-hearted _diablerie_. They are a
+baffling and inexplicable folk, the Irish. I suppose God loves the
+Irish because He doesn't really know how else to take them.
+
+"It will break my own heart, and possibly my mother's and Mary
+Virginia's will break to keep it company, if anything evil happens to
+you this night," said I, severely. I was in no grinning humor, me.
+
+He reached over and carefully buttoned, with one hand, the too-big
+collar about my throat. For a moment, with that odd, little-boy
+gesture of his, he held on to my sleeve. He looked down at me; and his
+eyes grew wide, his face melted into a whimsical tenderness.
+
+"When you get to heaven, parson, you'll keep them all busy a hundred
+years and a day trying to cut and make a suit of sky clothes big
+enough to fit your real measure," said he, irrelevantly. "You real
+thing in holy sports, come on, since you've got to!" With that he blew
+out the light, and we stepped into the cold and windy night. It was
+ten minutes after three.
+
+Armed with bottle-belt, knapsack, and net, many a happy night had I
+gone forth with the Butterfly Man a-hunting for such as we might find
+of our chosen prey. Armed now with nothing more nor less formidable
+than the black rosary upon which my hand shut tightly, I, Armand De
+Rancé, priest and gentleman, walked forth with Slippy McGee in those
+hours when deep sleep falls upon the spirit of man, for to aid and
+encourage and abet and assist and connive at, nothing more nor less
+than burglary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE I O U OF SLIPPY MCGEE
+
+
+The wind that precedes the dawn was blowing, a freakish and impish
+wind though not a vicious one. One might imagine it animated by those
+sportive and capricious nature-spirits an old Father of the church
+used to call the monkeys of God. Every now and then a great deluge of
+piled-up clouds broke into tossing billows and went rolling and
+tumbling across the face of the sky, and in and out of these swirling
+masses the high moon played hide-and-seek and the stars showed like
+pin-points. Such street lights as we have being extinguished at
+midnight, the tree-shaded sidewalks were in impenetrable shadow, the
+gardens that edged them were debatable ground, full of grotesque
+silhouettes, backgrounded by black bulks of silent houses all
+profoundly asleep. As for us, we also were shadows, whose feet were
+soundless on the sandy sidewalks. We moved in the dark like travelers
+in the City of Dreadful Night.
+
+And so we came at last to the red-brick bank, approaching it by the
+long stretch of the McCall garden which adjoins it. For years there
+have been battered "For Sale" signs tacked onto its trees and fences,
+but no one ever came nearer purchasing the McCall property than asking
+the price. Folks say the McCalls believe that Appleboro is going to
+rival New York some of these days, and are holding their garden for
+sky-scraper sites.
+
+I was very grateful to the McCall estimate of Appleboro's future, for
+the long stretch shadowed by their overgrown shrubbery brought us to
+the door leading to the upstair offices, without any possible danger
+of detection.
+
+The bank had been a stately old home before business seized upon it,
+tore out its whole lower floors, and converted it into a strong and
+commodious bank. It is the one building in all Appleboro that keeps a
+light burning all night, a proceeding some citizens regard as
+unnecessary and extravagant; for is not Old Man Jackson there employed
+as night watchman? Old Man Jackson lost a finger and a piece of an ear
+before Appomattox, and the surrender deprived him of all opportunity
+to repay in kind. It was his cherished hope that "some smartybus
+crooks 'd try to git in my bank some uh these hyuh nights--an' I
+cert'nly hope to God they'll be Yankees, that's all."
+
+Somehow, they hadn't tried. Perhaps they had heard of Old Man
+Jackson's watchful waiting and knew he wasn't at all too proud to
+fight. His quarters was a small room in the rear of the building,
+which he shared with a huge gray tomcat named Mosby. With those two on
+guard, Appleboro knew its bank was as impregnable as Gibraltar. But as
+nobody could possibly gain entrance to the vaults from above, the
+upper portion of the building, given over to offices, was of course
+quite unguarded.
+
+One reached these upper offices by a long walled passageway to the
+left, where the sidewall of the bank adjoins the McCall garden. The
+door leading to this stairway is not flush with the street, but is set
+back some feet; this forms a small alcove, which the light flickering
+through the bank's barred windows does not quite reach.
+
+John Flint stepped into this small cavern and I after him. As if by
+magic the locked door opened, and we moved noiselessly up the narrow
+stairs with tin signs tacked on them. At the head of the flight we
+paused while the flashlight gave us our bearings. Here a short passage
+opens into the wide central hall. Inglesby's offices are to the left,
+with the windows opening upon the tangled wilderness of the McCall
+place.
+
+Right in front of us half a dozen sets of false teeth, arranged in a
+horrid circle around a cigar-box full of extracted molars such as made
+one cringe, grinned bitingly out of a glass case before the dentist's
+office door. The effect was of a lipless and ghastly laugh.
+
+Before the next door a fatuously smiling pink-and-white bust simpered
+out of the Beauty Parlor's display-case, a bust elaborately coiffured
+with pounds of yellow hair in which glittered rhinestone buckles. Hair
+of every sort and shade and length was clustered about her, as if she
+were the presiding genius of some barbarian scalping-cult. Seen at
+that hour, in the pale luster of the flashlight, this sorry plunder of
+lost teeth and dead hair made upon one a melancholy impression,
+disparaging to humanity. I had scant time to moralize on hair and
+teeth, however, for Flint was stopping before a door the neat brass
+plate of which bore upon it:
+
+          _Mr. Inglesby_.
+
+Mr. Inglesby had a desk downstairs in the bank, in the little pompous
+room marked "President's Office," where at stated hours and times he
+presided grandly; just as he had a big bare office at the mills, where
+he was rather easy of access, willing to receive any one who might
+chance to catch him in. But these rooms we were entering without
+permission were the sanctum sanctorum, the center of that wide web
+whose filaments embraced and ensnared the state. It would be about as
+easy to stroll casually into the Vatican for an informal chat with the
+Holy Father, to walk unannounced into the presence of the Dalai Lama,
+or to drop in neighborly on the Tsar of all the Russias, as to
+penetrate unasked into these offices during the day.
+
+We stepped upon the velvet square of carpet covering the floor of what
+must have once been a very handsome guest chamber and was now a very
+handsome private office. One had to respect the simple and solid
+magnificence of the mahogany furnishings, the leather-covered chairs,
+the big purposeful desk. Above the old-fashioned marble mantel hung a
+life-sized portrait in oils of Inglesby himself. The artist had done
+his sitter stern justice--one might call the result retribution; and
+one wondered if Inglesby realized how immensely revealing it was.
+There he sat, solid, successful, informed with a sort of brutal
+egotism that never gives quarter. In despite of a malevolent
+determination to look pleasant, his smile was so much more of a threat
+than a promise that one could wish for his own sake he had scowled
+instead. He is a throaty man, is Inglesby; and this, with an
+uncompromising squareness of forehead, a stiffness of hair, and a
+hard hint of white in the eyes, lent him a lowering likeness to an
+unpedigreed bull.
+
+John Flint cast upon this charming likeness one brief and pregnant
+glance.
+
+"Regular old Durham shorthorn, isn't he?" he commented in a low voice.
+"Wants to charge right out of his frame and trample. Take a look at
+that nose, parson--like a double-barreled shotgun, for all the world!
+Beautiful brute, Inglesby. Makes you think of that minotaur sideshow
+they used to put over on the Greeks."
+
+In view of Laurence and of Mary Virginia, I saw the resemblance.
+
+Mr. Hunter's office was less formal than Mr. Inglesby's, and furnished
+with an exact and critical taste alien to Appleboro, where many a
+worthy citizen's office trappings consist of an alpaca coat, a chair
+and a pine table, three or four fly-specked calendars and shabby
+ledgers, and a box of sawdust. To these may sometimes be added a pot
+of paste with a dead cockroach in it, or a hound dog either scratching
+fleas or snapping at flies.
+
+Here the square of carpet was brown as fallen pine-needles in October,
+the walls were a soft tan, the ceiling and woodwork ivory-toned. One
+saw between the windows a bookcase filled with handsomely bound books,
+and on top of it a few pieces of such old china as would enrapture my
+mother. The white marble mantel held one or two signed photographs in
+silver frames, a pair of old candlesticks of quaint and pleasing
+design, and a dull red pottery vase full of Japanese quince. There
+were a few good pictures on the walls--a gay impudent Detaille Lancer
+whose hardy face of a fighting Frenchman warmed one's heart; some
+sketches signed with notable American names; and above the mantel a
+female form clothed only in the ambient air, her long hair swept back
+from her shoulders, and a pearl-colored dove alighting upon her
+outstretched finger.
+
+I suppose one might call the whole room beautiful, for even the desk
+was of that perfection of simplicity whose cost is as rubies. It was
+not, however, a womanish room; there was no slightest hint of
+femininity in its uncluttered, sane, forceful orderliness. It was
+rather like Hunter himself--polished, perfect, with a note of finality
+and of fitness upon it like a hall-mark. Nothing out of keeping,
+nothing overdone. Even the red petal fallen from the pottery vase on
+the white marble mantel was a last note of perfection.
+
+Flint glanced about him with the falcon-glance that nothing escapes.
+For a moment the light stayed upon the nude figure over the
+mantel--the one real nude in all Appleboro, which cherishes family
+portraits of rakehelly old colonials in wigs, chokers, and
+tight-fitting smalls, and lolloping ladies with very low necks and
+sixteen petticoats, but where scandalized church-goers have been known
+to truss up a little plaster copy of the inane Greek Slave in a
+pocket-handkerchief, by way of needful drapery.
+
+"What I want to know is, _why_ a lady should have to strip to the buff
+just to play with a pigeon?" breathed John Flint, and his tone was
+captious.
+
+It did not strike me as being to the last degree whimsical,
+improbable, altogether absurd, that such a man should pause at such a
+time to comment upon art as he thinks it isn't. On the contrary it was
+a consistent and coherent feature of that astounding nightmare in
+which we figured. The absurd and the impossible always happen in
+dreams. I am sure that if the dove on the woman's finger had opened
+its painted bill and spoken, say about the binomial theorem, or the
+Effect of Too Much Culture upon Women's Clubs, I should have listened
+with equal gravity and the same abysmal absence of surprise. I
+pattered platitudinously:
+
+"The greatest of the Greeks considered the body divine in itself, my
+son, and so their noblest art was nude. Some moderns have thought
+there is no real art that is not nude. Truth itself is naked."
+
+"Aha!" said my son, darkly. "I see! You take off your pants when you
+go out to feed your chickens, say, and you're not bughouse. You're
+art. Well, if Truth is naked, thank God the rest of us are liars!"
+
+What I have here set down was but the matter of a moment. Flint
+brushed it aside like a cobweb and set briskly about his real
+business. Over in the recess next to the fireplace was the safe, and
+before this he knelt.
+
+"Hold the light!" he ordered in a curt whisper. "There--like that.
+Steady now." My hand closed as well upon the rosary I carried, and I
+clung to the beads as the shipwrecked cling to a spar. The familiar
+feel of them comforted me.
+
+I do not know to this day the make of that safe, nor its actual
+strength, and I have always avoided questioning John Flint about it. I
+do know it seemed incredibly strong, big, heavy, ungetatable. There
+was a dark-colored linen cover on top of it, embroidered with yellow
+marguerites and their stiff green leaves. And there was a brass
+fern-jar with claw feet, and rings on the sides that somehow made me
+think of fetters upon men's wrists.
+
+"A little lower--to the left. So!" he ordered, and with steady fingers
+I obeyed. He stood out sharply in the clear oval--the "cleverest crook
+in all America" at work again, absorbed in his task, expert, a
+mind-force pitting itself against inanimate opposition. He was
+smiling.
+
+The tools lay beside him and quite by instinct his hand reached out
+for anything it needed. I think he could have done his work
+blindfolded. Once I saw him lay his ear against the door, and I
+thought I heard a faint click. A gnawing rat might have made something
+like the noise of the drill biting its way. With this exception an
+appalling silence hung over the room. I could hardly breathe in it. I
+gripped the rosary and told it, bead after bead.
+
+_"Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death--"_
+
+There are moments when time loses its power and ceases to be; before
+our hour we seem to have stepped out of it and into eternity, in which
+time does not exist, and wherein there can be no relation of time
+between events. They stand still, or they stretch to indefinite and
+incredible lengths--all, all outside of time, which has no power upon
+them. So it was now. Every fraction of every second of every minute
+lengthened into centuries, eternities passed between minutes. The
+hashish-eater knows something of this terror of time, and I seemed to
+have eaten hashish that night.
+
+I could still see him crouching before the safe; and all the while the
+eternities stretched and stretched on either side of us, infinities I
+could only partly bridge over with Hailmarys and Ourfathers.
+
+_"And lead us not into temptation ... but deliver us from evil ..."_
+
+Although I watched him attentively, being indeed unable to tear my
+eyes away from him, and although I held the light for him with such a
+steady hand, I really do not know what he did, nor how he forced that
+safe. I understand it took him a fraction over fourteen minutes.
+
+"Here she comes!" he breathed, and the heavy door was open, revealing
+the usual interior, with ledgers, and a fairsized steel money-vault,
+which also came open a moment later. Flint glanced over the contents,
+and singled out from other papers two packages of letters held
+together by stout elastic bands, and with pencil notations on the
+corner of each envelope, showing the dates. He ran over both, held up
+the smaller of the two, and I saw, with a grasp of inexpressible
+relief, the handwriting of Mary Virginia.
+
+He locked the vault, shut the heavy door of the rifled safe, and began
+to gather his tools together.
+
+"You have forgotten to put the other packages back," I reminded him. I
+was in a raging fever of impatience to be gone, to fly with the
+priceless packet in my hand.
+
+"No, I'm not forgetting. I saw a couple of the names on the envelopes
+and I rather think these letters will be a whole heap interesting to
+look over," said he, imperturbably. "It's a hunch, parson, and I've
+gotten in the habit of paying attention to hunches. I'll risk it on
+these, anyhow. They're in suspicious company and I'd like to know
+why." And he thrust the package into the crook of his arm, along with
+the tools.
+
+The light was carefully flashed over every inch of the space we had
+traversed, to make sure that no slightest trace of our presence was
+left. As we walked through Inglesby's office John Flint ironically
+saluted the life-like portrait:
+
+"You've had a ring twisted in your nose for once, old sport!" said he,
+and led me into the dark hall. We moved and the same exquisite caution
+we had exercised upon entering, for we couldn't afford to have Dan
+Jackson's keen old ears detect footfalls overhead at that hour of the
+morning. Now we were at the foot of the long stairs, and Flint had
+soundlessly opened and closed the last door between us and freedom.
+And now we were once more in the open air, under the blessed shadow of
+the McCall trees, and walking close to their old weather-beaten fence.
+The light was still shining in the bank, and I knew that that
+redoubtable old rebel of a watchman was peacefully sleeping with his
+gray guerilla of a marauding cat beside him. He could afford to sleep
+in peace. He had not failed in his trust, for the intruders had no
+designs upon the bank's gold. Questioned, he could stoutly swear that
+nobody had entered the building. In proof, were not all doors locked?
+Who should break into a man's office and rob his safe just to get a
+package of love-letters--if Inglesby made complaint?
+
+I remember we stood leaning against the McCall fence for a few
+minutes, for my strength had of a sudden failed, my head spun like a
+top, and my legs wavered under me.
+
+"Buck up!" said Flint's voice in my ear. "It's all over, and the
+baby's named for his Poppa!" His arm went about me, an arm like a
+steel bar. Half led, half carried, I went staggering on beside him
+like a drunken man, clutching a rosary and a packet of love-letters.
+
+The streets were still dark and deserted, the whole town slept. But
+over in the east, when one glimpsed the skies above the trees, a
+nebulous gray was stealing upon the darkness; and the morning star
+blazed magnificently, in a space that seemed to have been cleared for
+it. Somewhere, far off, an ambitious rooster crowed to make the sun
+rise.
+
+It took us a long time to reach home. It was all of a quarter past
+four when we turned into the Parish House gate, cut across the garden,
+and reached Flint's rooms. Faint, trembling in every limb, I fell into
+a chair, and through a mist saw him kneel and blow upon the coals of
+the expiring fire, upon which he dropped a lightwood knot. A ruddy
+glow went dancing up the chimney. Then he was beside me again. Very
+gently he removed hat and overcoat. And then I was sitting peacefully
+in the Morris chair, in my old cassock, and with my own old biretta on
+my head; and there was no longer that thin buzzing, shrill and
+torturing as a mosquito's, singing in my ears. At my knee stood Kerry,
+with his beautiful hazel eyes full of a grave concern; and beside him,
+calm and kind and matter-of-fact, the Butterfly Man himself stood
+watching me with an equal regard. I rubbed my forehead. The incredible
+had happened, and like all incredible things it had been almost
+ridiculously simple and easy of accomplishment. Here we were, we two,
+priest and naturalist, in our own workroom, with an old dog wagging
+his tail beside us. Could anything be more commonplace? The last trace
+of nightmare vanished, as smoke dispelled by the wind. If Mary
+Virginia's letters had not been within reach of my hand I would have
+sworn I was just awake out of a dream of that past hour.
+
+"She has escaped from them, they cannot touch her, she is free!" I
+exulted. "John, John, you have saved our girl! No matter what they do
+to Eustis they can't drag her into the quicksands _now_."
+
+But he went walking up and down, shoulders squared, face uplifted. One
+might think that after such a night he would have been humanly tired,
+but he had clean forgotten his body. His eyes shone as with a flame
+lit from inward, and I think there was on him what the Irish people
+call the _Aisling_, the waking vision. For presently he began to
+speak, as to Somebody very near him.
+
+"Oh, Lord God!" said the Butterfly Man, with a reverent and fierce
+joy, "she's going to have her happiness now, and it wasn't holy priest
+nor fine gentleman you picked out to help her toward it--it was me,
+Slippy McGee, born in the streets and bred in the gutter, with the
+devil knows who for his daddy and a name that's none of his own! For
+that I'm Yours for keeps: _You've got me_.
+
+"You've done all even God Almighty can do, given me more than I ever
+could have asked You for--and now it's up to me to make good--and I'll
+do it!"
+
+There came to listening me something of the emotion I experienced when
+I said my first Mass--as if I had been brought so close to our Father
+that I could have put out my hand and touched Him. Ah! I had had a
+very small part to play in this man's redemption. I knew it now, and
+felt humbled and abashed, and yet grateful that even so much had been
+allowed me. Not I, but Love, had transformed a sinner and an outlaw
+into a great scientist and a greater lover. And I remembered Mary
+Virginia's childish hand putting into his the gray-winged Catocala,
+and how the little moth, raising the sad-colored wings worn to suit
+his surroundings, revealed beneath that disfiguring and disguising
+cloak the exquisite and flower-like loveliness of the underwings.
+
+He paused in his swinging stride, and looked down at me a bit shyly.
+
+"Parson--you see how it is with me?"
+
+"I see. And I think she is the greater lady for it and you the finer
+gentleman," said I stoutly. "It would honor her, if she were ten times
+what she is--and she is Mary Virginia."
+
+"She is Mary Virginia," said the Butterfly Man, "and I am--what I am.
+Yet somehow I feel sure I can care for her, that I can go right on
+caring for her to the end of time, without hurt to her or sorrow to
+me." And after a pause, he added, deliberately:
+
+"I found something better than a package of letters to-night, parson.
+I found--_Me_."
+
+For awhile neither of us spoke. Then he said, speculatively:
+
+"Folks give all sorts of things to the church--dedicate them in
+gratitude for favors they fancy they've received, don't they? Lamps,
+and models of ships, and glass eyes and wax toes and leather hands,
+and crutches and braces, and that sort of plunder? Well, I'm moved to
+make a free-will offering myself. I'm going to give the church my
+kit, and you can take it from me the old Lady will never get her
+clamps on another set like that until Gabriel blows his trumpet in the
+morning. Parson, I want you to put those tools back where you had
+them, for I shall never touch them again. I couldn't. They--well,
+they're sort of holy from now on. They're my IOU. Will you do it for
+me?"
+
+"Yes!" said I.
+
+"I might have known you would!" said he, smiling. "Just one more
+favor, parson--may I put her letters in her hands, myself?"
+
+"My son, my son, who but you should do that?" I pushed the package
+across the table.
+
+"Great Scott, parson, here it is striking five o'clock, and you've
+been up all night!" he exclaimed, anxiously. "Here--no more gassing.
+You come lie down on my bed and snooze a bit. I'll call you in plenty
+of time for mass."
+
+I was far too spent and tired to move across the garden to the Parish
+House. I suffered myself to be put to bed like a child, and had my
+reward by falling almost immediately into a dreamless sleep, nor did I
+stir until he called me, a couple of hours later. He himself had not
+slept, but had employed the time in going through the letters open on
+his table. He pointed to them now, with a grim smile.
+
+"Parson!" said he, and his eyes glittered. "Do you know what we've
+stumbled upon? Dynamite! Man, anybody holding that bunch of mail could
+blow this state wide open! So much for a hunch, you see!"
+
+"You mean--"
+
+"I mean I've got the cream off Inglesby's most private deals, that's
+what I mean! I mean I could send him and plenty of his pals to the
+pen. Everybody's been saying for years that there hasn't been a rotten
+deal pulled off that he didn't boss and get away with it. But nobody
+could prove it. He's had the men higher-up eating out of his
+hand--sort of you pat my head and I'll pat yours arrangement--and
+here's the proof, in black and white. Don't you understand? Here's the
+proof: these get him with the goods!
+
+"These," he slapped a letter, "would make any Grand Jury throw fits,
+make every newspaper in the state break out into headlines like a kid
+with measles, and blow the lid off things in general--if they got out.
+
+"Inglesby's going to shove Eustis under, is he? Not by a jugfull. He's
+going to play he's a patent life-preserver. He's going to _be_ that
+good Samaritan he's been shamming. Talk about poetic justice--this
+will be like wearing shoes three sizes too small for him, with a
+bunion on every toe!" And when I looked at him doubtfully, he laughed.
+
+"You can't see how it's going to be managed? Didn't you ever hear of
+the grapevine telegraph? Well then, dear George receives a grapevine
+wireless bright and early to-morrow morning. A word to the wise is
+sufficient."
+
+"He will employ detectives," said I, uneasily.
+
+The Butterfly Man looked at me quizzically.
+
+"_With_ an eagle eye and a walrus mustache," said he, grinning. "Sure.
+But if the plainclothes nose around, are they going to sherlock the
+parish priest and the town bughunter? _We_ haven't got any interest in
+Mr. Inglesby's private correspondence, have we? Suppose Miss Eustis's
+letters are returned to her, what does that prove? Why, nothing at
+all,--except that it wasn't her correspondence the fellows that
+cracked that safe were after. We should worry!
+
+"Say, though, don't you wish you could see them when they stroll down
+to those beautiful offices and go for to open that nice burglar-proof
+safe with the little brass flower-pot on top of it? What a joke! Holy
+whiskered black cats, what a joke!"
+
+"I'm afraid Mr. Inglesby's sense of humor isn't his strong point,"
+said I. "Not that I have any sympathy for him. I think he is getting
+only what he deserves."
+
+"_Alexander the coppersmith wrought me much evil. May God requite him
+according to his works!_" murmured the Butterfly Man, piously, and
+chuckled. "Don't worry, parson--Alexander's due to fall sick with the
+pip to-day or to-morrow. What do you bet he don't get it so bad he'll
+have to pull up all his pretty plans by the roots, leave Mr. Hunter in
+charge, and go off somewhere to take mudbaths for his liver? Believe
+me, he'll need them! Why, the man won't be able to breathe easy any
+more--he'll be expecting one in the solar plexus any minute, not
+knowing any more than Adam's cat who's to hand it to him. He can't
+tell who to trust and who to suspect. If you want to know just how
+hard Alexander's going to be requited according to his works, take a
+look at these." He pointed to the letters.
+
+I did take a look, and I admit I was frightened. It seemed to me
+highly unsafe for plain folks like us to know such things about such
+people. I was amazed to the point of stupefaction at the corruption
+those communications betrayed, the shameless and sordid disregard of
+law and decency, the brutal and cynical indifference to public
+welfare. At sight of some of the signatures my head swam--I felt
+saddened, disillusioned, almost in despair for humanity. I suppose
+Inglesby had thought it wiser to preserve these letters--possibly for
+his own safety; but no wonder he had locked them up! I looked at the
+Butterfly Man openmouthed.
+
+"You wouldn't think folks wearing such names could be that rotten,
+would you? Some of them pillars of the church, too, and married to
+good women, and the fathers of nice kids! Why, I have known crooks
+that the police of a dozen states were after, that wouldn't have been
+caught dead on jobs like some of these. Inglesby won't know it, but he
+ought to thank his stars _we've_ got his letters instead of the State
+Attorney, for I shan't use them unless I have to.... Parson, you
+remember a bluejay breaking up a nest on me once, and what Laurence
+said when I wanted to wring the little crook's neck? That the thing
+isn't to reform the jay but to keep him from doing it again? That's
+the cue."
+
+He gathered up the scattered letters, made a neat package of them, and
+put it in a table drawer behind a stack of note-books. And then he
+reached over and touched the other package, the letters written in
+Mary Virginia's girlish hand.
+
+"Here's her happiness--long, long years of it ahead of her," he said
+soberly. "As for you, you take back those tools, and go say mass."
+
+Outside it was broad bright day, a new beautiful day, and the breath
+of the morning blew sweetly over the world. The Church was full of a
+clear and early light, the young pale gold of the new Spring sun.
+None of the congregation had as yet arrived. Before I went into the
+sacristy to put on my vestments, I gave back into St. Stanislaus'
+hands the IOU of Slippy McGee.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+BETWEEN A BUTTERFLY'S WINGS
+
+
+There was a glamour upon it. One knew it was going to grow into one of
+those wonderful and shining days in whose enchanted hours any
+exquisite miracle might happen. I am perfectly sure that the Lord God
+walked in the garden in the cool of an April day, and that it was a
+morning in spring when the angels visited Abraham, sitting watchful in
+the door of his tent.
+
+There was in the air itself something long-missed and come back, a
+heady and heart-moving delight, a promise, a thrill, a whisper of
+"_April! April!_" that the Green Things and the hosts of the Little
+People had heard overnight. In the dark the sleeping souls of the
+golden butterflies had dreamed it, known it was a true Word, and now
+they were out, "Little flames of God" dancing in the Sunday sunlight.
+The Red Gulf Fritillary had heard it, and here she was, all in her
+fine fulvous frock besmocked with black velvet, and her farthingale
+spangled with silver. And the gallant Red Admiral, the brave beautiful
+Red Admiral that had dared unfriendlier gales, trimmed his painted
+sails to a wind that was the breath of spring.
+
+Over by the gate the spirea had ventured into showering sprays
+exhaling a shy and fugitive fragrance, and what had been a blur of
+gray cables strung upon the oaks had begun to bud with emerald and
+blossom with amethyst--the wisteria was a-borning. And one knew there
+was Cherokee rose to follow, that the dogwood was in white, and the
+year's new mintage of gold dandelions was being coined in the fresh
+grass.
+
+There wasn't a bird that wasn't caroling _April!_ at the top of his
+voice from the full of his heart; for wasn't the world alive again,
+wasn't it love-time and nest-time, wasn't it Spring?
+
+Even to the tired faces of my work-folks that shining morning lent a
+light that was hope. Without knowing it, they felt themselves a vital
+part of the reborn world, sharers in its joy because they were the
+children of the common lot, the common people for whom the world is,
+and without whom no world could be. Classes, creeds, nations, gods,
+all these pass and are gone; God, and the common people, and the
+spring remain.
+
+When I was young I liked as well as another to dwell overmuch upon the
+sinfulness of sin, the sorrow of sorrow, the despair of death. Now
+that these three terrible teachers have taught me a truer wisdom and a
+larger faith, I like better to turn to the glory of hope, the wisdom
+of love, and the simple truth that death is just a passing phase of
+life. So I sent my workers home that morning rejoicing with the truth,
+and was all the happier and hopefuller myself because of it.
+
+Afterwards, when Clélie was giving me my coffee and rolls, the
+Butterfly Man came in to breakfast with me, a huge roll of those New
+York newspapers which contain what are mistakenly known as Comic
+Supplements tucked under his arm.
+
+He said he bought them because they "tasted like New York" which they
+do not. Just as Major Cartwright explains his purchase of them by the
+shameless assertion that it just tickles him to death "to see what
+Godforsaken idjits those Yankees can make of themselves when they
+half-way try. Why, suh, one glance at their Sunday newspapers ought to
+prove to any right thinkin' man that it's safer an' saner to die in
+South Carolina than to live in New York!"
+
+_I_ think the Butterfly Man and Major Cartwright buy those papers
+because they think they are _funny_! After they have read and
+sniggered, they donate them to Clélie and Daddy January. And presently
+Clélie distributes them to a waiting colored countryside, which
+wallpapers its houses with them. I have had to counsel the erring and
+bolster the faith of the backsliding under the goggle eyes of inhuman
+creations whose unholy capers have made futile many a prayer. And yet
+the Butterfly Man likes them! Is it not to wonder?
+
+He laid them tenderly upon the table now, and smiled slyly to see me
+eye them askance.
+
+"Did you know," said he, over his coffee, "that Laurence came in this
+morning on the six-o'clock? January had him out in the garden showing
+off the judge's new patent hives, and I stopped on my way to church
+and shook hands over the fence. It was all I could do to keep from
+shouting that all's right with the world, and all he had to do was to
+be glad. I didn't know how much I cared for that boy until this
+morning. Parson, it's a--a terrible thing to love people, when you
+come to think about it, isn't it? I told him you were honing to see
+him: and that we'd be looking for him along about eleven. And I
+intimated that if he didn't show up then I'd go after him with a gun.
+He said he'd be here on the stroke." After a moment, he added gently:
+"I figured they'd be here by then--Madame and Mary Virginia."
+
+"What! You have induced Laurence to come while she is here--without
+giving him any intimation that he is likely to meet her?" I said,
+aghast. "You are a bold man, John Flint!"
+
+The study windows were open and the sweet wind and the warm sun poured
+in unchecked. The stir of bees, the scent of honey-locust just
+opening, drifted in, and the slow solemn clangor of church bells, and
+lilts and flutings and calls and whistlings from the tree-tops. We
+could see passing groups of our neighbors, fathers and mothers
+shepherding little flocks of children in their Sunday best, trotting
+along with demure Sabbath faces on their way to church. The Butterfly
+Man looked out, waved gaily to the passing children, who waved back a
+joyous response, nodded to their smiling parents, followed the flight
+of a tanager's sober spouse, and sniffed the air luxuriously.
+
+"Oh, somebody's got to stage-manage, parson," he said at last, lightly
+enough, but with a hint of tiredness in his eyes. "And then vanish
+behind the scenes, leaving the hero and heroine in the middle of the
+spotlight, with the orchestra tuning up 'The Voice that Breathed o'er
+Eden,'" he finished, without a trace of bitterness. "So I sent Madame
+a note by a little nigger newsie." His eyes crinkled, and he quoted
+the favorite aphorism of the colored people, when they seem to
+exercise a meticulous care: "Brer Rabbit say, 'I trus' no mistake.'"
+
+"You are a bold man," said I again, with a respect that made him
+laugh. Then we went over to his rooms to wait, and while we waited I
+tried to read a chapter of a book I was anxious to finish, but
+couldn't, my eyes being tempted by the greener and fresher page
+opening before them. Flint smoked a virulent pipe and read his papers.
+
+Presently he laid his finger upon a paragraph and handed me the
+paper.... And I read where one "Spike" Frazer had been shot to death
+in a hand-to-hand fight with the police who were raiding a dive
+suspected of being the rendezvous of drug-fiends. Long wanted and at
+last cornered, Frazer had fought tigerishly and died in his tracks,
+preferring death to capture. A sly and secretive creature, he had had
+a checkered career in the depths. It was his one boast that more than
+anybody else he had known and been a sort of protegé of the once
+notorious Slippy McGee, that King of Crooks whose body had been found
+in the East River some years since, and whose daring and mysterious
+exploits were not yet altogether forgotten by the police or the
+underworld.
+
+"_Sic transit gloria mundi!_" said the Butterfly Man in his gentle
+voice, and looked out over the peaceful garden and the Sunday calm
+with inscrutable eyes. I returned the paper with a hand that shook. It
+seemed to me that a deep and solemn hush fell for a moment upon the
+glory of the day, while the specter of what might have been gibbered
+at us for the last time.
+
+Out of the heart of that hush walked two women--one little and rosy
+and white-haired, one tall and pale and beautiful with the beauty upon
+which sorrow has placed its haunting imprint. Her black hair framed
+her face as in ebony, and her blue, blue eyes were shadowed. By an
+odd coincidence she was dressed this morning just as she had been when
+the Butterfly Man first saw her--in white, and over it a scarlet
+jacket. Kerry and little Pitache rose, met them at the gate, and
+escorted them with grave politeness. The Butterfly Man hastily emptied
+his pipe and laid aside his newspapers.
+
+"Your note said we were to come, that everything was all right," said
+my mother, looking up at him with bright and trustful eyes. "Such a
+relief! Because I know you never say anything you don't mean, John."
+
+He smiled, and with a wave of the hand beckoned us into the workroom.
+Madame followed him eagerly and expectantly--she knew her John Flint.
+Mary Virginia came listlessly, dragging her feet, her eyes somber in a
+smileless face. She could not so quickly make herself hope, she who
+had journeyed so far into the arid country of despair. But he, with
+something tender and proud and joyful in his looks, took her
+unresisting hand and drew her forward.
+
+"Mary Virginia!" I had not known how rich and deep the Butterfly Man's
+voice could be. "Mary Virginia, we promised you last night that if you
+would trust us, the Padre and me, we'd find the right way out, didn't
+we? Now this is what happened: the Padre took his troubles to the
+Lord, and the Lord presently sent him back to _me_--with the beginning
+of the answer in his hand! And here's the whole answer, Mary
+Virginia." And he placed in her hand the package of letters that meant
+so much to her.
+
+My mother gave a little scream. "Armand!" she said, fearfully. "She
+has told me all. _Mon Dieu_, how have you two managed this, between
+midnight and morning? My son, you are a De Rancé: look me in the eyes
+and tell me there is nothing wrong, that there will be no ill
+consequences--"
+
+"There won't be any comebacks," said John Flint, with engaging
+confidence. "As for you, Mary Virginia, you don't have to worry for
+one minute about what those fellows can do--because they can't do
+anything. They're double-crossed. Now listen: when you see Hunter, you
+are to say to him, '_Thank you for returning my letters_.' Just that
+and no more. If there's any questioning, _stare_. Stare hard. If
+there's any threatening about your father, _smile_. You can afford to
+smile. They can't touch him. But _how_ those letters came into your
+hands you are never to tell, you understand? They did come and that's
+all that interests you." He began to laugh, softly. "All Hunter will
+want to know is that you've received them. He's too game not to lose
+without noise, and he'll make Inglesby swallow his dose without
+squealing, too. So--you're finished and done with Mr. Hunter and Mr.
+Inglesby!" His voice deepened again, as he added gently: "It was just
+a bad dream, dear girl. It's gone with the night. Now it's morning,
+and you're awake."
+
+But Mary Virginia, white as wax, stared at the letters in her hand,
+and then at me, and trembled.
+
+"Trust us, my child," said I, somewhat troubled. "And obey John Flint
+implicitly. Do just what he tells you to do, say just what he tells
+you to say."
+
+Mary Virginia looked from one to the other, thrust the package upon
+me, walked swiftly up to him, and, laying her hands upon his arms
+stared with passionate earnestness into his face: the kind, wise,
+lovable face that every child in Appleboro County adores, every woman
+trusts, every man respects. Her eyes clung to his, and he met that
+searching gaze without faltering, though it seemed to probe for the
+root of his soul. It was well for Mary Virginia that those brave eyes
+had caught something from the great faces that hung upon his walls and
+kept company and counsel with him day and night, they that conquered
+life and death and turned defeat into victory because they had first
+conquered themselves!
+
+"Yes!" said she, with a deep sigh of relief. "I trust you! Thank God
+for just how much I can believe and trust you!"
+
+I think that meeting face to face that luminous and unfaltering
+regard, Mary Virginia must have divined that which had heretofore been
+hidden from her by the man's invincible modesty and reserve; and being
+most generous and of a large and loving soul herself, I think she
+realized to the uttermost the magnitude of his gift. Her name, her
+secure position, her happiness, the hopes that the coming years were
+to transform into realities--oh, I like to think that Mary Virginia
+saw all this, in one of those lightning-flashes of spiritual insight
+that reveal more than all one's slower years; I like to think she saw
+it given her freely, nobly, with joy, a glorious love-gift from the
+limping man into whose empty hand she had one day put a little gray
+underwing!
+
+I glanced at my mother, and saw by her most expressive face that she
+knew and understood. She had known and understood, long before any of
+us.
+
+"If I might offer a suggestion," I said in as matter-of-fact a voice
+as I could command, "it would be, that the sooner those letters are
+destroyed, the better."
+
+Mary Virginia took them from me and dropped them on the coals
+remaining from last night's fire--the last fire of the season. They
+did not ignite quickly, though they began to turn brown, and thin
+spirals of smoke arose from them. The Butterfly Man knelt, thrust a
+handful of lightwood splinters under the pile, and touched a match
+here and there. When the resinous wood flared up, the letters blazed
+with it. They blazed and then they crumbled; they disappeared in bits
+of charred and black paper that vanished at a touch; they were gone
+while we watched, the girl kneeling upon the hearthrug with her hand
+on Flint's arm, and I with my old heart singing like a skylark in my
+breast, and my mother's mild eyes upon us all.
+
+Life and color and beauty flowed back into Mary Virginia's face and
+music's self sang again in her voice. She was like the day itself,
+reborn out of a dark last night. When the last bit of blackened paper
+went swirling up the chimney, and the two of them had risen, the most
+beautiful and expressive eyes under heaven looked up like blue and
+dewy flowers into the Butterfly Man's face. She was too wise and too
+tender to try to thank him in words, and never while they two lived
+would this be again referred to so much as once by either; but she
+took his hand, palm upward, gave him one deep long upward glance, and
+then bent her beautiful head and dropped into the center of his palm a
+kiss, and closed the fingers gently over it for everlasting keeping
+and remembrance. The eyes brimmed over then, and two large tears fell
+upon his hand and washed her kiss in, indelibly.
+
+None of us four had the power of speech left us. Heaven knows what we
+should have done, if Laurence hadn't opened the door at that moment
+and walked in upon us. I don't think he altogether sensed the
+tenseness of the situation which his coming relieved, but he went pale
+at sight of Mary Virginia, and he would have left incontinently if my
+mother, with a joyous shriek, hadn't pounced upon him.
+
+"Laurence! Why, Laurence! But we didn't expect you home until
+to-morrow night!" said she, kissing him motherly. "My dear, dear boy,
+how glad I am to see you! What happy wind blew you home to-day,
+Laurence?"
+
+"Oh, I finished my work ahead of schedule and got away just as soon as
+I could," Laurence briefly and modestly explained thus that he had won
+his case. He edged toward the door, avoiding Mary Virginia's eyes. He
+had bowed to her with formal politeness. He wondered at the usually
+tactful Madame's open effort to detain him. It was a little too much
+to expect of him!
+
+"I just ran in to see how you all were," he tried to be very casual.
+"See you later, Padre. 'By, p'tite Madame. 'By, Flint." He bowed again
+to Mary Virginia, whose color had altogether left her, and who stood
+there most palpably nervous and distressed.
+
+"Laurence!" The Butterfly Man spoke abruptly. "Laurence, if a chap was
+dying of thirst and the water of life was offered him, he'd be
+considerable of a fool to turn his head aside and refuse to see it,
+wouldn't he?"
+
+Laurence paused. Something in the Butterfly Man's face, something in
+mine and Madame's, but, above all, something in Mary Virginia's,
+arrested him. He stood wavering, and my mother released his arm.
+
+"I take it," said John Flint, boldly plunging to the very heart of the
+matter, "I take it, Laurence, that you still care a very great deal
+for this dear girl of ours?" And now he had taken her hand in his and
+held it comfortingly. "More, say, than you could ever care for anybody
+else, if you lived to rival Methusaleh? So much, Laurence, that not to
+be able to believe she cares the same way for you takes the core out
+of life?" His manner was simple and direct, and so kind that one could
+only answer him in a like spirit. Besides, Laurence loved the
+Butterfly Man even as Jonathan loved David.
+
+"Yes," said the boy honestly, "I still care for her--like that. I
+always did. I always will. She knows." But his voice was toneless.
+
+"Of course you do, kid brother," said Flint affectionately. "Don't you
+suppose I know? But it's just as well for you to say it out loud every
+now and then. Fresh air is good for everything, particularly feelings.
+Keeps 'em fresh and healthy. Now, Mary Virginia, you feel just the
+same way about Laurence, don't you?" And he added: "Don't be ashamed
+to tell the most beautiful truth in the world, my dear. Well?"
+
+She went red and white. She looked entreatingly into the Butterfly
+Man's face. She didn't exactly see why he should drive her thus, but
+she caught courage from his. One saw how wise Flint had been to have
+snared Laurence here just now. One moment she hesitated. Then:
+
+"Yes!" said she, and her head went up proudly. "Yes, oh, yes, I
+care--like that. Only much, much more! I shall always care like that,
+although he probably won't believe me now when I say so. And I can't
+blame him for doubting me."
+
+"But it just happens that I have never been able to make myself doubt
+you," said Laurence gravely. "Why, Mary Virginia, you are _you_."
+
+"Then, Laurence," said the Butterfly Man, quickly, "will you take your
+old friends' word for it--mine, Madame's, the Padre's--that you were
+most divinely right to go on believing in her and loving her, because
+she never for one moment ceased to be worthy of faith and affection?
+No, not for one moment! She couldn't, you know. She's Mary Virginia!
+And will you promise to listen with all your patience to what she may
+think best to tell you presently--and then forget it? You're big
+enough to do that! She's been in sore straits, and she needs all the
+love you have, to help make up to her. Can she be sure of it,
+Laurence?"
+
+Laurence flushed. He looked at his old friend with reproach in his
+fine brown eyes. "You have known me all my life, all of you," said he,
+stiffly. "Have I ever given any of you any reason to doubt me!"
+
+"No, and we don't. Not one of us. But it's good for your soul to say
+things out loud," said Flint comfortably. "And now you've said it,
+don't you think you two had better go on over to the Parish House
+parlor, which is a nice quiet place, and talk this whole business over
+and out--together?"
+
+Laurence looked at Mary Virginia and what he saw electrified him.
+Boyishness flooded him, youth danced in his eyes, beauty was upon him,
+like sunlight.
+
+"Mary Virginia!" said the boy lover to the girl sweetheart, "is it
+really so? I was really right to believe all along that you--care?"
+
+"Laurence, Laurence!" she was half-crying. "Oh, Laurence, are you sure
+_you_ care--yet? You are sure, Laurence? You are _sure_? Because--I--I
+don't think I could stand things now if--if I were mistaken--"
+
+I don't know whether the boy ran to the girl at that, or the girl to
+the boy. I rather think they ran to each other because, in another
+moment, perfectly regardless of us, they were clinging to each other,
+and my mother was walking around them and crying heartily and
+shamelessly, and enjoying herself immensely. Mary Virginia began to
+stammer:
+
+"Laurence, if you only knew--Laurence, if it wasn't for John
+Flint--and the Padre--" The two of them had the two of us, each by an
+arm; and the Butterfly Man was brick-red and furiously embarrassed, he
+having a holy horror of being held up and thanked.
+
+"Why, I did what I did," said he, uncomfortably. "But,"--he brightened
+visibly--"if you _will_ have the truth, have it. If it wasn't for this
+blessed brick of a parson I'd never have been in a position to do
+anything for anybody. Don't you forget that!"
+
+"What ridiculous nonsense the man talks!" said I, exasperated by this
+shameless casuistry. "John Flint raves. As for me--"
+
+"As for you," said he with deep reproach, "you ought to know better
+than to tell such a thumping lie at this time of your life. I'm
+ashamed of you, parson! Why, you know good and well--"
+
+"Why, John Flint, you--" I began, aghast.
+
+My mother began to laugh. "For heaven's sake, thank them both and
+have done with it!" said she, a bit hysterically. "God alone knows how
+they managed, but this thing lies between them, the two great geese.
+Did one ever hear the like?"
+
+"Madame is right, as always," said Laurence gravely. "Remember, I
+don't know anything yet, except that somehow you've brought Mary
+Virginia and me back to each other. That's enough for _me_. I haven't
+got any questions to ask." His voice faltered, and he gripped us by
+the hand in turn, with a force that made me, for one, wince and
+cringe. "And Padre--Bughunter, you both know that I--" he couldn't
+finish.
+
+"That we--" choked Mary Virginia.
+
+"Sure we know," said the Butterfly Man hastily. "Don't you know you're
+our kids and we've got to know?" He began to edge them towards the
+door. I think his courage was getting a little raw about the corners.
+"Yes, you two go on over to the Parish House parlor, where you'll have
+a chance to talk without being interrupted--Madame will see to
+that--and don't you show your noses outside of that room until
+everything's settled the one and only way everything ought to be
+settled." His eyes twinkled as he manoeuvered them outside, and then
+stood in the doorway to watch them walk away--beautiful, youthful,
+radiantly happy, and very close together, the girl's head just on the
+level of the boy's shoulder. He was still faintly smiling when he came
+back to us; if there was pain behind that smile, he concealed it. My
+mother ran to him, impulsively.
+
+"John Flint!" said she, profoundly moved and earnest. "John Flint, the
+good God never gave me but one child, though I prayed for more. Often
+and often have I envied her silly mother Mary Virginia. But now.
+John, I know that if I could have had another child that, after
+Armand, I'd love best and respect most and be proudest of in this
+world, it would be _you_. Yes, _you_. John Flint, you are the best
+man, and the bravest and truest and most unselfish, and the finest
+gentleman, outside of my husband and my son, that I have ever known.
+What makes it all the more wonderful is that you're a genius along
+with it. I am proud of you, and glad of you, and I admire and love you
+with all my heart. And I really wish you'd call me mother. You should
+have been born a De Rancé!"
+
+This, from my mother! I was amazed. Why, she would think she was
+flattering one of the seraphim if she had said to him, "You might have
+been a De Rancé!"
+
+"Madame!" stammered Flint, "why, Madame!"
+
+"Oh, well, never mind, then. Let it go at Madame, since it would
+embarrass you to change. But I look upon you as my son, none the less.
+I claim you from this hour," said she firmly, as one not to be
+gainsaid.
+
+"I'm beginning to believe in fairy-stories," said Flint. "The beggar
+comes home--and he isn't a beggar at all, he's a Prince. Because the
+Queen is his mother."
+
+My mother looked at him approvingly. The grace of his manner, and the
+unaffected feeling of his words, pleased her. But she said no more of
+what was in her heart for him. She fell back, as women do, upon the
+safe subject of housekeeping matters.
+
+"I suppose," she mused, "that those children will remain with us
+to-day? Yes, of course. Armand, we shall have the last of your
+great-grandfather's wine. And I am going to send over for the judge.
+Let me see: shall I have time for a cake with frosting? H'm! Yes, I
+think so. Or would you prefer wine jelly with whipped cream, John?"
+
+He considered gravely, one hand on his hip, the other stroking his
+beard.
+
+"Couldn't we have both!" he wondered hopefully. "Please! Just for this
+once?"
+
+"We could! We shall!" said my mother, grandly, recklessly,
+extravagantly. "Adieu, then, children of my heart! I go to confer with
+Clélie." She waved her hand and was gone.
+
+The place shimmered with sun. Old Kerry lay with his head between his
+paws and dozed and dreamed in it, every now and then opening his hazel
+eyes to make sure that all was well with his man. All outdoors was one
+glory of renewing life, of stir and growth, of loving and singing and
+nest-building, and the budding of new green leaves and the blossoming
+of April boughs. Just such April hopes were theirs who had found each
+other again this morning. All of life at its best and fairest
+stretched sunnily before those two, the fairer for the cloud that had
+for a time darkened it, the dearer and diviner for the loss that had
+been so imminent.
+
+... That was a redbird again. And now a vireo. And this the
+mockingbird, love-drunk, emptying his heart of a troubadour in a song
+of fire and dew. And on a vagrant air, a gipsy air, the scent of the
+honey-locust. The spring for all the world else. But for him I
+loved,--what?
+
+I suppose my wistful eyes betrayed me, for used to the changing
+expressions of my thin visage, he smiled; and stood up, stretching
+his arms above his head. He drew in great mouthfuls of the sweet air,
+and expanded his broad chest.
+
+"I feel full to the brim!" said he gloriously. "I've got almost too
+much to hold with both hands! Parson, parson, it isn't possible you're
+fretting over _me_? Sorry for _me_? Why, man, consider!"
+
+Ah, but had I not considered? I knew, I thought, what he had to hold
+fast to. Honor, yes. And the friendship of some and the admiration of
+many and the true love of the few, which is all any man may hope for
+and more than most attain. Outside of that, a gray moth, and a
+butterfly's wing, and a torn nest, and a child's curl, and a ragdoll
+in her grave; and now a girl's kiss on the palm and a tear to hallow
+it. But I who had greatly loved and even more greatly lost and
+suffered, was it not for me of all men to know and to understand?
+
+"But I have got the thing itself," said the Butterfly Man, "that makes
+everything else worth while. Why, I have been taught how to love! My
+work is big--but by itself it wasn't enough for me. I needed something
+more. So I was swept and empty and ready and waiting--when she came.
+Now hadn't there got to be something fine and decent in me, when it
+was she alone out of all the world I was waiting for and could love?"
+
+"Yes, yes. But oh, my son, my son!"
+
+"Oh, it was bad and bitter enough at first, parson. Because I wanted
+her so much! Great God, I was like a soul in hell! After awhile I
+crawled out of hell--on my hands and knees. But I'd begun to
+understand things. I'd been taught. It'd been burnt into me past
+forgetting. Maybe that's what hell is for, if folks only knew it.
+Could anything ever happen to anybody any more that I couldn't
+understand and be sorry for, I wonder?
+
+"No, don't you worry any about me. I wouldn't change places with
+anybody alive, I'm too glad for everything that's ever happened to me,
+good and bad. I'm not ashamed of the beginning, no, nor I'm not afraid
+of the end.
+
+"Will you believe me, though, when I tell you what worried me like the
+mischief for awhile? Family, parson! You can't live in South Carolina
+without having the seven-years' Family-itch wished on you, you know. I
+felt like a mushroom standing up on my one leg all by myself among a
+lot of proper garden plants--until I got fed up on the professional
+Descendant banking on his boneyard full of dead ones; then I quit
+worrying. I'm Me and alive--and I should worry about ancestors! Come
+to think about it, everybody's an ancestor while you wait. I made up
+my mind I'd be my own ancestor and my own descendant--and make a good
+job of both while I was at it."
+
+But I was too sad to smile. And after awhile he asked gently:
+
+"Are you grieving because you think I've lost love? Parson, did you
+ever know something you didn't know how you knew, but you know you
+know it because it's true? Well then--I know that girl's mine and I
+came here to find her, though on the face of it you'd think I'd lost
+her, wouldn't you? Somewhere and sometime I'll come again--and when I
+do, she'll know _me_."
+
+And to save my life I couldn't tell him I didn't believe it! His
+manner even more than his words impressed me. He didn't look
+improbable.
+
+"One little life and one little death," said the Butterfly Man,
+"couldn't possibly be big enough for something like this to get away
+from a man forever. I have got the thing too big for a dozen lives to
+hold. Isn't that a great deal for a man to have, parson?"
+
+"Yes." said I. "It is a great deal for a man to have." But I foresaw
+the empty, empty places, in the long, long years ahead. I added
+faintly: "Having that much, you have more than most."
+
+"You only have what you are big enough not to take," said he. "And I'm
+not fooling myself I shan't be lonesome and come some rough tumbles at
+times. The difference is, that if I go down now I won't stay down. If
+there was one thing I could grieve over, too, it would be--kids. I'd
+like kids. My own kids. And I shall never have any. It--well, it just
+wouldn't be fair to the kids. Louisa'll come nearest to being mine by
+bornation--though I'm thinking she's managed to wish me everybody
+else's, on her curl."
+
+"So! You are your own ancestor and your own descendant, and
+everybody's kids are yours! You are modest, _hein_? And what else have
+you got?"
+
+His eyes suddenly danced. "Nothing but the rest of the United States,"
+said the Butterfly Man, magnificently. And when I stared, he laughed
+at me.
+
+"It's quite true, parson: I have got the whole United States to work
+for. Uncle Sam. U.S. _Us!_ I've been drafted into the Brigade that
+hasn't any commander, nor any colors, nor honors, nor even a name;
+but that's never going to be mustered out of service, because we that
+enlist and belong can't and won't quit.
+
+"Parson, think of _me_ representing the Brigade down here on the
+Carolina coast, keeping up the work, fighting things that hurt and
+finding out things that help Lord, what a chance! A hundred millions
+to work for, a hundred millions of one's own people--and a trail to
+blaze for the unborn millions to come!" His glance kindled, his face
+was like a lighted lamp. The vision was upon him, standing there in
+the April sunlight, staring wide-eyed into the future.
+
+Its reflected light illumined me, too--a little. And I saw that in a
+very large and splendid sense, this was the true American. He stood
+almost symbolically for that for which America stands--the fighting
+chance to overcome and to grow, the square deal, the spirit that looks
+eagle-eyed and unafraid into the sunrise. And above all for unselfish
+service and unshakable faith, and a love larger than personal love,
+prouder than personal pride, higher than personal ambition. They do
+not know America who do not know and will not see this spirit in her,
+going its noble and noiseless way apart.
+
+"The whole world to work for, and a whole lifetime to do it in!" said
+the voice of America, exultant. "Lord God, that's a man-sized job, but
+You just give me hands and eyes and time, and I'll do the best I can.
+You've done Your part by me--stand by, and I'll do mine by You!"
+
+Are those curious coincidences, those circumstances which occur at
+such opportune moments that they leave one with a sense of a guiding
+finger behind the affairs of men--are they, after all, only fortuitous
+accidents, or have they a deeper and a diviner significance?
+
+There stood the long worktable, with orderly piles of work on it; the
+microscope in its place; the books he had opened and pushed aside last
+night; and some half-dozen small card-board boxes in a row, containing
+the chrysalids he had been experimenting with, trying the effect of
+cold upon color. The cover of one box had been partially pushed off,
+possibly when he had moved the books. And while we had been paying
+attention to other things, one of these chrysalids had been paying
+strict attention to its own business, the beautiful and important
+business of becoming a butterfly. Flint discovered it first, and gave
+a pleased exclamation.
+
+"Look! Look! A Turnus, father! The first Turnus of the year!"
+
+The insect had been out for an hour or two, but was not yet quite
+ready to fly. It had crawled out of the half-opened box, dragged its
+wormy length across the table, over intervening obstacles, seeking
+some place to climb up and cling to.
+
+Now the Butterfly Man had left the Bible open, merely shoving it aside
+without shutting it, when he had found no comfort for himself last
+night in what John had to say. Protected by piled-up books and propped
+almost upright by the large inkstand, it gave the holding-place the
+insect desired. The butterfly had walked up the page and now clung to
+the top.
+
+There she rested, her black-and-yellow body quivering like a tiny live
+dynamo from the strong force of circulation, that was sending vital
+fluids upward into the wings to give them power and expansion. We had
+seen the same thing a thousand and one times before, we should see it
+a thousand and one times again. But I do not think either of us could
+ever forego the delight of watching a butterfly's wings shaping
+themselves for flight, and growing into something of beauty and of
+wonder. The lovely miracle is ever new to us.
+
+She was a big butterfly, big even for the greatest of Carolina
+swallow-tails; not the dark dimorphic form, but the true Tiger Turnus
+itself, her barred yellow upper wings edged with black enamel indented
+with red gold, her tailed lower wings bordered with a wider band of
+black, and this not only set with lunettes of gold but with purple
+amethysts, and a ruby on the upper and lower edges. Her wings moved
+rhythmically; a constant quivering agitated her, and her antennæ with
+their flattened clubs seemed to be sending and receiving wireless
+messages from the shining world outside.
+
+And as the wings had dried and grown firmer in the mild warm current
+of air and the bright sunlight, she moved them with a wider and bolder
+sweep. The heavy, unwieldy body, thinned by the expulsion of those
+currents driven upward to give flying-power to the wings, had taken on
+a slim and tapering grace. She had reached her fairy perfection. She
+was ready now for flight and light and love and freedom and the
+uncharted pathways of the air, ready to carry out the design of the
+Creator who had fashioned her so wondrously and so beautiful, and had
+sent ahead of her the flowers for that marvelous tongue of hers to
+sip.
+
+Waiting still, opening and closing her exquisite wings, trying them,
+spreading them flat, the splendid swallow-tail clung to the page of
+the book open at the Gospel of John. And I, idly enough, leaned
+forward, and saw between the opening and the closing wings, words. The
+which John Flint, bending forward beside me, likewise saw. "_Work_,"
+flashed out. And on a lower line, "_while it is day_."
+
+I grasped the edge of the table; his knuckles showed white beside
+mine.
+
+    "_I must work the works of him
+     that sent me, while it is day._"
+
+His eyes grew larger and deeper. A sort of inward light, a serene and
+joyous acceptance and assurance, flowed into them. I that had dared to
+be despondent felt a sense of awe. The Voice that had once spoken
+above the Mercy Seat and between the wings of the cherubim was
+speaking now in immortal words between, the wings of a butterfly.
+
+She was poising herself for her first flight, the bright and lovely
+Lady of the Sky. Now she spread her wings flat, as a fan is unfurled.
+And now she had lifted them clear and uncovered her message. The
+Butterfly Man watched her, hanging absorbed upon her every movement.
+And he read, softly:
+
+    "_I must work
+    ... while it is day_."
+
+Lightly as a flower, a living and glorious flower, she lifted and
+launched herself into the air, flew straight and sure for the outside
+light, hung poised one gracious moment, and was gone.
+
+He turned to me the sweetest, clearest eyes I have ever seen in a
+mortal countenance, the eyes of a little child. His face had caught a
+sort of secret beauty, that was never to leave it any more.
+
+"Parson!" said the Butterfly Man, in a whisper that shook with the
+beating of his heart behind it: "Parson! _Don't it beat hell?_"
+
+I rocked on my toes. Then I flung my arms around him, with a jubilant
+shout:
+
+"It does! It does! Oh, Butterfly Man, by the grace and the glory and
+the wonder of God, it beats hell!"
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the
+Butterfly Man, by Marie Conway Oemler
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SLIPPY MCGEE ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the
+Butterfly Man, by Marie Conway Oemler
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man
+
+Author: Marie Conway Oemler
+
+Release Date: May 17, 2005 [EBook #15843]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SLIPPY MCGEE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Janet Kegg, Jeannie Howse and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net).
+
+
+
+
+
+{~--- UTF-8 BOM ---~}
+     SLIPPY McGEE
+
+     SOMETIMES KNOWN AS
+     THE BUTTERFLY MAN
+
+     BY
+     MARIE CONWAY OEMLER
+
+
+     NEW YORK
+     THE CENTURY CO.
+     1920
+
+
+     1917, by
+     THE CENTURY CO.
+
+
+     Published, April, 1917.
+     Reprinted, August, 1917; February, 1918;
+     August, 1918; March, 1919; August, 1919;
+     November, 1919; February, 1920.
+
+
+     TO
+     ELIZABETH AND ALAN OEMLER
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+    I have known life and love, I have known death and disaster;
+    Foregathered with fools, succumbed to sin, been not unacquainted
+        with shame;
+    Doubted, and yet held fast to a faith no doubt could o'ermaster.
+    Won and lost:--and I know it was all a part of the Game.
+
+    Youth and the dreams of youth, hope, and the triumph of sorrow:
+    I took as they came, I played them all; and I trumped the trick
+        when I could.
+    And now, O Mover of Men, let the end be to-day or to-morrow--
+    I have staked and played for Myself, and You and the Game were good!
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                                      PAGE
+
+    I APPLEBORO                                                 3
+   II THE COMING OF SLIPPY McGEE                               19
+  III NEIGHBORS                                                37
+   IV UNDERWINGS                                               48
+    V ENTER KERRY                                              65
+   VI "THY SERVANT WILL GO AND FIGHT WITH THIS PHILISTINE."
+      1 SAM. 17-32                                             94
+  VII THE GOING OF SLIPPY McGEE                               111
+ VIII THE BUTTERFLY MAN                                       131
+   IX NESTS                                                   145
+    X THE BLUEJAY                                             172
+   XI A LITTLE GIRL GROWN UP                                  189
+  XII JOHN FLINT, GENTLEMAN                                   203
+ XIII "EACH IN HIS OWN COIN"                                  226
+  XIV THE WISHING CURL                                        258
+   XV IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT                              283
+  XVI "WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR"                          302
+ XVII "--SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY--"                        319
+XVIII ST. STANISLAUS CROOKS HIS ELBOW                         343
+  XIX THE I O U OF SLIPPY McGEE                               364
+   XX BETWEEN A BUTTERFLY'S WINGS                             382
+
+
+
+
+SLIPPY McGEE
+
+
+
+
+CHARACTERS
+
+
+FATHER ARMAND JEAN DE RANCÉ, Catholic Priest of Appleboro, South Carolina
+MADAME DE RANCÉ, his Mother
+CLÉLIE, their Servant
+LAURENCE MAYNE, the Boy
+MARY VIRGINIA EUSTIS, the Girl
+JAMES EUSTIS, Man of the New South
+MRS. EUSTIS, a Lady
+DOCTOR WALTER WESTMORELAND, the Beloved Physician
+JIM DABNEY, Editor of the Appleboro "Clarion"
+MAJOR APPLEBY CARTWRIGHT }
+MISS SALLY RUTH DEXTER   } Neighbors
+JUDGE HAMMOND MAYNE      }
+GEORGE INGLESBY, the Boss of Appleboro
+J. HOWARD HUNTER, his Private Secretary
+KERRY, an Irish Setter
+PITACHE, the Parish House Dog
+THE MOTHS AND BUTTERFLIES OF SOUTH CAROLINA
+THE CHILDREN, THE MILL-HANDS, THE FACTORY FOLKS, and
+SLIPPY MCGEE, sometimes known as the Butterfly Man
+
+
+
+
+SLIPPY McGEE
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+APPLEBORO
+
+
+"Now there was my cousin Eliza," Miss Sally Ruth Dexter once said to
+me, "who was forced to make her home for thirty years in Vienna! She
+married an attaché of the Austrian legation, you know; met him while
+she was visiting in Washington, and she was such a pretty girl and he
+was such a charming man that they fell in love with each other and got
+married. Afterward his family procured him a very influential post at
+court, and of course poor Cousin Eliza had to stay there with him.
+Dear mama often said she considered it a most touching proof of
+woman's willingness to sacrifice herself--for there's no doubt it must
+have been very hard on poor Cousin Eliza. She was born and raised
+right here in Appleboro, you see."
+
+Do not think that Miss Sally Ruth was anything but most transparently
+sincere in thus sympathizing with the sad fate of poor Cousin Eliza,
+who was born and raised in Appleboro, South Carolina, and yet
+sacrificed herself by dragging out thirty years of exile in the court
+circles of Vienna! Any trueborn Appleboron would be equally sorry for
+Cousin Eliza for the same reason that Miss Sally Ruth was. Get
+yourself born in South Carolina and you will comprehend.
+
+"What did you see in your travels that you liked most?" I was curious
+to discover from an estimable citizen who had spent a summer abroad.
+
+"Why, General Lee's standin' statue in the Capitol an' his recumbent
+figure in Washington an' Lee chapel, of co'se!" said the colonel
+promptly. "An' listen hyuh, Father De Rancé, I certainly needed him to
+take the bad taste out of my mouth an' the red out of my eye after
+viewin' Bill Sherman on a brass hawse in New York, with an angel
+that'd lost the grace of God prancin' on ahead of him!" He added
+reflectively: "I had my own ideah as to where any angel leadin' _him_
+was most likely headed for!"
+
+"Oh, I meant in Europe!" hastily.
+
+"Well, father, I saw pretty near everything in Europe, I reckon;
+likewise New York. But comin' home I ran up to Washington an' Lee to
+visit the general lyin' there asleep, an' it just needed one glance to
+assure me that the greatest an' grandest work of art in this round
+world was right there before me! What do folks want to rush off to
+foreign parts for, where they can't talk plain English an' a man can't
+get a satisfyin' meal of home cookin', when we've got the greatest
+work of art an' the best hams ever cured, right in Virginia? See
+America first, I say. Why, suh, I was so glad to get back to good old
+Appleboro that I let everybody else wait until I'd gone around to the
+monument an' looked up at our man standin' there on top of it, an' I
+found myself sayin' over the names he's guardin' as if I was sayin' my
+prayers: _our names_.
+
+"Uh huh, Europe's good enough for Europeans an' the Nawth's a God's
+plenty good enough for Yankees, but Appleboro for me. Why, father,
+they haven't got anything like our monument to their names!"
+
+They haven't. And I should hate to think that any Confederate living
+or dead ever even remotely resembled the gray granite one on our
+monument. He is a brigandish and bearded person in a foraging cap,
+leaning forward to rest himself on his gun. His long skirted coat is
+buckled tightly about his waist to form a neat bustle effect in the
+back, and the solidity of his granite shoes and the fell rigidity of
+his granite breeches are such as make the esthetic shudder; one has to
+admit that as a work of art he is almost as bad as the statues
+cluttering New York City. But in Appleboro folks are not critical;
+they see him not with the eyes of art but with the deeper vision of
+the heart. He stands for something that is gone on the wind and the
+names he guards are our names.
+
+This is not irrelevant. It is merely to explain something that is
+inherent in the living spirit of all South Carolina; wherefore it
+explains my Appleboro, the real inside-Appleboro.
+
+Outwardly Appleboro is just one of those quiet, conservative, old
+Carolina towns where, loyal to the customs and traditions of their
+fathers, they would as lief white-wash what they firmly believe to be
+the true and natural character of General William Tecumseh Sherman as
+they would their own front fences. Occasionally somebody will give a
+backyard henhouse a needed coat or two; but a front fence? Never! It
+isn't the thing. Nobody does it. All normal South Carolinians come
+into the world with a native horror of paint and whitewash and they
+depart hence even as they were born. In consequence, towns like
+Appleboro take on the venerable aspect of antiquity, peacefully
+drowsing among immemorial oaks draped with long, gray, melancholy
+moss.
+
+Not that we are cut off from the world, or that we have escaped the
+clutch of commerce. We have the usual shops and stores, even an
+emporium or two, and street lights until twelve, and the mills and
+factory. We have the river trade, and two railroads tap our rich
+territory to fetch and carry what we take and give. And, except in the
+poor parish of which I, Armand De Rancé, am pastor, and some few
+wealthy families like the Eustises, Agur's wise and noble prayer has
+been in part granted to us; for if it has not been possible to remove
+far from us all vanity and lies, yet we have been given neither
+poverty nor riches, and we are fed with food convenient for us.
+
+In Appleboro the pleasant and prejudiced Old looks askance at the
+noisy and intruding New, before which, it is forced to retreat--always
+without undue or undignified haste, however, and always unpainted and
+unreconstructed. It is a town where families live in houses that have
+sheltered generations of the same name, using furniture that was not
+new when Marion's men hid in the swamps and the redcoats overran the
+country-side. Almost everybody has a garden, full of old-fashioned
+shrubs and flowers, and fine trees. In such a place men and women grow
+old serenely and delightfully, and youth flourishes all the fairer for
+the rich soil which has brought it forth.
+
+One has twenty-four hours to the day in a South Carolina town--plenty
+of time to live in, so that one can afford to do things unhurriedly
+and has leisure to be neighborly. For you do have neighbors here. It
+is true that they know all your business and who and what your
+grandfather was and wasn't, and they are prone to discuss it with a
+frankness to make the scalp prickle. But then, you know theirs, too,
+and you are at liberty to employ the same fearsome frankness, provided
+you do it politely and are not speaking to an outsider. It is
+perfectly permissible for _you_ to say exactly what you please about
+your own people to your own people, but should an outsider and an
+alien presume to do likewise, the Carolina code admits of but one
+course of conduct; borrowing the tactics of the goats against the
+wolf, they close in shoulder to shoulder and present to the audacious
+intruder an unbroken and formidable front of horns.
+
+And it is the last place left in all America where decent poverty is
+in nowise penalized. You can be poor pleasantly--a much rarer and far
+finer art than being old gracefully. Because of this, life in South
+Carolina sometimes retains a simplicity as fine and sincere as it is
+charming.
+
+I deplore the necessity, but I will be pardoned if I pause here to
+become somewhat personal, to explain who and what I am and how I came
+to be a pastor in Appleboro. To explain myself, then, I shall have to
+go back to a spring morning long ago, when I was not a poor parish
+priest, no, nor ever dreamed of becoming one, but was young Armand De
+Rancé, a flower-crowned and singing pagan, holding up to the morning
+sun the chalice of spring; joyous because I was of a perishable
+beauty, dazzled because life gave me so much, proud of an old and
+honored name, secure in ancestral wealth, loving laughter so much that
+I looked with the raised eyebrow and the twisted lip at austerities
+and prayers.
+
+If ever I reflected at all, it was to consider that I had nothing to
+pray for, save that things might ever remain as they were: that I
+should remain me, myself, young Armand De Rancé, loving and above all
+beloved of that one sweet girl whom I loved with all my heart. Young,
+wealthy, strong, beautiful, loving, and beloved! To hold all that,
+crowded into the hollow of one boyish hand! Oh, it was too much!
+
+I do not think I had ever felt my own happiness so exquisitely as I
+did upon that day which was to see the last of it. I was to go
+a-Maying with her who had ever been as my own soul, since we were
+children playing together. So I rode off to her home, an old house set
+in its walled inclosure by the river. At the door somebody met me,
+calling me by my name. I thought at first it had been a stranger. It
+was her mother. And while I stood staring at her changed face she took
+me by the hand and began to whisper in my ear ... what I had to know.
+Blindly, like one bludgeoned on the head, I followed her into a
+darkened room, and saw what lay there with closed eyes and hair still
+wet from the river into which my girl had cast herself.
+
+No, I cannot put into words just what had happened; indeed, I never
+really knew all. There was no public scandal, only great sorrow. But I
+died that morning. The young and happy part of me died, and, only
+half-alive I walked about among the living, dragging about with me the
+corpse of what had been myself. Crushed by this horrible burden which
+none saw but I, I was blind to the beauties of earth and deaf to the
+mercies of heaven, until a great Voice called me to come out of the
+sepulcher of myself; and I came--alive again, and free, of a strong
+spirit, but with youth gone from it. Out of the void of an
+irremediable disaster God had called me to His service, chastened and
+humbled.
+
+"_Who is weak and I am not weak? who is offended and I burn not?_"
+
+And yet, although I knew my decision was irrevocable, I did not find
+it easy to tell my mother. Then:
+
+"Little mother of my heart," I blurted, "my career is decided. I have
+been called. I am for the Church."
+
+We were in her pleasant morning room, a beautiful room, and the lace
+curtains were pushed aside to allow free ingress of air and sunlight.
+Between the windows hung two objects my mother most greatly
+cherished--one an enameled Petitot miniature, gold-framed, of a man in
+the flower of his youth. His hair, beautiful as the hair of Absalom,
+falls about his haughty, high-bred face, and so magnificently is he
+clothed that when I was a child I used to associate him in my mind
+with those "_captains and rulers, clothed most gorgeously, all of them
+desirable young men, ... girdled with a girdle upon their loins,
+exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look
+to" ... whom Aholibah "doted upon when her eyes saw them portrayed
+upon the walls in vermilion_."
+
+The other is an Audran engraving of that same man grown old and
+stripped of beauty and of glory, as the leaf that falls and the flower
+that fades. The somber habit of an order has replaced scarlet and
+gold; and sackcloth, satin. Between the two pictures hangs an old
+crucifix. For that is Armand De Rancé, glorious sinner, handsomest,
+wealthiest, most gifted man of his day--and his a day of glorious men;
+and this is Armand De Rancé, become the sad austere reformer of La
+Trappe.
+
+My mother rose, walked over to the Abbé's pictures, and looked long
+and with rather frightened eyes at him. Perhaps there was something in
+the similarity to his of the fate which had come upon me who bore his
+name, which caused her to turn so pale. I also am an Armand De Rancé,
+of a cadet branch of that great house, which emigrated to the New
+World when we French were founding colonies on the banks of the
+Mississippi.
+
+Her hand went to her heart. Turning, she regarded me pitifully.
+
+"Oh, no, not that!" I reassured her. "I am at once too strong and not
+strong enough for solitude and silence. Surely there is room and work
+for one who would serve God through serving his fellow men, in the
+open, is there not?"
+
+At that she kissed me. Not a whimper, although I am an only son and
+the name dies with me, the old name of which she was so beautifully
+proud! She had hoped to see my son wear my father's name and face and
+thus bring back the lost husband she had so greatly loved; she had
+prayed to see my children about her knees, and it must have cost her a
+frightful anguish to renounce these sweet and consoling dreams, these
+tender and human ambitions. Yet she did so, smiling, and kissed me on
+the brow.
+
+Three months later I entered the Church; and because I was the last
+De Rancé, and twenty four, and the day was to have been my
+wedding-day, there fell upon me, sorely against my will, the halo of
+sad romance.
+
+Endeared thus to the young, I suppose I grew into what I might call a
+very popular preacher. Though I myself cannot see that I ever did much
+actual good, since my friends praised my sermons for their "fine
+Gallic flavor," and I made no enemies.
+
+But there was no rest for my spirit, until the Call came again, the
+Call that may not be slighted, and bade me leave my sheltered place,
+my pleasant lines, and go among the poor, to save my own soul alive.
+
+That is why and how the Bishop, my old and dear friend, after long
+argument and many protests, at length yielded and had me transferred
+from fashionable St. Jean Baptiste's to the poverty-stricken
+missionary parish of sodden laboring folk in a South Carolina
+coast-town: he meant to cure me, the good man! I should have the worst
+at the outset.
+
+"And I hope you understand," said he, sorrowfully, "that this step
+practically closes your career. Such a pity, for you could have gone
+so far! You might even have worn the red hat. It is not hoping too
+much that the last De Rancé, the namesake of the great Abbé, might
+have finished as an American cardinal! But God's will be done. If you
+must go, you must go."
+
+I said, respectfully, that I had to go.
+
+"Well, then, go and try it out to the uttermost," said the Bishop.
+"And it may be that, if you do not kill yourself with overwork, you
+may return to me cured, when you see the futility of the task you
+wish to undertake." But I was never again to see his kind face in this
+world.
+
+And then, as if to cut me off yet more completely from all ties, as if
+to render my decision irrevocable, it was permitted of Providence that
+the wheel of my fortune should take one last revolution. Henri Dupuis
+of the banking house which bore his name shot himself through the head
+one fine morning, and as he had been my guardian and was still the
+executor of my father's estate, the whole De Rancé fortune went down
+with him. All of it. Even the old house went, the old house which had
+sheltered so many of the name these two hundred years. If I could have
+grieved for anything it would have been that. Nothing was left except
+the modest private fortune long since secured to my mother by my
+father's affection. It had been a bridal gift, intended to cover her
+personal expenses, her charities, and her pretty whims. Now it was to
+stand between her and want.
+
+Stripped all but bare, and with one servant left of all our staff, we
+turned our backs upon our old life, our old home, and faced the world
+anew, in a strange place where nothing was familiar, and where I who
+had begun so differently was destined to grow into what I have since
+become--just an old priest, with but small reputation outside of his
+few friends and poor working-folks. There! That is quite enough of
+_me_!
+
+There was one pleasant feature of our new home that rejoiced me for my
+mother's sake. From the very first she found neighbors who were
+friendly and charming. Now my mother, when we came to Appleboro, was
+still a beautiful woman, fair and rosy, with a profusion of _blonde
+cendre_ curls just beginning to whiten, a sweet and arch face, and
+eyes of clearest hazel, valanced with jet. She had been perhaps the
+loveliest and most beloved woman of that proud and select circle which
+is composed of families descended from the old noblesse, the most
+exclusive circle of New Orleans society. And, as she said, nothing
+could change nor alter the fact that no matter _what_ happened to us,
+we were still De Rancés!
+
+"Ah! And was it, then, a De Rancé who had the holy Mother of God
+painted in a family picture, with a scroll issuing from her lips
+addressing him as 'My Cousin'?" I asked, slyly.
+
+"If it was, nobody in the world had a better right!" said she stoutly.
+
+Thus the serene and unquestioning faith of their estimate of
+themselves in the scheme of things, as evidenced by these Carolina
+folk around her, caused Madame De Rancé neither surprise nor
+amusement. She understood. She shared many of their prejudices, and
+she of all women could appreciate a pride that was almost equal to her
+own. When they initiated her into the inevitable and inescapable
+Carolina game of Matching Grandfathers, she always had a Roland for
+their Oliver; and as they generally came back with an Oliver to match
+her Roland, all the players retired with equal honors and mutual
+respect. Every door in Appleboro at once opened wide to Madame De
+Rancé. The difference in religion was obviated by the similarity of
+Family.
+
+Fortunately, too, the Church and Parish House were not in the mill
+district itself, a place shoved aside, full of sordid hideousness,
+ribboned with railroad tracks, squalid with boarding-houses never free
+from the smell of bad cooking, sinister with pawnshops, miserable with
+depressingly ugly rows of small houses where the hands herded, and all
+of it darkened by the grim shadow of the great red brick mills
+themselves. Instead, our Church sits on a tree-shaded corner in the
+old town, and the roomy white-piazza'd Parish House is next door,
+embowered in the pleasantest of all gardens.
+
+That garden reconciled my mother to her exile, for I am afraid she had
+regarded Appleboro with somewhat of the attitude of the castaway
+sailor toward a desert island--a refuge after shipwreck, but a desert
+island nevertheless, a place which cuts off one from one's world. And
+when at first the poor, uncouth, sullen creatures who were a part of
+my new charge, frightened and dismayed her, there was always the
+garden to fly to for consolation. If she couldn't plant seeds of order
+and cleanliness and morality and thrift in the sterile soil of poor
+folks' minds, she could always plant seeds of color and beauty and
+fragrance in her garden and be surer of the result. That garden was my
+delight, too. I am sure no other equal space ever harbored so many
+birds and bees and butterflies; and its scented dusks was the paradise
+of moths. Great wonderful fellows clothed in kings' raiment, little
+chaps colored like flowers and seashells and rainbows, there the airy
+cohorts of the People of the Sky wheeled and danced and fluttered. Now
+my grandfather and my father had been the friends of Audubon and of
+Agassiz, and I myself had been the correspondent of Riley and Scudder
+and Henry Edwards, for I love the People of the Sky more than all
+created things. And when I watched them in my garden, I am sure it was
+they who lent my heart their wings to lift it above the misery and
+overwork and grief which surrounded me; I am sure I should have sunk
+at times, if God had not sent me my little friends, the moths and
+butterflies.
+
+Our grounds join Miss Sally Ruth Dexter's on one side and Judge
+Hammond Mayne's are just behind us; so that the Judge's black Daddy
+January can court our yellow Clélie over one fence, with coy and
+delicate love-gifts of sugar-cane and sweet-potato pone in season; and
+Miss Sally Ruth's roosters and ours can wholeheartedly pick each
+other's eyes out through the other all the year round. These are fowls
+with so firm a faith in the Mosaic code of an eye for an eye that when
+Miss Sally Ruth has six blind of the right eye we have five blind of
+the left. We are at times stung by the Mayne bees, but freely and
+bountifully supplied with the Mayne honey, a product of fine flavor.
+And our little dog Pitache made it the serious business of his life to
+keep the Mayne cats in what he considered their proper bounds.
+
+Major Appleby Cartwright, our neighbor to the other side of Miss Sally
+Ruth, has a theory that not alone by our fruits, but by our animals,
+shall we be known for what we are. He insists that Pitache wags his
+tail and barks in French and considers all cats Protestants, and that
+Miss Sally Ruth's hens are all Presbyterians at heart, in spite of the
+fact that her roosters are Mormons. The Major likewise insists that
+you couldn't possibly hope to know the real Judge Hammond Mayne unless
+you knew his pet cats. You admire that calm and imperturbable
+dignity, that sphinxlike and yet vigilant poise of bearing which has
+made Judge Mayne so notable an ornament of the bench? It is purely
+feline: "He caught it from his cats, suh: he caught every God-blessed
+bit of it from his cats!"
+
+As one may perceive, we have delicious neighbors!
+
+When we had been settled in Appleboro a little more than a year, and I
+had gotten the parish wheels running fairly smooth, we discovered that
+by my mother's French house-keeping, that exquisitely careful
+house-keeping which uses everything and wastes nothing, my salary was
+going to be quite sufficient to cover our modest ménage, thus leaving
+my mother's own income practically intact. We could use it in the
+parish; but there was so much to be done for that parish that we were
+rather at a loss where to begin, or what one thing to accomplish among
+so many things crying aloud. But finally, tackling what seemed to us
+the worst of these crying evils, we were able to turn the two empty
+rooms upstairs into what Madame pleasantly called Guest Rooms, thus
+remedying, to the best of our ability, the absolute lack of any
+accommodation for the sick and injured poor. And as time passed, these
+Guest Rooms, so greatly needed, proved not how much but how little we
+could do. We could only afford to maintain two beds on our small
+allowance, for they had to be absolutely free, to help those for whom
+they were intended--poor folks in immediate and dire need, for whom
+the town had no other place except an insanitary room in the jail. You
+could be born and baptized in the Guest Rooms, or shriven and sent
+thence in hope. More often you were coaxed back to health under my
+mother's nursing and Clélie's cooking and the skill of Doctor Walter
+Westmoreland.
+
+No bill ever came to the Parish House from Dr. Walter Westmoreland,
+whom my poor people look upon as a direct act of Providence in their
+behalf. He is an enormous man, big and ruddy and baldheaded and
+clean-shaven, with the shoulders of a coal-heaver and legs like a pair
+of twin oaks. He is rather absent-minded, but he never forgets the
+down-and-out Guest Roomers, and he has a genius for remembering the
+mill-children. These are his dear and special charge.
+
+Westmoreland is a great doctor who chooses to live in a small town; he
+says you can save as many lives in a little town as a big one, and
+folks need you more. He is a socialist who looks upon rich people as
+being merely poor people with money; an idealist, who will tell you
+bluntly that revelations haven't ceased; they've only changed for the
+better.
+
+Westmoreland has the courage of a gambler and the heart of a little
+child. He likes to lay a huge hand upon my shoulder and tell me to my
+teeth that heaven is a habit of heart and hell a condition of liver. I
+do not always agree with him; but along with everybody else in
+Appleboro, I love him. Of all the many goodnesses that God has shown
+me, I do not count it least that this good and kind man was sent in
+our need, to heal and befriend the broken and friendless waifs and
+strays who found for a little space a resting place in our Guest
+Rooms.
+
+And when I look back I know now that not lightly nor fortuitously was
+I uprooted from my place and my people and sent hither to impinge upon
+the lives of many who were to be dearer to me than all that had gone
+before; I was not idly sent to know and love Westmoreland, and Mary
+Virginia, and Laurence; and, above all, Slippy McGee, whom we of
+Appleboro call the Butterfly Man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE COMING OF SLIPPY MCGEE
+
+
+On a cold gray morning in December two members of my flock, Poles who
+spoke but little English and that little very badly, were on their way
+to their daily toil in the canning factory. It is a long walk from the
+Poles' quarters to the factory, and the workpeople must start early,
+for one is fined half an hour's time if one is five minutes late. The
+short-cut is down the railroad tracks that run through the mill
+district--for which cause we bury a yearly toll of the children of the
+poor.
+
+Just beyond the freight sheds, signal tower, and water tank, is a
+grade crossing where so many terrible things have happened that the
+colored people call that place Dead Man's Crossin' and warn you not to
+go by there of nights because the signal tower is haunted and Things
+lurk in the rank growth behind the water tank, coming out to show
+themselves after dark. If you _must_ pass it then you would better
+turn your coat inside out, pull down your sleeves over your hands, and
+be very careful to keep three fingers twisted for a Sign. This is a
+specific against most ha'nts, though by no means able to scare away
+all of them. Those at Dead Man's Crossin' are peculiarly malignant and
+hard to scare. Maum Jinkey Delette saw one there once, coming down the
+track faster than an express train, bigger than a cow, and waving
+both his legs in his hands. Poor old Maum Jinkey was so scared that
+she chattered her new false teeth out of her mouth, and she never
+found those teeth to the day of her death, but had to mumble along as
+best she could without them.
+
+Hurrying by Dead Man's Crossin', the workmen stumbled over a man lying
+beside the tracks; his clothing was torn to shreds, he was wet with
+the heavy night dew and covered with dirt, cinders, and partly
+congealed blood, for his right leg had been ground to pulp. Peering at
+this horrible object in the wan dusk of the early morning, they
+thought he was dead like most of the others found there.
+
+For a moment the men hesitated, wondering whether it wouldn't be
+better to leave him there to be found and removed by folks with more
+time at their disposal. One doesn't like to lose time and be
+consequently fined, on account of stopping to pick up a dead tramp;
+particularly when Christmas is drawing near and money so much needed
+that every penny counts.
+
+The thing on the ground, regaining for a fraction of a second a glint
+of half-consciousness, quivered, moaned feebly, and lay still again.
+Humanity prevailing, the Poles looked about for help, but as yet the
+place was quite deserted. Grumbling, they wrenched a shutter off the
+Agent's window, lifted the mangled tramp upon it, and made straight
+for the Parish House; when accidents such as this happened to men such
+as this, weren't the victims incontinently turned over to the Parish
+House people? Indeed, there wasn't any place else for them, unless one
+excepted the rough room at the jail; and the average small town
+jail--ours wasn't any exception to the rule--is a place where a
+decent veterinary would scruple to put a sick cur. With him the Poles
+brought his sole luggage, a package tied up in oilskin, which they had
+found lying partly under him.
+
+We had become accustomed to these sudden inroads of misfortune, so he
+was carried upstairs to the front Guest Room, fortunately just then
+empty. The Poles turned over to me the heavy package found with him,
+stolidly requested a note to the Boss explaining their necessary
+tardiness, and hurried away. They had done what they had to do, and
+they had no further interest in him. Nobody had any interest in one of
+the unknown tramps who got themselves killed or crippled at Dead Man's
+Crossin'.
+
+The fellow was shockingly injured and we had some strenuous days and
+nights with him, for that which had been a leg had to come off at the
+knee; he had lain in the cold for some hours, he had sustained a
+frightful shock, and he had lost considerable blood. I am sure that in
+the hands of any physician less skilled and determined than
+Westmoreland he must have gone out. But Westmoreland, with his jaw
+set, followed his code and fenced with death for this apparently
+worthless and forfeited life, using all his skill and finesse to
+outwit the great Enemy; in spite of which, so attenuated was the man's
+chance that we were astonished when he turned the corner--very, very
+feebly--and we didn't have to place another pine box in the potter's
+field, alongside other unmarked mounds whose occupants were other
+unknown men, grim causes of Dead Man's Crossin's sinister name.
+
+The effects of the merciful drugs that had kept him quiet in time wore
+away. Our man woke up one forenoon clear-headed, if hollow-eyed and
+mortally weak. He looked about the unfamiliar room with wan curiosity,
+then his eyes came to Clélie and myself, but he did not return the
+greetings of either. He just stared; he asked no questions. Presently,
+very feebly, he tried to move,--and found himself a cripple. He fell
+back upon his pillow, gasping. A horrible scream broke from his
+lips--a scream of brute rage and mortal fear, as of a trapped wild
+beast. He began to revile heaven and earth, the doctor, myself.
+Clélie, clapping her hands over her outraged ears, fled as if from
+fiends. Indeed, never before nor since have I heard such a frightful,
+inhuman power of profanity, such hideous oaths and threats. When
+breath failed him he lay spent and trembling, his chest rising and
+falling to his choking gasps.
+
+"You had better be thankful your life is spared you, young man," I
+said a trifle sharply, my nerves being somewhat rasped; for I had
+helped Westmoreland through more than one dreadful night, and I had
+sat long hours by his pillow, waiting for what seemed the passing of a
+soul.
+
+He glared. "Thankful?" he screamed, "Thankful, hell! I've got to have
+two good legs to make any sort of a getaway, haven't I? Well, have I
+got 'em? I'm down and out for fair, that's what! Thankful? You make me
+sick! Honest to God, when you gas like that I feel like bashing in
+your brain, if you've got any! You and your thankfulness!" He turned
+his quivering face and stared at the wall, winking. I wondered,
+heartsick, if I had ever seen a more hopelessly unprepossessing
+creature.
+
+It was not so much physical, his curious ugliness; the dreadful thing
+was that it seemed to be his spirit which informed his flesh, an
+inherent unloveliness of soul upon which the body was modeled, worked
+out faithfully, and so made visible. Figure to yourself one with the
+fine shape of the welter-weight, steel-muscled, lithe, powerful,
+springy, slim in the hips and waist, broad in the shoulders; the arms
+unusually long, giving him a terrible reach, the head round,
+well-shaped, covered with thick reddish hair; cold, light, and
+intelligent eyes, full of animosity and suspicion, reminding you
+unpleasantly of the rattlesnake's look, wary, deadly, and ready to
+strike. When he thought, his forehead wrinkled. His lips shut upon
+each other formidably and without softness, and the jaws thrust
+forward with the effect as of balled fists. One ear was slightly
+larger than the other, having the appearance of a swelling upon the
+lobe. In this unlovely visage, filled with distrust and concentrated
+venom, only the nose retained an incongruous and unexpected niceness.
+It was a good straight nose, yet it had something of the pleasant
+tiptiltedness of a child's. It was the sort of nose which should have
+complemented a mouth formed for spontaneous laughter. It looked
+lonesome and out of place in that set and lowering countenance, to
+which the red straggling stubble of beard sprouting over jaws and
+throat lent a more sinister note.
+
+We had had many a sad and terrible case in our Guest Rooms, but
+somehow this seemed the saddest, hardest and most hopeless we had yet
+encountered.
+
+For three weary weeks had we struggled with him, until the doctor,
+sighing with physical relief, said he was out of danger and needed
+only such nursing as he was sure to get.
+
+"One does one's duty as one finds it, of course," said the big doctor,
+looking down at the unpromising face on the pillow, and shaking his
+head. "Yes, yes, yes, one must do what's right, on the face of it,
+come what will. There's no getting around _that!_" He glanced at me, a
+shadow in his kind gray eyes. "But there are times, my friend, when I
+wonder! Now, this morning I had to tell a working man his wife's got
+to die. There's no help and no hope--she's got to die, and she a
+mother of young children. So I have to try desperately," said the
+doctor, rubbing his nose, "to cling tooth and claw to the hope that
+there is Something behind the scenes that knows the forward-end of
+things--sin and sorrow and disease and suffering and death things--and
+uses them always for some beneficent purpose. But in the meantime the
+mother dies, and here you and I have been used to save alive a poor
+useless devil of a one-legged tramp, probably without his consent and
+against his will, because it had to be and we couldn't do anything
+else! Now, why? I can't help but wonder!"
+
+We looked down again, the two of us, at the face on the pillow. And I
+wondered also, with even greater cause than the doctor; for I had
+opened the oilskin package the Poles found, and it had given me
+occasion for fear, reflection, and prayer. I was startled and alarmed
+beyond words, for it contained tools of a curious and unusual
+type,--not such tools as workmen carry abroad in the light of day.
+
+There was no one to whom I might confide that unpleasant discovery. I
+simply could not terrify my mother, nor could I in common decency
+burden the already overburdened doctor. Nor is our sheriff one to turn
+to readily; he is not a man whose intelligence or heart one may
+admire, respect, or depend upon. My guest had come to me with empty
+pockets and a burglar's kit; a hint of that, and the sheriff had
+camped on the Parish House front porch with a Winchester across his
+knees and handcuffs jingling in his pockets. No, I couldn't consult
+the law.
+
+I had yet a deeper and a better reason for waiting, which I find it
+rather hard to set down in cold words. It is this: that as I grow
+older I have grown more and more convinced that not fortuitously, not
+by chance, never without real and inner purposes, are we allowed to
+come vitally into each other's lives. I have walked up the steep sides
+of Calvary to find out that when another wayfarer pauses for a space
+beside us, it is because one has something to give, the other
+something to receive.
+
+So, upon reflection, I took that oilskin package weighted down with
+the seven deadly sins over to the church, and hid it under the statue
+of St. Stanislaus, whom my Poles love, and before whom they come to
+kneel and pray for particular favors. I tilted the saint back upon his
+wooden stand, and thrust that package up to where his hands fold over
+the sheaf of lilies he carries. St. Stanislaus is a beautiful and most
+holy youth. No one would ever suspect _him_ of hiding under his brown
+habit a burglar's kit!
+
+When I had done this, and stopped to say three Hail Marys for
+guidance, I went back to the little room called my study, where my
+books and papers and my butterfly cabinets and collecting outfits
+were kept, and set myself seriously to studying my files of
+newspapers, beginning at a date a week preceding my man's appearance.
+Then:
+
+             Slippy McGee
+     Makes Good His Name Once More.
+       Slips One Over On The Police.
+         Noted Burglar Escapes.
+
+said the glaring headlines in the New York papers. The dispatches were
+dated from Atlanta, and when I turned to the Atlanta papers I found
+them, too, headlining the escape of "Slippy McGee."
+
+I learned that "the slickest crook in America" finding himself
+somewhat hampered in his native haunts, the seething underworld of New
+York, because the police suspected him of certain daring and
+mysterious burglaries although they had no positive proof against him,
+had chosen to shift his base of operations South for awhile. But the
+Southern authorities had been urgently warned to look out for him; in
+consequence they had been so close upon his heels that he had been
+surrounded while "on a job." Half an hour later, and he would have
+gotten away with his plunder; but, although they were actually upon
+him, by what seemed a miracle of daring and of luck he slipped through
+their fingers, escaped under their very noses, leaving no clue to his
+whereabouts. He was supposed to be still in hiding in Atlanta, though
+as he had no known confederates and always worked alone and unaided,
+the police were at a loss for information. The man had simply
+vanished, after his wont, as if the earth had opened and swallowed
+him. The papers gave rather full accounts of some of his past
+exploits, from which one gathered that Slippy McGee was a very noted
+personage in his chosen field. I sat for a long time staring at those
+papers, and my thoughts were uneasy ones. What should I do?
+
+I presently decided that I could and must question my guest. So far he
+had volunteered no information beyond the curt statement that his name
+was John Flint and he was a hobo because he liked the trade. He had
+been stealing a ride and he had slipped--and when he woke up we had
+him and he hadn't his leg. And if some people knew how to be obliging
+they'd make a noise like a hoop and roll away, so's other people could
+pound their ear in peace, like that big stiff of a doctor ordered them
+to do.
+
+As I stood by the bed and studied his sullen, suspicious, unfriendly
+face, I came to the conclusion that if this were not McGee himself it
+could very well be some one quite as dangerous.
+
+"Friend," said I, "we do not as a rule seek information about the
+guests in these rooms. We do not have to; they explain themselves. I
+should never question your assertion that your name is Flint, and I
+sincerely hope it is Flint; but--there are reasons why I must and do
+ask you for certain definite information about yourself."
+
+The hand lying upon the coverlet balled into a fist.
+
+"If John Flint's not fancy enough for you," he suggested truculently,
+"suppose you call me Percy? Some peach of a moniker, Percy, ain't it?"
+
+"Percy?"
+
+"Sure, Percy," he grinned impudently. "But if you got a grouch against
+Percy, can it, and make me Algy. _I_ don't mind. It's not _me_
+beefing about monikers; it's you."
+
+"I am also," said I, regarding him steadily and ignoring his
+flippancy, "I am also obliged to ask you what is your occupation--when
+you are not stealing rides?"
+
+"Looks like it might be answering questions just now, don't it? What
+you want to know for? Whatever it is, I'm not able to do it now, am I?
+But as you're so naturally bellyaching to know, why, I've been in the
+ring."
+
+"So I presumed. Thank you," said I, politely. "And your name is John
+Flint, or Percy, or Algy, just as I choose. Percy and Algy are rather
+unusual names for a gentleman who has been in the ring, don't you
+think?"
+
+"I think," he snarled, turned suddenly ferocious, "that I'm named what
+I dam' please to be named, and no squeals from skypilots about it,
+neither. Say! what you driving at, anyhow? If what I tell you ain't
+satisfying, suppose you slip over a moniker to suit yourself--and go
+away!"
+
+"Oh! Suppose then," said I, without taking my eyes from his, "suppose,
+then, that I chose to call you--_Slippy McGee_?"
+
+I am sure that only his bodily weakness kept him from flying at my
+throat. As it was, his long arms with the hands upon them outstretched
+like a beast's claws, shot out ferociously. His face contracted
+horribly, and of a sudden the sweat burst out upon it so blindingly
+that he had to put up an arm and wipe it away. For a moment he lay
+still, glaring, panting, helpless; while I stood and watched him
+unmoved.
+
+"Ain't you the real little Sherlock Holmes, though?" he jeered
+presently. "Got Old Sleuth skinned for fair and Nick Carter eating
+out of your hand! You damned skypilot!" His voice cracked. "You're all
+alike! Get a man on his back and then put the screws on him!"
+
+I made no reply; only a great compassion for this mistaken and
+miserable creature surged like a wave over my heart.
+
+"For God's sake don't stand there staring like a bughouse owl!" he
+gritted. "Well, what you going to do? Bawl for the bulls? What put you
+wise?"
+
+"Help you to get well. No. I opened your bag--and looked up the
+newspapers," I answered succinctly.
+
+"Huh! A fat lot of good it'll do me to get well now, won't it? You
+think I ought to thank you for butting in and keeping me from dying
+without knowing anything about it, don't you? Well, you got another
+think coming. I don't. Ever hear of a pegleg in the ring? Ever hear of
+a one-hoofed dip! A long time I'd be Slippy McGee playing
+cat-and-mouse with the bulls, if I had to leave some of my legs home
+when I needed them right there on the job, wouldn't I? Oh, sure!"
+
+"And was it," I wondered, "such a fine thing to be Slippy McGee,
+flying from the police, that one should lament his--er--disappearance?"
+
+His eyes widened. He regarded me with pity as well as astonishment.
+
+"Didn't you read the papers?" he wondered in his turn. "There don't
+many travel in _my_ class, skypilot! Why, I haven't _got_ any
+equals--the best of them trail a mile behind. Ask the bulls, if you
+want to know about Slippy McGee! And I let the happy dust alone. Most
+dips are dopes, but I was too slick; I cut it out. I knew if the dope
+once gets you, then the bulls get next. Not for Slippy. I've kept my
+head clear, and that's how I've muddled theirs. They never get next to
+anything until I've cleaned up and dusted. Why, honest to God, I can
+open any box made, easy as easy, just like I can put it all over any
+bull alive! That is," a spasm twisted his face and into his voice
+crept the acute anguish of the artist deprived of all power to create,
+"that is, I could--until I made that last getaway on a freight, and
+this happened."
+
+"I am sorry," said I soothingly, "that you have lost your leg, of
+course. But better to lose your leg than your soul, my son. Why, how
+do you know--"
+
+He writhed. "Can it!" he implored. "Cut it out! Ain't I up against
+enough now, for God's sake? Down and out--and nothing to do but have
+my soul curry-combed and mashfed by a skypilot with _both_ his legs
+and _all_ his mouth on him! Ain't it hell, though? Say, you better
+send for the cops. I'd rather stand for the pen than the preaching.
+What'd you do with my bag, anyway?"
+
+"But I really have no idea of preaching to you; and I would rather not
+send for the police--afterwards, when you are better, you may do so if
+you choose. You are a free agent. As for your bag, why--it is--it
+is--in the keeping of the Church."
+
+"Huh!" said he, and twisted his mouth cynically. "Huh! Then it's
+good-bye tools, I suppose. I'm no churchmember, thank God, but I've
+heard that once the Church gets her clamps on anything worth while all
+hell can't pry her loose."
+
+Now I don't know why, but at that, suddenly and inexplicably, as if I
+had glimpsed a ray of light, I felt cheered.
+
+"Why, that's it exactly!" said I, smiling. "Once the Church gets real
+hold of a thing--or a man--worth while, she holds on so fast that all
+hell can't pry her loose. Won't you try to remember that, my son!"
+
+"If it's a joke, suck the marrow out of it yourself," said he sourly.
+"It don't listen so horrible funny to me. And you haven't peeped yet
+about what you're going to do. I'm waiting to hear. I'm real
+interested."
+
+"Why, I really don't know yet," said I, still cheerfully. "Suppose we
+wait and see? Here you are, safe and harmless enough for the present.
+And God is good; perhaps He knows that you and I may need each other
+more than you and the police need each other--who can tell? I should
+simply set myself strictly to the task of getting entirely well, if I
+were you--and let it go at that."
+
+He appeared to reflect; his forehead wrinkled painfully.
+
+"Devil-dodger," said he, after a pause, "are you just making a noise
+with your face, or is that on the level?"
+
+"That's on the level."
+
+His hard and suspicious eyes bored into me. And as I held his glance,
+a hint of wonder and amazement crept into his face.
+
+"God A'mighty! I believe him!" he gasped. And then, as if ashamed of
+that real feeling, he scowled.
+
+"Say, if you're really on the level, I guess you'd better not be
+flashing the name of Slippy McGee around promiscuous," he suggested
+presently. "It won't do either you or me any good, see? And say,
+parson,--forget Percy and Algy. How was I to know you'd be so white?
+And look here: I did know a gink named John Flint, once. Only he was
+called Reddy, because he'd got such a blazing red head and whiskers.
+He's croaked, so he wouldn't mind me using his moniker, seeing it's
+not doing him any good now."
+
+"Let us agree upon John Flint," I decided.
+
+"Help yourself," he agreed, equably.
+
+Clélie, with wrath and disapproval written upon every stiffened line,
+brought him his broth, which he took with a better grace than I had
+yet witnessed. He even added a muttered word of thanks.
+
+"It's funny," he reflected, when the yellow woman had left the room
+with the empty bowl, "it's sure funny, but d'ye know, I'm lots easier
+in my mind, knowing you know, and not having to think up a hard-luck
+gag to hand out to you? I hate like hell to have to lie, except of
+course when I need a smooth spiel for the cops. I guess I'll snooze a
+bit now," he added, as I rose to leave the room. And as I reached the
+door:
+
+"Parson?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Why--er--come in a bit to-night, will you? That is, if you've got
+time. And look here: don't you get the notion in your bean I'm just
+some little old two-by-four guy of a yegg or some poor nut of a dip.
+I'm _not_. Why, I've been the whole show _and_ manager besides. Yep,
+I'm Slippy McGee himself."
+
+He paused, to let this sink into my consciousness. I must confess that
+I was more profoundly impressed than even he had any idea of. And
+then, magnanimously, he added: "You're sure some white man, parson."
+
+"Thank you, John Flint," said I, with due modesty.
+
+Heaven knows why I should have been pleased and hopeful, but I was. My
+guest was a criminal; he hadn't shown the slightest sign of
+compunction or of shame; instead, he had betrayed a brazen pride. And
+yet--I felt hopeful. Although I knew I was tacitly concealing a
+burglar, my conscience remained clear and unclouded, and I had a calm
+intuitive assurance of right. So deeply did I feel this that when I
+went over to the church I placed before St. Stanislaus a small lamp
+full of purest olive oil, which is expensive. I felt that he deserved
+some compensation for hiding that package under his sheaf of lilies.
+
+The authorities of our small town knew, of course, that another
+forlorn wretch was being cared for at the Parish House. But had not
+the Parish House sheltered other such vagabonds? The sheriff saw no
+reason to give himself the least concern, beyond making the most
+casual inquiry. If I wanted the fellow, he was only too glad to let me
+keep him. And who, indeed, would look for a notorious criminal in a
+Parish House Guest Room? Who would connect that all too common
+occurrence, a tramp maimed by the railroad, with, the mysterious
+disappearance of the cracksman, Slippy McGee? So, for the present, I
+could feel sure that the man was safe.
+
+And in the meantime, in the orderly proceeding of everyday life, while
+he gained strength under my mother's wise and careful nursing and
+Westmoreland's wise and careful overseeing, there came to him those
+who were instruments for good--my mother first, whom, like Clélie, he
+never called anything but "Madame" and whom, like Clélie, he presently
+obeyed with unquestioning and childlike readiness. Now, Madame is a
+truly wonderful person when she deals with people like him. Never for
+a moment lowering her own natural and beautiful dignity, but without a
+hint of condescension, Madame manages to find the just level upon
+which both can stand as on common ground; then, without noise, she
+helps, and she conveys the impression that thus noiselessly to help is
+the only just, natural and beautiful thing for any decent person to
+do, unless, perhaps, it might be to receive in the like spirit.
+
+Judge Mayne's son, Laurence, full of a fresh and boyish enthusiasm,
+was such another instrument. He had a handsome, intelligent face, a
+straight and beautiful body, and the pleasantest voice in the world.
+His mother in her last years had been a fretful invalid, and to meet
+her constant demands the judge and his son had developed an angelic
+patience with weakness. They were both rather quiet and
+undemonstrative, this father and son; the older man, in fact had a
+stern visage at first glance, until one learned to know it as the face
+of a man trained to restraint and endurance. As for the boy, no one
+could long resist the shrewd, kind youngster, who could spend an hour
+with the most unlikely invalid and leave him all the better for it. I
+was unusually busy just then, Clélie frankly hated and feared the man
+upstairs, my mother had her hands full, and there were many heavy and
+lonesome hours which Laurence set himself the task of filling. I left
+this to the boy himself, offering no suggestions.
+
+"Padre," said the boy to me, some time later, "that chap upstairs is
+the hardest nut I ever tried to crack. There've been times when I felt
+tempted to crack him with a sledge-hammer, if you want the truth. You
+know, he always seemed to like me to read to him, but I've never been
+able to discover whether or not he liked what I read. He never asked
+me a single question, he never seemed interested enough to make a
+comment. But I think that I've made a dent in him at last."
+
+"A dent! In Flint? With what adamantine pick, oh hardiest of miners!"
+
+"With a book. Guess!"
+
+"I couldn't. I give up."
+
+"The Bible!" said Laurence.
+
+The Bible! Had _I_ chosen to read it to him, he would have resented
+it, been impervious, suspicious, hostile. I looked at the boy's
+laughing face, and wondered, and wondered.
+
+"And how," said I, curious, "did you happen to pitch on the Bible?"
+
+"Why, I got to studying about this chap. I wanted something that'd
+_reach him_. I was puzzled. And then I remembered hearing my father
+say that the Bible is the most interesting book in the world because
+it's the most personal. There's something in it for everybody. So I
+thought there'd be something in it for John Flint, and I tried it on
+him, without telling him what I was giving him. I just plunged right
+in, head over heels. Lord, Padre, it _is_ a wonderful old book, isn't
+it? Why, I got so lost in it myself that I forgot all about John
+Flint, until I happened to glance up and see that he was up to the
+eyes in it, just like I was! He likes the fights and he gloats over
+the spoils. He's asking for more. I think of turning Paul loose on
+him."
+
+"Well, if after the manner of men Paul fought with wild beasts at
+Ephesus," I said hopefully. "I dare say he'll be able to hold his own
+even with John Flint."
+
+"I like Paul best of all, myself," said Laurence. "You see, Padre, my
+father and I have needed a dose of Paul more than once--to stiffen our
+backbones. So I'm going to turn the fighting old saint loose on John
+Flint. 'By, Padre;--I'll look in to-morrow--I left poor old Elijah up
+in a cave with no water, and the ravens overdue!"
+
+He went down our garden path whistling, his cap on the back of his
+head, and I looked after him with the warm and comforting sense that
+the world is just that much better for such as he.
+
+The boy was now, in his last high school year, planning to study
+law--all the Maynes took to law as a duck to water. Brave,
+simple-hearted, direct, clear-thinking, scrupulously honorable,--this
+was one of the diamonds used to cut the rough hard surface of Slippy
+McGee.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+NEIGHBORS
+
+
+On a morning in late March, with a sweet and fresh wind blowing, a
+clear sun shining, and a sky so full of soft white woolly clouds that
+you might fancy the sky-people had turned their fleecy flock out to
+graze in the deep blue pastures, Laurence Mayne and I brought John
+Flint downstairs and rolled him out into the glad, green garden, in
+the comfortable wheel-chair that the mill-people had given us for a
+Christmas present; my mother and Clélie followed, and our little dog
+Pitache marched ahead, putting on ridiculous airs of responsibility;
+he being a dog with a great idea of his own importance and wholly
+given over to the notion that nothing could go right if he were not
+there to superintend and oversee it.
+
+The wistaria was in her zenith, girdling the tree-tops with amethyst;
+the Cherokee rose had just begun to reign, all in snow-white velvet,
+with a gold crown and a green girdle for greater glory; the greedy
+brown grumbling bees came to her table in dusty cohorts, and over her
+green bowers floated her gayer lovers the early butterflies, clothed
+delicately as in kings' raiment. In the corners glowed the
+ruby-colored Japanese quince, and the long sprays of that flower I
+most dearly love, the spring-like spirea which the children call
+bridal wreath, brushed you gently as you passed the gate. I never see
+it deck itself in bridal white, I never inhale its shy, clean scent,
+without a tightening of the throat, a misting of the eyes, a melting
+of the heart.
+
+Across our garden and across Miss Sally Ruth Dexter's you could see in
+Major Appleby Cartwright's yard the peach trees in pink party dresses,
+ruffled by the wind. Down the paths marched my mother's daffodils and
+hyacinths, with honey-breathing sweet alyssum in between. Robins and
+wrens, orioles and mocking-birds, blue jays and jackdaws, thrushes and
+blue-birds and cardinals, all were busy house-building; one heard
+calls and answers, saw flashes of painted wings, followed by outbursts
+of ecstasy. If one should lay one's ear to the ground on such a
+morning I think one might hear the heart of the world.
+
+"_Hallelujah! Risen! Risen!_" breathed the glad, green things, pushing
+from the warm mother-mold.
+
+"_Living! Living! Loving! Loving!_" flashed and fluted the flying
+things, joyously.
+
+We wheeled our man out into this divine freshness of renewed life,
+stopping the chair under a glossy, stately magnolia. My mother and
+Clélie and Laurence and I bustled about to make him comfortable.
+Pitache stood stock still, his tail stuck up like a sternly
+admonishing forefinger, a-bossing everything and everybody. We spread
+a light shawl over the man's knees, for it is not easy to bear a cruel
+physical infirmity, to see oneself marred and crippled, in the growing
+spring. He looked about him, snuffed, and wrinkled his forehead; his
+eyes had something of the wistful, wondering satisfaction of an
+animal's. He had never sat in a garden before, in all his life! Think
+of it!
+
+Whenever we bring one of our Guest Roomers downstairs, Miss Sally Ruth
+Dexter promptly comes to her side of the fence to look him over. She
+came this morning, looked at our man critically, and showed plain
+disapproval of him in every line of her face.
+
+On principle Miss Sally Ruth disapproves of most men and many women.
+She does not believe in wasting too much sympathy upon people either;
+she says folks get no more than they deserve and generally not half as
+much.
+
+Miss Sally Ruth Dexter is a rather important person in Appleboro. She
+is fifty-six years old, stout, brown-eyed, suffers from a congenital
+incapacity to refrain from telling the unwelcome truth when people are
+madly trying to save their faces,--she calls this being frank,--is
+tactless, independent, generous, and the possessor of what she herself
+complacently refers to as "a Figure."
+
+For a woman so convinced we're all full of natural and total
+depravity, unoriginal sinners, worms of the dust, and the devil's
+natural fire-fodder, Miss Sally Ruth manages to retain a simple and
+unaffected goodness of practical charity toward the unelect, such as
+makes one marvel. You may be predestined to be lost, but while you're
+here you shall lack no jelly, wine, soup, chicken-with-cream,
+preserves, gumbo, neither such marvelous raised bread as Miss Sally
+Ruth knows how to make with a perfection beyond all praise.
+
+She has a tiny house and a tiny income, which satisfies her; she has
+never married. She told my mother once, cheerfully, that she guessed
+she must be one of those born eunuchs of the spirit the Bible
+mentions--it was intended for her, and she was glad of it, for it had
+certainly saved her a sight of worry and trouble.
+
+There is a cherished legend in our town that Major Appleby Cartwright
+once went over to Savannah on a festive occasion and was there
+joyously entertained by the honorable the Chatham Artillery. The
+Chatham Artillery brews a Punch; insidious, delectable, deceptive, but
+withal a pernicious strong drink that is raging, a wine that mocketh
+and maketh mad. And they gave it to Major Appleby Cartwright in
+copious draughts.
+
+Coming home upon the heels of this, the major arose, put on his Prince
+Albert, donned his top hat, picked a huge bunch of zinnias, and at
+nine o'clock in the morning marched over to Miss Sally Ruth Dexter's.
+
+We differ as to certain unimportant details of that historic call, but
+we are in the main agreed upon the conversation that ensued.
+
+"Sally Ruth," said the major, depositing his bulky person in a rocking
+chair, his hat upon the floor, and wiping his forehead with a spotless
+handkerchief the size of a respectable sheet, "Sally Ruth, you like
+Old Maids?" Here he presented the zinnias.
+
+"Why, I've got a yard full of 'em myself, Major. Whatever made you
+bother to pick 'em? But to whom much hath more shall be given, I
+suppose," said she, resignedly, and put them on the whatnot.
+
+"Sally Ruth," said the major solemnly, ignoring this indifferent
+reception of his offering. "Sally Ruth, come to think of it, an Old
+Maid's a miserable, stiff, scentless sort of a flower. You might
+think, when you first glance at 'em, that they're just like any other
+flowers, but they're not; they're without one single, solitary
+redeemin' particle of sweetness! The Lord made 'em for a warnin' to
+women.
+
+"What good under God's sky does it do you to be an old maid, Sally
+Ruth? You're flyin' in the face of Providence. No lady should fly in
+the face of Providence--she'd a sight better fly to the bosom of some
+man, where she belongs. This mawnin' I looked out of my window and my
+eye fell upon these unfortunate flowers. Right away I thought of you,
+livin' over here all alone and by yourself, with no man's bosom to
+lean on--you haven't really got anything but a few fowls and the Lord
+to love, have you? And, Sally Ruth, tears came to my eyes. Talk not of
+tears till you have seen the tears of warlike men! I believe it would
+almost scare you to death to see me cryin', Sally Ruth! I got to
+thinkin', and I said to myself: 'Appleby Cartwright, you have always
+done your duty like a man. You charged up to the very muzzle of Yankee
+guns once, and you weren't scared wu'th a damn! Are you goin' to be
+scared now? There's a plain duty ahead of you; Sally Ruth's a fine
+figure of a woman, and she ought to have a man's bosom to lean on. Go
+offer Sally Ruth yours!' So here I am, Sally Ruth!" said the major
+valiantly.
+
+Miss Sally Ruth regarded him critically; then:
+
+"You're drunk, Appleby Cartwright, that's what's the matter with you.
+You and your bosom! Why, it's not respectable to talk like that! At
+your age, too! I'm ashamed of you!"
+
+"I was a little upset, over in Savannah," admitted the major. "Those
+fellows must have gotten me to swallow over a gallon of their infernal
+brew--and it goes down like silk, too. Listen at me: don't you ever
+let 'em make you drink a gallon of that punch, Sally Ruth."
+
+"I've seen its effects before. Go home and sleep it off," said Miss
+Sally Ruth, not unkindly. "If you came over to warn me about filling
+up on Artillery Punch, your duty's done--I've never been entertained
+by the Chatham Artillery, and I don't ever expect to be. I suppose it
+was intended for you to be a born goose, Appleby, so it'd be a waste
+of time for me to fuss with you about it. Go on home, now, do, and let
+Cæsar put you to bed. Tell him to tie a wet rag about your head and to
+keep it wet. That'll help to cool you off."
+
+"Sally Ruth," said the major, laying his hand upon his heart and
+trying desperately to focus her with an eye that would waver in spite
+of him, "Sally Ruth, _somebody's_ got to do something for you, and it
+might as well be me. My God, Sally Ruth, _you're settin' like
+clabber!_ It's a shame; it's a cryin' shame, for you're a fine woman.
+I don't mean to scare or flutter you, Sally Ruth,--no gentleman ought
+to scare or flutter a lady--but I'm offerin' you my hand and heart;
+here's my bosom for you to lean on."
+
+"That Savannah brew is worse even than I thought--it's run the man
+stark crazy," said Miss Sally Ruth, viewing him with growing concern.
+
+"Me crazy! Why, I'm askin' you," said the major with awful dignity,
+"I'm askin' you to marry me!"
+
+"Marry _you_? Marry fiddlesticks! Shucks!" said the lady.
+
+"You won't?" Amazement made him sag down in his chair. He stared at
+her owl-like. "Woman," said he solemnly, "when I see my duty I try to
+do it. But I warn you--it's your last chance."
+
+"I hope," said Miss Sally Ruth tartly, "that it's my last chance to
+make a born fool of myself. Why, you old gasbag, if I had to stay in
+the same house with you I'd be tempted to stick a darning needle in
+you to hear you explode! Appleby, I'm like that woman that had a
+chimney that smoked, a dog that growled, a parrot that swore, and a
+cat that stayed out nights; _she_ didn't need a man--and no more do
+I."
+
+"Sally Ruth," said the major feelingly, "when I came here this mawnin'
+it wasn't for my own good--it was for yours. And to think this is all
+the thanks I get for bein' willin' to sacrifice myself! My God! The
+ingratitude of women!"
+
+He looked at Miss Sally Ruth, and Miss Sally Ruth looked at him. And
+then suddenly, without a moment's warning, Miss Sally Ruth rose, and
+took Major Appleby Cartwright, who on a time had charged Yankee guns
+and hadn't been scared wu'th a damn, by the ear. She tugged, and the
+major rose, as one pulled upward by his bootstraps.
+
+"Ouch! Turn loose! I take it back! The devil! It wasn't intended for
+any mortal man to marry you--Sally Ruth, I wouldn't marry you now for
+forty billion dollars and a mule! Turn loose, you hussy! Turn loose!"
+screeched the major.
+
+Unheeding his anguished protests, which brought Judge Hammond Mayne on
+the run, thinking somebody was being murdered, Miss Sally Ruth marched
+her suitor out of her house and led him to her front gate. Here she
+paused, jaws firmly set, eyes glittering, and, as with hooks of
+steel, took firm hold upon the gallant major's other ear. Then she
+shook him; his big crimson countenance, resembling a huge overripe
+tomato, waggled deliriously to and fro.
+
+"I was born"--_shake_--"an old maid,"--_shake, shake, shake_--"I have
+lived--by the grace of God"--_shake, shake, shake_--"an old maid, and
+I expect"--_shake_--"to die an old maid! I don't propose to
+have"--_shake_--"an old windbag offering _me_ his blubbery old
+bosom"--_shake, shake, SHAKE_--"at this time of my life!--and don't
+you forget it, Appleby Cartwright! _THERE!_ You go back home"--_shake,
+shake, shake_--"and sober up, you old gander, you!"
+
+Major Appleby Cartwright stood not upon the order of his going, but
+went at once, galloping as if a company of those Yankees with whom he
+had once fought were upon his hindquarters with fixed bayonets.
+
+However, they being next-door neighbors and friends of a lifetime's
+standing, peace was finally patched up. In Appleboro we do not mention
+this historic meeting when either of the participants can hear us,
+though it is one of our classics and no home is complete without it.
+The Major ever afterward eschewed Artillery Punch.
+
+This morning, over the fence, Miss Sally Ruth addressed our invalid
+directly and without prelude, after her wont. She doesn't believe in
+beating about the bush:
+
+"The wages of walking up and down the earth and going to and fro in
+it, tramping like Satan, is a lost leg. Not that it wasn't intended
+you should lose yours--and I hope and pray it will be a lesson to
+you."
+
+"Well, take it from me," he said grimly, "there's nobody but me
+collecting my wages."
+
+A quick approval of this plain truth showed in Miss Sally Ruth's
+snapping eyes.
+
+"Come!" said she, briskly. "If you've got sense enough to see _that_,
+you're not so far away from the truth as you might be. Collecting your
+wages is the good and the bad thing about life, I reckon. But
+everything's intended, so you don't need to be too sorry for yourself,
+any way you look at it. And you could just as well have lost _both_
+legs while you were at it, you know." She paused reflectively. "Let's
+see: I've got chicken-broth and fresh rolls to-day--I'll send you over
+some, after awhile." She nodded, and went back to her housework.
+
+Laurence went on to High School, Madame had her house to oversee, I
+had many overdue calls; so we left Pitache and John Flint together,
+out in the birdhaunted, sweet-scented, sun-dappled garden, in the
+golden morning hours. No one can be quite heartless in a green garden,
+quite hopeless in the spring, or quite desolate when there's a dog's
+friendly nose to be thrust into one's hand.
+
+I am afraid that at first he missed all this; for he could think of
+nothing but himself and that which had befallen him, coming upon him
+as a bolt from the blue. He had had, heretofore, nothing but his
+body--and now his body had betrayed him! It had become, not the
+splendid engine which obeyed his slightest wish, but a drag upon him.
+Realizing this acutely, untrained, undisciplined, he was savagely
+sullen, impenetrably morose. He tired of Laurence's reading--I think
+the boy's free quickness of movement, his well-knit, handsome body,
+the fact that he could run and jump as pleased him, irked and chafed
+the man new and unused to his own physical infirmity.
+
+He seemed to want none of us; I have seen him savagely repulse the
+dog, who, shocked and outraged at this exhibition of depravity,
+withdrew, casting backward glances of horrified and indignant
+reproach.
+
+But as the lovely, peaceful, healing days passed, that bitter and
+contracted heart had to expand somewhat. Gradually the ferocity faded,
+leaving in its room an anxious and brooding wonder. God knows what
+thoughts passed through that somber mind in those long hours, when,
+concentrated upon himself, he must have faced the problem of his
+future and, like one before an impassable stone wall, had to fall
+back, baffled. He could be sure of only one thing: that never again
+could he be what he had been once--"the slickest cracksman in
+America." This in itself tortured him. Heretofore, life had been
+exactly what he chose to make it: he had put himself to the test, and
+he had proven himself the most daring, the coolest, shrewdest, most
+cunning, in that sinister world in which he had shone with so evil a
+light. _He had been Slippy McGee_. Sure of himself, his had been that
+curious inverted pride which is the stigmata of the criminal.
+
+More than once I saw him writhe in his chair, tormented, shaken, spent
+with futile curses, impotently lamenting his lost kingdom. He still
+had the skill, the cold calculating brain, the wit, the will; and now,
+by a cruel chance and a stupid accident, he had lost out! The end had
+come for him, and he in his heyday! There were moments when, watching
+him, I had the sensation as of witnessing almost visibly, here in our
+calm sunny garden, the Dark Powers fighting openly for a soul.
+
+_"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against
+principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of
+this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+UNDERWINGS
+
+
+If I have not heretofore spoken of Mary Virginia, it is because all
+that winter she and Mrs. Eustis had been away; and in consequence
+Appleboro was dull enough. For the Eustises are our wealthiest and
+most important family, just as the Eustis house, with its pillared,
+Greek-temple-effect front, is by far the handsomest house in town.
+When we have important folks to entertain, we look to the Eustises to
+save our faces for us by putting them up at their house.
+
+One afternoon, shortly after we had gotten settled in Appleboro, I
+came home to find my mother entertaining no less a personage than Mrs.
+Eustis; she wasn't calling on the Catholic priest and his mother, you
+understand; far from it! She was recognizing Armand De Rancé and Adele
+de Marsignan!
+
+Mrs. Eustis was a fair, plump little partridge of a woman, so
+perfectly satisfied with herself that brains, in her case, would have
+amounted to a positive calamity. She is an instance of the fascination
+a fool seems to have for men of undoubted powers of mind and heart,
+for Eustis, who had both to an unusual degree, loved her devotedly,
+even while he smiled at her. She had, after some years of
+childlessness, laid him under an everlasting obligation by presenting
+him with a daughter, an obligation deepened by the fact that the
+child was in every sense her father's child, not her mother's.
+
+That afternoon she brought the little girl with her, to make our
+acquaintance. When the child, shyly friendly, looked up, it seemed to
+me for an anguished moment as if another little girl had walked out of
+the past, so astonishingly like was she to that little lost playmate
+of my youth. Right then and there Mary Virginia walked into my heart
+and took possession, as of a place swept and garnished and long
+waiting her coming.
+
+When we knew her better my mother used to say that if she could have
+chosen a little girl instead of the little boy that had been I, she
+must have chosen Mary Virginia Eustis out of all the world.
+
+Like Judge Mayne's Laurence, she chose to make the Parish House her
+second home--for indeed my mother ever seemed to draw children to her,
+as by some delightful magic. Here, then, the child learned to sew and
+to embroider, to acquire beautiful housewifely accomplishments, and to
+speak French with flawless perfection; she reaped the benefit of my
+mother's girlhood spent in a convent in France; and Mrs. Eustis was
+far too shrewd not to appreciate the value of this. And so we acquired
+Mary Virginia.
+
+I watched the lovely miracle of her growth with an almost painful
+tenderness. Had I not become a priest, had I realized those spring
+hopes of mine; and had there been little children resembling their
+mother, then my own little girls had been like this one. Even thus had
+been their blue eyes, and theirs, too, such hair of such curling
+blackness.
+
+The hours I spent with the little girl and Laurence helped me as well
+as them; these fresh souls and growing minds freshened and revived
+mine, and kept me young in heart.
+
+"We are all made of dust," said my mother once. "But Mary Virginia's
+is star dust. Star dust, and dew, and morning gold," she added
+musingly.
+
+"She simply cannot imagine evil, much less see it in anything or in
+anybody," I told Madame, for at times the child's sheer innocence
+troubled me for her. "One is puzzled how to bring home to this naïve
+soul the ugly truth that all is not good. Now, Laurence is better
+balanced. He takes people and events with a saving grain of
+skepticism. But Mary Virginia is divinely blind."
+
+My mother regarded me with a tolerant smile. "Do not worry too much
+over that divinely blind one, my son," said she. "I assure you, she is
+quite capable of seeing a steeple in daylight! Observe this: yesterday
+Laurence angered her, and she seized him by the hair and bumped his
+head against the study wall--no mild thump, either! She has in her
+quite enough of the leaven of unrighteousness to save her, at a
+pinch--for Laurence was entirely right, she entirely wrong. Yet--she
+made him apologize before she consented to forgive him, and he did it
+gratefully. She allowed him to understand how magnanimous she was in
+thus pardoning him for her own naughtiness, and he was deeply
+impressed, as men-creatures should be under such circumstances. Such
+wisdom, and she but a child! I was enchanted!"
+
+"Good heavens! Surely, Mother, I misunderstand you! Surely you
+reproved her!"
+
+"Reprove her?" My mother's voice was full of astonishment. "Why should
+I reprove her? She was perfectly right!"
+
+"Perfectly right? Why, you said--indeed, I assure you, you said that
+Laurence had been entirely right, she entirely wrong!"
+
+"Oh, _that!_ I see; well, as for that, she was."
+
+"Then, surely--"
+
+"My son, a woman who is in the wrong is entirely right when she makes
+the man apologize," said my mother firmly. "That is the Law, fixed as
+the Medes' and the Persians', and she who forgets or ignores it is
+ground between the upper and the nether millstones. Mary Virginia
+remembered and obeyed. When she grows up you will all of you adore her
+madly. Why, then, should she be reproved?"
+
+I have never been able to reflect upon Laurence getting his head
+bumped and then gratefully apologizing to the darling shrew who did
+it, without a cold wind stirring my hair. And yet--Laurence, and I,
+too, love her all the more dearly for it! _Miserere, Domine!_
+
+It was May when Mary Virginia came back to Appleboro. She had written
+us a bubbling letter, telling us just when we were to expect her, and
+how happy she was at the thought of being home once more. We, too,
+rejoiced, for we had missed her sadly. My mother was so happy that she
+planned a little intimate feast to celebrate the child's return.
+
+I remember how calm and mild an evening it was. At noon there had been
+a refreshing shower, and the air was deliciously pure and clear, and
+full of wet woodsy scents. The raindrops fringing the bushes became
+prisms, a spiderweb was a fairy foot-bridge; and all our birds,
+leaving for a moment such household torments as squalling insatiable
+mouths that must be filled, became jubilant choristers. "The opulent
+dyepots of the angels" had been emptied lavishly across the sky, and
+the old Parish House lay steeped in a serene and heavenly glow, every
+window glittering diamond-bright to the west.
+
+Next door Miss Sally Ruth was feeding and scolding her cooing pigeons,
+which fluttered about her, lighting upon her shoulder, surrounding her
+with a bright-colored living cloud; the judge's black cat Panch lay
+along the Mayne side of the fence and blinked at them regretfully with
+his slanting emerald eyes. From the Mayne kitchen-steps came, faintly,
+Daddy January's sweet quavering old voice:
+
+    "--Gwine tuh climb up higher 'n' higher,
+         Some uh dese days--"
+
+John Flint, silent, depressed, with folded lips and somber eyes,
+hobbled about awkwardly, savagely training himself to use the crutches
+Westmoreland had lately brought him. Very unlovely he looked, dragging
+himself along like a wounded beast. The poor wretch struck a
+discordant note in the sweet peacefulness of the spring evening; nor
+could we say anything to comfort him, we who were not maimed.
+
+Came a high, sweet, shrill call at the gate; a high yelp of delight
+from Pitache, hurtling himself forward like a woolly white cannonball;
+a sound of light and flying feet; and Mary Virginia ran into the
+garden, the little overjoyed dog leaping frantically about her. She
+wore a white frock, and over it a light scarlet jacket. Her blue eyes
+were dancing, lighting her sweet and fresh face, colored like a rose.
+The gay little breeze that came along with her stirred her skirts, and
+fluttered her scarlet ribbons, and the curls about her temples. You
+might think Spring herself had paused for a lovely moment in the
+Parish House garden and stood before you in this gracious and virginal
+shape, at once delicate and vital.
+
+Miss Sally Ruth, scattering pigeons right and left, dashed to the
+fence to call greetings. My mother, seizing the child by the arms,
+held her off a moment, to look her over fondly; then, drawing her
+closer, kissed her as a daughter is kissed.
+
+I laid my hand on the child's head, happy with that painful happiness
+her presence always occasioned me, when she came back after an
+absence--as if the Other Girl flashed into view for a quick moment,
+and then was gone. Laurence, who had followed, stood looking down at
+her with boyish condescension.
+
+"Huh! I can eat hominy off her head!" said he, aggravatingly.
+
+"Old Mister Biggity!" flashed Mary Virginia. And then she turned and
+met, face to face, the fixed stare of John Flint, hanging upon his
+crutches as one might upon a cross,--a stare long, still, intent,
+curious, speculative, almost incredulous.
+
+"You are the Padre's last guest, aren't you?" her eyes were full of
+gravest sympathy. "I'm so sorry you met with such a misfortune--but
+I'm gladder you're alive. It's so good just to be alive in the spring,
+isn't it?" She smiled at him directly, taking him, as it were, into a
+pleasant confidence. She seemed perfectly unconscious of the evil
+unloveliness of him; Mary Virginia always seemed to miss the evil,
+passing it over as if it didn't exist. Instead, diving into the depths
+of other personalities, always she brought to the surface whatever
+pearl of good might lie concealed at the bottom. To her this sinister
+cripple was simply another human being, with whose misfortune one must
+sympathize humanly.
+
+Clélie, in a speckless white apron and a brand-new red-and-white
+bandanna to do greater honor to the little girl whom she adored, set a
+table under the trees and spread it with the thin dainty sandwiches,
+the delectable little cakes, and the fine bonbons she and my mother
+had made to celebrate the child's return. And we had tea, making very
+merry, for she had a thousand amusing things to tell us, every airy
+trifle informed with something of her own brave bright mirthful
+spirit. John Flint sat nearby in the wheel chair, his crutches lying
+beside it, and looked on silently and ate his cake and drank his tea
+stolidly, as if it were no unusual thing for him to break bread in
+such company.
+
+"Padre," said Mary Virginia with deep gravity. "My aunt Jenny says I'm
+growing up. She says I'll have to put up my hair and let down my
+frocks pretty soon, and that I'll probably be thinking of beaux in
+another year, though she hopes to goodness I won't, until I've got
+through with school at least."
+
+The almost unconscious imitation of Miss Jenny's pecking, birdlike
+voice made me smile.
+
+"Beaux! Long skirts! Put up hair! Great Scott, will you listen to the
+kid!" scoffed Laurence. "You everlasting little silly, you! P'tite
+Madame, these cakes are certainly all to the good. May I have another
+two or three, please!"
+
+"I'm 'most thirteen years old, Laurence Mayne," said Mary Virginia,
+with dignity. "You're only seventeen, so you don't need to give
+yourself such hateful airs. You're not too old to be greedy, anyhow.
+Padre, _am_ I growing up?"
+
+"I fear so, my child," said I, gloomily.
+
+"You're not glad, either, are you, Padre?"
+
+"But you were such a delightful child," I temporized.
+
+"Oh, lovely!" said Laurence, eying her with unflattering
+brotherliness. "And she had so much feeling, too, Mary Virginia! Why,
+when I was sick once, she wanted me to die, so she could ride to my
+funeral in the front carriage; she doted on funerals, the little
+ghoul! She was horribly disappointed when I got better--she thought it
+disobliging of me, and that I'd done it to spite her. Once, too, when
+I tried to reason with her--and Mary Virginia needed reason if ever a
+kid did--she bumped my head until I had knots on it. There's your
+delightful Mary Virginia for you!"
+
+"Anyhow, you didn't die and become an angel--you stayed disagreeably
+alive and you're going to become a lawyer," said Mary Virginia, too
+gently. "And your head was bumpable, Laurence, though I'm sorry to say
+I don't ever expect to bump it again. Why, I'm going away to school
+and when I come back I'll be Miss Eustis, and you'll be Mr. Mayne!
+Won't it be funny, though?"
+
+"I don't see anything funny in calling you Miss Eustis," said
+Laurence, with boyish impatience. "And I'm certainly not going to
+notice you if you're silly enough to call me Mister Mayne. I hope you
+won't be a fool, Mary Virginia. So many girls are fools." He ate
+another cake.
+
+"Not half as big fools as boys are, though," said she,
+dispassionately. "My father says the man is always the bigger fool of
+the two."
+
+Laurence snorted. "I wonder what we'll be like, though--both of us?"
+he mused.
+
+"You? You're biggity now, but you'll be lots worse, then," said Mary
+Virginia, with unflattering frankness. "I think you'll probably strut
+like a turkey, and you'll be baldheaded, and wear double-lensed horn
+spectacles, and spats, and your wife will call you 'Mr. Mayne' to your
+face and 'Your Poppa' to the children, and she'll perfectly _despise_
+people like Madame and the Padre and me!"
+
+"You never did have any reasoning power, Mary Virginia," said
+Laurence, with brotherly tact. "Our black cat Panch would put it all
+over you. Allow me to inform you I'm _not_ biggity, miss! I'm
+logical--something a girl can't understand. And I'd like to know what
+you think _you're_ going to grow up to be?"
+
+"Oh, let's quit talking about it," she said petulantly. "I hate to
+think of growing up. Grown ups don't seem to be happy--and _I_ want to
+be happy!" She turned her head, and met once more the absorbed and
+watchful stare of the man in the wheel-chair.
+
+"Weren't you sorry when you had to stop being a little boy and grow
+up?" she asked him, wistfully.
+
+"Me?" he laughed harshly. "I couldn't say, miss. I guess I was born
+grown up." His face darkened.
+
+"That wasn't a bit fair," said she, with instant sympathy.
+
+"There's a lot not fair," he told her, "when you're born and brought
+up like I was. The worst is not so much what happens to you, though
+that's pretty bad; it's that you don't know it's happening--and
+there's nobody to put you wise. Why," his forehead puckered as if a
+thought new to him had struck him, "why, your very looks get to be
+different!"
+
+Mary Virginia started. "Oh, looks!" said she, thoughtfully. "Now,
+isn't it curious for you to say just that, right now, for it reminds
+me that I brought something to the Padre--something that set me to
+thinking about people's looks, too,--and how you never can tell. Wait
+a minute, and I'll show you." She reached for the pretty crocheted bag
+she had brought with her, and drew from it a small pasteboard box.
+None of us, idly watching her, dreamed that a moment big with fate was
+upon us. I have often wondered how things would have turned out if
+Mary Virginia had lost or forgotten that pasteboard box!
+
+"I happened to put my hand on a tree--and this little fellow moved,
+and I caught him. I thought at first he was a part of the tree-trunk,
+he looked so much like it," said the child, opening the little box.
+Inside lay nothing more unusual than a dark-colored and rather ugly
+gray moth, with his wings folded down.
+
+"One wouldn't think him pretty, would one?" said she, looking down at
+the creature.
+
+"No," said Flint, who had wheeled nearer, and craned his neck over the
+box. "No, miss, I shouldn't think I'd call something like that
+pretty,"--he looked from the moth to Mary Virginia, a bit
+disappointedly.
+
+Mary Virginia smiled, and picking up the little moth, held his body,
+very gently, between her finger-tips. He fluttered, spreading out his
+gray wings; and then one saw the beautiful pansy-like underwings, and
+the glorious lower pair of scarlet velvet barred and bordered with
+black.
+
+"I brought him along, thinking the Padre might like him, and tell me
+something about him," said the little girl. "The Padre's crazy about
+moths and butterflies, you must understand, and we're always on the
+lookout to get them for him. I never found this particular one before,
+and you can't imagine how I felt when he showed me what he had hidden
+under that gray cloak of his!"
+
+"He's a member of a large and most respectable family, the Catocalæ,"
+I told her. "I'll take him, my dear, and thank you--there's always a
+demand for the Catocalæ. And you may call him an Underwing, if you
+prefer--that's his common name."
+
+"I got to thinking," said the little girl, thoughtfully, lifting her
+clear and candid eyes to John Flint's. "I got to thinking, when he
+threw aside his plain gray cloak and showed me his lovely underwings,
+that he's like some people--people you'd think were very common, you
+know. You couldn't be expected to know what was underneath, could you?
+So you pass them by, thinking how ordinary, and matter of fact, and
+uninteresting and even ugly they are, and you feel rather sorry for
+them--because you don't know. But if you can once get close enough to
+touch them--why, then you find out!" Her eyes grew deeper, and
+brighter, as they do when she is moved; and the color came more
+vividly to her cheek. "Don't you reckon," said she naïvely, "that
+plenty of folks are like him? They're the sad color of the
+street-dust, of course, for things do borrow from their surroundings,
+didn't you know that? That's called protective mimicry, the Padre
+says. So you only think of the dust-colored outside--and all the while
+the underwings are right there, waiting for you to find them! Isn't it
+wonderful and beautiful? And the best of all is, it's true!"
+
+The cripple in the chair put out his hand with a hint of timidity in
+his manner; he was staring at Mary Virginia as if some of the light
+within her had dimly penetrated his grosser substance.
+
+"Could I hold it--for a minute--in my own hand?" he asked, turning
+brick-red.
+
+"Of course you may," said Mary Virginia pleasantly. "I see by the
+Padre's face this isn't a rare moth--he's been here all along, only my
+eyes have just been opened to him. I don't want him to go in any
+collection. I don't want him to go anywhere, except back into the
+air--I owe him that for what he taught me. So I'm sure the Padre won't
+mind, if you'd like to set him free, yourself."
+
+She put the moth on the man's finger, delicately, for a Catocala is a
+swift-winged little chap; it spread out its wings splendidly, as if to
+show him its loveliness; then, darting upward, vanished into the cool
+green depth of the shrubbery.
+
+"I remember running after a butterfly once, when I was a kid," said
+he. "He came flying down our street, Lord knows where from, or why,
+and I caught him after a chase. I thought he was the prettiest thing
+ever my eyes had seen, and I wanted the worst way in the world to keep
+him with me. A brown fellow he was, all sprinkled over with little
+splotches of silver, as if there'd been plenty of the stuff on hand,
+and it'd been laid on him thick. But after awhile I got to thinking
+he'd feel like he was in jail, shut up in my hot fist. I couldn't bear
+that, so I ran to the end of the street, to save him from the other
+kids, and then I turned him loose and watched him beat it for the sky.
+They're pretty things, butterflies. Somehow I always liked them better
+than any other living creatures." He was staring after the moth, his
+forehead wrinkled. He spoke almost unconsciously, and he certainly had
+no idea that he had given us cause for a hopeful astonishment.
+
+Now, Mary Virginia's eyes had fallen, idly enough, upon John Flint's
+hands lying loosely upon his knees. Her face brightened.
+
+"Padre," she suggested suddenly, "why don't you let him help you with
+your butterflies? Look at his hands! Why, they're just exactly the
+right sort to handle setting needles and mounting blocks, and to
+stretch wings without loosening a scale. He could be taught in a few
+lessons, and just think what a splendid help he could be! And you do
+so need help with those insects of yours, Padre--I've heard you say
+so, over and over."
+
+The child was right--John Flint did have good hands--large enough,
+well-shaped, steel-muscled, powerful, with flexible, smooth-skinned,
+sensitive fingers, the fingers of an expert lapidary rather than a
+prize-fighter.
+
+"If you think there's any way I could help the parson for awhile, I'd
+be proud to try, miss. It's true," he added casually, with a
+sphinx-like immobility of countenance, "that I'm what might be called
+handy with my fingers."
+
+"We'll call it settled, then," said Mary Virginia happily.
+
+Laurence took her home at dusk; it was a part of his daily life to
+look after Mary Virginia, as one looks after a cherished little
+sister. When they were younger the boy had often complained that she
+might as well be his sister, she quarreled with him so much; and the
+little girl said, bitterly, he was as disagreeable as if he'd been a
+brother. In spite of which the little girl, for all her delicious
+impertinences, looked up to the boy; and the boy had adored her, from
+the time she gurgled at him from her cradle.
+
+My mother left us, and John Flint and I sat outdoors in the pleasant
+twilight, he smoking the pipe Laurence had given him.
+
+"Parson," said he, abruptly, "Parson, you folks are swells, ain't you?
+The real thing, I mean, you and Madame? Even the yellow nigger's a
+lady nigger, ain't she?"
+
+"I am a poor priest, such as you see, my son, Madame is--Madame. And
+Clélie is a good servant."
+
+"But you were born a swell, weren't you?" he persisted. "Old family,
+swell diggings, trained flunkies, and all that?"
+
+"I was born a gentleman, if that is what you mean. Of an old family,
+yes. And there was an old house--once."
+
+"How'd _you_ ever hit the trail for the Church? I wonder! But say,
+you never asked me any more questions than you had to, so you can tell
+me to shut up, if you want to. Not that I wouldn't like to know how
+the Sam Hill the like of you ever got nabbed by the skypilots."
+
+"God called me through affliction, my son."
+
+"Oh," said my son, blankly. "Huh! But I bet you the best crib ever
+cracked you were some peach of a boy before you got that 'S.O.S.'"
+
+"I was, like the young, the thoughtless young, a sinner."
+
+"I suppose," said he tentatively, after a pause, "that _I'm_ one hell
+of a sinner myself, according to Hoyle, ain't I?"
+
+"I do not think it would injure you to change your--course of life,
+nor yet your way of mentioning it," I said, feeling my way cautiously.
+"But--we are bidden to remember there is more joy in heaven over one
+sinner saved than over the ninety-and-nine just men."
+
+"Is that so? Well, it listens like good horse-sense to me," said Mr.
+Flint, promptly. "Because, look here: you can rake in ninety-and-nine
+boobs any old time--there's one born every time the clock ticks,
+parson--but they don't land something like me every day, believe me!
+And I bet you a stack of dollar chips a mile high there was some
+song-and-dance in the sky-joint when they put one over on _you_ for
+fair. Sure!" He puffed away at his pipe, and I, having nothing to say
+to this fine reasoning, held my peace.
+
+"Parson, that kid's a swell, too, ain't she? And the boy?"
+
+"Laurence is the son of Judge Hammond Mayne."
+
+"And the little girl?" Insensibly his voice softened.
+
+"I suppose," I agreed, "that the little girl is what you might call a
+swell, too."
+
+"I never," said he, reflectively, "came what you might call _talking_
+close to real swells before. I've seen 'em, of course--at a distance.
+Some of 'em, taking 'em by and large, looked pretty punk, to me; some
+of 'em was middling, and a few looked as if they might have the goods.
+But none of 'em struck me as being real live breathing _people_, same
+as other folks. Why, parson, some of those dames'd throw a fit,
+fancying they was poisoned, if they had to breathe the same air with
+folks like me--me being what I am and they being--what they think they
+are. Yet here's you and Madame, the real thing--and the boy--and the
+little girl--the little girl--" he stopped, staring at me dumbly, as
+the vision of Mary Virginia rose before him.
+
+"She is, indeed, a dear, dear child," said I. His words stung me
+somewhat, for once upon a time, I myself would have resented that such
+as he should have breathed the same air with Mary Virginia.
+
+"I'd almost think I'd dreamed her," said he, thoughtfully, "that is,
+if I was good enough to have dreams like that," he added hastily, with
+his first touch of shame. "I've seen 'em from the Battery up, and some
+of 'em was sure-enough queens, but I didn't know they came like this
+one. She's bran-new to me, parson. Say, you just show me what she
+wants me to help you with, and I'll do it. She seems to think I can,
+and it oughtn't to be any harder than opening a time-vault, ought it?"
+
+"No," said I gravely, "I shouldn't think it would be. Though I never
+opened a time-vault, you understand, and I hope and pray you'll never
+touch one again, either. I'd rather you wouldn't even refer to it,
+please. It makes me feel, rather--well, let's say _particeps
+criminis_."
+
+"I suppose that's the polite for punching you in the wind," said he,
+just as gravely. "And I didn't think you'd ever monkeyed with a vault;
+why, you couldn't, not if you was to try till Gabriel did his little
+turn in the morning--not unless you'd been caught when you were softer
+and put wise. Man, it's a bigger job than you think, and you've got to
+have the know-how and the nerve before you can put it over. But
+there--I'll keep it dark, seeing you want me to." He stretched out his
+hands, regarding them speculatively. "They _are_ classy mitts," he
+remarked impersonally. "Yep, seemed like they were just naturally made
+to--do what they did. They were built for fine work." At that his jaw
+snapped; a spasm twitched his face; it darkened.
+
+"The work little Miss Eustis suggested for you," I insinuated hastily,
+"is what very many people consider very fine work indeed. About one in
+a thousand can do it properly."
+
+"Lead me to it," said he wearily, and without enthusiasm, "and turn me
+loose. I'll do what I can, to please her. At least, until I can make a
+getaway for keeps."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ENTER KERRY
+
+
+When I was first seen prowling along the roads and about the fields
+stalking butterflies and diurnal moths with the caution of a red
+Indian on the warpath and the stealth of a tiger in the jungle; when
+mystified folk met me at night, a lantern suspended from my neck, a
+haversack across my shoulders, a bottle-belt about my waist, and armed
+with a butterfly net, the consensus of opinion was that poor Father De
+Rancé was stark staring mad. Appleboro hadn't heretofore witnessed the
+proceedings of the Brethren of the Net, and I had to do much patient
+explaining; even then I am sure I must have left many firmly convinced
+that I was not, in their own phrase, "all there."
+
+"Hey, you! Mister! Them worms is pizen! Them's _fever_-worms!" was
+shrieked at me frenziedly by the country-folks, black and white, when
+I was caught scooping up the hairy caterpillars of the tiger moths.
+Even when it was understood that I wished caterpillars, cocoons, and
+chrysalids, for the butterflies and moths they would later make, looks
+of pitying contempt were cast upon me. That a grown man--particularly
+a minister of the gospel, with not only his own but other people's
+souls to save--should spend time hunting for worms, with which he
+couldn't even bait a hook, awakened amazement.
+
+"What any man in his right mind wants with a thing that ain't nothin'
+but wriggles an' hair on the outside an' sqush on the inside, beats
+me!" was said more than once.
+
+"But all of them are interesting, some are valuable, and many grow
+into very beautiful moths and butterflies," I ventured to defend
+myself.
+
+"S'posin' they do? You can't eat 'em or wear 'em or plant 'em, can
+you?" And really, you understand, I couldn't!
+
+"An' you mean to tell me to my face," said a scandalized farmer,
+watching me assorting and naming the specimens taken from my field
+box, "you mean to tell me you're givin' every one o' them bugs a
+_name_, same's a baptized Christian? Adam named every livin' thing,
+an' Adam called them things Caterpillars an' Butterflies. If it suited
+him an' Eve and God A'mighty to have 'em called that an' nothin' else,
+looks to me it had oughter suit anybody that's got a grain o'real
+religion. If you go to call 'em anythin' else it's sinnin' agin the
+Bible. I've heard all my life you Cath'lics don't take as much stock
+in the Scripters as you'd oughter, but this thing o'callin' a wurrum
+Adam named plain Caterpillar a--a--_what'd_ you say the dum beast's
+name was? _My sufferin' Savior!_ is jest about the wust dern
+foolishness yet! I lay it at the Pope's door, every mite o' it, an'
+you'd better believe he'll have to answer for sech carryin's on, some
+o' these days!"
+
+So many other things having been laid at the Pope's door, I held my
+peace and made no futile attempt to clear the Holy Father of the dark
+suspicion of having perpetrated their names upon certain of the
+American lepidoptera.
+
+I had yet other darker madnesses; had I not been seen spreading upon
+trees with a whitewash brush a mixture of brown sugar, stale beer, and
+rum?
+
+Asked to explain this lunatic proceeding I could only say that I was
+sugaring for moths; these airy fairy gentlemen having a very human
+liking for a "wee drappie o't."
+
+"That amiable failin'," Major Appleby Cartwright decided, "is a credit
+to them an' commends them to a respectful hearin'. On its face it
+would seem to admit them to the ancient an' honorable brotherhood of
+convivial man. But, suh, there's another side to this question, an'
+it's this:--a creature that's got six perfectly good legs, not to
+mention wings, an' still can't carry his liquor without bein' caught,
+deserves his fate. It's not in my line to offer suggestions to an
+allwise Providence, or I _might_ hint that a scoop-net an' a killing
+jar in pickle for some two-legged topers out huntin' free drinks
+wouldn't be such a bad idea at all."
+
+But as I pursued my buggy way--and displayed, save in this one
+particular, what might truthfully be called ordinary common
+sense--people gradually grew accustomed to it, looking upon me as a
+mild and harmless lunatic whose inoffensive mania might safely be
+indulged--nay, even humored. In consequence I was from time to time
+inundated with every common thing that creeps, crawls, and flies. I
+accepted gifts of bugs and caterpillars that filled my mother with
+disgust and Clélie with horror; both of them hesitated to come into my
+study, and I have known Clélie to be afraid to go to bed of a night
+because the great red-horned "Hickory devil" was downstairs in a box,
+and she was firmly convinced that this innocent worm harbored a
+cold-blooded desire to crawl upstairs and bite her. That silly woman
+will depart this life in the firm faith that all crawling creatures
+came into the world with the single-hearted hope of biting her, above
+all other mortals; and that having achieved the end for which they
+were created, both they and she will immediately curl up and die.
+
+But alas, I had but scant time to devote to this enchanting and
+engrossing study, which, properly pursued, will fill a man's days to
+the brim. I gathered my specimens as I could and classified and
+mounted them as it pleased God--until the advent of John Flint.
+
+Now, I must, with great reluctance, here set down the plain truth that
+he, too, looked upon me at first with amaze not unmixed with rage and
+contempt. Most caterpillars, you understand, feed upon food of their
+own arbitrary choosing; and when they are in captivity one must
+procure this particular aliment if one hopes to rear them.
+
+_Slippy McGee feeding bugs!_ It was about as hideous and devil-born a
+contretemps as, say, putting a belted earl to peel potatoes or asking
+an archbishop to clean cuspidors. The man boiled with offended dignity
+and outraged pride. One could actually see him swell. He had expected
+something quite different, and this apparently offensive triviality
+disgusted and shocked him. I could see myself falling forty thousand
+fathoms in his esteem, and I think he would have incontinently turned
+his back upon me save for his promise to Mary Virginia.
+
+It is true that many of the caterpillars are ugly and formidable, poor
+things, to the uninitiated eye, which fails to recognize under this
+uncomely disguise the crowned and glorious citizens of the air. I had
+just then a great Cecropia, an able-bodied green gentleman armed with
+twelve thorn-like, sizable horns, and wearing, along with other
+agreeable adornments, three yellow and four red arrangements like
+growths of dwarf cactus plants on the segments behind his hard round
+green head.
+
+Mr. Flint, with an ejaculation of horror, backed off on one crutch and
+clubbed the other.
+
+"My God!" said he, "Kill it! Kill it!" I saved my green friend in the
+nick of time. The man, with staring eyes, looked from me to the
+caterpillar; then he leaned over and watched it, in grim silence.
+
+He knotted his forehead, made slits of his eyes, gulped, screwed his
+mouth into the thin red line of deadly determination, and with every
+nerve braced, even as a martyr braces himself for the stake or the
+sword, put out his hand, up which the formidable-looking worm walked
+leisurely. Death not immediately resulting from this daring act, he
+controlled his shudders and breathed easier. The worm became less and
+less terrifying; no longer appearing, say, the size of the boa
+constrictor. A few moments of this harmless meandering about Mr.
+Flint's hand and arm, and of a sudden he wore his true colors of an
+inoffensive and law-abiding larva, anxious only to attend strictly to
+his own legitimate business, the Gargantuan feeding of himself into
+the pupa from which he would presently emerge one of the most
+magnificent of native moths. Gingerly Mr. Flint picked him up between
+thumb and fore-finger, and as gingerly dropped him back into the
+breeding-cage. He squared his shoulders, wiped his brow, and drew a
+long whistling breath.
+
+"Phe-ew! It took all my nerve to do it!" said he, frankly. "I felt for
+a minute as if a strong-arm cop'd chased me up an alley and pulled his
+gun on me. The feeling of a bug's legs on your bare skin is something
+fierce at first, ain't it? But after _him_ none of 'em can scare me
+any more. I could play tag with pink monkeys with blue tails and green
+whiskers without sending in the hurry-call."
+
+The setting boards and blocks, the arrays of pins, needles, tubes,
+forceps, jars and bottles, magnifying-glasses, microscope, slides,
+drying-ovens, relaxing-box, cabinets, and above all, the mounted
+specimens, raised his spirits somewhat. This, at least, looked
+workman-like; this, at least, promised something better than stoking
+worms!
+
+If not hopefully, at least willingly enough, he allowed himself to be
+set to work. And that work had come in what some like to call the
+psychological moment. At least it came--or was sent--just when he
+needed it most.
+
+He soon discovered, as all beginners must, that there is very much
+more to it than one might think; that here, too, one must pay for
+exact knowledge with painstaking care and patient study and ceaseless
+effort. He discovered how fatally easy it is to spoil a good specimen;
+how fairy-fragile a wee wing is; how painted scales rub, and vanish
+into thin air; how delicate antennæ break, and forelegs will
+fiendishly depart hence; and that proper mounting, which results in a
+perfect insect, is a task which requires practice, a sure eye, and an
+expert, delicate, and dexterous touch. Also, that one must be
+ceaselessly on guard lest the baleful little ant and other tiny curses
+evade one's vigilance and render void one's best work. He learned
+these and other salutary lessons, which tend to tone down an amateur's
+conceit of his half-knowledge; and this chastened him. He felt his
+pride at stake--he who could so expertly, with almost demoniac
+ingenuity, force the costliest and most cunningly constructed
+burglar-proof lock; he whose not idle boast was that he was handy with
+his fingers! Slippy McGee baffled, at bay before a butterfly? And in
+the presence of a mere priest and a girl-child? Never! He'd show us
+what he could do when he really tried to try!
+
+Presently he wanted to classify; and he wanted to do it alone and
+unaided--it looked easy enough. It irked him, pricked his pride, to
+have to be always asking somebody else "what is this?" And right then
+and there those inevitable difficulties that confront every earnest
+and conscientious seeker at the beginning of his quest, arose, as the
+fascinating living puzzles presented themselves for his solving.
+
+To classify correctly is not something one learns in a day, be he
+never so willing and eager; as one may discover who cares to take half
+a dozen plain, obscurely-colored small moths, and attempts to put them
+in their proper places.
+
+Mr. Flint tried it--and those wretched creatures _wouldn't_ stay put.
+It seemed to him that every time he looked at them they ought to be
+somewhere else; always there was something--a bar, a stripe, a small
+distinctive spot, a wing of peculiar shape, antennæ, or palpi, or
+spur, to differentiate them.
+
+"Where the Sam Hill," he blazed, "do all these footy little devils
+come from, anyhow? Where am I to put a beast of a bug when the next
+one that's exactly like it is entirely different the next time you
+look at it? There's too much beginning and no end at all to this
+game!"
+
+For all that, he followed them up. I saw with pure joy that he refused
+to dismiss anything carelessly, while he scorned to split hairs. He
+had a regular course of procedure when he was puzzled. First he turned
+the new insect over and over and glared at it from every possible
+angle; then he rumpled his hair, gritted his teeth, squared his
+shoulders and hurled himself into work.
+
+There was, for instance, the common Dione Vanillæ, that splendid Gulf
+Fritillary which haunts all the highways of the South. She's a
+long-wing, but she's not a Heliconian; she's a silver-spot, but she's
+not an Argynnis. She bears a striking family likeness to her fine
+relations, but she has certain structural peculiarities which
+differentiate her. Whose word should he take for this, and why?
+Wherein lay those differences? He began, patiently, with her
+cylinder-shaped yellow-brown, orange-spotted caterpillar, on the
+purple passion flowers in our garden; he watched it change into a
+dark-brown chrysalis marked with a few pale spots; he saw emerge from
+this the red-robed lady herself, with her long fulvous forewings, and
+her shorter hind wings smocked with black velvet, and her under-frock
+flushed with pinkish orange and spangled with silver. And yet, in
+spite of her long marvelous tongue--he was beginning to find out that
+no tool he had ever seen, and but few that God Himself makes, is so
+wonderful as a butterfly's tongue--she hadn't been able to tell him
+that about herself which he most wished to find out. _That_ called for
+a deeper knowledge than he as yet possessed.
+
+But he knew that other men knew. And he had to know. He meant to know.
+For the work gripped him as it does those marked and foreordained for
+its service. That marvelous world in which the Little People dwell--a
+world so absolutely different from ours that it might well be upon
+another planet--began to open, slowly, slowly, one of its many
+mysterious doors, allowing him just glimpse enough of what magic lay
+beyond to fire his heart and to whet his appetite. And he couldn't
+break into that world with a jimmy. It was burglar-proof. That portal
+was so impervious to even the facile fingers of Slippy McGee, that
+John Flint must pay the inevitable and appropriate toll to enter!
+
+Westmoreland had replaced his crutches with a wooden leg, and you
+might see him stumping about our grounds, minutely examining the
+underside of shrubs and bushes, the bark of trees, poking into corners
+and crannies, or scraping in the mold under the fallen leaves by the
+fences, for things which no longer filled him with aversion and
+disgust, but with the student's interest and pleasure.
+
+"Think of me being in the same world with 'em all these years and not
+knowing a thing about 'em when there's so much to know, and under my
+skin stark crazy to learn it, only I didn't know I even wanted to know
+what I really want to know more than anything else, until I had to
+get dumped down here to find it out! I get the funniest sort of a
+feeling, parson, that all along there's been a Me tucked away inside
+my hide that's been loving these things ever since I was born. Not
+just to catch and handle 'em, and stretch out their little wings, and
+remember the names some bughouse high-brow wished on 'em, though all
+that's in the feeling, too; it's something else, if I could make you
+understand what I mean."
+
+I laughed. "I think I do understand," said I. "I have a Me like that
+tucked away in mine, too, you know."
+
+He looked at me gravely. "Parson," said he, earnestly, "there's times
+I wish you had a dozen kids, and every one of 'em twins! It's a shame
+to think of some poor orphans swindled out of such a daddy as you'd
+have made!"
+
+"Why," said I, smiling, "_You_ are one of my twins."
+
+"Me?" He reflected. "Maybe half of me might be, parson," he agreed,
+"but it's not safe for a skypilot to be caught owning a twin like the
+other half."
+
+"I'm pinning my faith to _my_ half," said I, serenely.
+
+"Now, why?" he asked, with sudden fierceness. "I turn it over and over
+and over: it looks white on the outside, but I can't to save me figure
+out _why_ you're doing it. Parson, _what_ have you got up your
+sleeve?"
+
+"Nothing but my arm. What should you think?"
+
+"I don't know what to think, and that's the straight of it. What's
+your game, anyhow? What in the name of God are you after?"
+
+"Why, I think," said I, "that in the name of God I'm after--that other
+You that's been tucked away all these years, and couldn't get born
+until a Me inside mine, just like himself, called him to come out and
+be alive."
+
+He pondered this in silence. Then:
+
+"I'll take your word for it," said he. "Though if anybody'd ever told
+me I'd be eating out of a parson's hand, I'd have pushed his face in
+for him. Yep, I'm Fido! _Me!_"
+
+"At least you growl enough," said I, tartly.
+
+He eyed me askance.
+
+"Have I got to lick hands?" he snarled.
+
+I walked away, without a reply; through my shoulder-blades I could
+feel him glaring after me. He followed, hobbling:
+
+"Parson!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"If I'm not the sort that licks hands I'm not the sort that bites 'em,
+neither. I'll tell you--it's this way: I--sort of get to chewing on
+that infernal log of wood that's where my good leg used to grow
+and--and splinters get into my temper--and I've _got_ to snarl or
+burst wide open! You'd growl like the devil yourself, if you had to
+try holding down my job for awhile, skypilot or no skypilot!"
+
+"Why--I dare say I should," said I, contritely. "But," I added, after
+a pause, "I shouldn't be any the better for it, should you think?"
+
+"Not so you could notice," shortly. And after a moment he added, in an
+altered voice: "Rule 1: Can the Squeal!"
+
+I think he most honestly tried to. It was no easy task, and I have
+seen the sweat start upon his forehead and his face go pale, when in
+his eagerness he forgot for a moment the cruel fact that he could no
+longer move as lightly as of old--and the crippled body, betraying
+him, reminded him all too swiftly of his mistake.
+
+The work saved him. For it is the heaven-sent sort of work, to those
+ordained for it, that fills one's hours and leaves one eager for
+further tasks. It called for all his oldtime ingenuity. His tools, for
+instance--at times their limitations irked him, and he made others
+more satisfactory to himself; tools adjusted to an insect's frail
+body, not to a time-lock. Before that summer ended he could handle
+even the frailest and tiniest specimen with such nice care that it was
+delightful to watch him at work. The time was to come when he could
+mend a torn wing or fix a broken antennas with such exquisite fidelity
+to detail that even the most expert eye might well be deceived.
+
+I had only looked for a little temporary help, such as any intelligent
+amateur might be able to furnish. But I was not long unaware that this
+was more than a mere amateur. To quote himself, he had the goods, and
+I realized with a mounting heart that I had made a find, if I could
+only hold on to it. For the first time in years I could exchange
+specimens. My cabinets began to fill out--with such perfect insects,
+too! We added several rare ones, a circumstance to make any
+entomologist look upon the world through rosy spectacles. Why, even
+the scarce shy Cossus Centerensis came to our very doors, apparently
+to fill a space awaiting him. Perhaps he was a Buddhist insect
+undergoing reincarnation, and was anxious to acquire merit by
+self-immolation. Anyhow, we acquired him, and I hope he acquired
+merit.
+
+We had scores of insects in the drying ovens. We had more and ever more
+in the breeding cages,--in our case simple home-made affairs of a keg
+or a box with a fine wire-netting over the food plant; or a lamp-chimney
+slipped over a potted plant with a bit of mosquito-netting tied over the
+top, for the smaller forms.
+
+These cages were a never-failing source of delight and interest to the
+children, and at their hands heaven rained caterpillars upon us that
+season. Even my mother grew interested in the work, though Clélie
+never ceased to look upon it as a horrid madness peculiar to white
+people.
+
+"All Buckrahs is funny in dey haids," Daddy January consoled her when
+she complained to him about it. "Dey gets all kind o' fool notions
+'bout all kind o' fool t'ings. You ain't got to feel so bad--de Jedge
+is lots wuss'n yo' boss is. Yo' boss kin see de bugs he run atter, but
+my boss talk 'bout some kind o' bug he call Germ. I ax um what kind o'
+bug is dat; an' he 'low you can't see um wid yo' eye. I ain't say so
+to de Jedge, but _I_ 'low when you see bug you can't see wid yo' eye,
+you best not seem um 'tall--case he must be some kind o' spook, an'
+Gawd knows I ain't want to see no spook. Ef de bug ain't no spook, den
+he mus' be eenside yo' haid, 'stead o' outside um, an' to hab bug on
+de eenside o' yo' haid is de wuss kind o' bad luck. Anyhow, nobody but
+Buckrah talk an' ack like dat, niggers is got mo' sense."
+
+We found, presently, a ready and a steady sale for our extra stock. We
+could supply caterpillars, butterflies and moths, or chrysalids and
+cocoons; we had some rather scarce ones; and then, our unmounted
+specimens were so perfect, and our mounted ones so exquisitely done,
+that we had but little trouble in disposing of them. Under the hand of
+John Flint these last were really works of art. Not for nothing had
+he boasted that he was handy with his fingers.
+
+The pretty common forms, framed hovering lifelike over delicately
+pressed ferns and flowers, found even a readier market, for they were
+really beautiful. Money had begun to come in--not largely, it is true,
+but still steadily and surely. You must know how to handle your stock,
+and you must be in touch with your market--scientists, students,
+collectors,--and this, of course, takes time. We could supply the
+larger dealers, too, although they pay less, and we had a modest
+advertisement in one or two papers published for the profession, which
+brought us orders. But let no one imagine that it is an easy task to
+handle these frail bodies, these gossamer wings, so that naturalists
+and collectors are glad to get them. Once or twice we lost valuable
+shipments.
+
+Long since--in the late spring, to be exact, John Flint had moved out
+of the Guest Room, needed for other occupants, into a two-roomed
+outbuilding across the garden. Some former pastor had had it built for
+an oratory and retreat, but now, covered with vines, it had stood for
+many years unused, save as a sort of lumber room.
+
+When the troublesome question of where we might properly house him had
+arisen, my mother hit upon these unused rooms as by direct
+inspiration. She had them cleaned, repainted, scoured, and turned into
+a pleasant well-lighted, airy workroom and living-room combined, and a
+smaller and rather austere bedroom, with an inexpensive but very good
+head of Christ over the mantel, and an old, old carved crucifix on the
+wall beside the white iron bed. Laurence took from his own room a
+Morris chair, whose somewhat frayed cushions my mother neatly
+re-covered. Mary Virginia contributed a rug, as well as dressing-gown
+and slippers. Miss Sally Ruth gave him outright a brand-new Bible, and
+loaned him an old cedar-wood wardrobe which had been her
+great-grandmother's, and which still smelt delicately of generations
+of rose-leaved and lavendered linen.
+
+"All I ask," said Miss Sally Ruth sharply, "is that you'll read Paul
+with your eyes open and your mouth shut, and that you'll keep your
+clothes in that wardrobe and your moths out of it. If it was intended
+for anybody to teach you anything, then Paul will teach you; but it
+_wasn't_ intended for a cedar-wood wardrobe to hold moths, and I hope
+you won't forget it!"
+
+Major Cartwright sent over a fishing-rod, a large jar of tobacco, and
+a framed picture of General Lee.
+
+"Because no man, suh, could live under the same roof with even his
+pictured semblance, and not be the bettah fo' it," said the major
+earnestly. "I know. I've got to live with him myself. When I'm fair to
+middlin' he's in the dinin' room. When I've skidded off the straight
+an' narrow path I lock him up in the parlor, an' at such times I sleep
+out on the po'ch. But when I'm at peace with man an' God I take him
+into my bedroom an' look at him befo' retirin'. He's about as easy to
+live with as the Angel Gabriel, but he's mighty bracin', Marse Robert
+is: mighty bracin'!"
+
+Thus equipped, John Flint settled himself in his own house. It had
+been a wise move, for he had the sense of proprietorship, privacy, and
+freedom. He could come and go as he pleased, with no one to question.
+He could work undisturbed, save for the children who brought him such
+things as they could find. He put his breeding cages out on the
+vine-covered piazzas surrounding two-sides of his house, arranged the
+cabinets and boxes which had been removed from my study to his own,
+nailed up a few shelves to suit himself, and set up housekeeping.
+
+My mother had been frankly delighted to have my creeping friends moved
+out of the Parish House, and Clélie abated in her dislike of the
+one-legged man because he had, in a way, removed from her a heretofore
+never-absent fear of waking up some night and finding a caterpillar
+under her bed. More yet, he entailed no extra work, for he flatly
+refused to have her set foot in his rooms for the purpose of cleaning
+them. He attended to that himself. The man was a marvel of neatness
+and order. Mesdames, permit me to here remark that when a man is neat
+and orderly no woman of Eve's daughters can compare with him. John
+Flint's rooms would arouse the rabid envy of the cleanest and most
+scourful she in Holland itself.
+
+Now as the months wore away there had sprung up between him, and Mary
+Virginia and Laurence, one of those odd comradely friendships which
+sometime unite the totally unlike with bonds hard to break. His
+spotless workroom had a fascination for the youngsters. They were
+always in and out, now with a cocoon, now an imago, now a larva, and
+then again to see how those they had already brought were getting
+along.
+
+The lame man was an unrivaled listener--a circumstance which endeared
+him to youthful Laurence, in whom thoughts and the urge to express
+these thoughts in words rose like sap. This fresh and untainted
+confidence, poured out so naïvely, taught John Flint more than any
+words or prayers of mine could have done. It opened to him a world
+into which, his eyes had not heretofore been permitted to look; and
+the result was all the more sure and certain, in that the children had
+no faintest idea of the effect they were producing. They had no end to
+gain, no ax to grind; they merely spoke the truth as they knew it, and
+this unselfish and hopeful truthfulness aroused his interest and
+curiosity; it even compelled his admiration. He couldn't dismiss
+_this_ as "hot air"!
+
+I was more than glad to have him thus taught. It was a salutary
+lesson, tending to temper his overweening confidence and to humble his
+contemptuous pride. In his own world he had been supreme, a figure of
+sinister importance. Brash had been crook or cop who had taught or
+caught Slippy McGee! But in this new atmosphere, in which he breathed
+with difficulty, the young had been given him for guides. They led
+him, where a grownup had failed.
+
+Mary Virginia was particularly fond of him. He had as little to say to
+her as to Laurence, but he looked at her with interested eyes that
+never lost a movement; she knew he never missed a word, either; his
+silence was friendly, and the little girl had a pleasant fashion of
+taking folk for granted. Hers was one of those large natures which
+give lavishly, shares itself freely, but does not demand much in
+return. She gave with an open hand to her quiet listener--her books,
+her music, her amusing and innocent views, her frank comments, her
+truthfulness, her sweet brave gaiety; and he absorbed it like a
+sponge. It delighted her to find and bring the proper food-plants for
+his cages. And she being one of those who sing while they work, you
+might hear her caroling like a lark, flitting about the old garden
+with her red setter Kerry at her heels.
+
+Laurence no longer read aloud to him, but instead gave Flint such
+books as he could find covering his particular study, and these were
+devoured and pored over, and more begged for. Flint would go without
+new clothes, neat as he was, and without tobacco, much as he liked to
+smoke,--to buy books upon lepidoptera.
+
+He helped my mother with her flowers and her vegetables, but refused
+to have anything to do with her chickens, remarking shortly that hens
+were such fools he couldn't help hating them. Madame said she liked to
+have him around, for he was more like some unobtrusive jinnee than a
+mere mortal. She declared that John Flint had what the negroes call a
+"growing hand"--he had only to stick a bit of green in the ground and
+it grew like Jonah's gourd.
+
+Since he had begun to hobble about, he had gradually come to be
+accepted by the town in general. They looked upon him as one who
+shared Father De Rancé's madness, a tramp who was a hunter of bugs. It
+explained his presence in the Parish House; I fancy it also explained
+to some why he had been a tramp!
+
+Folks got used to him, as one does to anything one sees daily. The
+pleasant conservative soft-voiced ladies who liked to call on Madame
+of an afternoon and gossip Christianly, and drink tea and eat Clélie's
+little cakes on our broad shady verandah, only glanced casually at the
+bent head and shoulders visible through the screened window across the
+garden. They said he was very interesting, of course, but painfully
+shy and bashful. As for him, he was as horribly afraid of them as they
+would have been of him, had they known. I could not always save
+myself from the sin of smiling at an ironic situation.
+
+Judge Mayne had at first eyed the man askance, watching him as his own
+cats might an interloping stray dog.
+
+"The fellow's not very prepossessing," he told me, of an evening when
+he had dined with us, "but I've been on the bench long enough to be
+skeptical of any fixed good or bad type--I've found that the criminal
+type is any type that goes wrong; so I shouldn't go so far as to call
+this chap a bad egg. But--I hope you are reasonably sure of him,
+father?"
+
+"Reasonably," said I, composedly.
+
+"Laurence tells me Madame and Mary Virginia _like_ the fellow. H'm!
+Well, I've acquired a little faith in the intuition of women--some
+women, understand, and some times. And mark you, I didn't say
+_judgment_. Let us hope that this is one of the times when faith in
+intuition will be justified."
+
+Later, when he had had time to examine the work progressing under the
+flexible fingers of the silent workman, he withdrew with more respect.
+
+"I suppose he's all right, if you think so, father. But I'd watch out
+for him, anyway," he advised.
+
+"That is exactly what I intend to do."
+
+"Rather he fell into your hands than mine. Better for him," said the
+judge, briefly. Then he launched into an intimate talk of Laurence,
+and in thus talking of the boy's future, forgot my helper.
+
+That was it, exactly. The man was so unobtrusive without in the least
+being furtive. Had so little to say; attended so strictly to his own
+business, and showed himself so utterly and almost inhumanly
+uninterested in anybody else's, that he kept in the background. He
+was there, and people knew it; they were, in a sense, interested in
+him, but not curious about him.
+
+One morning in early autumn--he had been with us then some eight or
+nine months--I went over to his rooms with a New York newspaper in my
+hand. It had news that set my heart to pounding sickeningly--news that
+at once simplified and yet complicated matters. I hesitated as to
+whether or not I should tell him, but decided that whatever effect
+that news might produce, I would deal with him openly, above board,
+and always with truth. He must act and judge for himself and with his
+eyes open. On my part there should be no concealment.
+
+The paper stated that the body of a man found floating in the East
+River had been positively identified by the police as that of Slippy
+McGee. That the noted crook had gotten back into New York through the
+cunning dragnet so carefully spread for him was another proof of his
+daring and dexterity. How he met the dark fate which set him adrift,
+battered and dreadful, in the East River, was another of those
+underworld crimes that remain unsolved. Cunning and dangerous,
+mysterious in his life, baffling all efforts to get at him, he was as
+evilly mysterious in his death. There was only one thing sure--that
+this dead wretch with the marks of violence upon him was Slippy McGee;
+and since his breath had ceased, the authorities could breathe easier.
+
+He read it deliberately; then re-read it, and sat and stared at the
+paper. A slow grim smile came to his lips, and he took his chin in his
+hand, musingly. The eyes narrowed, the face darkened, the jaw thrust
+itself forward.
+
+"Dead, huh?" he grunted, and stared about him, with a slow, twisting
+movement of the head. "Well--I might just as well be, as buried alive
+in a jay-dump at the tail-end of all creation!" Once again the Powers
+of Darkness swooped down and wrestled with and for him; and knowing
+what I knew, sick at heart, I trembled for him.
+
+"What am _I_ doing here, anyhow?" he snarled with his lips drawn back
+from his teeth. "Piddling with bugs--_Me!_ Patching up their dinky
+little wings and stretching out their dam' little legs and feelers--me
+being what I am, and they being what they are! Say, I've got to quit
+this, once for all I've got to quit it. I'm not a _man_ any more. I'm
+a dead one, a he-granny cutting silo for lady-worms and drynursing
+their interesting little babies. My God! _Me!_" And he threw his hands
+above his head with a gesture of rage and despair.
+
+"Hanging on here like a boob--no wonder they think I'm dead! If I
+could just make a getaway and pull off one more good job and land
+enough--"
+
+"You couldn't keep it, if you did land it--your sort can't. You know
+how it went before--the women and the sharks got it. There'd be always
+that same incentive to pull off just one more to keep you going--until
+you'd pulled yourself behind bars, and stayed there. And there's the
+drug-danger, too. If you escaped so far, it was because so far you had
+the strength to let drugs alone. But the drugs get you, sooner or
+later, do they not? Have you not told me over and over again that
+'nearly all dips are dopes'? That first the dope gets you--and then
+the law? No. You can't pull off anything that won't pull you into
+hell. We have gone over this thing often enough, haven't we?"
+
+"No, we haven't. And I haven't had a chance to pull off
+anything--except leaves for bugs. _Me!_ I want to get my hand in once
+more, I tell you! I want to pull off a stunt that'll make the whole
+bunch of bulls sit up and bellow for fair--and I can do it, easy as
+easy. Think I've croaked, do they? And they can all snooze on their
+peg-posts, now I'm a stiff? Well, by cripes, I just want half of a
+half of a chance, and I'll show 'em Slippy McGee's good and plenty
+alive!"
+
+"Come out into the garden, my son, and feel that you are good and
+plenty alive. Come out into the free air. Hold on tight, a little
+while longer!"
+
+I laid my hand upon his shoulder compellingly, and although he glared
+at me, and ground his teeth, and lifted his lip, he came; unwillingly,
+swearing under his breath, he came. We tramped up and down the garden
+paths, up and down, and back again, his wooden peg making a round
+hole, like a hoofmark, in the earth. He stared down at it, spat
+savagely upon it, and swore horribly, but not too loudly.
+
+"I want to feel like a live man!" he gritted. "A live man, not a
+one-legged mucker with a beard like a Dutch bomb-thrower's, puttering
+about a skypilot's backyard on the wrong side of everything!"
+
+"Stick it out a little longer, John Flint; hold fast!"
+
+"Hold fast to what?" he demanded savagely. "To a bug stuck on a
+needle?"
+
+"Yes. And to me who trusts you. To Madame who likes you. To the dear
+child who put bug and needle into your hand because she knew it was
+good work and trusted your hand to do it. And more than all, to that
+other Me you're finding--your own true self, John Flint! Hold fast,
+hold fast!"
+
+He stopped and stared at me.
+
+"I'm believing him again!" said he, grievously. "I've been sat on
+while I was hot, and my number's marked on me, 23. I'm hoodooed,
+that's what!"
+
+Tramp, tramp, stump, stump, up and down, the two of us.
+
+"All right, devil-dodger," said he wearily, after a long sullen
+silence. "I'll stick it out a bit longer, to please you. You've been
+white--the lot of you. But look here--if I beat it some night ... with
+what I can find, why, I'm warning you: don't blame _me_--you're
+running your risks, and it'll be up to _you_ to explain!"
+
+"When you want to go, John Flint--when you really and truly want to
+go, why, take anything I have that you may fancy, my son. I give it
+you beforehand."
+
+"I don't want anything given to me beforehand!" he growled. "I want to
+take what I want to take without anybody's leave!"
+
+"Very well, then; take what you want to take, without anybody's leave!
+I shall be able to do without it, I dare say."
+
+He turned upon me furiously:
+
+"Oh, yes, I guess you can! You'd do without eating and breathing too,
+I suppose, if you could manage it! You do without too blamed much
+right now, trying to beat yourself to being a saint! Of course I'd
+help myself and leave you to go without--you're enough to make a man
+ache to shoot some sense into you with a cannon! And for God's sake,
+_who_ are you pinching and scraping and going without _for_? A bunch
+of hickey factory-shuckers that haven't got sense enough to talk
+American, and a lot of mill-hands with beans on 'em like bone buttons!
+They ain't worth it. While I'm in the humor, take it from me there
+ain't anybody worth anything anyhow!"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Flint! What a shame and a sin!" called another voice. "Oh,
+Mr. Flint, I'm ashamed of you!" There in the freedom of the Saturday
+morning sunlight stood Mary Virginia, her red Irish setter Kerry
+beside her.
+
+"I came over," said she, "to see how the baby-moths are getting on
+this morning, and to know if the last hairy gentleman I brought spins
+into a cocoon or buries himself in the ground. And then I heard Mr.
+Flint--and what he said is unkind, and untrue, and not a bit like him.
+Why, everybody's worth everything you can do for them--only some are
+worth more."
+
+The wild wrath died out of his face. As usual, he softened at sight of
+her.
+
+"Oh, well, miss, I wasn't thinking of the like of you--and him," he
+jerked his head at me, half apologetically, "nor young Mayne, nor the
+little Madame. You're different."
+
+"Why, no, we aren't, really," said Mary Virginia, puckering her brows
+adorably. "We only _seem_ to be different--but we are just exactly
+like everybody else, only _we_ know it, and some people never can seem
+to find it out--and there's the difference! You see?" That was the
+befuddled manner in which Mary Virginia very often explained things.
+If God was good to you, you got a little glimmer of what she meant and
+was trying to tell you. Mary Virginia often talked as the alchemists
+used to write--cryptically, abstrusely, as if to hide the golden truth
+from all but the initiate.
+
+"Come and shake hands with Mr. Flint, Kerry," said she to the setter.
+"I want you to help make him understand things it's high time he
+should know. Nobody can do that better than a good dog can."
+
+Kerry looked a trifle doubtful, but having been told to do a certain
+thing, he obeyed, as a good dog does. Gravely he sat up and held out
+an obedient paw, which the man took mechanically. But meeting the
+clear hazel eyes, he dropped his hand upon the shining head with the
+gesture of one who desires to become friends. Accepting this, Kerry
+reached up a nose and nuzzled. Then he wagged his plumy tail.
+
+"There!" said Mary Virginia, delightedly. "Now, don't you see how
+horrid it was to talk the way you talked? Why, Kerry _likes_ you, and
+Kerry is a sensible dog."
+
+"Yes, miss," and he looked at Mary Virginia very much as the dog did,
+trustingly, but a little bewildered.
+
+"Aren't you sorry you said that?"
+
+"Y-e-s, seeing you seem to think it was wrong."
+
+"Well, you'll know better from now on," said Mary Virginia,
+comfortingly. She looked at him searchingly for a minute, and he met
+her look without flinching. That had been the one hopeful sign, from
+the first--that he never refused to meet your glance, but gave you
+back one just as steady, if more suspicious.
+
+"Mr. Flint," said Mary Virginia, "you've about made up your mind to
+stay on here with the Padre, haven't you? For a good long while, at
+any rate? You wouldn't like to leave the Padre, would you?"
+
+He stiffened. One could see the struggle within him.
+
+"Well, miss, I can't see but that I've just got to stay on--for
+awhile. Until he's tired of me and my ways, anyhow," he said gloomily.
+
+Mary Virginia dismissed my tiredness with an airy wave of her hand.
+She smiled.
+
+"Do you know," said she earnestly, "I've had the funniest idea about
+you, from the very first time I saw you? Well, I have. I've somehow
+got the notion that you and the Padre _belong_. I think that's why you
+came. I think you belong right here, in that darling little house,
+studying butterflies and mounting them so beautifully they look alive.
+I think you're never going to go away anywhere any more, but that
+you're going to stay right here as long as you live!"
+
+His face turned an ugly white, and his mouth fell open. He looked at
+Mary Virginia almost with horror--Saul might have looked thus at the
+Witch of Endor when she summoned the shade of Samuel to tell him that
+the kingdom had been rent from his hand and his fate was upon him.
+
+Mary Virginia nodded, thoughtfully.
+
+"I feel so sure of it," said she, confidently, "that I'm going to ask
+you to do me a favor. I want you to take care of Kerry for me. You
+know I'm going away to school next week, and--he can't stay at home
+when I'm not there. My father's away frequently, and he couldn't take
+Kerry about with him, of course. And he couldn't be left with the
+servants--somehow he doesn't like the colored people. He always growls
+at them, and they're afraid of him. And my mother dislikes dogs
+intensely--she's afraid of them, except those horrible little
+toy-things that aren't _dogs_ any more." The scorn of the real
+dog-lover was in her voice. "Kerry's used to the Parish House. He
+loves the Padre, he'll soon love you, and he likes to play with
+Pitache, so Madame wouldn't mind his being here. And--I'd be more
+satisfied in my mind if he were with somebody that--that needed
+him--and would like him a whole lot--somebody like you," she finished.
+
+Now, Mary Virginia regarded Kerry even as the apple of her eye. The
+dog was a noble and beautiful specimen of his race, thoroughbred to
+the bone, a fine field dog, and the pride of the child's heart. He was
+what only that most delightful of dogs, a thoroughbred Irish setter,
+can be. John Flint gasped. Something perplexed, incredulous, painful,
+dazzled, crept into his face and looked out of his eyes.
+
+"_Me_?" he gasped. "You mean you're willing to let me keep your dog
+for you? Yours?"
+
+"I want to _give_ him to you," said Mary Virginia bravely enough,
+though her voice trembled. "I am perfectly sure you'll love
+him--better than any one else in the world would, except me myself. I
+don't know why I know that, but I do know it. If you wanted to go
+away, later on, why, you could turn him over to the Padre, because of
+course you wouldn't want to have a dog following you about everywhere.
+They're a lot of bother. But--somehow, I think you'll keep him. I
+think you'll love him. He--he's a darling dog." She was too proud to
+turn her head aside, but two large tears rolled down her cheeks, like
+dew upon a rose.
+
+John Flint stood stock-still, looking from her to the dog, and back
+again. Kerry, sensing that something was wrong with his little
+mistress, pawed her skirts and whined.
+
+"Now I come to think of it," said John Flint slowly, "I never had
+anything--anything alive, I mean--belong to me before."
+
+Mary Virginia glanced up at him shrewdly, and smiled through her
+tears. Her smile makes a funny delicious red V of her lower lip, and
+is altogether adorable and seductive.
+
+"That's just exactly why you thought nobody was worth anything," she
+said. Then she bent over her dog and kissed him between his beautiful
+hazel eyes.
+
+"Kerry, dear," said she, "Kerry, dear Kerry, you don't belong to me
+any more. I--I've got to go away to school--and you know you wouldn't
+be happy at home without me. You belong to Mr. Flint now, and I'm sure
+he needs you, and I know he'll love you almost as much as I do, and
+he'll be very, very good to you. So you're to stay with him,
+and--stand by him and be his dog, like you were mine. You'll remember,
+Kerry? Good-by, my dear, dear, darling dog!" She kissed him again,
+patted him, and thrust his collar into his new owner's hand.
+
+"Go--good-by, everybody!" said she, in a muffled voice, and ran. I
+think she would have cried childishly in another moment; and she was
+trying hard to remember that she was growing up!
+
+John Flint stood staring after her, his hand on the dog's collar,
+holding him in. His face was still without a vestige of color, and his
+eyes glittered. Then his other hand crept out to touch the dog's
+head.
+
+"It's wet--where she dropped tears on it! Parson ... she's given me
+her dog ... that she loves enough to cry over!"
+
+"He's a very fine dog, and she has had him and loved him from his
+puppyhood," I reminded him. And I added, with a wily tongue: "You can
+always turn him over to me, you know--if you decide to take to the
+road and wish to get rid of a troublesome companion. A dog is bad
+company for a man who wishes to dodge the police."
+
+But he only shook his head. His eyes were troubled, and his forehead
+wrinkled.
+
+"Parson," said he, hesitatingly, "did you ever feel like you'd been
+caught by--by Something reaching down out of the dark? Something big
+that you couldn't see and couldn't ever hope to get away from, because
+it's always on the job? Ain't it a hell of a feeling?"
+
+"Yes," I agreed. "I've felt--caught by that Something, too. And it is
+at first a terrifying sensation. Until--you learn to be glad."
+
+"You're caught--and you know under your hat you're never going to be
+able to get away any more. It'll hold you till you die!" said he, a
+little wildly. "My God! I'm caught! First It bit off a leg on me, so I
+couldn't run. Then It wished you and your bugs on me. And now--Yes,
+sir; I'm done for. That kid got my goat this morning. My God, who'd
+believe it? But it's true: I'm done for. She gave me her dog and she
+got my goat!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+"THY SERVANT WILL GO AND FIGHT WITH THIS PHILISTINE"
+    1 Sam. 17: 32.
+
+
+Mary Virginia had gone, weeping and bewept, and the spirit of youth
+seemed to have gone with her, leaving the Parish House darkened
+because of its absence. A sorrowful quiet brooded over the garden that
+no longer echoed a caroling voice. Kerry, seeking vainly for the
+little mistress, would come whining back to John Flint, and look up
+mutely into his face; and finding no promise there, lie down,
+whimpering, at his feet. The man seemed as desolate as the dog,
+because of the child's departure.
+
+"When I come back," Mary Virginia said to him at parting, "I expect
+you'll know more about moths and butterflies than anybody else in the
+world does. You're that sort. I'd love to be here, watching you grow
+up into it, but I've got to go away and grow up into something myself.
+I'm very glad you came here, Mr. Flint. You've helped me, lots."
+
+"Me?" with husky astonishment.
+
+"You, of course," said the child, serenely. "Because you are such a
+good man, Mr. Flint, and so patient, and you stick at what you try to
+do until you do it better than anybody else does. Often and often when
+I've been trying to do sums--I'm frightfully stupid about
+arithmetic--and I wanted to give up, I'd think of you over here just
+trying and trying and keeping right on trying, until you'd gotten what
+you wanted to know; and then _I'd_ keep on trying, too. The funny part
+is, that I like you for making me do it. You see, I'm a very, very bad
+person in some things, Mr. Flint," she said frankly. "Why, when my
+mother has to tell me to look at so and so, and see how well they
+behave, or how nicely they can do certain things, and how good they
+are, and why don't I profit by such a good example, a perfectly horrid
+raging sort of feeling comes all over me, and I want to be as naughty
+as naughty! I feel like doing and saying things I'd never want to do
+or say, if it wasn't for that good example. I just can't seem to
+_bear_ being good-exampled. But you're different, thank goodness. Most
+really good people are different, I guess."
+
+He looked at her, dumbly--he had no words at his command. She missed
+the irony and the tragedy, but she sensed the depths of feeling under
+that mute exterior.
+
+"I'm glad you're sorry I'm going away," said she, with the directness
+that was so engaging. "I perfectly love people to feel sorry to part
+with me. I hope and _hope_ they'll keep on being sorry--because
+they'll be that much gladder when I come back. I don't believe there's
+anything quite so wonderful and beautiful as having other folks like
+you, except it's liking other folks yourself!"
+
+"I never had to be bothered about it, either way," said he dryly. His
+face twitched.
+
+"Maybe that's because you never stayed still long enough in any one
+place to catch hold," said she, and laughed at him.
+
+"Good-by, Mr. Flint! I'll never see a butterfly or a moth, the whole
+time I'm gone, without making believe he's a messenger from Madame,
+and the Padre, and you, and Kerry. I'll play he's a carrier-butterfly,
+with a message tucked away under his wings: 'Howdy, Mary Virginia!
+I've just come from flying over the flowers in the Parish House
+garden; and the folks are all well, and busy, and happy. But they
+haven't forgotten you for a single solitary minute, and they miss you
+and wish you'd come back; and they send you their dear, dear love--and
+I'll carry your dear, dear love back to them!' So if you see a big,
+big, beautiful, strange fellow come sailing by your window some
+morning, why, that's mine, Mr. Flint! Remember!"
+
+And then she was gone, and he had his first taste of unselfish human
+sorrow. Heretofore his worries had been purely personal and
+self-centered: this was different, and innocent. It shocked and
+terrified him to find out how intensely he could miss another being,
+and that being a mere child. He wasn't used to that sort of pain, and
+it bewildered him.
+
+Eustis himself had wanted the little girl sent to a preparatory school
+which would fit her for one of the women's colleges. He had visions of
+the forward sweep of women--visions which his wife didn't share. Her
+daughter should go to the Church School at which she herself had been
+educated, an exclusive and expensive institution where the daughters
+of the wealthy were given a finishing hand-polish with ecclesiastical
+emery, as a sort of social hall-mark. Mrs. Eustis had a horror of what
+she called, in quotation-marks, the modern non-religious method of
+educating young ladies.
+
+The Eustis house was closed, and left in charge of the negro
+caretakers, for Mrs. Eustis couldn't stand the loneliness of the place
+after the child's departure, and Eustis himself found his presence
+more and more necessary at the great plantation he was building up.
+Mrs. Eustis left Appleboro, and my mother missed her. There was a vein
+of pure gold underlying the placid little woman's character, which the
+stronger woman divined and built upon.
+
+Laurence, too, entered college that Fall. I had coached him, in such
+hours as I could spare. He was conscientious enough, though his Greek
+was not the Greek of Homer and he vexed the soul of my mother with a
+French she said was spoke
+
+    full fair and fetisly
+    After ye schole of Strattford atte Bowe.
+
+But if he hadn't Mary Virginia's sensitiveness to all beauty, nor her
+playful fancy and vivid imagination, he was clear-brained and
+clean-thinking, with that large perspective and that practical
+optimism which seem to me so essentially American. He saw without
+confusion both the thing as it was and as it could become. With only
+enough humor to save him, he had a sternness more of the puritan than
+of the cavalier blood from which he had sprung. Above all was he
+informed with that new spirit brooding upon the face of all the
+waters, a spirit that for want of a better name one might call the
+Race Conscience.
+
+It was this last aspect of the boy's character that amazed and
+interested John Flint, who was himself too shrewd not to divine the
+sincerity, even the commonsense, of what Laurence called "applied
+Christianity." Altruism--and Slippy McGee! He listened with a puzzled
+wonder.
+
+"I wish," he grumbled to Laurence, "that you'd come off the roof. It
+gives a fellow stiff neck rubbering up at you!"
+
+"I'd rather stay up--the air's better, and you can see so much
+farther," said Laurence. And he added hospitably: "There's plenty of
+room--come on up, yourself!"
+
+"With one leg?" sarcastically.
+
+"And two eyes," said the boy. "Come on up--the sky's fine!" And he
+laughed into the half-suspicious face.
+
+The gimlet eyes bored into him, and the frank and truthful eyes met
+them unabashed, unwavering, with a something in them which made the
+other blink.
+
+"When I got pitched into this burg," said the lame man thoughtfully,
+"I landed all there--except a leg, but I never carried my brains in my
+legs. I hadn't got any bats in my belfry. But I'm getting 'em. I'm
+getting 'em so bad that when I hear some folks talk bughouse these
+days it pretty near listens like good sense to me. Why, kid, I'm nut
+enough now to dangle over the edge of believing you know what you're
+talking about!"
+
+"Fall over: I _know_ I know what I'm talking about," said Laurence
+magnificently.
+
+"I'm double-crossed," said John Flint, soberly and sadly, "Anyway I
+look at it--" he swept the horizon with a wide-flung gesture, "it's
+bugs for mine. I began by grannying bugs for _him_," he tossed his
+head bull-like in my direction, "and I stand around swallowing hot
+air from _you_--" He glared at Laurence, "and what's the result? Why,
+that I've got bugs in the bean, that's what! Think of me licking an
+all-day sucker a kid dopes out! _Me!_ Oh, he--venly saints!" he
+gulped. "Ain't I the nut, though?"
+
+"Well, supposing?" said Laurence, laughing. "Buck up! You _could_ be a
+bad egg instead of a good nut, you know!"
+
+John Flint's eyes slitted, then widened; his mouth followed suit
+almost automatically. He looked at me.
+
+"Can you beat it?" he wondered.
+
+"Beating a bad egg would be a waste of time I wouldn't be guilty of,"
+said I amusedly. "But I hope to live to see the good nut grow into a
+fine tree."
+
+"Do your damnedest--excuse me, parson!" said he contritely. "I mean,
+don't stop for a little thing like _me_!"
+
+Laurence leaned forward. "Man," said he, impressively, "he won't have
+to! You'll be marking time and keeping step with him yourself before
+you know it!"
+
+"Huh!" said John Flint, non-committally.
+
+
+
+Laurence came to spend his last evening at home with us.
+
+"Padre," said he, when we walked up and down in the garden, after an
+old custom, after dinner, "do you really know what I mean to do when
+I've finished college and start out on my own hook?"
+
+"Put 'Mayne & Son' on the judge's shingle and walk around the block
+forty times a day to look at it!" said I, promptly.
+
+"Of course," said he. "That first. But a legal shingle can be turned
+into as handy a weapon as one could wish for, Padre, and _I'm_ going
+to take that shingle and spank this sleepy-headed old town wide awake
+with it!" He spoke with the conviction of youth, so sure of itself
+that there is no room for doubt. There was in him, too, a hint of
+latent power which was impressive. One did not laugh at Laurence.
+
+"It's my town," with his chin out. "It could be a mighty good town.
+It's going to become one. I expect to live all my life right here,
+among my own people, and they've got to make it worth my while. I
+don't propose to cut myself down to fit any little hole: I intend to
+make that hole big enough to fit my possible measure."
+
+"May an old friend wish more power to your shovel?"
+
+"It'll be a steam shovel!" said he, gaily. Then his face clouded.
+
+"Padre! I'm sick of the way things are run in Appleboro! I've talked
+with other boys and they're sick of it, too. You know why they want to
+get away? Because they think they haven't got even a fighting chance
+here. Because towns like this are like billion-ton old wagons sunk so
+deep in mudruts that nothing but dynamite can blow them out--and they
+are not dealers in dynamite. If they want to do anything that even
+_looks_ new they've got to fight the stand-patters to a finish, and
+they're blockaded by a lot of reactionaries that don't know the
+earth's moving. There are a lot of folks in the South, Padre, who've
+been dead since the civil war, and haven't found it out themselves,
+and won't take live people's word for it. Well, now, I mean to _do_
+things. I mean to do them right here. And I certainly shan't allow
+myself to be blockaded by anybody, living or dead. You've got to fight
+the devil with fire;--I'm going to blockade those blockaders, and see
+that the dead ones are decently buried."
+
+"You have tackled a big job, my son."
+
+"I like big jobs, Padre. They're worth while. Maybe I'll be able to
+keep some of the boys home--the town needs them. Maybe I can keep some
+of those poor kids out of the mills, too. Oh, yes, I expect a right
+lively time!"
+
+I was silent. I knew how supinely Appleboro lay in the hollow of a
+hard hand. I had learned, too, how such a hand can close into a
+strangling fist.
+
+"Of course I can't clean up the whole state, and I can't reorganize
+the world," said the boy sturdily. "I'm not such a fool as to try. But
+I can do my level best to disinfect my own particular corner, and make
+it fit for men and safe for women and kids to live and breathe in.
+Padre, for years there hasn't been a rotten deal nor a brazen steal in
+this state that the man who practically owns and runs this town hadn't
+a finger in, knuckle-deep. _He's got to go_."
+
+"Goliath doesn't always fall at the hand of the son of Jesse, my
+little David," said I quietly. I also had dreamed dreams and seen
+visions.
+
+"That's about what my father says," said the boy. "He wants me to be a
+successful man, a 'safe and sane citizen.' He thinks a gentleman
+should practise his profession decently and in order. But to believe,
+as I do, that you can wipe out corruption, that you can tackle poverty
+the same as you would any other disease, and prevent it, as smallpox
+and yellow fever are prevented, he looks upon as madness and a waste
+of time."
+
+"He has had sorrow and experience, and he is kind and charitable, as
+well as wise," said I.
+
+"That's exactly where the hardest part comes in for us younger
+fellows. It isn't bucking the bad that makes the fight so hard: it's
+bucking the wrong-idea'd good. Padre, one good man on the wrong side
+is a stumbling-block for the stoutest-hearted reformer ever born. It's
+men like my father, who regard the smooth scoundrel that runs this
+town as a necessary evil, and tolerate him because they wouldn't soil
+their hands dealing with him, that do the greatest injury to the
+state. I tell you what, it wouldn't be so hard to get rid of the
+devil, if it weren't for the angels!"
+
+"And how," said I, ironically, "do you propose to set about smoothing
+the rough and making straight the crooked, my son?"
+
+"Flatten 'em out," said he, briefly. "Politics. First off I'm going to
+practice general law; then I'll be solicitor-general for this county.
+After that, I shall be attorney-general for the state. Later I may be
+governor, unless I become senator instead."
+
+"Well," said I, cautiously, "you'll be so toned down by that time that
+you might make a very good governor indeed."
+
+"I couldn't very well make a worse one than some we've already had,"
+said the boy sternly. There was something of the accusing dignity of a
+young archangel about him. I caught a glimpse of that newer America
+growing up about us--an America gone back to the older, truer,
+unbuyable ideals of our fathers.
+
+"I guess you'd better tell me good-by now, Padre," said he, presently.
+"And bless me, please--it's a pretty custom. I won't see you again,
+for you'll be saying mass when I'm running for my train. I'll go tell
+John Flint good-by, too."
+
+He went over and rapped on the window, through which we could see
+Flint sitting at his table, his head bent over a book.
+
+"Good-by, John Flint" said Laurence. "Good luck to you and your leggy
+friends! When I come back you'll probably have mandibles, and you'll
+greet me with a nip, in pure Bugese."
+
+"Good-by," said John Flint, lifting his head. Then, with unwonted
+feeling: "I'm horrible sorry you've got to go--I'll miss you something
+fierce. You've been very kind--thank you."
+
+"Mind you take care of the Padre," said the boy, waiving the thanks
+with a smile. "Don't let him work too hard."
+
+"Who, me?" Flint's voice took the knife-edge of sarcasm. "Oh, sure! It
+don't need but one leg to keep up with a gent trying to run a
+thirty-six hour a day job with one-man power, does it? Son, take it
+from me, when a man's got the real, simonpure, no-imitation,
+soulsaving bug in his bean, a forty-legged cyclone couldn't keep up
+with him, much less a guy with one pedal short." He glared at me
+indignantly. From the first it has been one of his vainest notions
+that I am perversely working myself to death.
+
+"There's nothing to be done with the Padre, then, I'm afraid," said
+Laurence, chuckling.
+
+"I _might_ soak him in the cyanide jar for ten minutes a day without
+killing him," mused Mr. Flint. "But," disgustedly, "what'd be the use?
+When he came to and found he'd been that long idle he'd die of
+heart-failure." He pushed aside the window screen, and the two shook
+hands heartily. Then the boy, wringing my hand again, walked away
+without another word. I felt a bit desolate--there are times when I
+could envy women their solace of tears--as if he figured in his
+handsome young person that newer, stronger, more conquering generation
+which was marching ahead, leaving me, older and slower and sadder,
+far, far behind it. Ah! To be once more that young, that strong, that
+hopeful!
+
+When I began to reflect upon what seemed visionary plans, I was
+saddened, foreseeing inevitable disillusion, perhaps even stark
+failure, ahead of him. That he would stubbornly try to carry out those
+plans I did not doubt: I knew my Laurence. He might accomplish a
+certain amount of good. But to overthrow Inglesby, the Boss of
+Appleboro--for he meant no less than this--why, that was a horse of
+another color!
+
+For Inglesby was our one great financial figure. He owned our bank;
+his was the controlling interest in the mills; he owned the factory
+outright; he was president of half a dozen corporations and chairman
+and director of many more.
+
+Did we have a celebration? There he was, in the center of the stage,
+with a jovial loud laugh and an ultra-benevolent smile to hide the
+menace of his little cold piglike eyes, and the meaning of his heavy
+jaw. Will the statement that he had a pew in every church in town
+explain him? He had one in mine, too; paid for, which many of them are
+not.
+
+At the large bare office in the mill he was easy of access, and would
+listen to what you had to say with flattering attention and sympathy.
+But it was in his private office over the bank that this large spider
+really spun the web of our politics. Mills, banks, churches, schools,
+lights, railroads, stores, heating, water-power--all these juicy flies
+apparently walked into his parlor of their own accord. He had made and
+unmade governors; he had sent his men to Washington. How? We
+suspected; but held our peace. If our Bible had bidden us Americans to
+suffer rascals gladly--instead of mere fools--we couldn't be more
+obedient to a mandate.
+
+Men like James Eustis and Judge Mayne despised Inglesby--but gave him
+a wide berth. They wouldn't be enmeshed. It was known that Major
+Appleby Cartwright had blackballed him.
+
+"I can stand a man, suh, that likes to get along in this world--within
+proper bounds. But Inglesby hasn't got any proper bounds. He's a--a
+cross between a Republican mule and a party-bolting boa-constrictor,
+an' a hybrid like that hasn't got any place in nature. On top of that
+he drinks ten cents a bottle grape juice and smokes five cent cigars.
+And he's got the brazen and offensive effrontery to offer 'em to
+self-respectin' men!"
+
+And here was Laurence, our little Laurence, training himself to
+overthrow this overgrown Goliath! Well, if the boy could not bring
+this Philistine to the earth, he might yet manage to give him a few
+manful clumps on the head; perhaps enough to insure a chronic
+headache.
+
+So thinking, I went in and watched John Flint finish a mounting-block
+from a plan in the book open upon the table, adding, however, certain
+improvements of his own.
+
+He laid the block aside and then took a spray of fresh leaves and fed
+it to a horned and hungry caterpillar prowling on a bit of bare stem
+at the bottom of his cage.
+
+"Get up there on those leaves, you horn-tailed horror! Move on,--you
+lepidopterous son of a wigglejoint, or I'll pull your real name on you
+in a minute and paralyze you stiff!" He drew a long breath. "You know
+how I'm beginning to remember their real names? I swear 'em half an
+hour a day. Next time you have trouble with those hickeys of yours,
+try swearing caterpillar at 'em, and you'll find out."
+
+I laughed, and he grinned with me.
+
+"Say," said he, abruptly. "I've been listening with both my ears to
+what that boy was talking to you about awhile ago. Thinks he can buck
+the Boss, does he?"
+
+"Perhaps he may," I admitted.
+
+"Nifty old bird, the Big Un," said Mr. Flint, squinting his eyes.
+"And," he went on, reflectively, "he's sure got your number in this
+burg. Take you by and large, you lawabiders are a real funny sort,
+ain't you? Now, there's Inglesby, handing out the little kids their
+diplomas come school-closing, and telling 'em to be real good, and
+maybe when they grow up he'll have a job in pickle for 'em--work like
+a mule in a treadmill, twelve hours, no unions, _and_ the coroner to
+sit on the remains, free and gratis, for to ease the widow's mind.
+Inglesby's got seats in all your churches--first-aid to the parson's
+pants-pockets.
+
+"Inglesby's right there on the platform at all your spiel-fests,
+smirking at the women and telling 'em not to bother their nice little
+noddles about anything but holding down their natural jobs of being
+perfect ladies--ain't he and other gents just like him always right
+there holding down _their_ natural jobs of protecting 'em and being
+influenced to do what's right? Sure he is! And nobody howls for the
+hook! You let him be It--him with a fist in the state's jeans up to
+the armpit!
+
+"Look here, that Mayne kid's dead right. It's you good guys that are
+to blame. We little bad ones see you kowtowing to the big worse ones,
+and we get to thinking _we_ can come in under the wires easy winners,
+too. However, let me tell you something while I'm in the humor to gas.
+It's this: _sooner or later everybody gets theirs_. My sort and
+Inglesby's sort, we all get ours. Duck and twist and turn and sidestep
+all we want, at the end it's right there waiting for us, with a loaded
+billy up its sleeve: _Ours!_ Some fine day when we're looking the
+other way, thinking we've even got it on the annual turnout of the
+cops up Broadway for class, why, Ours gets up easy on its hind legs,
+spits on its mitt, and hands us exactly what's coming to us, biff! and
+we wake up sitting on our necks in the middle of day-before-yesterday
+and year-after-next. I got mine. If I was you I wouldn't be too
+cock-sure that kid don't give Inglesby his, some of these days, good
+and plenty."
+
+"Maybe so," said I, cautiously.
+
+"Gee, that'd be fly-time for all the good guys in this tank, wouldn't
+it?" he grinned. "Sure! I can see 'em now, patting the bump on their
+beams where they think the brain-patch sprouts, and handing out hunks
+of con to the Lord about his being right on his old-time job of
+swatting sinners in their dinners. Yet they'll all of them go right on
+leading themselves up to be trimmed by the very next holdup that's got
+the nerve to do them! Friend, believe a goat when he tells you that
+you stillwater-and-greenpasture sheep are some bag of nuts!"
+
+"Thank you," said I, with due meekness.
+
+"Keep the change," said he, unabashed. "I wasn't meaning _you_,
+anyhow. I've got more manners, I hope, than to do such. And, parson,
+you don't need to have cold feet about young Mayne. If you ask me,
+_I'd_ bet the limit on him. Why, I think so much of that boy that if
+he was a rooster I'd put the gaffs and my last dollar on him, and back
+him to whip everything in feathers clean up to baldheaded eagles.
+Believe me, he'd do it!" he finished, with enthusiasm.
+
+Bewildered by a mental picture of a Laurence with ruffled
+neck-feathers and steel spurs, I hurriedly changed the subject to the
+saner and safer one of our own immediate affairs.
+
+"Yep, ten orders in to-day's mail and seven in yesterday's; and good
+orders for the wasp-moths, single or together, and that house in New
+York wants steady supplies from now on. And here's a fancy shop wants
+a dozen trays, like that last one I finished. We're looking up," said
+he, complacently.
+
+
+
+The winter that followed was a trying one, and the Guest Rooms were
+never empty. I like to record that John Flint put his shoulder to the
+wheel and became Madame's right hand man and Westmoreland's faithful
+ally. His wooden leg made astonishingly little noise, and his entrance
+into a room never startled the most nervous patient. He went on
+innumerable errands, and he performed countless small services that in
+themselves do not seem to amount to much, but swell into a great
+total.
+
+"He may have only one leg," said Westmoreland, when Flint had helped
+him all of one night with a desperately ill millworker, "but he
+certainly has two hands; he knows how to use his ears and eyes, he's
+dumb until he ought to speak, and then he speaks to the point. Father,
+Something knew what It was about when you and I were allowed to drag
+that tramp out of the teeth of death! Yes, yes, I'm certainly glad and
+grateful we were allowed to save John Flint."
+
+From that time forth the big man gave his ex-patient a liking which
+grew with his years. Absent-minded as he was, he could thereafter
+always remember to find such things as he thought might interest him.
+Appleboro laughs yet about the day Dr. Westmoreland got some small
+butterflies for his friend, and having nowhere else to put them,
+clapped them under his hat, and then forgot all about them; until he
+lifted his hat to some ladies and the swarm of insects flew out.
+
+Without being asked, and as unostentatiously as he did everything
+else, Flint had taken his place in church every Sunday.
+
+"Because it'd sort of give you a black eye if I didn't," he explained.
+"Skypiloting's your lay, father, and I'll see you through with it as
+far as I can. I couldn't fall down on any man that's been as white to
+me as you've been."
+
+I must confess that his conception of religion was very, very hazy,
+and his notions of church services and customs barbarous. For
+instance, he disliked the statues of the saints exceedingly. They
+worried him.
+
+"I can't seem to stand a man dolled-up in skirts," he confessed. "Any
+more than I'd be stuck on a dame with whiskers. It don't somehow look
+right to me. Put the he-saints in pants instead of those brown kimonas
+with gold crocheting and a rope sash, and I'd have more respect for
+'em."
+
+When I tried to give him some necessary instructions, and to penetrate
+the heathen darkness in which he seemed immersed, he listened with the
+utmost respect and attention--and wrinkled his brow painfully, and
+blinked, and licked his lips.
+
+"That's all right, father, that's all right. If you say it's so, I
+guess it's so. I'll take your word for it. If it's good enough for you
+and Madame, there's got to be something in it, and it's sure good
+enough for me. Look here: the little girl and young Mayne have got a
+different brand from yours, haven't they?"
+
+"Neither of them is of the Old Faith."
+
+"Huh! Well, I tell you what you do: you just switch me in somewhere
+between you and Madame and him and her. That'll give me a line on all
+of you--and maybe it'll give all of you a line on me. See?"
+
+I saw, but as through a glass darkly. So the matter rested. And I must
+in all humility set down that I have never yet been able to get at
+what John Flint really believes he believes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE GOING OF SLIPPY MCGEE
+
+
+Little by little, so quietly as to be unnoticeable in the working, but
+with, cumulative effect; built under the surface like those coral
+reefs that finally rear themselves into palm-crowned peaks upon the
+Pacific, during the years' slow upward march had John Flint grown.
+
+Nature had never meant him for a criminal. The evil conditions that
+society saddles upon the slums had set him wrong because they gave him
+no opportunity to be right. Now even among butterflies there are
+occasional aberrants, but they are the rare exceptions. Give the grub
+his natural food, his chance to grow, protect him from parasites in
+the meanwhile, and he will presently become the normal butterfly. That
+is the Law.
+
+At a crucial phase in this man's career his true talisman--a gray
+moth--had been put into his hand; and thereby he came into his
+rightful heritage.
+
+I count as one of my red-letter days that on which I found him
+brooding over the little gray-brown chrysalis of the Papilio
+Cresphontes, that splendid swallowtail whose hideous caterpillar we in
+the South call the orange puppy, from the fancied resemblance the hump
+upon it bears to the head of a young dog. Its chrysalis looks so much
+like a bit of snapped-off twig that the casual eye misses it,
+fastened to a stem by a girdle of silk or lying among fallen leaves.
+
+"I watched it ooze out of an egg like a speck of dirty water. I
+watched it eat a thousand times its own weight and grow into the
+nastiest wretch that crawls. I saw it stop eating and spit its stomach
+out and shrivel up, and crawl out of its skin and pull its own head
+off, and bury itself alive in a coffin made out of itself, a coffin
+like a bit of rotting wood. Look at it! There it lies, stone-dead for
+all a man's eyes can see!
+
+"And yet this thing will answer a call no ears can hear and crawl out
+of its coffin something entirely different from what went into it!
+I've seen it with my own eyes, but how it's done I don't know; no, nor
+no man since the world was made knows, or could do it himself. What
+does it? What gives that call these dead-alive things hear in the
+dark? What makes a crawling ugliness get itself ready for what's
+coming--how does it _know_ there's ever going to be a call, or that
+it'll hear it without fail?"
+
+"Some of us call it Nature: but others call it God," said I.
+
+"Search me! I don't know what It is--but I do know there's got to be
+Something behind these things, anyhow," said he, and turned the
+chrysalis over and over in his palm, staring down at it thoughtfully.
+He had used Westmoreland's words, once applied to his own case! "Oh,
+yes, there's Something, because I've watched It working with grubs,
+getting 'em ready for five-inch moths and hand-colored butterflies,
+Something that's got the time and the patience and the know-how to
+build wings as well as worlds." He laid the little inanimate mystery
+aside.
+
+"It's come to the point, parson, where I've just _got_ to know more. I
+know enough now to know how much I don't know, because I've got a peep
+at how much there is to know. There's a God's plenty to find out, and
+it's up to me to go out and find it."
+
+"Some of the best and brightest among men have given all the years of
+their lives to just that finding out and knowing more--and they found
+their years too few and short for the work. But such help as you need
+and we can get, you shall have, please God!" said I.
+
+"I'm ready for the word to start, chief." And heaven knows he was.
+
+His passion transformed him; he forgot himself; took his mind off
+himself and his affairs and grievances and hatreds and fears; and thus
+had chance to expand and to grow, in those following years of
+patientest effort, of untiring research and observance, of lovingest
+study. Days in the open woods and fields burned his pale skin a good
+mahogany, and stamped upon it the windswept freshness of out of doors.
+The hunted and suspicious glance faded from his eyes, which took on
+more and more the student's absorbed intensity; the mouth lost its
+sinister straightness; and while it retained an uncompromising
+firmness, it learned how to smile. He was a familiar figure, tramping
+from dawn to dusk with Kerry at his heels, for the dog obeyed Mary
+Virginia's command literally. He looked upon John Flint as his special
+charge, and made himself his fourlegged red shadow. I am sure that if
+we had seen Kerry appear in the streets of Appleboro without John
+Flint, we would have incontinently stopped work, sounded a general
+alarm, and gone to hunt for his body. And to have seen John Flint
+without Kerry would have called forth condolences.
+
+Sometimes--when I had time--I went with him moth-hunting at night; and
+never, never could either of us forget those enchanted hours under the
+stars!
+
+We moved in a quiet fresh and dewy, with the night wind upon us like a
+benediction. Sometimes we skirted a cypress swamp and saw the shallow
+black water with blacker trees reflected upon its bosom, and heard the
+frogs' canorous quarrelings, and the stealthy rustlings of creatures
+of the dark. We crossed dreaming fields, and smelt leaves and grasses
+and sleeping flowers. We saw the heart of the wood bared to the magic
+of the moon, which revealed a hidden and haunting beauty of places
+commonplace enough by day; as if the secret souls of things showed
+themselves only in the holy dark.
+
+For the world into which we stepped for a space was not our world, but
+the fairy world of the Little People, the world of the Children of the
+Moon. And oh, the moths! Now it was a tiger, with his body banded with
+yellow and his white opaque delicate wings spotted with black; now the
+great green silken Luna with long curved tails bordered with lilac or
+gold, and vest of ermine; now some quivering Catocala, with afterwings
+spread to show orange and black and crimson; now the golden-brown Io,
+with one great black velvet spot; and now some rarer, shyer fellow
+over which we gloated.
+
+How they flashed and fluttered about the lantern, or circled about the
+trees upon which the feast had been spread! The big yellow-banded
+sphinx whirred hither and thither on his owl-like wings, his large
+eyes glowing like rubies, hung quivering above some flower for a
+moment, and then was off again as swift as thought. The light drew the
+great Regalis, all burnished tawny brown, striped and spotted with raw
+gold; and the Cynthia, banded with lilac, her heavy body tufted with
+white. The darkness in which they moved, the light which, for a moment
+revealed them, seemed to make their colors _alive_; for they show no
+such glow and glory in the common day; they pale when the moon pales,
+and when the sun is up they are merely moths; they are no longer the
+fantastic, glittering, gorgeous, throbbing Children of the Dark.
+
+Home we would go, at an hour when the morning star blazed like a
+lighted torch, and the pearl-gray sky was flushing with pink. No haul
+he had ever made could have given him such joy as the treasures
+brought home in dawns like these, so free of evil that his heart was
+washed in the night dew and swept by the night wind.
+
+My mother, after her pleasant, housewifely fashion, baked a big iced
+cake for him on the day he replaced his clumsy wooden peg with the
+life-like artificial limb he himself had earned and paid for. I had
+wished more than once to hasten this desirable day; but prudently
+restrained myself, thinking it best for him to work forward unaided.
+It had taken months of patient work, of frugality, and planning, and
+counting, and saving, to cover a sum which, once on a time, he might
+have gotten in an hour's evil effort. And it represented no small
+achievement and marked no small advance, so that it was really the
+feast day we made of it. That limb restored him to a dignity he seemed
+to have abdicated. It hid his obvious misfortune--you could not at
+first glance tell that he was a cripple, a something of which he had
+been morbidly conscious and savagely resentful. He would never again
+be able to run, or even to walk rapidly for any length of time,
+although he covered the ground at a good and steady gait; and as he
+grew more and more accustomed to the limb there was only a slight limp
+to distinguish him. The use of the stick he thought best to carry
+became perfunctory. I have seen Kerry carrying that stick when his
+master had forgotten all about it.
+
+Meeting him now upon the streets, plainly but really well-dressed,
+scrupulously brushed, his linen immaculate, and with his trimmed red
+beard, his eyeglasses, and his soft hat, he conveyed the impression of
+being a professional man--say a pleasantly homely and scholarly
+college professor. There was a fixed sentiment in Appleboro that I
+knew very much more about Mr. Flint's past than I would tell--which
+was perfectly true, and went undenied by me; that he had seen better
+days; that he had been the black sheep of a good family, gotten into a
+scrape of some sort, and had then taken to traveling a rough road into
+a far country, eating husks with the swine, like many another
+prodigal; and that aware of this I had kept him with me until he found
+himself again.
+
+So when folks met him and Kerry they smiled and spoke, for we are
+friendly people and send no man to Coventry without great cause. And
+there wasn't a child, black or white, who didn't know and like the
+man with the butterfly net.
+
+The country people for miles around knew and loved him, too; for he
+walked up and down the earth and went to and fro in it, full of
+curious and valuable knowledge shared freely as the need arose. He
+would glance at your flower-garden, for instance, and tell you what
+insect visitors your flowers had, and what you should do to check
+their ravages. He'd walk about your out-buildings and commend
+white-wash, and talk about insecticides; and you'd learn that bees are
+partial to blue, but flies are not; and that mosquitoes seem to
+dislike certain shades of yellow. And then he'd leave you to digest
+it.
+
+He was a quiet evangelist, a forerunner of that Grand Army which will
+some day arise, not to murder and maim men, but to conquer man's
+deadliest foe and greatest economic menace--the injurious insect.
+
+It was he who spread the tidings of Corn and Poultry and Live Stock
+Clubs, stopping by many a lonely farm to whisper a word in the ears of
+discouraged boys, or to drop a hint to unenlightened fathers and
+mothers.
+
+He carried about in his pockets those invaluable reports and bulletins
+which the government issues for the benefit and enlightenment of
+farmers; and these were left, with a word of praise, where they would
+do the most good.
+
+Those same bulletins from the Bureau of Entomology had planted in John
+Flint's heart the seed which bore such fruit of good citizenship. The
+whole course of his early years had tended to make him suspicious of
+government, which spelt for him police and prison, the whole grim
+machinery which threatened him and which he in turn threatened. He had
+feared and hated it; it caught men and shut them up and broke them. If
+he ever asked himself, "What can my government do for me?" he had to
+answer: "It can put me in prison and keep me there; it can even send me
+to the Chair." Wherefore government was a thing to hate, to injure--and
+to escape from.
+
+The first thing he had ever found worthy of respect and admiration in
+this same government was one of its bulletins.
+
+"Where'd you get this?"
+
+"I asked for it, and the Bureau sent it."
+
+"Oh! You've got a friend there!"
+
+"No. The bulletins are free to any one interested enough to ask for
+them."
+
+"You mean to say the government gets up things like this--pays men to
+find out and write 'em up--pays to have 'em printed--and then gives
+'em away to _anybody_? Why, they're valuable!"
+
+"Yes; but they are nevertheless quite free. I have a number, if you'd
+like to go over them. Or you can send for new ones."
+
+"But why do they do it? Where's the graft?" he wondered.
+
+"The graft in this case is common sense in operation. If farms can be
+run with less labor and loss and more profit and pleasure, why, the
+whole country is benefited, isn't it? Don't you understand, the
+government is trying to help those who need help, and therefore is
+willing to lend them the brains of its trained and picked experts? It
+isn't selfish thwart that aim, is it?"
+
+He said nothing. But he read and re-read the bulletins I had, and sent
+for more, which came to him promptly. They didn't know him, at the
+Bureau; they asked him no questions; he wasn't going to pay anybody so
+much as a penny. They assumed that the man who asked for advice and
+information was entitled to all they could reasonably give him, and
+they gave it as a matter of course. That is how and why he found
+himself in touch with his Uncle Sam, a source hitherto disliked and
+distrusted. This source was glad to put its trained intelligence at
+his service and the only reward it looked to was his increased
+capacity to succeed in his work! He simply couldn't dislike or
+distrust that which benefited him; and as his admiration and respect
+for the Department of Agriculture grew, unconsciously his respect and
+admiration for the great government behind it grew likewise. After
+all, it was _his_ government which was reaching across intervening
+miles, conveying information, giving expert instruction, telling him
+things he wanted to know and encouraging him to go right on and find
+out more for himself!
+
+_Now_ if he had asked himself what his government could do for him, he
+had to answer: "It can help me to make good."
+
+And he began to understand that this was possible because he obeyed
+the law, and that only in intelligent obedience and co-operation is
+there any true freedom. The law no longer meant skulking by day and
+terror by night; it was protection and peace, and a chance to work in
+the open, and the sympathy and understanding and comradeship of
+decent folks. The government was no longer a brute force which
+arbitrarily popped men into prison; it was the common will of a free
+people, just as the law was the common conscience.
+
+I dare not say that he learned all this easily, or all at once, or
+even willingly. None of us learns our great lessons easily. We have to
+live them, breathe them, work them out with sweat and tears. That we
+do learn them, even inadequately, makes the glory and the wonder of
+man.
+
+And so John Flint went to school to the government of the United
+States, and carried its little text-books about with him and taught
+them to others in even more need that he; and heckled hopeless boys
+into Corn Clubs; and coaxed sullen mothers and dissatisfied girls into
+Poultry and Tomato Clubs; and was full of homely advice upon such
+living subjects as the spraying of fruit trees, and how to save them
+from blight and scale-insects, and how to get rid of flies, and
+cut-worms, and to fight the cattle-tick, which is our curse; and the
+preservation of birds, concerning which he was rabid. His liking for
+birds began with Miss Sally Ruth's pigeons and the friendly birds in
+our garden. And as he learned to know them his love for them grew. I
+have seen him daily visit a wren's nest without once alarming the
+little black-eyed mother. I have heard him give the red-bird's call,
+and heard that loveliest of all birds answer him. And I have seen the
+impudent jays, within reach of his hand, swear at him unabashed and
+unafraid, because he fed a vireo first.
+
+I like to think of his intimate friendship with the wholesome country
+children--not the least of his blessings. He was their chief visitor
+from the outside world. He knew wonderful secrets about things one
+hadn't noticed before, and he could make miracles with his quick
+strong fingers. He'd sit down, his stick and knapsack beside him, his
+glamorous dog at his feet, and while you and your sisters and brothers
+and friends and neighbors hung about him like a cluster of tow-headed
+bees, he'd turn a few sticks and bits of cloth and twine and a tack or
+two, and an old roller-skate wheel he took out of his pocket, into an
+air-ship! He could go down by your little creek and make you a
+water-wheel, or a windmill. He could make you marvelous little men,
+funny little women, absurd animals, out of corks or peanuts. He knew,
+too, just exactly the sort of knife your boy-heart ached for--and at
+parting you found that very knife slipped into your enraptured palm.
+You might save the pennies you earned by picking berries and gathering
+nuts, but you could never, never find at any store any candy that
+tasted like the sticks that came out of his pockets, and you needn't
+hope to try. He had the inviolable secret of that candy, and he
+imparted to it a divine flavor no other candy ever possessed. If you
+were a little doll-less girl, he didn't leave you with the provoking
+promise that Santa Claus would bring you one if you were good. He was
+so sure you were good that he made you right then and there a
+wonderful doll out of corn-husks, with shredded hair, and a frock of
+his own handkerchief. When he came again you got another doll--a store
+doll; but I think your child-heart clung to the corn-baby with the
+handkerchief dress. I have often wondered how many little cheeks
+snuggled against John Flint's home-made dollies, how many innocent
+breasts cradled them; how many a little fellow carried his knife to
+bed with him, afraid to let it get out of reach of a hard little hand,
+because he might wake up in the morning and find he had only dreamed
+it! No, I hardly think the country children were the least of John
+Flint's blessings. They would run to meet him, hold on to his hands,
+drag him here and there to show him what wonders their sharp eyes had
+discovered since his last visit; and give him, with shining eyes, such
+cocoons and caterpillars, and insects as they had found for him. It
+was they who called him the Butterfly Man, a name which spread over
+the whole country-side. If you had asked for John Flint, folks would
+have stared. And if you described him--a tall man in a Norfolk suit,
+with a red beard and a red dog, and an insect case:
+
+"Oh, you mean the Butterfly Man! Sure. You'll find him about somewhere
+with the kids." If there was anything he couldn't have, in that
+county, it was because folks hadn't it to give if he should ask.
+
+At home his passion for work at times terrified me. When I protested:
+
+"I was twenty-five years old when I landed here," he reminded me. "So
+I've got twenty-five years' back-work to catch up with."
+
+He had taken over a correspondence that had since become voluminous,
+and which included more and more names that stood for very much.
+Sometimes when I read aloud a passage from a letter that praised him,
+he turned red, and writhed like a little boy whose ears are being
+relentlessly washed by his elders.
+
+By this time he had learned to really classify; heavens, how
+unerringly he could place an insect in its proper niche! It was a sort
+of sixth sense with him. That cold, clear, incisive power of brain
+which on a time had made Slippy McGee the greatest cracksman in
+America, was, trained and disciplined in a better cause, to make John
+Flint in later years an international authority upon lepidoptera, an
+observer to whom other observers deferred, a naturalist whose dictum
+settled disputed points. And I knew it, I foresaw it!
+
+_Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_ I grew as vain over his enlarging
+powers as if I had been the Mover of the Game, not a pawn. I felt,
+gloriously, that I had not lived for nothing. A great naturalist is
+not born every day, no, nor every year, nor even every century. And I
+had caught me a great burglar and I had hatched me a great naturalist!
+My Latin soul was enraptured with this ironic anomaly. I could not
+choose but love the man for that.
+
+I really had some cause for vanity. Others than myself had been
+gradually drawn to the unassuming Butterfly Man. Westmoreland loved
+him. A sympathetic listener who seldom contradicted, but often
+shrewdly suggested, Flint somehow knew how to bring out the big
+doctor's best; and in consequence found himself in contact with a mind
+above all meanness and a nature as big and clean as a spray-swept
+beach.
+
+"Oh, my, my, my, what a surgeon gone to waste!" Westmoreland would
+lament, watching the long, sure fingers at work. "Well, I suppose it's
+all for the best that Father De Rancé beat me to you--at least you've
+done less damage learning your trade." So absorbed would he become
+that he sometimes forget cross patients who were possibly fuming
+themselves into a fever over his delay.
+
+Eustis, who had met the Butterfly Man on the country roads and had
+stopped his horse for an informal chat, would thereafter go out of his
+way for a talk with him. These two reticent men liked each other
+immensely. At opposite poles, absolutely dissimilar, they yet had odd
+similarities and meeting-points. Eustis was nothing if not practical;
+he was never too busy to forget to be kind. Books and pamphlets that
+neither Flint nor I could have hoped to possess found their way to us
+through him. Scientific periodicals and the better magazines came
+regularly to John Flint's address. That was Eustis's way. This
+friendship put the finishing touch upon the Butterfly Man's repute. He
+was my associate, and my mother was devoted to him. Miss Sally Ruth,
+whose pet pear-tree he had saved and whose pigeons he had cured,
+approved of him, too, and said so with her usual openness.
+Westmoreland was known to be his firm friend; nobody could forget the
+incident of those butterflies in the doctor's hat! Major Cartwright
+liked him so much that he even bore with the dogs, though Pitache in
+particular must have sorely strained his patience. Pitache cherished
+the notion that it was his duty to pass upon all visitors to the
+Butterfly Man's rooms. For some reason, known only to himself, the
+little dog also cherished a deep-seated grudge against the major, the
+very sound of whose voice outside the door was enough to send him
+howling under the table, where he lay with his head on his paws, a
+wary eye cocked balefully, and his snarls punctuating the Major's
+remarks.
+
+"He smells my Unitarian soul, confound him!" said the major. "An' he's
+so orthodox he thinks he'll get chucked out of dog-heaven, if he
+doesn't show his disapproval."
+
+The little dog did finally learn to accept the major's presence
+without outward protest; though the major declared that Pitache always
+hung down his tail when he came and hung it up when he left!
+
+The Butterfly Man accepted whatever friendliness was proffered without
+diffidence, but with no change in his natural reserve. You could tell
+him anything: he listened, made few comments and gave no advice, was
+absolutely non-shockable, and never repeated what he heard. The
+unaffected simplicity of his manner delighted my mother. She said you
+couldn't tell her--there was good blood in that man, and he had been
+more than any mere tramp before he fell into our hands! Why, just
+observe his manner, if you please! It was the same to everybody; he
+had, one might think, no sense whatever of caste, creed, age, sex, or
+color; and yet he neither gave offense nor received it.
+
+Those outbursts which had so terrified me at first came at rare and
+rarer intervals. If I were to live for a thousands years I should
+never be able to forget the last and worst; which fell upon him
+suddenly and without warning, on a fine morning while he sat on the
+steps of his verandah, and I beside him with my Book of Hours in my
+hand. In between the Latin prayers I sensed pleasantly the light wind
+that rustled the vines, and how the Mayne bees went grumbling from
+flower to flower, and how one single bird was singing to himself over
+and over the self-same song, as if he loved it; and how the sunlight
+fell in a great square, like a golden carpet, in front of the steps.
+It was all very still and peaceful. I was just turning a page, when
+John Flint jerked his pipe out of his mouth, swung his arm back, and
+hurled the pipe as far as he could. I watched it, involuntarily, and
+saw where it fell among our blue hydrangeas; from which a thin spiral
+of smoke arose lazily in the calm air. But Flint shoved his hat back
+on his head, sat up stiffly, and swore.
+
+He had been with me then nearly four years, and I had learned to know
+the symptoms:--restlessness, followed by hours of depressed and sullen
+brooding. So I had heretofore in a sense been forewarned, though I
+never witnessed one of these outbursts without being shaken to the
+depths. This one was different--as if the evil force had invaded him
+suddenly, giving him no time to resist. A glance at his face made me
+lay aside the book hurriedly; for this was no ordinary struggle. The
+words that had come to me at first came back now with redoubled
+meaning, and rang through my head like passing-bells:
+
+"_For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood but against ... the
+rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of
+wickedness_."
+
+He tilted his head, looked upward, and swore steadily. As for me, my
+throat felt as if it had been choked with ashes. I could only stare at
+him, dumbly. If ever a man was possessed, he was. His voice rose,
+querulously:
+
+"I get up in the morning, and I catch bugs, and I study them, and I
+dry them--and I go to bed. I get up in the morning, and I catch bugs,
+and I study them, and I dry them--and I go to bed. I get up _every_
+morning, and I do the same damn thing, over and over and over and
+over, day in, day out, day in, day out. Nothing else.... No drinks, no
+lights, no girls, no sprees, no cards, no gang, no risks, no jobs, no
+bulls, no anything! God! I could say my prayers to Broadway, anywhere
+from the Battery up to Columbus Circle! I want it all so hard I could
+point my nose like a lost dog and howl for it!
+
+"... There is a Dutchman got a restaurant down on Eighth Avenue, and I
+dream at nights about the hotdog-and-kraut, and the ham-and that they
+give you there, and the jane that slings it. Hips on her like a horse,
+she has, and an arm that shoves your eats under your nose in a way
+you've got to respect. I smell those eats in my sleep. I want some
+more Childs' bucks. I want to see the electrics winking on the roofs.
+I want to smell wet asphalt and see the taxis whizzing by in the rain.
+I want to see a seven-foot Mick cop with a back like a piano-box and a
+paw like a ham and a foot like a submarine with stove-polish on it. I
+want to see the subway in the rush hour and the dips and mollbuzzers
+going through the crowd like kids in a berry patch. I want to see a
+ninety-story building going up, and the wops crawling on it like ants.
+I want to see the breadline, and the panhandlers, and the bums in
+Union Square. I want a bellyful of the happy dust the old town hands
+out--the whole dope and all there is of it! My God! I want everything
+I haven't got!"
+
+He looked at me, wildly. He was trembling violently, and sweat poured
+down his face.
+
+"Parson," he rasped, "I've bucked this thing for fair, but I've got to
+go back and see it and smell it and taste it and feel it and know it
+all again, or I'll go crazy. You're all of you so good down here
+you're too much for me. _I'm home-sick for hell_. It--it comes over
+me like fire over the damned. You don't fool yourself that folks who
+know what it is to be damned can stay on in heaven without freezing,
+do you? Well, they can't. I can't help it! I can't! I've got to
+go--this time I've got to go!"
+
+I sat and stared at him. Oh, what was it Paul had said we were to pray
+for, at such a time as this?
+
+"_And for me, that speech may be given to me ... that I may open my
+mouth with confidence_..."
+
+But the words wouldn't come.
+
+"I've got to go! I've got to go, and try myself out!" he gritted.
+
+"You--understand your risks," I managed to say through stiff lips. I
+had always, in my secret heart, been more or less afraid of this.
+Always had I feared that the rulers of the world of darkness, swooping
+down and catching him unaware, might win the long fight in the end.
+
+"Here you are safe. You are building up an honored name. You are
+winning the respect and confidence of all decent people--and you wish
+to undo it all. You wish to take such desperate chances--now!" I
+groaned.
+
+"I've got to go!" he burst forth, white-lipped. "You've never seen a
+dip cut off from his dope, have you? Well, I'm it, when the old town
+calls me loud enough for me to hear her plain. I've stood her off as
+long as I could--and now I'm that crazy for her I could wallow in her
+dust. Besides, there's not such a lot of risks. I don't have to leave
+my card at the station-house to let 'em know I'm calling, do I? They
+haven't been sitting on what they think is my grave to keep me from
+getting up before Gabriel beats 'em to it, have they? No, they're not
+expecting _me_. What I could do to 'em now would make the Big Uns look
+like a bunch of pikers--and their beans would have to turn inside out
+before they fell for it that _I'd_ come back to my happy home and was
+on the job again."
+
+"If--if you hadn't been so white, I'd have cut and run for it without
+ever putting you wise. But I want to play fair. I'd be a hog if I
+didn't play fair, and I'm trying to do it. I'm going because I can't
+stay. I've got enough of my own money, earned honest, saved up, to pay
+my way. Let me take it and go. And if I can come back, why, I'll
+come."
+
+He was stone deaf to entreaties, prayers, reasoning, argument. The
+four years of his stay with me, and all their work, and study, and
+endeavor, and progress, seemed to have slipped from him as if they had
+never been. They were swept aside like cobwebs. He broke away from me
+in the midst of my pleading, hurried into his bedroom, and began to
+sort into a grip a few necessities.
+
+"I'll leave on the three-o'clock," he flung over his shoulder to me,
+standing disconsolate in the door. "I'll stop at the bank on my way."
+I could do nothing; he had taken the bit between his teeth and was
+bolting. I had for the time being lost all power of control over him,
+and before I might hope to recover it he would be out of my reach.
+Perhaps, I reflected wretchedly, the best thing to do under the
+circumstances, would simply be to give him his head. I had seen horses
+conquered like that. But the road before John Flint was so dark and so
+crooked--and at the end of it waited Slippy McGee!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE BUTTERFLY MAN
+
+
+It was just one-thirty by the placid little clock on his mantel. The
+express was due at three.
+
+"Very well," said I, forcing myself to face the inevitable without
+noise, "you are free. If you must go, you must go."
+
+"I've got to go! I've got to go!" He repeated it as one repeats an
+incantation. "I've got to go!" And he went on methodically assorting
+and packing. Even at this moment of obsession his ingrained
+orderliness asserted itself; the things he rejected were laid back in
+their proper place with, the nicest care.
+
+I went over to tell my mother that John Flint had suddenly decided to
+go north. She expressed no surprise, but immediately fell to counting
+on her fingers his available shirts, socks, and underwear. She rather
+hoped he would buy a new overcoat in New York, his old one being
+hardly able to stand the strain of another winter. She was pleasantly
+excited; she knew he had many northern correspondents, with whom he
+must naturally be anxious to foregather. There was much to call him
+thither.
+
+"He really needs the change. A short trip will do him a world of
+good," she concluded equably. "He is still quite a young man, and I'm
+sure it must be dull for him here at times, in spite of his work.
+Why, he hasn't been out of this county for over three years, and just
+think of the unfettered life he must have led before he came here!
+Yes, I'm sure New York will stimulate him. A dose of New York is a
+very good tonic. It regulates one's mental liver. Don't look so
+worried, Armand--you remind me of those hens who hatch ducklings. I
+should think a duckling of John Flint's size could be trusted to swim
+by himself, at his time of life!"
+
+She had not my cause for fear. Besides, in her secret heart, Madame
+was convinced that, rehabilitated, reclaimed, having more than proven
+his intrinsic worth, John Flint went to be reconciled with and
+received into the bosom of some preeminently proper parent, and to be
+acclaimed and applauded by admiring and welcoming friends. For
+although she had once heard the Butterfly Man gravely assure Miss
+Sally Ruth Dexter that the only ancestor his immediate Flints were
+sure of was Flint the pirate, my mother still clung firmly to the
+illusion of Family. Blood will tell!
+
+As for me, I was equally sure that blood was telling now; and telling
+in the atrocious tongue of the depths. I felt that the end had come.
+Vain, vain, all the labor, all the love, all the hope, the prayers,
+the pride! The submerged voice of his old life was calling him; the
+vampire extended her white and murderous arms in which many and many
+had died shamefully; she lifted to his her insatiable lips stained
+scarlet with the wine of hell. Against that siren smile, those
+beckoning hands, I could do nothing. The very fact that I was what I
+am, was no longer a help, but rather a hindrance; he recognized in the
+priest a deterring and detaining influence against which he rebelled,
+and which he wished to repudiate. He was, as he had said so terribly,
+"home-sick for hell." He would go, and he would most inevitably be
+caught in the whirlpools; the naturalist, the scientist, the Butterfly
+Man, would be sucked into that boiling vortex and drowned beyond all
+hope of resuscitation; but from it the soul of Slippy McGee would
+emerge, with a larger knowledge and a clearer brain, a thousand-fold
+more deadly dangerous than of old; because this time he knew better
+and had deliberately chosen the evil and rejected the good. By the law
+of the pendulum he must swing as far backward into wrong as he had
+swung forward into right.
+
+I could not bring myself to speak to him, I dared not bid him the
+mockery of a Godspeed upon his journey, dreading as I did that
+journey's end. So I stood at a window and watched him as with suitcase
+in hand he walked down our shady street. At the corner he turned and
+lifted his hat in a last farewell salute to my mother, standing
+looking after him in the Parish House gate. Then he turned down the
+side-street, and so disappeared.
+
+From his closed rooms came a long wailing howl. For the first time
+Kerry might not follow his master; more yet, the master had thrust the
+astonished dog into his bedroom and shut the door upon him. He had
+refused to recognize the scratch at the door, the snuffling whine
+through the keyhole. The outer door had slammed. Kerry raced to the
+window. And the master was going, and going without him! He had
+neither net, knapsack, nor bottle-belt, but he carried a suitcase. He
+did not look back, nor whistle: he _meant_ to leave him behind.
+Sensing that an untoward thing was occurring, a thing that boded no
+good to himself or his beloved, the red dog lifted his voice and
+howled a piercing protest.
+
+The sash was down, but the blinds had not yet been closed to. One saw
+Kerry standing with his forepaws on the window-sill, his nose against
+the glass, his ears lifted, his eyes anxious and distressed, his lip
+caught in his teeth. At intervals he threw back his head, and then
+came the howls.
+
+The catastrophe--for to me it was no less a thing--had come upon me so
+suddenly that I was fairly stunned. From sheer force of habit I went
+over to the church and knelt before the altar; but I could not pray; I
+could only kneel there dumbly. I heard the screech of the three
+o'clock express coming in, and, a few minutes later, its longer
+screech as it departed. He had gone, then! I was not dreaming it: it
+was true. Down and down and down went my heart. And down and down and
+down went my head, humbled and prostrate. Alas, the end of hope, the
+fall of pride! Alas and alas for the fair house built upon the sand,
+wrecked and scattered!
+
+When I rose from my knees I staggered. I walked draggingly, as one
+walks with fetters upon the feet. Oh, it was a cruel world, a world in
+which nothing but inevitable loss awaited one, in which one was
+foredoomed to disappointment; a world in which one was leaf by leaf
+stripped bare.
+
+I could not bear to look at his closed rooms, but turned my head aside
+as I passed them. Disconsolate Kerry barked at my passing step, and
+pawed frantically at the window, but I made no effort to release him.
+What comfort had I for the faithful creature, deserted by what he most
+loved?
+
+His dismal outcries rasped my nerves raw; it was exactly as if the dog
+howled for the dead. And that John Flint was dead I had no reasonable
+cause to doubt. _He was dead because Slippy McGee was alive_. That
+thought drove me as with a whip out into the garden, for as black an
+hour as I have ever lived through--the sort of hour that leaves a scar
+upon the soul. The garden was very still, steeped and drowsing in the
+bright clear sunlight; only the bees were busy there, calling from
+flower-door to flower-door, and sometimes a vireo's sweet whistle
+fluted through the leaves. Pitache lay on John Flint's porch, and
+dozed with his head between his paws; Judge Mayne's Panch sat on the
+garden fence, and washed his black face, and watched the little dog
+out of his emerald eyes. All along the fences the scarlet salvia shot
+up its vivid spikes, and when the wind stirred, the red petals fell
+from it like drops of blood.
+
+It seemed to me incongruous and cruel that one should suffer on such a
+day; grief is for gray days; but the sunlight mocks sorrow, the soft
+wind makes light of it. I was out of tune with this harmony, as I
+walked up and down with my rosary in my hand. I knew that every flying
+minute took him farther and farther away from me and from hope and
+happiness and honor, and brought him nearer and nearer to the
+whirlpool and the pit. I beat my hands together and the crucifix cut
+into my palms. I walked more rapidly, as if I could get away from the
+misery within. My heart ached intolerably, a mist dimmed my sight, and
+a hideous choking lump rose in my throat; and it seemed to me that,
+old and futile and alone, I was set down, not in my garden, but in the
+midst of the abomination of desolation.
+
+Through this aching desolation Kerry's cries stabbed like
+knife-thrusts.... And then little Pitache lifted his head, cocked a
+listening ear and an alert eye, perked up his black nose, thumped an
+expressive tail, and barked. It was a welcoming bark; Kerry, hearing
+it, stiffened statue-like at the window and fell to whining in his
+throat. The garden gate had clicked.
+
+Dreading that any mortal eye should see me thus in my grief, knowing
+it was beyond my power of endurance to meet calmly or to speak
+coherently with any human being at that moment, I turned, with the
+instinct of flight strong upon me. I knew I must be alone, to face
+this thing in its inevitableness, to fight it out, to get my bearings.
+The gate was turning upon its hinges; I could hear it creak.
+
+Hesitating which way to turn, I looked up to see who it was that was
+coming into the Parish House garden. And I fell to trembling, and
+rubbed my eyes, and stared again, unbelievingly. There had been plenty
+of time for him to have visited the bank and withdrawn his account;
+there had been plenty of time for him then to have caught the
+three-o'clock express. I had heard the train come and go this full
+hour since. Surely my wish was father to the thought that I saw him
+before me--my old eyes were playing me a trick--for I thought I saw
+John Flint walking up the garden path toward me! Pitache barked again,
+rose, stretched himself, and trotted to meet him, as he always did
+when the Butterfly Man came home.
+
+He walked with the limp most noticeable when he tried to hurry. He was
+flushed and perspiring and rumpled and well-nigh breathless; his coat
+was wrinkled, his tie awry, his collar wilted, and bits of grass and
+twigs and a leaf or so clung to his dusty clothes. The afternoon sun
+shone full on his thick, close-cropped hair, for he carried his hat in
+his hands, gingerly, carefully, as one might carry a fragile treasure;
+a clean pocket handkerchief was tied over it.
+
+He was making straight for his workroom. I do not think he saw me
+until I stepped into the path, directly in front of him. Then,
+stopping perforce, he looked at me with dancing eyes, wiped his red
+perspiring face with one hand, and nodded to the hat, triumphantly.
+
+"Such an--aberrant!" he panted. He was still breathing so rapidly he
+had to jerk his words out. "I've got the--biggest, handsomest--most
+perfect and wonderful--specimen of--an aberrant swallow-tail--any man
+ever laid--his eyes on! I thought at first--I wasn't seeing things
+right. But I was. Parson, parson, I've seen many--butterflies--but
+never--another one like--this!" He had to pause, to take breath. Then
+he burst out again, unable to contain his delight.
+
+"Oh, it was the luckiest chance! I was standing on the end platform of
+the last car, and the train was pulling out, when I saw her go sailing
+by. I stared with all my eyes, shut 'em, stared again, and there she
+was! I knew there was never going to be such another, that if I lost
+her I'd mourn for the rest of my days. I knew I had to have her. So I
+measured my distance, risked my neck, and jumped for her. Game leg and
+all I jumped, landed in the pit of a nigger's stomach, went down on
+top of him, scrambled up again and was off in a jiffy, with the darky
+bawling he'd been killed and the station buzzing like the judge's bees
+on strike, and people hanging out of all the car windows to see who'd
+been murdered.
+
+"She led me the devil's own chase, for I'd nothing but my hat to net
+her with. A dozen times I thought I had her, and missed. It was
+heart-breaking. I felt I'd go stark crazy if she got away from me. I
+had to get her. And the Lord was good and rewarded me for my patience,
+for I caught her at the end of a mile run. I was so blown by then that
+I had to lie down in the grass by the roadside and get my wind back.
+Then I slid my handkerchief easy-easy under my hat, tilted it up, and
+here she is! She hasn't hurt herself, for she's been quiet. She's
+perfect. She hasn't rubbed off a scale. She's the size of a bat. Her
+upper wings, and one lower wing, are black, curiously splotched with
+yellow, and one lower wing is all yellow. She's got the usual orange
+spots on the secondaries, only bigger, and blobs of gold, and the
+purple spills over onto the ground-color. She's a wonder. Come on in
+and let's gloat at our ease--I haven't half seen her yet! She's the
+biggest and most wonderful Turnus ever made. Why, Gabriel could wear
+her in his crown to make himself feel proud, because there'd be only
+one like her in heaven!"
+
+He took a step forward; but I could only stand still and blink,
+owlishly. My heart pounded and the blood roared in my ears like the
+wind in the pinetrees. My senses were in a most painful confusion,
+with but one thought struggling clear above the turmoil: that _John
+Flint had come back_.
+
+"But you didn't go!" I stammered. "Oh, John Flint, John Flint, you
+didn't go!"
+
+He snorted. "Catch me running away like a fool when a six-inch
+off-color swallow-tail flirts herself under my nose and dares me to
+catch her! You'd better believe I didn't go!"
+
+And then I knew with a great uprush of joy that Slippy McGee himself
+had gone instead, and the three-o'clock express was bearing him away,
+forever and forever, beyond recall or return. Slippy McGee had gone
+into the past; he was dead and done with. But John Flint the
+naturalist was vibrantly and vitally alive, built upon the living
+rock, a house not to be washed away by any wave of passion.
+
+This reaction from the black and bitter hour through which I had just
+passed, this turbulent joy and relief, overcame me. My knees shook and
+gave way; I tottered, and sank helplessly into the seat built around
+our great magnolia. And shaken out of all self-control I wept as I had
+not been permitted to weep over my own dead, my own overthrown hopes.
+Head to foot I was shaken as with some rending sickness. The sobs were
+torn out of my throat with gasps.
+
+He stood stone still. He went white, and his nostrils grew pinched,
+and in his set face only his eyes seemed alive and suffering. They
+blinked at me, as if a light had shone too strongly upon them. A sort
+of inarticulate whimper came from him. Then with extreme care he laid
+the handkerchief-covered hat upon the ground, and down upon his knees
+he went beside me, his arms about my knees. He, too, was trembling.
+
+"Father! ... _Father!_"
+
+"My son ... I was afraid ... you were lost ... gone ... into a far
+country.... It would have broken my heart!"
+
+He said never a word; but hung his head upon his breast, and clung to
+my knees. When he raised his eyes to mine, their look was so piteous
+that I had to put my hand upon him, as one reassures one's child. So
+for a healing time we two remained thus, both silent. The garden was
+exquisitely still and calm and peaceful. We were shut in and canopied
+by walls and roof of waving green, lighted with great cream-colored
+flowers with hearts of gold, and dappled with sun and shadow. Through
+it came the vireo's fairy flute.
+
+God knows what thoughts went through John Flint's mind; but for me, a
+great peace stole upon me, mixed with a greater, reverent awe and
+wonder. Oh, heart of little faith! I had been afraid; I had doubted
+and despaired and been unutterably wretched; I had thought him lost
+whom the Powers of Darkness swooped upon, conquered, and led astray.
+And God had needed nothing stronger than a butterfly's fragile wing to
+bear a living soul across the abyss!
+
+We went together, after a while, to his rooms, and when he had
+submitted to Kerry's welcome, we carefully examined the beautiful
+insect he had captured. As he had said, she had not lost a scale; and
+she was by far the most astonishing aberrant I have ever seen, before
+or since. The Turnus is perhaps the most beautiful of our butterflies,
+and this off-color was larger than the normal, and more irregularly
+and oddly and brilliantly colored. Their natural coloring is gorgeous
+enough; but hers was like a seraph's head-jewels.
+
+I have her yet, with the date of her capture written under her. She is
+the only one of all our butterflies I claim personally. The gold has
+never been minted that could buy that Turnus.
+
+"I had the station agent wire for my grip," said Flint casually. "And
+I gave the darky I knocked down fifty cents to soothe his feelings. He
+offered to let me do it again for a quarter." His eyes roved over the
+pleasant workroom with its books and cabinets, its air of homely
+comfort; through the open door one glimpsed the smaller bedroom, the
+crucifix on the white wall. He dropped his hand on Kerry's head, close
+against his knee, and drew a sharp breath.
+
+"Father," said he, quietly, and looked at me with steady eyes, "you
+don't need to be afraid for me any more as you had to be to-day.
+To-day's the last of my--my dumfoolishness." After a moment he added:
+
+"Remember what that little girl said when she gave me her dog? Well, I
+reckon she was right. I reckon I'm here for keeps. I reckon, father,
+that you and I do belong."
+
+"Yes," said I; and looked over the cases of our butterflies, and the
+books we had gathered, and the table where we worked and studied
+together. "Yes; you and I belong." And I left him with Kerry's head on
+his knees, and Kerry's eyes adoring him, and went over to the Parish
+House to tell Madame that John Flint had changed his mind and wouldn't
+go North just now, because an aberrant Turnus had beguiled him.
+
+For a moment my mother looked profoundly disappointed.
+
+"Are you sure," she asked, "that this doesn't mean a loss to him,
+Armand?"
+
+"Yes, I am sure."
+
+She watched my eyes, and of a sudden she reached out, caught my hand,
+and squeezed it. Her face softened with sympathetic and tolerant
+understanding, but she asked no questions, made no comment. If Solomon
+had been lucky enough to marry my mother, I am sure he would never
+have plagued himself with the nine hundred and ninety-nine. But then,
+neither would he have written Proverbs.
+
+Neither the Butterfly Man nor I have ever referred to that morning's
+incident; the witness of it we cherish; otherwise it pleases us to
+ignore it as if it had never happened. It had, of course, its results,
+for with a desperate intensity of purpose he plunged back into study
+and research; and as the work was broadening, and called for all his
+skill and patience, the pendulum swung him far forward again.
+
+I had been so fascinated, watching that transformation, even mere
+wonderful than any butterfly's, going on before my eyes; I was so
+enmeshed in the web of endless duties spun for me by my big poor
+parish that I did not have time to miss Mary Virginia as poignantly as
+I must otherwise have done, although my heart longed for her.
+
+My mother never ceased to mourn her absence; something went away from
+us with Mary Virginia, which could only come back to us with her. But
+it so happened that the ensuing summers failed to bring her back. The
+little girl spent her vacations with girl friends of whose standing
+her mother approved, or with relatives she thought it wise the child
+should cultivate. For the time being, Mary Virginia had vanished out
+of our lives.
+
+Laurence, however, spent all his vacations at home; and of Laurence we
+were immensely proud. Most of his holidays were spent, not with
+younger companions, but oddly enough with John Flint. That old
+friendship, renewed after every parting, seemed to have grown stronger
+with the boy's growth; the passing years deepened it.
+
+"My boy's forever boasting of your Butterfly Man," said the judge,
+falling into step with me one morning on the street. "He tells me
+Flint's been made a member of several learned societies; and that he's
+gotten out a book of sorts, telling all there is to tell about some
+crawling plague or other. And it seems this isn't all the wonderful
+Mr. Flint is capable of: Laurence insists that biologists will have to
+look Flintward pretty soon, on account of observations on what he
+calls insect allies--whatever _they_ are."
+
+"Well, you see, his work on insect allies is really unique and
+thorough, and it opens a door to even more valuable research," said I,
+as modestly as I could. "Flint is one of its great pioneers, and he's
+blazing the way. Some day when the real naturalist comes into his own,
+he will rank far, far above tricky senators and mutable governors!"
+
+The judge smiled. "Spoken like a true bughunter," said he. "As a
+matter of fact, this fellow is a remarkable man. Does he intend to
+remain here for good?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "I think he intends to remain here--for good." I could
+not keep the pride out of my voice and eyes. Let me again admit my
+grave fault: I am a vain and proud old man, God forgive me!
+
+"Your goose turned out a butterfly," said the judge. "One may well be
+pardoned a little natural vanity when one has engineered a feat like
+that! Common tramp, too, wasn't he?"
+
+"No, he wasn't. He was a most uncommon one."
+
+"I could envy the man his spontaneity and originality," admitted the
+judge, rubbing _his_ nose. "Well, father, I'm perfectly satisfied, so
+far, to have my only son tramp with him."
+
+"So is my mother," said I.
+
+At that the judge lifted his hat with a fine old-fashioned courtesy
+good to see in this age when a youth walks beside a maid and blows
+cigarette smoke in her face upon the public streets.
+
+"When such a lady approves of any man," said he, gallantly, "it
+confers upon him letters patent of nobility."
+
+"We shall have to consider John Flint knighted, then," said my mother
+merrily, when I repeated the conversation. "Let's see," she continued
+gaily. "We'll put on his shield three butterflies, or, rampant on a
+field, azure; in the lower corner a net, argent. Motto, '_In Hoc Signo
+Vinces_.' There'll be no sign of the cyanide jar. I'll have nothing
+sinister shadowing; the Butterfly Man's escutcheon!"
+
+She knew nothing about the trust St. Stanislaus kept; she had never
+met Slippy McGee.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+NESTS
+
+
+Laurence at last hung out that shingle which was to tingle Appleboro
+into step with the Time-spirit. It was a very happy and important day
+for the judge and his immediate friends, though Appleboro at large
+looked on with but apathetic interest. One more little legal light
+flickering "in our midst" didn't make much difference; we literally
+have lawyers to burn. So we aren't too enthusiastic over our
+fledglings; we wait for them to show us--which is good for them, and
+sometimes better for us.
+
+This fledgling, however, was of the stuff which endures. Laurence was
+one of those dynamic and dangerous people who not only think
+independently themselves, but have the power to make other people
+think. No one who came in contact with him escaped this; it seemed to
+crackle electrically in the air around him; he was a sort of human
+thought-conductor, and he shocked many a smug and self-satisfied
+citizen into horrific life before he had done with him.
+
+If this young man had not been one of the irreproachable Maynes
+Appleboro might have set him down as a pestilent and radical theorist
+and visionary. But fortunately for us and himself he was a Mayne; and
+the Maynes have been from the dawn of things Carolinian "a good
+family."
+
+I don't think I have ever seen two people so mutually delight in each
+other's powers as did John Flint and Laurence Mayne. The Butterfly Man
+was immensely proud of Laurence's handsome person and his grace of
+speech and manner; he had even a more profound respect for his more
+solid attainments, for his own struggle upward had deepened his regard
+for higher education. As for Laurence, he thought his friend
+marvelous; what he had overcome and become made him in the younger
+man's eyes an incarnate proof of the power of will and of patience.
+The originality and breadth of his views fired the boy's imagination
+and broadened his personality. The two complemented each other.
+
+The Butterfly Man's workroom had a fascination for others than
+Laurence. It was a sort of Open Question Club. Here Westmoreland came
+to air his views with a free tongue and to ride his hobbies with a
+gallant zest; here the major, tugging at his goatee, his glasses far
+down on his nose, narrated in spicy chapters the Secret Social History
+of Appleboro. Here the judge--for he, too, had fallen into the habit
+of strolling over of an evening--sunk in the old Morris chair, his
+cigar gone cold in his fingers, reviewed great cases. And sometimes
+Eustis stopped by, spoke in his modest fashion of his experiments, and
+left us all the better for his quiet strength. And Flint, with his
+eyes alive and watchful behind his glasses, listened with that air
+which made one like to tell him things. Laurence declared that he got
+his post-graduate course in John Flint's workroom, and that the
+Butterfly Man wasn't the least of his teachers.
+
+I should dearly like to say that the Awakening of Appleboro began in
+that workroom; and in a way it did. But it really had its inception in
+a bird's nest John Flint had discovered and watched with great
+interest and pleasure. The tiny mother had learned to accept his
+approach, without fear; he said she knew him personally. She allowed
+him to approach close enough to touch her; she even took food out of
+his fingers. He had worked toward that friendliness with great skill
+and patience, and his success gave him infinite pleasure. He had a
+great tenderness for the little brown lady, and he looked forward to
+her babies with an almost grandfatherly eagerness. The nest was over
+in a corner of our garden, in a thick evergreen bush big enough to be
+called a young tree.
+
+Now on a sunny morning Laurence and I and the Butterfly Man walked in
+our garden. Laurence had gotten his first brief, and we two older
+fellows were somewhat like two old birds fluttering over an
+adventurous fledgling. I think we saw the boy sitting on the Supreme
+Court bench, that morning!
+
+As we neared the evergreen tree the Butterfly Man raised his hand to
+caution us to be silent. He wanted us to see his wee friend's
+reception of him, and so he went on a bit ahead, to let her know she
+needn't be afraid--we, too, were merely big friends come a-calling.
+And just then we heard shrill cries of distress, and above it the
+louder, raucous scream of the bluejay.
+
+The bluejay was entirely occupied with his own business of breaking
+into another bird's nest and eating the eggs. He scolded violently
+between mouthfuls; he had finished three eggs and begun on the fourth
+and last when we came upon the scene. He had no fear of us; he had
+seen us before, and he knew very well indeed that the red-bearded
+creature with the cane was a particular and peculiar friend of
+feathered folks. So he cocked a knowing head, with a cruel beak full
+of egg, and flirted a splendid tail at his friend; then swallowed the
+last morsel and rowed viciously with Laurence and me; for the bluejay
+is wholly addicted to billingsgate. He paid no attention to the
+distraught mother-bird, fluttering and crying on a limb nearby.
+
+"Gosh, pal, I've sure had some meal!" said the bluejay to John Flint.
+"Chase that skirt, over there, please--she makes too much noise to
+suit me!"
+
+But for once John Flint wasn't a friend to a bluejay--he uttered an
+exclamation of sorrow and dismay.
+
+"My nest!" he cried tragically. "My beautiful nest with the four eggs,
+that I've been watching day by day! And the little mother-thing that
+knew me, and let me touch her, and feed her, and wasn't afraid of me!
+Oh, you blue devil! You thief! You murderer!" And in a great gust of
+sorrow and anger he lifted his stick to hurl it at the criminal.
+Laurence caught the upraised arm.
+
+"But he doesn't know he's a thief and a murderer," said he, and looked
+at the handsome culprit with unwilling admiration. The jay, having
+finished the nest to his entire satisfaction, hopped down upon a limb
+and turned his attention to us. He screamed at Laurence, thrusting
+forward his impudent head; while the poor robbed mother, with
+lamentable cries, watched him from a safe distance. Full of his
+cannibal meal, Mister Bluejay callously ignored her. He was more
+interested in us. Down he came, nearer yet, with a flirt of fine
+wings, a spreading of barred tail, just above Flint's head, and
+talked jocularly to his friend in jayese.
+
+"You're a thief and a robber!" raged the Butterfly Man. "You're a damn
+little bird-killer, that's what you are! I ought to wring your neck
+for you, and I'd do it if it would do the rest of your tribe any good.
+But it wouldn't. It wouldn't bring back the lost eggs nor the spoiled
+nest, either. Besides, you don't know any better. You're what you are
+because you were hatched like that, and there wasn't Anything to tell
+you what's right and wrong for a decent bird to do. The best one can
+do for you is to get wise to your ways and watch out that you can't do
+more mischief."
+
+The bluejay, with his handsome crested head on one side, cocked his
+bright black eye knowingly, and passed derisive remarks. Any one who
+has listened attentively to a bluejay must be deeply grateful that the
+gift of articulate speech has been wisely withheld from him; he is a
+hooligan of a bird. He lifted his wings like half-playful fists. If he
+had fingers, be sure a thumb had been lifted profanely to his nose.
+
+The Butterfly Man watched him for a moment in silence; a furrow came
+to his forehead.
+
+"Damn little thief!" he muttered. "And you don't even have to care!
+No! It's not right. There ought to be some way to save the mothers and
+the nests from your sort--without having to kill you, either. But good
+Lord, how? That's what I want to know!"
+
+"Beat 'em to it and stand 'em off," said Laurence, staring at the
+ravaged nest, the unhappy mother, the gorged impenitent thief. "'Git
+thar fustest with the mostest men.' Have the nests so protected the
+thief can't get in without getting caught. Build Better Bird Houses,
+say, and enforce a Law of the Garden--Boom and Food for all, Pillage
+for None. You'd have to expect some spoiled nests, of course, for you
+couldn't be on guard all the time, and you couldn't make all the birds
+live in your Better Bird Houses--they wouldn't know how. But you'd
+save some of them, at any rate."
+
+"Think so?" said John Flint. "Huh! And what'd you do with _him_?" And
+he jerked his head at the screaming jay.
+
+"Let him alone, so long as he behaved. Shoo him outside when he
+didn't--and see that he kept outside," said Laurence. "You see, the
+idea isn't so much to reform bluejays--it's to save the other birds
+from them."
+
+John Flint's face was troubled. "It's all a muddle, anyhow," said he.
+"You can't blame the bluejay, because he was born so, and it's
+bluejay nature to act like that when it gets the chance. But there's
+the other bird--it looks bad. It is bad. For a thief to come into a
+little nest like that, that she'd been brooding on, and twittering to,
+and feeling so good and so happy about--Man, I'd have given a month's
+work and pay to have saved that nest! It's not fair. God! Isn't there
+_some_ way to save the good ones from the bad ones?"
+
+There he stood, in the middle of the path, staring ruefully at the
+wrecked bit of twigs and moss and down that had been a wee home; and
+with more of sorrow than anger at the feathered crook who had done the
+damage. The thing was slight in itself, and more than common--just one
+of the unrecorded humble tragedies which daily engulf the Little
+Peoples. But I had seen a butterfly's wing save him alive; and so I
+did not doubt now that a little bird's nest could weigh down the
+balance which would put him definitely upon the side of good and of
+God.
+
+"I think there is a way," said Laurence, gravely, "and that is to beat
+them to it and stand them off. All the rest is talk and piffle--the
+only way to save is to save. There are no halfway measures; also, it's
+a lifetime job, full of kicks and cuffs and ingratitude and
+misunderstanding and failure and loneliness, and sometimes even worse
+things yet. But you do manage to sometimes save the nests and the
+fledglings, and you do sometimes escape the pain of hearing the
+mothers lamenting. And that's the only reward a decent mortal ought to
+hope for. I reckon it's about the best reward there is, this side of
+heaven."
+
+The Butterfly Man swallowed this a bit ungraciously.
+
+"You've got a devil of a way of twisting things into parables. I'm
+talking birds and thinking birds, and here you must go and make my
+birds people! I wasn't thinking about people--that is, I wasn't, until
+you have to go and put the notion into my head. It's not fair. The
+thing's bad enough already, without your lugging folks into it and
+making it worse!"
+
+Laurence looked at him steadily. "You've got to think of people, when
+you see things like that," said he, slowly; "otherwise you only
+half-see. I have to think of people--of kids, particularly--and their
+mothers." He turned as he spoke, and stared out over our garden, with
+its sunny spaces, and its shrubs and flowers, and trees, to where,
+over in the sky a pillar of smoke rose steadily, endlessly, and
+merged into a cloud overhanging the quiet little town.
+
+"The pillar of cloud by day," said he "that leads the children--" He
+stopped, and the whimsical smile faded from his face; his jaw set.
+
+The bluejay, having exhausted his vocabulary of jay-ribaldry,
+screeched one last outrageous bit of billingsgate into Flint's ears,
+shut up his tail like a fan, and darted off, a streak of blue and
+gray. The Butterfly Man's eyes followed him smilelessly; then they
+came back and dwelt for a moment upon the ruined nest and the
+fluttering mother-bird, still vexing the ear with her shrill
+lamentable futile protests. From her his eyes went, out over the trees
+and flowers to that pillar mounting lazily and inevitably into the
+sky. For a long moment he stared at that, too, fixedly. After an
+interval he clenched his hand upon his stick and struck the ground.
+
+"_Nothing's_ got any business to break up a nest! I'd rather sit up
+all night and watch than see what I've just seen and listen to that
+mother-thing calling to Something that's far-off and stone deaf and
+can't hear nor heed. Why, the little birds haven't got even the chance
+to get themselves born, much less grow up and sing! I--Say, you two go
+on a bit. I feel mighty bad about this. I'd been watching her. She
+knew me. She let me feed her. If only I'd thought about the jay, why,
+I might have saved her. But just when she needed me I wasn't there!"
+He turned abruptly, and strode off toward his own rooms. Kerry
+followed with a drooping head and tail. But Laurence looked after him
+hopefully.
+
+"Padre, the Butterfly Man's seen something this morning that will
+sink to the bottom of his soul and stay there: didn't you see his
+eyes? Now, which of those two have taught him the most--the happy
+thief and murderer, or the innocent unhappy victim? The bluejay's not
+a whit the worse for it, remember; in fact, he's all the better off,
+for his stomach is full and his mischief satisfied, and that's all
+that ever worries a bluejay. And there isn't any redress for the
+mother-bird. The thing's done, and can't be undone. But between them
+they've shown John Flint something that forces a man to take sides.
+Doesn't the bluejay deserve some little credit for that? And is there
+_ever_ any redress for the mother-bird, Padre?"
+
+"Why, the Church teaches--" I began.
+
+Laurence nodded. "Yes, Padre, I know all that. But it can't teach away
+what's always happening here and now. At least not to the Butterfly
+Man and me, ... nor yet the mother-birds, Padre. No. We want to be
+shown how to head off the bluejays."
+
+We walked along in silence, his hand upon my arm. His eyes were
+clouded with the vision that beckoned him. As for me, I was wondering
+just where, and how far, that bluejay was going to lead John Flint.
+
+It led him presently to my mother. All men learn their great lessons
+from women and in stress the race instinctively goes back to be taught
+by the mothers of it. There were long intimate talks between herself
+and the Butterfly Man, to which Laurence was also called. In her quiet
+way Madame knew by heart the whole mill district, good, bad and
+indifferent, for she was a woman among the women. She had supported
+wives parting from dying husbands; she had hushed the cries of
+frightened children, while I gave the last blessings to mothers whose
+feet were already on the confines of another world; she had taken dead
+children from frenzied women's arms. Just as the Butterfly Man had
+shown the country folks to Laurence, so now Madame showed them both
+the mill folks, the poor folks, the foreigners in a small town
+disdainful of them; and she did it with the added keenness of her
+woman's eyes and the diviner kindness of her woman's heart.
+
+The little lady had enormous influence in the parish. And as
+Laurence's plans and hopes and ambitions unfolded before her, she
+threw this potent influence, with all it implied, in the scale of the
+young lawyer's favor. They began their work at the bottom, as all
+great movements should begin. What struck me with astonishment was
+that so many quiet women seemed to be ready and waiting, as for a
+hoped for message, a bugle-call in the dawn, for just that which
+Laurence had to tell them.
+
+"A fellow with pull behind him," said John Flint, "is what you might
+call a pretty fair probability. But a fellow with the women behind him
+is a steam-roller. There's nothing to do but clear the road and keep
+from under." And when he went on his rounds among the farm houses now
+it wasn't only the men and children he talked to. There was a message
+for the overworked women, the wives and daughters who had all the
+pains and none of the profits. Westmoreland, who had been a rather
+lonesome evangelist for many years, of a sudden found himself backed
+and supported by younger and stronger forces.
+
+The work was done very noiselessly; there was no outward
+disturbances, yet; but the women were in deadly earnest; there were
+far, far too many small graves in our cemetery, and they were being
+taught to ask why the children who filled them hadn't had a fair
+chance? The men might smile at many things, but fathers couldn't smile
+when mothers of lost children wanted to know why Appleboro hadn't
+better milk and sanitation. And there, under their eyes bulked the
+huge red mills, and every day from the bosom of this Moloch went up
+the smoke of sacrifice.
+
+Behind all this gathering of forces stood an almost unguessed figure.
+Not the lovely white-haired lady of the Parish House; not big
+Westmoreland; not handsome Laurence, nor outspoken Miss Sally Ruth
+with a suffrage button on her black basque; but a limping man in gray
+tweeds with a soft felt hat pulled down over his eyes and a butterfly
+net in his hand. That net was symbolic. With trained eye and sure hand
+the naturalist caught and classified us, put each one in his proper
+place.
+
+Keener, shrewder far than any of us, no one, save I alone, guessed the
+part it pleased him to play. Laurence was hailed as the Joshua who was
+to lead all Appleboro into the promised land of better paving, better
+lighting, better schools, better living conditions, better city
+government--a better Appleboro. Behind Laurence stood the Butterfly
+Man.
+
+He seldom interfered with Laurence's plans; but every now and then he
+laid a finger unerringly upon some weak point which, unnoticed and
+uncorrected, would have made those plans barren of result. He amended
+and suggested. I have seen him breathe upon the dry bones of a
+project and make it live. It satisfied that odd sardonic twist in him
+to stand thus obscurely in the background and pull the strings. I
+think, too, that there must have been in his mind, since that morning
+he had watched the bluejay destroy his nest, some obscure sense of
+restitution. Once, in the dark, he had worked for evil. Still keeping
+himself hidden, it pleased him now to work for good. So there he sat
+in his workroom, and cast filaments here and there, and spun a web
+which gradually netted all Appleboro.
+
+There was, for instance, the _Clarion_. We had had but that one
+newspaper in our town from time immemorial. I suppose it might have
+been a fairly good county paper once,--but for some years it had
+spluttered so feebly that one wondered how it survived at all. In
+spite of this, nobody in our county could get himself decently born or
+married, or buried, without a due and proper notice in the _Clarion_.
+To the country folks an obituary notice in its columns was as much a
+matter of form as a clergyman at one's obsequies. It simply wasn't
+respectable to be buried without proper comment in the _Clarion_.
+Wherefore the paper always held open half a column for obituary
+notices and poetry.
+
+These dismal productions had first brought the _Clarion_ to Mr.
+Flint's notice. He used to snigger at sight of the paper. He said it
+made him sure the dead walked. He cut out all those lugubrious and
+home-made verses and pasted them in a big black scrapbook. He had a
+fashion of strolling down to the paper's office and snipping out all
+such notices and poems from its country exchanges. A more ghoulish and
+fearsome collection than he acquired I never elsewhere beheld. It was
+a taste which astonished me. Sometimes he would gleefully read aloud
+one which particularly delighted him:
+
+    "A Christian wife and offspring seven
+     Mourn for John Peters who has gone to heaven.
+     But as for him we are sure he can weep no more,
+     He is happy with the lovely angels on that bright shore."{~DAGGER~}
+
+{~DAGGER~} Heaven.
+
+My mother was horrified. She said, severely, that she couldn't to save
+her life see why any mortal man should snigger because a Christian
+wife and children seven mourned for John Peters who had gone to
+heaven. The Butterfly Man looked up, meekly. And of a sudden my mother
+stopped short, regarded him with open mouth and eyes, and retired
+hastily. He resumed his pasting.
+
+"I've got a hankering for what you might call grave poetry," said he,
+pensively. "Yes, sir; an obituary like that is like an all-day sucker
+to me. Say, don't you reckon they make the people they're written
+about feel glad they're dead and done for good with folks that could
+spring something like that on a poor stiff? Wait a minute, parson--you
+can't afford to miss Broken-hearted Admirer:
+
+    "Miss Matty, I watched thee laid in the gloomy grave's embrace,
+    Where nobody can evermore press your hand or your sweet face.
+    When you were alive I often thought of thee with fond pride,
+    And meant to call around some night & ask you to be my loving Bride.
+    "But alas, there is a sorrowful sadness in my bosom to-day,
+    For I never did it & now can never really know what you would say.
+
+    Miss Matty, the time may come when I can remember thee as a brother,
+    And lay my fond true heart at the loving feet of another.
+    For though just at present I can do nothing but sigh & groan,
+    The Holy Bible tells us it is not good for a man to dwell alone.
+    But even though, alas, I'm married, my poor heart will still be true,
+    And oft in the lone night I will wake & weep to think she never
+        can be you."
+           --"A BROKEN-HEARTED ADMIRER."
+
+"Ain't that sad and sweet, though?" said the Butterfly Man admiringly.
+"Don't you hope those loving feet will be extra loving when
+Broken-hearted makes 'em a present of his fond heart, parson? Wouldn't
+it be something fierce if they stepped on it! Gee, I cried in my hat
+when I first read that!" Now wasn't it a curious coincidence that,
+even as Madame, I regarded John Flint with open mouth and eyes, and
+retired hastily?
+
+For some time the _Clarion_ had been getting worse and worse; heaven
+knows how it managed to appear on time, and we expected each issue to
+be its last. It wasn't news to Appleboro that it was on its last legs.
+I was not particularly interested in its threatened demise, not having
+John Flint's madness for its obituaries; but he watched it narrowly.
+
+"Did you know," he remarked to Laurence, "that the poor old _Clarion_
+is ready to bust? It will have to write a death-notice for itself in a
+week or two, the editor told me this morning."
+
+"So?" Laurence seemed as indifferent as I.
+
+The Butterfly Man shot him a freighted glance. "Folks in this county
+will sort of miss the _Clarion_," he reflected. "After all, it's the
+one county paper. Seems to me," he mused, "that if _I_ were going in
+head, neck and crop for the sweet little job of reformer-general, I'd
+first off get me a grappling-hook on my town's one newspaper.
+Particularly when grappling-hooks were going cheap."
+
+"Hasn't Inglesby got a mortgage on it?"
+
+"If he had would he let it die in its bed so nice and ladylike? Not
+much! It'd kick out the footboard and come alive. Inglesby must be
+getting rusty in the joints not to reach out for the _Clarion_
+himself, right now. Maybe he figures it's not worth the price. Maybe
+he knows this town so well he's dead sure nobody that buys a newspaper
+here would have the nerve to print anything or think anything he
+didn't approve of. Yes, I guess that's it."
+
+"Which is your gentle way," cut in Laurence, "of telling me I'd better
+hustle out and gather in the _Clarion_ before Inglesby beats me to it,
+isn't it?"
+
+"Me?" The Butterfly Man looked pained. "I'm not telling you to buy
+anything. _I'm_ only thinking of the obituaries. Ask the parson.
+I'm--I'm addicted to 'em, like some people are to booze. But if you'd
+promise to keep open the old corner for them, why, I might come out
+and _beg_ you to buy the _Clarion_, now it's going so cheap. Yep--all
+on account of the obituaries!" And he murmured:
+
+    "_Our dear little Johnny was left alive
+       To reach the interesting age of five
+     When_--"
+
+"That's just about as much as I can stand of that, my son!" said I,
+hastily.
+
+"The parson's got an awful tender heart," the Butterfly Man explained
+and Laurence was graceless enough to grin.
+
+"Well, as I was about to say: I happened to think Inglesby would be
+brute enough to choke out my pet column, or make folks pay for it, and
+things like that haven't got any business to have price tags on 'em.
+So I got to thinking of you. You're young and tender; also a college
+man; and you're itching to wash and iron Appleboro--" he took off his
+glasses and wiped them delicately and deliberately.
+
+"Did you also get to thinking," said Laurence, crisply, "that I'm just
+about making my salt at present, and still you're suggesting that I
+tie a dead old newspaper about my neck and jump overboard? One might
+fancy you hankered to add my obituary to your collection!" he finished
+with a touch of tartness.
+
+The Butterfly Man smiled ever so gently.
+
+"The _Clarion_ is the county paper," he explained patiently. "It was
+here first. It's been here a long time, and people are used to it. It
+knows by heart how they think and feel and how they want to be told
+they think and feel. And you ought to know Carolina people when it
+comes right down to prying them loose from something they're used to!"
+He paused, to let that sink in.
+
+"There's no reason why the _Clarion_ should keep on being a dead one,
+is there? There's plenty room for a live daily right here and now, if
+it was run right. Why, this town's blue-molded for a live paper! Look
+here: You go buy the _Clarion_. It won't cost you much. Believe me,
+you'll find it mighty handy--power of the press, all the usual guff,
+you know! I sha'n't have to worry about obituaries, but I bet you
+dollars to doughnuts some people will wake up some morning worrying a
+whole lot about editorials. Mayne--people like to think they think
+what they think themselves. They don't. They think what their home
+newspapers tell them to think. And this is your great big chance to
+get the town ear and shout into it good and loud."
+
+A week or so later Mayne & Son surprised Appleboro by purchasing the
+moribund _Clarion_. They didn't have to go into debt for it, either.
+They got it for an absurdly low sum, although folks said, with sniffs,
+that anything paid for that rag was too much.
+
+"Nevertheless," said the Butterfly Man to me, complacently, "that's
+the little jimmy that's going to grow up and crack some fat cribs.
+Watch it grow!"
+
+I watched; but, like most others, I was rather doubtful. It was true
+that the _Clarion_ immediately showed signs of reviving life. And that
+Jim Dabney, a college friend from upstate, whom Laurence had induced
+to accept the rather precarious position of editor and manager, wrote
+pleasantly as well as pungently, and so set us all to talking.
+
+I suppose it was because it really had something to say, and that
+something very pertinent to our local interests and affairs, that we
+learned and liked to quote the _Clarion_. It made a neat appearance in
+new black type, and this pleased us. It had, too, a newer, clearer,
+louder note, which made itself heard over the whole county. The county
+merchants and farmers began once more to advertise in its pages, as
+John Flint, who watched it jealously--feeling responsible for
+Laurence's purchase of it--was happy to point out.
+
+One thing, too, became more and more evident. The women were behind
+the _Clarion_ in a solid phalanx. They knew it meant for them a voice
+which spoke articulately and publicly, an insistent voice which must
+be answered. It noticed every Mothers' Meeting, Dorcas activity,
+Ladies' Aid, Altar Guild, temperance gathering; spoke respectfully of
+the suffragists and hopefully of the "public-spirited women" of the
+new Civic League. And never, never, never omitted nor misplaced nor
+misspelled a name! The boy from up-state saw to that. He was wily as
+the serpent and simple as the dove. Over the local page appeared
+daily:
+
+          "LET'S GET TOGETHER!"
+
+After awhile we took him at his word and tried to ... and things began
+to happen in Appleboro.
+
+"Here," said the Butterfly Man to me, "is where the bluejay begins to
+get his."
+
+For in most Appleboro houses insistent women were asking harassed and
+embarrassed men certain questions concerning certain things which
+ladies hadn't been supposed to know anything about, much less worry
+their heads over, since the state was a state. So determined were the
+women to have these questions fairly answered that they presently
+asked them in cold print, on the front page of the town paper. And
+Laurence told them. He had appalling lists and figures and names and
+dates. The "chiel among us takin' notes" printed them. Dabney's
+editorial comments were barbed.
+
+Now there are mills in the South which do obey the state laws and
+regulations as to hours, working conditions, wages, sanitation, safety
+appliances, child labor. But there are others which do not. Ours
+notoriously didn't.
+
+John Flint and my mother had had many a conference about deplorable
+cases which both knew, but were powerless to change. The best they had
+been able to do was to tabulate such cases, with names and facts and
+dates, but precious little had been accomplished for the welfare of
+the mill people, for those who might have helped had been too busy, or
+perhaps unwilling, to listen or to act.
+
+But, as Flint insisted, the new Civic League was ready and ripe to
+hear now what Madame had to tell. At one meeting, therefore, she took
+the floor and told them. When she had finished they named a committee
+to investigate mill conditions in Appleboro.
+
+That work was done with a painstaking thoroughness, and the
+committee's final report was very unpleasant reading. But the names
+signed to it were so unassailable, the facts so incontrovertible, that
+Dabney thought best to print it in full, and later to issue it in
+pamphlet form. It has become a classic for this sort of thing now, and
+it is always quoted when similar investigations are necessary
+elsewhere.
+
+It was the Butterfly Man who had taken that report and had rewritten
+and revised it, and clothed it with a terrible earnestness and force.
+Its plain words were alive. It seemed to me, when I read them that I
+heard ... a bluejay's ribald screech ... and the heart-rending and
+piercing cries of a little brown motherbird whose nest had been
+ravaged and destroyed.
+
+Appleboro gasped, and sat up, and rubbed its eyes. That such things
+could be occurring here, in this pleasant little place, in the shadow
+of their churches, within reach of their homes! No one dared to even
+question the truth of that report, however, and it went before the
+Grand Jury intact. The Grand Jury very promptly called Mr. Inglesby
+before it. They were polite to him, of course, but they did manage to
+ask him some very unpleasant and rather personal questions, and they
+did manage to impress upon him that certain things mentioned in the
+Civic League's report must not be allowed to reoccur. One juror--he
+was a planter--had even had the temerity to say out loud the ugly word
+"penetentiary."
+
+Inglesby was shocked. He hadn't known. He was a man of large interests
+and he had to leave a great deal to the discretion of superintendents
+and foremen. It might be, yes, he could understand how it might very
+well be--that his confidence had been abused. He would look into these
+things personally hereafter. Why, he was even now busily engaged
+compiling a "Book of Rules for Employees." He deplored the almost
+universal unrest among employees. It was a very bad sign. Very. Due
+almost entirely to agitators, too.
+
+He didn't come out of that investigation without some of its slime
+sticking to him, and this annoyed and irritated and enraged him more
+than we guessed, for we hadn't as yet learned the man's ambition.
+Also, the women kept following him up. They meant to make him comply
+with the strict letter of the law, if that were humanly possible.
+
+He was far too shrewd not to recognize this; for he presently called
+on my mother and offered her whatever aid he could reasonably give.
+Her work was invaluable; his foremen and superintendents had
+instructions to give her any information she asked for, to show her
+anything in the mills she wished to see, and to report to headquarters
+any suggestions as to the--er--younger employees, she might be kind
+enough to make. If that were not enough she might, he suggested, call
+on him personally. Really, one couldn't but admire the _savoir faire_
+of this large unctious being, so fluent, so plausible, until one
+happened to catch of a sudden that hard and ruthless gleam which, in
+spite of all his caution, would leap at times into his cold eyes.
+
+"Is he, or isn't he, a hypocrite pure and simple, or are such men
+self-deceived?" mused my mother, puckering her brows. "He will do
+nothing, I know, that he can well avoid. But--he gave me of his own
+accord his personal check for fifty dollars, for that poor consumptive
+Shivers woman."
+
+"She contracted her disease working in his mill and living in one of
+his houses on the wages he paid her," said I, "I might remind you to
+beware of the Greeks when they come bearing gifts."
+
+"Proverb for proverb," said she. "The hair of the dog is good for its
+bite."
+
+"Fifty dollars isn't much for a woman's life."
+
+"Fifty dollars buys considerable comfort in the shape of milk and ice
+and eggs. When it's gone--if poor Shivers isn't--I shall take the
+Baptist minister's wife and Miss Sally Ruth Dexter with me, and go and
+ask him for another check. He'll give it."
+
+"You'll make him bitterly repent ever having succumbed to the
+temptation of appearing charitable," said I.
+
+We were not left long in doubt that Inglesby had other methods of
+attack less pleasant than offering checks for charity. Its two largest
+advertisers simultaneously withdrew their advertisements from the
+_Clarion_.
+
+"Let's think this thing out," said John Flint to Laurence. "Cutting
+out ads is a bad habit. It costs good money. It should be nipped in
+the bud. You've got to go after advertisers like that and make 'em see
+the thing in the right light. Say, parson, what's that thing you were
+saying the other day--the thing I asked you to read over, remember?"
+
+_"When the scorner is punished, the simple is made wise; and when the
+wise is instructed, he receiveth knowledge,"_ I quoted Solomon.
+
+"That's it, exactly. You see," he explained, "there's always the right
+way out, if you've got sense enough to find it. Only you mustn't get
+rattled and try to make your getaway out the wrong door or the front
+window--that spoils things. The parson's given you the right tip. That
+old chap Solomon had a great bean on him, didn't he?"
+
+A few days later there appeared, in the space which for years had been
+occupied by the bigger of the two advertisements, the following
+pleasant notice:
+
+       People Who Disapprove of
+         Civic Cleanliness,
+           A Better Town,
+          Better Kiddies,
+                and
+     A Square Deal for Everybody,
+             _Also_
+            Disapprove of
+     Advertising in the Clarion.
+
+And the space once occupied by the other advertiser was headed:
+
+          OBITUARIES
+
+That ghastly poetry in which the soul of the Butterfly Man reveled
+appeared in that column thereafter. It was a conspicuous space, and
+the horn of rural mourning in printer's ink was exalted among us. It
+was not very hard to guess whose hand had directed those
+counter-blows.
+
+When we met those two advertisers on the street afterward we greeted
+them with ironical smiles intended to enrage. They had at Inglesby's
+instigation been guilty of a tactical blunder of which the men behind
+the _Clarion_ had taken fiendish and unexpected advantage. It had
+simply never occurred to either that a small town editor might dare to
+"come back." The impossible had actually happened.
+
+I think it was this slackening of his power which alarmed Inglesby
+into action.
+
+"Mr. Inglesby," said the Butterfly Man to me one night, casually, "has
+got him a new private secretary. He came this afternoon. His name's
+Hunter--J. Howard Hunter. He dresses as if he wrote checks for a
+living and he looks exactly like he dresses. Honest, he's the original
+he-god they use to advertise suspenders and collars and neverrips and
+that sort of thing in the classy magazines. I bet you Inglesby's got
+to fork over a man-sized bucket of dough per, to keep _him_. There'll
+be a flutter of calico in this burg from now on, for that fellow
+certainly knows how to wear his face. He's gilt-edged from start to
+finish!"
+
+Laurence, lounging on the steps, looked up with a smile.
+
+"His arrival," said he, "has been duly chronicled in to-day's press.
+Cease speaking in parables, Bughunter, and tell us what's on your
+mind."
+
+The Butterfly Man hesitated for a moment. Then:
+
+"Why, it's this way," said he, slowly. "I--hear things. A bit here and
+there, you see, as folks tell me. I put what I've heard together, and
+think it over. Of course I didn't need anybody to tell me Inglesby was
+sore because the _Clarion_ got away from him. He expected it to die.
+It didn't. He thought it wouldn't pay expenses--well, the sheriff
+isn't in charge yet. And he knows the paper is growing. He's too wise
+a guy to let on he's been stung for fair, once in his life, but he
+don't propose to let himself in for any more body blows than he can
+help. So he looks about a bit and he gets him an agent--older than
+you, Mayne, but young enough, too--and even better looking. That agent
+will be everywhere pretty soon. The town will fall for him. Say, how
+many of you folks know what Inglesby really wants, anyhow?"
+
+"Everything in sight," said Laurence promptly.
+
+"And something around the corner, too. He wants to come out in the
+open and be IT. He intends to be a big noise in Washington. Gentlemen,
+Senator Inglesby! Well, why not?"
+
+"He hasn't said so, has he?" Laurence was skeptical.
+
+"He doesn't have to say so. He means to be it, and that's very much
+more to the point. However, it happens that he did peep, once or
+twice, and it buzzed about a bit--and that's how I happened to catch
+it in my net. This Johnny he's just got to help him is the first move.
+Private Secretary now. Campaign manager and press agent, later.
+Inglesby's getting ready to march on to Washington. You watch him do
+it!"
+
+"Never!" said Laurence, and set his mouth.
+
+"No?" The Butterfly Man lifted his eyebrows. "Well, what are you going
+to do about it? Fight him with your pretty little _Clarion_? It's not
+big enough, though you could make it a handy sort of brick to paste
+him in the eye with, if you aim straight and pitch hard enough. Go up
+against him yourself? You're not strong enough, either, young man,
+whatever you may be later on. You can prod him into firing some poor
+kids from his mills--but you can't make him feed 'em after he's fired
+'em, can you? And you can't keep him from becoming Senator Inglesby
+either, unless," he paused impressively, "you can match him even with
+a man his money and pull can't beat. Now think."
+
+The young man bit his lip and frowned. The Butterfly Man watched him
+quizzically through his glasses.
+
+"Don't take it so hard," he grinned. "And don't let the whole
+salvation of South Carolina hang too heavy on your shoulders. Leave
+_something_ to God Almighty--He managed to pull the cocky little brute
+through worse and tougher situations than Inglesby! Also, He ran the
+rest of the world for a few years before you and I got here to help
+Him with it."
+
+"You're a cocky brute yourself," said Laurence, critically.
+
+"I can afford to be, because I can open my hand this minute and show
+you the button. Why, the very man you need is right in your reach! If
+you could get _him_ to put up his name against Inglesby's, the Big Un
+wouldn't be in it."
+
+Laurence stared. The Butterfly Man stared back at him.
+
+"Look here," said he slowly. "You remember my nest, and what that
+bluejay did for it? And what you said? Well, I've looked about a bit,
+and I've seen the bluejay at work.... Oh, hell, I can't talk about
+this thing, but I've watched the putty-faced, hollow-chested,
+empty-bellied kids--that don't even have guts enough left to laugh....
+Somebody ought to sock it to that brute, on account of those kids. He
+ought to be headed off ... make him feel he's to be shoo'd outside!
+And I think I know the one man that can shoo him." He paused again,
+with his head sunk forward. This was so new a John Flint to me that I
+had no words. I was too lost in sheer wonder.
+
+"The man I mean hates politics. I've been told he has said openly it's
+not a gentleman's game any more. You've got to make him see it can be
+made one. You've got to make him see it as a duty. Well, once make him
+see _that_, and he'll smash Inglesby."
+
+"You can't mean--for heaven's sake--"
+
+"I do mean. James Eustis."
+
+Laurence got up, and walked about, whistling.
+
+"Good Lord!" said he, "and I never even thought of him in that light.
+Why ... he'd sweep everything clean before him!"
+
+I am a priest. I am not even an Irish priest. Therefore politics do
+not interest me so keenly as they might another. But even to my slow
+mind the suitability of Eustis was apparent. Of an honored name, just,
+sure, kind, sagacious, a builder, a teacher, a pioneer, the plainer
+people all over the state leaned upon his judgment. A sane shrewd man
+of large affairs, other able men of affairs respected and admired him.
+The state, knowing what he stood for, what he had accomplished for her
+farmers, what he meant to her agricultural interests, admired and
+trusted him. If Eustis wanted any gift within the power of the people
+to give, he had but to signify that desire. And yet, it had taken my
+Butterfly Man to show us this!
+
+"Bughunter," said Laurence, respectfully. "If you ever take the notion
+to make me president, will you stand behind and show me how to run the
+United States on greased wheels?"
+
+"I?" John Flint was genuinely astounded. "The boy's talking in his
+sleep: turn over--you 're lying on your back!"
+
+"You won't?"
+
+"I will not!" said the Butterfly Man severely. "I have got something
+much more important on my hands than running states, I'll have you
+know. Lord, man, I'm getting ready some sheets that will tell pretty
+nearly all there is to tell about Catocala Moths!"
+
+I remembered that sunset hour, and the pretty child of James Eustis
+putting in this man's hand a gray moth. I think he was remembering,
+too, for his eyes of a sudden melted, as if he saw again her face that
+was so lovely and so young. Glancing at me, he smiled fleetingly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE BLUEJAY
+
+
+When Mary Virginia was graduated, my mother sent her, to commemorate
+that very important and pleasant occasion, one of her few remaining
+treasures--a carved ivory fan which Le Brun had painted out of his
+heart of hearts for one of King Louis' loveliest ladies. It still
+exhaled, like a whiff of lost roses, something of her vanished grace.
+
+  "I have a fancy," wrote my mother to Mary Virginia, "that having
+  been pressed against women's bosoms and held in women's hands,
+  having been, as it were, symbols which expressed the hidden
+  emotions of the heart, these exquisite toys have thus been
+  enabled to gain a soul, a soul composed of sentience and of
+  memory. I think that as they lie all the long, long years in
+  those carved and scented boxes which are like little tombs, they
+  remember the lights and the flowers and the perfumes, the glimmer
+  and gleam of jewels and silks, the frothy fall of laces, the
+  laughter and whispers and glances, the murmured word, the stifled
+  sigh: and above all, the touch of soft lips that used to brush
+  them lightly; and the poor things wonder a bit wistfully what has
+  become of all that gay and lovely life, all that perished bravery
+  and beauty that once they knew. So I am quite sure this
+  apparently soulless bit of carved ivory sighs inaudibly to feel
+  again the touch of a warm and young hand, to be held before gay
+  and smiling eyes, to have a flower-fresh face bent over it once
+  more.
+
+  "Accept it, then, my child, with your old friend's love. Use it in
+  your happy hours, dream over it a little, sigh lightly; and then
+  smile to remember that this is your Hour, that you are young, and
+  life and love are yours. It is in such youthful and happy smiles
+  that we whose day declines may relive for a brief and bright space
+  our golden noon. Shall I tell you a secret, before your time to
+  know it? _Youth alone is eternal and immortal!_ How do I know?
+  _'Et Ego in Arcadia vixi!'_"
+
+Mary Virginia showed me that letter, long afterward, and I have
+inserted it here, although I suppose it really isn't at all relevant.
+But I shall let it stand, because it is so like my mother!
+
+John Flint made for the schoolgirl a most wonderful tray with handles
+and border of hammered and twisted copper. The tray itself was covered
+with a layer of silvery thistle-down; and on this, hovering above
+flowers, some of his loveliest butterflies spread their wings. So
+beautifully did their frail bodies fit into this airy bed, so
+carefully was the work done, that you might fancy only the glass which
+covered them kept them from escaping.
+
+  "You will remember telling me, when you were going away to grow
+  up," wrote John Flint, "to watch out for any big fine fellows
+  that came by of a morning, because they'd be messengers from you
+  to the Parish House people. Big and little they've come, and
+  I've played like they were all of them your carriers. So you see
+  we had word of you every single day of all these years you've
+  been gone! Now I'm sending one or two of them back to you. Please
+  play like my tray's a million times bigger and finer and that
+  it's all loaded down with good messages and hopes; and believe
+  that still it wouldn't be half big enough to hold all the good
+  wishes the Parish House folks (you were right: I belong, and so
+  does Kerry) send you to-day by the hand of your old friend,
+
+             THE BUTTERFLY MAN.
+
+Mary Virginia showed me that letter, too, because she was so delighted
+with it, and so proud of it. I like its English very well, but I like
+its Irishness even better.
+
+But, although she had at last finished and done with school, Mary
+Virginia didn't come home to us as we had hoped she would. Her mother
+had other plans, which failed to include little Appleboro. Why should
+a girl with such connections and opportunities be buried in a little
+town when great cities waited for just such with open and welcoming
+arms? The best we got then was a photograph of our girl in her
+graduation frock--slim wistful Mary Virginia, with much of her dear
+angular youthfulness still clinging to her.
+
+It was Mrs. Eustis herself who kept us posted, after awhile, of the
+girl's later triumphant progress; the sensation she created, the bored
+world bowing to her feet because she brought it, along with name and
+wealth, so fresh a spirit, so pure a beauty. There was a certain
+autocratic old Aunt of her mother's, a sort of awful high priestess in
+the inmost shrine of the sacred elect; this Begum, delighted with her
+young kinswoman, ordered the rest of her world to be likewise
+delighted, and the world agreeing with her verdict, Mary Virginia
+fared very well. She was fêted, photographed, and paragraphed. Her
+portrait, painted by a rather obscure young man, made the painter
+famous. In the hands of the Begum the pretty girl blossomed into a
+great beauty. The photograph that presently came to us quite took our
+breath away, she was so regal.
+
+"She will never, never again be at home in little Appleboro," said my
+mother, regretfully. "That dear, simple, passionate, eager child we
+used to know has gone forever--life has taken her. This beautiful
+creature's place is not here--_she_ belongs to a world where the women
+wear titles and tiaras, and the men wear kings' orders. No, we could
+never hope to hold her any more."
+
+"But we could love her, could we not? Perhaps even more than those
+fine ladies with tiaras and titles and those fine gentlemen with
+orders, whom your fancy conjures up for her," said I crisply, for her
+words stung. They found an echo in my own heart.
+
+"Love her? Oh, but of course! But--love counts for very, very little
+in the world which claims Mary Virginia now, Armand. Ambition stifles
+him." I was silent. I knew.
+
+As for John Flint, he looked at that photograph and turned red.
+
+"Good Lord! To think I had nerve to send _her_ a few butterflies last
+year ... told _her_ to play like they meant more! I somehow couldn't
+get the notion in my head that she'd grown up.... I never could think
+of her except as a sort of kid-angel, because I couldn't seem to bear
+the idea of her ever being anything else but what she was. Well ...
+she's not, any more. And I've had the nerve to give a few insects to
+the Queen of Sheba!"
+
+"Bosh!" said Laurence, sturdily. "She ought to be glad and proud to
+get that tray, and I'll bet you Mary Virginia's delighted with it.
+She's her father's daughter as well as her mother's, please. As for
+Appleboro not being good enough for her, that's piffle, too, p'tite
+Madame, and I'm surprised at you! Her own town is good enough for any
+girl. If it isn't, let her just pitch in and help make it good enough,
+if she's worth her salt. Not that Mary Virginia isn't scrumptious,
+though. Lordy, who'd think this was the same kid that used to bump my
+head?"
+
+"She turns heads now, instead of bumping them," said my mother.
+
+"Oh, she's not the only head-turner Appleboro can boast of!" said the
+young man grandly. "We've always been long on good-lookers in
+Carolina, whatever else we may lack. They're like berries in their
+season."
+
+"But the berry season is short and soon over, my son: and there are
+seasons when there are no berries at all--except preserved ones,"
+suggested my mother, with that swift, curious cattiness which so often
+astounds me in even the dearest of women.
+
+"Dare you to tell that to the Civic League!" chortled Laurence. "I'll
+grant you that Mary Virginia's the biggest berry in the patch, at the
+height of a full season. But look at her getup! Don't doodads and
+fallals, and hen-feathers in the hair, and things twisted and tied,
+and a slithering train, and a clothesline length of pearls and such,
+count for something? How about Claire Dexter, for instance? She mayn't
+have a Figure like her Aunt Sally Ruth, but suppose you dolled Claire
+up like this? A flirt she was born and a flirt she will die, but isn't
+she a perfect peach? That reminds me--that ungrateful minx gave two
+dances rightfully mine to Mr. Howard Hunter last night. I didn't raise
+any ructions, because, to tell you the truth, I didn't much blame her.
+That fellow really knows how to dance, and the way he can convey to a
+girl the impression that he's only alive on her account makes me gnash
+my teeth with green-and-blue envy. No wonder they all dote on him! No
+home complete without this handsome ornament!" he added.
+
+My mother's lips came firmly together.
+
+"It is a great mistake to figure Mephistopheles as a rather blasé
+brunette," she remarked crisply. "I am absolutely certain that if you
+could catch the devil without his mask you'd find him a perfect
+blonde."
+
+"Nietzsche's blonde beast, then?" suggested Laurence, amused at her
+manner.
+
+"That same blonde beast is perhaps the most magnificent of animals," I
+put in. For alone of my household I admired immensely Mr. Inglesby's
+secretary. He was the only man I have ever known to whom the term
+'beautiful' might be justly applied, and at the word's proper worth.
+Such a man as this, a two-handed sword gripped in his steel fists, a
+wolfskin across his broad shoulders and eagle-wings at either side the
+helmet that crowns his yellow hair, looks at one out of many a red,
+red page of the past with just such blue, dangerous, and cloudless
+eyes. Rolling and reeking decks have known him, and falling walls,
+and shrieks, and flames mounting skyward, and viking sagas, and
+drinking-songs roared from brass throats, and terrible hymns to Odin
+Allfather in the midwatches of Northern nights.
+
+He had called upon me shortly after his arrival, his ostensible reason
+being my work among his mill-people. I think he liked me, later. At
+any rate, I had seen much of him, and I was indebted to him for more
+than one shrewd and practical suggestion. If at times I was chilled by
+what seemed to me a ruthless and cold-blooded manner of viewing the
+whole great social question I was nevertheless forced to admire the
+almost mathematical perfection to which he had reduced his system.
+
+"But you wish to deal with human beings as with figures in a sum," I
+objected once.
+
+"Figures," he smiled equably, "are only stubborn--on paper. When
+they're alive they're fluid and any clever social chemist can reduce
+them to first principles. It's really very simple, as all great things
+are: _When in doubt, reach the stomach!_ There you are! That's the
+universal eye-opener."
+
+"My dear friend," he added, laughing, "don't look so horrified. _I_
+didn't make things as they are. Personally, I might even prefer to
+say, like Mr. Fox in the old story, _'It was not so. It is not so. And
+God forbid it should be so!'_ But I can't, truthfully, and
+therefore--I don't. I accept what I can't help. Self-preservation, we
+all admit, is the first law of nature. Now I consider myself, and the
+class I represent, as beings much more valuable to the world than,
+let's say, your factory-hands, your mill-workers, your hewers of wood
+and drawers of water. Thus, should the occasion arise, I should most
+unhesitatingly use whatever weapons law, religion, civilization
+itself, put into my hands, without compunction and possibly what some
+cavilers might call without mercy; having at stake a very vital
+issue--the preservation of my kind, the protection of my class against
+Demos."
+
+He spoke without heat, calmly, looking at me smilingly with his fine
+intelligent eyes: there was even much of truth in his frank statement
+of his case. Always has Dives spoken thus, law-protected, dining
+within; while without the doors of the sick civilization he has
+brought about, Lazarus lies, licked by the dogs of chance. No, this
+man was advocating no new theory; once, perhaps, I might have argued
+even thus myself, and done so with a clean conscience. This man was
+merely an opportunist. I knew he would never "reach their stomachs"
+unless he thought he had to. Indeed, since his coming, things had
+changed greatly at the mills, and for the better.
+
+"The day of the great god Gouge," he had said to Inglesby, "is
+passing. It's bad business to overwork and underpay your hands into a
+state of chronic insurrection. That means losing time and scamping
+work. The square deal is not socialism nor charity nor a matter of any
+one man's private pleasure or conscience--it's cold hard common sense
+and sound scientific business. You get better results, and that's what
+you're after."
+
+Perhaps it was because Appleboro offered, at that time, very little to
+amuse and interest that keen mind of his, that the Butterfly Man
+amused and interested Hunter so much. Or perhaps, proud as he was,
+even he could not wholly escape that curious likableness which drew
+men to John Flint.
+
+He was delighted with our collection. He could appreciate its scope
+and value, something to which all Appleboro else paid but passing
+heed. John Flint declared that most folks came to see our butterflies
+just as they would have run to see the dog-faced boy or the bearded
+lady--merely for something to see. But this man's appreciation and
+praise were both sincere and encouraging. And as he never allowed
+anything or anybody unusual or interesting to pass him by without at
+least sampling its savor, he formed the habit of strolling over to the
+Parish House to talk with the limping man who had come there a dying
+tramp, was now a scientist, with the manner and appearance of a
+gentleman, and who spoke at will the language of two worlds. That this
+once black sheep had strayed of his own will and pleasure from some
+notable fold Hunter didn't for a moment doubt. Like all Appleboro, he
+wouldn't have been at all surprised to see this prodigal son welcomed
+into the bosom of some Fifth Avenue father, and have the fatted calf
+dressed for him by a chef whose salary might have hired three college
+professors. Hunter had known one or two such black sheep in his time;
+he fancied himself none too shrewd in thus penetrating Flint's rather
+obvious secret.
+
+My mother watched the secretary's comings and goings at the Parish
+House speculatively. Not even the fact that he quoted her adored La
+Rochefoucauld, in flawless French, softened _her_ estimate.
+
+"If he even had the semblance of a heart!" said she, regretfully. "But
+he is all head, that one."
+
+Now, I am a simple man, and this cultivated and handsome man of the
+world delighted me. To me immured in a mill town he brought the modern
+world's best. He was a window, for me, which let in light.
+
+"That great blonde!" said Madame, wonderingly. "He is so designedly
+fascinating I wonder you fail to see the wheels go 'round. However,
+let me admit that I thank God devoutly I am no longer young and
+susceptible. Consider the terrible power such a man might exert over
+an ardent and unsophisticated heart!"
+
+It was Hunter who had brought me a slim book, making known to me a
+poet I had otherwise missed.
+
+"You are sure to like Bridges," he told me, "for the sake of one
+verse. Have you ever thought _why_ I like you, Father De Rancé?
+Because you amuse me. I see in you one of life's subtlest ironies: A
+Greek beauty-worshiper posing as a Catholic priest--in Appleboro!" He
+laughed. And then, with real feeling, he read in his resonant voice:
+
+    "I love all beautiful things:
+    I seek and adore them.
+    God has no better praise,
+    And man in his hasty days,
+    Is honored for them."
+
+When at times the secretary brought his guests to see what he
+pleasingly enough termed Appleboro's one claim to distinction, the
+Butterfly Man did the honors to the manner born. Drawer after drawer
+and box after box would he open, patiently answering and explaining.
+And indeed, I think the contents were worth coming far to see. Some of
+them had come to us from the ends of the earth; from China and Japan
+and India and Africa and Australia, from the Antilles and Mexico and
+South America and the isles of the Pacific; from many and many a
+lonely missionary station had they been sent us. Even as our
+collection grew, the library covering it grew with it. But this was
+merely the most showy and pleasing part of the work. That which had
+the greatest scientific worth and interest, that upon which John
+Flint's value and reputation were steadily mounting, was in less
+lovely and more destructive forms of insect life. Beside this last, a
+labor calling for the most unremitting, painstaking, persevering
+research, observation, and intelligence, the painted beauties of his
+butterflies were but as precious play. For in this last he was
+wringing from Nature's reluctant fingers some of her dearest and most
+deeply hidden secrets. He was like Jacob, wrestling all night long
+with an unknown angel, saying sturdily:
+
+"I will not let thee go except thou tell me thy name!" Like Jacob, he
+paid the price of going halt for his knowledge.
+
+I like to think that Hunter understood the enormous value of the
+naturalist's work. But I fancy the silent and absorbed student himself
+was to his mind the most interesting specimen, the most valuable
+study. It amused him to try to draw his reticent host into familiar
+and intimate conversation. Flint was even as his name.
+
+Oddly enough, Hunter shared the Butterfly Man's liking for that
+unspeakable Book of Obituaries, and I have seen him take a batch of
+them from his pocket as a free-will offering. I have seen him, who had
+all French, Russian and English literature at his fingers' ends, sit
+chuckling and absorbed for an hour over that fearful collection of
+lugubrious verse and worse grammar; pausing every now and then to cast
+a speculative and curious glance at his impassive host, who, paying
+absolutely no attention to him, bent his whole mind, instead, upon
+some tiny form in a balsam slide mount under his microscope.
+
+"Why don't you admire Mr. Hunter?" I was curious to know.
+
+"But I do admire him." Flint was sincere.
+
+"Then if you admire him, why don't you like him?"
+
+He reflected.
+
+"I don't like the expression of his teeth," he admitted. "They're too
+pointed. He looks like he'd bite. I don't think he'd care much who he
+bit, either; it would all depend on who got in his way."
+
+Seeing me look at him wonderingly, he paused in his work, stretched
+his legs under the table, and grinned up at me.
+
+"I'm not saying he oughtn't to put his best foot foremost," he agreed.
+"We'd all do that, if we only knew how. And I'm not saying he ought to
+tell on himself, or that anybody's got any business getting under his
+guard. I don't hanker to know anybody's faults, or to find out what
+they've got up their sleeves besides their elbows, unless I have to.
+Why, I'd as soon ask a fellow to take off his patent leathers to prove
+he hadn't got bunions, or to unbutton his collar, so I'd be sure it
+wasn't fastened onto a wart on the back of his neck. Personally I
+don't want to air anybody's bumps and bunions. It's none of my
+business. I believe in collars and shoes, myself. _But_ if I see
+signs, I can believe all by my lonesome they've got 'em, can't I?"
+
+"Exactly. Your deductions, my dear Sherlock, are really marvelous. A
+gentleman wears good shoes and clean collars--wherefore, you don't
+like the expression of his teeth!" said I, ironically.
+
+"Slap me on the wrist some more, if it makes you feel good," he
+offered brazenly. "For he may--and I sure don't." His grin faded, the
+old pucker came to his forehead.
+
+"Parson, maybe the truth is I'm not crazy over him because people like
+him get people like me to seeing too plainly that things aren't fairly
+dealt out. Why, think a minute. That man's got about all a man can
+have, hasn't he? In himself, I mean. And if there's anything more he
+fancies, he can reach out and get it, can't he? Well, then, some folks
+might get to thinking that folks like him--get more than they deserve.
+And some ... don't get any more than they deserve," he finished, with
+grim ambiguity.
+
+"Do you like him yourself?" he demanded, as I made no reply.
+
+"I admire him immensely."
+
+"Does Madame like him?" he came back.
+
+"Madame is a woman," I said, cautiously. "Also, you are to remember
+that if Madame doesn't, she is only one against many. All the rest of
+them seem to adore him."
+
+"Oh, the rest of them!" grunted John Flint, and scowled. "Huh! If it
+wasn't for Madame and a few more like her, I'd say women and hens are
+the two plum-foolest things God has found time to make yet. If you
+don't believe it, watch them stand around and cackle over the first
+big dunghill rooster that walks on his wings before them! There are
+times when I could wring their necks. Dern a fool, anyhow!" He
+wriggled in his chair with impatience.
+
+"Liver," said I, outraged. "You'd better see Dr. Westmoreland about
+it. When a man talks like you're talking now, it's just one of two
+things--a liver out of whack, or plain ugly jealousy."
+
+"I do sound like I've got a grouch, don't I?" he admitted, without
+shame. "Well ... maybe it's jealousy, and maybe it's not. The truth
+is, he rubs me rather raw at times, I don't know just how or why.
+Maybe it's because he's so sure of himself. He can afford to be sure.
+There isn't any reason why he shouldn't be. And it hurts my feelings."
+He looked up at me, shrewdly. "He looks all right, and he sounds all
+right, and maybe he might be all right--but, parson, I've got the
+notion that somehow he's not!"
+
+"Good heavens! Why, look at what the man has done for the mill folks!
+Whatever his motives are, the result is right there, isn't it? His
+works praise him in the gates!"
+
+"Oh, sure! But he hasn't played his full hand out yet, friend. You just
+give him time. His sort don't play to lose; they can't afford to lose;
+losing is the other fellow's job. Parson, see here: there are two sides
+to all things; one of 'em's right and the other's wrong, and a man's got
+to choose between 'em. He can't help it. He's got to be on one side or
+the other, if he's a _man_. A neutral is a squashy It that both sides do
+right to kick out of the way. Now you can't do the right side any good
+if you're standing flatfooted on the wrong side, can you? No; you take
+sides according to what's in you. You know good and well one side is
+full of near-poors, and half-ways, and real-poors--the downandouters,
+the guys that never had a show, ditchers and sewercleaners and
+sweatshoppers and mill hands and shuckers, and overdriven mutts and
+starved women and kids. It's sure one hell of a road, but there's got to
+be a light somewhere about it or the best of the whole world wouldn't
+take to it for choice, would they? Yet they do! Like Jesus Christ, say.
+They turn down the other side cold, though it's nicer traveling. Why,
+you can hog that other road in an auto, you can run down the beggars and
+the kids, you can even shoot up the cops that want to make you keep the
+speed laws. You haven't _got_ any speed laws there. It's your road. You
+own it, see? It's what it is because you've made it so, just to please
+yourself, and to hell with the hicks that have to leg it! But--you lose
+out on that side even when you think you've won. You get exactly what
+you go after, but you don't get any more, and so you lose out. Why?
+Because you're an egg-sucker and a nest-robber and a shrike, and a
+four-flusher and a piker, that's why!
+
+"The first road don't give you anything you can put your hands on;
+except that you think and hope maybe there's that light at the end of
+it. But, parson, I guess if _you're_ man enough to foot it without a
+pay-envelope coming in on Saturdays, why, it's plenty good enough for
+_me_--and Kerry. But while I'm legging it I'll keep a weather eye
+peeled for crooks. That big blonde he-god is one of 'em. You soak that
+in your thinking-tank: he's one of 'em!"
+
+"But look at what he's doing!" said I, aghast. "What he's doing is
+_good_. Even Laurence couldn't ask for more than good results, could
+he?"
+
+The Butterfly Man smiled.
+
+"Don't get stung, parson. Why, you take me, myself. Suppose, parson,
+you'd been on the other side, like Hunter is, when I came along? Suppose
+you'd never stopped a minute, since you were born, to think of anything
+or anybody but yourself and your own interests--where would I be to-day,
+parson? Suppose you had the utility-and-nothing-but-business bug biting
+you, like that skate's got? Why, what do you suppose you'd have done
+with little old Slippy? I was considerable good business to look at
+then, wasn't I? No. You've got to have something in you that will let
+you take gambler's chances; you've got to be willing to bet the limit
+and risk your whole kitty on the one little chance that a roan will come
+out right, if you give him a fair show, just because he _is_ a man; or
+you can't ever hope to help just when that help's needed. Right there is
+the difference between the Laurence-and-you sort and the Hunter-men,"
+said John Flint, obstinately.
+
+As for Laurence, he and Hunter met continually, both being in constant
+social demand. If Laurence did not naturally gravitate toward that
+bright particular set of rather rapid young people which presently
+formed itself about the brilliant figure of Hunter, the two did not
+dislike each other, though Hunter, from an older man's sureness of
+himself, was the more cordial of the two. I fancy each watched the
+other more guardedly than either would like to admit. They represented
+opposite interests; one might at any moment become inimical to the
+other. Of this, however, no faintest trace was allowed to appear upon
+the calm unruffled surface of things.
+
+If Inglesby had chosen this man by design, it had been a wise choice.
+For he was undoubtedly very popular, and quite deservedly so. He had
+unassailable connections, as we all knew. He brought a broader
+culture, which was not without its effect. And in spite of the fact
+that he represented Inglesby, there was not a door in Appleboro that
+was not open to him. Inglesby himself seemed a less sinister figure in
+the light of this younger and dazzling personality. Thus the secretary
+gradually removed the thorns and briars of doubts and prejudices,
+sowing in their stead the seeds of Inglesby's ambition and
+rehabilitation, in the open light of day. He knew his work was well
+done; he was sure of ultimate success; he had always been successful,
+and there had been, heretofore, no one strong enough to actively
+oppose him. He could therefore afford to make haste slowly. Even had
+he been aware of the Butterfly Man's acrid estimate of him, it must
+have amused him. When all was said and done, what did a Butterfly
+Man--even such a one as ours--amount to, in the world of Big Business
+_He_ hadn't stocks nor bonds nor power nor pull. He hadn't anything
+but a personality that arrested you, a setter dog, a slowly-growing
+name, a room full of insects in an old priest's garden. Of course
+Hunter would have smiled! And there wasn't a soul to tell him anything
+of Slippy McGee!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A LITTLE GIRL GROWN UP
+
+
+Summer stole out a-tiptoe, and October had come among the live-oaks
+and the pines, and touched the wide marshes and made them brown, and
+laid her hand upon the barrens and the cypress swamps and set them
+aflame with scarlet and gold. October is not sere and sorrowful with
+us, but a ruddy and deep-bosomed lass, a royal and free-hearted
+spender and giver of gifts. Asters of imperial purple, golden rod fit
+for kings' scepters, march along with her in ever thinning ranks; the
+great bindweed covers fences and clambers up dying cornstalks; and in
+many a covert and beside the open ditches the Gerardia swings her pink
+and airy bells. All down the brown roads white lady's-lace and yarrow
+and the stiff purple iron-weed have leaped into bloom; under its faded
+green coat the sugar-cane shows purple; and sumac and sassafras and
+gums are afire. The year's last burgeoning of butterflies riots, a
+tangle of rainbow coloring, dancing in the mellow sunshine. And day by
+day a fine still deepening haze descends veil-like over the landscape
+and wraps it in a vague melancholy which most sweetly invades the
+spirit. It is as if one waits for a poignant thing which must happen.
+
+Upon such a perfect afternoon, I, reading my worn old breviary under
+our great magnolia, heard of a sudden a voice of pure gold call me,
+very softly, by my name; and looking up met eyes of almost
+unbelievable blue, and the smile of a mouth splendidly young and red.
+
+I suppose the tall girl standing before me was fashionably and
+expensively clad; heaven knows _I_ don't know what she wore, but I do
+know that whatever it was it became her wonderfully; and although it
+seemed to me very simple, and just what such a girl ought to wear, my
+mother says you could tell half a mile away that those clothes smacked
+of super-tailoring at its costliest. Hat and gloves she held in her
+slim white ringless hand. One thus saw her waving hair, framing her
+warm pale face in living ebony.
+
+"Padre!" said she. "Oh, dear, dear, Padre!" and down she dropped
+lightly beside me, and cradled her knees in her arms, and looked up,
+with an arch and tender friendliness. That childish action, that
+upward glance, brought back the darling child I had so greatly loved.
+This was no Queen-of-Sheba, as John Flint had thought. This was not
+the regal young beauty whose photograph graced front pages. This was
+my own girl come back. And I knew I hadn't lost Mary Virginia.
+
+"I remembered this place, and I knew--I just knew in my heart--you'd
+be sitting here, with your breviary in your hand. I knew just how
+you'd be looking up, every now and then, smiling at things because
+they're lovely and you love them. So I stole around by the back
+gate--and there you were!" said she, her eyes searching me. "Padre,
+Padre, how more than good to see you again! And I'm sure that's the
+same cassock I left you wearing. You could wear it a couple of
+lifetimes without getting a single spot on it--you were always such a
+delightful old maid, Padre! Where and how is Madame? Who's in the
+Guest Rooms? How is John Flint since he's come to be a Notable? Has
+Miss Sally Ruth still got a Figure? How are the judge's cats, and the
+major's goatee? How is everything and everybody?"
+
+"Did you know you'd have to make room for me, Padre? Well, you will. I
+picked up and fairly ran away from everything and everybody, because
+the longing for home grew upon me intolerably. When I was in Europe,
+and I used to think that three thousand miles of water lay between me
+and Appleboro, I used to cry at nights. I hope John Flint's
+butterflies told him what I told them to tell him for me, when they
+came by! How beautiful the old place looks! Padre, you're _thin_. Why
+will you work so hard? Why doesn't somebody stop you? And--you're
+gray, but how perfectly beautiful gray hair is, and how thick and wavy
+yours is, too! Gray hair was invented and intended for folks with
+French blood and names. Nobody else can wear it half so gracefully.
+Now tell me first of all you're glad as glad can be to see me, Padre.
+Say you haven't forgotten me--and then you can tell me everything
+else!"
+
+She paused, fanned herself with her hat, and laughed, looking up at me
+with her blue, blue eyes that were so heavily fringed with black.
+
+I was so startled by her sudden appearance--as if she had walked out
+of my prayers, like an angel; and, above all, by that resemblance to
+the one long since dust and unremembered of all men's hearts save
+mine, that I could hardly bear to look upon her. That other one seemed
+to have stepped delicately out of her untimely grave; to sit once more
+beside me, and thus to look at me once more with unforgotten eyes.
+Thou knowest, my God, before whom all hearts are bare, that I could
+not have loved thee so singly nor served thee without fainting, all
+these years, if for one faithless moment I could have forgotten her!
+
+My mother came out of the house with a garden hat tied over her white
+hair, and big garden gloves on her hands. At sight of the girl she
+uttered a joyful shriek, flung scissors and trowel and basket aside,
+and rushed forward. With catlike quickness the girl leaped to her feet
+and the two met and fell into each other's arms. I wished when I saw
+the little woman's arms close so about the girl, and the look that
+flashed into her face, that heaven had granted her a daughter.
+
+"Mother complained that I should at least have the decency to wire you
+I was coming--she said I was behaving like a child. But I wanted to
+walk in unannounced. I was so sure, you see, that there'd be welcome
+and room for me at the Parish House."
+
+"The little room you used to like so much is waiting for you," said my
+mother, happily.
+
+"Next to yours, all in blue and white, with the Madonna of the Chair
+over the mantelpiece and the two china shepherdesses under her?"
+
+"Then you shall see the new baby in the bigger Guest Room, and the
+crippled Polish child in the small one," said my mother. "The baby's
+name is Smelka Zurawawski, but she's all the better for it--I never
+saw a nicer baby. And the little boy is so patient and so intelligent,
+and so pretty! Dr. Westmoreland thinks he can be cured, and we hope to
+be able to send him on to Johns Hopkins, after we've got him in good
+shape. Where is your luggage? How long may we keep you? But first of
+all you shall have tea and some of Clélie's cakes. Clélie has grown
+horribly vain of her cakes. She expects to make them in heaven some of
+these days, for the most exclusive of the cherubim and seraphim, and
+the lordliest of the principalities and powers."
+
+Mary Virginia smiled at the pleased old servant. "I've half a dozen
+gorgeous Madras head-handkerchiefs for you, Clélie, and a perfect duck
+of a black frock which you are positively to make up and wear now--you
+are _not_ to save it up to be buried in!"
+
+"No'm, Miss Mary Virginia. I won't get buried in it. I'll maybe get
+married in it," said Clélie calmly.
+
+"Married! Clélie!" said my mother, in consternation. "Do you mean to
+tell me you're planning to leave me, at this time of our lives?"
+
+Clélie was indignant. "You think I have no mo'sense than to leave you
+and M'sieu Armand, for some strange nigger? Not me!"
+
+"Who are you going to marry, Clélie?" Mary Virginia was delighted.
+"And hadn't you better let me give you another frock? Black is hardly
+appropriate for a bride."
+
+"I'm not exactly set in my mind who he's going to be yet, Miss Mary
+Virginia, but he's got to be somebody or other. There's been lots
+after me, since it got out I'm such a grand cook and save my wages.
+But I've got a sort of taste for Daddy January. He's old, but he's
+lively. He's a real ambitious old man like that. Besides, I'm sure of
+his family,--I always did like Judge Mayne and Mister Laurence, and I
+do like 'ristocratic connections, Miss Mary Virginia. That big nigger
+that drives one of the mill trucks had the impudence to tell me he'd
+give me a church wedding and pay for it himself, but I told him I was
+raised a Catholic; and what you think he said? He said, 'Oh, well,
+you've been christened in the face already. We can dip the rest of you
+easy enough, and then you'll be a real Christian, like me!' I'd just
+scalded my chickens and was picking them, and I was that mad I upped
+and let him have that dish pan full of hot water and wet feathers in
+his face. 'There,' says I, 'you're christened in the face now
+yourself,' I says. 'You can go and dip the rest of yourself,' says I,
+'but see you do it somewhere else besides my kitchen,' I says. I don't
+think he's crazy to marry me any more, and Daddy January's sort of
+soothing to my feelings, besides being close to hand. Yes'm, I guess
+you'd better give me the black dress, Miss Mary Virginia, if you don't
+mind: it'd come in awful handy if I had to go in mourning."
+
+"The black dress it shall be," said Mary Virginia, gaily. She turned
+to my mother. "And what do you think, p'tite Madame? I've a rare
+butterfly for John Flint, that an English duke gave me for him! The
+duke is a collector, too, and he'd gotten some specimens from John
+Flint. The minute he learned I was from Appleboro he asked me all
+about him. He said nobody else under the sky can 'do' insects so
+perfectly, and that nobody except the Lord and old Henri Fabre knew as
+much about certain of them as John Flint does. Folks thought the duke
+was taken up with _me_, of course, and I was no end conceited! I
+hadn't the ghost of an idea you and John Flint were such astonishingly
+learned folks, Padre! But of course if a duke thought so, I knew I'd
+better think so, too--and so I did and do! Think of a duke knowing
+about folks in little Appleboro! And he was such a nice old man, too.
+Not a bit dukey, after you knew him!"
+
+"We come in touch with collectors everywhere," I explained.
+
+"And so John Flint has written some sort of a book, describing the
+whole life history of something or other, and _you've_ done all the
+drawings! Isn't it lovely? Why, it sounds like something out of a
+pleasant book. Mayn't I see collector and collection in the morning?
+And oh, where's Kerry?"
+
+"Kerry," said my mother gravely, "is a most important personage. He's
+John Flint's bodyguard. He doesn't actually sleep in his master's bed,
+because he has one of his own right next it. Clélie was horrified at
+first. She said they'd be eating together next, but the Butterfly Man
+reminded her that Kerry likes dog-biscuit and he doesn't. I figure
+that in the order of his affections the Butterfly Man ranks Kerry
+first, Armand and myself next, and Laurence a close third."
+
+"Oh, Laurence," said Mary Virginia. "I'll be so glad to see Laurence
+again, if only to quarrel with him. Is he just as logical as ever? Has
+he given the sun a black eye with his sling-shot? My father's always
+praising Laurence in his letters."
+
+Now my mother adores Laurence. She patterns upon this model every
+young man she meets, and if they are not Laurence-sized she does not
+include them in her good graces. But she seldom lifts her voice in
+praise of her favorite. She is far, far too wise.
+
+"Laurence generally looks in upon us during the evening, if he is not
+too busy," she said, non-committally. "You see, people are beginning
+to find out what a really fine lawyer Laurence is, so cases are coming
+to him steadily."
+
+The trunks had arrived, and Mary Virginia changed into white, in which
+she glowed and sparkled like a fire opal. We three dined together, and
+as she became more and more animated, a pink flush stole into her
+rather pale cheeks and her eyes deepened and darkened. She was vividly
+alive. One could see why Mary Virginia was classed as a great beauty,
+although, strictly speaking, she was no such thing. But she had that
+compelling charm which one simply cannot express in words. It was
+there, and you felt it. She did not take your heart by storm,
+willynilly. You watched her, and presently you gave her your heart
+willingly, delighted that a creature so lovely and so unaffected and
+worth loving had crossed your path.
+
+She chatted with my mother about that world which the older woman had
+once graced, and my mother listened without a shade to darken her
+smooth forehead. But I do not think I ever so keenly appreciated the
+many sacrifices she had made for me, until that night.
+
+The autumn evening had grown chilly, and we had a fire in the
+clean-swept fireplace. The old brass dogs sparkled in the blaze, and
+the shadows flickered and danced on the walls, and across the faces of
+De Rancé portraits; the pleasant room was full of a ruddy, friendly
+glow. My mother sat in her low rocker, making something or other out
+of pink and white wools for the baby upstairs. Mary Virginia, at the
+old square piano, sang for us. She had a charming voice, carefully
+cultivated and sweet, and she played with great feeling.
+
+Kerry barked at the gate, as he always does when home is reached. My
+mother, dropping her work, ran to the window which gives upon the
+garden, and called. A moment later the Butterfly Man, with Laurence
+just back of him, and Kerry squeezing in between them, stood in the
+door. Mary Virginia, lips parted, eyes alight, hands outstretched,
+arose. The light of the whole room seemed not so much to gather upon
+her, as to radiate from her.
+
+The dog reached her first. Outdoor exercise, careful diet, perfect
+grooming, had kept Kerry in fine shape. His age told only in an added
+dignity, a slower movement.
+
+The girl went down on her knees, and hugged him. Pitache, aroused by
+Kerry's unwonted demonstrations, circled about them, rushing in every
+now and then to bestow an indiscriminate lick.
+
+"Why, it's Mary Virginia!" exclaimed Laurence, and helped her to her
+feet. The two regarded each other, mutually appraising. He towered
+above her, head and shoulders, and I thought with great satisfaction
+that, go where she would, she could nowhere find a likelier man than
+this same Laurence of ours. Like David in his youth, he was ruddy and
+of a beautiful countenance.
+
+"Why, Laurence! What a Jack-the-Giant-killer! Mercy, how big the boy's
+grown!"
+
+"Why, Mary Virginia! What a heart-smasher! Mercy, how pretty the
+girl's grown!" he came back, holding her hand and looking down at her
+with equally frank delight. "When I remember the pigtailed, leggy,
+tonguey minx that used to fetch me clumps over the head--and then
+regard this beatific vision--I'm afraid I'll wake up and you'll be
+gone!"
+
+"If you'll kindly give me back my hand, I might be induced to fetch
+you another clump or two, just to prove my reality," she suggested,
+with a delightful hint of the old truculence.
+
+"'T is she! This is indeed none other than our long-lost child!"
+burbled Laurence. "Lordy, I wish I could tell her how more than good
+it is to see her again--and to see her as she is!"
+
+Now all this time John Flint had stood in the doorway; and when my
+mother beckoned him forward, he came, I fancied, a bit unwillingly.
+His limp was for once painfully apparent, and whether from the
+day-long tramp, or from some slight indisposition, he was very pale;
+it showed under his deep tan.
+
+But I was proud of him. His manner had a pleasant shyness, which was a
+tribute to the young girl's beauty. It had as well a simple dignity.
+And one was impressed by the fine and powerful physique of him, so
+lean and springy, so boyishly slim about the hips and waist, so deeply
+stamped with clean living of days in the open, of nights under the
+stars. The features had thinned and sharpened, and his red beard
+became him; the hair thinning on the temples increased the breadth of
+the forehead, and behind his glasses the piercing blue eyes--something
+like an eagle's eyes--were clear, direct, and kind. He wore his
+clothes well, with a sort of careless carefulness, more like an
+Englishman than an American, who is always welldressed, but rather
+gives the impression of being conscious of it.
+
+Mary Virginia's lips parted, her eyes widened, for a fraction of a
+second. But if, remembering him as she had first seen and known him,
+she was astonished to find him as he was now, she gave no further
+outward sign. Instead, she gave him her hand as to an equal, and in a
+few gracious words let him know that she knew and was proud of what he
+had done and what he was yet to do. She repeated, too, with a pretty
+air of personal triumph, the old nobleman's praise. Indeed, it had
+been he who had told her of the book, which he had lately purchased
+and studied, she said. And oh, hadn't she just _swelled_ with pride!
+She had been that conceited!
+
+"You don't know how much obliged to you I should be, for if he hadn't
+accidentally learned I was from Appleboro, the town in which dwelt his
+most greatly prized correspondent--that's what he said, Mr.
+Flint!--why, I'm sure he wouldn't have noticed me any more than he
+noticed any other girl--which is, not at all; he being a toplofty and
+serious Personage addicted to people who do things and write things,
+particularly things about things that crawl and fly. And if he hadn't
+noticed me so pointedly--he actually came to see us!--why, I shouldn't
+have had such a perfectly gorgeous time. It was a great feather in my
+cap," she crowed. "Everybody envied me desperately!" She managed to
+make us understand that this was really a compliment to the Butterfly
+Man, not to herself.
+
+"If the little book served you for one minute it was well worth the
+four years it took me to gather the materials together and write it,"
+said he, pleasantly. And even the courtly Hunter couldn't have said it
+with a manlier grace.
+
+"Mary Virginia," said Laurence slyly, "when you've had your fill of
+bugs, make him show you the Book of Obituaries. He thereby stands
+revealed in his true colors. Why, he made me buy the old _Clarion_ and
+hire Jim Dabney to run it, so his supply of mortuary gems shouldn't be
+cut off untimely. To-day he culled this one:
+
+    Phileola dear, we cry because thou hast gone and left us,
+    But well we know it is a merciful heaven which has bereft us.
+    We tried five doctors and everything else we knew of you to save,
+    But alas, nothing did you any good, and to-day you are in your grave!
+
+He's got it in his pocket now. Dabney calls him Mister Bones," grinned
+Laurence.
+
+My mother looked profoundly uncomfortable. The Butterfly Man reddened
+guiltily under her reproachful glance, but Mary Virginia giggled
+irrepressibly.
+
+"I choose the Book of Obituaries first!" said she promptly, with
+dancing eyes. Flint drew a breath of relief.
+
+He sat by silently enough, while Laurence and Madame and Mary Virginia
+talked of everything under heaven. His whole manner was that of an
+amused, tolerant, sympathetic listener--a manner which spurs
+conversation to its happiest and best. Not for nothing had Major
+Cartwright called him the most discriminatin' listener in Carolina.
+
+"Oh, by the way, Flint! Hunter came by this morning to see Dabney. He
+is going to give a series of Plain Talks to Workingmen this winter,
+and of course he wants the _Clarion_ to cover them. What do you think,
+Padre?"
+
+"I think they will be eminently sensible talks and well worth
+listening to," said I promptly.
+
+The Butterfly Man smiled crookedly, and shot me a freighted glance.
+
+"Of course," said Laurence, easily. "Where's your father these days,
+Mary Virginia?"
+
+"He was at the plantation this morning, but he'll be here to-morrow,
+because I wired him to come. I've just got to have him for awhile,
+business or no business."
+
+"You did me a favor, then. I want to see him, too."
+
+"Anything very particular?"
+
+"Politics."
+
+"How silly! You know very well he never meddles with politics, thank
+goodness! He thinks he has something better to do."
+
+"That's just what I want to see him about," said Laurence.
+
+"You mentioned a--a Mr. Hunter." Mary Virginia spoke after a short
+pause. "This is the first time I've heard of any Mr. Hunter in
+Appleboro. Who is Mr. Hunter?"
+
+"Inglesby's right-bower, and the king-card of the pack," said Laurence
+promptly.
+
+"One of them which set up golden images in high places and make all
+Israel for to sin," said my mother. "_That's_ what Howard Hunter is!"
+
+"Oh, ... Howard Hunter!" said she. "What sort of a person may he be?
+And what is he doing here in Appleboro?"
+
+We told her according to our lights. Only the Butterfly Man sat silent
+and imperturbable.
+
+"And you'll meet him everywhere," finished my mother. "He's
+everything a man should be to the naked eye, and I sincerely hope,"
+she added piously, "that you won't like him at all."
+
+Mary Virginia leaned back in her chair, and glanced thoughtfully down
+at the slim ringless hands clasped in her white lap.
+
+"No," said she, as if to herself. "There couldn't by any chance be two
+such men in this one world. That is he, himself." And she lifted her
+head, and glanced at my mother, with a level and proud look. "I think
+I have met this Mr. Hunter," said she, smiling curiously. "And if that
+is true, your hope is realized, p'tite Madame. I shan't."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+JOHN FLINT, GENTLEMAN
+
+
+Almost up to Christmas the weather had been so mild and warm that
+folks lived out of doors. Girls clothed like the angels in white
+raiment fluttered about and blessed the old streets with their fresh
+and rosy faces. In the bright sunshine the flowers seemed to have lost
+all thought of winter; they forgot to fade; and roses rioted in every
+garden as if it were still summer. Nobody but the Butterfly Man
+grumbled at this springlike balminess, and he only because he was
+impatient to resume experiments carried over from year to year--the
+effect of varying degrees of natural cold upon the colors of
+butterflies whose chrysalids were exposed to it. He generally used the
+chrysalids of the Papilio Turnus, whose females are dimorphic, that
+is, having two distinct forms. He did not care to resort to artificial
+freezing, preferring to allow Nature herself to work for him. And the
+jade repaid him, as usual, by showing him what she could do but
+refusing to divulge the moving why she did it. She gave him for his
+pains sometimes a light, and sometimes a dark butterfly, with
+different degrees of blurred or enlarged and vivid markings, from
+chrysalids subjected to exactly the same amount of exposure.
+
+The Butterfly Man was burning to complete his notes, already assuming
+the proportions of that very exact and valuable book they were
+afterward to become. He chafed at the enforced delay, and wished
+himself at the North Pole.
+
+In the meantime, having nothing else on hand just then, it occurred to
+him to put some of these notes, covering the most interesting and
+curious of the experiments, into papers which the general run of folks
+might like to read. Dabney had been after him for some time to do some
+such work as this for the _Clarion_.
+
+I think Flint himself was genuinely surprised when he read over those
+enchanting papers, though he did not then and never has learned to
+appreciate their unique charm and value. Instead, however, of sending
+them to Dabney, he thought they might possibly interest a somewhat
+wider public, and with great diffidence, and some misgivings, he sent
+one or two of them to certain of the better known magazines. They did
+not come back. He received checks instead, and a request for more.
+
+Now the book and the several monographs he had already gotten out had
+been, although very interesting, strictly scientific; they could
+appeal only to students and scholars. But these papers were entirely
+different. Scientific enough, very clear and lucid and most quaintly
+flavored with what Laurence called Flintishness, they were so well
+received, and the response of the reading public to this fresh and new
+presentment of an ever-fascinating subject was so immediate and so
+hearty, that the Butterfly Man found himself unexpectedly confronting
+a demand he was hard put to it to supply.
+
+He was very much more modest about this achievement than we were. My
+mother's pride was delicious to witness. You see, it also invested
+_me_ with a very farsighted wisdom! Here was it proven to all that
+Father De Rancé had been right in holding fast to the man who had come
+to him in such sorry plight.
+
+I suppose it was this which moved Madame to take the step she had long
+been contemplating. Knowing her Butterfly Man, she began with infinite
+wile.
+
+"Armand," said she, one bright morning in early November, "_I_ am
+going to entertain, too--everybody else has done so, and now it's my
+turn. The weather is so ideal, and my garden so gorgeous with all
+those chrysanthemums and salvias and geraniums and roses, that it
+would be sinful not to take advantage of such conditions.
+
+"I have saved enough out of my house-money to meet the expenses--and I
+am _not_ going to be charitable and do my Christian duty with that
+money! I'm going to entertain. I really owe that much attention to
+Mary Virginia." She laid her hand on my arm. "I must see John Flint;
+go over to his rooms, and bring him back with you."
+
+I thought she merely needed his help and counsel, for she is always
+consulting him; she considers that whatever barque is steered by John
+Flint must needs come home to harbor. He obeyed her summons with
+alacrity, for it delights him to assist Madame. He did not know what
+fate overshadowed him!
+
+My mother sat in her low rocker, a lace apron lending piquancy to her
+appearance. She looked unusually pretty--there wasn't a girl in
+Appleboro who didn't envy Madame De Rancé's complexion.
+
+"Well," said the Butterfly Man cheerfully, unconsciously falling under
+the spell of this feminine charm, "the Padre tells me there's a party
+in the wind. Good! Now what am I to do? How am I to help you out?"
+
+My mother leaned forward and compelled him to meet direct her eyes
+that were friendly and clear and candid as a child's.
+
+"Mr. Flint," said she artlessly, ignoring his questions, "Mr. Flint,
+you've been with Armand and me quite a long time now, have you not?"
+
+"A couple of lifetimes," said he, wonderingly.
+
+"A couple of lifetimes," she mused, still holding his eyes, "is a
+fairly long time. Long enough, at least, to know and to be known,
+shouldn't you think?"
+
+He awaited enlightenment. He never asks unnecessary questions.
+
+"I am going," said my mother, with apparent irrelevance, "to entertain
+in honor of Mary Virginia Eustis. I shall probably have all Appleboro
+here. I sent for you to explain that you and Armand are to be present,
+too."
+
+The Butterfly Man almost fell out of his chair.
+
+"Me?" he gasped.
+
+"You," with deadly softness. "You."
+
+Horror and anguish encompassed him. Perspiration appeared on his
+forehead, and he gripped the arms of his chair as one bracing himself
+for torture. He looked at the little lady with the terror of one to
+whom the dentist has just said: "That jaw tooth must come out at once.
+Open your mouth wider, please, so I can get a grip!"
+
+My mother regarded this painful emotion heartlessly enough. She said
+coolly:
+
+"You don't need to look as if I were sentencing you to be hanged
+before sundown. I am merely inviting you to be present at a very
+pleasant affair." But the Butterfly Man, with his mouth open, wagged
+his head feebly.
+
+"And this," said my mother, turning the screw again, "is but the
+beginning. After this, I shall manage it so that all invitations to
+the Parish House include Mr. John Flint. There is no reason under
+heaven why you should occupy what one might call an ambiguous
+position. I am determined, too, that you shall no longer rush away to
+the woods like a scared savage, the minute more than one or two ladies
+appear. No, nor have Armand hurrying away as quickly as he can,
+either, to bury or to marry somebody. All feminine Appleboro shall be
+here at once, and you two shall be here at the same time!
+
+"John Flint, regard me: if the finest butterfly that ever crawled a
+caterpillar on this earth has the impertinence to fly by my garden the
+afternoon I'm entertaining for Mary Virginia, it can fly, but you
+shan't.
+
+"Armand: nobody respects Holy Orders more than I do: but there isn't
+anybody alive going to get born or baptized or married or buried, or
+anything else, in this parish, on that one afternoon. If they are
+selfish enough to do it anyhow, why, they can do it without your
+assistance. You are going to stay home with me: both of you."
+
+"My _dear_ mother--"
+
+"Good Lord! Madame--"
+
+"I am not to be dearmothered nor goodlorded! Heaven knows I ask little
+enough of either of you. _I_ am at _your_ beck and call, every day in
+the year. It does seem to me that when I wish to be civilized, and
+return for once some of the attentions I have received from my
+friends, I might at least depend upon you two for one little
+afternoon!" Could anything be more artfully unanswerable?
+
+"Oh, but Madame--" began Flint, horrified by such an insinuation as
+his unwillingness to do anything at any time for this adored lady.
+
+"Particularly," continued my mother, inexorably, "when I have your
+best interest at heart, too, John Flint! Monsieur the Butterfly Man,
+you will please to remember that you are a member of my household. You
+are almost like a son to me. You are the apple of that foolish
+Armand's eye--do not look so astounded, it is true! Also, you will
+have a great name some of these days. So far, so good. But--you are
+making the grievous error of shunning society, particularly the
+society of women. This is wrong; it makes for queerness, it evolves
+the 'crank,' it spoils many an otherwise very nice man."
+
+Flint sagged in his chair, and clasped and unclasped his hands, which
+trembled visibly. Madame regarded him without pity, with even a touch
+of scorn.
+
+"Yes, it is indeed high time to reclaim you!" she decided, with the
+fearsome zeal of the female reformer of a man. "You silly man, you!
+Have you no proper pride? Have you absolutely no idea of your own
+worth? Well, then, if you haven't, _I_ have. You _shall_ take your
+place and play your part!"
+
+"But," said Flint, and a gleam of hope irradiated his stricken face,
+"but I don't think I've got the clothes to wear to parties. And I
+really can't afford to spend any more money right now, either. I spent
+a lot on that old 1797 Abbot & Smith's 'Natural History of the Rarer
+Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia.' It cost like the dickens, although
+I really got it for about half what it's worth. I had to take it when
+I got the chance, and I'd be willing to wear gunny-sacking for a year
+to pay for those plates! I need them: I want them. But I don't need a
+party. I don't want a party! Madame, don't, don't make me go to any
+party!"
+
+"Nonsense!" said my mother. "Clothes, indeed! I shouldn't worry about
+clothes, if I were you, John Flint. You came into this world knowing
+exactly what to wear and how to wear it. Why, you have an air! That is
+a very great mercy, let me tell you, and one not always vouchsafed to
+the deserving, either."
+
+"I have a cage full of grubs--most awfully particular grubs, and
+they've got to be watched like a sick kid with the--with the whatever
+it is sick kids have, anyhow. Why, if I were to leave those grubs one
+whole afternoon--"
+
+"You just let me see a single solitary grub have the temerity to hatch
+himself out that one afternoon, that's all! They have all the rest of
+their nasty little lives to hatch out!"
+
+"Besides, there's a boy lives about five miles from here, and he's
+likely to bring me word any minute about something I simply have to
+have--"
+
+"I want to see that boy!" She pointed her small forefinger at him,
+with the effect of a pistol leveled at his head.
+
+"You are coming to my affair!" said she, sternly. "If you have no
+regard whatsoever for Mary Virginia and me, you shall have some for
+yourself; if you have none for yourself, then you shall have some for
+_us!_"
+
+This took the last puff of wind from the Butterfly Man's sails.
+
+"All right!" he gulped, and committed himself irremediably. "I--I'll
+be right here. You say so, and of course I've got to!"
+
+"Of course you will," said my mother, smiling at him charmingly. "I
+knew I had only to present the matter in its proper light, and you'd
+see it at once. You are so sensible, John Flint. It's such a comfort,
+when the gentlemen of one's household are so amenable to reason, and
+so ready to stand by one!"
+
+Having said her say, and gotten her way--as she was perfectly sure she
+would--Madame left the gentlemen of her household to their own
+reflections and devices.
+
+"Parson!" The Butterfly Man seemed to come out of a trance. "Remember
+the day you made me let a caterpillar crawl up my hand?"
+
+"Yes, my son."
+
+"Parson, there's a horrible big teaparty crawling up my pants' leg
+this minute!"
+
+"Just keep still," I couldn't help laughing at him, "and it will come
+down after awhile without biting you. Remember, you got used to the
+others in no time."
+
+"Some of 'em stung like the very devil," he reminded me, darkly.
+
+"Oh, but those were the hairy fellows. This is a stingless, hairless,
+afternoon party! It won't hurt you at all!"
+
+"It's walking up my pants' leg, just the same. And I'm scared of it:
+I'm horrible scared of it! My God! _Me!_ At a jane-junket! ... all the
+thin ones diked out with doodads where the bones come through ...
+stoking like sailors on shore leave ... all the fat ones grouchy about
+their shapes and thinking it's their souls. ..." And he broke out, in
+a fluttering falsetto:
+
+"'Oh, Mr. Flint, do please let us see your lovely butterflies! Aren't
+they just too perfectly sweet for anything! I wonder why they don't
+trim hats with butterflies? Do you know _all_ their names, you awfully
+clever man? Do _they_ know their names, too, Mr. Flint? Butterflies
+must be so very interesting! And so decorative, particularly on china
+and house linen! How you have the heart to kill them, I can't imagine.
+Just think of taking the poor mother-butterflies away from the dear
+little baby-ones!' ...--and me having to stand there and behave like a
+perfect gentleman!" He looked at me, scowling:
+
+"Now, you look here: I can stand 'em single-file, but if I'm made to
+face 'em in squads, why, you blame nobody but yourself if I foam at
+the mouth and chase myself in a circle and snap at legs, you hear me?"
+
+"I hear you," said I, coldly. "You didn't get your orders from _me_.
+_I_ think your proper place is in the woods. You go tell Madame what
+you've just told me--or should you like me to warn her that you're
+subject to rabies?"
+
+"For the love of Mike, parson! Have a heart! Haven't I got troubles
+enough?" he asked bitterly.
+
+"You are behaving more like an unspanked brat than a grown man."
+
+"I wasn't weaned on teaparties," said he, sulkily, "and it oughtn't
+to be expected I can swallow 'em at sight without making a face and--"
+
+"Whining," I finished for him. And I added, with a reminiscent air:
+"Rule 1: Can the Squeal!"
+
+He glared at me, but as I met the glare unruffled, his lip presently
+twisted into a grin of desperate humor. His shoulders squared.
+
+"All right," said he, resignedly. And after an interval of dejected
+silence, he remarked: "I've sort of got a glimmer of how Madame feels
+about this. She generally knows what's what, Madame does, and I
+haven't seen her make a mistake yet. If she thinks it's my turn to
+come on in and take a hand in any game she's playing, why, I guess I'd
+better play up to her lead the best I know how ... and trust God to
+slip me over an ace or two when I need them. You tell her she can
+depend on me not to fall down on her ... and Miss Eustis."
+
+"No need to tell Madame what she already knows."
+
+"Huh!" With his chin in his hand and his head bent, he stared out over
+the autumn garden with eyes which did not see its flaming flowers. Of
+a sudden his shoulders twitched; he laughed aloud.
+
+"What are you laughing at?" I was startled out of a revery of my own.
+
+"Everything," said the Butterfly Man, succinctly, and stood up and
+shook himself. "And everybody. And me in particular. _Me!_ Oh, good
+Lord, think of _Me!_" He whistled for Kerry, and took himself off. I
+watched him walk down the street, and saw Judge Mayne's familiar
+greeting; and Major Cartwright stop him, and with his hand on the
+Butterfly Man's arm, walk off with him. Major Cartwright had kept
+George Inglesby out of two coveted clubs, for all his wealth; he was
+stiff as the proverbial poker to Howard Hunter, for all that
+gentleman's impeccable connections; he met John Flint, not as through
+a glass darkly, but face to face.
+
+My mother, coming out of the house with her cherished manuscript
+cookbook in her hand, looked after them thoughtfully:
+
+"Yes; it is high time for that man to know his proper place!"
+
+"And does he not?"
+
+"Oh, I suppose so, Armand. In a man's way, though--not a woman's. It's
+the woman's way that really matters, you see. When women acknowledge
+that man socially--and I mean it to happen--his light won't be hidden
+under a bushel basket. He will climb up into his candlestick and
+shine."
+
+That sense of bewilderment which at times overwhelmed me when the case
+of John Flint pressed hard, overtook me now, with its ironic humor. As
+he himself had expressed it, I felt myself caught by a Something too
+big to withstand. I was afraid to do anything, to say anything, for or
+against, this launching of his barque upon the social sea. I felt that
+the affair had been once more lifted out of my power; that my serving
+now was but to stand and wait.
+
+And in the meanwhile my mother, with her own hands, washed and darned
+the priceless old lace that was her chiefest pride; had something done
+to a frock; got out her sacredest treasures of linen and china and
+silver; requisitioned the Mayne and the Dexter spoons as well; had the
+Parish House scoured until it glittered; did everything to the garden
+but wash and iron it; spent momentous and odorous hours with Clélie
+over the making of toothsome delights; and on a golden afternoon gave
+a tea on the flower-decked verandahs and in the glorious garden, to
+which all Appleboro, in its best bib and tucker, came as one. And
+there, in the heart and center of it, cool, calm, correct, collected,
+hiding whatever mortal qualms he might have felt under a demeanor as
+perfect as Hunter's own, apparently at home and at ease, behold the
+Butterfly Man!
+
+Everybody seemed to know him. Everybody had something pleasant to say
+to him. Folks simply accepted him at sight as one of themselves. And
+the Butterfly Man accepted them quite as simply, with no faintest
+trace of embarrassment.
+
+If Appleboro had cherished the legend that this was a prodigal well on
+his way home, that afternoon settled it for them into a positive fact.
+His manner was perfect. It was as if one saw the fine and beautiful
+grain of a piece of rare wood come out as the varnish that disfigured
+it was removed. Here was no veneer to scratch and crack at a touch,
+but the solid, rare thing itself. My mother had been right, as always.
+John Flint stepped into his proper place. Appleboro was acknowledging
+it officially.
+
+The garden was full of laughter and chatter and perfumes, and women in
+pretty clothes, and young girls dainty as flowers, and the smiling
+faces of men. But I am no longer of the party age. I stole away to a
+favorite haunt of mine at the back of the garden, behind the spireas
+and the holly tree, where there is a dilapidated old seat we have been
+threatening to remove any time this five years. Here, some time
+later, the Butterfly Man himself came stealthily, and seemed
+embarrassed to find the place preëmpted.
+
+"Well," said I, making room for him beside me, "it isn't so bad after
+all, is it?"
+
+"No. I'm glad I was let in for it," he admitted frankly, "though I'd
+hate to have to come to parties for a living. Still, this afternoon
+has nailed down a thought that's been buzzing around loose in my mind
+this long time. It's this: people aren't anything but people, after
+all. Men and women and kids, the best and the worst of 'em, they're
+nothing but people, the same as everybody else. No, I'll never be
+scared to meet anybody, after this. _I'm_ people, too!"
+
+"The same as everybody else."
+
+"The same as everybody else," he repeated, soberly. "Not but what
+there's lots of difference between folks. And there are things it's
+good to know, too ... things that women like Madame ... and Miss Mary
+Virginia Eustis ... expect a man to know, if they're not going to be
+ashamed of him." He thought about this awhile, then:
+
+"I tell you what, father," he remarked, tentatively, "it must be a
+mighty fine thing to know you've got the right address written on you,
+good and plain, and the right number of stamps, and the sender's name
+somewhere on a corner, to keep you from going astray or to the Dead
+Letter Office; and not to be scrawled in lead-pencil, and misspelt,
+and finger-smutched, and with a couple of postage-due stamps stuck on
+you crooked, and the Lord only knows who and where from."
+
+"Why, yes," said I, "that's true, and one does well to consider it.
+But the main thing, the really important thing, is the letter
+itself--what's written inside, John Flint."
+
+"But what's written inside wouldn't be any the worse if it was written
+clearer and better, and the outside was cleaner and on nice paper? And
+in pen-and-ink, not lead-pencil scratches?" he insisted earnestly.
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"That's what I've been thinking lately, father. Somehow, I always did
+like things to have some class to 'em. I remember how I used to lean
+against the restaurant windows when I was a kid, and watch the folks
+inside, how they dressed and acted, and the way the nicest of 'em
+handled table-tools. They weren't swells, of course, and plenty of 'em
+made plenty of mistakes--I've seen stunts done with a common
+table-knife that had the best of the sword-swallowing gents skinned a
+mile--but I wasn't a fool, and I learned some. Then when I--er--began
+to make real money (parson, I made it in wads and gobs and lumps those
+days!) why, I got me the real thing in glad rags from the real thing
+in tailors, and I used to blow a queen that'd been a swell herself
+once, to the joint where the gilt-edged bunch eat and show off their
+clothes and the rest of themselves. My jane looked the part to the
+life, I had the kale and the clothes and was chesty as a head-waiter,
+being considerably stuck on yours truly along about then, so we put it
+over. I had the chance to get hep to the last word in clothes and
+manners; that's what I'd gone for, though I didn't tell that to the
+skirt I was buying the eats for. And it was good business, too, for
+more than once when some precinct bonehead that pipe-dreamed he was a
+detective was pussy-catting some cold rat-hole, there was me
+vanbibbering in the white light at the swellest joints in little old
+New York! Funny, wasn't it? And handy! And I was learning,
+too--learning things worth good money to know. I saw that the best
+sort didn't make any noise about anything. They went about their
+business, whatever it was, easy-easy, same as me in my line. But,
+parson, though I'd got hep to the outside, and had sense enough to
+copy what I'd seen, I wasn't wise to the inside difference--the things
+that make the best what it is, I mean--because I'd never been close
+enough to find out that there's more to it than looks and duds and
+manners. It took the Parish House people to soak that into me. People
+aren't anything but people--but the best are--well, different."
+
+We fell silent; a happy silence, into which, as from another planet,
+there drifted light laughter, and sweet gay voices of girls, and the
+stir and rustle of many people moving about. On the Mayne fence the
+judge's black Panch sat, neck outstretched, emerald eyes aslant, ears
+cocked uneasily at these unwonted noises. At a little distance a
+bluejay watched him with bright malevolent eyes, every now and then
+screaming insults at the whole tribe of cats, and black Panch in
+particular. Flint snapped his fingers, and Panch, with a spring, was
+off the fence and on his friend's knees. It seemed to me it had only
+needed the sleek beastie to make that hour perfect;--for cats in the
+highest degree make for a sense of homely, friendly intimacy. Flint,
+feeling this, stroked the black head contentedly. Panch purred for the
+three of us.
+
+Into this presently broke Miss Sally Ruth Dexter, and bore down on
+John Flint like a frigate with all sails spread. At sight of her Panch
+spat and fled, and took the happy spell with him.
+
+"Here you are, cuddling that old pirate of a black cat!" said she,
+briskly. "I told Madame you'd be mooning about somewhere. Here's some
+cocoanut cake for you both. Father, Madame's been looking for you. Did
+you know," she sank her voice to a piercing whisper, "that George
+Inglesby's here? Well, he is! He's talking to Mary Virginia Eustis,
+this very minute! They do say he's running after Mary Virginia, and
+I'm sure I wouldn't be surprised, for if ever a mortal man had the
+effrontery of Satan that man's George Inglesby! I must admit he's
+improved since Mr. Hunter took him in hand. He's not nearly so stout
+and red-faced, and he hasn't half the jowl, though Lord knows he'll
+have to get rid of a few tons more of his blubber" (Miss Sally Ruth
+has a free and fetterless tongue) "if he wants to look _human_. As I
+say, what's the use of being a millionaire if you've got a shape like
+a rainbarrel? I often tell myself, 'Maybe you haven't been given such
+a lot of this world's goods as some, Sally Ruth Dexter, but you can
+thank your sweet Redeemer you've at least got a Figure!"
+
+The Butterfly Man cast a speculative eye over her generous
+proportions.
+
+"Yes'm, you certainly have a whole lot to be thankful for," he agreed,
+so wholeheartedly that Miss Sally Ruth laughed.
+
+"Get along with you, you impudent fellow!" said she, in high good
+humor. "Go and look at that old scamp of an Inglesby making eyes at a
+girl young enough to be his daughter! I heard this morning that Mr.
+Hunter has orders to get him, by hook or crook, an invitation to
+anything Mary Virginia goes to. I declare, it's scandalous! Come to
+think of it, though, I never saw any man yet, no matter how old or
+ugly or outrageous he might be, who didn't really believe he stood a
+perfectly good chance to win the affections of the handsomest young
+woman alive! If you ask _me_, _I_ think George Inglesby had better
+join the church and get himself ready to meet his God, instead of
+gallivanting around girls. If he feels he has to gallivant, why don't
+he pick out somebody nearer his own age?"
+
+"Why should you make him choose mutton when he wants lamb?" asked the
+Butterfly Man, unexpectedly.
+
+"Because he's an old bellwether, that's why!" snapped Miss Sally Ruth,
+scandalized. "I wonder at Annabelle Eustis allowing him to come near
+Mary Virginia, millionaire or no millionaire. I bet you James Eustis
+will have something to say, if Mary Virginia herself doesn't!" And she
+sailed off again, leaving us, as the saying is, with a bug in the ear.
+
+"Now what in the name of heaven," I wondered, "can Miss Sally Ruth
+mean? Mary Virginia ... Inglesby. ... The thing's sacrilegious."
+
+The Butterfly Man rose abruptly. "Suppose we stroll about a bit?" he
+suggested.
+
+"I thought," said my mother, when we approached her, "that you had
+disobeyed orders, and run away!"
+
+"We were afraid to," said John Flint. "We knew you'd make us go to bed
+without supper."
+
+"Did you know," said my mother, hurriedly, for Clélie was making signs
+to her, "that George Inglesby is here? The invitation was merely
+perfunctory, just sent along with Mr. Hunter's. I never dreamed the
+man would accept it. You can't imagine how astonished I was when he
+presented himself!"
+
+A few moments later, the Butterfly Man said in a low voice: "Look
+yonder!" And turning, I saw Hunter. He was for the moment alone, and
+stood with his head bent slightly forward, his bright cold glance
+intent upon the two persons approaching--Mary Virginia and George
+Inglesby. His white teeth showed in a smile. I remembered,
+disagreeably, Flint's "I don't like the expression of his teeth: he
+looks like he'd bite."
+
+Until that afternoon I had not seen the secretary for some time, for
+he had been kept unusually busy. Those eminently sensible talks to the
+mill workers had been well received, and were to be followed by others
+along the same line. He had done even more: he had induced the owners
+to recognize the men's Union, and all future complaints and demands
+were to be submitted to arbitration. Inglesby had undoubtedly gained
+ground enormously by that move. Hunter had done well. And
+yet--catching that sharp-toothed smile, I felt my faith in him for the
+first time shaken by one of those unaccountable uprushes of intuition
+which perplex and disturb.
+
+I knew, too, that Laurence had had several long and serious
+conferences with Eustis, and I could well imagine the arguments he had
+brought to bear, the rousing of a sense of duty, and of state pride.
+
+Eustis was obstinate. He had many interests. He was a very, very busy
+man. He didn't want to be a Senator; he wanted to be let alone to
+attend to his own business in his own way. But, insisted Laurence,
+when a thing must be done, and you can do it in a manner which
+benefits all and injures none; when your own people ask you to do it
+for them, isn't _that_ your business?
+
+A cold damning resume of Inglesby's entire career made Eustis
+hesitate. A vivid picture of what the state might expect at Inglesby's
+hands roused him to just anger. Such as this fellow represent
+Carolina? Never! When Inglesby's name should be put up, Eustis
+unwillingly agreed to oppose him.
+
+And here was Inglesby, in my garden, making himself agreeable to
+Eustis's daughter! He was so plainly desirous to please her, that it
+troubled me, although it made his secretary smile.
+
+The Mary Virginia walking beside Inglesby was not the Mary Virginia
+_we_ knew: this was the regal one, the great beauty. Her whole manner
+was subtly charged with a sort of arrogant hauteur; her fairness
+itself changed, tinged with pride as with an inward fire, until she
+glowed with a cold, jewel-like brightness, hard and clear. Her very
+skirts rustled pridefully. Her glance at the man beside her was
+insulting in its disdainful indifference.
+
+What would have saddened a nobler spirit enchanted Inglesby. He was
+dazzled by her. Her interest in what he was saying was coolly
+impersonal, the fixed habit of trained politeness. He could even
+surmise that she was mentally yawning behind her hand. When she looked
+at him her eyes under her level brows held a certain scornfulness. And
+this, too, delighted him. He groveled to it. His red face glowed with
+pleasure; he swelled with a pride very different from Mary Virginia's.
+I thought he had an upholstered look in his glossy clothes, reminding
+me unpleasantly of horsehair furniture.
+
+"He looks like a day coach in July," growled the Butterfly Man in my
+ear, disgustedly.
+
+Inglesby at this moment perceived Hunter and beamed upon him, as well
+he might! Who but this priceless secretary had pulled the strings
+which set him beside this glorious creature, in the Parish House
+garden? He turned to the girl, with heavy jauntiness:
+
+"My good right hand, Miss Eustis, I assure you!" he beamed. "But I am
+sure you two need no dissertations upon each other's merits!"
+
+"None whatever," said Miss Eustis, and looked over Mr. Hunter's head.
+
+"Oh, Miss Eustis and I are really old acquaintances!" smiled the
+secretary. "We know each other very well indeed."
+
+Mary Virginia made no reply. Instead, she looked about her,
+indifferently enough, until her glance encountered the Butterfly
+Man's. What he saw in her's I do not know. But he instantly moved
+toward her, and swept me with him.
+
+"Father De Rancé and I," said he, easily, "haven't had chance to speak
+to you all afternoon, Miss Eustis." He acknowledged Hunter's friendly
+greeting pleasantly enough.
+
+"And I've been looking for you both." The hauteur faded from the young
+face. Our own Mary Virginia appeared, changed in the twinkling of an
+eye.
+
+Inglesby favored me with condescending effusiveness. Flint got off
+with a smirking stare.
+
+"And this," said Inglesby in the sort of voice some people use in
+addressing strange children to whom they desire to be patronizingly
+nice and don't know how, "this is the Butterfly Man!" Out came the
+jovial smile in its full deadliness. The Butterfly Man's lips drew
+back from his teeth and his eyes narrowed to gimlet points behind his
+glasses. "I have heard of you from Mr. Hunter. And so you collect
+butterflies! Very interesting and active occupation for any one
+that--ahem! likes that sort of thing. Very."
+
+"He collects obituaries, too," said Hunter, immensely amused. "You
+mustn't overlook the obituaries, Mr. Inglesby."
+
+Mr. Inglesby favored the collector of butterflies _and_ obituaries
+with another speculative, piglike stare. You could see the thought
+behind it: "Trifling sort of fellow! Idiotic! Very." Aloud he merely
+mumbled:
+
+"Singular taste. Very. Collecting obituaries, eh?"
+
+"Fascinating things to collect. Very," said the Butterfly Man,
+sweetly. "Not to be laughed at. I might add yours to 'em, too, you
+know, some of these fine days!"
+
+"Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed!" murmured Hunter. Mr. Inglesby,
+however, was visibly ruffled and annoyed. Who was this fellow braying
+of obituaries as if he, Inglesby, were on the highroad to oblivion
+already, when he was, in reality, still quite a young man? And right
+before Miss Eustis! He turned purple.
+
+"My obituary?" he spluttered. "_Mine_? Mine?"
+
+"Sure, if it's worth while," said the Butterfly Man, amiably. Mary
+Virginia barely suppressed a smile.
+
+"Madame would like to see you, Miss Eustis," he told her.
+
+Mary Virginia, bowing distantly to the millionaire and his secretary,
+walked off with him, I following.
+
+Once free of them, her spirits rose soaringly.
+
+"It's been a lovely afternoon, and I've enjoyed it all--except Mr.
+Inglesby. I don't _like_ Mr. Inglesby, Padre. He's amusing enough, I
+suppose, at times, but one can't seem to get rid of him--he's a
+perfect Old Man of the Sea," she told us, confidentially. "And you
+can't imagine how detestably youthful he is, Mr. Flint! He told me
+half a dozen times this afternoon that after all, years don't
+matter--it is the heart which is young. And he takes cold tubs and is
+proud of himself, and plays golf--for exercise!" The scorn of the
+lithe and limber young was in her voice.
+
+"What's the use of being a millionaire, if you have a shape like the
+rainbarrel?" I quoted pensively.
+
+Later that night, when "the lights were fled, the garlands dead, and
+all but me departed," I went over for my usual last half-hour with
+John Flint. Very often we have nothing whatever to say, and we are
+even wise enough not to say it. We sit silently, he with Kerry's noble
+old head against his foot, each busy with his own thoughts and
+reflections, but each conscious of the friendly nearness of the other.
+You have never had a friend, if you have never known one with whom you
+might sit a silent, easy hour. To-night he sucked savagely at his old
+pipe, and his eyes were somber.
+
+"You got the straight tip from Miss Sally Ruth, father," he said,
+coming out of a brown study. "What do you suppose that piker's trying
+to crawl out of his cocoon for? He never wanted to caper around
+Appleboro women before, did he? No. And here he's been muldooning to
+get some hog-fat off and some wind and waistline back. Now, why? To
+please himself? _He_ don't have to care a hoot what he looks like. To
+please some girl? That's more likely. Parson: that girl's Mary
+Virginia Eustis." He added, through his teeth: "Hunter knows. Hunter's
+steering." And then, with quiet conviction: "They're both as crooked
+as hell!" he finished.
+
+"But the thing's absurd on the face of it! Why, the mere notion is
+preposterous!" I insisted, angrily.
+
+"I have seen worse things happen," said he, shortly. "But there,--keep
+your hair on! Things don't happen unless they're slated to happen, so
+don't let it bother you too much. You go turn in and forget everything
+except that you need a night's sleep."
+
+I tried to follow his sound advice, but although I needed a night's
+sleep and there was no tangible reason why I shouldn't have gotten it,
+I didn't. The shadow of Inglesby haunted my pillow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+"EACH IN HIS OWN COIN"
+
+
+With the New Year had descended upon John Flint an obsessing and
+tormenting spirit which made him by fits and starts moody, depressed,
+nervous, restless, or wholly silent and abstracted. I have known him
+to come in just before dawn, snatch a few hours' sleep, and be off
+again before day had well set in, though he must already have been far
+afield, for Kerry heeled him with lagging legs and hanging head. Or he
+would shut himself up, and refusing himself to all callers, fall into
+a cold fury of concentrated effort, sitting at his table hour after
+hour, tireless, absorbed, accomplishing a week's overdue work in a day
+and a night. Often his light burned all night through. Some of the
+most notable papers bearing his name, and research work of
+far-reaching significance, came from that workroom then--as if lumps
+of ambergris had been tossed out of a whirlpool.
+
+All this time, too, he was working in conjunction with the Washington
+Bureau, experimenting with remedies for the boll-weevil, and fighting
+the plague of the cattle-tick. This, and the other outside work in
+which he was so immensely interested, could not be allowed to hang
+fire. Like many another, he found himself for his salvation caught in
+the great human net he himself had helped to spin. It was not only
+the country people who held him. Gradually, as he passed to and from
+on his way among them, and became acquainted with their children,
+there had sprung up a most curious sort of understanding between the
+Butterfly Man on the one side, and the half-articulate foreigners in
+the factory and the sly secretive mill-workers on the other.
+
+People I had never been able to get at humanly, people who resisted
+even Madame, not only chose to open their doors but their mouths, to
+Meester Fleent. Uncouth fumbling men, slip-shod women, dirty-faced
+children, were never dumb and suspicious or wholly untruthful and
+evasive, where the Butterfly Man was concerned. He was one to whom
+might be told, without shame, fear, or compunction, the plain, blunt,
+terrible truth. _He understood._
+
+"I wish you'd look up Petronovich's boy, father," he might tell me,
+or, "Madame, have a woman-talk with Lovena Smith's girl at the mills,
+will you? Lovena's a fool, and that girl's up against things." And we
+went, and wondered, afterwards, what particularly tender guardian
+angels kept close company with our Butterfly Man.
+
+Then occurred the great event which put Meester Fleent in a place
+apart in the estimation of all Appleboro, forever settled his status
+among the mill-hands and the "hickeys," and incidentally settled a
+tormenting doubt of himself in his own mind. I mean the settling of
+the score against Big Jan.
+
+Half-Russian Jan was to the Poles what a padrone too often is to the
+Italian laborers, a creature who herded them together and mercilessly
+worked them for the profit of others, and incidentally his own, an
+exacting tyrant against whose will it was useless to rebel. He had a
+little timid wife with red eyes--perhaps because she cried so much
+over the annual baby which just as annually died. He made a good deal
+of money, but the dark Slav passion for whisky forced him to spend
+what he earned, and this increased a naturally sullen temper. He was
+the thorn in the Parish side; that we could do so little for the Poles
+was due in a large measure to Jan's stubborn hindering.
+
+His people lived in terror of him. When they displeased him he beat
+them. It was not a light beating, and once or twice we had in the
+Guest Rooms nursed its victims back into some semblance of humanity.
+But what could we do? Jan was so efficient a foreman that Inglesby's
+power was always behind him. So when Jan chose to get very drunk, and
+sang long, monotonous songs, particularly when he sang through his
+teeth, lugubriously:
+
+    "_Yeszeze Polska nie Zginela
+     Poki my Zygemy_ ..."
+
+men and women trembled. Poland might not be lost, but somebody's skin
+always paid for that song.
+
+In passing one morning--it was a holiday--through the Poles' quarters,
+an unpleasant enough stretch which other folks religiously avoided,
+the Butterfly Man heard shrieks coming from Michael Karski's back
+yard. It was Michael's wife and children who screamed.
+
+"It is the Boss who beats Michael, Meester Fleent," a man volunteered.
+"The Boss, he is much drunk. Karski's woman, she did not like the ways
+of him in her house, and Michael said, 'I will to send for the
+police.' So Big Jan beats Michael, and Michael's woman, she hollers
+like hell."
+
+John Flint knew inoffensive, timid Michael; he knew his broad-bosomed,
+patient, cowlike wife, and he liked the brood of shockheaded
+youngsters who plodded along patient in old clothes, bare-footed, and
+with scanty enough food. He had made a corn-cob doll for the littlest
+girl and a cigar-box wagon with spool wheels for the littlest boy.
+Perhaps that is why he turned and went with the rest to Michael's yard
+where Big Jan was knocking Michael about like a ten-pin, grunting
+through his teeth: "Now! Sen' for those policemens, you!"
+
+Michael was no pretty thing to look upon, for Jan was in an uglier
+mood than usual, and Michael had greatly displeased him; therefore it
+was Michael's turn to pay. Nobody interfered, for every one was
+horribly afraid Big Jan would turn upon _him_. Besides, was not he the
+Boss, and could he not say Go, and then must not a man go, short of
+pay, and with his wife and children crying? Of a verity!
+
+The Butterfly Man slipped off his knapsack and laid his net aside.
+Then he pushed his way through the scared onlookers.
+
+"Meester Fleent! For God's love, save my man, Meester Flint!"
+Michael's wife Katya screamed at him.
+
+By way of answer Meester Fleent very deliberately handed her his
+eye-glasses. Then one saw that his eyes, slitted in his head, were
+cold and bright as a snake's; his chin thrust forward, and in his red
+beard his lips made a straight line like a clean knife-cut. Two
+bright red spots had jumped into his tanned cheeks. His lean hands
+balled.
+
+He said no word; but the crumpled thing that was Michael was of a
+sudden plucked bodily out of Big Jan's hands and thrust into the
+waiting woman's. The astonished Boss found himself confronting a pale
+and formidable face with a pair of eyes like glinting sword-blades.
+
+Kerry had followed his master, and was now close to his side. For the
+moment Flint had forgotten him. But Big Jan's evil eyes caught sight
+of him. He knew the Butterfly Man's dog very well. He snickered. A
+huge foot shot out, there was a howl of anguish and astonishment, and
+Kerry went flying through the air as if shot from a catapult.
+
+"So!" Jan grunted like a satisfied hog, "I feex _you_ like that in one
+meenute, me."
+
+The red jumped from John Flint's cheeks to his eyes, and stayed there.
+Why, this hulking brute had hurt _Kerry!_ His breath exhaled in a
+whistling sigh. He seemed to coil himself together; with a tiger-leap
+he launched himself at the great hulk before him. It went down. It had
+to.
+
+I know every detail of that historic fight. Is it not written large in
+the Book of the Deeds of Appleboro, and have I not heard it by word of
+mouth from many a raving eye-witness? Does not Dr. Walter Westmoreland
+lick his lips over it unto this day?
+
+A long groaning sigh went up from the onlookers. Meester Fleent was a
+great and a good man; but he was a crippled man. Death was very close
+to him.
+
+Big Jan was not too drunk to fight savagely, but he was in a most
+horrible rage, and this weakened him. He meant to kill this impudent
+fellow who had taken Michael away from him before he had half-finished
+with him. But first he would break every bone in the crippled man's
+body, take him in his hands and break his back over one knee as one
+does a slat. A man with one leg to balk him, Big Jan? That called for
+a killing. Jan had no faintest idea he might not be able to make good
+this pleasant intention.
+
+It was a stupendous fight, a Homeric fight, a fight against odds,
+which has become a town tradition. If Jan was formidable, a veritable
+bison, his opponent was no cringing workman scared out of his wits and
+too timid to defend himself. John Flint knew his own weakness, knew
+what he could expect at Jan's hands, and it made him cool, collected,
+wary, and deadly. He was no more the mild-mannered, soft-spoken
+Butterfly Man, but another and a more primal creature, fighting for
+his life. Big Jan, indeed, fancied he had nobody but the Butterfly Man
+to deal with; as a matter of fact he was tackling Slippy McGee.
+
+Skilled, watchful, dangerous, that old training saved him. Every time
+Jan came to his feet, roaring, thrashing his arms like flails, making
+head-long, bull-like rushes, the Butterfly Man managed to send him
+sprawling again. Then he himself caught one well-aimed blow, and went
+staggering; but before slow-moving and raging Jan could follow up his
+advantage, with a lightning-like quickness the Butterfly Man made a
+battering ram of his head, caught Jan in the pit of the stomach, and
+even as he fell Jan went down, too, and went down underneath.
+Desperately, fighting like a fiend, John Flint kept him down. And
+presently using every wrestler's trick that he knew, and bringing to
+bear every ounce of his saved and superb strength, in a most orderly,
+businesslike, cold-blooded manner he proceeded to pound Big Jan into
+pulp. The devil that had been chained these seven years was a-loose at
+last, rampant, fully aroused, and not easily satisfied. Besides, had
+not Jan most brutally and wantonly tried to kill Kerry!
+
+If it was a well deserved it was none the less a most drastic
+punishment, and when it was over Big Jan lay still. He would lie prone
+for many a day, and he would carry marks of it to his grave.
+
+When the tousled victor, with a reeling head, an eye fast closing, and
+a puffed and swollen lip, staggered upright and stood swaying on his
+feet, he found himself surrounded by a great quiet ring of men and
+women who regarded him with eyes of wonder and amaze. He was
+superhuman; he had accomplished the impossible; paid the dreaded Boss
+in his own coin, yea, given him full measure to the running over
+thereof! No man of all the men Jan had beaten in his time had received
+such as Jan himself had gotten at this man's hands to-day. The reign
+of the Boss was over: and the conqueror was a crippled man! A great
+sighing breath of sheer worshipful admiration went up; they were too
+profoundly moved to cheer him; they could only stand and stare. When
+they wished, reverently, to help him, he waved them aside.
+
+"Where's my dog?" he demanded thickly through his swollen lips.
+"Where's Kerry? If he's dead--" he cast upon fallen Jan a menacing
+glare.
+
+"Your dog's in bed with the baby, and Ma's give him milk with brandy
+in it, and he drank it and growled at her, and the boys is holding
+him down now to keep him from coming out to you, and he ain't much
+hurt nohow," squealed one of Michael's big-eyed children.
+
+John Flint, stretching his arms above his head, drew in a great
+gulping mouthful of air, exhaled it, and laughed a deepchested,
+satisfied laugh, for all he was staggering like a drunken man. Here
+Michael's wife Katya came puffing out of her house like a traction
+engine--such was the shape in which nature formed her--and falling on
+her knees, caught his hand to her vast bosom, weeping like the
+overflowing of a river and blubbering uncouth sounds.
+
+"Get up, you crazy woman!" snarled John Flint, his face going
+brick-red. "Stop licking my hand, and get up!" Although he did not
+know it, Katya symbolized the mental attitude of every laborer in
+Appleboro toward him from that hour.
+
+"Here's Doctor Westmoreland! And here comes the po-lice!" yelled a
+boy, joyous with excitement.
+
+Westmoreland cast one by no means sympathetic glance at the wreck on
+the ground, and his big arms went about John Flint; his fingers flew
+over him like an apprehensive father's.
+
+"What's all this? Who's been fighting here, you people?" demanded the
+town marshal's brisk voice. "Big Jan? And--good Lord! _Mister Flint!_"
+His eyes bulged. He looked from Big Jan on the ground to the Butterfly
+Man under Westmoreland's hands, with an almost ludicrous astonishment.
+
+"I'm sure sorry, Mr. Flint, if I have to give you a little trouble for
+awhile, but--"
+
+"But you'll be considerably sorrier if you do it," said Dr. Walter
+Westmoreland savagely. "You take that hulk over there to the jail,
+until I have time to see him. I can't have him sent home to his wife
+in that shape. And look here, Marshal: Jan got exactly what he
+deserved; it's been coming to him this long time. If Inglesby's bunch
+tries to take a hand in this, _I'll_ try to make Appleboro too hot to
+hold somebody. Understand?"
+
+The marshal was a wise enough man, and he understood. Inglesby's pet
+foreman had been all but killed, and Inglesby would be furiously
+angry. But--Mr. Flint had done it, and behind Mr. Flint were powers
+perhaps as potent as Inglesby's. One thing more may have influenced
+the marshal: The hitherto timid and apathetic people had merged into a
+compact and ominous ring around the Butterfly Man and the doctor. A
+shrill murmur arose, like the wind in the trees presaging a storm.
+There would be riot in staid Appleboro if one were so foolish as to
+lay a detaining hand upon John Flint this day. More yet, the beloved
+Westmoreland himself would probably begin it. Never had the marshal
+seen Westmoreland look so big and so raging.
+
+"All right, Doctor," said he, hastily backing off. "I reckon you're
+man enough to handle this."
+
+Some proud worshiper brought Mr. Flint his hat, knapsack, and net, and
+the mountainous Katya insisted upon tenderly placing his glasses upon
+his nose--upside down. Westmoreland used to say afterward that for a
+moment he feared Flint was going to bite her hand! Then man and dog
+were placed in the doctor's car and hurried home to my mother; who
+made no comment, but put both in the larger Guest Room, the whimpering
+dog on a comfort at the foot of his master's bed. Kerry had a broken
+rib, but outside of this he was not injured. He would be out and all
+right again in a week, Westmoreland assured his anxious master.
+
+"Oh, you _man_, you!" crowed Westmoreland. "John, John, if anything
+were needed to make me love you, this would clinch it! Prying open
+nature's fist, John, having butterflies bear your name, working hand
+in glove with your government, boosting boys, writing books, are all
+of them fine big grand things. But if along with them one's man enough
+to stand up, John, with the odds against him, and punish a bully and a
+scoundrel, the only way a bully and a scoundrel can feel punishment,
+that's a heart-stirring thing, John! It gets to the core of my heart.
+It isn't so much the fight itself, it's being able to take care of
+oneself and others when one has to. Yes, yes, yes. A fight like that
+is worth a million dollars to the man who wins it!"
+
+Westmoreland may be president of the Peace League, and tell us that
+force is all wrong. Nevertheless, his great-grandmother was born in
+Tipperary.
+
+We kept the Butterfly Man indoors for a week, while Westmoreland
+doctored a viciously black eye and sewed up his lip. Morning and
+afternoon Appleboro called, and left tribute of fruit and flowers.
+
+"Gad, suh, he behaved like one of Stonewall Jackson's men!" said Major
+Cartwright, pridefully. "No yellow in _him_; he's one of _us_!"
+
+At nights came the Polish folks, and these people whom he had once
+despised because they "hadn't got sense enough to talk American," he
+now received with a complete and friendly understanding.
+
+"I just come by and see how you make to feel, Meester."
+
+"Oh, I feel fine, Joe, thank you."
+
+There would be an interval of absolute silence, which, did not seem to
+embarrass either visited or visitor. Then:
+
+"Baby better now?" Meester would ask, interestedly.
+
+"That beeg doctor, he oil heem an' make heem well all right."
+
+After awhile: "I mebbe go now, Meester."
+
+"Good-night," said the host, briefly.
+
+At the door the Pole would turn, and look back, with the wistfully
+animal look of the Under Dog.
+
+"Those cheeldren, they make to get you the leetle bug. You mebbe like
+that, Meester, yes? They make to get you plenty much bug, those
+cheeldren. We _all_ make to get you the bug, Meester, thank you."
+
+"That's mighty nice of you folks." Then one felt the note in the quiet
+voice which explained his hold upon people.
+
+"Hell, no. We _like_ to do that for you, Meester. Thank you." And
+closing the door gently after him, he would slink off.
+
+"They don't need to be so allfired grateful," said John Flint frankly.
+"Parson, I'm the guy to be grateful. I got a whole heap more out of
+that shindy than a black eye and a pretty mouth. I was bluemolding for
+a man-tussle, and that scrap set me up again. You see--I wasn't sure
+of myself any more, and it was souring on my stomach. Now I know I
+haven't lost out, I feel like a white man. Yep, it gives a fellow the
+holiday-heart to be dead sure he's plenty able to use his fists if
+he's got to. Westmoreland's right about that."
+
+I was discreetly silent. God forgive me, in my heart I also was most
+sinfully glad my Butterfly Man could and would use his fists when he
+had to. I do not believe in peace at any price. I know very well that
+wrong must be conquered before right can prevail. But I shouldn't have
+been so set up!
+
+"Here," said he one morning. "Ask Madame to give this to Jan's wife.
+And say, beg her for heaven's sake to buy some salve for her eyelids,
+will you?" "This" was a small roll of bills. "I owe it to Jan," he
+explained, with his twistiest smile.
+
+Westmoreland's skill removed all outward marks of the fray, and the
+Butterfly Man went his usual way; but although he had laid at rest one
+cruel doubt, he was still in deep waters. Because of his stress his
+clothes had begun to hang loosely upon him.
+
+Now the naturalist who knows anything at all of those deep mysterious
+well-springs underlying his great profession, understands that he is a
+'prentice hand learning his trade in the workshop of the Almighty;
+wherein "_the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world
+are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made_." As
+Paul on a time reminded the Romans.
+
+Wherefore I who had learned somewhat from the Little Peoples now
+applied what they had taught me, and when I saw my man grow restless,
+move about aimlessly, withdraw into himself and become as one blind
+and dumb and unhearing, I understood he was facing a change, making
+ready to project himself into some larger phase of existence as yet in
+the womb of the future. So I did not question what wind drove him
+forth before it like a lost leaf. The loving silent companionship of
+red Kerry, the friendly faces of young children to whom he was kind,
+the eyes of poor men and women looking to him for help, these were
+better for him now than I.
+
+But my mother was not a naturalist, and she was provoked with John
+Flint. He ate irregularly, he slept as it pleased God. He was "running
+wild" again. This displeased her, particularly as Appleboro had at her
+instigation included Mr. John Flint in its most exclusive list, and
+there were invitations she was determined he should accept. She had
+put her hand to the social plow in his behalf, and she had no faintest
+notion of withdrawing it. Once fairly aroused, Madame had that
+able-bodied will heaven seems to have lavished so plenteously upon
+small women: In recompense, I dare say, for lack of size.
+
+Therefore Mr. Flint duteously appeared at intervals among the elect,
+and appeared even to advantage. And my mother remarked, complacently,
+that blood will tell: he had the air! He was not expected to dance,
+but he was a superb cardplayer. He never told jokes, and so avoided
+deadly repetition. He had in a large measure that virtue the Chinese
+extol--the virtue of allowing others to save their faces in peace. Was
+it any wonder Mr. Flint's social position was soon solidly
+established?
+
+He played the game as my mother forced it upon him, though at times, I
+think, it bored and chafed him sorely. What chafed him even more
+sorely was the unprecedented interest many young ladies--and some old
+enough to know better--suddenly evinced in entomology.
+
+Mr. Flint almost overnight developed a savage cunning in eluding the
+seekers of entomological lore. One might suppose a single man would
+rejoice to see his drab workroom swarm with these brightly-colored
+fluttering human butterflies; he bore their visits as visitations,
+displaying the chastened resignation Job probably showed toward the
+latest ultra-sized carbuncle.
+
+"Cheer up!" urged Laurence, who was watching this turn of affairs with
+unfeeling mirth. "The worst is yet to come. These are only the
+chickens: wait until the hens get on your trail!"
+
+"Mr. Flint," said Mary Virginia one afternoon, rubbing salt into his
+smarting wounds, "Mr. Flint, I am so glad all the girls like you so
+much. You fascinate them. They say you are such a profoundly clever
+and interesting man, Mr. Flint! Why, some of those girls are perfectly
+demented about you!"
+
+"Demented," said he, darkly, "is the right word for them when it comes
+down to fussing about _me_." Now Laurence had just caught him in his
+rooms, and, declaring that he looked overworked and pale, had dragged
+him forcibly outside on the porch, where we were now sitting. Mary
+Virginia, in a white skirt, sport coat, and a white felt hat which
+made her entrancingly pretty, had been visiting my mother and now
+strolled over to John Flint's, after her old fashion.
+
+"I feel like making the greatest sort of a fuss about you myself," she
+said honestly. "Anyhow, I'm mighty glad girls like you. It's a good
+sign."
+
+"If they do--though God knows I can't see why--I'm obliged to them,
+seeing it pleases _you_!" said Flint, without, however, showing much
+gratitude in eyes or voice. "To tell you the truth, it looks to me at
+times as if they were wished on me."
+
+Mary Virginia tried to look horrified, and giggled instead.
+
+"If I could only make any of them understand anything!" said the
+Butterfly Man desperately, "but I can't. If only they really wanted to
+know, I'd be more than glad to teach them. But they don't. I show them
+and show them and tell them and tell them, over and over and over
+again, and the same thing five minutes later, and they haven't even
+listened! They don't care. What do they take up my time and say they
+like my butterflies for, when they don't like them at all and don't
+want to know anything about them? That's what gets me!"
+
+Laurence winked at Mary Virginia, shamelessly.
+
+"Bugs!" said he, inelegantly. "That's what's intended to get you, you
+old duffer!"
+
+"Mr. Flint," said Mary Virginia, with dancing eyes. "I don't blame
+those girls one single solitary bit for wanting to know all
+about--butterflies."
+
+"But they don't want to know, I tell you!" Mr. Flint's voice rose
+querulously.
+
+"My dear creature, I'd be stuck on you myself if I were a girl," said
+Laurence sweetly. "Padre, prepare yourself to say, 'Bless you, my
+children!' I see this innocent's finish." And he began to sing, in a
+lackadaisical manner, through his nose:
+
+    "Now you're married you must obey,
+     You must be true to all you say,
+     Live together all your life--"
+
+No answering smile came to John Flint's lips. He made no reply to the
+light banter, but stiffened, and stared ahead of him with a set face
+and eyes into which crept an expression of anguish. Mary Virginia,
+with a quick glance, laid her hand on his arm.
+
+"Don't mind Laurence and me, we're a pair of sillies. You and the
+Padre are too good to put up with us the way you do," she said,
+coaxingly. "And--we girls do like you, Mr. Flint, whether we're wished
+on you or not."
+
+That seductive "we" in that golden voice routed him, horse and foot.
+He looked at the small hand on his arm, and his glance went swiftly to
+the sweet and innocent eyes looking at him with such frank
+friendliness.
+
+"It's better than I deserve," he said, gently enough. "And it isn't
+I'm not grateful to the rest of them for liking me,--if they do. It's
+that I want to box their ears when they pretend to like my insects,
+and don't."
+
+"Being a gentleman has its drawbacks," said I, tentatively.
+
+"Believe _me_!" he spoke with great feeling. "It's nothing short of
+doing a life-stretch!"
+
+The boy and girl laughed gaily. When he spoke thus it added to his
+unique charm. So profoundly were they impressed with what he had
+become, that even what he had been, as they remembered it, increased
+their respect and affection. That past formed for him a somber
+background, full of half-lights and shadows, against which he stood
+out with the revealing intensity of a Rembrandt portrait.
+
+"What I came over to tell you, is that Madame says you're to stay home
+this evening, Mr. Flint," said Mary Virginia, comfortably. "I'm
+spending the night with Madame, you're to know, and we're planning a
+nice folksy informal sort of a time; and you're to be home."
+
+"Orders from headquarters," commented Laurence.
+
+"All right," agreed the Butterfly Man, briefly.
+
+Mary Virginia shook out her white skirts, and patted her black hair
+into even more distractingly pretty disorder.
+
+"I've got to get back to the office--mean case I'm working on,"
+complained Laurence. "Mary Virginia, walk a little way with me, won't
+you? Do, child! It will sweeten all my afternoon and make my work
+easier."
+
+"You haven't grown up a bit--thank goodness!" said Mary Virginia. But
+she went with him.
+
+The Butterfly Man looked after them speculatively.
+
+"Mrs. Eustis," he remarked, "is an ambitious sort of a lady, isn't
+she? Thinks in millions for her daughter, expects her to make a great
+match and all that. Miss Sally Ruth told me she'd heard Mrs. Eustis
+tried once or twice to pull off a match to suit herself, but Miss Mary
+Virginia wouldn't stand for it."
+
+"Why, naturally, Mrs. Eustis would like to see the child well settled
+in life," said I.
+
+"Oh, you don't have to be a Christian _all_ the time," said he calmly.
+"I know Mrs. Eustis, too. She talked to me for an hour and a half
+without stopping, one night last week. See here, parson: Inglesby's
+got a roll that outweighs his record. Suppose he wants to settle down
+and reform--with a young wife to help him do it--wouldn't it be a real
+Christian job to lady's-aid him?"
+
+I eyed him askance.
+
+"Now there's Laurence," went on the Butterfly Man, speculatively.
+"Laurence is making plenty of trouble, but not so much money. No, Mrs.
+Eustis wouldn't faint at the notion of Inglesby, but she'd keel over
+like a perfect lady at the bare thought of Laurence."
+
+"I don't see," said I, crossly, "why she should be called upon to
+faint for either of them. Inglesby's--Inglesby. That makes him
+impossible. As for the boy, why, he rocked that child in her cradle."
+
+"That didn't keep either of them from growing up a man and a woman.
+Looks to me as if they were beginning to find it out, parson."
+
+I considered his idea, and found it so eminently right, proper, and
+beautiful, that I smiled over it. "It would be ideal," I admitted.
+
+"Her mother wouldn't agree with you, though her father might," he said
+dryly. And he asked:
+
+"Ever had a hunch?"
+
+"A presentiment, you mean?"
+
+"No; a hunch. Well, I've got one. I've got a hunch there's trouble
+ahead for that girl."
+
+This seemed so improbable, in the light of her fortunate days, that I
+smiled cheerfully.
+
+"Well, if there should be,--here are you and I to stand by."
+
+"Sure," said he, laconically, "that's all we're here for--to stand
+by."
+
+Although it was January, the weather was again springlike. All day the
+air was like a golden wine, drenched in a golden sun. All day in the
+cedars' dark and vivid green the little wax-wings flew in and out, and
+everywhere the blackberry bramble that "would grace the parlors of
+heaven" was unfolding its crisp red leaves and white buds; and all the
+roads and woods were gay with the scarlet berries of the casida, which
+the robins love. And the nights were clear and still and starry,
+nights of a beauty so vital one sensed it as something alive.
+
+Because Mary Virginia was to spend that night at the Parish House,
+Mrs. Eustis having been called away and the house for once free of
+guests, my mother had seized the occasion to call about her the youth
+in which her soul delighted. To-night she was as rosy and bright-eyed
+as any one of her girl-friends. She beamed when she saw the old rooms
+alive and alight with fresh and laughing faces and blithe figures.
+There was Laurence, with that note in his voice, that light in his
+eyes, that glow and glory upon him, which youth alone knows; and
+Dabney, with his black hair, as usual, on end, and his intelligent
+eyes twinkling behind his glasses; and Claire Dexter, colored like a
+pearl set in a cluster of laughing girls; and Mary Virginia, all in
+white, so beautiful that she brought a mist to the eyes that watched
+her. All the other gay and charming figures seemed but attendants for
+this supremer loveliness, snow-white, rose-red, ebony-black, like the
+queen's child in the fairy-tale.
+
+The Butterfly Man had obediently put in his appearance. With the
+effect which a really strong character produces, he was like an
+insistent deep undernote that dominates and gives meaning to a lighter
+and merrier melody. All this bright life surged, never away from, but
+always toward and around him. Youth claimed him, shared itself with
+him, gave him lavishly of its best, because he fascinated and ensnared
+its fresh imagination. Though he should live to be a thousand it would
+ever pay homage to some nameless magic quality of spirit which was
+his.
+
+"Are you writing something new? Have you found another butterfly?"
+asked the young things, full of interest and respect.
+
+Well, he _had_ promised a certain paper by a certain time, though what
+people could find to like so much in what he had to say about his
+insects--
+
+"Because," said Dabney, "you create in us a new feeling for them.
+They're living things with a right to their lives, and you show us
+what wonderful little lives most of them are. You bring them close to
+us in a way that doesn't disgust us. I guess, Butterfly Man, the truth
+is you've found a new way of preaching the old gospel of One Father
+and one life; and the common sense of common folks understands what
+you mean, thanks you for it, likes you for it, and--asks you to tell
+us some more."
+
+"Whenever a real teacher appears, always the common people hear him
+gladly," said I, reflectively.
+
+"Only," said Mary Virginia, quickly, "when the teacher himself is just
+as uncommon as he can be, Padre." She smiled at John Flint with a
+sincerity that honored him.
+
+He stood abashed and silent before this naïve appreciation. It was at
+once his greatest happiness and his deepest pain--that open admiration
+of these clean-souled youngsters.
+
+When he had gone, I too slipped away, for the still white night
+outside called me. I went around to that favorite retreat of mine, the
+battered seat shut in among spireas and syringas. I like to say my
+rosary out of doors. The beads slipping through my fingers soothed me
+with their monotonous insistent petition. Prayer brought me closer to
+the heart of the soft and shining night, and the big still stars.
+
+     _They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; yea, all of them
+     shall wax old as a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change
+     them, and they shall be changed; but thou art the same and
+     thy years shall have no end_.
+
+The surety of the beautiful words brought the great overshadowing
+Presence near me. And I fell into a half-revery, in which the
+hailmarys wove themselves in and out, like threads in a pattern.
+
+Dreamily enough, I heard the youthful guests depart, in a gale of
+laughter and flute-like goodnights. And I noted, too, that no light as
+yet shone in the Butterfly Man's rooms. Well--he would hurl himself
+into the work to-morrow, probably, and clear it up in an hour or two.
+He was like that.
+
+My retreat was just off the path, and near the little gate between our
+grounds and Judge Mayne's. Thus, though I was completely hidden by the
+screening bushes and the shadow of the holly tree as well, I could
+plainly see the two who presently came down the bright open path. Of
+late it had given me a curious sense of comfort to see Laurence with
+Mary Virginia, and, I reflected, he had been her shadow recently. I
+liked that. His strength seemed to shield her from Hunter's ambiguous
+smile, from Inglesby's thoughts, even from her own mother's ambition.
+
+I could see my girl's dear dark head outlined with a circle of
+moonlight as with a halo, and it barely reached my tall boy's
+shoulder. Her hand lay lightly on his arm, and he bent toward her,
+bringing his close-cropped brown head nearer hers. I couldn't have
+risen or spoken then, without interrupting them. I merely glanced out
+at them, smilingly, with my rosary in my finger.
+
+I reached the end of a decade: "_As it was in the beginning, is now,
+and ever shall be_--"
+
+They stopped at the gate, and fell silent for a space, the girl with
+her darling face uplifted. The fleecy wrap she wore fell about her
+slim shoulders in long lines, glinting with silver. She did not give
+the effect of remoteness, but of being near and dear and desirable and
+beautiful. The boy, looking upon her with his heart in his eyes, drew
+nearer.
+
+"Mary Virginia," said he, eagerly and huskily and passionately and
+timidly and hopefully and despairingly, "Mary Virginia, are you going
+to marry anybody?"
+
+Mary Virginia came back from the stars in the night sky to the stars
+in the young man's eyes. "Why, yes, I hope I am," said she lightly
+enough, but one saw she had been startled. "What a funny boy you are,
+Laurence, to be sure! You don't expect me to remain a spinster, do
+you?"
+
+"You are going to be married?" This time despair was uppermost.
+
+"I most certainly am!" said Mary Virginia stoutly. "Why, I confided
+_that_ to you years and years and years ago! Don't you remember I
+always insisted he should have golden hair, and sea-blue eyes, and a
+classic brow, and a beautiful willingness to go away somewhere and die
+of a broken heart if I ordered him to?"
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"Who is who?" she parried provokingly.
+
+"The chap you're going to marry?"
+
+Mary Virginia appeared to reflect deeply and anxiously. She put out a
+foot, with the eternal feminine gesture, and dug a neat little hole in
+the graveled walk with her satin toe.
+
+"Laurence," said she. "I'm going to tell you the truth. The truth is,
+Laurence, that I simply hate to have to tell you the truth."
+
+"Mary Virginia!" he stammered wretchedly. "You hate to have to tell
+_me_ the truth? Oh, my dear, why? Why?"
+
+"Because."
+
+"But because why?"
+
+"Because," said the dear hussy, demurely, "I don't know."
+
+Laurence's arms fell to his sides, helplessly; he craned his neck and
+stared.
+
+"Mary Virginia!" said he, in a breathless whisper.
+
+Mary Virginia nodded. "It's really none of your business, you know,"
+she explained sweetly; "but as you've asked me, why, I'll tell you.
+That same question plagues and fascinates me, too, Laurence. Why, just
+consider! Here's a whole big, big world full of men--tall men, short
+men, lean men, fat men, silly men, wise men, ugly men, handsome men,
+sad men, glad men, good men, bad men, rich men, poor men,--oh, all
+sorts and kinds and conditions and complexions of men: any one of whom
+I might wake up some day and find myself married to: and I don't know
+which one! It delights and terrifies and fascinates and amuses and
+puzzles me when I begin to think about it. Here I've got to marry
+Somebody and I don't know any more than Adam's housecat who and where
+that Somebody is, and he might pop from around the corner at me, any
+minute! It makes the thing so much more interesting, so much more like
+a big risky game of guess, when you don't know, don't you think?"
+
+"No: it makes you miserable," said Laurence, briefly.
+
+"But I'm not miserable at all!"
+
+"You're not, because you don't have to be. But I am!"
+
+"You? Why, Laurence! Why should _you_ be miserable?" Her voice lost
+its blithe lightness; it was a little faint. She said hastily, without
+waiting for his reply: "I guess I'd better run in. It was silly of me
+to walk to the gate with you at this hour. I think Madame's calling
+me. Goodnight, Laurence."
+
+"No, you don't," said he. "And it wasn't silly of you to come, either;
+it was dear and delightful, and I prayed the Lord to put the notion
+into your darling head, and He did it. And now you're here you don't
+budge from this spot until you've heard what I've got to say.
+
+"Mary Virginia, I reckon you're just about the most beautiful girl in
+the world. You've been run after and courted and flattered and
+followed until it was enough to turn any girl's head, and it would
+have turned any girl's head but yours. You could say to almost any man
+alive, Come, and he'd come--oh, yes, he'd come quick. You've got the
+earth to pick and choose from--but I'm asking you to pick and choose
+_me_. I haven't got as much to offer you as I shall have some of these
+days, but I've got me myself, body and brain and heart and soul,
+sound to the core, and all of me yours, and I think that counts most,
+if you care as I do. Mary Virginia, will you marry me?"
+
+"Oh, but, Laurence! Why--Laurence--I--indeed, I didn't know--I didn't
+think--" stammered the girl. "At least, I didn't dream you cared--like
+that."
+
+"Didn't you? Well, all I can say is, you've been mighty blind, then.
+For I do care. I guess I've always cared like that, only, somehow,
+it's taken this one short winter to drive home what I'd been learning
+all my life?" said he, soberly. "I reckon I've been just like other
+fool-boys, Mary Virginia. That is, I spooned a bit around every good
+looking girl I ran up against, but I soon found out it wasn't the real
+thing, and I quit. Something in me knew all along I belonged to
+somebody else. To you. I believe now--Mary Virginia, I believe with
+all my heart--that I cared for you when you were squalling in your
+cradle."
+
+"Oh! ... Did I squall, really?"
+
+"_Squall?_ Sometimes it was tummy and sometimes it was temper. Between
+them you yelled like a Comanche," said this astonishing lover.
+
+Mary Virginia tilted her head back, adorably.
+
+"It was very, very noble of you to mind me--under the circumstances,"
+she conceded, graciously.
+
+"Believe me, it was," agreed Laurence. "I didn't know it, of course,
+but even at that tender age my fate was upon me, for I _liked_ to mind
+you. Even the bawling didn't daunt me, and I adored you when you
+resembled a squab. Yes, I was in love with you then. I'm in love with
+you now. My girl, my own girl, I'll go out of this world and into the
+next one loving you."
+
+"Then why," she asked reproachfully, "haven't you said so?"
+
+"Why haven't I said what?"
+
+"Why, you know. That you--loved me, Laurence." Her rich voice had sunk
+to a whisper.
+
+"Good Lord, haven't I been saying it?"
+
+"No, you haven't! You've been merely asking me to marry you. But you
+haven't said a word about loving me, until this very minute!"
+
+"But you must know perfectly well that I'm crazy about you, Mary
+Virginia!" said the boy, and his voice trembled with bewilderment as
+well as passion. "How in heaven's name could I help being crazy about
+you? Why, from the beginning of things, there's never been anybody
+else, but just you. I never even pretended to care for anybody else.
+No, there's nobody but you. Not for me. You're everything and all,
+where I'm concerned. And--please, please look up, beautiful, and tell
+me the truth: look at me, Mary Virginia!"
+
+The white-clad figure moved a hair's breadth nearer; the uplifted
+lovely face was very close.
+
+"Do I really mean that to you, Laurence? All that, really and truly?"
+she asked, wistfully.
+
+"Yes! And more. And more!"
+
+"I'll be the unhappiest girl in the world: I'll be the most miserable
+woman alive--if you ever change your mind, Laurence," said she.
+
+There was a quivering pause. Then:
+
+"You care?" asked the boy, almost breathlessly. "Mary Virginia, you
+care?" He laid his hands upon her shoulders and bent to search the
+alluring face.
+
+"Laurence!" said Mary Virginia, with a tremulous, half-tearful laugh,
+"Laurence, it's taken this one short winter to teach me, too. And--you
+were mistaken, utterly mistaken about those symptoms of mine. It
+wasn't tummy, Laurence. And it wasn't temper. I think--I am sure--that
+what I was trying so hard to squall to you in my cradle was--that I
+cared, Laurence."
+
+The young man's arms closed about her, and I saw the young mouths
+meet. I saw more than that: I saw other figures steal out into the
+moonlight and stand thus entwined, and one was the ghost of what once
+was I. That other, lost Armand De Rancé, looked at me wistfully with
+his clear eyes; and I was very, very sorry for him, as one may be
+poignantly sorry for the innocent, beautiful dead. My hand tightened
+on my beads, and the feel of my cassock upon me, as a uniform,
+steadied and sustained me.
+
+Those two had drawn back a little into the shadows as if the night had
+reached out its arms to them. Such a night belonged to such as these;
+they invest it, lend it meaning, give it intelligible speech. As for
+me, I was an old priest in an old cassock, with all his fond and
+foolish old heart melting in his breast. Youth alone is eternal and
+immortal. And as for love, it is of God.
+
+"_As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without
+end, Amen_." I had finished the decade. And then as one awakes from a
+trance I rose softly and as softly crept back to the Parish House,
+happy and at peace, because I had seen that which makes the morning
+stars rejoice when they sing together.
+
+"Armand," said my mother, sleepily, "is that you, dear? I must have
+been nodding in my chair. Mary Virginia's just walked to the gate with
+Laurence."
+
+"My goodness," said she, half an hour later. "What on earth can that
+child mean? Hadn't you better call her in, Armand?"
+
+"No," said I, decidedly.
+
+Laurence brought her back presently. There must have been something
+electrical in the atmosphere, for my mother of a sudden sat bolt
+upright in her chair. Women are like that. That is one of the reasons
+why men are so afraid of them.
+
+"Padre, and p'tite Madame," began Laurence, "you've been like a father
+and mother to me--and--and--"
+
+"And we thought you ought to know," said Mary Virginia.
+
+"My children!" cried my mother, ecstatically, "it is the wish of my
+heart! Always have I prayed our good God to let this happen--and you
+see?"
+
+"But it's a great secret: it's not to be _breathed_, yet," said Mary
+Virginia.
+
+"Except, of course, my father--" began Laurence.
+
+"And the Butterfly Man," I added, firmly. Well knowing none of us
+could keep such news from _him_.
+
+"As for me," said my mother, gloriously reckless, "I shall open one of
+the two bottles of our great-grandfather's wine!" The last time that
+wine had been opened was the day I was ordained. "Armand, go and bring
+John Flint."
+
+When I reached his rooms Kerry was whining over a huddled form on the
+porch steps. John Flint lay prone, his arms outstretched, horribly
+suggestive of one crucified. At my step he struggled upright. I had my
+arms about him in another moment.
+
+"Are you hurt? sick? John, John, my son, what is it? What is it?"
+
+"No, no, I'm all right. I--was just a little shaky for the minute.
+There, there, don't you be scared, father." But his voice shook, and
+the hand I held was icy cold.
+
+"My son, my dear son, what is wrong with you?"
+
+He controlled himself with a great effort. "Oh, I've been a little off
+my feed of late, father, that's all. See, I'm perfectly all right,
+now." And he squared his shoulders and tried to speak in his natural
+voice.
+
+"My mother wanted you to come over for a few minutes, there's
+something you're to know. But if you don't feel well enough--"
+
+He seemed to brace himself. "Maybe I know it already. However, I'm
+quite able to walk over and hear--anything I'm to be told," he said,
+composedly.
+
+In the lighted parlor his face showed up pale and worn, and his eyes
+hollow. But his smile was ready, his voice steady, and the hand which
+received the wine Mary Virginia herself brought him, did not tremble.
+
+"It is to our great, great happiness we wish you to drink, old
+friend," said Laurence. Intoxicated with his new joy, glowing,
+shining, the boy was magnificent.
+
+The Butterfly Man turned and looked at him; steadily, deliberately, a
+long, searching, critical look, as if measuring him by a new standard.
+Laurence stood the test. Then the man's eyes came back to the girl,
+rose-colored, radiant, star-eyed, and lingered upon her. He arose, and
+held up the glass in which our old wine seemed to leap upward in
+little amber-colored flames.
+
+"You'll understand," said the Butterfly Man, "that I haven't the
+words handy to my tongue to say what's in my heart. I reckon I'd have
+to be God for awhile, to make all I wish for you two come true." There
+was in look and tone and manner something so sweet and reverent that
+we were touched and astonished.
+
+When my mother had peremptorily sent Laurence home to the judge, and
+carried Mary Virginia off to talk the rest of the night through, I
+went back to his rooms with John Flint, in spite of the lateness of
+the hour: for I was uneasy about him.
+
+I think my nearness soothed him. For with that boyish diffident
+gesture of his he reached over presently and held me by the sleeve.
+
+"Parson," he asked, abruptly, "is a man born with a whole soul, or
+just a sort of shut-up seed of one? Is one given him free, or has he
+got to earn and pay for one before he gets it, parson? I want to
+know."
+
+"We all want to know that, John Flint. And the West says Yes, and the
+East, No."
+
+"I've been reading a bit," said he, slowly and thoughtfully. "I wanted
+to hear what both sides had to say. Paul is pretty plain, on his side
+of the fence. But, parson, some chaps that talk as if they knew quite
+as much as Paul does, say you don't get anything in this universe for
+nothing; you have to pay for what you get. As near as I can figure it
+out, you land here with a chance to earn yourself. You can quit or you
+can go on--it's all up to you. If you're a sport and play the game
+straight, why, you stand to win yourself a water-tight fire-proof
+soul. Because, you see, you've earned and paid for it, parson. That
+sounded like good sense to me. Looked to me as if I was sort of doing
+it myself. But when I began to go deeper into the thing, why, I got
+stuck. For I can't deny I'd been doing it more because I had to than
+because I wanted to. But--which-ever way it is, I'm paying! Oh, yes,
+I'm paying!"
+
+"Ah, but so is everybody else, my son," said I, sadly. "... each in
+his own coin. ... But after all isn't oneself worth while, whatever
+the cost?"
+
+"I don't know," said he. "That's where I'm stuck. Is the whole show a
+skin game or is it worth while? But, parson, whatever it is, you pay a
+hell of a price when you buy yourself on the instalment plan, believe
+me!" his voice broke, as if on a suppressed groan. "If I could get it
+over and done with, pay for my damned little soul in one big gob, I
+wouldn't mind. But to have to buy what I'm buying, to have to pay what
+I'm paying--"
+
+"You are ill," said I, deeply concerned. "I was afraid of this."
+
+He laughed, more like a croak.
+
+"Sure I'm sick. I'm sick to the core of me, but you and Westmoreland
+can't dose me. Nobody can do anything for me, I have to do it myself
+or go under. That's part of paying on the instalment plan, too,
+parson."
+
+"I don't think I exactly understand--"
+
+"No, you wouldn't. _You_ paid in a lump sum, you see. And you got what
+you got. Whatever it was that got _you_, parson, got the best of the
+bargain." His voice softened.
+
+"You are talking in parables," said I, severely.
+
+"But I'm not paying in parables, parson. I'm paying in _me_," said he,
+grimly. And he laughed again, a laugh of sheer stark misery that
+raised a chill echo in my heart. His hand crept back to my sleeve.
+
+"I--can't always can the squeal," he whispered.
+
+"If only I could help you!" I grieved.
+
+"You do," said he, quickly. "You do, by being you. I hang on to you,
+parson. And say, look here! Don't you think I'm such a hog I can't
+find time to be glad other folks are happy even if I'm not. If there's
+one thing that could make me feel any sort of way good, it's to know
+those two who were made for each other have found it out. It sort of
+makes it look as if some things do come right, even if others are
+rotten wrong. I'm glad till it hurts me. I'd like you to believe
+that."
+
+"I do believe it. And, my son! if you can find time to be glad of
+others' happiness, without envy, why, you're bound to come right,
+because you're sound at the core."
+
+"You reckon I'm worth my price, then, parson?"
+
+"I reckon you're worth your price, whatever it is. I don't worry about
+you, John Flint."
+
+And somehow, I did not. I left him with Kerry's head on his knee. His
+hand was humanly warm again, and the voice in which he told me
+goodnight was bravely steady. He sat erect in his doorway, fronting
+the night like a soldier on guard. If he were buying his soul on the
+instalment plan I was sure he would be able to meet the payments,
+whatever they were, as they fell due.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE WISHING CURL
+
+
+With February the cold that the Butterfly Man had wished for came with
+a vengeance. The sky lost its bright blue friendliness and changed
+into a menacing gray, the gray of stormy water. Overnight the flowers
+vanished, leaving our gardens stripped and bare, and our birds that
+had been so gay were now but sorry shivering balls of ruffled
+feathers, with no song left in them. When rain came the water froze in
+the wagon-ruts, and ice-covered puddles made street-corners dangerous.
+
+This intense cold, damp, heavy, penetrating, coming upon the heels of
+the unseasonably warm weather, seemed to bring to a head all the
+latent sickness smoldering in the mill-parish, for it suddenly burst
+forth like a conflagration. If the Civic League had not already done
+so much to better conditions in the poorer district, we must have had
+a very serious epidemic, as Dr. Westmoreland bluntly told the Town
+Council.
+
+As it was, things were pretty bad for awhile, and the inevitable white
+hearse moved up and down, stopping now at this door, now at that. In
+one narrow street, I remember, it moved in the exact shape of a figure
+eight within the week. I do not like to recall those days. I buried
+the children with the seal of Holy Mother Church upon their innocence;
+I repeated over them "The Lord hath given, the Lord hath taken
+away"--and knew in my heart that it was man-made want, the greed of
+money-madness, that had taken them untimely out of their mothers'
+laps. And the earth was like iron; it opened unwillingly to receive
+the babes of the poor.
+
+In and out of stricken mill-houses and shabby shacks, as regularly as
+Westmoreland and I, whose business and duty lay there, came John
+Flint. He made no effort to comfort parents, although these seemed to
+derive a curious consolation from his presence. He did not even come
+because he wanted to; he came because the children begged to see the
+Butterfly Man and one may not refuse a sick child. He had made friends
+with them, made toys for them; and now he saw dull eyes brighten at
+his approach and pale faces try to smile; languid and fever-hot hands
+were held out to him. All the force of the affection of young
+children, their dazzling faith, the almost unthinkable power upon
+their plastic minds of those whom they trust, came home to him. He
+could not, in such an hour, accept lightly, with a careless smile, the
+fact that children loved him. And once or twice a small hand that
+clung to him grew cold in his clasp, and under his eyes a child's
+closed to this world.
+
+Now, something that saw straight, thought like a naked sword-blade,
+ate like a testing acid into shams and hated evasions and half-truths
+and subterfuges, had of late been showing more and more behind John
+Flint's reserve; and I think it might have hardened into a mentality
+cold and bright and barren, hard and cutting as a diamond, had it not
+been for the children whom he had to see suffer and die.
+
+There was one child of whom he was particularly fond--a child with
+the fairest of fair hair, deep and sweet blue eyes, and the quickest,
+shyest, most fleeting of smiles to lighten flashingly her small pale
+serious face. She had been one of the first of the mill folks'
+children to make friends with the Butterfly Man. She used to watch for
+him, and then, holding on to one of his fingers, she liked to trot
+sedately down the street beside him.
+
+This child's going was sudden and rather painful. Westmoreland did
+what he could, but there was no stamina in that frail body, so her's
+had been one of the small hands to fall limp and still out of John
+Flint's. The doll he had made for her lay in the crook of her arm; it
+had on a red calico dress, very garish in the gray room, and against
+the child's whiteness.
+
+Westmoreland stood, big and compassionate, at the foot of the bed. His
+ruddy face showed wan and behind his glasses his gray tired eyes
+winked and blinked.
+
+"There must be," said the Doctor, as if to himself, "some eternal vast
+reservoir somewhere, that stores up all this terrible total of
+unnecessary suffering--the cruel and needless suffering inflicted upon
+children and animals, in particular. Perhaps it's a spiritual serum
+used for the saving of the race. Perhaps races higher up than we use
+it--as _we_ use rabbits and guinea-pigs. No, no, nothing's wasted;
+there's a forward end to pain, somewhere." He looked down at the child
+and shook his head doubtfully:
+
+"But when all is said and done," he muttered, "what do such as these
+get out of it? Nothing--so far as we can see. They're victims, they
+and the innocent beasts, thrust into a world which tortures and
+devours them. Why? Why? Why?"
+
+"There is nothing to do but leave that everlasting Why to God," said
+I, painfully.
+
+The Butterfly Man looked up and one saw that cold sword-straight,
+diamond-hard something in his eyes:
+
+"Parson," said he, grimly, "you're a million miles off the right
+track--and you know it. Leaving things to God--things like poor kids
+dying because they're gouged out of their right to live--is just about
+as rotten stupid and wrong as it can well be. God's all right; he does
+his part of the job. You do yours, and what happens? Why, my
+butterflies answer that! I'm punk on your catechism, and if _this_ is
+all it can teach I hope I die punk on it; but as near as I can make
+out, original sin is leaving things like this"--and he looked at his
+small friend with her doll on her arm--"to God, instead of tackling
+the job yourself and straightening it out."
+
+The child's mother, a gaunt creature without a trace of youth left in
+her, although she could not have been much more than thirty, shambled
+over to a chair on the other side of the bed. She wore a faded red
+calico wrapper--a scrap of it had made the doll's frock--and a
+blue-checked apron with holes in it. Her hair was drawn painfully back
+from her forehead, and there was a wispy fringe of it on the back of
+her scraggy neck. In her dull eyes glimmered nothing but the innate
+uneasiness of those who are always in need, and her mouth had drawn
+itself into the shape of a horseshoe. There is no luck in a horseshoe
+hung thus on a woman's face. One might fancy she felt no emotion, her
+whole demeanor was so apathetic; but of a sudden she leaned over and
+took up one of the thick shining curls; half smiling, she began to
+wrap it about her finger.
+
+"I useter be right smart proud o' Louisa's hair," she remarked in a
+drawling, listless voice. "She come by it from them uppidy folks o'
+her pa's. I've saw her when she wasn't much more 'n hair an' eyes,
+times her pa was laid up with the misery in his chest, an' me with
+nothin' but piecework weeks on end.
+
+"... She was a cu'rus kind o' child, Louisa was. She sort o'
+'spicioned things wasn't right, but you think that child ever let a
+squeal out o' her? Not her! Lemme tell you-all somethin', jest to show
+what kind o' a heart that child had, suhs."
+
+With a loving and mothering motion she moved the bright curl about and
+about her hard finger. She spoke half intimately, half garrulously;
+and from the curl she would lift her faded eyes to the Butterfly
+Man's.
+
+"'T was a Sarrerday night, an' I was a-walkin' up an' down, account o'
+me bein' awful low in the mind.
+
+"'Ma,' says Louisa, 'I'm reel hungry to-night. You reckon I could have
+a piece o' bread with butter on it? I wisht I could taste some bread
+with butter on it,' says she.
+
+"'Darlin',' says I, turrible sad, 'Po' ma c'n give yo' the naked bread
+an' thanks to God I got even that to give,' I says. 'But they ain't a
+scrap o' butter in this house, an' no knowin' how to git any. Oh,
+darlin', ma's so sorry!'
+
+"She looks up with that quick smile o' her'n. Yes, suh, Mr. Flint, she
+ups and smiles. 'You don't belong to be sorry any, ma,' says she,
+comfortin'. 'Don't you mind none at all. Why, ma, darlin', _I just
+love naked bread without no butter on it_!' says she. My God, Mr.
+Flint, I bust out a-cryin' in her face. Seemed like I natchelly
+couldn't stand no mo'!" And smiling vaguely with her poor old
+down-curved mouth, she went on fingering the curl.
+
+"Will you-all look a' that!" she murmured, with pride. "Even her
+hair's lovin', an' sort o' holds on like it wants you should touch it.
+My Lord o' glory, I'm glad her pa ain't livin' to see this day! He had
+his share o' misery, po' man, him dyin' o' lung-fever an' all....
+
+"Six head o' young ones we'd had, me an' him. An' they'd all dropped
+off. Come spring, an' one'd be gone. I kep' a-comfortin' that man best
+I could they was better off, angels not bein' pindlin' an' hungry an'
+barefoot, an' thanks be, they ain't no mills in heaven. But their pa
+he couldn't see it thataway nohow. He was turrible sot on them
+children, like us pore folks gen'rally is. They was reel fine-lookin'
+at first.
+
+"When all the rest of 'em had went, her pa he sort o' sot his heart on
+Louisa here. 'For we ain't got nothin' else, ma,' says he. 'An' please
+the good Lord, we're a-goin' to give this one book-learnin' an' sich,
+an' so be she'll miss them mills,' he says. 'Ma, less us aim to make a
+lady o' our Louisa. Not that the Lord ain't done it a'ready,' says her
+pa, 'but we got to he'p Him keep on an' finish the job thorough.' An'
+here's him an' her both gone, an' me without a God's soul belongin' to
+me this day! My God, Mr. Flint, ain't it something turrible the things
+happens to us pore folks?"
+
+The Butterfly Man looked from her to Westmoreland and me: doctor of
+bodies, doctor of souls, naturalist, what had we to say to this woman
+stripped of all? But she, with the greater wisdom of the poor, spoke
+for herself and for us. A sort of veiled light crept into her sodden
+face.
+
+"It ain't I ain't grateful to you-all," said she. "God knows I be. You
+was good to Louisa. Doctor, you remember that day you give her a ride
+in your ottermobile an' forgot to bring her home for more 'n a hour?
+My, but that child was happy!"
+
+"'Ma,' says she when I come home that night, 'you know what heaven
+is?'
+
+"'Child,' says I, 'folks like me mostly knows what it ain't.'
+
+"'I beat you, ma!' says she, clappin' her hands. 'Heaven ain't nothin'
+much but country an' roads an' trees an' butterflies, an' things like
+that,' says she. 'An' God's got ottermobiles, plenty an' plenty
+ottermobiles, an' you ride free in 'em long's you feel like it, 'cause
+that's what they's _for_. An', ma,' says she, 'God's, showfers is all
+of 'em Dr. Westmorelands and Mr. Flints.' Yea, suh, you-all been
+mighty kind to Louisa. But I reckon," she drawled, "it was Mr. Flint
+Louisa loved best, him bein' a childern's kind o' man, an' on account
+o' Loujaney." She laid a hand upon the rag doll lying on the little
+girl's arm.
+
+"From the first day you give her that doll, Mr. Flint--which she named
+Loujaney, for her an' me both--that child ain't been parted from it."
+She smiled down at the two. I could almost have prayed she would weep
+instead. It would have been easier to bear.
+
+"The King's Daughters, they give her a mighty nice doll off their
+Christmas tree last year, but Louisa, she didn't take to it like she
+done to Loujaney.
+
+"'_That_ doll's jest a visitin' lady,' says she, 'but Loujaney, she's
+_my child_. Mr. Flint made her a-purpose for me, same's God made me
+for you, ma, an' she's mine by bornation. I can live with Loujaney. I
+ain't a mite ashamed afore her when we ain't got nothin', but I turn
+'tother's face to the wall so she won't know. Loujaney's pore folks
+same's you an' me, an' she knows prezac'ly how 't is. That's why I
+love her so much.
+
+"An' day an' night," resumed the drawling voice, "them two's been
+together. She jest lived an' et an' slept with that doll. If ever a
+doll gits to grow feelin's, Loujaney's got 'em. I s'pose I'd best give
+that visitin' doll to some child that wants it bad, but I ain't got
+the heart to take Loujaney away from her ma. I'm a-goin' to let them
+two go right on sleepin' together.
+
+"Mr. Flint, suh, seein' Louisa liked you so much, an' it's you she'd
+want to have it--" she leaned over, pushed the thick fair hair aside,
+and laid her finger upon a very whimsy of a curl, shorter, paler,
+fairer than the others, just above the little right ear.
+
+"Her pa useter call that the wishin' curl," said she, half
+apologetically. "You see, suh, he was a comical sort of man, an' a great
+hand for pertendin' things. I never could pertend. Things is what they
+is an' pertendin' don't change 'em none. But him an' her was different.
+That's how come him to pertend the Lord'd put the rainbow's pot o' gold
+in Louisa's hair with a wish in it, an' that ridic'lous curl one side
+her head, like a mark, was the wishin' curl. He'd pertend he could pull
+it twict an' say whisperin', '_Bickery-ickery-ee--my wish is comin' to
+me_,' an' he'd git it. An' she liked to pertend 'twas so an' she could
+wish things on it for me an' git 'em.... Clo'es an' shoes an' fire an'
+cake an' beefsteak an' butter an' stayin' home.... Just pertendin', you
+see.
+
+"Mr. Flint, suh, _I_ ain't got a God's thing any more to wish for, but
+you bein' the sort o' man you are, I'd rather 'twas you had Louisa's
+wishin' curl, to remember her by." Snip! went the scissors; and there
+it lay, pale as the new gold of spring sunlight, curling as young
+grape-tendrils, in the Butterfly Man's open palm.
+
+"_Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee_," said
+the great Apostle to the lame man who lay beside the gate of the
+temple that is called, Beautiful.
+
+"I ain't got nothin' else," said the common mill-woman; and laid in
+John Flint's hand Louisa's wishing-curl.
+
+He stared at it, and turned as pale as the child on her pillow. The
+human pity of the thing, its sheer stark piercing simplicity, squeezed
+his heart as with a great hand.
+
+"My God!" he choked. "My--God!" and a rending sob tore loose from his
+throat. For the first time in his life he had to weep; uncontrolled,
+unashamed, childlike, fatherly, brotherly. For he had experienced,
+unselfishly, on account of one of the humblest of God's creatures, one
+of the great divine emotions. And when that happens to a man it is as
+if his soul were winnowed by the wind of an archangel's wings.
+
+Westmoreland and I slipped out and left him with the woman. She would
+know what further thing to say to him.
+
+Outside in the bleak bitter street, the Doctor laid his hand on my
+shoulder. He winked his eyes rapidly. "Father," said he, earnestly,
+"when I witness such a thing as we've seen this morning, I do not lose
+faith. I gain it." And he gripped me heartily with his big gloved
+hand. "Tell John Flint," he added, "that sometimes a rag doll is a
+mighty big thing for a man to have to his credit." Then he was gone,
+with a tear freezing on his cheek.
+
+"Angels," John Flint had said more than once, "are not middle-aged
+doctors with shoulders on them like a barn-door, and ribs like a dray;
+angels don't have bald heads and wear a red tie and tan shoes. But I'd
+pass them all up, from Gabriel down, wings and tailfeathers, for one
+Walter Westmoreland."
+
+I would, too. And I walked along, thinking of what I had just
+witnessed; sensing its time value. To those slight and fragile things
+which had, for John Flint, outweighed the scales of evil--a gray moth,
+a butterfly's wing, a bird's nest--I added a child's fair hair, and a
+rag doll that was going to sleep with its ma.
+
+There were but few people on the freezing streets, for folks preferred
+to stay indoors and hug the fire. Fronting the wind, I walked with a
+lowered head, and thus collided with a lady who turned a corner at the
+same time I did.
+
+"Don't apologize, Padre," said Mary Virginia, for it was she. "It was
+my fault--I wasn't looking where I was going."
+
+"Are you by any chance bound for the Parish House? Because my mother
+will be on her way to a poor thing that's just lost her only child.
+Where have you been these past weeks? I haven't seen you for ages."
+
+"Oh, I've been rather busy, too, Padre. And I haven't been quite
+well--" she hesitated. I thought I understood. For, possibly from some
+servant who had overheard Mrs. Eustis expostulating with her daughter,
+the news of Mary Virginia's unannounced engagement had sifted pretty
+thoroughly throughout the length and breadth of Appleboro; a town
+where an unfledged and callow rumor will start out of a morning and
+come home to roost at night with talons and tailfeathers.
+
+That Mary Virginia had all James Eustis's own quiet will-power,
+everybody knew. She would not, perhaps, marry Laurence in the face of
+her mother's open opposition. Neither would she marry anybody else to
+please her mother in defiance of her own heart. There was a pretty
+struggle ahead, and Appleboro took sides for and against, and settled
+itself with eager expectancy to watch the outcome.
+
+So I concluded that Mary Virginia had not been having a pleasant time.
+Indeed, it struck me that she was really unwell. One might even
+suspect she had known sleepless nights, from the shadowed eyes and the
+languor of her manner.
+
+Just then, swinging down the street head erect, shoulders square, the
+freezing weather only intensifying his glowing fairness, came Howard
+Hunter. The man was clear red and white. His gold hair and beard
+glittered, his bright blue eyes snapped and sparkled. He seemed to
+rejoice in the cold, as if some Viking strain in him delighted in its
+native air.
+
+As he paused to greet us a coldness not of the weather crept into Mary
+Virginia's eyes. She did not speak, but bowed formally. Mr. Hunter,
+holding her gaze for a moment, lifted his brows whimsically and
+smiled; then, bowing, he passed on. She stood looking after him, her
+lips closed firmly upon each other.
+
+Tucking her hand in my arm, she walked with me to the Parish House
+gate. No, she said, she couldn't come in. But I was to give her
+regards to the Butterfly Man, and her love to Madame.
+
+"Parson," the Butterfly Man asked me that night, "have you seen Mary
+Virginia recently?"
+
+"I saw her to-day."
+
+"I saw her to-day, too. She looked worried. She hasn't been here
+lately, has she?"
+
+"No. She hasn't been feeling well. I hear Mrs. Eustis has been very
+outspoken about the engagement, and I suppose that's what worries Mary
+Virginia."
+
+"I don't think so. She knew she had to go up against that, from the
+first. She's more than a match for her mother. There's something else.
+Didn't I tell you I had a hunch there was going to be trouble? Well,
+I've got a hunch it's here."
+
+"Nonsense!" said I, shortly.
+
+"I know," said he, stubbornly. And he added, irrelevantly: "It's
+generally known, parson, that Eustis will be nominated. Inglesby's
+managed to gain considerable ground, thanks to Hunter, and folks say
+if it wasn't for Eustis he'd win. As it is, he'll be swamped. I hear
+he was thunderstruck when he got wind of what Mayne was going to play
+against him--for he knows Laurence brought Eustis out. Inglesby's
+mighty sore. He's the sort that hates to have to admit he can't get
+what he wants."
+
+"Then he'd better save himself the trouble of having to put it to the
+test," said I.
+
+"I'm wondering," said John Flint. "I wish I hadn't got that hunch!"
+
+I did not see Mary Virginia again for some time. Just then I moved
+breathlessly in a horrid round of sickbeds, for the wave had reached
+its height; already it had swept seventeen of my flock out of time
+into eternity.
+
+I came home on one of the last of those heavy evenings, to find
+Laurence waiting for me in my study. He was standing in the middle of
+the room, his hands clasped behind his back.
+
+"Padre," said he by way of greeting, "have you seen Mary Virginia
+lately? Has Madame?"
+
+"No, except for a chance meeting one morning on the street. But she
+has been sending me help right along, bless her."
+
+"Has Madame heard anything from her, Padre?"
+
+"No, I don't think so. But we've been frightfully busy of late, you
+understand."
+
+"No, neither of you know," said Laurence, in a low voice. "You
+wouldn't know. Padre, I--don't look at me like that, please; I'm not
+ill. But, without reason--swear to you before God, without any reason
+whatever, that I can conjure up--she has thrown me over, jilted
+me--Mary Virginia, Padre! And I'm to forget her. _I'm to forget her,
+you understand?_ Because she can't marry me." He spoke in a level,
+quiet, matter of fact voice. Then laughter shook him like a nausea.
+
+I laid my hand upon him. "Now tell me," said I, "what you have to tell
+me."
+
+"I've really told you all I know," said Laurence. "Day before
+yesterday she sent for me. You can't think how happy it made me to
+have her send for me, how happy I've been since I knew she cared! I
+felt as if there wasn't anything I couldn't do. There was nothing too
+great to be accomplished--
+
+"Well, I went. She was standing in the middle of the long
+drawing-room. There was a fire behind her. She was so like ice I
+wonder now she didn't thaw. All in white, and cold, and frozen. And
+she said she couldn't marry me. That's why she had sent for me--to
+tell me that she meant to break our engagement: _Mary Virginia_!
+
+"I wanted to know why. I was within my rights in asking that, was I
+not? And she wouldn't let me get close to her, Padre. She waved me
+away. I got out of her that there were reasons: no, she wouldn't say
+what those reasons were; but there were reasons. Her reasons, of
+course. When I began to talk, to plead with her, she begged me not to
+make things harder for her, but to be generous and go away. She just
+couldn't marry me, didn't I understand? So I must release her."
+
+He hung his head. The youth of him had been dimmed and darkened.
+
+"And you said--?"
+
+"I said," said Laurence simply, "that she was mine as much as I was
+hers, and that I'd go just then because she asked me to, but I was
+coming back. I tried to see her again yesterday. She wouldn't see me.
+She sent down word she wasn't at home. But I knew all along she was.
+Mary Virginia, Padre!
+
+"I tried again. I haven't got any pride where she's concerned. Why
+should I? She's--she's my soul, I think. I can't put it into words,
+because you can't put feelings into words, but she's the pith of life.
+Then I wrote her. Half a dozen times I wrote her. I got down to the
+level of bribing the colored maid to take the notes to her, one every
+hour, like a medicine, and slip them under her door. I know she
+received them. I repeated it again to-day. It's Mary Virginia at
+stake, and I can't take chances, can I? And this afternoon she sent
+this.
+
+     "Oh, Laurence, be generous and spare me the torment of
+     questions. So far you have not reproached me; spare me that,
+     too! Don't you understand? I cannot marry you. Accept the
+     inevitable as I do. Forgive me and forget me. M.V.E."
+
+The writing showed extreme nervousness, haste, agitation.
+
+"Well?" said Laurence. But I stood staring at the crumpled bit of
+paper. I knew what I knew. I knew what my mother had thought fit to
+reveal to me of the girl's feelings: Mary Virginia had been very sure.
+I remembered what my eyes had seen, my ears heard. I was sure she was
+faithful, for I knew my girl. And yet--
+
+There came back to me a morning in spring and I riding gaily off in
+the glad sunshine, full of faith and of hope. To find what I had
+found. I handed the note back, in silence.
+
+"Oh, why, why, why?" burst out the boy, in a gust of acute torment.
+"For God's sake, why? Think of her eyes and her mouth, Padre--and her
+forehead like a saint's--No, she's not false. God never made such eyes
+as hers untruthful. I believe in her. I've got to believe in her. I
+tell you, I belong to her, body and soul." He began to walk up and
+down the room, and his shoulders twitched, as if a lash were laid over
+them. "I could forgive her for not loving me, if she doesn't love me
+and found it out, and said so. Women change, do they not? But--to
+take a man that loves her--and tear his living soul to shreds and
+tatters--
+
+"If _she's_ a liar and a jilt, who and what am I to believe? Why
+should she do it, Padre--to me that love her? Oh, my God, think of it:
+to be betrayed by the best beloved! No, I can't think it. This isn't
+just any light girl: this is Mary Virginia!"
+
+I put my hand on his shoulder. He is a head over me, and once again as
+broad, perhaps. We two fell into step. I did not attempt to counsel or
+console.
+
+"Here I come like a whining kid, Padre," said he, remorsefully,
+"piling my troubles upon your shoulders that carry such burdens
+already. Forgive me!"
+
+"I shouldn't be able to forgive you if you didn't come," said I. Up
+and down the little room, up and down, the two of us.
+
+Came a light tap at the door. The Butterfly Man's head followed it.
+
+"Didn't I hear Laurence talking?" asked he, smiling. The smile froze
+at sight of the boy's face. He closed the door, and leaned against it.
+
+"What's wrong with her?" he asked, quickly. It did not occur to us to
+question his right to ask, or to wonder how he knew.
+
+In a dull voice Laurence told him. He held out his hand for the note,
+read it in silence, and handed it back.
+
+"What do you make of it?" I asked.
+
+"Trouble," said he, curtly; and he asked, reproachfully, "Don't you
+know her, both of you, by this time?"
+
+"I know," said Laurence, "that she has sent me away from her."
+
+"Because she wants to, or because she thinks she has to?" asked John
+Flint.
+
+"Why should she do so unless it pleased her?" I asked sorrowfully.
+
+His eyes flashed. "Why, she's _herself!_ A girl like her couldn't play
+anybody false because there's no falseness in her to do it with. What
+are you going to do about it?"
+
+"There is nothing to do," said Laurence, "but to release her; a
+gentleman can do no less."
+
+John Flint's lips curled. "Release her? I'd hang on till hell froze
+over and caught me in the ice! I'd wait. I'd write and tell her she
+didn't need to make herself unhappy about me, I was unhappy enough
+about her for the two of us, because she didn't trust me enough to
+tell me what her trouble was, so I could help her. That first and
+always I was her friend, right here, whenever she needed me and
+whatever she needed me for. And I'd stand by. What else is a man good
+for?"
+
+"I believe," said I, "that John Flint has given you the right word,
+Laurence. Just hold fast and be faithful."
+
+Laurence lifted his haggard face. "There isn't any question of my
+being faithful to her, Padre. And I couldn't make myself believe that
+she's less so than I. What Flint says tallies with my own intuition.
+I'll write her to-night." He laid his hand on John Flint's arm.
+"You're all right, Bughunter," said he, earnestly. "'Night, Padre."
+Then he was gone.
+
+"Do you think," said John Flint, when he had rejected every conjecture
+his mind presented as the possible cause of Mary Virginia's action,
+"that Inglesby could be at the bottom of this?"
+
+"I think," said I, "that you have an obsession where that man is
+concerned. He is a disease with you. Good heaven, what could Inglesby
+possibly have to do with Mary Virginia's affairs?"
+
+"That's what I'm wondering. Well, then, who is it?"
+
+"Perhaps," said I, unwillingly, "it is Mary Virginia herself."
+
+"Forget it! She's not that sort."
+
+"She is a woman."
+
+"Ain't it the truth, though?" he jeered. "What a peach of a reason for
+not acting like herself, looking like herself, being like herself!
+She's a woman! So are all the rest of the folks that weren't born men,
+if you'll notice. They're women; we're men: and both of us are people.
+Get it?"
+
+"I get it," said I, annoyed. "Your attitude, John Flint, is a vulgar
+platitude. And permit me to--"
+
+"I'll permit you to do anything except get cross," said he, quickly.
+The ghost of a smile touched his face. "Being bad-tempered, parson,
+suits you just about as well as plaid pants and a Hello Bill button."
+
+"I am a human being," I began, frigidly.
+
+"And I'm another. And so is Mary Virginia. And there we are, parson.
+I'm troubled. I don't like the looks of things. It's no use telling
+myself this is none of my business; it is very much my business. You
+remember ... when I came here ..." he hesitated, for this is a subject
+we do not like to discuss, "what you were up against ... parson, I've
+thought you must have been caught and crucified yourself, and learned
+things on the cross, and that's why you held on to me. But with the
+kids, it was different--particularly the little girl. The first thing
+I ever got from her was a lovely look, the first time ever I set eyes
+on her she came with an underwing moth. I'd be a poor sort that
+wouldn't be willing to be spilt like water and scattered like dust, if
+she needed me now, wouldn't I?"
+
+"But," said I, perplexed, "what can you do? A young lady has seen fit
+to break her engagement; young ladies often see fit to do that, my
+dear fellow. This isn't an uncommon case. Also, one doesn't interfere
+in a lady's private affairs, not even when one is an old priest who
+has loved her since her childhood, nor yet a Butterfly Man who is her
+devoted friend. Don't you see?"
+
+"I see there's something wrong," said he, doggedly.
+
+"Perhaps. But that doesn't give one the right to pry into something
+she evidently doesn't wish to reveal," I told him.
+
+"I suppose," said he, heavily, "you are right. But if you hear
+anything, let me know, won't you?"
+
+I promised; but I found out nothing, save that it had not been Mrs.
+Eustis who influenced her daughter's action. This came out in a call
+Mrs. Eustis made at the Parish House.
+
+"My dear," she told my mother, "when she told me she had broken that
+engagement, I was astounded! But I can't say I wasn't pleased.
+Laurence is a dear boy; and his family's as good as ours--no one can
+take that away from the Maynes. But Mary Virginia should have done
+better.
+
+"I quarreled with her, argued with her, pleaded with her. I cried and
+cried. But she's James Eustis to the life--you might as well try to
+move the Rock of Gibraltar. Then one morning she came to my room and
+told me she found she couldn't marry Laurence! And she had already
+told him so, and broken her engagement, and I wasn't to ask her any
+questions. I didn't. I was too glad."
+
+"And--Laurence--?" asked my mother, ironically.
+
+"Laurence? Laurence is a _man_. Men get over that sort of thing. I've
+known a man to be perfectly mad over his wife--and marry, six months
+after her death. They're like that. They always get over it. It's
+their nature."
+
+"Let us hope, then, for Laurence's peace of mind," said my mother,
+"that he'll get over it--like all the rest of his sex. Though I
+shouldn't call Laurence fickle, or faithless, if you ask me."
+
+"He is a very fine boy. I always liked him myself and James adores
+him. If I had two or three daughters, I'd be willing to let one of
+them marry Laurence--after awhile. But having only one I must say I
+want her to do better."
+
+"I see," said my mother. To me she said later:
+
+"And yet, Armand, although I condemn it, I can quite appreciate Mrs.
+Eustis's point of view. I was somewhat like that myself, once upon a
+time."
+
+"You? Never!"
+
+My mother smiled tolerantly.
+
+"Ah, but you never offered me a daughter-in-law I did not relish. It
+was much easier for me to bear the Church!"
+
+That night I went over to John Flint's, for I thought that the fact
+of Mary Virginia's deliberately choosing to act as she had done would
+in a measure settle the matter and relieve his anxiety.
+
+There was a cedar wood fire before which Kerry lay stretched; little
+white Pitache, grown a bit stiff of late, occupied a chair he had
+taken over for his own use and from which he refused to be dislodged.
+Major Cartwright had just left, and the room still smelt of his cigar,
+mingling pleasantly with the clean smell of the burning cedar.
+
+On the table, within reach of his hand, was ranged the Butterfly Man's
+entire secular library: Andrew Lang's translation of Homer; Omar;
+Richard Burton's Kasidah; Saadi's Gulistan, over which he chuckled;
+Robert Burns; Don Quixote; Joan of Arc, and Huckleberry Finn; Treasure
+Island; the Bible Miss Sally Ruth had given him--I never could induce
+him to change it for my own Douai version--; one or two volumes of
+Shakespeare; the black Obituary Book, grown loathsomely fat; and the
+"Purely Original Verse of James Gordon Coogler," which a light-minded
+professor of mathematics at the University of South Carolina had given
+him, and in which he evilly delighted. Other books came and went, but
+these remained. To-night it was the Bible which lay open, at the Book
+of Psalms.
+
+"Look at this." He laid his finger on a verse of the nineteenth: "The
+testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple."
+
+"The times I've turned that over in my mind, out in the woods by night
+and the fields by day!" said the Butterfly Man, musingly. "The simple
+is _me_, parson, and the testimony is green things growing, and
+butterflies and moths, and Kerry, and people, and trouble, and
+Louisa's hair, and--well, about everything, I reckon.
+
+"Yes, everything's testimony, and it can make wise the simple--if he's
+not too simple. I reckon, parson, the simple is lumped in three
+lots--the fool for a little while, the fool for half the day, and the
+life-everlasting twenty-four-hours-a-day, dyed-in-the-wool damn-fool.
+
+"Some of us are the life-everlasting kind, the kind that used to make
+old man Solomon wall his eyes and throw fits and then get busy and
+hatch out proverbs with stings in their tails. A lot of us are
+half-the-day fools; and all the rest are fools for a little while.
+There's nobody born that hasn't got his times and seasons for being a
+fool for a while. But that's the sort of simple the testimony slams
+some sense into. Like _me_," he added earnestly, and closed the great
+Book.
+
+I told him presently what I had heard; that, as he surmised, Mrs.
+Eustis was not responsible for Mary Virginia's change of mind--or
+perhaps of heart. He nodded. But he offered no comment. Now, since I
+had come in, he had been from time to time casting at me rather
+speculative and doubtful glances. He drummed on the table, smiled
+sheepishly, and presently reached for a package, unwrapped it, and
+laid before me a book.
+
+'"The Relation of Insect Life to Human Society,'" I read, "By John
+Flint and Rev. Armand Jean De Rancé. With notes and drawings by Father
+De Rancé." It bore the imprint of a great publishing house.
+
+"You suggested it more than once," said John Flint. "Off and on, these
+two years, I've been working on it. All the notes I particularly asked
+you for were for this. Mighty fine and acute notes they are,
+too--you'd never have been willing to do it if you'd known they were
+for publication--I know you. And I saved the drawings. I'm vain of
+those illustrations. Abbot's weren't in it, next to yours."
+
+As a matter of fact I have a pretty talent for copying plant and
+insect. I have but little originality, but this very limitation made
+the drawings more valuable. They were almost painfully exact, the
+measurements and coloration being as approximately perfect as I could
+get them.
+
+Now that the book has been included in all standard lists I needn't
+speak of it at length--the reviewers have given it what measure of
+bricks and bouquets it deserved. But it is a clever, able,
+comprehensive book, and that is why it has made its wide appeal.
+
+Every least credit that could possibly be given to me, he had
+scrupulously rendered. He had made full use of note and drawing. He
+made light enough of his own great labor of compilation, but his
+preface was quick to state his "great indebtedness to his patient and
+wise teacher."
+
+One sees that the situation was not without irony. But I could not
+cloud his pleasure in my co-authorship nor dim his happiness by
+disclaiming one jot or tittle of what he had chosen to accredit me
+with. It is more blessed to give than to receive, but much more
+difficult to receive than to give.
+
+"Do you like it?" he asked, hopefully.
+
+"I am most horribly proud of it," said I, honestly.
+
+"Sure, parson? Hand on your heart?"
+
+"Sure. Hand on my heart."
+
+"All right, then," said he, sighing with relief.
+
+"Here's your share of the loot," and he pushed a check across the
+table.
+
+"But--" I hesitated, blinking, for it was a check of sorts.
+
+"But nothing. Blow it in. Say, I'm curious. What are you going to do
+with yours?"
+
+"What are you going to do with yours?" I asked in return.
+
+He reddened, hesitated; then his head went up.
+
+"I figure it, parson, that by way of that rag-doll I'm kin to Louisa's
+ma. As near as I can get to it, Louisa's ma's my widow. It's a devil
+of a responsibility for a live man to have a widow. It worries him.
+Just to get her off my mind I'm going to invest my share of this book
+for her. She'll at least be sure of a roof and fire and shoes and
+clothes and bread with butter on it and staying home sometimes. She'll
+have to work, of course; anyway you looked at it, it wouldn't be right
+to take work away from her. She'll work, then; but she won't be
+worked. Louisa's managed to pull something out of her wishin' curl for
+her ma, after all. I'm sure I hope they'll let the child know."
+
+I could not speak for a moment; but as I looked at him, the red in his
+tanned cheek deepened.
+
+"As a matter of fact, parson," he explained, "somebody ought to do
+something for a woman that looks like that, and it might just as well
+be me. I'm willing to pay good money to have my widow turn her mouth
+the other way up, and I hope she'll buy a back-comb for those bangs on
+her neck."
+
+"And all this," said I, "came out of one little wishin' curl,
+Butterfly Man?"
+
+"But what else could I do?" he wondered, "when I'm kin to Loujaney by
+bornation?" and to hide his feeling, he asked again:
+
+"Now what are you going to do with yours?"
+
+I reflected. I watched his clever, quizzical eyes, out of which the
+diamond-bright hardness had vanished, and into which I am sure that
+dear child's curl had wished this milder, clearer light.
+
+"You want to know what I am going to do with mine?" said I, airily.
+"Well; as for me, the very first thing I am going to do is to
+purchase, in perpetuity, a fine new lamp for St. Stanislaus!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
+
+
+Timid tentative rifts and wedges of blue had ventured back into the
+cold gray sky, and a stout-hearted robin or two heralded spring. One
+morning coming from mass I saw in the thin watery sunshine the painted
+wings of the Red Admiral flash by, and I welcomed him as one welcomes
+the long-missed face of a friend. I cannot choose but love the Red
+Admiral. He has always stirred my imagination, for frail as his gay
+wings are they have nevertheless borne this dauntless small Columbus
+of butterflies across unknown seas and around uncharted lands, until
+like his twin-sister the Painted Lady he has all but circled the
+globe. A few days later a handful of those gold butterflies that
+resemble nothing so much as new bright dandelions in the young grass,
+dared the unfriendly days before their time as if to coax the lagging
+spring to follow.
+
+The sad white streamers disappeared from doors and for a space the
+little white hearse ceased to go glimmering by. Then at many windows
+appeared small faces bearing upon them the mark of the valley of the
+shadow through which they had just passed. Although they were on side
+streets in the dingy mill district, far removed from our pleasant
+windows that looked out upon trees and flowers, all Appleboro was
+watching these wan visages with wiser and kinder eyes.
+
+Perhaps the most potent single factor in the arousing of our civic
+conscience was a small person who might have justly thought we hadn't
+any: I mean Loujaney's little ma, whose story had crept out and gone
+from lip to lip and from home to home, making an appeal to which there
+could be no refusal.
+
+When Major Cartwright heard it, the high-hearted old rebel hurried
+over to the Parish House and thrust into my hand a lean roll of bills.
+And the major is by no means a rich man.
+
+"It's not tainted money," said the major, "though some mighty good
+Bourbon is goin' to turn into pap on account of it. However, it's an
+ill wind that doesn't blow somebody good--Marse Robert can come on
+back upstairs now an' thaw himself out while watchin' me read the
+Lamentations of Jeremiah--who was evidently sufferin' from a dry spell
+himself."
+
+On the following Sunday the Baptist minister chose for his text that
+verse of Matthew which bids us take heed that we despise not one of
+these little ones because in heaven their angels do always behold the
+face of our Father. And then he told his people of that little one who
+had pretended to love dry bread when she couldn't get any butter--in
+Appleboro. And who had gone to her rest holding to her thin breast a
+rag-doll that was kin to her by bornation, Loujaney being poor folks
+herself and knowing prezactly how't was.
+
+Over the heads of loved and sheltered children the Baptist brethren
+looked at each other. Of course, it wasn't their fault any more than
+anybody else's.--In a very husky voice their pastor went on to tell
+them of the curl which the woman who hadn't a God's thing left to
+wish for had given as a remembrance to "that good and kind man, our
+brother John Flint, sometimes known as the Butterfly Man."
+
+Dabney put the plain little discourse into print and heightened its
+effect by an editorial couched in the plainest terms. We were none of
+us in the humor to hear a spade called an agricultural implement just
+then, and Dabney knew it; particularly when the mill dividends and the
+cemetery both showed a marked increase.
+
+Something had to be done, and quickly, but we didn't exactly know how
+nor where to begin doing it. Laurence, insisting that this was really
+everybody's business, called a mass-meeting at the schoolhouse, and
+the _Clarion_ requested every man who didn't intend to bring his
+women-folks to that meeting to please stay home himself. Wherefore
+Appleboro town and county came with the wife of its bosom--or maybe
+the wife came and fetched it along.
+
+Laurence called the meeting to order, and his manner of addressing the
+feminine portion of his audience would have made his gallant
+grandfather challenge him. He hadn't a solitary pretty phrase to
+tickle the ears of the ladies--he spoke of and to them as women.
+
+"And did you see how they fell for him?" rejoiced the Butterfly Man,
+afterward. "From the kid in a middy up to the great old girl with
+three chins and a prow like an ocean liner, they were with him. When
+you're in dead earnest, can the ladies; just go after women as women
+and they're with you every time. They know."
+
+A Civic Leaguer followed Laurence, then Madame, and after her a girl
+from the mills, whose two small brothers went in one night. There
+were no set speeches. Everybody who spoke had something to say; and
+everybody who had something to say spoke. Then Westmoreland, who like
+Saul the king was taller by the head and shoulders than all Israel,
+bulked up big and good and begged us to remember that we couldn't do
+anything of permanent value until we first learned how to reach those
+folks we had been ignoring and neglecting. He said gruffly that
+Appleboro had dumped its whole duty in this respect upon the frail
+shoulders of one old priest, and that the Guest Rooms were overworked.
+Didn't the town want to do its share now? The town voted, unanimously,
+that it did.
+
+There was a pause. Laurence asked if anybody else had anything to say?
+Apparently, anybody else hadn't.
+
+"Well, then," said Laurence, smiling, "before we adjourn, is there
+anybody in particular that Appleboro County here assembled wants to
+hear?"
+
+And at that came a sort of stir, a murmur, as of an immense multitude
+of bees:
+
+"_The Butterfly Man!_" And louder: "The Butterfly Man!"
+
+Followed a great hand-clapping, shrill whistles, the stamping of feet.
+And there he was, with Westmoreland and Laurence behind him as if to
+keep him from bolting. His face expressed a horrified astonishment.
+Twice, thrice, he opened his lips, and no words came. Then:
+
+"_I?_" in a high and agonized falsetto.
+
+"You!" Appleboro County settled back with rustles of satisfaction.
+"Speech! Speech!" From a corn-club man, joyfully.
+
+"Oh, marmar, look! It's the Butterfly Man, marmar!" squealed a child.
+
+"A-a-h! Talk weeth us, Meester Fleent!" For the first time a "hand"
+felt that he might speak out openly in Appleboro.
+
+John Flint stood there staring owlishly at all these people who ought
+to know very well that he hadn't anything to say: what should he have
+to say? He was embarrassed; he was also most horribly frightened. But
+then, after all, they weren't anything but people, just folks like
+himself! When he remembered that his panic subsided. For a moment he
+reflected; as if satisfied, he nodded slightly and thrust his hand
+into his breast pocket.
+
+"Instead of having to listen to me you'd better just look at this,"
+said the Butterfly Man. "Because this can talk louder and say more in
+a minute than I could between now and Judgment." And he held out
+Louisa's dear fair whimsy of a curl; the sort of curl mothers tuck
+behind a rosy ear of nights, and fathers lean to and kiss. "_I_
+haven't got anything to say," said the Butterfly Man. "The best I can
+do is just to wish for the children all that Louisa pretended to pull
+out of her wishin' curl--and never got. I wish on it that all the kids
+get a square deal--their chance to grow and play and be healthy and
+happy and make good. And I wish again," said the Butterfly Man,
+looking at his hearers with his steady eyes, "I wish that you folks,
+every God-blessed one of you, will help to make that wish come true,
+so far as lies in your power, from now until you die!" His funny,
+twisty smile flashed out. He put the fairy tress back into his breast
+pocket, made a casual gesture to imply that he had concluded his
+wishes for the present; and walked off in the midst of the deepest
+silence that had ever fallen upon an Appleboro audience.
+
+But however willing we might be, we discovered that we could not do
+things as quickly or as well as might be wished. People who wanted to
+help blundered tactlessly. People who wanted to be helped had to be
+investigated. People who ought to be helped were suspicious and
+resentful, couldn't always understand or appreciate this sudden
+interest in their affairs, were inclined to slam doors, or, when
+cornered, to lie stolidly, with wooden faces and expressionless eyes.
+
+Ensued an awkward pause, until the Butterfly Man came unobtrusively
+forward, discovering in himself that amazing diplomacy inherent in the
+Irish when they attend to anybody's business but their own. It was
+amusing to watch the only democrat in a solidly Democratic county
+infusing something of his own unabashed humanness into proceedings
+which but for him might have sloughed into
+
+    Organized charity, carefully iced,
+    In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ.
+
+Having done what was to be done, he went about his own affairs. Nobody
+gushed over him, and he escaped that perilous popularity which is as a
+millstone around a man's neck. Nevertheless the Butterfly Man had
+stumbled upon the something divine in his fellows, and they
+entertained for him a feeling that wasn't any more tangible, say, than
+pure air, and no more emotional than pure water, but was just about as
+vital and life-giving.
+
+I was enchanted to have a whole county endorse my private judgment. I
+rose so in my own estimation that I fancy I was a bit condescending to
+St. Stanislaus! I was vain of the Butterfly Man's standing--folks
+couldn't like him too much, to please me. And I was greatly interested
+in the many invitations that poured in upon him, invitations that
+ranged all the way from a birthday party at Michael Karski's to a
+state dinner at the Eustis's.
+
+From Michael's he came home gaily, a most outrageous posy pinned upon
+him by way of honor, and whistling a Slavic love song so dismal that
+one inferred love must be something like toothache for painfulness. He
+had had such a bully time, he told me. Big Jan had been there with his
+wife, an old friend of Michael's Katya. Although pale, and still
+somewhat shaky as to legs, Jan had willingly enough shaken hands with
+his conqueror.
+
+It seemed quite right and natural that he and Jan should presently
+enter into a sort of Dual Alliance. Meester Fleent was to be
+Arbitrator Extraordinary. When he stipulated that thereafter Big Jan
+was only to tackle a man his own size, everybody cheered madly, and
+Mrs. Jan herself beamed red-eyed approval. She said her prayers to the
+man who had trounced Jan into righteousness.
+
+But from the Eustis dinner, to which he went with my mother, he came
+home somber and heavy-hearted. Laurence was conspicuously absent; it
+is true he was away, defending his first big case in another part of
+the State. But Mr. George Inglesby was just as conspicuously present,
+apparently on the best of all possible terms with himself, the world
+in general, and Mrs. James Eustis in particular. His presence in that
+house, in the face of persistent rumors, made at least two guests
+uneasy. Mrs. Eustis showed him a most flattering attention. She was
+deeply impressed by him. He had just aided her pet mission in
+China--what he had given the heathen would have buttered my children's
+bread for many a day. Also, he was all but lyrical in his voicing of
+the shibboleth that Woman's Sphere is the Home, wherein she should be
+adored, enshrined, and protected. Woman and the Home! All the innate
+chivalry of Southern manhood--
+
+I don't know that Louisa's Ma was ever enshrined or protected by the
+chivalry of any kind of manhood, no, nor any of the mill women. Their
+kind don't know the word. But Mrs. Eustis was, and she agreed with Mr.
+Inglesby's noble sentiments.
+
+"Parson, you should have heard him!" raved the Butterfly Man. "There's
+a sort of man down here that's got chivalry like another sort's got
+hookworm, and he makes the man that hasn't got either want to set up
+an image to the great god Dam!
+
+"You'd think being chivalrous would be enough for him, wouldn't you?"
+continued the Butterfly Man, bitterly. "Nix! What's he been working
+the heavy charity lay for, except that it's his turn to be a
+misunderstood Christian? Doesn't charity cover a multitude of skins,
+though? And doesn't it beat a jimmy when it comes to breaking into
+society!"
+
+Mary Virginia, he added in an altered voice, had been exquisite in a
+frock all silver lace and shimmery stuffs like moonbeams, and with a
+rope of pearls about her throat, and in her black hair. Appleboro
+folks do not affect orchids, but Mary Virginia wore a huge cluster of
+those exotics. She had been very gracious to the Butterfly Man and
+Madame. But only for a brief bright minute had she been the Mary
+Virginia they knew. All the rest of the evening she seemed to grow
+statelier, colder, more dazzlingly and imperially regal. And her eyes
+were like frozen sapphires under her level brows, and her mouth was
+the red splendid bow of Pride.
+
+Watching her, my mother was pained and puzzled; as for the Butterfly
+Man, his heart went below zero. Those who loved Mary Virginia had
+cause for painful reflections.
+
+Blinded by her beauty, were we judging her by the light of affection,
+instead of the colder light of reason? We couldn't approve of her
+behavior to Laurence, nor was it easy to refrain from disapproval of
+what appeared to be a tacit endurance of Inglesby's attention. She
+couldn't plead ignorance of what was open enough to be town talk--the
+man's shameless passion for herself, a passion he seemed to take
+delight in flaunting. And she made no effort to explain; she seemed
+deliberately to exclude her old friends from the confidence once so
+freely given. She hadn't visited the Parish House since she had broken
+her engagement.
+
+
+And all the while the spring that hadn't time for the little concerns
+of mortals went secretly about her immortal business of rejuvenation.
+The blue that had been so timid and so tentative overspread the sky;
+more robins came, and after them bluebirds and redbirds and
+Peterbirds, and the impudent screaming robber jay that is so beautiful
+and so bold, and flute-voiced vireos, and nuthatches, and the darling
+busybody wren fussing about her house-building in the corners of our
+piazzas. The first red flowers of the Japanese quince opened
+flame-like on the bare brown bushes. When the bridal-wreath by the
+gate saw that, she set industriously to work upon her own
+wedding-gown. The yellow jessamine was full of waxy gold buds; and
+long since those bold frontiersmen of the year, the Judas-trees, had
+flaunted it in bravest scarlet, and the slim-legged scouts of the
+pines showed shoulder-straps and cockades of new gay green above
+gallant brown leggings.
+
+One brand new morning the Butterfly Man called me aside and placed in
+my hands a letter. The American Society of Natural History invited Mr.
+John Flint, already a member of the Entomological Society of France, a
+Fellow of the Entomological Society of London, and a member of the
+greatest of Dutch and German Associations, to speak before it and its
+guests, at a most notable meeting to be held in the Society's splendid
+Museum in New York City. Not to mention two mere ex-Presidents, some
+of the greatest scientific names of the Americas were included in that
+list. And it was before such as these that my Butterfly Man was to
+speak. Behold me rocking on my toes!
+
+The first effect of this invitation was to please me immensely, I
+being a puffed-up old man and carnal-minded at times; nor do I seem to
+improve with age. The plaudits of the world, for anybody I admire and
+love, ring most sweetly in my foolish ears. Now the honors he had
+gotten from abroad were fine and good in their way, but this meant
+that the value of his work was recognized and his position
+established in his own country, in his own time. It meant a widening
+of his horizon, association with clever men and women, ennobling
+friendships to broaden his life. A just measure of appreciation from
+the worthwhile sweetens toil and encourages genius. And yet--our eyes
+met, and mine had to ask an old question.
+
+"Would you better accept it?" I wondered.
+
+"I can't afford not to," said he resolutely. "The time's come for me
+to get out in the open, and I might just as well face the music, and
+Do it Now. Risks? I hardly think so. I never hunted in couples,
+remember--I always went by my lonesome and got away with it. Besides,
+who's remembering Slippy? Nobody. He's drowned and dead and done with.
+But, however, and nevertheless, and because, I shall go."
+
+Again we looked at each other; and his look was untroubled.
+
+"The pipe-dreams I've had about slipping back into little old New
+York! But if anybody had told me I'd go back like I'm going, with the
+sort of folks waiting for me that will be waiting now, I'd have passed
+it up. Well, you never can tell, can you? And in a way it's funny--now
+isn't it?"
+
+"No, you never can tell," said I, soberly. "But I do not think it at
+all funny. Quite the contrary." Suppose, oh, suppose, that after all
+these years, when a well-earned success was in his grasp, it should
+happen--I turned pale. He read my fear in my face and his smile might
+have been borrowed from my mother's mouth.
+
+"Don't you get cold feet, parson," he counseled kindly. "Be a sport!
+Besides, it's all in the Game, you know."
+
+"Is it?"
+
+"Sure!"
+
+"And worth while, John?"
+
+He laughed. "Believe me! It's the worthwhilest thing under the sun to
+sit in the Game, with a sport's interest in the hands dealt out,
+taking yours as it comes to you, bluffing all you can when you've got
+to, playing your cards for all they're worth when it's your turn. No
+reneging. No squealing when you lose. No boasting how you did it when
+you win. There's nothing in the whole universe so intensely and
+immensely worth while as being _you_ and alive, with yourself the
+whole kitty and the sky your limit! It's one great old Game, and I'm
+for thanking the Big Dealer that I'da whack at playing it." And his
+eyes snapped and his lean brown face flushed.
+
+"And you are really willing to--to stake yourself now, my son?"
+
+"Lord, parson, you ought to know! And you a dead ringer for the real
+thing in a classy sport yourself!"
+
+"My _dear_ son--!"
+
+My dear son waved his fine hand, and chuckled in his red beard.
+
+"Would _you_ back down if this was your call? Why, you're the sort
+that would tackle the biggest noise in the ring, even if you knew
+you'd be dragged out on your pantry in the first half of the first
+round, if you thought you'd got holy orders to do it! If you saw me
+getting jellyfish of the spine now, you'd curl up and die--wouldn't
+you, honest Injun?" His eyes crinkled and he grinned so infectiously
+that my fears subsided. I had an almost superstitious certainty that
+nothing really evil could happen to a man who could grin like that.
+Fate and fortune are perfectly powerless before the human being who
+can meet them with the sword of a smile.
+
+"Well," I admitted cautiously, "jellyfish of the spine must be an
+unlovely ailment; not that I ever heard of it before."
+
+"You're willing for me to go, then?"
+
+"You'd go anyhow, would you not?"
+
+"Forget it!" said he roughly. "If you think I'd do anything I knew
+would cause you uneasiness, you've got another thing coming to you."
+
+"Oh, go, for heaven's sake!" said I, sharply.
+
+"All right. I'll go for heaven's sake," he agreed cheerfully. "And now
+it's formally decided I'm to go, and talk, the question arises--what
+they really want me to talk about? _I_ don't know how to deal in
+glittering generalities. A chap on the trail of truth has got to let
+generalities go by the board. The minute he tackles the living Little
+People he chucks theories and bucks conditions.
+
+"Suppose I tell the truth as I see it: that most so-called authorities
+are like cats chasing their tails--because they accept theories that
+have never been really proven, run after them, and so never get
+anywhere? And that facts dug up in the open under the sunlight don't
+always fit in with notions hatched out in libraries under the electric
+light?
+
+"Suppose I say that after they've run everything down to that plasma
+they're so fond of beginning and ending with, there is still something
+behind it all their theories can't explain away? Protoplasm doesn't
+explain Life any more than the battery explains electricity. Instinct?
+Evolution? The survival of the fittest? Well, nothing is tagged for
+fair, and I'm more than willing to be shown. For the more I find out
+from the living things themselves,--you can't get truth from death,
+you've got to get it from life--the more self-evident it seems to me
+that to exist at all insects must have arrived on the scene complete,
+handfinished, with the union label of the Great Workshop on them by
+way of a trade-mark."
+
+"As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, one God, world
+without end, Amen!" said I, smiling. I have never thought it necessary
+to explain or excuse the Creator. God is; things are.
+
+But he shook his head, wrinkling his forehead painfully. "I wish I
+_knew_," said he, wistfully. "You're satisfied to believe, but I have
+got to know. Oh, great Power behind Things, I want to know! I want to
+_know_!"
+
+Ah, but I also do most passionately wish to know! If, however, the
+Insect has taught me anything in my lifelong study of it, it is to
+recognize the Unknowable, to know there is that which I cannot hope to
+know. But if under the law of its world, so different from ours and
+yet so alike because so inevitable, the Insect must move in a fixed
+circle within which it is safe, a circle whose very limitation
+preserves it from error and thus from destruction, may not a like
+fixed circle beyond which _we_ may not penetrate preserve us, too? Are
+these mountain peaks of the Unknowable, the Impassable, which
+encompass the skyline of our humanity, these heights so mysterious and
+so unscalable, not rather bulwarks between man's pride and the abyss?
+
+Something of this I said to the Butterfly Man, and he nodded, but did
+not answer. He fell into a brown study; then plunged from the room
+without further look or word and made for his own desk. I was not
+afraid of what the Butterfly Man, fresh from little Appleboro's woods
+and fields, would have to say to the scholars and scientists gathered
+to hear him!
+
+Apparently he was not either, for after he had gotten a few notes
+together he wisely turned the whole affair over to that mysterious
+Self that does our work and solves our problems for us. On the surface
+he busied himself with a paper setting forth the many reasons why the
+County of Appleboro should appropriate adequate funds for a common
+dipping vat, and hurried this to Dabney, who was holding open a space
+in the _Clarion_ for it. Then there were new breeding cages to be
+made, for the supply of eggs and cocoons on hand would require
+additional quarters, once they began to emerge.
+
+By the Saturday he had finished all this; and as I had that afternoon
+free we spent some beautiful hours with the microscope and slide
+mounts. I completed, too, the long delayed drawings of some diurnal
+wasp-moths and their larvæ. We worked until my mother interrupted us
+with a summons to an early dinner, for Saturday evening belongs to the
+confessional and I was shortly due at the church.
+
+I left Flint with Madame and Miss Sally Ruth, who had run over after
+the neighborly Appleboro wont with a plate of fresh sponge-cake and a
+bowl of fragrant custard. Miss Sally Ruth is nothing if not generous,
+but there are times when one could wish upon her the affliction of
+dumbness. As I slipped into my cassock in the study, I could hear her
+uplifted voice, a voice so insistent and so penetrating that it can
+pierce closed doors and come through a ceiling:
+
+"I declare to goodness, I don't know what to believe any more! She's
+got money enough in her own right, hasn't she? For heaven's sake,
+then, why should she marry for more money? But you never really know
+people, do you? Why, folks say--"
+
+I hurried out of the house and ran the short distance to the church. I
+wished I hadn't heard; I wished Miss Sally Ruth, good as she is, would
+sometimes hold her tongue. She will set folks by the ears in heaven
+some of these days if she doesn't mend her ways before she gets there.
+
+It must have been all of ten o'clock when I got back to the Parish
+House. Madame had retired; John Flint's rooms were dark. The night
+itself was dark, though in between the clouds that a brisk wind
+pulleyhauled about the skies, one saw many stars.
+
+Too tired to sleep, I sat beside my window and breathed the repose
+that lay like a benediction upon the little city. I found myself
+praying; for Mary Virginia, whom I loved and over whom I was sorely
+troubled; for Laurence, even now walking such a road as I also once
+had to travel with feet as young but no more steadfast; and then with
+a thankfulness too deep for words, I thought a prayer for the
+Butterfly Man. So thinking and so praying, with a glow in my heart
+because of him, I closed my window, and crept into bed and into
+sleep.
+
+I awoke with a start. Somebody was in the room. There was an urgent
+voice whispering my name, an urgent hand upon me. A pocket light
+flashed, and in its pale circle appeared the face of John Flint.
+
+"Get up!" said he in an intense whisper. "And come. Come!"
+
+"Why, what in the name of heaven--"
+
+"Don't make a row!" he snarled, and brought his face close. "Here--let
+me help you. Heaven, man, how slow you are!" With furious haste he
+forced my clothes upon me and even as I mechanically struggled to
+adjust them he was hustling me toward the door, through the dark hall,
+and down the stairs.
+
+"Easy there--careful of that step!" he breathed in my ear, guiding me.
+
+"But what is the matter?" I whispered back impatiently. I do not
+relish mystery and I detest being led willynilly.
+
+"In my rooms," said he briefly, and hustled me across the garden on
+the double run, I with my teeth chattering, for I had been dragged out
+of my sleep, and the night air was cold.
+
+He fairly lifted me up his porch-steps, unlocked his door, and pushed
+me inside. With the drawn shades and the flickering firelight, the
+room was peaceful and pleasant enough. Then Kerry caught my astonished
+gaze, for the dog stood statue-like beside the Morris chair, and when
+I saw what Kerry guarded I crossed myself. Sunk into the chair, the
+Butterfly Man's old gray overcoat partly around her, was Mary
+Virginia.
+
+At my involuntary exclamation she raised her head and regarded me. A
+great sigh welled from her bosom and I could see her eyes dilate and
+her lips quiver.
+
+"Padre, Padre!" Down went her head, and she began to cry childishly,
+with sobs.
+
+I watched her helplessly, too bewildered to speak. But the other man's
+face was the face of one crucified. I saw his eyes, and something I
+had been all too blind to rushed upon me overwhelmingly. This, then,
+was what had driven him forth for a time, this was what had left its
+indelible imprint upon him! He had hung upon his cross and I had not
+known. Oh, Butterfly Man, I had not known!
+
+"She'll be able to talk to you in a few minutes now, parson." He was
+so perfectly unconscious of himself that he had no idea he had just
+made mute confession. He added, doubtfully: "She said she had to come
+to you, about something--I don't know what. It's up to you to find
+out--she's got to talk to you, parson."
+
+"But--I wanted to talk to you, Padre. That's why I--ran away from home
+in the middle of the night." She sat suddenly erect. "I just couldn't
+stand things, any more--by myself--"
+
+Gone was the fine lady, the great beauty, the proud jilt who had
+broken Laurence's heart and maddened and enslaved Inglesby. Here was
+only a piteous child with eyes heavy from weeping, with a pale and sad
+face and drooping childish lips. And yet she was so dear and so
+lovely, for all her reddened eyelids and her reddened little nose,
+that one could have wept with her. The Butterfly Man, with an intake
+of breath, stood up.
+
+"I shall leave you with the Padre now," he said evenly, "to tell him
+what you wanted to tell him. Father, understand: there's something
+rotten wrong, as I've been telling you all along. Now she's got to
+tell you what it is and all about it. Everything. Whether she likes to
+or not, and no matter what it is, she's got to tell you. You
+understand that, Mary Virginia?"
+
+She fixed him with a glance that had in it something hostile and
+oblique. Even with those dearest of women whom I adore, there are
+moments when I have the impression that they have, so to speak, their
+ears laid back flat, and I experience what I may justly term cat-fear.
+I felt it then.
+
+"Oh, don't have too much consideration for my feelings, Mr. Flint!"
+said she, with that oblique and baffling glance, and the smile Old
+Fitz once likened to the Curve in the Cat's Tail. "Indeed, why should
+you go? Why don't you stay and find out _why_ I wanted to run to the
+Padre--to beg him to find some way to help me, since I can't fall like
+a plum into Mr. Inglesby's hand when Mr. Hunter shakes the Eustis
+family tree!"
+
+His breath came whistlingly between his teeth.
+
+"Parson! You hear?" he slapped his leg with his open palm. "Oh, I knew
+it, I knew it!" And he turned upon her a kindling glance:
+
+"I knew all along it was never in you to be anything but true!" said
+the Butterfly Man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+"WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR"
+
+
+It is impossible for me to put down in her own words what Mary
+Virginia told the Butterfly Man and me. Also, I have had to fill in
+gaps here and there, supplying what was lacking, from my intimate
+knowledge of the actors and from such chance words and hints and bits
+of detail as came to me afterward. But what I have added has been
+necessary, in order to do greater justice to everybody concerned.
+
+If it be true that the boy is father to the man, it is even more
+tritely true that the girl is mother to the woman, there being here
+less chance for change. So it was with Mary Virginia. That gracious
+little girlhood of hers, lived among the birds and bees and blossoms
+of an old Carolina garden, had sent her into the Church School with a
+settled and definite idealism as part of her nature. Her creed was
+simple enough: The world she knew was the best of all possible worlds,
+its men good, its women better; and to be happy and loved one had only
+to be good and loving.
+
+The school did not disabuse her of this pleasing optimism. It was a
+very expensive school and could afford to have optimisms of its own.
+For one thing, it had no pupils poor enough to apply the acid test.
+
+When Mary Virginia was seventeen, Mrs. Eustis perceived with dismay
+that her child who had promised beauty was instead become angular,
+awkward, and self-conscious; and promptly packed the unworldly one off
+to spend a saving summer with a strenuously fashionable cousin, a
+widow, of whom she herself was very fond. She liked the idea of
+placing the gauche girl under so vigorous and seasoned a wing as
+Estelle Baker's. As for Mrs. Baker herself, that gay and good-humored
+lady laughed at the leggy and serious youngster and promptly took her
+education in hand along lines not laid down in Church Schools.
+
+Mrs. Baker was delighted with her own position--the reasonably young,
+handsome, and wealthy widow of a man she had been satisfied to marry
+and later to bury. She had an unimpaired digestion and no illusions, a
+kind heart, and the power of laughter. Naturally, she found life
+interesting. A club-woman, an ultra-modernist, vitally alive, she was
+fully abreast of her day. Her small library skimmed the cream of the
+insurgents and revolutionaries of genius; and here the shy and
+reticent schoolgirl with the mark of the churchly checkrein fresh upon
+her, was free to browse, for her cousin had no slightest notion of
+playing censor. Mrs. Baker thought that the sooner one was allowed to
+slough off the gaucheries of the Young Person, the better. She did not
+gauge the real and tumultuous depths of feeling concealed under the
+young girl's simplicity.
+
+The revolutionaries and the insurgent and free poets didn't trouble
+Mary Virginia very much. Although she sensed that something was wrong
+with somebody somewhere--hence these lyrical lamentations--she could
+not, to save her, tell what all the pother was about, for as yet she
+saw the world _couleur de rose_. Some one or two of the French and
+Germans pleased her; she fell into long reveries over the Gael, who
+has the sound of the sea in his voice and whose eyes are full of a
+haunting light, as of sunsets upon graves. But it was the Russians who
+electrified and dazzled her. When she glimpsed with her eyes of a
+young girl those strange souls simple as children's and yet mosaiced
+with unimaginable and barbarous splendors, she stood blinking and half
+blinded, awed, fascinated, and avid to know more of that sky-scaling
+passion with which they burned.
+
+And in that crucial moment she chanced upon the "Diary of Marie
+Bashkirtseff," so frank and so astounding that it took her breath away
+and swept her off her feet. She was stirred into a vague and trembling
+expectancy; she had the sense of waiting for something to happen. Life
+instantly became more colorful and more wonderful than she had dreamed
+could be possible, and she wished passionately to experience all these
+emotions, so powerful and so poignant. The Russian's morbid and
+disease-bright genius acted upon her as with the force and intensity
+of a new and potent toxin. She could not lay the book aside, but
+carried it up to her room to be pored and pondered over. She failed to
+understand that, untried as she was, it was impossible for her to
+understand it. Had the book come later, it had been harmless enough;
+but it came at a most critical moment of that seething period when
+youth turns inward to question the universe, and demands that the
+answer shall be personal to itself. The first long ground-swell of
+awakening emotion swept over her, sitting in the pleasant chintz-hung
+room, with the Russian woman's wild and tameless heart beating through
+the book open upon her knees. And these waves of emotion that at
+recurrent intervals surge over the soul, come from the shores of a
+farther country than any earthly seas have touched, and recede to
+depths so profound that only the eyes of God may follow their ebb and
+flow.
+
+Mrs. Baker, however, saw nothing about which to give herself any
+concern. If she perceived the girl intense and preoccupied, she smiled
+indulgently--at Mary Virginia's age one is apt to be like that, and
+one recovers from that phase as one gets over mumps and measles. Mrs.
+Baker did think it advisable, though, to subtly detach the girl from
+books for awhile. She amused herself by allowing her wide-eyed
+glimpses of the larger life of grown-ups, by way of arousing and
+initiation. Thus it happened that one afternoon at the country-club,
+where Mary Virginia, at the green-fruit stage, found herself playing
+gooseberry instead of golf, Mrs. Baker sauntered up with a tall and
+very blonde man.
+
+"Here," said she gaily, indicating with a wave of her hand her
+sulky-eyed young cousin, "is a marvel and a wonder--a girl who accepts
+on faith everything and everybody! My dear Howard, in all probability
+she will presently even believe in _you_!" With that she left them,
+whisked off by a waiting golfer.
+
+The man and the girl appraised each other. The man saw young
+bread-and-butter with the raw sugar of beauty sprinkled upon it
+promisingly. What the girl saw was not so much a faultlessly groomed
+and handsome man as the most beautiful person in the world. And
+suddenly she was aware that that for which she had been waiting had
+come. Something divine and wonderful was happening, and there was fire
+before her eyes and the noise of unloosed winds and great waters in
+her ears, and her knees trembled and her heart fluttered. A vivid red
+flamed into her pale cheeks, a soft and trembling light suffused her
+blue eyes. That happens when the sweet and virginal freshness of youth
+is brought face to face with the bright shadow of love.
+
+He drew her out of her shyness and made her laugh, and after awhile,
+when there was dancing, he danced with her. He did not behave to her
+as other men of Estelle's acquaintance had more than once behaved--as
+though they bestowed the lordly honor of their society upon her out of
+the sheer goodness of their hearts and their desire to please Mrs.
+Baker. Mary Virginia was uncompromising and stiff-necked enough then,
+and she bored most of her cousin's friends unconsciously. Now this
+man, as much their superior as the sun is to farthing dips, was
+exerting himself to please her. That was the one thing Mary Virginia
+needed to arouse her.
+
+Mrs. Baker admired Mr. Hunter for a grace of manner almost Latin in
+its charm. If at times he puzzled her, he at least never bored her or
+anybody else, and for this she praised him in the gates. Her respect
+for him deepened when she perceived that he never allowed himself to
+be absorbed or monopolized.
+
+The pleasant widow did not take him too seriously. She only asked that
+he amuse and interest her. He did both, to a superlative degree. That
+is why and how he saw so much of the school-girl cousin whose naïvete
+made him smile, it was so absurdly sincere.
+
+Mrs. Baker was glad enough to have Howard take her charge off her
+hands occasionally. She thought contact with this fine pagan an
+excellent thing for the girl who took herself so seriously. She was
+really fond of Mary Virginia, but she must have found her hand-grenade
+directness a bit disconcerting at times. She wanted the child's visit
+to be pleasant, and she considered it very amiable of Howard to help
+her make it so. She had no faintest notion of danger--to her Mary
+Virginia was nothing but a child, a little girl one indulged with
+pickles and pound-cake and the bliss of staying up later than the
+usual bedtime. As for Hunter, his was the French attitude toward the
+Young Person; she had heard him say he preferred his flowers in full
+bloom and his fruit ripe--one then knows what one is getting; one
+isn't deceived by canker in the closed bud and worm in the green
+fruit. No, Howard wasn't the sort that hankered for verjuice.
+
+None the less, although Mrs. Baker didn't know it, Mary Virginia was
+engaged to the godlike Howard when she returned to school. It was to
+be a state secret until after she was graduated, and in the meantime
+he was to "make himself worthier of her love." She hadn't any notion
+he could be improved upon, but it pleased her to hear him say that.
+Humility in the superman is the ultimate proof of perfection.
+
+The maid who attended her room at school arranged for the receipt of
+his letters and mailed Mary Virginia's. The maid was sentimental, and
+delighted to play a part smacking of those dime novels she spoiled her
+brains with.
+
+The little schoolgirl who was in love with love, and secretly
+betrothed to a man who had stepped alive out of old knightly romance,
+walked in the Land of April Rainbows and felt the whole joyous
+universe suffused with a delicious and quivering glow of light and
+sound and scent. Surcharged with an emotion that she was irresistibly
+urged to express, and unable to do so by word of mouth, she was driven
+to the necessity of putting it down on paper for him. And she put it
+down in the burning words, the fiery phrases, of those anarchists of
+art who had intoxicated and obsessed her.
+
+Just a little later,--even a year later--and Mary Virginia could never
+have written those letters. But now, very ignorant, very innocent,
+very impassioned, she accomplished a miracle. She was like one
+speaking an unknown tongue, perfectly sure that the spirit moved her,
+but quite unable to comprehend what it was that it moved her to say.
+
+When Mrs. Baker insisted that her young cousin should come back to her
+for the Christmas holidays, the girl was more than eager to go. Seeing
+him again only deepened her infatuation.
+
+That holiday visit was an unusually gay one, for Mrs. Baker was really
+fond of Mary Virginia--the young girl's tenderness and simplicity
+touched the woman of the world. She gave a farewell dance the night
+before Mary Virginia was to return to school. It was an informal
+affair, with enough college boys and girls to lend it a junior air,
+but there was a goodly sprinkling of grown-ups to deepen it, for the
+hostess said frankly that she simply couldn't stand the Very Young
+except in broken doses and in bright spots.
+
+Hunter, of course, was to be one of the grownups. He had sent Mary
+Virginia the flowers she was to wear. And she had a new dancing frock,
+quite the loveliest and fluffiest and laciest she had ever worn.
+
+He was somewhat late. And so engrossed with him were all her thoughts,
+so eager was she to see him, that she was a disappointing companion
+for anybody else. She couldn't talk to anybody else. She flitted in
+and out of laughing groups like a blue-and-silver butterfly, and
+finally managed to slip away to the stair nook behind what Mrs. Baker
+liked to call the conservatory. This was merely a portion of the big
+back hall glassed in and hung with a yellow silk curtain; it had a
+tiny round crystal fountain in the center and one or two carved seats,
+but one wouldn't think so small a space could hold so much bloom and
+fragrance. From the nook where Mary Virginia sat, one could hear every
+word spoken in the flower-room, though the hearer remained hidden by
+the paneled stairway.
+
+Hands in her lacy lap, eyes abstracted, she fell into the dreams that
+youth dreams; in which a girl--one's self, say,--walks hand in hand
+through an enchanted world with a being very, very little lower than
+the angels and twice as dear. They are such innocent dreams, such
+impossible dreams, so untouched of all reality; but I wonder, oh I
+wonder, if life can ever give us anything to repay their loss!
+
+Somebody spoke in the conservatory and she looked up, startled.
+Through a parting in the silk curtain she glimpsed the woman and
+recognized one of Estelle's friends, handsome and fashionable, but a
+woman she had never liked.
+
+"You provoke me. You try my patience too much!" she was saying, in a
+tone of suppressed anger. "People are beginning to say that you have a
+serious affair with that sugar-candy chit. I want to know if that is
+true?"
+
+The man laughed, a lazy, pleasant, disarming laugh. She knew that
+laugh among a million, and her heart began to beat, but not with doubt
+or distrust. She wondered how she had missed him, and if he had been
+looking for her; she thought of the exquisite secret that bound them
+together, and wondered how he was going to protect it without evasions
+or untruthfulness. And she thought the woman abominable.
+
+"You're so suspicious, Evie!" he said smilingly. "Why bother about
+what can give you no real concern? Why discuss it here, at all? It's
+not the thing, really."
+
+The woman stamped her foot. She had an able-bodied temper.
+
+"I will know, and I will know now. I have to know," said she, and her
+voice shook. Mary Virginia would have coughed then, would have made
+her presence known had she been able; but something held her silent.
+"Remember, you're not dealing with a love-sick school-girl now,
+Howard: you are dealing with _me_. Have you made that little fool
+think you're in love with her?"
+
+"Why, and what then?" he asked coolly. "I like the child. Of course
+she is without form and void as yet, but there's quite a lot to that
+girl."
+
+"Oh, yes! Quite a lot!" said she, with sarcasm. "That's what made me
+take notice. James Eustis's girl--and barrels of money. She'll be a
+catch. You are clever, Howard! But what of _me_?"
+
+Mary Virginia's heart fluttered. Indeed, what of this other woman?
+
+"Oh, well, there's nothing definite yet, Evie," said he soothingly. A
+hint of impatience was betrayed in his voice. Plainly, it irked him to
+be held up and questioned point-blank, at such a time and place. Just
+as plainly, he wished to conciliate his jealous questioner. "My dear
+girl, it would be all of two or three years before the affair could be
+considered. Let well enough alone, Evie. Let's talk about something
+else."
+
+"No. We will talk about this. You are offering me a two or three
+years' reprieve, are you not? Well, and then?"
+
+"Well, and then suppose I do marry the little thing,--if she hasn't
+changed her little mind?" said he, exasperated into punishing her. "It
+wouldn't be a bad thing for me, remember, and she's temptingly easy to
+deal with--that girl has more faith than the twelve apostles. Heavens,
+Evie, don't look like that! My dearest girl, _you_ don't have to
+worry, anyhow. If your--er--impediment hasn't stood in my way, why
+should mine in yours?"
+
+He spoke with a half-impatient, half-playful reproach. The woman
+uttered a little cry. To soothe and silence her, he kissed her. It was
+very risky, of course, but then the whole situation was risky, and he
+took his chance like the bold player he was. The girl crouching behind
+the paneled wall clenched her hands in her lap, felt her heart and
+brain on fire, and wondered why the sky did not fall upon the world
+and blot it out.
+
+When those two had left the conservatory and she could command her
+trembling limbs and whip her senses back into some semblance of order,
+she went upstairs and got his letters. When she came downstairs again
+he was standing in the hall, and he came forward eager, smiling,
+tender, as if his heart welcomed her; as perhaps it did, men having
+catholic hearts. She put her hand on his arm and whispered: "Come
+into the conservatory."
+
+The hall was quite empty. From drawing-room and library and
+dining-room came the laughter and chatter of many people. Then the
+music struck up a gay and popular air. The lilt and swing of it made
+her giddy. But the little flower-room was cool and sweet, and she drew
+a breath of relief.
+
+Hunter bent his fair head, but she pushed him away with her hands
+against his chest. A horror of his beauty, his deliberate fascination,
+the falseness of him, came over her. For the first time she had been
+brought face to face with sin and falsehood, and hers was the
+unpardoning white condemnation of an angel to whom sin is unknown and
+falsehood impossible. That such knowledge should have come through him
+of all men made the thing more unbearable. Surprised and irritated by
+the pale tragedy of her aspect, Hunter stared, waiting for her to
+speak.
+
+"I was on the stairs. I heard you--and that woman," said she with the
+directness that was sometimes so appalling. "And I _know_." Her face
+turned burning red before it paled again. She was ashamed for him with
+the noble shame of the pure in heart.
+
+His face, too, went red and white with rage and astonishment. It was a
+damnable trap for a man to be caught in, and he was furious with the
+two women who had pushed him into it--he could have beaten them both
+with rods. Innocent as this girl was, he could not hope to deceive her
+as to the real truth. She had heard too much. But he thought he could
+manage her; women were as wax in Hunter's hands. To begin with, they
+_wanted_ to believe him.
+
+"I hate to have to say it--but the lady is jealous," he said frankly
+enough, with a disarming smile; and shrugged his shoulders, quite as
+if that simple statement explained and excused everything.
+
+"Oh, she need not be afraid--of me!" said the girl, with white-hot
+scorn. "I'd rather die by inches of leprosy than belong to you now.
+You are clever, though. And I _was_ easy to deal with, wasn't I? And I
+cared so much! I dare say it was really your hair and beard, but I
+honestly thought you a sort of Archangel! Well, you're not. You're not
+anything I thought you--not good nor kind nor honorable nor
+truthful--not anything but just a rather paltry sort of liar. You're
+not even loyal to _her_. I think I could respect you more if you were.
+But I _am_ James Eustis's girl--and that's my salvation, Mr. Hunter.
+Please take your letters. You will send me back mine to-morrow."
+
+He stroked his short gold beard. The color had come back into his face
+and a new light flashed into his cold blue eyes. He laughed. "Why, you
+game little angel!" he said delightedly. "Gad, I never thought you had
+it in you--never. I begin to adore you, Mary Virginia, upon my soul I
+do! Now listen to reason, my too-good child, and don't be so
+puritanical. You've got to take folks as they are and not as you'd
+like them to be, you know. Men are not angels, no, nor women, either.
+You must learn to be charitable--a virtue very good people seldom
+practice and never properly appreciate." And he added, leaning lower:
+"Mary Virginia! Give me another chance ... you won't be sorry,
+Ladybird."
+
+But she stood unmoved, stonily silent, holding out the letters. And
+when he still ignored this silent insistence, she thrust them into his
+hands and left him.
+
+Mary Virginia was to go back to school the next night. All day she
+waited for her letters. Instead came a note and a huge bunch of
+violets. The note said he couldn't allow those precious letters which
+meant so much to him to pass even into her hands who had written them.
+When he could summon up the courage, he would presently destroy them
+himself. And she had treated him with great harshness, and wouldn't
+she be a good little girl and let him see her, if only for a few
+minutes, before she went away?
+
+Mary Virginia tore up the note and returned the violets by way of
+answer.
+
+When she returned to school, the superioress regretted that she had
+been allowed to visit Mrs. Baker again, because too much gaiety wasn't
+good for her, and she was falling off in her studies. The other girls
+said she had lost all her looks, for in truth she was wan and peaked
+and hollow-eyed. Seventeen suffers frightfully, when it suffers at
+all. Eighteen enjoys its blighted affection, revels in its broken
+heart, would like to crochet a black edging on its immortal soul, and
+wouldn't exchange its secret sorrow for a public joy. Nineteen is
+convalescent--pride would come to its rescue even if life itself did
+not beguile it into being happy.
+
+Mary Virginia got back her color and her appetite and forgot to
+remember that her heart was incurably broken and that she could never
+love again. She liked to think her painful experience had made her
+very wise. Then she went abroad, and her cure was complete. The result
+of it all was that poise and pride which had so greatly delighted the
+autocratic old kinswoman whose fiat had set the last seal of social
+success upon her.
+
+When one of life's little jokes flung Hunter into Appleboro and she
+had to observe him with impartial and less ingenuous eyes, she forgave
+the simple schoolgirl's natural mistake. He had not changed, and she
+perceived his effect upon others older and wiser than herself. And her
+pride chose neither to slight nor to ignore him now, but rather to
+meet him casually, with indifference, as a stranger in whom she was
+not at all interested.
+
+Mr. Inglesby she did not take seriously. She did not dream that a
+possible menace to herself lay in this stout man whom she considered
+fatuous and absurd, when she thought of him at all. That her mother
+should be completely taken in by his specious charity and his
+plausible presentment of himself, did not surprise her. She was
+inclined to smile scornfully and so dismiss him.
+
+She underestimated Inglesby.
+
+The very fact that there was such an obstacle in the way as a young
+fellow with whom she fancied herself in love only deepened Inglesby's
+passion for Mary Virginia. She was in her proper person all that he
+coveted and groveled to. To possess her in addition to his own
+wealth--what more could a man ask? Let Eustis become senator,
+governor, president, anything he chose. But let Inglesby have Mary
+Virginia by way of fair exchange.
+
+Mr. Inglesby was well aware that Miss Eustis would not for one moment
+consider him--unless she had to. He proposed to so arrange affairs
+that she had to. Naturally, he looked to his private secretary to help
+him bring about this desirable end. And at this opportune moment fate
+played into his hands in a manner that left Mr. Hunter's assent a
+matter of course.
+
+Mr. Hunter had very expensive tastes which his salary was not always
+sufficient to cover. Wherefore, like many another, he speculated. When
+he was lucky, it was easy money; but it was never enough. Of late he
+had not been fortunate, and he found himself confronted by the high
+cost of living as he chose to live. This annoyed him. So when there
+came his way what appeared to be an absolute certainty of not only
+recouping all his losses but of making some real money as well, Hunter
+plunged, with every dollar he could manage to get hold of. But Wall
+Street is a lane that has many crooked and devious turnings, and Mr.
+Hunter's investments took a very wrong turn. And this time it was not
+only all his own money that had been lost. The bottom might have
+dropped out of things then, except for Inglesby.
+
+When Hunter had to tell him the truth the financier listened with an
+unmoved face. Then he swung around in his chair, lifted an eyebrow,
+grunted, and remarked briefly: "Very unsafe thing to do, Hunter.
+Very." And shoved his personal check across the desk. Nobody knew
+anything about it, except the head bookkeeper of the bank.
+
+Inglesby had no illusions, however. He understood that to have in his
+power an immensely clever man who knew as much about his private
+affairs as Hunter did, was good business, to say the least. He simply
+invested in Mr. Hunter's brains and personality for his own immediate
+ends, and he expected his brilliant and expensive secretary to prove
+the worth of the investment.
+
+Inglesby had not risen to his present heights by beating about the
+bush in his dealings with others. He had seized Success by the
+windpipe and throttled it into obedience, and he ruthlessly bent
+everything and everybody to his own purposes. The task he set before
+Hunter now was to steer the Inglesby ship through a perilous passage
+into the matrimonial harbor he had in mind. Let Hunter do that--no
+matter how--and the pilot's future was assured. Inglesby would be no
+niggardly rewarder. But let the venture come to shipwreck and Hunter
+must go down with it. Hunter was not left in any doubt upon that
+score.
+
+Brought face to face with the situation as it affected his fortune and
+misfortune, Hunter must have had a very bad half an hour. I am sure he
+had not dreamed of such a contretemps, and he must have been startled
+and amazed by the cold calculation and the raw fury of passion he had
+to deal with. I do not think he relished his task. His was the sort of
+conscience that would dislike such a course, not because it was
+dishonorable or immoral in itself, but because its details offended
+his fastidiousness. I think he would have extricated himself honorably
+if he could. It just happened that he couldn't.
+
+Give a sufficient shock to a man's pocket-nerve and you electrify his
+brain-cells, which automatically receive orders to work overtime.
+Hunter's brain worked then because it had to, self-preservation being
+the first law of nature. And this service for Inglesby not only spelt
+safety; it meant the golden key to the heights, the power to gratify
+those fine tastes which only a rich and able man can afford. Inglesby
+had promised that, and he had just had a fair example of what
+Inglesby's support meant.
+
+One must try to consider the case from Mr. Hunter's point of view. To
+refuse Inglesby meant disaster. And who was Laurence, who was Mary
+Virginia, that he should quixotically wreck his prospects for them?
+Why should he lose Inglesby's goodwill or gain Inglesby's enmity for
+them or anybody else? Forced to choose, Hunter made the only choice
+possible to him.
+
+_Voe victis!_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+"--SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY--"
+
+
+Now I am only an old priest and no businessman, so of course I do not
+know just how Hunter was set like a hound upon the track of those
+circumstances that, properly manipulated, helped him toward a solution
+of his problem--the getting of a girl apparently as unreachable as
+Mary Virginia Eustis.
+
+To start with, he had two assets, the first being Eustis pride.
+Shrewdly working upon that, Hunter played with skill and finesse.
+
+When he was ready, it was easy enough to meet Miss Eustis on the
+street of an afternoon. Although her greeting was disconcertingly
+cold, he fell into step beside her. And presently, in a low and
+intimate voice, he began to quote certain phrases that rang in her
+astonished ears with a sort of hateful familiarity.
+
+A glance at her face made him smile. "I wonder," he questioned, "if
+you have changed, dear puritan? You are engaged to Mayne now, I hear.
+Very clever chap, Mayne. The moving power behind your father, I
+understand. And engaged to you! You're so intense and interesting when
+you're in love that one is tempted to envy Mayne. Do you write _him_
+letters, too?"
+
+Mary Virginia's level eyes regarded him with haughty surprise. The
+situation was rather unbelievable.
+
+"Miss Eustis--" he paused to bow and smile to some passing girls who
+plainly envied Mary Virginia, "Miss Eustis, you must come to my
+office, say to-morrow afternoon. We must have a heart-to-heart talk. I
+have something you will find it to your interest to discuss with me."
+
+She disdained to reply, to ask him to leave her; her attitude did not
+even suggest that he should explain himself. Seeming to be perfectly
+content with this attitude, he sauntered along beside her.
+
+"Do you know," he smiled, "that with you the art of writing genuine
+love-letters amounts to a gift? I am sure your father--and let's say
+Mayne--would be astonished and delighted to read the ones I have. They
+are unequaled. Human documents, heart-interest, delicate and piquant
+sex-tang--the very sort of thing the dear public devours. I told you
+once they meant a great deal to me, remember? They're going to mean
+more. Come about four, please." He lifted his hat, bowed, and was
+gone.
+
+Mary Virginia went to his office at four o'clock the next afternoon,
+as he had planned she should. She wanted to know exactly what he
+meant, and she fancied he meant to make her buy back the letters he
+claimed not to have destroyed. The bare idea of anybody on earth
+reading those insane vaporings sickened her.
+
+Hunter's manner subtly allowed her to understand that he had known she
+would come, and this angered her inexpressibly; it gave him an
+advantage.
+
+"Instead of wasting time in idle persiflage," he said when he had
+handed her a chair, "let's get right down to brass tacks. You
+naturally desire to know why I kept your letters? For one reason,
+because they are a bit of real literature. However, I propose to
+return them now--for a consideration."
+
+He leaned forward, idly drumming on the polished desk, and regarded
+her with a sort of impersonal speculation. A little smile crept to his
+lip.
+
+"The whirligig of time does bring in its revenges, doesn't it?" he
+mused aloud. Mary Virginia's lips curled.
+
+"I do not follow you," she said coldly. "I am not even sure you have
+the letters--that is why I am here. I must see them with my own eyes
+before I agree to pay for them. That is what you expect me to do, is
+it not?"
+
+"Oh, I have them all right--that is very easily proven," said he,
+unruffled. "Now listen carefully, please, while I explain the real
+reason for your presence here this afternoon. Mr. Inglesby, for
+reasons of his own, desires to don the senatorial toga; why not? Also,
+even more vehemently, Mr. Inglesby desires to lead to the altar Miss
+Mary Virginia Eustis: yourself, dear lady, your charming self: again,
+why not? Who can blame him for so natural and laudable an ambition?
+
+"As to his ever persuading you to become Mrs. Inglesby, without
+some--ah--moral suasion, why, you know what his chance would be better
+than I do. As to his persuading the state to send him to Washington,
+it would have been a certainty, a sure thing, if our zealous young
+friend Mayne hadn't egged your father into the game. How Mayne managed
+that, heaven knows, particularly with your father's affairs in the
+condition they are. Now, Eustis is a fine man. Far too fine to be lost
+in the shuffle at Washington, where he'd be a condemned
+nuisance--just as he sometimes is here at home. Do you begin to
+comprehend?"
+
+"Why, no," said she, blankly. "And I certainly fail to see where my
+silly letters--"
+
+"Let me make it plainer. You and your silly letters put the game into
+Mr. Inglesby's hands, swing the balance in his favor. _You_ pay _me_?
+Heavens, no! _We_ pay _you_--and a thumping price at that!"
+
+For a long moment they looked at each other.
+
+"My dear Miss Eustis," he put the tips of his fine fingers together,
+bent forward over them, and favored her with a white-toothed smile,
+"behold in me Mr. Inglesby's ambassador--the advocate of Cupid. Plainly,
+I am authorized to offer you Mr. Inglesby's heart, his hand, and--his
+check-book. Let us suppose you agree to accept--no, don't interrupt me
+yet, please. And keep your seat, Miss Eustis. You may smile, but I would
+advise you to consider very seriously what I am about to say to you, and
+to realize once for all that Mr. Inglesby is in dead earnest and
+prepared to go to considerable lengths. Well, then, as I was about to
+say: suppose you agree to accept his proposal! Being above all things a
+business man, Mr. Inglesby realizes that gilt-edged collateral should be
+put up for what you have to offer--youth, beauty, charm, health,
+culture, family name, desirable and influential connections, social
+position of the highest. In exchange he offers the Inglesby millions,
+his absolute devotion to yourself, and his hearty support to all your
+father's plans and interests. Observe the last, please; it is highly
+important. Besides this, Mayne and Eustis want reform, progress,
+Demos-with-a-full-dinner-pail, all the wearisome rest of that uplift
+stuff? Inglesby will see that they get an undiluted dose of it. More
+yet: if you have any scruples about Mayne, Inglesby will get behind that
+young man and boost him until he can crow on the weathervane--when you
+are Mrs. Inglesby. A chap like Mayne would be valuable, properly
+expurgated. Come, Miss Eustis, that's fair enough. If you refuse--well,
+it's up to you to make Eustis understand that he must eliminate himself
+from politics--and look out for himself," he finished ominously.
+
+Mary Virginia rose impetuously.
+
+"I am no longer seventeen, Mr. Hunter. What, do you honestly think you
+can frighten a grown woman into believing that a handful of silly
+letters could possibly be worth all that? Well, you can't. And--let me
+remind you that blackmailing women isn't smiled upon in Carolina. A
+hint of this and you'd be ostracized."
+
+"So would you. And why use such an extreme term as blackmailing for
+what really is a very fair offer?" said he, equably. "The letters are
+not the only arrows in my quiver, Miss Eustis. But as you are more
+interested in them than anything else just now, suppose we run over a
+few, just to remind you of their amazing nature?" He rose leisurely,
+opened the safe in a corner of the room, took from the steel
+money-vault a package, and Mary Virginia recognized her own writing.
+Always keeping them under his own hand, he yet allowed her to lean
+forward and verify what he chose to read.
+
+Her face burned and tears of mortification stung her eyes. Good
+heavens, had she been as silly and as sentimental as all that? But as
+she listened to his smooth remorseless voice, mortification merged
+into amazement and amazement into consternation. Older and wiser now,
+she saw what ignorance and infatuation had really accomplished, and
+she realized that a fool can unwittingly pull the universe about her
+ears.
+
+She was appalled. It was as if her waking self were confronted by an
+incredible something her dreaming self had done. She knew enough of
+the world now to realize how such letters would be received--with
+smiles intended to wound, with the raised eyebrow, the shrugged
+shoulder. She wondered, with a chill of panic, how she could ever hope
+to make anybody understand what she admitted she herself couldn't
+explain. For heaven's sake, _what_ had she been trying to tell this
+man? She didn't know any more, except that it hadn't been what these
+letters seemed to reveal.
+
+"Well?" said the lazy, pleasant voice, "don't you agree with me that
+it would have been barbarous to destroy them? Wonderful, aren't they?
+Who would credit a demure American schoolgirl with their supreme art?
+A French court lady might have written them, in a day when folks made
+a fine art of love and weren't afraid nor ashamed."
+
+"I must have been stark mad!" said she, twisting her fingers. "How
+could I ever have done it? Oh, how?"
+
+"Oh, we all have our moments of genius!" said he, airily.
+
+As he faced her, smiling and urbane, she noted woman-fashion the
+superfine quality of his linen, the perfection of every detail of his
+appearance, the grace with which he wore his clothes. His manner was
+gracious, even courtly. Yet there was about him something so
+relentless that for the first time she felt a quiver of fear.
+
+"If my father--or Mr. Mayne--knew this, you would undoubtedly be
+shot!" said she, and her eyes flashed.
+
+"Unwritten law, chivalry, all the rest of that rot? I am well aware
+that the Southern trigger-finger is none too steady, where lovely
+woman is concerned," he admitted, with a faint sneer. "But when one
+plays for high stakes, Miss Eustis, one runs the risks. Granted I do
+get shot? That wouldn't give you the letters: it would simply hand
+them over to prosecuting attorneys and the public press, and they'd be
+damning with blood upon them. No, I don't think there'll be any
+fireworks--just a sensible deal, in which everybody benefits and
+nobody loses."
+
+"The thing is impossible, perfectly impossible."
+
+"I don't see why. Everything has its price and I'm offering you a
+pretty stiff one."
+
+"I would rather be burned alive. Marry Mr. Inglesby? _I_? Why, he is
+impossible, perfectly impossible!"
+
+"He is nothing of the kind. And he is very much in love with you--you
+amount to a grand passion with Inglesby. Also, he has twenty
+millions." He added dryly: "You are hard to please."
+
+Mary Virginia waved aside grand passion and twenty millions with a
+gesture of ineffable disdain.
+
+"Even if I were weak and silly enough to take you seriously, do you
+imagine my father would ever consent? He would despise me. He would
+rather see me dead."
+
+"Oh, no, he wouldn't. Nobody can afford to despise a woman with twenty
+millions. It isn't in human nature. Particularly when you save Mr.
+James Eustis himself from coming a breakneck cropper, to say the very
+least."
+
+For the moment she missed the significance of that last remark.
+
+"I repeat that I would rather be burned alive. I despise the man!"
+said she, passionately.
+
+"Oh, no, you wouldn't." His manner was a bit contemptuous. "And you'd
+soon get used to him. Women and cats are like that. They may squall
+and scratch a bit at first, but the saucer of cream reconciles them,
+and presently they are quite at home and purring, the sensible
+creatures! You'll end by liking him very well."
+
+The girl ignored this Job's comforting.
+
+"What shall I say to my father?" she asked directly. "Tell him you
+kept the foolish letters written you by an ignorant child--and the
+price is either his or my selling out to Mr. Inglesby?"
+
+"That is your lookout. You can't expect us to let your side whip us,
+hands down, can you? Mr. Inglesby does not propose to submit tamely to
+_everything_." His face hardened, a glacial glint snapped into his
+eyes. "Inglesby's no worse than anybody else would be that had to hold
+down his job. He's got virtues, plenty of solid good-citizen,
+church-member, father-of-a-family virtues, little as you seem to
+realize it. Also, let me repeat--he has twenty millions. To buy up a
+handful of letters for twenty million dollars looks to me about the
+biggest price ever paid since the world began. Don't be a fool!"
+
+"I refuse. I refuse absolutely and unconditionally. I shall
+immediately send for my father--and for Mr. Mayne--"
+
+"I give you credit for better sense," said he, with a razor-edged
+smile. "Eustis is honorable and Mayne is in love with you, and when
+you spring this they'll swear they believe you: _but will they_? Do
+men ever believe women, without the leaven of a little doubt? Speaking
+as a man for men, I wouldn't put them to the test. No, dear lady, I
+hardly think you are going to be so silly. Now let us pass on to
+something of greater moment than the letters. Did you think I had
+nothing else to urge upon you?"
+
+"What, more?" said she, derisively. "I don't think I understand."
+
+"I am sure you don't. Permit me, then, to enlighten you." He paused a
+moment, as if to reflect. Then, impressively:
+
+"Hitherto, Miss Eustis, you have had the very button on Fortune's
+cap," he told her. "Suppose, however, that fickle goddess chose to
+whisk herself off bodily, and left you--_you_, mind you! to face the
+ugly realities of poverty, and poverty under a cloud?" And while she
+stared at him blankly, he asked: "What do you know of your father's
+affairs?"
+
+As a matter of fact she knew very little. But something in the deadly
+pleasantness of his voice, something in his eyes, startled her.
+
+"What do you mean, Mr. Hunter?"
+
+"Ah, now we get down to bedrock: your father's affairs," he said evenly.
+"Your father, Miss Eustis, is a very remarkable man, a man with one
+idea. In other words, a fanatic. Only a fanatic could accomplish what
+Eustis has accomplished. His one idea is the very sound old idea that
+people should remain on the land. He starts in to show his people how to
+do it successfully. Once started, the work grows like Jonah's gourd. He
+becomes a sort of rural white hope. So far, so good. But reclamation
+work, experimenting, blooded stock, up-to-the-minute machinery,
+labor-saving devices, chemicals, high-priced experts, labor itself, all
+that calls for money, plenty of money. Your father's work grew to its
+monumental proportions because he'd gotten other men interested in
+it--all sorts and conditions of men, but chiefly--and here's at once his
+strength and weakness--farmers, planters, small-town merchants and
+bankers. They backed him with everything they had--and they haven't
+lost--yet.
+
+"However, there are such things as bad seasons, labor troubles,
+boll-weevil, canker, floods, war. He lost ship-loads of cotton. He
+lost heavily on rice. Remember those last floods? In some of his
+places they wiped the work of years clean off the map. He had to begin
+all over, and he had to do it on borrowed money; which in lean and
+losing years is expensive. Floods may come and crops may go, but
+interest on borrowed money goes on forever. He mortgaged all he could
+mortgage, risked everything he could risk, took every chance--and now
+everything is at stake with him.
+
+"Do you realize what it would mean if Eustis went under? A smash to
+shake the state! Consider, too, the effect of failure upon the man
+himself! He can't fail, though--_if Mr. Inglesby chooses to lend a
+hand_. Now do you begin to comprehend?"
+
+In spite of her distrust, he impressed her profoundly. He did not
+over-estimate her father's passionate belief in himself and the value
+of his work. If anything, Hunter had slurred the immense influence
+Eustis exerted, and the calamitous effect his failure would have upon
+the plain people who looked up to him with such unlimited trust. They
+would not only lose their money; they would lose something no money
+could pay for--their faith.
+
+"Oh, but that just simply couldn't happen!" said Mary Virginia, and
+her chin went up.
+
+"It could very easily happen. It may happen shortly," he contradicted
+politely. "Heavens, girl, don't you know that the Eustis house is
+mortgaged to the roof, that Rosemount Plantation is mortgaged from the
+front fences to the back ditches? No, I suppose he wouldn't want his
+women-folks to know. He thinks he can tide it over. They always
+believe they can tide it over, those one-idea chaps. And he could,
+too, for he's a born winner, is Eustis. Give him time and a good
+season and he'd be up again, stronger than ever." While he spoke he
+was taking from a drawer a handful of papers, which he spread out on
+the desk. She could see upon all of them a bold clear "_James
+Eustis_."
+
+"One place mortgaged to prop up another, and that in turn mortgaged to
+save a third. Like links in a chain. Any chain is only as strong as
+its weakest link, remember. And we've got the links. Look at these,
+please." He laid before her two or three slips of paper. Mary
+Virginia's eyes asked for enlightenment.
+
+"These," explained Hunter, "are promissory notes. You will see that
+some of them are about due--and the amounts are considerable."
+
+"Oh! And _he_ had to do that?"
+
+"Of course. What else could he do? We kept a very close watch since we
+got the first inkling that things were not breaking right for him. Mr.
+Inglesby's own interests are pretty extensive--and we set them to
+work. It wasn't hard to manage, after things began to shape: a word
+here, a hint there, an order somewhere else; and once or twice, of
+course, a bit of pressure was brought to bear, in obdurate instances.
+But the man with money is always the man with the whip hand. Eustis
+got the help he had to have--and presently we got these. All perfectly
+legitimate, all in the course of the day's work.
+
+"Now, promissory notes are dangerous instruments should a holder
+desire to use them dangerously. Mr. Inglesby could give Eustis an
+extension of time, or he could demand full payment and immediately
+foreclose. You see, it's entirely optional with Mr. Inglesby." And he
+leaned back in his chair, perfectly self-possessed, entirely at his
+ease, and waited for her to speak.
+
+"You could do that--anybody could do that--to my father?" she was
+only half-convinced.
+
+"I assure you we can send him under--with a lot of other men's money
+tied around his neck to keep him down."
+
+"But even you would hesitate to do a thing like that!"
+
+"All is fair," said Hunter, "in love and war."
+
+"_Fair_?"
+
+"Legitimate, then."
+
+"But if he is in Mr. Inglesby's way and in his power at the same time,
+why not remove him in the ordinary course of business? Why drag in me
+and my letters?"
+
+"Why? Because it's the letters that enable us to reach _you_. My dear
+girl, Mr. Inglesby doesn't really give a hang whether Eustis sinks or
+swims. He'd as lief back him as not, for in the long run it's good
+business to back a winner. But it's _you_ he's playing for, and on
+that count all is fish that comes to his net. _Now_ do you begin to
+see?"
+
+Mary Virginia began to see. She looked at the unruffled man before her
+a bit wonderingly.
+
+"And what do _you_ get out of this?" she asked, unexpectedly. "Mr.
+Inglesby is to get me, I am to get his money and a package of letters,
+my father is to get time to save himself; well then, what do _you_
+get? The pleasure of doing something wrong? Revenge?"
+
+But Hunter looked at her with cold astonishment. "You surprise me," he
+said. "You talk as if you'd been going to see too many of those
+insufferable screen-plays that make the proletariat sniffle and the
+intelligent swear. I am merely a business man, Miss Eustis, and
+attending to this particular affair for my employer is all in the
+course of the day's work. I--er--am not in a position to refuse to
+obey orders or to be captious, particularly since Mr. Inglesby has
+agreed to double my present salary. That in itself is no light
+inducement--but I get more. I get Mr. Inglesby's personal backing,
+which means an assured future to me; as it will mean to you and your
+father, if you have got the sense you were born with. This is
+business. Kindly omit melodrama--crude, and not at all your style,
+really," he finished, critically.
+
+"This is nothing short of villainy. And not at all too crude for
+_your_ style," said Mary Virginia.
+
+He laughed good-humoredly. "Bad temper is vastly becoming to you," he
+told her. "It gives you a magnificent color."
+
+And at that Mary Virginia looked at him with eyes in which the shadow
+of fear was deepening. Hard as nails, cold as ice, to him she was
+merely a means to an end. He did not even hate her. The guillotine
+does not hate those whom it decapitates, either; none the less it
+takes off their heads once they get in the way of the descending
+knife.
+
+"I suggest," said Hunter, rising, "that you go home now and think the
+matter over carefully. Weigh what you and your father stand to gain
+against what you stand to lose. I do not press you for an immediate
+decision. You shall have a reasonable time for consideration." It was
+a threat and a command, thinly veiled.
+
+All that night, unable to sleep, she did think the matter over
+carefully; she turned and twisted it about and about and saw it now
+from this angle and now from that; and the more she studied it in all
+its bearings the worse it grew. There was no escape from it.
+
+Suppose, although she knew she could never, never hope to
+satisfactorily explain them, she nevertheless told her father about
+those letters and the part they were to be made play, now that his own
+affairs had reached a crisis? She could fancy herself telling him that
+he must shield himself behind her skirts if he would save himself from
+ruin. That ... to James Eustis!
+
+Suppose that the Carolina trigger-finger slipped, as Hunter had
+nonchalantly admitted might happen: what then? But it is the woman in
+the case who always suffers the most and the longest; it is the woman,
+always, who pays the greater price. Her fears magnified the imagined
+evil, her pride was crucified.
+
+What tortured her most was that they were actually making her party to
+a wreck that could easily be averted. Hunter had admitted that Eustis
+could weather the storm, if he were given time. Oh, to gain time for
+him, then! And she lay there, staring into the dark with wet eyes. How
+could she help him, she who was also snared?
+
+And in desperation she hit upon a forlorn hope. She dared not speak
+out openly to anybody, she dared not flatly refuse Inglesby's
+pretensions, for that would be to invite the avalanche. What she
+proposed to herself was to hold him off as long as she could. She
+would not be definite until the last possible minute. Always there was
+the chance that by some miracle of mercy Eustis might be able to meet
+those notes when they fell due. Let him do that, and she would then
+tell him everything. But not now. He was bearing too much, without
+that added burden.
+
+It cost her a supreme effort to face the situation as it affected
+herself and Laurence. Life without Laurence! The bare thought of it
+tested her heart and showed her how inalienably it belonged to him.
+But under all his lovingness and his boyishness, Laurence had a
+sternness, a ruggedness as adamantine as one of Cromwell's Iron-sides.
+With him to know would be to act. Well--he mustn't know. It terrified
+her to think of just what might happen, if Laurence knew.
+
+Under the circumstances there seemed but one course open to her--to
+give up Laurence, and that without explanations. For his own sake she
+had to keep silent--just as Hunter had known she would. What Laurence
+must think of her, even the loss of his affection and respect, would
+be part of the price paid for having been a fool.
+
+In the most unobtrusive manner they kept in touch with her. Hunter had
+so adroitly wirepulled, and so deftly softened and toned down
+Inglesby's crudities, that Mrs. Eustis had become the latter's open
+champion. Condescending and patronizing, she liked the importance of
+lending a very rich man her social countenance. She insisted that he
+was misunderstood. Men of great fortunes are always misunderstood.
+Nobody considers it a virtue to be charitable to the rich--they save
+all their charity for the poor, who as often as not are undeserving,
+and are generally insanitary as well. Mrs. Eustis thanked her heavenly
+Father she was a woman of larger vision, and never thought ill of a
+man just because he happened to be a millionaire. Millionaires have
+got souls, she hoped? And hearts? Mrs. Eustis said she knew Mr.
+Inglesby's noble heart, my dear, whether others did or not.
+
+Compelled to apparently jilt Laurence, Mary Virginia sank deeper and
+deeper into the slough of despond. A terror of Inglesby's power, as of
+something supernatural, was growing upon her, a terror almost childish
+in its intensity. He had begun to occupy the niche vacated by the
+Boogerman her Dah had threatened her with in her nursery. She could
+barely conceal this terror, save that an instinct warned her that to
+let him know she feared him would be fatal. And she felt for him a
+physical repulsion strong enough to be nauseating.
+
+The fact that she disdained and perhaps even disliked him and made no
+effort to conceal her feelings, did not in the least ruffle his bland
+complacency nor affront his pride. He knew that not even an Inglesby
+could hope to find a Mary Virginia more than once in a lifetime, and
+the haughtier she was the more she pleased him; it added to his
+innate sense of power, and this in itself endeared her to him
+inexpressibly.
+
+But as the girl still held out stubbornly, trying to evade the final
+word that would force a climax disastrous any way she viewed it,
+Inglesby's patience was exhausted. He was determined to make her come
+to terms by the word of her own mouth, and he had no doubt that her
+final word must be Yes; perhaps a Yes reluctant enough, but
+nevertheless one to which he meant to hold her.
+
+To make that final demand more impressive, Hunter was not entrusted
+with the interview. Hunter may have been doubtful as to the wisdom of
+this, but Inglesby could no longer forego the delight of dealing with
+Mary Virginia personally. On the Saturday night, then, Mrs. Eustis
+being absent, Mr. Inglesby, manicured, massaged, immaculate, shaven
+and shorn, called in person; and not daring to refuse, Mary Virginia
+received him, wondering if for her the end of the world had not come.
+
+He made a mistake, for Mary Virginia had her back against the wall,
+literally waiting for the Eustis roof to fall. But he could not forego
+the pleasure of witnessing her pride lower its crest to him. He did
+not relish a go-between, even such a successful one as his secretary.
+He had made up his mind that she should have until to-morrow night,
+Sunday, to come to a decision--just that long, and not another hour.
+He was not getting younger; he wanted to marry, to found a great
+establishment as whose mistress Mary Virginia should shine. And she
+was making him lose time.
+
+What Inglesby succeeded in doing was to bring her terror to a head,
+and to fill her with a sick loathing of him. Under the smooth
+protestations, the promises, the threats veiled with hateful and oily
+smiles, the man himself was revealed: crude, brutal, dominant,
+ruthless, a male animal bull-necked and arrogant, with small eyes,
+wide nostrils, cruel moist lips, sensual fat white hands she hated.
+And he was so sure of her! Mary Virginia found herself smarting under
+that horrible sureness.
+
+Perfectly at his ease, inclined to be familiar and jocose, he looked
+insolently about the lovely old room that had never before held such a
+suitor for a daughter of that house. Watching her with the complacent
+eyes of an accepted lover, assuming odious airs of proprietorship such
+as made one wish to throttle him, he was in no hurry to go. It seemed
+to her that black and withering years rolled over her head before he
+could bring himself to rise to take his departure. Death could hardly
+be colder to a mortal than she had been to this man all the evening,
+and yet it had not disconcerted him in the least!
+
+He stood for a moment regarding her with the eyes of possession. "And
+to think that to-morrow night I shall have the right to openly claim
+you as my promised wife!" he exulted. "You can't realize what it means
+to a man to be able to say to the world that the most beautiful woman
+in it is his!"
+
+Directly in front of her hung the portrait of the founder of the house
+in Carolina, the cavalier who had fled to the new world when Charles
+Stuart's head fell in the old one. It was a fine and proud face, the
+eyes frank and brave, the mouth firm and sweet. The girl looked from
+it to George Inglesby's, and found herself unable to speak. But as she
+stood before him, tall and proud and pale, the loveliness, the
+appealing charm of her, went like a strong wine to the man's head.
+With a quick and fierce movement he seized her hand and covered it
+with hot and hateful kisses.
+
+At the touch of his lips cold horror seized her. She dragged her hand
+free and waved him back with a splendid indignation. But Inglesby was
+out of hand; he had taken the bit between his teeth, and now he
+bolted.
+
+"Do you think I'm made of stone?" he bellowed, and the mask slipped
+altogether. There was no hypocrisy about Inglesby now; this was
+genuine. "Well, I'm not! I'm a man, a flesh-and-blood man, and I'm
+crazy for you--and you're _mine_! You're _mine_, and you might just as
+well face the music and get acquainted with me, first as last.
+Understand?
+
+"I'm not such a bad sort--what's the matter with me, anyhow? Why ain't
+I good enough for you or any other woman? Suppose I'm not a young
+whippersnapper with his head full of nonsense and his pockets full of
+nothing, can the best popinjay of them all do for you what _I_ can?
+Can any of 'em offer you what _I_ can offer? Let him try to: I'll
+raise his bid!
+
+"Here--don't you stand there staring at me as if I'd tried to slit
+your throat just because I've kissed your hand. Suppose I did? Why
+shouldn't I kiss your hand if I want to? It's my hand, when all's said
+and done, and I'll kiss it again if I feel like it. No, no, beauty, I
+won't, not if it's going to make you look at me like that! Why, queen,
+I wouldn't frighten you for worlds! I love you too much to want to do
+anything but please you. I'd do anything, everything, just to please
+you, to make you like me! You'll believe that, won't you?" And he
+held out his hands with a supplicating and impassioned gesture.
+
+"Why can't we be friends? Try to be friends with me, Mary Virginia!
+You would, if you only knew how much I love you. Why, I've loved you
+ever since that first day I saw you, after you'd come back home. I was
+going into the bank, and I turned, and there you were! You had on a
+gray dress, and you wore violets, a big bunch of them. I can smell
+them yet. God! It was all up with me! I was crazy about you from the
+start, and it's been getting worse and worse ... worse and worse!
+
+"You don't know all I mean to do for you, beauty! I'm going to give
+you this little old world to play with. Nothing's too good for _you_.
+Look at me! I'm not an old man yet--I've only just _begun_ to make
+money for you. Now be a little kind to me. You've got to marry me, you
+know. Look here: you kiss me good-night, just once, of your own free
+will, and I swear you shall have anything under the sky you ask me
+for. Do you want a string of pearls that will make yours look like a
+child's playpretty? I'll hang a million dollars around that white
+throat of yours!"
+
+But there came into the girl's eyes that which gave him pause. They
+stood staring at each other; and slowly the wine-dark flush faded from
+his face and left him livid. Little dents came about his nose, and his
+lips puckered as if the devil had pinched them together.
+
+"No?" said he thickly, and his jaw hardened, and his eyes narrowed
+under his square forehead. "No? You won't, eh? Too fine and proud? My
+lady, you'll learn to kiss me when I tell you to, and glad enough of
+the chance, before you and I finish with each other! Why, you--I--Oh,
+good God! Why do you rouse the devil in me, when I only want to be
+friends with you?"
+
+But she, with a ghastly face, turned swiftly and with her head held
+high walked out of the room, passed through the wide hall, and
+ascended the stairs, without even bidding him goodnight. Let him take
+his dismissal as he would--she could stand no more!
+
+Once in her own room, Mary Virginia dismissed Nancy for the night. She
+had to be alone, and the colored woman was an irrepressible magpie.
+Furiously she scrubbed her hands, as if to remove the taint of his
+touch. That he had dared! Her teeth chattered. She could barely save
+herself from screaming aloud. She bathed her face, dashed some toilet
+water over herself, and fell into a chair, limp and unnerved.
+
+_One day!_
+
+She was facing the end and she knew it. Because she had to say No. She
+had never for one minute admitted to herself the possibility of her
+own surrender. She could give up Laurence, since she had to; but she
+could not accept Inglesby. Anything rather than that! At the most, all
+she had hoped was to evade that final No until the last moment, in
+order to give Eustis what poor respite she could. Only her great love
+for him had enabled her to do that much. And it had not helped. When
+she thought of the wreck that must come, she beat her hands together,
+softly, in sheer misery. It was like standing by and watching some
+splendid ship being pounded to pieces on the rocks.
+
+Only her innate bravery and her real and deep religious instinct saved
+her from altogether sinking into inertia and despair. She _had_ to
+arouse herself. Other women had faced situations equally as impossible
+and unbearable as hers, and the best of them had not allowed
+themselves to be whipped into tame and abject submission. Even at the
+worst they had snatched the great chance to live their own lives in
+their own way. As for her, surely there must be some way out of this
+snarl, some immediate way that led to honorable freedom, even without
+hope. But how and where was she to find any way open to her, between
+now and to-morrow night?
+
+On her dressing table, with a handful of trinkets upon it, lay the
+tray that the Butterfly Man had sent her when she was graduated. Chin
+in hands, Mary Virginia stared absently enough at the brightly colored
+butterflies she had been told to remember were messengers bearing on
+their wings the love of the Parish House people. Why--why--of course!
+The Parish House people! They had blamed her, because they hadn't
+understood. But if she were to ask the Parish House people for any
+help within their power, she could be sure of receiving it without
+stint.
+
+If she could get to the Parish House without anybody knowing where she
+was, Inglesby and Hunter would be balked of that interview to-morrow
+night. The worst was going to happen anyhow, but if she couldn't save
+herself from anything else, at least she could save herself from
+facing them alone. To be able to do that, she would go now, in the
+middle of the night, and tell the Padre everything. Unnerved as she
+was, she couldn't face the hours between now and to-morrow morning
+here, by herself. She had to get to the Parish House.
+
+It was then after eleven. Nancy having been dismissed for the night,
+she had no fear of being interrupted. She made her few preparations,
+switched off the light, and sat down to wait until she could be sure
+that all the servants were abed, and the streets deserted. She felt as
+if she were a forlorn castaway upon a pinpoint of land, with
+immeasurable dark depths upon either side.
+
+The midnight express screeched and was gone. She switched on the light
+for a last look about her pretty, pleasant room. There was a snapshot
+of the Parish House people upon her mantel, and she nodded to it,
+gravely, before she once more plunged the room into darkness.
+
+Noiselessly she slipped downstairs and let herself out. The midnight
+air was bitingly cold, but she did not feel it. With one handsatchel
+holding all she thought she could honestly lay claim to, Mary Virginia
+turned her back upon the home that had sheltered her all her life, but
+that wouldn't be able to shelter its own people much longer, because
+Inglesby was going to take it away from them. It made her wince to
+think of him as master under that roof. The old house deserved a
+happier fate.
+
+At best the Parish House could be only a momentary stopping-place.
+What lay beyond she didn't know. What her fate held further of evil
+she couldn't guess. But at least, she thought, it would be in her own
+hands. It wasn't. Unexpectedly and mercifully was it put into the
+abler and stronger hands of the Butterfly Man.
+
+
+Now, that night Flint had found himself unable to work. He was
+unaccountably depressed. He couldn't read; even the Bible, opened at
+his favorite John, hadn't any comfort for him. He shoved the book
+aside, snatched hat and overcoat, and fled to his refuge the healing
+out-of-doors.
+
+He trudged the country roads for awhile, then turned toward town,
+intending to pass by the Eustis house. It wasn't the first time he had
+passed the Eustis house at night of late, and just to see it asleep in
+the midst of its gardens steadied him and made him smile at the vague
+fears he entertained.
+
+He was almost up to the gate when a girl emerged from it, and he
+stiffened in his tracks, for it was Mary Virginia. A second later, and
+they stood face to face.
+
+"Don't be alarmed, it is I, Flint," he said in his quiet voice. And
+then he asked directly: "Why are you out alone at this hour? Where are
+you going?"
+
+"To--to the Parish House," she stammered. She was greatly startled by
+his sudden appearance.
+
+"Exactly," said the Butterfly Man, with meaning, and relieved her of
+her satchel. He asked no questions, offered no comments; but as
+quickly as he could he got her to his own rooms, put Kerry on guard,
+and ran for help.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+ST. STANISLAUS CROOKS HIS ELBOW
+
+
+Mary Virginia's voice trailed into silence and she sank back into her
+chair, staring somberly at the fire. Her face marked with tears, the
+long braids of her hair over her shoulders, she looked so like a sad
+and chidden child that the piteousness of her would have moved and
+melted harder hearts than ours.
+
+The Butterfly Man had listened without an interruption. He sat leaning
+slightly forward, knees crossed, the left arm folded to support the
+elbow of the right, and his chin in his cupped right hand. His eyes
+had the piercing clear directness of an eagle's; they burned with an
+unwavering pale flame. Shrewder far than I, he saw the great advantage
+of knowing the worst, of at last thoroughly understanding Hunter and
+Inglesby and the motives which moved them. He had, too, a certain
+tolerance. These two had merely acted according to their lights; he
+had not expected any more or less, therefore he was not surprised now
+into an undue condemnation.
+
+But the fighting instinct rose rampant in me. My hands are De Rancé
+hands, the hands of soldiers as well as of priests, and they itched
+for a weapon, preferably a sword. Horrified and astonished,
+suffocating with anger, I had no word at command to comfort this
+victim of abominable cunning. Indeed, what could I say; what could I
+do? I looked helplessly at the Butterfly Man, and the stronger man
+looked back at me, gravely and impassively.
+
+"But what is to be done?" I groaned.
+
+He seemed to know, for he said at once:
+
+"Call Madame. Tell her to bring some extra wraps. I am going to take
+Mary Virginia home, and Madame will go with us."
+
+"But why shouldn't she stay here?"
+
+"Because she'd better be at home to-morrow morning, parson. We're not
+supposed to know anything of her affairs, and I'd rather she didn't
+appear at the Parish House. Also, she needs sleep right now more than
+she needs anything else, and one sleeps better in one's own bed.
+Madame will see that she goes to hers and stays there."
+
+I was perfectly willing to commit the affair into John Flint's hands.
+But Mary Virginia demurred.
+
+"No. I want to stay here! I don't want to go home, Padre."
+
+Flint shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said mildly, "but I'm going to
+take you home." He looked so inexorable that Mary Virginia shrugged
+her shoulders.
+
+"Oh, all right, Mr. Flint, I'll go," said she. "What difference does
+it make? I'll even go to bed--as I'm told." And she added in a tone of
+indescribable bitterness: "I have read that men lie down and sleep
+peacefully the night before they are hanged. Well, I suppose they
+could: they hadn't anything but death to face on the morrow, but I--"
+and she caught her breath.
+
+"Why not take it for granted to-night that you'll be looked after
+to-morrow?" suggested Flint. "Mary Virginia, nothing's ever so bad as
+it's going to be."
+
+"Oh, yes, I'll be looked after to-morrow!" said she, bitingly. "Mr.
+Inglesby will see to that!" She covered her face with her hands.
+
+"Oh, I don't know!" The Butterfly Man shut his mouth on the words like
+a knife. "Inglesby may think he's going to, but somehow _I_ think he
+won't."
+
+"Ah!" said she scornfully. "Perhaps _you'll_ be able to stop him?"
+
+"Perhaps," he agreed. "If I don't, somebody or something else will.
+It's very unlucky to be too lucky too long. You see, everybody's got
+to get what's coming to them, and it generally comes hardest when
+they've tied themselves up to the notion they're It. Somehow I fancy
+Mr. Inglesby's due to come considerable of a cropper around about
+now."
+
+"Between now and to-morrow night?" she wondered, with sad contempt.
+
+"Why not? Anything can happen between a night and a night." He looked
+at her with shrewd appreciation: "You have taken yourself so
+seriously," said he, "that you've pretty nearly muddled yourself into
+being tragic. Those fellows knew who they were dealing with when they
+tackled _you_. They could bet the limit you'd never tell. So long as
+you didn't tell, so long as they had nobody but you to deal with, they
+had you where they wanted you. But now maybe things might happen that
+haven't been printed in the program."
+
+"What things?" she mocked somberly.
+
+"I don't know, yet," he admitted, "But I do know there is always a
+way out of everything except the grave. The thing is to find the right
+way. That's up to the Padre and me. Parson, would you mind going after
+Madame now, please? The sooner we go the better."
+
+Have I not said my mother is the most wonderful of women? I waked her
+in the small hours with the startling information that Mary Virginia
+was downstairs in John Flint's workroom, and that she herself must
+dress and accompany her home. And my mother, though she looked her
+stark bewilderment, plagued me with no questions.
+
+"She is in great trouble, and she needs you. Hurry."
+
+Madame slid out of her bed and reached for her neatly folded garments.
+
+"Wait in the hall, Armand; I will be with you in ten minutes." And she
+was, wrapped and hatted.
+
+Once in the workroom, she cast a deep and searching woman-glance at
+the pale girl in the chair. Her face was so sweet with motherliness
+and love and pity, and that profound comprehension the best women show
+to each other, that I felt my throat contract. Gathered into Madame's
+embrace, Mary Virginia clung to her old friend dumbly. Madame had but
+one question:
+
+"My child, have you told John Flint and my son what this trouble of
+yours is?"
+
+"Yes; I had to, I had to!"
+
+"Thank the good God for that!" said my mother piously. "Now we will go
+home, dearest, and you can sleep in peace--you have nothing more to
+worry about!"
+
+The clasp of the comforting arms, the sweet serenity of the mild eyes,
+and above all the little lady's perfect confidence, aroused Mary
+Virginia out of her torpor. She felt that she no longer stood alone
+at the mercy of the merciless. Bundled in the wraps my mother had
+provided, she paused at the door.
+
+"I think you will forgive me any trouble I may cause you, because I am
+sure all of you love me. And whatever comes, I will be brave enough to
+face and to bear it. Padre, dear Padre, you understand, don't you?"
+
+"My child, my darling child, I understand."
+
+"I'll be back in half an hour, parson," the Butterfly Man remarked
+meaningly. Then the three melted into the night.
+
+Left alone, I was far from sharing Madame's simple faith in our
+ability to untangle this miserable snarl. I knew now the temper of the
+men we had to deal with. I also understood that in cases like this the
+Southern trigger-finger is none too steady. Seen from a certain point
+of view, if ever men deserved an unconditional and thorough killing,
+these two did. Yet this homicidal specter turned me cold, for Mary
+Virginia's sake.
+
+For Eustis himself I could see nothing but ruin ahead, but I wished
+passionately to help the dear girl who had come to me in her stress.
+But what was one to do? How should one act?
+
+I sat there dismally enough, my chin sunk upon my breast; for as a
+plotter, a planner, a conspirator, I am a particularly hopeless
+failure. I have no sense of intrigue, and the bare idea of plotting
+reduces me to stupefaction.
+
+Perhaps because I am a priest by instinct, I always discover in myself
+the instant need of prayer when confronted by the unusual and the
+difficult. I have prayed over seemingly hopeless problems in my time
+and I think I have been led to a clear solution of many of them.
+Major Cartwright insists that this is merely because I bring desire
+and will to bear upon a given point and so release an irresistible
+natural force. He says prayer is as much a science as, say,
+mathematics--such and such its units, and such and such its fixed
+results. Well, maybe so. All I know is that when I beseech aid I think
+I receive it.
+
+So I ran over to the church and let myself in. I felt that at least
+for a few minutes I must kneel before the altar and implore help for
+her who was like my own child to me.
+
+The empty church was quite black save for the sanctuary lamp and the
+little red votive lights burning before the statues of the saints and
+of our Lady. All these many little lights only cast the veriest ghosts
+of brightness upon the darkness, but the white altar was revealed by
+the larger glow of the sanctuary lamp. There it shone with a mild and
+pure luster, unfailing, calm, steady, burning through the night, the
+sign and symbol of that light of Love which cannot fail, but burns and
+burns and burns forever and forever before an altar that is the
+infinite universe itself.
+
+My little-faith, my ready-to-halt faith, raised its head above the
+encompassing waters; the wild turmoil and torment died away: ... after
+the earthquake and the fire and the whirlwind, the still small
+voice....
+
+Then I, to whom life at best can only be working and waiting, was for
+a space able to pray for her to whom life should be "_as the light of
+the morning, when the sun riseth, even a clear morning without clouds;
+and as the tender grass by clear shining after rain_." I remembered
+her as she had first come to me, a little loving child to fill my
+empty heart, the poor clay heart that cannot even hold fast to the
+love of God but by these frail all-powerful ties of simple human
+affection. And when I thought of her now, so young and so sore-beset,
+a bird caught in the snare of the fowler, I beat my breast for pity
+and for grief. Oh, how should I help her, how!
+
+I turned my head, and there stood St. Stanislaus upon his pedestal,
+the memorial lights flickering upon his long robe, his smooth boy's
+face, his sheaf of lilies. I regarded him rather absently. Something
+stirred in my consciousness; something I always had to remember in
+connection with St. Stanislaus....
+
+Across my mind as across a screen flashed a series of pictures--a
+mangled tramp carried into the Parish House, my mother watching with a
+concerned and shocked face, and the hall mud-stained by the trampling
+feet of the clumsy bearers; the shaggy Poles, caps off, turning over
+to me as to high authority the heavy oilskin package they had found; I
+opening that package later and standing amazed and startled before its
+contents; and that same package, hidden under my cassock, carried over
+to the church and placed for security and secrecy in the keeping of
+the little saint. Well, that had been quite right; there had been
+nothing else to do; one had to be secret and careful when one had in
+one's keeping the tools of that notorious burglar, Slippy McGee.
+
+Small wonder that I did not connect those pictures with the fate of
+Mary Virginia Eustis! No, I did not immediately grasp their tremendous
+bearing upon the petitions I was repeating. And all the while, with a
+dull insistence, an enraging persistence, they flickered before the
+eyes of my memory--the Poles, the screaming cursing tramp;
+Westmoreland pondering aloud as to why he had been permitted to save
+so apparently worthless a life; and the little saint hiding from the
+eyes of men all traces of lost Slippy McGee. Nor, more curiously yet,
+did I connect them with the Butterfly Man. The Butterfly Man was
+somebody else altogether, another and a different person, a man of
+whom even one's secretest thoughts were admiring and respectful. He
+was so far removed from the very shadow of such things as these, that
+it did one's conscience a sort of violence to think of him in
+connection with them. I tried to dismiss the memories from my mind. I
+wished to concentrate wholly upon the problem of Mary Virginia.
+
+And then that mysterious, hidden self-under-self that lives in us far,
+far beneath thought and instinct and conscience and heredity and even
+consciousness itself, rose to the surface with a message:
+
+_Slippy McGee had been the greatest cracksman in all America...._
+"Honest to God, skypilot, I can open any box made, easy as easy!" ...
+_And even as his tools were hidden in St. Stanislaus, Slippy McGee
+himself was hidden in John Flint_.
+
+Recoiling, I clung to the altar railing. What dreadful thing was I
+contemplating, what fearful temptation was assailing me, here under
+the light of the sanctuary lamp? I looked reproachfully at St.
+Stanislaus, as if that seraphic youth had betrayed my confidence. I
+suspected him of being too anxious to rid himself of the ambiguous
+trust imposed upon him without so much as a by-your-leave. Perhaps he
+was secretly irked at the use to which his painted semblance had been
+put, and seized this first opportunity to extricate himself from a
+position in which the boldest saint of them all might well hesitate to
+find himself.
+
+I began to consider John Flint as he was, the work he had
+accomplished, the splendid structure of that life slowly and
+laboriously made over and lived so cleanly in the light of day. Not
+only had that old evil personality been sloughed off like a larval
+skin; he had come forth from it another creature, a being lovable,
+wise, tender, full of charm. Even the hint of melancholy that was
+becoming more and more a part of him endeared him to others, for the
+broader and brighter the light into which he was steadily mounting,
+the more marked and touching was this softening shadow.
+
+And I who had been the _accoucheur_ of his genius, I who had watched
+and prayed and ministered beside the cradle of his growth, was I of
+all men to threaten his overthrow? Alas, what madness was upon me that
+I was evoking before the very altar the grim ghost of Slippy McGee?
+
+There passed before me in procession the face of Laurence with all its
+boyish bloom stripped from it and the glory of its youth vanished; and
+the bowed and humbled head of James Eustis, one of the large and noble
+souls of this world; and the innocent beauty of Mary Virginia,
+wistfully appealing; followed them the beautiful ruthless face of
+Hunter, dazzlingly blonde, gold-haired as Baldur; and the piglike eyes
+and heavy jowl of Inglesby, brutally dominant; and then the dear
+whimsical visage of the Butterfly Man himself. They passed; and I fell
+to praying, with a sort of still desperation, for all of us.
+
+And all the while the steady and rosy light of the sanctuary lamp fell
+upon me, and the little lights flickered before the silent saints. I
+took myself in hand, forced myself into self-control. I did not
+minimize one risk nor slur one danger. I knew exactly what was at
+stake. And having done this, I decided upon my course:
+
+"If he has thought of this himself, then I will help. But if he has
+not, I will not suggest it, no, no matter what happens."
+
+I told myself I would say ten more Hailmarys, and I said them, with an
+Ourfather at the end. And without further praying I got to my feet.
+The church seemed to be full of breathless whisperings, as if it
+watched and listened while I moved over to Stanislaus and tipped him
+backward. He is a rather heavy and sizable boy for all his saintly
+slimness. Up in the hollow inside, in the crook of his arm, lay the
+oilskin package he had kept these long years through, waiting for
+to-night.
+
+"If ever you prayed for mortals in peril, pray, for the love of God,
+for all of us this night!" I told him. And with the package in a fold
+of my cassock I went back across the dark garden and let myself into
+the Butterfly Man's rooms, and was hardly inside the door when he
+himself returned.
+
+"Didn't meet a soul. And they got in without waking anybody in the
+house," said he complacently, rubbing his hands before the fire. "I
+waited until they showed a light upstairs. She's all right, now
+Madame's with her."
+
+"Have you--have you thought of anything--any way, John?" I quavered,
+and wondered if he heard my heart dunting against my ribs.
+
+"Why, I've thought that she's got until to-morrow night to come to
+terms," said he, and turned to face me. "And she can't accept them.
+Nobody could--that is, not a girl like her. As for Inglesby, he might
+push Eustis under, but he wouldn't have been so cocksure of _her_ if
+it wasn't for those letters. She's been afraid of what might happen if
+Eustis or Laurence found out about them--somebody ran the risk of
+being put to bed with a shovel. There's where they had her. A bit
+unbearable to think of, isn't it?" He spoke so mildly that I looked up
+with astonishment and some disappointment.
+
+"Why," said I, ruefully, "if that's as far as you've gone, we are
+still at the starting point."
+
+"No need to go farther and fare worse, parson," said he, equably. "I
+saw that the first minute I could see anything but red. Yet do you
+know, when she was telling us about it, I thought like a fool of
+everything but the right thing, from sandbagging and shanghaing
+Inglesby, down to holding up Hunter with an automatic?
+
+"When I got my reason on straight, I went back to the starting
+point--the letters, parson, the letter in the safe in Hunter's office.
+Given the letters she'd be free--the one thing Inglesby doesn't want
+to happen. We've got to have those letters."
+
+My mouth was parched as with fever and I saw him through a blur.
+
+"I don't know," he went on, "if you agree with me, parson, but to my
+mind the best way to fight the devil is with fire. What did you do
+with those tools?"
+
+"_Tools?_" in a dry whisper. "_Tools_, John?"
+
+"Tools. Kit. Layout. You had them. Could you put your hand on them in
+a hurry to-night? Don't stare so, man! And for the Lord's love don't
+you tell me you destroyed them! What did you do with my tools?"
+
+The four winds roared in my ears, and one lifted the hair on my scalp,
+as if the Rider on the Pale Horse had passed by. By way of reply I
+placed a heavy package on the table before him, slumped into my chair,
+and covered my face with my hands. Oh, Stanislaus, little saint, what
+had we done between us to-night to the Butterfly Man?
+
+When I looked up again he had risen. With his hands gripping the edge
+of the table until the knuckles showed white, and his neck stretched
+out, he was staring with all his eyes. A low whistle escaped him.
+Wonder, incredulity, a sort of ironic amusement, and a growing,
+iron-jawed determination, expressed themselves in his changing
+countenance. Once or twice he wet his lips and swallowed. Then he sat
+down again, deliberately, and fixed upon me a long and somewhat
+disconcerting stare, as if he were rearranging and tabulating his
+estimate of Father Armand Jean De Rancé. He took his head in his
+hands, and with slitted eyes considered the immediate course of action
+to which the possession of that package committed him. One surmised
+that he was weighing and providing for every possible contingency.
+
+Tentatively he spread out his fine hands, palms uppermost, and flexed
+them; then, turning them, he laid them flat upon the table and again
+spread out his fingers. They were notable hands--shapely, supple,
+strong as steel, the thin-skinned fingertips as delicate and sensitive
+of touch as the antennæ he was used to handling. They were even more
+capable than of old, because of the exquisite work they had been
+trained to accomplish, work to which only the most skilled lapidary's
+is comparable. Apparently satisfied, he drew the bundle toward him.
+Before he opened it he lifted those cool, blue, and ironic eyes to
+mine; and I am sure I was by far the paler and more shaken of the two.
+
+"They were in the crook of St. Stanislaus' arm." I tried to keep my
+voice steady. "I was praying--when you were gone." Somehow, I did not
+find it easy to explain to him. "And ... I remembered.... And I
+brought them with me ... so in case you also ... remembered--" I could
+go no further. I broke into a sort of groaning cry: "Oh, John, John!
+My son, my son!"
+
+"Steady!" said he. "Of course you remembered, parson. It's the only
+way. Didn't I tell her there's always a way out? Well, here it is!"
+His funny, twisted smile came to his lips; it twisted the heart in my
+breast. No thought of himself, of what this thing might mean to him,
+seemed to cross his mind.
+
+"I prayed," said I, almost sobbing, "I prayed. And, John, there stood
+St. Stanislaus--" I stopped again, choking.
+
+He nodded, understandingly. He was methodically spreading out the not
+unbeautiful instruments. And as he picked them up one by one, handling
+them with his strong and expert fingers and testing each with a
+hawk-eyed scrutiny, a most curious and subtle change stole over the
+Butterfly Man.
+
+I felt as if I were witnessing the evocation of something superhuman.
+Horrified and fascinated, I saw what might be called the apotheosis
+of Slippy McGee, so far above him was it, come back and subtly and
+awfully blend with my scientist. It was as if two strong and powerful
+individualities had deliberately joined forces to forge a more vital
+being than either, since the training, knowledge, skill and intellect
+of both would be his to command. If such a man as _this_ ever stepped
+over the deadline he would not be merely "the slickest cracksman in
+America"; he would be one of the master criminals of the earth. I
+fancy he must have felt this intoxicating new access of power, for
+there emanated from him something of a fierce and exalted delight. A
+potentiality, as yet neither good nor evil, he suggested a spiritual
+and physical dynamo.
+
+He gave a tigerish purr of pleasure over the tools, handling them with
+the fingers of the artist and admiring them with the eyes of the
+connoisseur. "The best I could get. All made to order. Tested blue
+steel. I never kicked at the price, and you wouldn't believe me if I
+told you what this layout cost in cold cash. But they paid. Good stuff
+always pays in the long run. It was lucky I winded the cops on that
+last job, or I'd have had to leave them. As it was, I just had time to
+grab them up before I hit the trail for the skyline. They don't need
+anything but a little rubbing--a saint's elbow must be a snug berth. I
+wish I had some juice, though."
+
+"Juice?"
+
+"Nitroglycerine," very gently, as to a child. "It does not make very
+much noise and it saves time when you're in a hurry--as you generally
+are, in this business," he smiled at me quizzically. "Not that one
+can't get along without it." The swift fingers paused for a fraction
+of a second to give a steel drill an affectionate pat. "I used to know
+one of the best ever, who never used anything but a particular drill,
+a pet bit, and his ear. Somebody snitched though, so the last I heard
+of him he was doing a twenty-year stretch. Pity, too. He was an artist
+in his line, that fellow. And his taste in neckties I have never seen
+equaled." The Butterfly Man's voice, evenly pitched and pleasantly
+modulated, a cultivated voice, was quite casual.
+
+He gathered his tools together and replaced them in the old worn case.
+"Wonder if that safe is a side-bolt?" he mused. "Most likely. I dare
+say it's only the average combination. A one-armed yegg could open
+most of the boxes in this town with a tin button-hook. Anyhow, it
+would have to be a new-laid lock _I_ couldn't open. If he's left the
+letters in the safe we're all right--so here's hoping he has. I
+certainly don't want to go to his room unless I have to. Hunter's not
+the sort to sit on his hands, and I'm not feeling what you'd call real
+amiable."
+
+A glance at his face, with little glinting devil-lights shining far
+back in his eyes, set me to babbling:
+
+"Oh, no, no, no, no, that would never do! God forbid that you should
+go to his rooms! He must have left them in the safe! He had to leave
+them in the safe!"
+
+"Sure he's left them in the safe: why shouldn't he?" he made light of
+my palpable fears. Slipping into his gray overcoat, he pulled on his
+felt hat, thrust his hands into his wellworn dogskin gloves, and
+picked up the package. Nobody in the world ever looked less like a
+criminal than this brown-faced, keen-eyed man with his pleasant
+bearing. Why, this was John Flint, the kindly bug-hunter all Appleboro
+loved, "that good and kind and Christian man, our brother John Flint,
+sometimes known as the Butterfly Man."
+
+"Now, don't you worry any at all, parson," he was saying. "There's
+nothing to be afraid of. I'll take care of myself, and I'll get those
+letters if they're in existence. I've got to get them. What else was I
+born for, I'd like to know?"
+
+The question caught me like a lash across the face.
+
+"You were born," I said violently, "to win an honored name, to do a
+work of inestimable value. And you are deliberately and quixotically
+risking it, and I allow you to risk it, because a girl's happiness
+hangs in the balance! If you are detected it means your own ruin, for
+you could never explain away those tools. Yes! You are facing possible
+ruin and disgrace. You might have to give up your work for years--have
+you considered that? Oh, John Flint, stop a moment, and reflect! There
+is nothing in this for you, John, nothing but danger. No, there's
+nothing in it for you, except--"
+
+He held up his hand, with a gesture of dignity and reproach.
+
+"--except that I get my big chance to step in and save the girl I
+happen to love, from persecution and wretchedness, if not worse," said
+he simply. "If I can do that, what the devil does it matter what
+happens to _me_? You talk about name and career! Man, man, what could
+anything be worth to me if I had to know she was unhappy?"
+
+The tides of emotion rushed over him and flooded his face into a
+shining-eyed passion nakedly unashamed and beautiful. And I had
+thought him casual, carelessly accepting a risk!
+
+"Parson," he wondered, "didn't you _know_? No, I suppose it wouldn't
+occur to anybody that a man of my sort should love a girl of hers. But
+I do. I think I did the first time I ever laid eyes on her, and she a
+girl-kid in a red jacket, with curls about her shoulders and a face
+like a little new rose in the morning. Remember her eyes, parson, how
+blue they were? And how she looked at me, so friendly--_me_, mind you,
+as I was! And she handed me a Catocala moth, and she gave me Kerry.
+'You're such a good man, Mr. Flint!' says she, and by God, she meant
+it! Little Mary Virginia! And she got fast hold of something in me
+that was never anybody's but hers, that couldn't ever belong to
+anybody but her, no, not if I lived for a thousand years and had the
+pick of the earth.
+
+"It wasn't until she came back, though, that I knew I belonged to her
+who could never belong to me. If I was dead at one end of the world
+and she dead at the other, we couldn't be any farther apart than life
+has put us two who can see and speak to each other every day!"
+
+"And yet--" he looked at me now and laughed boyishly, "and yet it
+isn't for Mayne, that she loves, it isn't for you, nor Eustis, nor any
+man but me alone to help her, by being just what I am and what I have
+been! Risks? Fail her? _I?_ I couldn't fail her. I'll get those
+letters for her to-night, if Hunter has hidden them in the beam of his
+eye!" He turned to me with a sudden white glare of ferocity that
+appalled me. "I could kill him with my hands," said he, with a quiet
+cold deadliness to chill one's marrow, "and Inglesby after him, for
+what they've made her endure! When I think of to-night--that brute
+daring to touch _her_ with his swine's mouth--I--I--"
+
+His face was convulsed; but after a moment's fierce struggle the
+disciplined spirit conquered.
+
+"No, there's been enough trouble for her without that, so they're safe
+from me, the both of them. I wouldn't do anything to imperil her
+happiness to save my own life. She was born to be happy--and she's
+going to have her chance. _I'll_ see to that, Mary Virginia!"
+
+The man seemed to grow, to expand, to tower giant-like before me. Next
+to the white heat of this lava-flow of pure feeling, all other loves
+lavished upon Mary Virginia during her fortunate life seemed dwarfed
+and petty. Beside it Inglesby's furious desire shrunk into a loathsome
+thing, small and crawling; and my own affection was only an old
+priest's; and even the strong and faithful love of Laurence appeared
+pale and boyish in the light of this majestic passion which gave all
+and in return asked only the right to serve and to save.
+
+"_Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm; for
+love is strong as death_ ...
+
+"_Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if
+a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would
+utterly be contemned_."
+
+Trying desperately to cling to such rags and tatters of common sense
+as I could lay hold upon:
+
+"There is your duty to yourself," I managed to say. "Yes, yes, one
+owes a great duty to oneself and one's work, John. You are risking too
+much--name, friends, honor, work, freedom. For God's sake, John, do
+not underestimate the danger. You have not had time to consider it."
+
+"Ho! Listen to the parson preaching self-interest!" he mocked. "He's a
+fine one to do that--at this hour of his life!"
+
+"I tell you you endanger everything," I insisted. I might bring that
+package, but at least he shouldn't rush upon the knife unwarned.
+
+"I know that--I'm no fool. And _I_ tell _you_ it's worth while.
+To-night makes me and my whole life worth while, the good and the bad
+of it together. Risks? I'll take all that's coming. You stay here and
+say some prayers for me, parson, if it makes you feel any better. As
+for me, I'm off."
+
+At that I lost my every last shred of commonplace everyday sanity, and
+let myself swing without further reserve into the wild current of the
+night.
+
+"Oh, very well!" said I shrilly. "You will take chances, you will run
+risks, _hein?_ My friend, you do not stir out of this house this night
+without _me_!" He stared, as well he might, but I folded my arms and
+stared back. Let him leave me, bent on such an errand? I to sit at
+home idly, awaiting the issue, whatever it might be?
+
+"I mean it, John Flint. I am going with you. Was it not I, then, who
+saved those tools and had them ready to your hand? Whatever happens to
+you now happens to me as well. It is quite useless for you to argue,
+to scowl, to grind the teeth, to swear like that. And it will be
+dangerous to try to trick me: I am going!"
+
+For he was protesting, violently and profanely. His profanity was so
+sincere, so earnest, so heartfelt, that it mounted into heights of
+real eloquence. Also, he did everything but knock me down and lock me
+indoors.
+
+"Whatever happens to you happens to me," I repeated doggedly, and I
+was not to be moved. I had a hazy notion that somehow my being with
+him might protect him in case of any untoward happening, and minimize
+his risks.
+
+I ran into his bedroom and clapped his best hat on my head, leaving my
+biretta on his bed; and I put on his new dark overcoat over my
+cassock. Both the borrowed garments were too big for me, the hat
+coming down over my ears, the coat-sleeves over my hands. I being as
+thin as a peeled willow-wand, and the clothes hanging upon me as on a
+clothes-rack, I dare say I cut a sad and ludicrous figure enough.
+Flint, standing watching me with his burglarious bundle under his arm,
+gave an irrepressible chuckle and his eyes crinkled.
+
+"Parson," said he solemnly, "I've seen all sorts and sizes and colors
+and conditions of crooks, up and down the line, in my time and
+generation, but take it from me you're a libel and an outrage on the
+whole profession. Why, you crazy he-angel, you'd break their hearts
+just to look at you!" And he grinned. At a moment like that, he
+grinned, with a sort of gay and light-hearted _diablerie_. They are a
+baffling and inexplicable folk, the Irish. I suppose God loves the
+Irish because He doesn't really know how else to take them.
+
+"It will break my own heart, and possibly my mother's and Mary
+Virginia's will break to keep it company, if anything evil happens to
+you this night," said I, severely. I was in no grinning humor, me.
+
+He reached over and carefully buttoned, with one hand, the too-big
+collar about my throat. For a moment, with that odd, little-boy
+gesture of his, he held on to my sleeve. He looked down at me; and his
+eyes grew wide, his face melted into a whimsical tenderness.
+
+"When you get to heaven, parson, you'll keep them all busy a hundred
+years and a day trying to cut and make a suit of sky clothes big
+enough to fit your real measure," said he, irrelevantly. "You real
+thing in holy sports, come on, since you've got to!" With that he blew
+out the light, and we stepped into the cold and windy night. It was
+ten minutes after three.
+
+Armed with bottle-belt, knapsack, and net, many a happy night had I
+gone forth with the Butterfly Man a-hunting for such as we might find
+of our chosen prey. Armed now with nothing more nor less formidable
+than the black rosary upon which my hand shut tightly, I, Armand De
+Rancé, priest and gentleman, walked forth with Slippy McGee in those
+hours when deep sleep falls upon the spirit of man, for to aid and
+encourage and abet and assist and connive at, nothing more nor less
+than burglary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE I O U OF SLIPPY MCGEE
+
+
+The wind that precedes the dawn was blowing, a freakish and impish
+wind though not a vicious one. One might imagine it animated by those
+sportive and capricious nature-spirits an old Father of the church
+used to call the monkeys of God. Every now and then a great deluge of
+piled-up clouds broke into tossing billows and went rolling and
+tumbling across the face of the sky, and in and out of these swirling
+masses the high moon played hide-and-seek and the stars showed like
+pin-points. Such street lights as we have being extinguished at
+midnight, the tree-shaded sidewalks were in impenetrable shadow, the
+gardens that edged them were debatable ground, full of grotesque
+silhouettes, backgrounded by black bulks of silent houses all
+profoundly asleep. As for us, we also were shadows, whose feet were
+soundless on the sandy sidewalks. We moved in the dark like travelers
+in the City of Dreadful Night.
+
+And so we came at last to the red-brick bank, approaching it by the
+long stretch of the McCall garden which adjoins it. For years there
+have been battered "For Sale" signs tacked onto its trees and fences,
+but no one ever came nearer purchasing the McCall property than asking
+the price. Folks say the McCalls believe that Appleboro is going to
+rival New York some of these days, and are holding their garden for
+sky-scraper sites.
+
+I was very grateful to the McCall estimate of Appleboro's future, for
+the long stretch shadowed by their overgrown shrubbery brought us to
+the door leading to the upstair offices, without any possible danger
+of detection.
+
+The bank had been a stately old home before business seized upon it,
+tore out its whole lower floors, and converted it into a strong and
+commodious bank. It is the one building in all Appleboro that keeps a
+light burning all night, a proceeding some citizens regard as
+unnecessary and extravagant; for is not Old Man Jackson there employed
+as night watchman? Old Man Jackson lost a finger and a piece of an ear
+before Appomattox, and the surrender deprived him of all opportunity
+to repay in kind. It was his cherished hope that "some smartybus
+crooks 'd try to git in my bank some uh these hyuh nights--an' I
+cert'nly hope to God they'll be Yankees, that's all."
+
+Somehow, they hadn't tried. Perhaps they had heard of Old Man
+Jackson's watchful waiting and knew he wasn't at all too proud to
+fight. His quarters was a small room in the rear of the building,
+which he shared with a huge gray tomcat named Mosby. With those two on
+guard, Appleboro knew its bank was as impregnable as Gibraltar. But as
+nobody could possibly gain entrance to the vaults from above, the
+upper portion of the building, given over to offices, was of course
+quite unguarded.
+
+One reached these upper offices by a long walled passageway to the
+left, where the sidewall of the bank adjoins the McCall garden. The
+door leading to this stairway is not flush with the street, but is set
+back some feet; this forms a small alcove, which the light flickering
+through the bank's barred windows does not quite reach.
+
+John Flint stepped into this small cavern and I after him. As if by
+magic the locked door opened, and we moved noiselessly up the narrow
+stairs with tin signs tacked on them. At the head of the flight we
+paused while the flashlight gave us our bearings. Here a short passage
+opens into the wide central hall. Inglesby's offices are to the left,
+with the windows opening upon the tangled wilderness of the McCall
+place.
+
+Right in front of us half a dozen sets of false teeth, arranged in a
+horrid circle around a cigar-box full of extracted molars such as made
+one cringe, grinned bitingly out of a glass case before the dentist's
+office door. The effect was of a lipless and ghastly laugh.
+
+Before the next door a fatuously smiling pink-and-white bust simpered
+out of the Beauty Parlor's display-case, a bust elaborately coiffured
+with pounds of yellow hair in which glittered rhinestone buckles. Hair
+of every sort and shade and length was clustered about her, as if she
+were the presiding genius of some barbarian scalping-cult. Seen at
+that hour, in the pale luster of the flashlight, this sorry plunder of
+lost teeth and dead hair made upon one a melancholy impression,
+disparaging to humanity. I had scant time to moralize on hair and
+teeth, however, for Flint was stopping before a door the neat brass
+plate of which bore upon it:
+
+          _Mr. Inglesby_.
+
+Mr. Inglesby had a desk downstairs in the bank, in the little pompous
+room marked "President's Office," where at stated hours and times he
+presided grandly; just as he had a big bare office at the mills, where
+he was rather easy of access, willing to receive any one who might
+chance to catch him in. But these rooms we were entering without
+permission were the sanctum sanctorum, the center of that wide web
+whose filaments embraced and ensnared the state. It would be about as
+easy to stroll casually into the Vatican for an informal chat with the
+Holy Father, to walk unannounced into the presence of the Dalai Lama,
+or to drop in neighborly on the Tsar of all the Russias, as to
+penetrate unasked into these offices during the day.
+
+We stepped upon the velvet square of carpet covering the floor of what
+must have once been a very handsome guest chamber and was now a very
+handsome private office. One had to respect the simple and solid
+magnificence of the mahogany furnishings, the leather-covered chairs,
+the big purposeful desk. Above the old-fashioned marble mantel hung a
+life-sized portrait in oils of Inglesby himself. The artist had done
+his sitter stern justice--one might call the result retribution; and
+one wondered if Inglesby realized how immensely revealing it was.
+There he sat, solid, successful, informed with a sort of brutal
+egotism that never gives quarter. In despite of a malevolent
+determination to look pleasant, his smile was so much more of a threat
+than a promise that one could wish for his own sake he had scowled
+instead. He is a throaty man, is Inglesby; and this, with an
+uncompromising squareness of forehead, a stiffness of hair, and a
+hard hint of white in the eyes, lent him a lowering likeness to an
+unpedigreed bull.
+
+John Flint cast upon this charming likeness one brief and pregnant
+glance.
+
+"Regular old Durham shorthorn, isn't he?" he commented in a low voice.
+"Wants to charge right out of his frame and trample. Take a look at
+that nose, parson--like a double-barreled shotgun, for all the world!
+Beautiful brute, Inglesby. Makes you think of that minotaur sideshow
+they used to put over on the Greeks."
+
+In view of Laurence and of Mary Virginia, I saw the resemblance.
+
+Mr. Hunter's office was less formal than Mr. Inglesby's, and furnished
+with an exact and critical taste alien to Appleboro, where many a
+worthy citizen's office trappings consist of an alpaca coat, a chair
+and a pine table, three or four fly-specked calendars and shabby
+ledgers, and a box of sawdust. To these may sometimes be added a pot
+of paste with a dead cockroach in it, or a hound dog either scratching
+fleas or snapping at flies.
+
+Here the square of carpet was brown as fallen pine-needles in October,
+the walls were a soft tan, the ceiling and woodwork ivory-toned. One
+saw between the windows a bookcase filled with handsomely bound books,
+and on top of it a few pieces of such old china as would enrapture my
+mother. The white marble mantel held one or two signed photographs in
+silver frames, a pair of old candlesticks of quaint and pleasing
+design, and a dull red pottery vase full of Japanese quince. There
+were a few good pictures on the walls--a gay impudent Detaille Lancer
+whose hardy face of a fighting Frenchman warmed one's heart; some
+sketches signed with notable American names; and above the mantel a
+female form clothed only in the ambient air, her long hair swept back
+from her shoulders, and a pearl-colored dove alighting upon her
+outstretched finger.
+
+I suppose one might call the whole room beautiful, for even the desk
+was of that perfection of simplicity whose cost is as rubies. It was
+not, however, a womanish room; there was no slightest hint of
+femininity in its uncluttered, sane, forceful orderliness. It was
+rather like Hunter himself--polished, perfect, with a note of finality
+and of fitness upon it like a hall-mark. Nothing out of keeping,
+nothing overdone. Even the red petal fallen from the pottery vase on
+the white marble mantel was a last note of perfection.
+
+Flint glanced about him with the falcon-glance that nothing escapes.
+For a moment the light stayed upon the nude figure over the
+mantel--the one real nude in all Appleboro, which cherishes family
+portraits of rakehelly old colonials in wigs, chokers, and
+tight-fitting smalls, and lolloping ladies with very low necks and
+sixteen petticoats, but where scandalized church-goers have been known
+to truss up a little plaster copy of the inane Greek Slave in a
+pocket-handkerchief, by way of needful drapery.
+
+"What I want to know is, _why_ a lady should have to strip to the buff
+just to play with a pigeon?" breathed John Flint, and his tone was
+captious.
+
+It did not strike me as being to the last degree whimsical,
+improbable, altogether absurd, that such a man should pause at such a
+time to comment upon art as he thinks it isn't. On the contrary it was
+a consistent and coherent feature of that astounding nightmare in
+which we figured. The absurd and the impossible always happen in
+dreams. I am sure that if the dove on the woman's finger had opened
+its painted bill and spoken, say about the binomial theorem, or the
+Effect of Too Much Culture upon Women's Clubs, I should have listened
+with equal gravity and the same abysmal absence of surprise. I
+pattered platitudinously:
+
+"The greatest of the Greeks considered the body divine in itself, my
+son, and so their noblest art was nude. Some moderns have thought
+there is no real art that is not nude. Truth itself is naked."
+
+"Aha!" said my son, darkly. "I see! You take off your pants when you
+go out to feed your chickens, say, and you're not bughouse. You're
+art. Well, if Truth is naked, thank God the rest of us are liars!"
+
+What I have here set down was but the matter of a moment. Flint
+brushed it aside like a cobweb and set briskly about his real
+business. Over in the recess next to the fireplace was the safe, and
+before this he knelt.
+
+"Hold the light!" he ordered in a curt whisper. "There--like that.
+Steady now." My hand closed as well upon the rosary I carried, and I
+clung to the beads as the shipwrecked cling to a spar. The familiar
+feel of them comforted me.
+
+I do not know to this day the make of that safe, nor its actual
+strength, and I have always avoided questioning John Flint about it. I
+do know it seemed incredibly strong, big, heavy, ungetatable. There
+was a dark-colored linen cover on top of it, embroidered with yellow
+marguerites and their stiff green leaves. And there was a brass
+fern-jar with claw feet, and rings on the sides that somehow made me
+think of fetters upon men's wrists.
+
+"A little lower--to the left. So!" he ordered, and with steady fingers
+I obeyed. He stood out sharply in the clear oval--the "cleverest crook
+in all America" at work again, absorbed in his task, expert, a
+mind-force pitting itself against inanimate opposition. He was
+smiling.
+
+The tools lay beside him and quite by instinct his hand reached out
+for anything it needed. I think he could have done his work
+blindfolded. Once I saw him lay his ear against the door, and I
+thought I heard a faint click. A gnawing rat might have made something
+like the noise of the drill biting its way. With this exception an
+appalling silence hung over the room. I could hardly breathe in it. I
+gripped the rosary and told it, bead after bead.
+
+_"Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death--"_
+
+There are moments when time loses its power and ceases to be; before
+our hour we seem to have stepped out of it and into eternity, in which
+time does not exist, and wherein there can be no relation of time
+between events. They stand still, or they stretch to indefinite and
+incredible lengths--all, all outside of time, which has no power upon
+them. So it was now. Every fraction of every second of every minute
+lengthened into centuries, eternities passed between minutes. The
+hashish-eater knows something of this terror of time, and I seemed to
+have eaten hashish that night.
+
+I could still see him crouching before the safe; and all the while the
+eternities stretched and stretched on either side of us, infinities I
+could only partly bridge over with Hailmarys and Ourfathers.
+
+_"And lead us not into temptation ... but deliver us from evil ..."_
+
+Although I watched him attentively, being indeed unable to tear my
+eyes away from him, and although I held the light for him with such a
+steady hand, I really do not know what he did, nor how he forced that
+safe. I understand it took him a fraction over fourteen minutes.
+
+"Here she comes!" he breathed, and the heavy door was open, revealing
+the usual interior, with ledgers, and a fairsized steel money-vault,
+which also came open a moment later. Flint glanced over the contents,
+and singled out from other papers two packages of letters held
+together by stout elastic bands, and with pencil notations on the
+corner of each envelope, showing the dates. He ran over both, held up
+the smaller of the two, and I saw, with a grasp of inexpressible
+relief, the handwriting of Mary Virginia.
+
+He locked the vault, shut the heavy door of the rifled safe, and began
+to gather his tools together.
+
+"You have forgotten to put the other packages back," I reminded him. I
+was in a raging fever of impatience to be gone, to fly with the
+priceless packet in my hand.
+
+"No, I'm not forgetting. I saw a couple of the names on the envelopes
+and I rather think these letters will be a whole heap interesting to
+look over," said he, imperturbably. "It's a hunch, parson, and I've
+gotten in the habit of paying attention to hunches. I'll risk it on
+these, anyhow. They're in suspicious company and I'd like to know
+why." And he thrust the package into the crook of his arm, along with
+the tools.
+
+The light was carefully flashed over every inch of the space we had
+traversed, to make sure that no slightest trace of our presence was
+left. As we walked through Inglesby's office John Flint ironically
+saluted the life-like portrait:
+
+"You've had a ring twisted in your nose for once, old sport!" said he,
+and led me into the dark hall. We moved and the same exquisite caution
+we had exercised upon entering, for we couldn't afford to have Dan
+Jackson's keen old ears detect footfalls overhead at that hour of the
+morning. Now we were at the foot of the long stairs, and Flint had
+soundlessly opened and closed the last door between us and freedom.
+And now we were once more in the open air, under the blessed shadow of
+the McCall trees, and walking close to their old weather-beaten fence.
+The light was still shining in the bank, and I knew that that
+redoubtable old rebel of a watchman was peacefully sleeping with his
+gray guerilla of a marauding cat beside him. He could afford to sleep
+in peace. He had not failed in his trust, for the intruders had no
+designs upon the bank's gold. Questioned, he could stoutly swear that
+nobody had entered the building. In proof, were not all doors locked?
+Who should break into a man's office and rob his safe just to get a
+package of love-letters--if Inglesby made complaint?
+
+I remember we stood leaning against the McCall fence for a few
+minutes, for my strength had of a sudden failed, my head spun like a
+top, and my legs wavered under me.
+
+"Buck up!" said Flint's voice in my ear. "It's all over, and the
+baby's named for his Poppa!" His arm went about me, an arm like a
+steel bar. Half led, half carried, I went staggering on beside him
+like a drunken man, clutching a rosary and a packet of love-letters.
+
+The streets were still dark and deserted, the whole town slept. But
+over in the east, when one glimpsed the skies above the trees, a
+nebulous gray was stealing upon the darkness; and the morning star
+blazed magnificently, in a space that seemed to have been cleared for
+it. Somewhere, far off, an ambitious rooster crowed to make the sun
+rise.
+
+It took us a long time to reach home. It was all of a quarter past
+four when we turned into the Parish House gate, cut across the garden,
+and reached Flint's rooms. Faint, trembling in every limb, I fell into
+a chair, and through a mist saw him kneel and blow upon the coals of
+the expiring fire, upon which he dropped a lightwood knot. A ruddy
+glow went dancing up the chimney. Then he was beside me again. Very
+gently he removed hat and overcoat. And then I was sitting peacefully
+in the Morris chair, in my old cassock, and with my own old biretta on
+my head; and there was no longer that thin buzzing, shrill and
+torturing as a mosquito's, singing in my ears. At my knee stood Kerry,
+with his beautiful hazel eyes full of a grave concern; and beside him,
+calm and kind and matter-of-fact, the Butterfly Man himself stood
+watching me with an equal regard. I rubbed my forehead. The incredible
+had happened, and like all incredible things it had been almost
+ridiculously simple and easy of accomplishment. Here we were, we two,
+priest and naturalist, in our own workroom, with an old dog wagging
+his tail beside us. Could anything be more commonplace? The last trace
+of nightmare vanished, as smoke dispelled by the wind. If Mary
+Virginia's letters had not been within reach of my hand I would have
+sworn I was just awake out of a dream of that past hour.
+
+"She has escaped from them, they cannot touch her, she is free!" I
+exulted. "John, John, you have saved our girl! No matter what they do
+to Eustis they can't drag her into the quicksands _now_."
+
+But he went walking up and down, shoulders squared, face uplifted. One
+might think that after such a night he would have been humanly tired,
+but he had clean forgotten his body. His eyes shone as with a flame
+lit from inward, and I think there was on him what the Irish people
+call the _Aisling_, the waking vision. For presently he began to
+speak, as to Somebody very near him.
+
+"Oh, Lord God!" said the Butterfly Man, with a reverent and fierce
+joy, "she's going to have her happiness now, and it wasn't holy priest
+nor fine gentleman you picked out to help her toward it--it was me,
+Slippy McGee, born in the streets and bred in the gutter, with the
+devil knows who for his daddy and a name that's none of his own! For
+that I'm Yours for keeps: _You've got me_.
+
+"You've done all even God Almighty can do, given me more than I ever
+could have asked You for--and now it's up to me to make good--and I'll
+do it!"
+
+There came to listening me something of the emotion I experienced when
+I said my first Mass--as if I had been brought so close to our Father
+that I could have put out my hand and touched Him. Ah! I had had a
+very small part to play in this man's redemption. I knew it now, and
+felt humbled and abashed, and yet grateful that even so much had been
+allowed me. Not I, but Love, had transformed a sinner and an outlaw
+into a great scientist and a greater lover. And I remembered Mary
+Virginia's childish hand putting into his the gray-winged Catocala,
+and how the little moth, raising the sad-colored wings worn to suit
+his surroundings, revealed beneath that disfiguring and disguising
+cloak the exquisite and flower-like loveliness of the underwings.
+
+He paused in his swinging stride, and looked down at me a bit shyly.
+
+"Parson--you see how it is with me?"
+
+"I see. And I think she is the greater lady for it and you the finer
+gentleman," said I stoutly. "It would honor her, if she were ten times
+what she is--and she is Mary Virginia."
+
+"She is Mary Virginia," said the Butterfly Man, "and I am--what I am.
+Yet somehow I feel sure I can care for her, that I can go right on
+caring for her to the end of time, without hurt to her or sorrow to
+me." And after a pause, he added, deliberately:
+
+"I found something better than a package of letters to-night, parson.
+I found--_Me_."
+
+For awhile neither of us spoke. Then he said, speculatively:
+
+"Folks give all sorts of things to the church--dedicate them in
+gratitude for favors they fancy they've received, don't they? Lamps,
+and models of ships, and glass eyes and wax toes and leather hands,
+and crutches and braces, and that sort of plunder? Well, I'm moved to
+make a free-will offering myself. I'm going to give the church my
+kit, and you can take it from me the old Lady will never get her
+clamps on another set like that until Gabriel blows his trumpet in the
+morning. Parson, I want you to put those tools back where you had
+them, for I shall never touch them again. I couldn't. They--well,
+they're sort of holy from now on. They're my IOU. Will you do it for
+me?"
+
+"Yes!" said I.
+
+"I might have known you would!" said he, smiling. "Just one more
+favor, parson--may I put her letters in her hands, myself?"
+
+"My son, my son, who but you should do that?" I pushed the package
+across the table.
+
+"Great Scott, parson, here it is striking five o'clock, and you've
+been up all night!" he exclaimed, anxiously. "Here--no more gassing.
+You come lie down on my bed and snooze a bit. I'll call you in plenty
+of time for mass."
+
+I was far too spent and tired to move across the garden to the Parish
+House. I suffered myself to be put to bed like a child, and had my
+reward by falling almost immediately into a dreamless sleep, nor did I
+stir until he called me, a couple of hours later. He himself had not
+slept, but had employed the time in going through the letters open on
+his table. He pointed to them now, with a grim smile.
+
+"Parson!" said he, and his eyes glittered. "Do you know what we've
+stumbled upon? Dynamite! Man, anybody holding that bunch of mail could
+blow this state wide open! So much for a hunch, you see!"
+
+"You mean--"
+
+"I mean I've got the cream off Inglesby's most private deals, that's
+what I mean! I mean I could send him and plenty of his pals to the
+pen. Everybody's been saying for years that there hasn't been a rotten
+deal pulled off that he didn't boss and get away with it. But nobody
+could prove it. He's had the men higher-up eating out of his
+hand--sort of you pat my head and I'll pat yours arrangement--and
+here's the proof, in black and white. Don't you understand? Here's the
+proof: these get him with the goods!
+
+"These," he slapped a letter, "would make any Grand Jury throw fits,
+make every newspaper in the state break out into headlines like a kid
+with measles, and blow the lid off things in general--if they got out.
+
+"Inglesby's going to shove Eustis under, is he? Not by a jugfull. He's
+going to play he's a patent life-preserver. He's going to _be_ that
+good Samaritan he's been shamming. Talk about poetic justice--this
+will be like wearing shoes three sizes too small for him, with a
+bunion on every toe!" And when I looked at him doubtfully, he laughed.
+
+"You can't see how it's going to be managed? Didn't you ever hear of
+the grapevine telegraph? Well then, dear George receives a grapevine
+wireless bright and early to-morrow morning. A word to the wise is
+sufficient."
+
+"He will employ detectives," said I, uneasily.
+
+The Butterfly Man looked at me quizzically.
+
+"_With_ an eagle eye and a walrus mustache," said he, grinning. "Sure.
+But if the plainclothes nose around, are they going to sherlock the
+parish priest and the town bughunter? _We_ haven't got any interest in
+Mr. Inglesby's private correspondence, have we? Suppose Miss Eustis's
+letters are returned to her, what does that prove? Why, nothing at
+all,--except that it wasn't her correspondence the fellows that
+cracked that safe were after. We should worry!
+
+"Say, though, don't you wish you could see them when they stroll down
+to those beautiful offices and go for to open that nice burglar-proof
+safe with the little brass flower-pot on top of it? What a joke! Holy
+whiskered black cats, what a joke!"
+
+"I'm afraid Mr. Inglesby's sense of humor isn't his strong point,"
+said I. "Not that I have any sympathy for him. I think he is getting
+only what he deserves."
+
+"_Alexander the coppersmith wrought me much evil. May God requite him
+according to his works!_" murmured the Butterfly Man, piously, and
+chuckled. "Don't worry, parson--Alexander's due to fall sick with the
+pip to-day or to-morrow. What do you bet he don't get it so bad he'll
+have to pull up all his pretty plans by the roots, leave Mr. Hunter in
+charge, and go off somewhere to take mudbaths for his liver? Believe
+me, he'll need them! Why, the man won't be able to breathe easy any
+more--he'll be expecting one in the solar plexus any minute, not
+knowing any more than Adam's cat who's to hand it to him. He can't
+tell who to trust and who to suspect. If you want to know just how
+hard Alexander's going to be requited according to his works, take a
+look at these." He pointed to the letters.
+
+I did take a look, and I admit I was frightened. It seemed to me
+highly unsafe for plain folks like us to know such things about such
+people. I was amazed to the point of stupefaction at the corruption
+those communications betrayed, the shameless and sordid disregard of
+law and decency, the brutal and cynical indifference to public
+welfare. At sight of some of the signatures my head swam--I felt
+saddened, disillusioned, almost in despair for humanity. I suppose
+Inglesby had thought it wiser to preserve these letters--possibly for
+his own safety; but no wonder he had locked them up! I looked at the
+Butterfly Man openmouthed.
+
+"You wouldn't think folks wearing such names could be that rotten,
+would you? Some of them pillars of the church, too, and married to
+good women, and the fathers of nice kids! Why, I have known crooks
+that the police of a dozen states were after, that wouldn't have been
+caught dead on jobs like some of these. Inglesby won't know it, but he
+ought to thank his stars _we've_ got his letters instead of the State
+Attorney, for I shan't use them unless I have to.... Parson, you
+remember a bluejay breaking up a nest on me once, and what Laurence
+said when I wanted to wring the little crook's neck? That the thing
+isn't to reform the jay but to keep him from doing it again? That's
+the cue."
+
+He gathered up the scattered letters, made a neat package of them, and
+put it in a table drawer behind a stack of note-books. And then he
+reached over and touched the other package, the letters written in
+Mary Virginia's girlish hand.
+
+"Here's her happiness--long, long years of it ahead of her," he said
+soberly. "As for you, you take back those tools, and go say mass."
+
+Outside it was broad bright day, a new beautiful day, and the breath
+of the morning blew sweetly over the world. The Church was full of a
+clear and early light, the young pale gold of the new Spring sun.
+None of the congregation had as yet arrived. Before I went into the
+sacristy to put on my vestments, I gave back into St. Stanislaus'
+hands the IOU of Slippy McGee.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+BETWEEN A BUTTERFLY'S WINGS
+
+
+There was a glamour upon it. One knew it was going to grow into one of
+those wonderful and shining days in whose enchanted hours any
+exquisite miracle might happen. I am perfectly sure that the Lord God
+walked in the garden in the cool of an April day, and that it was a
+morning in spring when the angels visited Abraham, sitting watchful in
+the door of his tent.
+
+There was in the air itself something long-missed and come back, a
+heady and heart-moving delight, a promise, a thrill, a whisper of
+"_April! April!_" that the Green Things and the hosts of the Little
+People had heard overnight. In the dark the sleeping souls of the
+golden butterflies had dreamed it, known it was a true Word, and now
+they were out, "Little flames of God" dancing in the Sunday sunlight.
+The Red Gulf Fritillary had heard it, and here she was, all in her
+fine fulvous frock besmocked with black velvet, and her farthingale
+spangled with silver. And the gallant Red Admiral, the brave beautiful
+Red Admiral that had dared unfriendlier gales, trimmed his painted
+sails to a wind that was the breath of spring.
+
+Over by the gate the spirea had ventured into showering sprays
+exhaling a shy and fugitive fragrance, and what had been a blur of
+gray cables strung upon the oaks had begun to bud with emerald and
+blossom with amethyst--the wisteria was a-borning. And one knew there
+was Cherokee rose to follow, that the dogwood was in white, and the
+year's new mintage of gold dandelions was being coined in the fresh
+grass.
+
+There wasn't a bird that wasn't caroling _April!_ at the top of his
+voice from the full of his heart; for wasn't the world alive again,
+wasn't it love-time and nest-time, wasn't it Spring?
+
+Even to the tired faces of my work-folks that shining morning lent a
+light that was hope. Without knowing it, they felt themselves a vital
+part of the reborn world, sharers in its joy because they were the
+children of the common lot, the common people for whom the world is,
+and without whom no world could be. Classes, creeds, nations, gods,
+all these pass and are gone; God, and the common people, and the
+spring remain.
+
+When I was young I liked as well as another to dwell overmuch upon the
+sinfulness of sin, the sorrow of sorrow, the despair of death. Now
+that these three terrible teachers have taught me a truer wisdom and a
+larger faith, I like better to turn to the glory of hope, the wisdom
+of love, and the simple truth that death is just a passing phase of
+life. So I sent my workers home that morning rejoicing with the truth,
+and was all the happier and hopefuller myself because of it.
+
+Afterwards, when Clélie was giving me my coffee and rolls, the
+Butterfly Man came in to breakfast with me, a huge roll of those New
+York newspapers which contain what are mistakenly known as Comic
+Supplements tucked under his arm.
+
+He said he bought them because they "tasted like New York" which they
+do not. Just as Major Cartwright explains his purchase of them by the
+shameless assertion that it just tickles him to death "to see what
+Godforsaken idjits those Yankees can make of themselves when they
+half-way try. Why, suh, one glance at their Sunday newspapers ought to
+prove to any right thinkin' man that it's safer an' saner to die in
+South Carolina than to live in New York!"
+
+_I_ think the Butterfly Man and Major Cartwright buy those papers
+because they think they are _funny_! After they have read and
+sniggered, they donate them to Clélie and Daddy January. And presently
+Clélie distributes them to a waiting colored countryside, which
+wallpapers its houses with them. I have had to counsel the erring and
+bolster the faith of the backsliding under the goggle eyes of inhuman
+creations whose unholy capers have made futile many a prayer. And yet
+the Butterfly Man likes them! Is it not to wonder?
+
+He laid them tenderly upon the table now, and smiled slyly to see me
+eye them askance.
+
+"Did you know," said he, over his coffee, "that Laurence came in this
+morning on the six-o'clock? January had him out in the garden showing
+off the judge's new patent hives, and I stopped on my way to church
+and shook hands over the fence. It was all I could do to keep from
+shouting that all's right with the world, and all he had to do was to
+be glad. I didn't know how much I cared for that boy until this
+morning. Parson, it's a--a terrible thing to love people, when you
+come to think about it, isn't it? I told him you were honing to see
+him: and that we'd be looking for him along about eleven. And I
+intimated that if he didn't show up then I'd go after him with a gun.
+He said he'd be here on the stroke." After a moment, he added gently:
+"I figured they'd be here by then--Madame and Mary Virginia."
+
+"What! You have induced Laurence to come while she is here--without
+giving him any intimation that he is likely to meet her?" I said,
+aghast. "You are a bold man, John Flint!"
+
+The study windows were open and the sweet wind and the warm sun poured
+in unchecked. The stir of bees, the scent of honey-locust just
+opening, drifted in, and the slow solemn clangor of church bells, and
+lilts and flutings and calls and whistlings from the tree-tops. We
+could see passing groups of our neighbors, fathers and mothers
+shepherding little flocks of children in their Sunday best, trotting
+along with demure Sabbath faces on their way to church. The Butterfly
+Man looked out, waved gaily to the passing children, who waved back a
+joyous response, nodded to their smiling parents, followed the flight
+of a tanager's sober spouse, and sniffed the air luxuriously.
+
+"Oh, somebody's got to stage-manage, parson," he said at last, lightly
+enough, but with a hint of tiredness in his eyes. "And then vanish
+behind the scenes, leaving the hero and heroine in the middle of the
+spotlight, with the orchestra tuning up 'The Voice that Breathed o'er
+Eden,'" he finished, without a trace of bitterness. "So I sent Madame
+a note by a little nigger newsie." His eyes crinkled, and he quoted
+the favorite aphorism of the colored people, when they seem to
+exercise a meticulous care: "Brer Rabbit say, 'I trus' no mistake.'"
+
+"You are a bold man," said I again, with a respect that made him
+laugh. Then we went over to his rooms to wait, and while we waited I
+tried to read a chapter of a book I was anxious to finish, but
+couldn't, my eyes being tempted by the greener and fresher page
+opening before them. Flint smoked a virulent pipe and read his papers.
+
+Presently he laid his finger upon a paragraph and handed me the
+paper.... And I read where one "Spike" Frazer had been shot to death
+in a hand-to-hand fight with the police who were raiding a dive
+suspected of being the rendezvous of drug-fiends. Long wanted and at
+last cornered, Frazer had fought tigerishly and died in his tracks,
+preferring death to capture. A sly and secretive creature, he had had
+a checkered career in the depths. It was his one boast that more than
+anybody else he had known and been a sort of protegé of the once
+notorious Slippy McGee, that King of Crooks whose body had been found
+in the East River some years since, and whose daring and mysterious
+exploits were not yet altogether forgotten by the police or the
+underworld.
+
+"_Sic transit gloria mundi!_" said the Butterfly Man in his gentle
+voice, and looked out over the peaceful garden and the Sunday calm
+with inscrutable eyes. I returned the paper with a hand that shook. It
+seemed to me that a deep and solemn hush fell for a moment upon the
+glory of the day, while the specter of what might have been gibbered
+at us for the last time.
+
+Out of the heart of that hush walked two women--one little and rosy
+and white-haired, one tall and pale and beautiful with the beauty upon
+which sorrow has placed its haunting imprint. Her black hair framed
+her face as in ebony, and her blue, blue eyes were shadowed. By an
+odd coincidence she was dressed this morning just as she had been when
+the Butterfly Man first saw her--in white, and over it a scarlet
+jacket. Kerry and little Pitache rose, met them at the gate, and
+escorted them with grave politeness. The Butterfly Man hastily emptied
+his pipe and laid aside his newspapers.
+
+"Your note said we were to come, that everything was all right," said
+my mother, looking up at him with bright and trustful eyes. "Such a
+relief! Because I know you never say anything you don't mean, John."
+
+He smiled, and with a wave of the hand beckoned us into the workroom.
+Madame followed him eagerly and expectantly--she knew her John Flint.
+Mary Virginia came listlessly, dragging her feet, her eyes somber in a
+smileless face. She could not so quickly make herself hope, she who
+had journeyed so far into the arid country of despair. But he, with
+something tender and proud and joyful in his looks, took her
+unresisting hand and drew her forward.
+
+"Mary Virginia!" I had not known how rich and deep the Butterfly Man's
+voice could be. "Mary Virginia, we promised you last night that if you
+would trust us, the Padre and me, we'd find the right way out, didn't
+we? Now this is what happened: the Padre took his troubles to the
+Lord, and the Lord presently sent him back to _me_--with the beginning
+of the answer in his hand! And here's the whole answer, Mary
+Virginia." And he placed in her hand the package of letters that meant
+so much to her.
+
+My mother gave a little scream. "Armand!" she said, fearfully. "She
+has told me all. _Mon Dieu_, how have you two managed this, between
+midnight and morning? My son, you are a De Rancé: look me in the eyes
+and tell me there is nothing wrong, that there will be no ill
+consequences--"
+
+"There won't be any comebacks," said John Flint, with engaging
+confidence. "As for you, Mary Virginia, you don't have to worry for
+one minute about what those fellows can do--because they can't do
+anything. They're double-crossed. Now listen: when you see Hunter, you
+are to say to him, '_Thank you for returning my letters_.' Just that
+and no more. If there's any questioning, _stare_. Stare hard. If
+there's any threatening about your father, _smile_. You can afford to
+smile. They can't touch him. But _how_ those letters came into your
+hands you are never to tell, you understand? They did come and that's
+all that interests you." He began to laugh, softly. "All Hunter will
+want to know is that you've received them. He's too game not to lose
+without noise, and he'll make Inglesby swallow his dose without
+squealing, too. So--you're finished and done with Mr. Hunter and Mr.
+Inglesby!" His voice deepened again, as he added gently: "It was just
+a bad dream, dear girl. It's gone with the night. Now it's morning,
+and you're awake."
+
+But Mary Virginia, white as wax, stared at the letters in her hand,
+and then at me, and trembled.
+
+"Trust us, my child," said I, somewhat troubled. "And obey John Flint
+implicitly. Do just what he tells you to do, say just what he tells
+you to say."
+
+Mary Virginia looked from one to the other, thrust the package upon
+me, walked swiftly up to him, and, laying her hands upon his arms
+stared with passionate earnestness into his face: the kind, wise,
+lovable face that every child in Appleboro County adores, every woman
+trusts, every man respects. Her eyes clung to his, and he met that
+searching gaze without faltering, though it seemed to probe for the
+root of his soul. It was well for Mary Virginia that those brave eyes
+had caught something from the great faces that hung upon his walls and
+kept company and counsel with him day and night, they that conquered
+life and death and turned defeat into victory because they had first
+conquered themselves!
+
+"Yes!" said she, with a deep sigh of relief. "I trust you! Thank God
+for just how much I can believe and trust you!"
+
+I think that meeting face to face that luminous and unfaltering
+regard, Mary Virginia must have divined that which had heretofore been
+hidden from her by the man's invincible modesty and reserve; and being
+most generous and of a large and loving soul herself, I think she
+realized to the uttermost the magnitude of his gift. Her name, her
+secure position, her happiness, the hopes that the coming years were
+to transform into realities--oh, I like to think that Mary Virginia
+saw all this, in one of those lightning-flashes of spiritual insight
+that reveal more than all one's slower years; I like to think she saw
+it given her freely, nobly, with joy, a glorious love-gift from the
+limping man into whose empty hand she had one day put a little gray
+underwing!
+
+I glanced at my mother, and saw by her most expressive face that she
+knew and understood. She had known and understood, long before any of
+us.
+
+"If I might offer a suggestion," I said in as matter-of-fact a voice
+as I could command, "it would be, that the sooner those letters are
+destroyed, the better."
+
+Mary Virginia took them from me and dropped them on the coals
+remaining from last night's fire--the last fire of the season. They
+did not ignite quickly, though they began to turn brown, and thin
+spirals of smoke arose from them. The Butterfly Man knelt, thrust a
+handful of lightwood splinters under the pile, and touched a match
+here and there. When the resinous wood flared up, the letters blazed
+with it. They blazed and then they crumbled; they disappeared in bits
+of charred and black paper that vanished at a touch; they were gone
+while we watched, the girl kneeling upon the hearthrug with her hand
+on Flint's arm, and I with my old heart singing like a skylark in my
+breast, and my mother's mild eyes upon us all.
+
+Life and color and beauty flowed back into Mary Virginia's face and
+music's self sang again in her voice. She was like the day itself,
+reborn out of a dark last night. When the last bit of blackened paper
+went swirling up the chimney, and the two of them had risen, the most
+beautiful and expressive eyes under heaven looked up like blue and
+dewy flowers into the Butterfly Man's face. She was too wise and too
+tender to try to thank him in words, and never while they two lived
+would this be again referred to so much as once by either; but she
+took his hand, palm upward, gave him one deep long upward glance, and
+then bent her beautiful head and dropped into the center of his palm a
+kiss, and closed the fingers gently over it for everlasting keeping
+and remembrance. The eyes brimmed over then, and two large tears fell
+upon his hand and washed her kiss in, indelibly.
+
+None of us four had the power of speech left us. Heaven knows what we
+should have done, if Laurence hadn't opened the door at that moment
+and walked in upon us. I don't think he altogether sensed the
+tenseness of the situation which his coming relieved, but he went pale
+at sight of Mary Virginia, and he would have left incontinently if my
+mother, with a joyous shriek, hadn't pounced upon him.
+
+"Laurence! Why, Laurence! But we didn't expect you home until
+to-morrow night!" said she, kissing him motherly. "My dear, dear boy,
+how glad I am to see you! What happy wind blew you home to-day,
+Laurence?"
+
+"Oh, I finished my work ahead of schedule and got away just as soon as
+I could," Laurence briefly and modestly explained thus that he had won
+his case. He edged toward the door, avoiding Mary Virginia's eyes. He
+had bowed to her with formal politeness. He wondered at the usually
+tactful Madame's open effort to detain him. It was a little too much
+to expect of him!
+
+"I just ran in to see how you all were," he tried to be very casual.
+"See you later, Padre. 'By, p'tite Madame. 'By, Flint." He bowed again
+to Mary Virginia, whose color had altogether left her, and who stood
+there most palpably nervous and distressed.
+
+"Laurence!" The Butterfly Man spoke abruptly. "Laurence, if a chap was
+dying of thirst and the water of life was offered him, he'd be
+considerable of a fool to turn his head aside and refuse to see it,
+wouldn't he?"
+
+Laurence paused. Something in the Butterfly Man's face, something in
+mine and Madame's, but, above all, something in Mary Virginia's,
+arrested him. He stood wavering, and my mother released his arm.
+
+"I take it," said John Flint, boldly plunging to the very heart of the
+matter, "I take it, Laurence, that you still care a very great deal
+for this dear girl of ours?" And now he had taken her hand in his and
+held it comfortingly. "More, say, than you could ever care for anybody
+else, if you lived to rival Methusaleh? So much, Laurence, that not to
+be able to believe she cares the same way for you takes the core out
+of life?" His manner was simple and direct, and so kind that one could
+only answer him in a like spirit. Besides, Laurence loved the
+Butterfly Man even as Jonathan loved David.
+
+"Yes," said the boy honestly, "I still care for her--like that. I
+always did. I always will. She knows." But his voice was toneless.
+
+"Of course you do, kid brother," said Flint affectionately. "Don't you
+suppose I know? But it's just as well for you to say it out loud every
+now and then. Fresh air is good for everything, particularly feelings.
+Keeps 'em fresh and healthy. Now, Mary Virginia, you feel just the
+same way about Laurence, don't you?" And he added: "Don't be ashamed
+to tell the most beautiful truth in the world, my dear. Well?"
+
+She went red and white. She looked entreatingly into the Butterfly
+Man's face. She didn't exactly see why he should drive her thus, but
+she caught courage from his. One saw how wise Flint had been to have
+snared Laurence here just now. One moment she hesitated. Then:
+
+"Yes!" said she, and her head went up proudly. "Yes, oh, yes, I
+care--like that. Only much, much more! I shall always care like that,
+although he probably won't believe me now when I say so. And I can't
+blame him for doubting me."
+
+"But it just happens that I have never been able to make myself doubt
+you," said Laurence gravely. "Why, Mary Virginia, you are _you_."
+
+"Then, Laurence," said the Butterfly Man, quickly, "will you take your
+old friends' word for it--mine, Madame's, the Padre's--that you were
+most divinely right to go on believing in her and loving her, because
+she never for one moment ceased to be worthy of faith and affection?
+No, not for one moment! She couldn't, you know. She's Mary Virginia!
+And will you promise to listen with all your patience to what she may
+think best to tell you presently--and then forget it? You're big
+enough to do that! She's been in sore straits, and she needs all the
+love you have, to help make up to her. Can she be sure of it,
+Laurence?"
+
+Laurence flushed. He looked at his old friend with reproach in his
+fine brown eyes. "You have known me all my life, all of you," said he,
+stiffly. "Have I ever given any of you any reason to doubt me!"
+
+"No, and we don't. Not one of us. But it's good for your soul to say
+things out loud," said Flint comfortably. "And now you've said it,
+don't you think you two had better go on over to the Parish House
+parlor, which is a nice quiet place, and talk this whole business over
+and out--together?"
+
+Laurence looked at Mary Virginia and what he saw electrified him.
+Boyishness flooded him, youth danced in his eyes, beauty was upon him,
+like sunlight.
+
+"Mary Virginia!" said the boy lover to the girl sweetheart, "is it
+really so? I was really right to believe all along that you--care?"
+
+"Laurence, Laurence!" she was half-crying. "Oh, Laurence, are you sure
+_you_ care--yet? You are sure, Laurence? You are _sure_? Because--I--I
+don't think I could stand things now if--if I were mistaken--"
+
+I don't know whether the boy ran to the girl at that, or the girl to
+the boy. I rather think they ran to each other because, in another
+moment, perfectly regardless of us, they were clinging to each other,
+and my mother was walking around them and crying heartily and
+shamelessly, and enjoying herself immensely. Mary Virginia began to
+stammer:
+
+"Laurence, if you only knew--Laurence, if it wasn't for John
+Flint--and the Padre--" The two of them had the two of us, each by an
+arm; and the Butterfly Man was brick-red and furiously embarrassed, he
+having a holy horror of being held up and thanked.
+
+"Why, I did what I did," said he, uncomfortably. "But,"--he brightened
+visibly--"if you _will_ have the truth, have it. If it wasn't for this
+blessed brick of a parson I'd never have been in a position to do
+anything for anybody. Don't you forget that!"
+
+"What ridiculous nonsense the man talks!" said I, exasperated by this
+shameless casuistry. "John Flint raves. As for me--"
+
+"As for you," said he with deep reproach, "you ought to know better
+than to tell such a thumping lie at this time of your life. I'm
+ashamed of you, parson! Why, you know good and well--"
+
+"Why, John Flint, you--" I began, aghast.
+
+My mother began to laugh. "For heaven's sake, thank them both and
+have done with it!" said she, a bit hysterically. "God alone knows how
+they managed, but this thing lies between them, the two great geese.
+Did one ever hear the like?"
+
+"Madame is right, as always," said Laurence gravely. "Remember, I
+don't know anything yet, except that somehow you've brought Mary
+Virginia and me back to each other. That's enough for _me_. I haven't
+got any questions to ask." His voice faltered, and he gripped us by
+the hand in turn, with a force that made me, for one, wince and
+cringe. "And Padre--Bughunter, you both know that I--" he couldn't
+finish.
+
+"That we--" choked Mary Virginia.
+
+"Sure we know," said the Butterfly Man hastily. "Don't you know you're
+our kids and we've got to know?" He began to edge them towards the
+door. I think his courage was getting a little raw about the corners.
+"Yes, you two go on over to the Parish House parlor, where you'll have
+a chance to talk without being interrupted--Madame will see to
+that--and don't you show your noses outside of that room until
+everything's settled the one and only way everything ought to be
+settled." His eyes twinkled as he manoeuvered them outside, and then
+stood in the doorway to watch them walk away--beautiful, youthful,
+radiantly happy, and very close together, the girl's head just on the
+level of the boy's shoulder. He was still faintly smiling when he came
+back to us; if there was pain behind that smile, he concealed it. My
+mother ran to him, impulsively.
+
+"John Flint!" said she, profoundly moved and earnest. "John Flint, the
+good God never gave me but one child, though I prayed for more. Often
+and often have I envied her silly mother Mary Virginia. But now.
+John, I know that if I could have had another child that, after
+Armand, I'd love best and respect most and be proudest of in this
+world, it would be _you_. Yes, _you_. John Flint, you are the best
+man, and the bravest and truest and most unselfish, and the finest
+gentleman, outside of my husband and my son, that I have ever known.
+What makes it all the more wonderful is that you're a genius along
+with it. I am proud of you, and glad of you, and I admire and love you
+with all my heart. And I really wish you'd call me mother. You should
+have been born a De Rancé!"
+
+This, from my mother! I was amazed. Why, she would think she was
+flattering one of the seraphim if she had said to him, "You might have
+been a De Rancé!"
+
+"Madame!" stammered Flint, "why, Madame!"
+
+"Oh, well, never mind, then. Let it go at Madame, since it would
+embarrass you to change. But I look upon you as my son, none the less.
+I claim you from this hour," said she firmly, as one not to be
+gainsaid.
+
+"I'm beginning to believe in fairy-stories," said Flint. "The beggar
+comes home--and he isn't a beggar at all, he's a Prince. Because the
+Queen is his mother."
+
+My mother looked at him approvingly. The grace of his manner, and the
+unaffected feeling of his words, pleased her. But she said no more of
+what was in her heart for him. She fell back, as women do, upon the
+safe subject of housekeeping matters.
+
+"I suppose," she mused, "that those children will remain with us
+to-day? Yes, of course. Armand, we shall have the last of your
+great-grandfather's wine. And I am going to send over for the judge.
+Let me see: shall I have time for a cake with frosting? H'm! Yes, I
+think so. Or would you prefer wine jelly with whipped cream, John?"
+
+He considered gravely, one hand on his hip, the other stroking his
+beard.
+
+"Couldn't we have both!" he wondered hopefully. "Please! Just for this
+once?"
+
+"We could! We shall!" said my mother, grandly, recklessly,
+extravagantly. "Adieu, then, children of my heart! I go to confer with
+Clélie." She waved her hand and was gone.
+
+The place shimmered with sun. Old Kerry lay with his head between his
+paws and dozed and dreamed in it, every now and then opening his hazel
+eyes to make sure that all was well with his man. All outdoors was one
+glory of renewing life, of stir and growth, of loving and singing and
+nest-building, and the budding of new green leaves and the blossoming
+of April boughs. Just such April hopes were theirs who had found each
+other again this morning. All of life at its best and fairest
+stretched sunnily before those two, the fairer for the cloud that had
+for a time darkened it, the dearer and diviner for the loss that had
+been so imminent.
+
+... That was a redbird again. And now a vireo. And this the
+mockingbird, love-drunk, emptying his heart of a troubadour in a song
+of fire and dew. And on a vagrant air, a gipsy air, the scent of the
+honey-locust. The spring for all the world else. But for him I
+loved,--what?
+
+I suppose my wistful eyes betrayed me, for used to the changing
+expressions of my thin visage, he smiled; and stood up, stretching
+his arms above his head. He drew in great mouthfuls of the sweet air,
+and expanded his broad chest.
+
+"I feel full to the brim!" said he gloriously. "I've got almost too
+much to hold with both hands! Parson, parson, it isn't possible you're
+fretting over _me_? Sorry for _me_? Why, man, consider!"
+
+Ah, but had I not considered? I knew, I thought, what he had to hold
+fast to. Honor, yes. And the friendship of some and the admiration of
+many and the true love of the few, which is all any man may hope for
+and more than most attain. Outside of that, a gray moth, and a
+butterfly's wing, and a torn nest, and a child's curl, and a ragdoll
+in her grave; and now a girl's kiss on the palm and a tear to hallow
+it. But I who had greatly loved and even more greatly lost and
+suffered, was it not for me of all men to know and to understand?
+
+"But I have got the thing itself," said the Butterfly Man, "that makes
+everything else worth while. Why, I have been taught how to love! My
+work is big--but by itself it wasn't enough for me. I needed something
+more. So I was swept and empty and ready and waiting--when she came.
+Now hadn't there got to be something fine and decent in me, when it
+was she alone out of all the world I was waiting for and could love?"
+
+"Yes, yes. But oh, my son, my son!"
+
+"Oh, it was bad and bitter enough at first, parson. Because I wanted
+her so much! Great God, I was like a soul in hell! After awhile I
+crawled out of hell--on my hands and knees. But I'd begun to
+understand things. I'd been taught. It'd been burnt into me past
+forgetting. Maybe that's what hell is for, if folks only knew it.
+Could anything ever happen to anybody any more that I couldn't
+understand and be sorry for, I wonder?
+
+"No, don't you worry any about me. I wouldn't change places with
+anybody alive, I'm too glad for everything that's ever happened to me,
+good and bad. I'm not ashamed of the beginning, no, nor I'm not afraid
+of the end.
+
+"Will you believe me, though, when I tell you what worried me like the
+mischief for awhile? Family, parson! You can't live in South Carolina
+without having the seven-years' Family-itch wished on you, you know. I
+felt like a mushroom standing up on my one leg all by myself among a
+lot of proper garden plants--until I got fed up on the professional
+Descendant banking on his boneyard full of dead ones; then I quit
+worrying. I'm Me and alive--and I should worry about ancestors! Come
+to think about it, everybody's an ancestor while you wait. I made up
+my mind I'd be my own ancestor and my own descendant--and make a good
+job of both while I was at it."
+
+But I was too sad to smile. And after awhile he asked gently:
+
+"Are you grieving because you think I've lost love? Parson, did you
+ever know something you didn't know how you knew, but you know you
+know it because it's true? Well then--I know that girl's mine and I
+came here to find her, though on the face of it you'd think I'd lost
+her, wouldn't you? Somewhere and sometime I'll come again--and when I
+do, she'll know _me_."
+
+And to save my life I couldn't tell him I didn't believe it! His
+manner even more than his words impressed me. He didn't look
+improbable.
+
+"One little life and one little death," said the Butterfly Man,
+"couldn't possibly be big enough for something like this to get away
+from a man forever. I have got the thing too big for a dozen lives to
+hold. Isn't that a great deal for a man to have, parson?"
+
+"Yes." said I. "It is a great deal for a man to have." But I foresaw
+the empty, empty places, in the long, long years ahead. I added
+faintly: "Having that much, you have more than most."
+
+"You only have what you are big enough not to take," said he. "And I'm
+not fooling myself I shan't be lonesome and come some rough tumbles at
+times. The difference is, that if I go down now I won't stay down. If
+there was one thing I could grieve over, too, it would be--kids. I'd
+like kids. My own kids. And I shall never have any. It--well, it just
+wouldn't be fair to the kids. Louisa'll come nearest to being mine by
+bornation--though I'm thinking she's managed to wish me everybody
+else's, on her curl."
+
+"So! You are your own ancestor and your own descendant, and
+everybody's kids are yours! You are modest, _hein_? And what else have
+you got?"
+
+His eyes suddenly danced. "Nothing but the rest of the United States,"
+said the Butterfly Man, magnificently. And when I stared, he laughed
+at me.
+
+"It's quite true, parson: I have got the whole United States to work
+for. Uncle Sam. U.S. _Us!_ I've been drafted into the Brigade that
+hasn't any commander, nor any colors, nor honors, nor even a name;
+but that's never going to be mustered out of service, because we that
+enlist and belong can't and won't quit.
+
+"Parson, think of _me_ representing the Brigade down here on the
+Carolina coast, keeping up the work, fighting things that hurt and
+finding out things that help Lord, what a chance! A hundred millions
+to work for, a hundred millions of one's own people--and a trail to
+blaze for the unborn millions to come!" His glance kindled, his face
+was like a lighted lamp. The vision was upon him, standing there in
+the April sunlight, staring wide-eyed into the future.
+
+Its reflected light illumined me, too--a little. And I saw that in a
+very large and splendid sense, this was the true American. He stood
+almost symbolically for that for which America stands--the fighting
+chance to overcome and to grow, the square deal, the spirit that looks
+eagle-eyed and unafraid into the sunrise. And above all for unselfish
+service and unshakable faith, and a love larger than personal love,
+prouder than personal pride, higher than personal ambition. They do
+not know America who do not know and will not see this spirit in her,
+going its noble and noiseless way apart.
+
+"The whole world to work for, and a whole lifetime to do it in!" said
+the voice of America, exultant. "Lord God, that's a man-sized job, but
+You just give me hands and eyes and time, and I'll do the best I can.
+You've done Your part by me--stand by, and I'll do mine by You!"
+
+Are those curious coincidences, those circumstances which occur at
+such opportune moments that they leave one with a sense of a guiding
+finger behind the affairs of men--are they, after all, only fortuitous
+accidents, or have they a deeper and a diviner significance?
+
+There stood the long worktable, with orderly piles of work on it; the
+microscope in its place; the books he had opened and pushed aside last
+night; and some half-dozen small card-board boxes in a row, containing
+the chrysalids he had been experimenting with, trying the effect of
+cold upon color. The cover of one box had been partially pushed off,
+possibly when he had moved the books. And while we had been paying
+attention to other things, one of these chrysalids had been paying
+strict attention to its own business, the beautiful and important
+business of becoming a butterfly. Flint discovered it first, and gave
+a pleased exclamation.
+
+"Look! Look! A Turnus, father! The first Turnus of the year!"
+
+The insect had been out for an hour or two, but was not yet quite
+ready to fly. It had crawled out of the half-opened box, dragged its
+wormy length across the table, over intervening obstacles, seeking
+some place to climb up and cling to.
+
+Now the Butterfly Man had left the Bible open, merely shoving it aside
+without shutting it, when he had found no comfort for himself last
+night in what John had to say. Protected by piled-up books and propped
+almost upright by the large inkstand, it gave the holding-place the
+insect desired. The butterfly had walked up the page and now clung to
+the top.
+
+There she rested, her black-and-yellow body quivering like a tiny live
+dynamo from the strong force of circulation, that was sending vital
+fluids upward into the wings to give them power and expansion. We had
+seen the same thing a thousand and one times before, we should see it
+a thousand and one times again. But I do not think either of us could
+ever forego the delight of watching a butterfly's wings shaping
+themselves for flight, and growing into something of beauty and of
+wonder. The lovely miracle is ever new to us.
+
+She was a big butterfly, big even for the greatest of Carolina
+swallow-tails; not the dark dimorphic form, but the true Tiger Turnus
+itself, her barred yellow upper wings edged with black enamel indented
+with red gold, her tailed lower wings bordered with a wider band of
+black, and this not only set with lunettes of gold but with purple
+amethysts, and a ruby on the upper and lower edges. Her wings moved
+rhythmically; a constant quivering agitated her, and her antennæ with
+their flattened clubs seemed to be sending and receiving wireless
+messages from the shining world outside.
+
+And as the wings had dried and grown firmer in the mild warm current
+of air and the bright sunlight, she moved them with a wider and bolder
+sweep. The heavy, unwieldy body, thinned by the expulsion of those
+currents driven upward to give flying-power to the wings, had taken on
+a slim and tapering grace. She had reached her fairy perfection. She
+was ready now for flight and light and love and freedom and the
+uncharted pathways of the air, ready to carry out the design of the
+Creator who had fashioned her so wondrously and so beautiful, and had
+sent ahead of her the flowers for that marvelous tongue of hers to
+sip.
+
+Waiting still, opening and closing her exquisite wings, trying them,
+spreading them flat, the splendid swallow-tail clung to the page of
+the book open at the Gospel of John. And I, idly enough, leaned
+forward, and saw between the opening and the closing wings, words. The
+which John Flint, bending forward beside me, likewise saw. "_Work_,"
+flashed out. And on a lower line, "_while it is day_."
+
+I grasped the edge of the table; his knuckles showed white beside
+mine.
+
+    "_I must work the works of him
+     that sent me, while it is day._"
+
+His eyes grew larger and deeper. A sort of inward light, a serene and
+joyous acceptance and assurance, flowed into them. I that had dared to
+be despondent felt a sense of awe. The Voice that had once spoken
+above the Mercy Seat and between the wings of the cherubim was
+speaking now in immortal words between, the wings of a butterfly.
+
+She was poising herself for her first flight, the bright and lovely
+Lady of the Sky. Now she spread her wings flat, as a fan is unfurled.
+And now she had lifted them clear and uncovered her message. The
+Butterfly Man watched her, hanging absorbed upon her every movement.
+And he read, softly:
+
+    "_I must work
+    ... while it is day_."
+
+Lightly as a flower, a living and glorious flower, she lifted and
+launched herself into the air, flew straight and sure for the outside
+light, hung poised one gracious moment, and was gone.
+
+He turned to me the sweetest, clearest eyes I have ever seen in a
+mortal countenance, the eyes of a little child. His face had caught a
+sort of secret beauty, that was never to leave it any more.
+
+"Parson!" said the Butterfly Man, in a whisper that shook with the
+beating of his heart behind it: "Parson! _Don't it beat hell?_"
+
+I rocked on my toes. Then I flung my arms around him, with a jubilant
+shout:
+
+"It does! It does! Oh, Butterfly Man, by the grace and the glory and
+the wonder of God, it beats hell!"
+
+THE END
+
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+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the
+Butterfly Man, by Marie Conway Oemler
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SLIPPY MCGEE ***
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+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Slippy McGee, by Marie Conway Oemler.
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the
+Butterfly Man, by Marie Conway Oemler
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man
+
+Author: Marie Conway Oemler
+
+Release Date: May 17, 2005 [EBook #15843]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SLIPPY MCGEE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Janet Kegg, Jeannie Howse and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h1><a name="Page_i"></a>SLIPPY McGEE</h1>
+
+<h2>SOMETIMES KNOWN AS<br />
+THE BUTTERFLY MAN</h2>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>BY</h4>
+<h3>MARIE CONWAY OEMLER</h3>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h5>NEW YORK<br />
+THE CENTURY CO.<br />
+1920</h5>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h5><a name="Page_ii"></a>1917, by<br />
+<span class="sc">The Century Co.</span></h5>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h6>Published, April, 1917.<br />
+Reprinted, August, 1917; February, 1918;<br />
+August, 1918; March, 1919; August, 1919;<br />
+November, 1919; February, 1920.</h6>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h3 class="sc"><a name="Page_iii"></a>TO<br />
+ELIZABETH and ALAN OEMLER</h3>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+<a name="Page_iv"></a>
+<h2>FOREWORD</h2>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>I have known life and love, I have known death and disaster;<br /></span>
+<span>Foregathered with fools, succumbed to sin, been not unacquainted with shame;<br /></span>
+<span>Doubted, and yet held fast to a faith no doubt could o'ermaster.<br /></span>
+<span>Won and lost:&mdash;and I know it was all a part of the Game.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>Youth and the dreams of youth, hope, and the triumph of sorrow:<br /></span>
+<span>I took as they came, I played them all; and I trumped the trick when I could.<br /></span>
+<span>And now, O Mover of Men, let the end be to-day or to-morrow&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>I have staked and played for Myself, and You and the Game were good!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="toc"></a><hr />
+<a name="Page_v"></a><br />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<br />
+
+<div class="centered">
+  <table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" width="90%" summary="Table of Contents">
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdrsc" style="font-size: 85%;">Chapter</td>
+  <td colspan="2" class="tdrsc" style="font-size: 85%;">Page</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">Appleboro</td>
+  <td class="tdr">3</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">The Coming Of Slippy McGee</td>
+  <td class="tdr">19</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">Neighbors</td>
+  <td class="tdr">37</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">Underwings</td>
+  <td class="tdr">48</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">Enter Kerry</td>
+  <td class="tdr">65</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">&quot;Thy Servant Will Go And Fight With This Philistine.&quot; 1 Sam. 17-32</td>
+  <td class="tdr">94</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">The Going Of Slippy McGee</td>
+  <td class="tdr">111</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">The Butterfly Man</td>
+  <td class="tdr">131</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">Nests</td>
+  <td class="tdr">145</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">X.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">The Bluejay</td>
+  <td class="tdr">172</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">A Little Girl Grown Up</td>
+  <td class="tdr">189</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">John Flint, Gentleman</td>
+  <td class="tdr">203</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">&quot;Each In His Own Coin&quot;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">226</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">The Wishing Curl</td>
+  <td class="tdr">258</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">In The Middle Of The Night</td>
+  <td class="tdr">283</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">&quot;Will You Walk Into My Parlor&quot;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">302</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">XVII.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">&quot;&mdash;Said The Spider To The Fly&mdash;&quot;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">319</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">XVIII.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">St. Stanislaus Crooks His Elbow</td>
+  <td class="tdr">343</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">XIX.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">The I O U Of Slippy McGee</td>
+  <td class="tdr">364</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">XX.</a></td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">Between A Butterfly's Wings</td>
+  <td class="tdr">382</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Page_1"></a><hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h2>SLIPPY McGEE</h2>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Page_2"></a><hr />
+<br />
+
+<h2>CHARACTERS</h2>
+<br />
+
+<div style="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;">
+<p class="noin"><span class="sc">Father Armand Jean De Ranc&eacute;</span>, <i>Catholic Priest of Appleboro, South
+Carolina</i></p>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="sc">Madame De Ranc&eacute;</span>, <i>his Mother</i></p>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="sc">Cl&eacute;lie</span>, <i>their Servant</i></p>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="sc">Laurence Mayne</span>, <i>the Boy</i></p>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="sc">Mary Virginia Eustis</span>, <i>the Girl</i></p>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="sc">James Eustis</span>, <i>Man of the New South</i></p>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="sc">Mrs. Eustis</span>, <i>a Lady</i></p>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="sc">Doctor Walter Westmoreland</span>, <i>the Beloved Physician</i></p>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="sc">JIM DABNEY</span>, <i>Editor of the Appleboro &quot;Clarion&quot;</i></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="65%" summary="bracket workaround">
+  <tr>
+  <td class="sc" width="45%" style="white-space: nowrap;">Major Appleby Cartwright<br />
+    Miss Sally Ruth Dexter<br />
+    Judge Hammond Mayne</td>
+  <td style="font-size: 38pt; white-space: nowrap;" width="15%"> }</td>
+  <td valign="middle" width="40%">Neighbors</td>
+ </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="sc">George Inglesby</span>, <i>the Boss of Appleboro</i></p>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="sc">J. Howard Hunter</span>, <i>his Private Secretary</i></p>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="sc">Kerry</span>, <i>an Irish Setter</i></p>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="sc">Pitache</span>, <i>the Parish House Dog</i></p>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="sc">The Moths And Butterflies Of South Carolina<br/>
+The Children, The Mill-hands, The Factory Folks</span>, and<br />
+<span class="sc">Slippy McGee</span>, <i>sometimes known as the Butterfly Man</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_I"></a><hr />
+<br />
+
+<h1><a name="Page_3"></a>SLIPPY McGEE</h1>
+
+<br />
+
+<h2>CHAPTER I <span class="totoc"><a class="noline" href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>APPLEBORO</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>&quot;Now there was my cousin Eliza,&quot; Miss Sally Ruth Dexter once said to
+me, &quot;who was forced to make her home for thirty years in Vienna! She
+married an attach&eacute; of the Austrian legation, you know; met him while
+she was visiting in Washington, and she was such a pretty girl and he
+was such a charming man that they fell in love with each other and got
+married. Afterward his family procured him a very influential post at
+court, and of course poor Cousin Eliza had to stay there with him.
+Dear mama often said she considered it a most touching proof of
+woman's willingness to sacrifice herself&mdash;for there's no doubt it must
+have been very hard on poor Cousin Eliza. She was born and raised
+right here in Appleboro, you see.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Do not think that Miss Sally Ruth was anything but most transparently
+sincere in thus sympathizing with the sad fate of poor Cousin Eliza,
+who was born and raised in Appleboro, South Carolina, and yet
+sacrificed herself by dragging out thirty years of exile in the court
+circles of Vienna! Any trueborn Appleboron would be equally sorry for
+Cousin Eliza for the same reason that <a name="Page_4"></a>Miss Sally Ruth was. Get
+yourself born in South Carolina and you will comprehend.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What did you see in your travels that you liked most?&quot; I was curious
+to discover from an estimable citizen who had spent a summer abroad.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, General Lee's standin' statue in the Capitol an' his recumbent
+figure in Washington an' Lee chapel, of co'se!&quot; said the colonel
+promptly. &quot;An' listen hyuh, Father De Ranc&eacute;, I certainly needed him to
+take the bad taste out of my mouth an' the red out of my eye after
+viewin' Bill Sherman on a brass hawse in New York, with an angel
+that'd lost the grace of God prancin' on ahead of him!&quot; He added
+reflectively: &quot;I had my own ideah as to where any angel leadin' <i>him</i>
+was most likely headed for!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I meant in Europe!&quot; hastily.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, father, I saw pretty near everything in Europe, I reckon;
+likewise New York. But comin' home I ran up to Washington an' Lee to
+visit the general lyin' there asleep, an' it just needed one glance to
+assure me that the greatest an' grandest work of art in this round
+world was right there before me! What do folks want to rush off to
+foreign parts for, where they can't talk plain English an' a man can't
+get a satisfyin' meal of home cookin', when we've got the greatest
+work of art an' the best hams ever cured, right in Virginia? See
+America first, I say. Why, suh, I was so glad to get back to good old
+Appleboro that I let everybody else wait until I'd gone around to the
+monument an' looked up at our man standin' there on top of it, an' I
+found myself sayin' over the names he's guardin' as if I was sayin' my
+prayers: <i>our names</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_5"></a>Uh huh, Europe's good enough for Europeans an' the Nawth's a God's
+plenty good enough for Yankees, but Appleboro for me. Why, father,
+they haven't got anything like our monument to their names!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They haven't. And I should hate to think that any Confederate living
+or dead ever even remotely resembled the gray granite one on our
+monument. He is a brigandish and bearded person in a foraging cap,
+leaning forward to rest himself on his gun. His long skirted coat is
+buckled tightly about his waist to form a neat bustle effect in the
+back, and the solidity of his granite shoes and the fell rigidity of
+his granite breeches are such as make the esthetic shudder; one has to
+admit that as a work of art he is almost as bad as the statues
+cluttering New York City. But in Appleboro folks are not critical;
+they see him not with the eyes of art but with the deeper vision of
+the heart. He stands for something that is gone on the wind and the
+names he guards are our names.</p>
+
+<p>This is not irrelevant. It is merely to explain something that is
+inherent in the living spirit of all South Carolina; wherefore it
+explains my Appleboro, the real inside-Appleboro.</p>
+
+<p>Outwardly Appleboro is just one of those quiet, conservative, old
+Carolina towns where, loyal to the customs and traditions of their
+fathers, they would as lief white-wash what they firmly believe to be
+the true and natural character of General William Tecumseh Sherman as
+they would their own front fences. Occasionally somebody will give a
+backyard henhouse a needed coat or two; but a front fence? Never! It
+isn't the thing. Nobody does it. All normal South Carolinians come
+into the world with a native horror of paint and whitewash and <a name="Page_6"></a>they
+depart hence even as they were born. In consequence, towns like
+Appleboro take on the venerable aspect of antiquity, peacefully
+drowsing among immemorial oaks draped with long, gray, melancholy
+moss.</p>
+
+<p>Not that we are cut off from the world, or that we have escaped the
+clutch of commerce. We have the usual shops and stores, even an
+emporium or two, and street lights until twelve, and the mills and
+factory. We have the river trade, and two railroads tap our rich
+territory to fetch and carry what we take and give. And, except in the
+poor parish of which I, Armand De Ranc&eacute;, am pastor, and some few
+wealthy families like the Eustises, Agur's wise and noble prayer has
+been in part granted to us; for if it has not been possible to remove
+far from us all vanity and lies, yet we have been given neither
+poverty nor riches, and we are fed with food convenient for us.</p>
+
+<p>In Appleboro the pleasant and prejudiced Old looks askance at the
+noisy and intruding New, before which, it is forced to retreat&mdash;always
+without undue or undignified haste, however, and always unpainted and
+unreconstructed. It is a town where families live in houses that have
+sheltered generations of the same name, using furniture that was not
+new when Marion's men hid in the swamps and the redcoats overran the
+country-side. Almost everybody has a garden, full of old-fashioned
+shrubs and flowers, and fine trees. In such a place men and women grow
+old serenely and delightfully, and youth flourishes all the fairer for
+the rich soil which has brought it forth.</p>
+
+<p>One has twenty-four hours to the day in a South Carolina town&mdash;plenty
+of time to live in, so that one <a name="Page_7"></a>can afford to do things unhurriedly
+and has leisure to be neighborly. For you do have neighbors here. It
+is true that they know all your business and who and what your
+grandfather was and wasn't, and they are prone to discuss it with a
+frankness to make the scalp prickle. But then, you know theirs, too,
+and you are at liberty to employ the same fearsome frankness, provided
+you do it politely and are not speaking to an outsider. It is
+perfectly permissible for <i>you</i> to say exactly what you please about
+your own people to your own people, but should an outsider and an
+alien presume to do likewise, the Carolina code admits of but one
+course of conduct; borrowing the tactics of the goats against the
+wolf, they close in shoulder to shoulder and present to the audacious
+intruder an unbroken and formidable front of horns.</p>
+
+<p>And it is the last place left in all America where decent poverty is
+in nowise penalized. You can be poor pleasantly&mdash;a much rarer and far
+finer art than being old gracefully. Because of this, life in South
+Carolina sometimes retains a simplicity as fine and sincere as it is
+charming.</p>
+
+<p>I deplore the necessity, but I will be pardoned if I pause here to
+become somewhat personal, to explain who and what I am and how I came
+to be a pastor in Appleboro. To explain myself, then, I shall have to
+go back to a spring morning long ago, when I was not a poor parish
+priest, no, nor ever dreamed of becoming one, but was young Armand De
+Ranc&eacute;, a flower-crowned and singing pagan, holding up to the morning
+sun the chalice of spring; joyous because I was of a perishable
+beauty, dazzled because life gave me so much, proud of <a name="Page_8"></a>an old and
+honored name, secure in ancestral wealth, loving laughter so much that
+I looked with the raised eyebrow and the twisted lip at austerities
+and prayers.</p>
+
+<p>If ever I reflected at all, it was to consider that I had nothing to
+pray for, save that things might ever remain as they were: that I
+should remain me, myself, young Armand De Ranc&eacute;, loving and above all
+beloved of that one sweet girl whom I loved with all my heart. Young,
+wealthy, strong, beautiful, loving, and beloved! To hold all that,
+crowded into the hollow of one boyish hand! Oh, it was too much!</p>
+
+<p>I do not think I had ever felt my own happiness so exquisitely as I
+did upon that day which was to see the last of it. I was to go
+a-Maying with her who had ever been as my own soul, since we were
+children playing together. So I rode off to her home, an old house set
+in its walled inclosure by the river. At the door somebody met me,
+calling me by my name. I thought at first it had been a stranger. It
+was her mother. And while I stood staring at her changed face she took
+me by the hand and began to whisper in my ear ... what I had to know.
+Blindly, like one bludgeoned on the head, I followed her into a
+darkened room, and saw what lay there with closed eyes and hair still
+wet from the river into which my girl had cast herself.</p>
+
+<p>No, I cannot put into words just what had happened; indeed, I never
+really knew all. There was no public scandal, only great sorrow. But I
+died that morning. The young and happy part of me died, and, only
+half-alive I walked about among the living, dragging about with me the
+corpse of what had been myself. Crushed by this horrible burden which
+none saw but I, I was <a name="Page_9"></a>blind to the beauties of earth and deaf to the
+mercies of heaven, until a great Voice called me to come out of the
+sepulcher of myself; and I came&mdash;alive again, and free, of a strong
+spirit, but with youth gone from it. Out of the void of an
+irremediable disaster God had called me to His service, chastened and
+humbled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Who is weak and I am not weak? who is offended and I burn not?</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And yet, although I knew my decision was irrevocable, I did not find
+it easy to tell my mother. Then:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Little mother of my heart,&quot; I blurted, &quot;my career is decided. I have
+been called. I am for the Church.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We were in her pleasant morning room, a beautiful room, and the lace
+curtains were pushed aside to allow free ingress of air and sunlight.
+Between the windows hung two objects my mother most greatly
+cherished&mdash;one an enameled Petitot miniature, gold-framed, of a man in
+the flower of his youth. His hair, beautiful as the hair of Absalom,
+falls about his haughty, high-bred face, and so magnificently is he
+clothed that when I was a child I used to associate him in my mind
+with those &quot;<i>captains and rulers, clothed most gorgeously, all of them
+desirable young men, ... girdled with a girdle upon their loins,
+exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look
+to&quot; ... whom Aholibah &quot;doted upon when her eyes saw them portrayed
+upon the walls in vermilion</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The other is an Audran engraving of that same man grown old and
+stripped of beauty and of glory, as the leaf that falls and the flower
+that fades. The somber habit of an order has replaced scarlet and
+gold; and sackcloth, satin. Between the two pictures hangs an old
+<a name="Page_10"></a>crucifix. For that is Armand De Ranc&eacute;, glorious sinner, handsomest,
+wealthiest, most gifted man of his day&mdash;and his a day of glorious men;
+and this is Armand De Ranc&eacute;, become the sad austere reformer of La
+Trappe.</p>
+
+<p>My mother rose, walked over to the Abb&eacute;'s pictures, and looked long
+and with rather frightened eyes at him. Perhaps there was something in
+the similarity to his of the fate which had come upon me who bore his
+name, which caused her to turn so pale. I also am an Armand De Ranc&eacute;,
+of a cadet branch of that great house, which emigrated to the New
+World when we French were founding colonies on the banks of the
+Mississippi.</p>
+
+<p>Her hand went to her heart. Turning, she regarded me pitifully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no, not that!&quot; I reassured her. &quot;I am at once too strong and not
+strong enough for solitude and silence. Surely there is room and work
+for one who would serve God through serving his fellow men, in the
+open, is there not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At that she kissed me. Not a whimper, although I am an only son and
+the name dies with me, the old name of which she was so beautifully
+proud! She had hoped to see my son wear my father's name and face and
+thus bring back the lost husband she had so greatly loved; she had
+prayed to see my children about her knees, and it must have cost her a
+frightful anguish to renounce these sweet and consoling dreams, these
+tender and human ambitions. Yet she did so, smiling, and kissed me on
+the brow.</p>
+
+<p>Three months later I entered the Church; and <a name="Page_11"></a>because I was the last
+De Ranc&eacute;, and twenty four, and the day was to have been my
+wedding-day, there fell upon me, sorely against my will, the halo of
+sad romance.</p>
+
+<p>Endeared thus to the young, I suppose I grew into what I might call a
+very popular preacher. Though I myself cannot see that I ever did much
+actual good, since my friends praised my sermons for their &quot;fine
+Gallic flavor,&quot; and I made no enemies.</p>
+
+<p>But there was no rest for my spirit, until the Call came again, the
+Call that may not be slighted, and bade me leave my sheltered place,
+my pleasant lines, and go among the poor, to save my own soul alive.</p>
+
+<p>That is why and how the Bishop, my old and dear friend, after long
+argument and many protests, at length yielded and had me transferred
+from fashionable St. Jean Baptiste's to the poverty-stricken
+missionary parish of sodden laboring folk in a South Carolina
+coast-town: he meant to cure me, the good man! I should have the worst
+at the outset.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And I hope you understand,&quot; said he, sorrowfully, &quot;that this step
+practically closes your career. Such a pity, for you could have gone
+so far! You might even have worn the red hat. It is not hoping too
+much that the last De Ranc&eacute;, the namesake of the great Abb&eacute;, might
+have finished as an American cardinal! But God's will be done. If you
+must go, you must go.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I said, respectfully, that I had to go.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, then, go and try it out to the uttermost,&quot; said the Bishop.
+&quot;And it may be that, if you do not kill yourself with overwork, you
+may return to me cured, <a name="Page_12"></a>when you see the futility of the task you
+wish to undertake.&quot; But I was never again to see his kind face in this
+world.</p>
+
+<p>And then, as if to cut me off yet more completely from all ties, as if
+to render my decision irrevocable, it was permitted of Providence that
+the wheel of my fortune should take one last revolution. Henri Dupuis
+of the banking house which bore his name shot himself through the head
+one fine morning, and as he had been my guardian and was still the
+executor of my father's estate, the whole De Ranc&eacute; fortune went down
+with him. All of it. Even the old house went, the old house which had
+sheltered so many of the name these two hundred years. If I could have
+grieved for anything it would have been that. Nothing was left except
+the modest private fortune long since secured to my mother by my
+father's affection. It had been a bridal gift, intended to cover her
+personal expenses, her charities, and her pretty whims. Now it was to
+stand between her and want.</p>
+
+<p>Stripped all but bare, and with one servant left of all our staff, we
+turned our backs upon our old life, our old home, and faced the world
+anew, in a strange place where nothing was familiar, and where I who
+had begun so differently was destined to grow into what I have since
+become&mdash;just an old priest, with but small reputation outside of his
+few friends and poor working-folks. There! That is quite enough of
+<i>me</i>!</p>
+
+<p>There was one pleasant feature of our new home that rejoiced me for my
+mother's sake. From the very first she found neighbors who were
+friendly and charming. Now my mother, when we came to <a name="Page_13"></a>Appleboro, was
+still a beautiful woman, fair and rosy, with a profusion of <i>blonde
+cendre</i> curls just beginning to whiten, a sweet and arch face, and
+eyes of clearest hazel, valanced with jet. She had been perhaps the
+loveliest and most beloved woman of that proud and select circle which
+is composed of families descended from the old noblesse, the most
+exclusive circle of New Orleans society. And, as she said, nothing
+could change nor alter the fact that no matter <i>what</i> happened to us,
+we were still De Ranc&eacute;s!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! And was it, then, a De Ranc&eacute; who had the holy Mother of God
+painted in a family picture, with a scroll issuing from her lips
+addressing him as 'My Cousin'?&quot; I asked, slyly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If it was, nobody in the world had a better right!&quot; said she stoutly.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the serene and unquestioning faith of their estimate of
+themselves in the scheme of things, as evidenced by these Carolina
+folk around her, caused Madame De Ranc&eacute; neither surprise nor
+amusement. She understood. She shared many of their prejudices, and
+she of all women could appreciate a pride that was almost equal to her
+own. When they initiated her into the inevitable and inescapable
+Carolina game of Matching Grandfathers, she always had a Roland for
+their Oliver; and as they generally came back with an Oliver to match
+her Roland, all the players retired with equal honors and mutual
+respect. Every door in Appleboro at once opened wide to Madame De
+Ranc&eacute;. The difference in religion was obviated by the similarity of
+Family.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, too, the Church and Parish House were not in the mill
+district itself, a place shoved aside, full <a name="Page_14"></a>of sordid hideousness,
+ribboned with railroad tracks, squalid with boarding-houses never free
+from the smell of bad cooking, sinister with pawnshops, miserable with
+depressingly ugly rows of small houses where the hands herded, and all
+of it darkened by the grim shadow of the great red brick mills
+themselves. Instead, our Church sits on a tree-shaded corner in the
+old town, and the roomy white-piazza'd Parish House is next door,
+embowered in the pleasantest of all gardens.</p>
+
+<p>That garden reconciled my mother to her exile, for I am afraid she had
+regarded Appleboro with somewhat of the attitude of the castaway
+sailor toward a desert island&mdash;a refuge after shipwreck, but a desert
+island nevertheless, a place which cuts off one from one's world. And
+when at first the poor, uncouth, sullen creatures who were a part of
+my new charge, frightened and dismayed her, there was always the
+garden to fly to for consolation. If she couldn't plant seeds of order
+and cleanliness and morality and thrift in the sterile soil of poor
+folks' minds, she could always plant seeds of color and beauty and
+fragrance in her garden and be surer of the result. That garden was my
+delight, too. I am sure no other equal space ever harbored so many
+birds and bees and butterflies; and its scented dusks was the paradise
+of moths. Great wonderful fellows clothed in kings' raiment, little
+chaps colored like flowers and seashells and rainbows, there the airy
+cohorts of the People of the Sky wheeled and danced and fluttered. Now
+my grandfather and my father had been the friends of Audubon and of
+Agassiz, and I myself had been the correspondent of Riley and Scudder
+and Henry Edwards, for I love the People of the Sky <a name="Page_15"></a>more than all
+created things. And when I watched them in my garden, I am sure it was
+they who lent my heart their wings to lift it above the misery and
+overwork and grief which surrounded me; I am sure I should have sunk
+at times, if God had not sent me my little friends, the moths and
+butterflies.</p>
+
+<p>Our grounds join Miss Sally Ruth Dexter's on one side and Judge
+Hammond Mayne's are just behind us; so that the Judge's black Daddy
+January can court our yellow Cl&eacute;lie over one fence, with coy and
+delicate love-gifts of sugar-cane and sweet-potato pone in season; and
+Miss Sally Ruth's roosters and ours can wholeheartedly pick each
+other's eyes out through the other all the year round. These are fowls
+with so firm a faith in the Mosaic code of an eye for an eye that when
+Miss Sally Ruth has six blind of the right eye we have five blind of
+the left. We are at times stung by the Mayne bees, but freely and
+bountifully supplied with the Mayne honey, a product of fine flavor.
+And our little dog Pitache made it the serious business of his life to
+keep the Mayne cats in what he considered their proper bounds.</p>
+
+<p>Major Appleby Cartwright, our neighbor to the other side of Miss Sally
+Ruth, has a theory that not alone by our fruits, but by our animals,
+shall we be known for what we are. He insists that Pitache wags his
+tail and barks in French and considers all cats Protestants, and that
+Miss Sally Ruth's hens are all Presbyterians at heart, in spite of the
+fact that her roosters are Mormons. The Major likewise insists that
+you couldn't possibly hope to know the real Judge Hammond Mayne unless
+you knew his pet cats. You admire that calm <a name="Page_16"></a>and imperturbable
+dignity, that sphinxlike and yet vigilant poise of bearing which has
+made Judge Mayne so notable an ornament of the bench? It is purely
+feline: &quot;He caught it from his cats, suh: he caught every God-blessed
+bit of it from his cats!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As one may perceive, we have delicious neighbors!</p>
+
+<p>When we had been settled in Appleboro a little more than a year, and I
+had gotten the parish wheels running fairly smooth, we discovered that
+by my mother's French house-keeping, that exquisitely careful
+house-keeping which uses everything and wastes nothing, my salary was
+going to be quite sufficient to cover our modest m&eacute;nage, thus leaving
+my mother's own income practically intact. We could use it in the
+parish; but there was so much to be done for that parish that we were
+rather at a loss where to begin, or what one thing to accomplish among
+so many things crying aloud. But finally, tackling what seemed to us
+the worst of these crying evils, we were able to turn the two empty
+rooms upstairs into what Madame pleasantly called Guest Rooms, thus
+remedying, to the best of our ability, the absolute lack of any
+accommodation for the sick and injured poor. And as time passed, these
+Guest Rooms, so greatly needed, proved not how much but how little we
+could do. We could only afford to maintain two beds on our small
+allowance, for they had to be absolutely free, to help those for whom
+they were intended&mdash;poor folks in immediate and dire need, for whom
+the town had no other place except an insanitary room in the jail. You
+could be born and baptized in the Guest Rooms, or shriven and sent
+thence in hope. More often you were coaxed back to health under my
+mother's <a name="Page_17"></a>nursing and Cl&eacute;lie's cooking and the skill of Doctor Walter
+Westmoreland.</p>
+
+<p>No bill ever came to the Parish House from Dr. Walter Westmoreland,
+whom my poor people look upon as a direct act of Providence in their
+behalf. He is an enormous man, big and ruddy and baldheaded and
+clean-shaven, with the shoulders of a coal-heaver and legs like a pair
+of twin oaks. He is rather absent-minded, but he never forgets the
+down-and-out Guest Roomers, and he has a genius for remembering the
+mill-children. These are his dear and special charge.</p>
+
+<p>Westmoreland is a great doctor who chooses to live in a small town; he
+says you can save as many lives in a little town as a big one, and
+folks need you more. He is a socialist who looks upon rich people as
+being merely poor people with money; an idealist, who will tell you
+bluntly that revelations haven't ceased; they've only changed for the
+better.</p>
+
+<p>Westmoreland has the courage of a gambler and the heart of a little
+child. He likes to lay a huge hand upon my shoulder and tell me to my
+teeth that heaven is a habit of heart and hell a condition of liver. I
+do not always agree with him; but along with everybody else in
+Appleboro, I love him. Of all the many goodnesses that God has shown
+me, I do not count it least that this good and kind man was sent in
+our need, to heal and befriend the broken and friendless waifs and
+strays who found for a little space a resting place in our Guest
+Rooms.</p>
+
+<p>And when I look back I know now that not lightly nor fortuitously was
+I uprooted from my place and my people and sent hither to impinge upon
+the lives of many <a name="Page_18"></a>who were to be dearer to me than all that had gone
+before; I was not idly sent to know and love Westmoreland, and Mary
+Virginia, and Laurence; and, above all, Slippy McGee, whom we of
+Appleboro call the Butterfly Man.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_II"></a><hr />
+<br />
+<h2><a name="Page_19"></a>CHAPTER II<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE COMING OF SLIPPY MCGEE</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>On a cold gray morning in December two members of my flock, Poles who
+spoke but little English and that little very badly, were on their way
+to their daily toil in the canning factory. It is a long walk from the
+Poles' quarters to the factory, and the workpeople must start early,
+for one is fined half an hour's time if one is five minutes late. The
+short-cut is down the railroad tracks that run through the mill
+district&mdash;for which cause we bury a yearly toll of the children of the
+poor.</p>
+
+<p>Just beyond the freight sheds, signal tower, and water tank, is a
+grade crossing where so many terrible things have happened that the
+colored people call that place Dead Man's Crossin' and warn you not to
+go by there of nights because the signal tower is haunted and Things
+lurk in the rank growth behind the water tank, coming out to show
+themselves after dark. If you <i>must</i> pass it then you would better
+turn your coat inside out, pull down your sleeves over your hands, and
+be very careful to keep three fingers twisted for a Sign. This is a
+specific against most ha'nts, though by no means able to scare away
+all of them. Those at Dead Man's Crossin' are peculiarly malignant and
+hard to scare. Maum Jinkey Delette saw one there once, coming down the
+track faster than an express train, bigger than a cow, <a name="Page_20"></a>and waving
+both his legs in his hands. Poor old Maum Jinkey was so scared that
+she chattered her new false teeth out of her mouth, and she never
+found those teeth to the day of her death, but had to mumble along as
+best she could without them.</p>
+
+<p>Hurrying by Dead Man's Crossin', the workmen stumbled over a man lying
+beside the tracks; his clothing was torn to shreds, he was wet with
+the heavy night dew and covered with dirt, cinders, and partly
+congealed blood, for his right leg had been ground to pulp. Peering at
+this horrible object in the wan dusk of the early morning, they
+thought he was dead like most of the others found there.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment the men hesitated, wondering whether it wouldn't be
+better to leave him there to be found and removed by folks with more
+time at their disposal. One doesn't like to lose time and be
+consequently fined, on account of stopping to pick up a dead tramp;
+particularly when Christmas is drawing near and money so much needed
+that every penny counts.</p>
+
+<p>The thing on the ground, regaining for a fraction of a second a glint
+of half-consciousness, quivered, moaned feebly, and lay still again.
+Humanity prevailing, the Poles looked about for help, but as yet the
+place was quite deserted. Grumbling, they wrenched a shutter off the
+Agent's window, lifted the mangled tramp upon it, and made straight
+for the Parish House; when accidents such as this happened to men such
+as this, weren't the victims incontinently turned over to the Parish
+House people? Indeed, there wasn't any place else for them, unless one
+excepted the rough room at the jail; and the average small town
+jail&mdash;ours wasn't any <a name="Page_21"></a>exception to the rule&mdash;is a place where a
+decent veterinary would scruple to put a sick cur. With him the Poles
+brought his sole luggage, a package tied up in oilskin, which they had
+found lying partly under him.</p>
+
+<p>We had become accustomed to these sudden inroads of misfortune, so he
+was carried upstairs to the front Guest Room, fortunately just then
+empty. The Poles turned over to me the heavy package found with him,
+stolidly requested a note to the Boss explaining their necessary
+tardiness, and hurried away. They had done what they had to do, and
+they had no further interest in him. Nobody had any interest in one of
+the unknown tramps who got themselves killed or crippled at Dead Man's
+Crossin'.</p>
+
+<p>The fellow was shockingly injured and we had some strenuous days and
+nights with him, for that which had been a leg had to come off at the
+knee; he had lain in the cold for some hours, he had sustained a
+frightful shock, and he had lost considerable blood. I am sure that in
+the hands of any physician less skilled and determined than
+Westmoreland he must have gone out. But Westmoreland, with his jaw
+set, followed his code and fenced with death for this apparently
+worthless and forfeited life, using all his skill and finesse to
+outwit the great Enemy; in spite of which, so attenuated was the man's
+chance that we were astonished when he turned the corner&mdash;very, very
+feebly&mdash;and we didn't have to place another pine box in the potter's
+field, alongside other unmarked mounds whose occupants were other
+unknown men, grim causes of Dead Man's Crossin's sinister name.</p>
+
+<p>The effects of the merciful drugs that had kept him quiet in time wore
+away. Our man woke up one <a name="Page_22"></a>forenoon clear-headed, if hollow-eyed and
+mortally weak. He looked about the unfamiliar room with wan curiosity,
+then his eyes came to Cl&eacute;lie and myself, but he did not return the
+greetings of either. He just stared; he asked no questions. Presently,
+very feebly, he tried to move,&mdash;and found himself a cripple. He fell
+back upon his pillow, gasping. A horrible scream broke from his
+lips&mdash;a scream of brute rage and mortal fear, as of a trapped wild
+beast. He began to revile heaven and earth, the doctor, myself.
+Cl&eacute;lie, clapping her hands over her outraged ears, fled as if from
+fiends. Indeed, never before nor since have I heard such a frightful,
+inhuman power of profanity, such hideous oaths and threats. When
+breath failed him he lay spent and trembling, his chest rising and
+falling to his choking gasps.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You had better be thankful your life is spared you, young man,&quot; I
+said a trifle sharply, my nerves being somewhat rasped; for I had
+helped Westmoreland through more than one dreadful night, and I had
+sat long hours by his pillow, waiting for what seemed the passing of a
+soul.</p>
+
+<p>He glared. &quot;Thankful?&quot; he screamed, &quot;Thankful, hell! I've got to have
+two good legs to make any sort of a getaway, haven't I? Well, have I
+got 'em? I'm down and out for fair, that's what! Thankful? You make me
+sick! Honest to God, when you gas like that I feel like bashing in
+your brain, if you've got any! You and your thankfulness!&quot; He turned
+his quivering face and stared at the wall, winking. I wondered,
+heartsick, if I had ever seen a more hopelessly unprepossessing
+creature.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_23"></a>It was not so much physical, his curious ugliness; the dreadful thing
+was that it seemed to be his spirit which informed his flesh, an
+inherent unloveliness of soul upon which the body was modeled, worked
+out faithfully, and so made visible. Figure to yourself one with the
+fine shape of the welter-weight, steel-muscled, lithe, powerful,
+springy, slim in the hips and waist, broad in the shoulders; the arms
+unusually long, giving him a terrible reach, the head round,
+well-shaped, covered with thick reddish hair; cold, light, and
+intelligent eyes, full of animosity and suspicion, reminding you
+unpleasantly of the rattlesnake's look, wary, deadly, and ready to
+strike. When he thought, his forehead wrinkled. His lips shut upon
+each other formidably and without softness, and the jaws thrust
+forward with the effect as of balled fists. One ear was slightly
+larger than the other, having the appearance of a swelling upon the
+lobe. In this unlovely visage, filled with distrust and concentrated
+venom, only the nose retained an incongruous and unexpected niceness.
+It was a good straight nose, yet it had something of the pleasant
+tiptiltedness of a child's. It was the sort of nose which should have
+complemented a mouth formed for spontaneous laughter. It looked
+lonesome and out of place in that set and lowering countenance, to
+which the red straggling stubble of beard sprouting over jaws and
+throat lent a more sinister note.</p>
+
+<p>We had had many a sad and terrible case in our Guest Rooms, but
+somehow this seemed the saddest, hardest and most hopeless we had yet
+encountered.</p>
+
+<p>For three weary weeks had we struggled with him, until the doctor,
+sighing with physical relief, said he was <a name="Page_24"></a>out of danger and needed
+only such nursing as he was sure to get.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One does one's duty as one finds it, of course,&quot; said the big doctor,
+looking down at the unpromising face on the pillow, and shaking his
+head. &quot;Yes, yes, yes, one must do what's right, on the face of it,
+come what will. There's no getting around <i>that!</i>&quot; He glanced at me, a
+shadow in his kind gray eyes. &quot;But there are times, my friend, when I
+wonder! Now, this morning I had to tell a working man his wife's got
+to die. There's no help and no hope&mdash;she's got to die, and she a
+mother of young children. So I have to try desperately,&quot; said the
+doctor, rubbing his nose, &quot;to cling tooth and claw to the hope that
+there is Something behind the scenes that knows the forward-end of
+things&mdash;sin and sorrow and disease and suffering and death things&mdash;and
+uses them always for some beneficent purpose. But in the meantime the
+mother dies, and here you and I have been used to save alive a poor
+useless devil of a one-legged tramp, probably without his consent and
+against his will, because it had to be and we couldn't do anything
+else! Now, why? I can't help but wonder!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We looked down again, the two of us, at the face on the pillow. And I
+wondered also, with even greater cause than the doctor; for I had
+opened the oilskin package the Poles found, and it had given me
+occasion for fear, reflection, and prayer. I was startled and alarmed
+beyond words, for it contained tools of a curious and unusual
+type,&mdash;not such tools as workmen carry abroad in the light of day.</p>
+
+<p>There was no one to whom I might confide that unpleasant discovery. I
+simply could not terrify my <a name="Page_25"></a>mother, nor could I in common decency
+burden the already overburdened doctor. Nor is our sheriff one to turn
+to readily; he is not a man whose intelligence or heart one may
+admire, respect, or depend upon. My guest had come to me with empty
+pockets and a burglar's kit; a hint of that, and the sheriff had
+camped on the Parish House front porch with a Winchester across his
+knees and handcuffs jingling in his pockets. No, I couldn't consult
+the law.</p>
+
+<p>I had yet a deeper and a better reason for waiting, which I find it
+rather hard to set down in cold words. It is this: that as I grow
+older I have grown more and more convinced that not fortuitously, not
+by chance, never without real and inner purposes, are we allowed to
+come vitally into each other's lives. I have walked up the steep sides
+of Calvary to find out that when another wayfarer pauses for a space
+beside us, it is because one has something to give, the other
+something to receive.</p>
+
+<p>So, upon reflection, I took that oilskin package weighted down with
+the seven deadly sins over to the church, and hid it under the statue
+of St. Stanislaus, whom my Poles love, and before whom they come to
+kneel and pray for particular favors. I tilted the saint back upon his
+wooden stand, and thrust that package up to where his hands fold over
+the sheaf of lilies he carries. St. Stanislaus is a beautiful and most
+holy youth. No one would ever suspect <i>him</i> of hiding under his brown
+habit a burglar's kit!</p>
+
+<p>When I had done this, and stopped to say three Hail Marys for
+guidance, I went back to the little room called my study, where my
+books and papers and my butterfly <a name="Page_26"></a>cabinets and collecting outfits
+were kept, and set myself seriously to studying my files of
+newspapers, beginning at a date a week preceding my man's appearance.
+Then:</p>
+
+<div class="centered">
+<br />
+Slippy McGee<br />
+Makes Good His Name Once More.<br />
+Slips One Over On The Police.<br />
+Noted Burglar Escapes.<br />
+<br />
+</div>
+
+<p class="noin">said the glaring headlines in the New York papers. The dispatches were
+dated from Atlanta, and when I turned to the Atlanta papers I found
+them, too, headlining the escape of &quot;Slippy McGee.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I learned that &quot;the slickest crook in America&quot; finding himself
+somewhat hampered in his native haunts, the seething underworld of New
+York, because the police suspected him of certain daring and
+mysterious burglaries although they had no positive proof against him,
+had chosen to shift his base of operations South for awhile. But the
+Southern authorities had been urgently warned to look out for him; in
+consequence they had been so close upon his heels that he had been
+surrounded while &quot;on a job.&quot; Half an hour later, and he would have
+gotten away with his plunder; but, although they were actually upon
+him, by what seemed a miracle of daring and of luck he slipped through
+their fingers, escaped under their very noses, leaving no clue to his
+whereabouts. He was supposed to be still in hiding in Atlanta, though
+as he had no known confederates and always worked alone and unaided,
+the police were at a loss for information. The man had simply
+vanished, after his wont, as if the earth had opened and swallowed
+him. The papers gave rather full accounts of some of <a name="Page_27"></a>his past
+exploits, from which one gathered that Slippy McGee was a very noted
+personage in his chosen field. I sat for a long time staring at those
+papers, and my thoughts were uneasy ones. What should I do?</p>
+
+<p>I presently decided that I could and must question my guest. So far he
+had volunteered no information beyond the curt statement that his name
+was John Flint and he was a hobo because he liked the trade. He had
+been stealing a ride and he had slipped&mdash;and when he woke up we had
+him and he hadn't his leg. And if some people knew how to be obliging
+they'd make a noise like a hoop and roll away, so's other people could
+pound their ear in peace, like that big stiff of a doctor ordered them
+to do.</p>
+
+<p>As I stood by the bed and studied his sullen, suspicious, unfriendly
+face, I came to the conclusion that if this were not McGee himself it
+could very well be some one quite as dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Friend,&quot; said I, &quot;we do not as a rule seek information about the
+guests in these rooms. We do not have to; they explain themselves. I
+should never question your assertion that your name is Flint, and I
+sincerely hope it is Flint; but&mdash;there are reasons why I must and do
+ask you for certain definite information about yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The hand lying upon the coverlet balled into a fist.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If John Flint's not fancy enough for you,&quot; he suggested truculently,
+&quot;suppose you call me Percy? Some peach of a moniker, Percy, ain't it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Percy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sure, Percy,&quot; he grinned impudently. &quot;But if you got a grouch against
+Percy, can it, and make me Algy. <a name="Page_28"></a><i>I</i> don't mind. It's not <i>me</i>
+beefing about monikers; it's you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am also,&quot; said I, regarding him steadily and ignoring his
+flippancy, &quot;I am also obliged to ask you what is your occupation&mdash;when
+you are not stealing rides?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Looks like it might be answering questions just now, don't it? What
+you want to know for? Whatever it is, I'm not able to do it now, am I?
+But as you're so naturally bellyaching to know, why, I've been in the
+ring.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So I presumed. Thank you,&quot; said I, politely. &quot;And your name is John
+Flint, or Percy, or Algy, just as I choose. Percy and Algy are rather
+unusual names for a gentleman who has been in the ring, don't you
+think?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think,&quot; he snarled, turned suddenly ferocious, &quot;that I'm named what
+I dam' please to be named, and no squeals from skypilots about it,
+neither. Say! what you driving at, anyhow? If what I tell you ain't
+satisfying, suppose you slip over a moniker to suit yourself&mdash;and go
+away!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! Suppose then,&quot; said I, without taking my eyes from his, &quot;suppose,
+then, that I chose to call you&mdash;<i>Slippy McGee</i>?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I am sure that only his bodily weakness kept him from flying at my
+throat. As it was, his long arms with the hands upon them outstretched
+like a beast's claws, shot out ferociously. His face contracted
+horribly, and of a sudden the sweat burst out upon it so blindingly
+that he had to put up an arm and wipe it away. For a moment he lay
+still, glaring, panting, helpless; while I stood and watched him
+unmoved.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ain't you the real little Sherlock Holmes, though?&quot; he jeered
+presently. &quot;Got Old Sleuth skinned for fair <a name="Page_29"></a>and Nick Carter eating
+out of your hand! You damned skypilot!&quot; His voice cracked. &quot;You're all
+alike! Get a man on his back and then put the screws on him!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I made no reply; only a great compassion for this mistaken and
+miserable creature surged like a wave over my heart.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For God's sake don't stand there staring like a bughouse owl!&quot; he
+gritted. &quot;Well, what you going to do? Bawl for the bulls? What put you
+wise?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Help you to get well. No. I opened your bag&mdash;and looked up the
+newspapers,&quot; I answered succinctly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Huh! A fat lot of good it'll do me to get well now, won't it? You
+think I ought to thank you for butting in and keeping me from dying
+without knowing anything about it, don't you? Well, you got another
+think coming. I don't. Ever hear of a pegleg in the ring? Ever hear of
+a one-hoofed dip! A long time I'd be Slippy McGee playing
+cat-and-mouse with the bulls, if I had to leave some of my legs home
+when I needed them right there on the job, wouldn't I? Oh, sure!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And was it,&quot; I wondered, &quot;such a fine thing to be Slippy McGee,
+flying from the police, that one should lament his&mdash;er&mdash;disappearance?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His eyes widened. He regarded me with pity as well as astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Didn't you read the papers?&quot; he wondered in his turn. &quot;There don't
+many travel in <i>my</i> class, skypilot! Why, I haven't <i>got</i> any
+equals&mdash;the best of them trail a mile behind. Ask the bulls, if you
+want to know about Slippy McGee! And I let the happy dust alone. Most
+dips are dopes, but I was too slick; I cut it out. I knew if the dope
+once gets you, then the bulls get next. <a name="Page_30"></a>Not for Slippy. I've kept my
+head clear, and that's how I've muddled theirs. They never get next to
+anything until I've cleaned up and dusted. Why, honest to God, I can
+open any box made, easy as easy, just like I can put it all over any
+bull alive! That is,&quot; a spasm twisted his face and into his voice
+crept the acute anguish of the artist deprived of all power to create,
+&quot;that is, I could&mdash;until I made that last getaway on a freight, and
+this happened.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am sorry,&quot; said I soothingly, &quot;that you have lost your leg, of
+course. But better to lose your leg than your soul, my son. Why, how
+do you know<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>He writhed. &quot;Can it!&quot; he implored. &quot;Cut it out! Ain't I up against
+enough now, for God's sake? Down and out&mdash;and nothing to do but have
+my soul curry-combed and mashfed by a skypilot with <i>both</i> his legs
+and <i>all</i> his mouth on him! Ain't it hell, though? Say, you better
+send for the cops. I'd rather stand for the pen than the preaching.
+What'd you do with my bag, anyway?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I really have no idea of preaching to you; and I would rather not
+send for the police&mdash;afterwards, when you are better, you may do so if
+you choose. You are a free agent. As for your bag, why&mdash;it is&mdash;it
+is&mdash;in the keeping of the Church.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Huh!&quot; said he, and twisted his mouth cynically. &quot;Huh! Then it's
+good-bye tools, I suppose. I'm no churchmember, thank God, but I've
+heard that once the Church gets her clamps on anything worth while all
+hell can't pry her loose.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now I don't know why, but at that, suddenly and <a name="Page_31"></a>inexplicably, as if I
+had glimpsed a ray of light, I felt cheered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, that's it exactly!&quot; said I, smiling. &quot;Once the Church gets real
+hold of a thing&mdash;or a man&mdash;worth while, she holds on so fast that all
+hell can't pry her loose. Won't you try to remember that, my son!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If it's a joke, suck the marrow out of it yourself,&quot; said he sourly.
+&quot;It don't listen so horrible funny to me. And you haven't peeped yet
+about what you're going to do. I'm waiting to hear. I'm real
+interested.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I really don't know yet,&quot; said I, still cheerfully. &quot;Suppose we
+wait and see? Here you are, safe and harmless enough for the present.
+And God is good; perhaps He knows that you and I may need each other
+more than you and the police need each other&mdash;who can tell? I should
+simply set myself strictly to the task of getting entirely well, if I
+were you&mdash;and let it go at that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He appeared to reflect; his forehead wrinkled painfully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Devil-dodger,&quot; said he, after a pause, &quot;are you just making a noise
+with your face, or is that on the level?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's on the level.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His hard and suspicious eyes bored into me. And as I held his glance,
+a hint of wonder and amazement crept into his face.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God A'mighty! I believe him!&quot; he gasped. And then, as if ashamed of
+that real feeling, he scowled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say, if you're really on the level, I guess you'd better not be
+flashing the name of Slippy McGee around <a name="Page_32"></a>promiscuous,&quot; he suggested
+presently. &quot;It won't do either you or me any good, see? And say,
+parson,&mdash;forget Percy and Algy. How was I to know you'd be so white?
+And look here: I did know a gink named John Flint, once. Only he was
+called Reddy, because he'd got such a blazing red head and whiskers.
+He's croaked, so he wouldn't mind me using his moniker, seeing it's
+not doing him any good now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let us agree upon John Flint,&quot; I decided.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Help yourself,&quot; he agreed, equably.</p>
+
+<p>Cl&eacute;lie, with wrath and disapproval written upon every stiffened line,
+brought him his broth, which he took with a better grace than I had
+yet witnessed. He even added a muttered word of thanks.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's funny,&quot; he reflected, when the yellow woman had left the room
+with the empty bowl, &quot;it's sure funny, but d'ye know, I'm lots easier
+in my mind, knowing you know, and not having to think up a hard-luck
+gag to hand out to you? I hate like hell to have to lie, except of
+course when I need a smooth spiel for the cops. I guess I'll snooze a
+bit now,&quot; he added, as I rose to leave the room. And as I reached the
+door:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Parson?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why&mdash;er&mdash;come in a bit to-night, will you? That is, if you've got
+time. And look here: don't you get the notion in your bean I'm just
+some little old two-by-four guy of a yegg or some poor nut of a dip.
+I'm <i>not</i>. Why, I've been the whole show <i>and</i> manager besides. Yep,
+I'm Slippy McGee himself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He paused, to let this sink into my consciousness. I must confess that
+I was more profoundly impressed <a name="Page_33"></a>than even he had any idea of. And
+then, magnanimously, he added: &quot;You're sure some white man, parson.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you, John Flint,&quot; said I, with due modesty.</p>
+
+<p>Heaven knows why I should have been pleased and hopeful, but I was. My
+guest was a criminal; he hadn't shown the slightest sign of
+compunction or of shame; instead, he had betrayed a brazen pride. And
+yet&mdash;I felt hopeful. Although I knew I was tacitly concealing a
+burglar, my conscience remained clear and unclouded, and I had a calm
+intuitive assurance of right. So deeply did I feel this that when I
+went over to the church I placed before St. Stanislaus a small lamp
+full of purest olive oil, which is expensive. I felt that he deserved
+some compensation for hiding that package under his sheaf of lilies.</p>
+
+<p>The authorities of our small town knew, of course, that another
+forlorn wretch was being cared for at the Parish House. But had not
+the Parish House sheltered other such vagabonds? The sheriff saw no
+reason to give himself the least concern, beyond making the most
+casual inquiry. If I wanted the fellow, he was only too glad to let me
+keep him. And who, indeed, would look for a notorious criminal in a
+Parish House Guest Room? Who would connect that all too common
+occurrence, a tramp maimed by the railroad, with, the mysterious
+disappearance of the cracksman, Slippy McGee? So, for the present, I
+could feel sure that the man was safe.</p>
+
+<p>And in the meantime, in the orderly proceeding of everyday life, while
+he gained strength under my mother's wise and careful nursing and
+Westmoreland's wise and careful overseeing, there came to him those
+<a name="Page_34"></a>who were instruments for good&mdash;my mother first, whom, like Cl&eacute;lie, he
+never called anything but &quot;Madame&quot; and whom, like Cl&eacute;lie, he presently
+obeyed with unquestioning and childlike readiness. Now, Madame is a
+truly wonderful person when she deals with people like him. Never for
+a moment lowering her own natural and beautiful dignity, but without a
+hint of condescension, Madame manages to find the just level upon
+which both can stand as on common ground; then, without noise, she
+helps, and she conveys the impression that thus noiselessly to help is
+the only just, natural and beautiful thing for any decent person to
+do, unless, perhaps, it might be to receive in the like spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Judge Mayne's son, Laurence, full of a fresh and boyish enthusiasm,
+was such another instrument. He had a handsome, intelligent face, a
+straight and beautiful body, and the pleasantest voice in the world.
+His mother in her last years had been a fretful invalid, and to meet
+her constant demands the judge and his son had developed an angelic
+patience with weakness. They were both rather quiet and
+undemonstrative, this father and son; the older man, in fact had a
+stern visage at first glance, until one learned to know it as the face
+of a man trained to restraint and endurance. As for the boy, no one
+could long resist the shrewd, kind youngster, who could spend an hour
+with the most unlikely invalid and leave him all the better for it. I
+was unusually busy just then, Cl&eacute;lie frankly hated and feared the man
+upstairs, my mother had her hands full, and there were many heavy and
+lonesome hours which Laurence set himself the task of filling. I left
+this to the boy himself, offering no suggestions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_35"></a>Padre,&quot; said the boy to me, some time later, &quot;that chap upstairs is
+the hardest nut I ever tried to crack. There've been times when I felt
+tempted to crack him with a sledge-hammer, if you want the truth. You
+know, he always seemed to like me to read to him, but I've never been
+able to discover whether or not he liked what I read. He never asked
+me a single question, he never seemed interested enough to make a
+comment. But I think that I've made a dent in him at last.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A dent! In Flint? With what adamantine pick, oh hardiest of miners!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With a book. Guess!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I couldn't. I give up.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Bible!&quot; said Laurence.</p>
+
+<p>The Bible! Had <i>I</i> chosen to read it to him, he would have resented
+it, been impervious, suspicious, hostile. I looked at the boy's
+laughing face, and wondered, and wondered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And how,&quot; said I, curious, &quot;did you happen to pitch on the Bible?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I got to studying about this chap. I wanted something that'd
+<i>reach him</i>. I was puzzled. And then I remembered hearing my father
+say that the Bible is the most interesting book in the world because
+it's the most personal. There's something in it for everybody. So I
+thought there'd be something in it for John Flint, and I tried it on
+him, without telling him what I was giving him. I just plunged right
+in, head over heels. Lord, Padre, it <i>is</i> a wonderful old book, isn't
+it? Why, I got so lost in it myself that I forgot all about John
+Flint, until I happened to glance up and see that he was up to the
+eyes in it, just like I was! <a name="Page_36"></a>He likes the fights and he gloats over
+the spoils. He's asking for more. I think of turning Paul loose on
+him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, if after the manner of men Paul fought with wild beasts at
+Ephesus,&quot; I said hopefully. &quot;I dare say he'll be able to hold his own
+even with John Flint.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I like Paul best of all, myself,&quot; said Laurence. &quot;You see, Padre, my
+father and I have needed a dose of Paul more than once&mdash;to stiffen our
+backbones. So I'm going to turn the fighting old saint loose on John
+Flint. 'By, Padre;&mdash;I'll look in to-morrow&mdash;I left poor old Elijah up
+in a cave with no water, and the ravens overdue!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He went down our garden path whistling, his cap on the back of his
+head, and I looked after him with the warm and comforting sense that
+the world is just that much better for such as he.</p>
+
+<p>The boy was now, in his last high school year, planning to study
+law&mdash;all the Maynes took to law as a duck to water. Brave,
+simple-hearted, direct, clear-thinking, scrupulously honorable,&mdash;this
+was one of the diamonds used to cut the rough hard surface of Slippy
+McGee.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Page_37"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_III"></a><hr />
+<br />
+<h2>CHAPTER III<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>NEIGHBORS</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>On a morning in late March, with a sweet and fresh wind blowing, a
+clear sun shining, and a sky so full of soft white woolly clouds that
+you might fancy the sky-people had turned their fleecy flock out to
+graze in the deep blue pastures, Laurence Mayne and I brought John
+Flint downstairs and rolled him out into the glad, green garden, in
+the comfortable wheel-chair that the mill-people had given us for a
+Christmas present; my mother and Cl&eacute;lie followed, and our little dog
+Pitache marched ahead, putting on ridiculous airs of responsibility;
+he being a dog with a great idea of his own importance and wholly
+given over to the notion that nothing could go right if he were not
+there to superintend and oversee it.</p>
+
+<p>The wistaria was in her zenith, girdling the tree-tops with amethyst;
+the Cherokee rose had just begun to reign, all in snow-white velvet,
+with a gold crown and a green girdle for greater glory; the greedy
+brown grumbling bees came to her table in dusty cohorts, and over her
+green bowers floated her gayer lovers the early butterflies, clothed
+delicately as in kings' raiment. In the corners glowed the
+ruby-colored Japanese quince, and the long sprays of that flower I
+most dearly love, the spring-like spirea which the children call
+bridal wreath, brushed you gently as you passed the gate. I never <a name="Page_38"></a>see
+it deck itself in bridal white, I never inhale its shy, clean scent,
+without a tightening of the throat, a misting of the eyes, a melting
+of the heart.</p>
+
+<p>Across our garden and across Miss Sally Ruth Dexter's you could see in
+Major Appleby Cartwright's yard the peach trees in pink party dresses,
+ruffled by the wind. Down the paths marched my mother's daffodils and
+hyacinths, with honey-breathing sweet alyssum in between. Robins and
+wrens, orioles and mocking-birds, blue jays and jackdaws, thrushes and
+blue-birds and cardinals, all were busy house-building; one heard
+calls and answers, saw flashes of painted wings, followed by outbursts
+of ecstasy. If one should lay one's ear to the ground on such a
+morning I think one might hear the heart of the world.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Hallelujah! Risen! Risen!</i>&quot; breathed the glad, green things, pushing
+from the warm mother-mold.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Living! Living! Loving! Loving!</i>&quot; flashed and fluted the flying
+things, joyously.</p>
+
+<p>We wheeled our man out into this divine freshness of renewed life,
+stopping the chair under a glossy, stately magnolia. My mother and
+Cl&eacute;lie and Laurence and I bustled about to make him comfortable.
+Pitache stood stock still, his tail stuck up like a sternly
+admonishing forefinger, a-bossing everything and everybody. We spread
+a light shawl over the man's knees, for it is not easy to bear a cruel
+physical infirmity, to see oneself marred and crippled, in the growing
+spring. He looked about him, snuffed, and wrinkled his forehead; his
+eyes had something of the wistful, wondering satisfaction of an
+animal's. He had never sat in a garden before, in all his life! Think
+of it!</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_39"></a>Whenever we bring one of our Guest Roomers downstairs, Miss Sally Ruth
+Dexter promptly comes to her side of the fence to look him over. She
+came this morning, looked at our man critically, and showed plain
+disapproval of him in every line of her face.</p>
+
+<p>On principle Miss Sally Ruth disapproves of most men and many women.
+She does not believe in wasting too much sympathy upon people either;
+she says folks get no more than they deserve and generally not half as
+much.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Sally Ruth Dexter is a rather important person in Appleboro. She
+is fifty-six years old, stout, brown-eyed, suffers from a congenital
+incapacity to refrain from telling the unwelcome truth when people are
+madly trying to save their faces,&mdash;she calls this being frank,&mdash;is
+tactless, independent, generous, and the possessor of what she herself
+complacently refers to as &quot;a Figure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For a woman so convinced we're all full of natural and total
+depravity, unoriginal sinners, worms of the dust, and the devil's
+natural fire-fodder, Miss Sally Ruth manages to retain a simple and
+unaffected goodness of practical charity toward the unelect, such as
+makes one marvel. You may be predestined to be lost, but while you're
+here you shall lack no jelly, wine, soup, chicken-with-cream,
+preserves, gumbo, neither such marvelous raised bread as Miss Sally
+Ruth knows how to make with a perfection beyond all praise.</p>
+
+<p>She has a tiny house and a tiny income, which satisfies her; she has
+never married. She told my mother once, cheerfully, that she guessed
+she must be one of those born eunuchs of the spirit the Bible
+mentions&mdash;<a name="Page_40"></a>it was intended for her, and she was glad of it, for it had
+certainly saved her a sight of worry and trouble.</p>
+
+<p>There is a cherished legend in our town that Major Appleby Cartwright
+once went over to Savannah on a festive occasion and was there
+joyously entertained by the honorable the Chatham Artillery. The
+Chatham Artillery brews a Punch; insidious, delectable, deceptive, but
+withal a pernicious strong drink that is raging, a wine that mocketh
+and maketh mad. And they gave it to Major Appleby Cartwright in
+copious draughts.</p>
+
+<p>Coming home upon the heels of this, the major arose, put on his Prince
+Albert, donned his top hat, picked a huge bunch of zinnias, and at
+nine o'clock in the morning marched over to Miss Sally Ruth Dexter's.</p>
+
+<p>We differ as to certain unimportant details of that historic call, but
+we are in the main agreed upon the conversation that ensued.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sally Ruth,&quot; said the major, depositing his bulky person in a rocking
+chair, his hat upon the floor, and wiping his forehead with a spotless
+handkerchief the size of a respectable sheet, &quot;Sally Ruth, you like
+Old Maids?&quot; Here he presented the zinnias.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I've got a yard full of 'em myself, Major. Whatever made you
+bother to pick 'em? But to whom much hath more shall be given, I
+suppose,&quot; said she, resignedly, and put them on the whatnot.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sally Ruth,&quot; said the major solemnly, ignoring this indifferent
+reception of his offering. &quot;Sally Ruth, come to think of it, an Old
+Maid's a miserable, stiff, scentless sort of a flower. You might
+think, when you first glance at 'em, that they're just like any other
+flowers, but they're not; they're without one single, <a name="Page_41"></a>solitary
+redeemin' particle of sweetness! The Lord made 'em for a warnin' to
+women.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What good under God's sky does it do you to be an old maid, Sally
+Ruth? You're flyin' in the face of Providence. No lady should fly in
+the face of Providence&mdash;she'd a sight better fly to the bosom of some
+man, where she belongs. This mawnin' I looked out of my window and my
+eye fell upon these unfortunate flowers. Right away I thought of you,
+livin' over here all alone and by yourself, with no man's bosom to
+lean on&mdash;you haven't really got anything but a few fowls and the Lord
+to love, have you? And, Sally Ruth, tears came to my eyes. Talk not of
+tears till you have seen the tears of warlike men! I believe it would
+almost scare you to death to see me cryin', Sally Ruth! I got to
+thinkin', and I said to myself: 'Appleby Cartwright, you have always
+done your duty like a man. You charged up to the very muzzle of Yankee
+guns once, and you weren't scared wu'th a damn! Are you goin' to be
+scared now? There's a plain duty ahead of you; Sally Ruth's a fine
+figure of a woman, and she ought to have a man's bosom to lean on. Go
+offer Sally Ruth yours!' So here I am, Sally Ruth!&quot; said the major
+valiantly.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Sally Ruth regarded him critically; then:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're drunk, Appleby Cartwright, that's what's the matter with you.
+You and your bosom! Why, it's not respectable to talk like that! At
+your age, too! I'm ashamed of you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was a little upset, over in Savannah,&quot; admitted the major. &quot;Those
+fellows must have gotten me to swallow over a gallon of their infernal
+brew&mdash;and it <a name="Page_42"></a>goes down like silk, too. Listen at me: don't you ever
+let 'em make you drink a gallon of that punch, Sally Ruth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've seen its effects before. Go home and sleep it off,&quot; said Miss
+Sally Ruth, not unkindly. &quot;If you came over to warn me about filling
+up on Artillery Punch, your duty's done&mdash;I've never been entertained
+by the Chatham Artillery, and I don't ever expect to be. I suppose it
+was intended for you to be a born goose, Appleby, so it'd be a waste
+of time for me to fuss with you about it. Go on home, now, do, and let
+C&aelig;sar put you to bed. Tell him to tie a wet rag about your head and to
+keep it wet. That'll help to cool you off.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sally Ruth,&quot; said the major, laying his hand upon his heart and
+trying desperately to focus her with an eye that would waver in spite
+of him, &quot;Sally Ruth, <i>somebody's</i> got to do something for you, and it
+might as well be me. My God, Sally Ruth, <i>you're settin' like
+clabber!</i> It's a shame; it's a cryin' shame, for you're a fine woman.
+I don't mean to scare or flutter you, Sally Ruth,&mdash;no gentleman ought
+to scare or flutter a lady&mdash;but I'm offerin' you my hand and heart;
+here's my bosom for you to lean on.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That Savannah brew is worse even than I thought&mdash;it's run the man
+stark crazy,&quot; said Miss Sally Ruth, viewing him with growing concern.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Me crazy! Why, I'm askin' you,&quot; said the major with awful dignity,
+&quot;I'm askin' you to marry me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Marry <i>you</i>? Marry fiddlesticks! Shucks!&quot; said the lady.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You won't?&quot; Amazement made him sag down in his chair. He stared at
+her owl-like. &quot;Woman,&quot; said <a name="Page_43"></a>he solemnly, &quot;when I see my duty I try to
+do it. But I warn you&mdash;it's your last chance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hope,&quot; said Miss Sally Ruth tartly, &quot;that it's my last chance to
+make a born fool of myself. Why, you old gasbag, if I had to stay in
+the same house with you I'd be tempted to stick a darning needle in
+you to hear you explode! Appleby, I'm like that woman that had a
+chimney that smoked, a dog that growled, a parrot that swore, and a
+cat that stayed out nights; <i>she</i> didn't need a man&mdash;and no more do
+I.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sally Ruth,&quot; said the major feelingly, &quot;when I came here this mawnin'
+it wasn't for my own good&mdash;it was for yours. And to think this is all
+the thanks I get for bein' willin' to sacrifice myself! My God! The
+ingratitude of women!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at Miss Sally Ruth, and Miss Sally Ruth looked at him. And
+then suddenly, without a moment's warning, Miss Sally Ruth rose, and
+took Major Appleby Cartwright, who on a time had charged Yankee guns
+and hadn't been scared wu'th a damn, by the ear. She tugged, and the
+major rose, as one pulled upward by his bootstraps.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ouch! Turn loose! I take it back! The devil! It wasn't intended for
+any mortal man to marry you&mdash;Sally Ruth, I wouldn't marry you now for
+forty billion dollars and a mule! Turn loose, you hussy! Turn loose!&quot;
+screeched the major.</p>
+
+<p>Unheeding his anguished protests, which brought Judge Hammond Mayne on
+the run, thinking somebody was being murdered, Miss Sally Ruth marched
+her suitor out of her house and led him to her front gate. Here she
+paused, jaws firmly set, eyes glittering, and, as with <a name="Page_44"></a>hooks of
+steel, took firm hold upon the gallant major's other ear. Then she
+shook him; his big crimson countenance, resembling a huge overripe
+tomato, waggled deliriously to and fro.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was born&quot;&mdash;<i>shake</i><span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span>an old maid,&quot;&mdash;<i>shake, shake, shake</i><span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span>I have
+lived&mdash;by the grace of God&quot;&mdash;<i>shake, shake, shake</i><span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span>an old maid, and
+I expect&quot;&mdash;<i>shake</i><span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span>to die an old maid! I don't propose to
+have&quot;&mdash;<i>shake</i><span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span>an old windbag offering <i>me</i> his blubbery old
+bosom&quot;&mdash;<i>shake, shake, SHAKE</i><span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span>at this time of my life!&mdash;and don't
+you forget it, Appleby Cartwright! <i>THERE!</i> You go back home&quot;&mdash;<i>shake,
+shake, shake</i><span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span>and sober up, you old gander, you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Major Appleby Cartwright stood not upon the order of his going, but
+went at once, galloping as if a company of those Yankees with whom he
+had once fought were upon his hindquarters with fixed bayonets.</p>
+
+<p>However, they being next-door neighbors and friends of a lifetime's
+standing, peace was finally patched up. In Appleboro we do not mention
+this historic meeting when either of the participants can hear us,
+though it is one of our classics and no home is complete without it.
+The Major ever afterward eschewed Artillery Punch.</p>
+
+<p>This morning, over the fence, Miss Sally Ruth addressed our invalid
+directly and without prelude, after her wont. She doesn't believe in
+beating about the bush:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The wages of walking up and down the earth and going to and fro in
+it, tramping like Satan, is a lost leg. Not that it wasn't intended
+you should lose yours&mdash;and I hope and pray it will be a lesson to
+you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_45"></a>Well, take it from me,&quot; he said grimly, &quot;there's nobody but me
+collecting my wages.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A quick approval of this plain truth showed in Miss Sally Ruth's
+snapping eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come!&quot; said she, briskly. &quot;If you've got sense enough to see <i>that</i>,
+you're not so far away from the truth as you might be. Collecting your
+wages is the good and the bad thing about life, I reckon. But
+everything's intended, so you don't need to be too sorry for yourself,
+any way you look at it. And you could just as well have lost <i>both</i>
+legs while you were at it, you know.&quot; She paused reflectively. &quot;Let's
+see: I've got chicken-broth and fresh rolls to-day&mdash;I'll send you over
+some, after awhile.&quot; She nodded, and went back to her housework.</p>
+
+<p>Laurence went on to High School, Madame had her house to oversee, I
+had many overdue calls; so we left Pitache and John Flint together,
+out in the birdhaunted, sweet-scented, sun-dappled garden, in the
+golden morning hours. No one can be quite heartless in a green garden,
+quite hopeless in the spring, or quite desolate when there's a dog's
+friendly nose to be thrust into one's hand.</p>
+
+<p>I am afraid that at first he missed all this; for he could think of
+nothing but himself and that which had befallen him, coming upon him
+as a bolt from the blue. He had had, heretofore, nothing but his
+body&mdash;and now his body had betrayed him! It had become, not the
+splendid engine which obeyed his slightest wish, but a drag upon him.
+Realizing this acutely, untrained, undisciplined, he was savagely
+sullen, impenetrably morose. <a name="Page_46"></a>He tired of Laurence's reading&mdash;I think
+the boy's free quickness of movement, his well-knit, handsome body,
+the fact that he could run and jump as pleased him, irked and chafed
+the man new and unused to his own physical infirmity.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to want none of us; I have seen him savagely repulse the
+dog, who, shocked and outraged at this exhibition of depravity,
+withdrew, casting backward glances of horrified and indignant
+reproach.</p>
+
+<p>But as the lovely, peaceful, healing days passed, that bitter and
+contracted heart had to expand somewhat. Gradually the ferocity faded,
+leaving in its room an anxious and brooding wonder. God knows what
+thoughts passed through that somber mind in those long hours, when,
+concentrated upon himself, he must have faced the problem of his
+future and, like one before an impassable stone wall, had to fall
+back, baffled. He could be sure of only one thing: that never again
+could he be what he had been once<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span>the slickest cracksman in
+America.&quot; This in itself tortured him. Heretofore, life had been
+exactly what he chose to make it: he had put himself to the test, and
+he had proven himself the most daring, the coolest, shrewdest, most
+cunning, in that sinister world in which he had shone with so evil a
+light. <i>He had been Slippy McGee</i>. Sure of himself, his had been that
+curious inverted pride which is the stigmata of the criminal.</p>
+
+<p>More than once I saw him writhe in his chair, tormented, shaken, spent
+with futile curses, impotently lamenting his lost kingdom. He still
+had the skill, the cold calculating brain, the wit, the will; and now,
+by a cruel chance and a stupid accident, he had lost out! The <a name="Page_47"></a>end had
+come for him, and he in his heyday! There were moments when, watching
+him, I had the sensation as of witnessing almost visibly, here in our
+calm sunny garden, the Dark Powers fighting openly for a soul.</p>
+
+<p><i>&quot;For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against
+principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of
+this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.&quot;</i></p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Page_48"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_IV"></a><hr />
+<br />
+<h2>CHAPTER IV<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>UNDERWINGS</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>If I have not heretofore spoken of Mary Virginia, it is because all
+that winter she and Mrs. Eustis had been away; and in consequence
+Appleboro was dull enough. For the Eustises are our wealthiest and
+most important family, just as the Eustis house, with its pillared,
+Greek-temple-effect front, is by far the handsomest house in town.
+When we have important folks to entertain, we look to the Eustises to
+save our faces for us by putting them up at their house.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon, shortly after we had gotten settled in Appleboro, I
+came home to find my mother entertaining no less a personage than Mrs.
+Eustis; she wasn't calling on the Catholic priest and his mother, you
+understand; far from it! She was recognizing Armand De Ranc&eacute; and Adele
+de Marsignan!</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Eustis was a fair, plump little partridge of a woman, so
+perfectly satisfied with herself that brains, in her case, would have
+amounted to a positive calamity. She is an instance of the fascination
+a fool seems to have for men of undoubted powers of mind and heart,
+for Eustis, who had both to an unusual degree, loved her devotedly,
+even while he smiled at her. She had, after some years of
+childlessness, laid him under an everlasting obligation by presenting
+him with a daughter, an <a name="Page_49"></a>obligation deepened by the fact that the
+child was in every sense her father's child, not her mother's.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon she brought the little girl with her, to make our
+acquaintance. When the child, shyly friendly, looked up, it seemed to
+me for an anguished moment as if another little girl had walked out of
+the past, so astonishingly like was she to that little lost playmate
+of my youth. Right then and there Mary Virginia walked into my heart
+and took possession, as of a place swept and garnished and long
+waiting her coming.</p>
+
+<p>When we knew her better my mother used to say that if she could have
+chosen a little girl instead of the little boy that had been I, she
+must have chosen Mary Virginia Eustis out of all the world.</p>
+
+<p>Like Judge Mayne's Laurence, she chose to make the Parish House her
+second home&mdash;for indeed my mother ever seemed to draw children to her,
+as by some delightful magic. Here, then, the child learned to sew and
+to embroider, to acquire beautiful housewifely accomplishments, and to
+speak French with flawless perfection; she reaped the benefit of my
+mother's girlhood spent in a convent in France; and Mrs. Eustis was
+far too shrewd not to appreciate the value of this. And so we acquired
+Mary Virginia.</p>
+
+<p>I watched the lovely miracle of her growth with an almost painful
+tenderness. Had I not become a priest, had I realized those spring
+hopes of mine; and had there been little children resembling their
+mother, then my own little girls had been like this one. Even thus had
+been their blue eyes, and theirs, too, such hair of such curling
+blackness.</p>
+
+<p>The hours I spent with the little girl and Laurence <a name="Page_50"></a>helped me as well
+as them; these fresh souls and growing minds freshened and revived
+mine, and kept me young in heart.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We are all made of dust,&quot; said my mother once. &quot;But Mary Virginia's
+is star dust. Star dust, and dew, and morning gold,&quot; she added
+musingly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She simply cannot imagine evil, much less see it in anything or in
+anybody,&quot; I told Madame, for at times the child's sheer innocence
+troubled me for her. &quot;One is puzzled how to bring home to this na&iuml;ve
+soul the ugly truth that all is not good. Now, Laurence is better
+balanced. He takes people and events with a saving grain of
+skepticism. But Mary Virginia is divinely blind.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My mother regarded me with a tolerant smile. &quot;Do not worry too much
+over that divinely blind one, my son,&quot; said she. &quot;I assure you, she is
+quite capable of seeing a steeple in daylight! Observe this: yesterday
+Laurence angered her, and she seized him by the hair and bumped his
+head against the study wall&mdash;no mild thump, either! She has in her
+quite enough of the leaven of unrighteousness to save her, at a
+pinch&mdash;for Laurence was entirely right, she entirely wrong. Yet&mdash;she
+made him apologize before she consented to forgive him, and he did it
+gratefully. She allowed him to understand how magnanimous she was in
+thus pardoning him for her own naughtiness, and he was deeply
+impressed, as men-creatures should be under such circumstances. Such
+wisdom, and she but a child! I was enchanted!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good heavens! Surely, Mother, I misunderstand you! Surely you
+reproved her!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_51"></a>Reprove her?&quot; My mother's voice was full of astonishment. &quot;Why should
+I reprove her? She was perfectly right!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perfectly right? Why, you said&mdash;indeed, I assure you, you said that
+Laurence had been entirely right, she entirely wrong!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, <i>that!</i> I see; well, as for that, she was.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then, surely<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>&quot;My son, a woman who is in the wrong is entirely right when she makes
+the man apologize,&quot; said my mother firmly. &quot;That is the Law, fixed as
+the Medes' and the Persians', and she who forgets or ignores it is
+ground between the upper and the nether millstones. Mary Virginia
+remembered and obeyed. When she grows up you will all of you adore her
+madly. Why, then, should she be reproved?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I have never been able to reflect upon Laurence getting his head
+bumped and then gratefully apologizing to the darling shrew who did
+it, without a cold wind stirring my hair. And yet&mdash;Laurence, and I,
+too, love her all the more dearly for it! <i>Miserere, Domine!</i></p>
+
+<p>It was May when Mary Virginia came back to Appleboro. She had written
+us a bubbling letter, telling us just when we were to expect her, and
+how happy she was at the thought of being home once more. We, too,
+rejoiced, for we had missed her sadly. My mother was so happy that she
+planned a little intimate feast to celebrate the child's return.</p>
+
+<p>I remember how calm and mild an evening it was. At noon there had been
+a refreshing shower, and the air was deliciously pure and clear, and
+full of wet woodsy scents. The raindrops fringing the bushes became
+<a name="Page_52"></a>prisms, a spiderweb was a fairy foot-bridge; and all our birds,
+leaving for a moment such household torments as squalling insatiable
+mouths that must be filled, became jubilant choristers. &quot;The opulent
+dyepots of the angels&quot; had been emptied lavishly across the sky, and
+the old Parish House lay steeped in a serene and heavenly glow, every
+window glittering diamond-bright to the west.</p>
+
+<p>Next door Miss Sally Ruth was feeding and scolding her cooing pigeons,
+which fluttered about her, lighting upon her shoulder, surrounding her
+with a bright-colored living cloud; the judge's black cat Panch lay
+along the Mayne side of the fence and blinked at them regretfully with
+his slanting emerald eyes. From the Mayne kitchen-steps came, faintly,
+Daddy January's sweet quavering old voice:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;&mdash;Gwine tuh climb up higher 'n' higher,<br /></span>
+<span class="i5">Some uh dese days&mdash;&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>John Flint, silent, depressed, with folded lips and somber eyes,
+hobbled about awkwardly, savagely training himself to use the crutches
+Westmoreland had lately brought him. Very unlovely he looked, dragging
+himself along like a wounded beast. The poor wretch struck a
+discordant note in the sweet peacefulness of the spring evening; nor
+could we say anything to comfort him, we who were not maimed.</p>
+
+<p>Came a high, sweet, shrill call at the gate; a high yelp of delight
+from Pitache, hurtling himself forward like a woolly white cannonball;
+a sound of light and flying feet; and Mary Virginia ran into the
+garden, the little overjoyed dog leaping frantically about her. She
+<a name="Page_53"></a>wore a white frock, and over it a light scarlet jacket. Her blue eyes
+were dancing, lighting her sweet and fresh face, colored like a rose.
+The gay little breeze that came along with her stirred her skirts, and
+fluttered her scarlet ribbons, and the curls about her temples. You
+might think Spring herself had paused for a lovely moment in the
+Parish House garden and stood before you in this gracious and virginal
+shape, at once delicate and vital.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Sally Ruth, scattering pigeons right and left, dashed to the
+fence to call greetings. My mother, seizing the child by the arms,
+held her off a moment, to look her over fondly; then, drawing her
+closer, kissed her as a daughter is kissed.</p>
+
+<p>I laid my hand on the child's head, happy with that painful happiness
+her presence always occasioned me, when she came back after an
+absence&mdash;as if the Other Girl flashed into view for a quick moment,
+and then was gone. Laurence, who had followed, stood looking down at
+her with boyish condescension.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Huh! I can eat hominy off her head!&quot; said he, aggravatingly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Old Mister Biggity!&quot; flashed Mary Virginia. And then she turned and
+met, face to face, the fixed stare of John Flint, hanging upon his
+crutches as one might upon a cross,&mdash;a stare long, still, intent,
+curious, speculative, almost incredulous.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are the Padre's last guest, aren't you?&quot; her eyes were full of
+gravest sympathy. &quot;I'm so sorry you met with such a misfortune&mdash;but
+I'm gladder you're alive. It's so good just to be alive in the spring,
+isn't it?&quot; She smiled at him directly, taking him, as it were, into a
+pleasant confidence. She seemed perfectly <a name="Page_54"></a>unconscious of the evil
+unloveliness of him; Mary Virginia always seemed to miss the evil,
+passing it over as if it didn't exist. Instead, diving into the depths
+of other personalities, always she brought to the surface whatever
+pearl of good might lie concealed at the bottom. To her this sinister
+cripple was simply another human being, with whose misfortune one must
+sympathize humanly.</p>
+
+<p>Cl&eacute;lie, in a speckless white apron and a brand-new red-and-white
+bandanna to do greater honor to the little girl whom she adored, set a
+table under the trees and spread it with the thin dainty sandwiches,
+the delectable little cakes, and the fine bonbons she and my mother
+had made to celebrate the child's return. And we had tea, making very
+merry, for she had a thousand amusing things to tell us, every airy
+trifle informed with something of her own brave bright mirthful
+spirit. John Flint sat nearby in the wheel chair, his crutches lying
+beside it, and looked on silently and ate his cake and drank his tea
+stolidly, as if it were no unusual thing for him to break bread in
+such company.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Padre,&quot; said Mary Virginia with deep gravity. &quot;My aunt Jenny says I'm
+growing up. She says I'll have to put up my hair and let down my
+frocks pretty soon, and that I'll probably be thinking of beaux in
+another year, though she hopes to goodness I won't, until I've got
+through with school at least.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The almost unconscious imitation of Miss Jenny's pecking, birdlike
+voice made me smile.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Beaux! Long skirts! Put up hair! Great Scott, will you listen to the
+kid!&quot; scoffed Laurence. &quot;You everlasting little silly, you! P'tite
+Madame, these cakes <a name="Page_55"></a>are certainly all to the good. May I have another
+two or three, please!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm 'most thirteen years old, Laurence Mayne,&quot; said Mary Virginia,
+with dignity. &quot;You're only seventeen, so you don't need to give
+yourself such hateful airs. You're not too old to be greedy, anyhow.
+Padre, <i>am</i> I growing up?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I fear so, my child,&quot; said I, gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're not glad, either, are you, Padre?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you were such a delightful child,&quot; I temporized.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, lovely!&quot; said Laurence, eying her with unflattering
+brotherliness. &quot;And she had so much feeling, too, Mary Virginia! Why,
+when I was sick once, she wanted me to die, so she could ride to my
+funeral in the front carriage; she doted on funerals, the little
+ghoul! She was horribly disappointed when I got better&mdash;she thought it
+disobliging of me, and that I'd done it to spite her. Once, too, when
+I tried to reason with her&mdash;and Mary Virginia needed reason if ever a
+kid did&mdash;she bumped my head until I had knots on it. There's your
+delightful Mary Virginia for you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Anyhow, you didn't die and become an angel&mdash;you stayed disagreeably
+alive and you're going to become a lawyer,&quot; said Mary Virginia, too
+gently. &quot;And your head was bumpable, Laurence, though I'm sorry to say
+I don't ever expect to bump it again. Why, I'm going away to school
+and when I come back I'll be Miss Eustis, and you'll be Mr. Mayne!
+Won't it be funny, though?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't see anything funny in calling you Miss Eustis,&quot; said
+Laurence, with boyish impatience. &quot;And I'm certainly not going to
+notice you if you're silly <a name="Page_56"></a>enough to call me Mister Mayne. I hope you
+won't be a fool, Mary Virginia. So many girls are fools.&quot; He ate
+another cake.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not half as big fools as boys are, though,&quot; said she,
+dispassionately. &quot;My father says the man is always the bigger fool of
+the two.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Laurence snorted. &quot;I wonder what we'll be like, though&mdash;both of us?&quot;
+he mused.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You? You're biggity now, but you'll be lots worse, then,&quot; said Mary
+Virginia, with unflattering frankness. &quot;I think you'll probably strut
+like a turkey, and you'll be baldheaded, and wear double-lensed horn
+spectacles, and spats, and your wife will call you 'Mr. Mayne' to your
+face and 'Your Poppa' to the children, and she'll perfectly <i>despise</i>
+people like Madame and the Padre and me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You never did have any reasoning power, Mary Virginia,&quot; said
+Laurence, with brotherly tact. &quot;Our black cat Panch would put it all
+over you. Allow me to inform you I'm <i>not</i> biggity, miss! I'm
+logical&mdash;something a girl can't understand. And I'd like to know what
+you think <i>you're</i> going to grow up to be?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, let's quit talking about it,&quot; she said petulantly. &quot;I hate to
+think of growing up. Grown ups don't seem to be happy&mdash;and <i>I</i> want to
+be happy!&quot; She turned her head, and met once more the absorbed and
+watchful stare of the man in the wheel-chair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Weren't you sorry when you had to stop being a little boy and grow
+up?&quot; she asked him, wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Me?&quot; he laughed harshly. &quot;I couldn't say, miss. I guess I was born
+grown up.&quot; His face darkened.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_57"></a>That wasn't a bit fair,&quot; said she, with instant sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There's a lot not fair,&quot; he told her, &quot;when you're born and brought
+up like I was. The worst is not so much what happens to you, though
+that's pretty bad; it's that you don't know it's happening&mdash;and
+there's nobody to put you wise. Why,&quot; his forehead puckered as if a
+thought new to him had struck him, &quot;why, your very looks get to be
+different!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia started. &quot;Oh, looks!&quot; said she, thoughtfully. &quot;Now,
+isn't it curious for you to say just that, right now, for it reminds
+me that I brought something to the Padre&mdash;something that set me to
+thinking about people's looks, too,&mdash;and how you never can tell. Wait
+a minute, and I'll show you.&quot; She reached for the pretty crocheted bag
+she had brought with her, and drew from it a small pasteboard box.
+None of us, idly watching her, dreamed that a moment big with fate was
+upon us. I have often wondered how things would have turned out if
+Mary Virginia had lost or forgotten that pasteboard box!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I happened to put my hand on a tree&mdash;and this little fellow moved,
+and I caught him. I thought at first he was a part of the tree-trunk,
+he looked so much like it,&quot; said the child, opening the little box.
+Inside lay nothing more unusual than a dark-colored and rather ugly
+gray moth, with his wings folded down.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One wouldn't think him pretty, would one?&quot; said she, looking down at
+the creature.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; said Flint, who had wheeled nearer, and craned his neck over the
+box. &quot;No, miss, I shouldn't think I'd <a name="Page_58"></a>call something like that
+pretty,&quot;&mdash;he looked from the moth to Mary Virginia, a bit
+disappointedly.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia smiled, and picking up the little moth, held his body,
+very gently, between her finger-tips. He fluttered, spreading out his
+gray wings; and then one saw the beautiful pansy-like underwings, and
+the glorious lower pair of scarlet velvet barred and bordered with
+black.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I brought him along, thinking the Padre might like him, and tell me
+something about him,&quot; said the little girl. &quot;The Padre's crazy about
+moths and butterflies, you must understand, and we're always on the
+lookout to get them for him. I never found this particular one before,
+and you can't imagine how I felt when he showed me what he had hidden
+under that gray cloak of his!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He's a member of a large and most respectable family, the Catocal&aelig;,&quot;
+I told her. &quot;I'll take him, my dear, and thank you&mdash;there's always a
+demand for the Catocal&aelig;. And you may call him an Underwing, if you
+prefer&mdash;that's his common name.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I got to thinking,&quot; said the little girl, thoughtfully, lifting her
+clear and candid eyes to John Flint's. &quot;I got to thinking, when he
+threw aside his plain gray cloak and showed me his lovely underwings,
+that he's like some people&mdash;people you'd think were very common, you
+know. You couldn't be expected to know what was underneath, could you?
+So you pass them by, thinking how ordinary, and matter of fact, and
+uninteresting and even ugly they are, and you feel rather sorry for
+them&mdash;because you don't know. But if you can once get close enough to
+touch them&mdash;why, then you find out!&quot; Her eyes grew deeper, and
+brighter, as they do when she <a name="Page_59"></a>is moved; and the color came more
+vividly to her cheek. &quot;Don't you reckon,&quot; said she na&iuml;vely, &quot;that
+plenty of folks are like him? They're the sad color of the
+street-dust, of course, for things do borrow from their surroundings,
+didn't you know that? That's called protective mimicry, the Padre
+says. So you only think of the dust-colored outside&mdash;and all the while
+the underwings are right there, waiting for you to find them! Isn't it
+wonderful and beautiful? And the best of all is, it's true!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The cripple in the chair put out his hand with a hint of timidity in
+his manner; he was staring at Mary Virginia as if some of the light
+within her had dimly penetrated his grosser substance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Could I hold it&mdash;for a minute&mdash;in my own hand?&quot; he asked, turning
+brick-red.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course you may,&quot; said Mary Virginia pleasantly. &quot;I see by the
+Padre's face this isn't a rare moth&mdash;he's been here all along, only my
+eyes have just been opened to him. I don't want him to go in any
+collection. I don't want him to go anywhere, except back into the
+air&mdash;I owe him that for what he taught me. So I'm sure the Padre won't
+mind, if you'd like to set him free, yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She put the moth on the man's finger, delicately, for a Catocala is a
+swift-winged little chap; it spread out its wings splendidly, as if to
+show him its loveliness; then, darting upward, vanished into the cool
+green depth of the shrubbery.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I remember running after a butterfly once, when I was a kid,&quot; said
+he. &quot;He came flying down our street, Lord knows where from, or why,
+and I caught him after <a name="Page_60"></a>a chase. I thought he was the prettiest thing
+ever my eyes had seen, and I wanted the worst way in the world to keep
+him with me. A brown fellow he was, all sprinkled over with little
+splotches of silver, as if there'd been plenty of the stuff on hand,
+and it'd been laid on him thick. But after awhile I got to thinking
+he'd feel like he was in jail, shut up in my hot fist. I couldn't bear
+that, so I ran to the end of the street, to save him from the other
+kids, and then I turned him loose and watched him beat it for the sky.
+They're pretty things, butterflies. Somehow I always liked them better
+than any other living creatures.&quot; He was staring after the moth, his
+forehead wrinkled. He spoke almost unconsciously, and he certainly had
+no idea that he had given us cause for a hopeful astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>Now, Mary Virginia's eyes had fallen, idly enough, upon John Flint's
+hands lying loosely upon his knees. Her face brightened.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Padre,&quot; she suggested suddenly, &quot;why don't you let him help you with
+your butterflies? Look at his hands! Why, they're just exactly the
+right sort to handle setting needles and mounting blocks, and to
+stretch wings without loosening a scale. He could be taught in a few
+lessons, and just think what a splendid help he could be! And you do
+so need help with those insects of yours, Padre&mdash;I've heard you say
+so, over and over.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The child was right&mdash;John Flint did have good hands&mdash;large enough,
+well-shaped, steel-muscled, powerful, with flexible, smooth-skinned,
+sensitive fingers, the fingers of an expert lapidary rather than a
+prize-fighter.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you think there's any way I could help the <a name="Page_61"></a>parson for awhile, I'd
+be proud to try, miss. It's true,&quot; he added casually, with a
+sphinx-like immobility of countenance, &quot;that I'm what might be called
+handy with my fingers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We'll call it settled, then,&quot; said Mary Virginia happily.</p>
+
+<p>Laurence took her home at dusk; it was a part of his daily life to
+look after Mary Virginia, as one looks after a cherished little
+sister. When they were younger the boy had often complained that she
+might as well be his sister, she quarreled with him so much; and the
+little girl said, bitterly, he was as disagreeable as if he'd been a
+brother. In spite of which the little girl, for all her delicious
+impertinences, looked up to the boy; and the boy had adored her, from
+the time she gurgled at him from her cradle.</p>
+
+<p>My mother left us, and John Flint and I sat outdoors in the pleasant
+twilight, he smoking the pipe Laurence had given him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Parson,&quot; said he, abruptly, &quot;Parson, you folks are swells, ain't you?
+The real thing, I mean, you and Madame? Even the yellow nigger's a
+lady nigger, ain't she?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am a poor priest, such as you see, my son, Madame is&mdash;Madame. And
+Cl&eacute;lie is a good servant.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you were born a swell, weren't you?&quot; he persisted. &quot;Old family,
+swell diggings, trained flunkies, and all that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was born a gentleman, if that is what you mean. Of an old family,
+yes. And there was an old house&mdash;once.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How'd <i>you</i> ever hit the trail for the Church? I <a name="Page_62"></a>wonder! But say,
+you never asked me any more questions than you had to, so you can tell
+me to shut up, if you want to. Not that I wouldn't like to know how
+the Sam Hill the like of you ever got nabbed by the skypilots.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God called me through affliction, my son.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh,&quot; said my son, blankly. &quot;Huh! But I bet you the best crib ever
+cracked you were some peach of a boy before you got that 'S.O.S.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was, like the young, the thoughtless young, a sinner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose,&quot; said he tentatively, after a pause, &quot;that <i>I'm</i> one hell
+of a sinner myself, according to Hoyle, ain't I?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not think it would injure you to change your&mdash;course of life,
+nor yet your way of mentioning it,&quot; I said, feeling my way cautiously.
+&quot;But&mdash;we are bidden to remember there is more joy in heaven over one
+sinner saved than over the ninety-and-nine just men.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is that so? Well, it listens like good horse-sense to me,&quot; said Mr.
+Flint, promptly. &quot;Because, look here: you can rake in ninety-and-nine
+boobs any old time&mdash;there's one born every time the clock ticks,
+parson&mdash;but they don't land something like me every day, believe me!
+And I bet you a stack of dollar chips a mile high there was some
+song-and-dance in the sky-joint when they put one over on <i>you</i> for
+fair. Sure!&quot; He puffed away at his pipe, and I, having nothing to say
+to this fine reasoning, held my peace.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Parson, that kid's a swell, too, ain't she? And the boy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Laurence is the son of Judge Hammond Mayne.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_63"></a>And the little girl?&quot; Insensibly his voice softened.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose,&quot; I agreed, &quot;that the little girl is what you might call a
+swell, too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I never,&quot; said he, reflectively, &quot;came what you might call <i>talking</i>
+close to real swells before. I've seen 'em, of course&mdash;at a distance.
+Some of 'em, taking 'em by and large, looked pretty punk, to me; some
+of 'em was middling, and a few looked as if they might have the goods.
+But none of 'em struck me as being real live breathing <i>people</i>, same
+as other folks. Why, parson, some of those dames'd throw a fit,
+fancying they was poisoned, if they had to breathe the same air with
+folks like me&mdash;me being what I am and they being&mdash;what they think they
+are. Yet here's you and Madame, the real thing&mdash;and the boy&mdash;and the
+little girl&mdash;the little girl<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span> he stopped, staring at me dumbly, as
+the vision of Mary Virginia rose before him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is, indeed, a dear, dear child,&quot; said I. His words stung me
+somewhat, for once upon a time, I myself would have resented that such
+as he should have breathed the same air with Mary Virginia.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'd almost think I'd dreamed her,&quot; said he, thoughtfully, &quot;that is,
+if I was good enough to have dreams like that,&quot; he added hastily, with
+his first touch of shame. &quot;I've seen 'em from the Battery up, and some
+of 'em was sure-enough queens, but I didn't know they came like this
+one. She's bran-new to me, parson. Say, you just show me what she
+wants me to help you with, and I'll do it. She seems to think I can,
+and it oughtn't to be any harder than opening a time-vault, ought it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; said I gravely, &quot;I shouldn't think it would <a name="Page_64"></a>be. Though I never
+opened a time-vault, you understand, and I hope and pray you'll never
+touch one again, either. I'd rather you wouldn't even refer to it,
+please. It makes me feel, rather&mdash;well, let's say <i>particeps
+criminis</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose that's the polite for punching you in the wind,&quot; said he,
+just as gravely. &quot;And I didn't think you'd ever monkeyed with a vault;
+why, you couldn't, not if you was to try till Gabriel did his little
+turn in the morning&mdash;not unless you'd been caught when you were softer
+and put wise. Man, it's a bigger job than you think, and you've got to
+have the know-how and the nerve before you can put it over. But
+there&mdash;I'll keep it dark, seeing you want me to.&quot; He stretched out his
+hands, regarding them speculatively. &quot;They <i>are</i> classy mitts,&quot; he
+remarked impersonally. &quot;Yep, seemed like they were just naturally made
+to&mdash;do what they did. They were built for fine work.&quot; At that his jaw
+snapped; a spasm twitched his face; it darkened.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The work little Miss Eustis suggested for you,&quot; I insinuated hastily,
+&quot;is what very many people consider very fine work indeed. About one in
+a thousand can do it properly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lead me to it,&quot; said he wearily, and without enthusiasm, &quot;and turn me
+loose. I'll do what I can, to please her. At least, until I can make a
+getaway for keeps.&quot;</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Page_65"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_V"></a><hr />
+<br />
+<h2>CHAPTER V<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>ENTER KERRY</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>When I was first seen prowling along the roads and about the fields
+stalking butterflies and diurnal moths with the caution of a red
+Indian on the warpath and the stealth of a tiger in the jungle; when
+mystified folk met me at night, a lantern suspended from my neck, a
+haversack across my shoulders, a bottle-belt about my waist, and armed
+with a butterfly net, the consensus of opinion was that poor Father De
+Ranc&eacute; was stark staring mad. Appleboro hadn't heretofore witnessed the
+proceedings of the Brethren of the Net, and I had to do much patient
+explaining; even then I am sure I must have left many firmly convinced
+that I was not, in their own phrase, &quot;all there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hey, you! Mister! Them worms is pizen! Them's <i>fever</i>-worms!&quot; was
+shrieked at me frenziedly by the country-folks, black and white, when
+I was caught scooping up the hairy caterpillars of the tiger moths.
+Even when it was understood that I wished caterpillars, cocoons, and
+chrysalids, for the butterflies and moths they would later make, looks
+of pitying contempt were cast upon me. That a grown man&mdash;particularly
+a minister of the gospel, with not only his own but other people's
+souls to save&mdash;should spend time hunting for <a name="Page_66"></a>worms, with which he
+couldn't even bait a hook, awakened amazement.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What any man in his right mind wants with a thing that ain't nothin'
+but wriggles an' hair on the outside an' sqush on the inside, beats
+me!&quot; was said more than once.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But all of them are interesting, some are valuable, and many grow
+into very beautiful moths and butterflies,&quot; I ventured to defend
+myself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;S'posin' they do? You can't eat 'em or wear 'em or plant 'em, can
+you?&quot; And really, you understand, I couldn't!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;An' you mean to tell me to my face,&quot; said a scandalized farmer,
+watching me assorting and naming the specimens taken from my field
+box, &quot;you mean to tell me you're givin' every one o' them bugs a
+<i>name</i>, same's a baptized Christian? Adam named every livin' thing,
+an' Adam called them things Caterpillars an' Butterflies. If it suited
+him an' Eve and God A'mighty to have 'em called that an' nothin' else,
+looks to me it had oughter suit anybody that's got a grain o'real
+religion. If you go to call 'em anythin' else it's sinnin' agin the
+Bible. I've heard all my life you Cath'lics don't take as much stock
+in the Scripters as you'd oughter, but this thing o'callin' a wurrum
+Adam named plain Caterpillar a&mdash;a&mdash;<i>what'd</i> you say the dum beast's
+name was? <i>My sufferin' Savior!</i> is jest about the wust dern
+foolishness yet! I lay it at the Pope's door, every mite o' it, an'
+you'd better believe he'll have to answer for sech carryin's on, some
+o' these days!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So many other things having been laid at the Pope's door, I held my
+peace and made no futile attempt to clear <a name="Page_67"></a>the Holy Father of the dark
+suspicion of having perpetrated their names upon certain of the
+American lepidoptera.</p>
+
+<p>I had yet other darker madnesses; had I not been seen spreading upon
+trees with a whitewash brush a mixture of brown sugar, stale beer, and
+rum?</p>
+
+<p>Asked to explain this lunatic proceeding I could only say that I was
+sugaring for moths; these airy fairy gentlemen having a very human
+liking for a &quot;wee drappie o't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That amiable failin',&quot; Major Appleby Cartwright decided, &quot;is a credit
+to them an' commends them to a respectful hearin'. On its face it
+would seem to admit them to the ancient an' honorable brotherhood of
+convivial man. But, suh, there's another side to this question, an'
+it's this:&mdash;a creature that's got six perfectly good legs, not to
+mention wings, an' still can't carry his liquor without bein' caught,
+deserves his fate. It's not in my line to offer suggestions to an
+allwise Providence, or I <i>might</i> hint that a scoop-net an' a killing
+jar in pickle for some two-legged topers out huntin' free drinks
+wouldn't be such a bad idea at all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But as I pursued my buggy way&mdash;and displayed, save in this one
+particular, what might truthfully be called ordinary common
+sense&mdash;people gradually grew accustomed to it, looking upon me as a
+mild and harmless lunatic whose inoffensive mania might safely be
+indulged&mdash;nay, even humored. In consequence I was from time to time
+inundated with every common thing that creeps, crawls, and flies. I
+accepted gifts of bugs and caterpillars that filled my mother with
+disgust and Cl&eacute;lie with horror; both of them hesitated to come into my
+study, <a name="Page_68"></a>and I have known Cl&eacute;lie to be afraid to go to bed of a night
+because the great red-horned &quot;Hickory devil&quot; was downstairs in a box,
+and she was firmly convinced that this innocent worm harbored a
+cold-blooded desire to crawl upstairs and bite her. That silly woman
+will depart this life in the firm faith that all crawling creatures
+came into the world with the single-hearted hope of biting her, above
+all other mortals; and that having achieved the end for which they
+were created, both they and she will immediately curl up and die.</p>
+
+<p>But alas, I had but scant time to devote to this enchanting and
+engrossing study, which, properly pursued, will fill a man's days to
+the brim. I gathered my specimens as I could and classified and
+mounted them as it pleased God&mdash;until the advent of John Flint.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I must, with great reluctance, here set down the plain truth that
+he, too, looked upon me at first with amaze not unmixed with rage and
+contempt. Most caterpillars, you understand, feed upon food of their
+own arbitrary choosing; and when they are in captivity one must
+procure this particular aliment if one hopes to rear them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Slippy McGee feeding bugs!</i> It was about as hideous and devil-born a
+contretemps as, say, putting a belted earl to peel potatoes or asking
+an archbishop to clean cuspidors. The man boiled with offended dignity
+and outraged pride. One could actually see him swell. He had expected
+something quite different, and this apparently offensive triviality
+disgusted and shocked him. I could see myself falling forty thousand
+fathoms in his esteem, and I think he would have incontinently turned
+his back upon me save for his promise to Mary Virginia.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_69"></a>It is true that many of the caterpillars are ugly and formidable, poor
+things, to the uninitiated eye, which fails to recognize under this
+uncomely disguise the crowned and glorious citizens of the air. I had
+just then a great Cecropia, an able-bodied green gentleman armed with
+twelve thorn-like, sizable horns, and wearing, along with other
+agreeable adornments, three yellow and four red arrangements like
+growths of dwarf cactus plants on the segments behind his hard round
+green head.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Flint, with an ejaculation of horror, backed off on one crutch and
+clubbed the other.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My God!&quot; said he, &quot;Kill it! Kill it!&quot; I saved my green friend in the
+nick of time. The man, with staring eyes, looked from me to the
+caterpillar; then he leaned over and watched it, in grim silence.</p>
+
+<p>He knotted his forehead, made slits of his eyes, gulped, screwed his
+mouth into the thin red line of deadly determination, and with every
+nerve braced, even as a martyr braces himself for the stake or the
+sword, put out his hand, up which the formidable-looking worm walked
+leisurely. Death not immediately resulting from this daring act, he
+controlled his shudders and breathed easier. The worm became less and
+less terrifying; no longer appearing, say, the size of the boa
+constrictor. A few moments of this harmless meandering about Mr.
+Flint's hand and arm, and of a sudden he wore his true colors of an
+inoffensive and law-abiding larva, anxious only to attend strictly to
+his own legitimate business, the Gargantuan feeding of himself into
+the pupa from which he would presently emerge one of the most
+magnificent of native moths. Gingerly Mr. Flint picked him up between
+thumb and fore-finger, and as gingerly <a name="Page_70"></a>dropped him back into the
+breeding-cage. He squared his shoulders, wiped his brow, and drew a
+long whistling breath.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Phe-ew! It took all my nerve to do it!&quot; said he, frankly. &quot;I felt for
+a minute as if a strong-arm cop'd chased me up an alley and pulled his
+gun on me. The feeling of a bug's legs on your bare skin is something
+fierce at first, ain't it? But after <i>him</i> none of 'em can scare me
+any more. I could play tag with pink monkeys with blue tails and green
+whiskers without sending in the hurry-call.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The setting boards and blocks, the arrays of pins, needles, tubes,
+forceps, jars and bottles, magnifying-glasses, microscope, slides,
+drying-ovens, relaxing-box, cabinets, and above all, the mounted
+specimens, raised his spirits somewhat. This, at least, looked
+workman-like; this, at least, promised something better than stoking
+worms!</p>
+
+<p>If not hopefully, at least willingly enough, he allowed himself to be
+set to work. And that work had come in what some like to call the
+psychological moment. At least it came&mdash;or was sent&mdash;just when he
+needed it most.</p>
+
+<p>He soon discovered, as all beginners must, that there is very much
+more to it than one might think; that here, too, one must pay for
+exact knowledge with painstaking care and patient study and ceaseless
+effort. He discovered how fatally easy it is to spoil a good specimen;
+how fairy-fragile a wee wing is; how painted scales rub, and vanish
+into thin air; how delicate antenn&aelig; break, and forelegs will
+fiendishly depart hence; and that proper mounting, which results in a
+perfect insect, is a task <a name="Page_71"></a>which requires practice, a sure eye, and an
+expert, delicate, and dexterous touch. Also, that one must be
+ceaselessly on guard lest the baleful little ant and other tiny curses
+evade one's vigilance and render void one's best work. He learned
+these and other salutary lessons, which tend to tone down an amateur's
+conceit of his half-knowledge; and this chastened him. He felt his
+pride at stake&mdash;he who could so expertly, with almost demoniac
+ingenuity, force the costliest and most cunningly constructed
+burglar-proof lock; he whose not idle boast was that he was handy with
+his fingers! Slippy McGee baffled, at bay before a butterfly? And in
+the presence of a mere priest and a girl-child? Never! He'd show us
+what he could do when he really tried to try!</p>
+
+<p>Presently he wanted to classify; and he wanted to do it alone and
+unaided&mdash;it looked easy enough. It irked him, pricked his pride, to
+have to be always asking somebody else &quot;what is this?&quot; And right then
+and there those inevitable difficulties that confront every earnest
+and conscientious seeker at the beginning of his quest, arose, as the
+fascinating living puzzles presented themselves for his solving.</p>
+
+<p>To classify correctly is not something one learns in a day, be he
+never so willing and eager; as one may discover who cares to take half
+a dozen plain, obscurely-colored small moths, and attempts to put them
+in their proper places.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Flint tried it&mdash;and those wretched creatures <i>wouldn't</i> stay put.
+It seemed to him that every time he looked at them they ought to be
+somewhere else; always there was something&mdash;a bar, a stripe, a small
+<a name="Page_72"></a>distinctive spot, a wing of peculiar shape, antenn&aelig;, or palpi, or
+spur, to differentiate them.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where the Sam Hill,&quot; he blazed, &quot;do all these footy little devils
+come from, anyhow? Where am I to put a beast of a bug when the next
+one that's exactly like it is entirely different the next time you
+look at it? There's too much beginning and no end at all to this
+game!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For all that, he followed them up. I saw with pure joy that he refused
+to dismiss anything carelessly, while he scorned to split hairs. He
+had a regular course of procedure when he was puzzled. First he turned
+the new insect over and over and glared at it from every possible
+angle; then he rumpled his hair, gritted his teeth, squared his
+shoulders and hurled himself into work.</p>
+
+<p>There was, for instance, the common Dione Vanill&aelig;, that splendid Gulf
+Fritillary which haunts all the highways of the South. She's a
+long-wing, but she's not a Heliconian; she's a silver-spot, but she's
+not an Argynnis. She bears a striking family likeness to her fine
+relations, but she has certain structural peculiarities which
+differentiate her. Whose word should he take for this, and why?
+Wherein lay those differences? He began, patiently, with her
+cylinder-shaped yellow-brown, orange-spotted caterpillar, on the
+purple passion flowers in our garden; he watched it change into a
+dark-brown chrysalis marked with a few pale spots; he saw emerge from
+this the red-robed lady herself, with her long fulvous forewings, and
+her shorter hind wings smocked with black velvet, and her under-frock
+flushed with pinkish orange and spangled with silver. And yet, in
+spite <a name="Page_73"></a>of her long marvelous tongue&mdash;he was beginning to find out that
+no tool he had ever seen, and but few that God Himself makes, is so
+wonderful as a butterfly's tongue&mdash;she hadn't been able to tell him
+that about herself which he most wished to find out. <i>That</i> called for
+a deeper knowledge than he as yet possessed.</p>
+
+<p>But he knew that other men knew. And he had to know. He meant to know.
+For the work gripped him as it does those marked and foreordained for
+its service. That marvelous world in which the Little People dwell&mdash;a
+world so absolutely different from ours that it might well be upon
+another planet&mdash;began to open, slowly, slowly, one of its many
+mysterious doors, allowing him just glimpse enough of what magic lay
+beyond to fire his heart and to whet his appetite. And he couldn't
+break into that world with a jimmy. It was burglar-proof. That portal
+was so impervious to even the facile fingers of Slippy McGee, that
+John Flint must pay the inevitable and appropriate toll to enter!</p>
+
+<p>Westmoreland had replaced his crutches with a wooden leg, and you
+might see him stumping about our grounds, minutely examining the
+underside of shrubs and bushes, the bark of trees, poking into corners
+and crannies, or scraping in the mold under the fallen leaves by the
+fences, for things which no longer filled him with aversion and
+disgust, but with the student's interest and pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Think of me being in the same world with 'em all these years and not
+knowing a thing about 'em when there's so much to know, and under my
+skin stark crazy to learn it, only I didn't know I even wanted to know
+what I really want to know more than anything <a name="Page_74"></a>else, until I had to
+get dumped down here to find it out! I get the funniest sort of a
+feeling, parson, that all along there's been a Me tucked away inside
+my hide that's been loving these things ever since I was born. Not
+just to catch and handle 'em, and stretch out their little wings, and
+remember the names some bughouse high-brow wished on 'em, though all
+that's in the feeling, too; it's something else, if I could make you
+understand what I mean.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laughed. &quot;I think I do understand,&quot; said I. &quot;I have a Me like that
+tucked away in mine, too, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me gravely. &quot;Parson,&quot; said he, earnestly, &quot;there's times
+I wish you had a dozen kids, and every one of 'em twins! It's a shame
+to think of some poor orphans swindled out of such a daddy as you'd
+have made!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why,&quot; said I, smiling, &quot;<i>You</i> are one of my twins.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Me?&quot; He reflected. &quot;Maybe half of me might be, parson,&quot; he agreed,
+&quot;but it's not safe for a skypilot to be caught owning a twin like the
+other half.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm pinning my faith to <i>my</i> half,&quot; said I, serenely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, why?&quot; he asked, with sudden fierceness. &quot;I turn it over and over
+and over: it looks white on the outside, but I can't to save me figure
+out <i>why</i> you're doing it. Parson, <i>what</i> have you got up your
+sleeve?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing but my arm. What should you think?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know what to think, and that's the straight of it. What's
+your game, anyhow? What in the name of God are you after?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I think,&quot; said I, &quot;that in the name of God I'm after&mdash;that other
+You that's been tucked away all these years, and couldn't get born
+until a Me inside mine, just <a name="Page_75"></a>like himself, called him to come out and
+be alive.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He pondered this in silence. Then:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll take your word for it,&quot; said he. &quot;Though if anybody'd ever told
+me I'd be eating out of a parson's hand, I'd have pushed his face in
+for him. Yep, I'm Fido! <i>Me!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At least you growl enough,&quot; said I, tartly.</p>
+
+<p>He eyed me askance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have I got to lick hands?&quot; he snarled.</p>
+
+<p>I walked away, without a reply; through my shoulder-blades I could
+feel him glaring after me. He followed, hobbling:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Parson!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I'm not the sort that licks hands I'm not the sort that bites 'em,
+neither. I'll tell you&mdash;it's this way: I&mdash;sort of get to chewing on
+that infernal log of wood that's where my good leg used to grow
+and&mdash;and splinters get into my temper&mdash;and I've <i>got</i> to snarl or
+burst wide open! You'd growl like the devil yourself, if you had to
+try holding down my job for awhile, skypilot or no skypilot!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why&mdash;I dare say I should,&quot; said I, contritely. &quot;But,&quot; I added, after
+a pause, &quot;I shouldn't be any the better for it, should you think?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not so you could notice,&quot; shortly. And after a moment he added, in an
+altered voice: &quot;Rule 1: Can the Squeal!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I think he most honestly tried to. It was no easy task, and I have
+seen the sweat start upon his forehead and his face go pale, when in
+his eagerness he forgot for a moment the cruel fact that he could no
+longer <a name="Page_76"></a>move as lightly as of old&mdash;and the crippled body, betraying
+him, reminded him all too swiftly of his mistake.</p>
+
+<p>The work saved him. For it is the heaven-sent sort of work, to those
+ordained for it, that fills one's hours and leaves one eager for
+further tasks. It called for all his oldtime ingenuity. His tools, for
+instance&mdash;at times their limitations irked him, and he made others
+more satisfactory to himself; tools adjusted to an insect's frail
+body, not to a time-lock. Before that summer ended he could handle
+even the frailest and tiniest specimen with such nice care that it was
+delightful to watch him at work. The time was to come when he could
+mend a torn wing or fix a broken antennas with such exquisite fidelity
+to detail that even the most expert eye might well be deceived.</p>
+
+<p>I had only looked for a little temporary help, such as any intelligent
+amateur might be able to furnish. But I was not long unaware that this
+was more than a mere amateur. To quote himself, he had the goods, and
+I realized with a mounting heart that I had made a find, if I could
+only hold on to it. For the first time in years I could exchange
+specimens. My cabinets began to fill out&mdash;with such perfect insects,
+too! We added several rare ones, a circumstance to make any
+entomologist look upon the world through rosy spectacles. Why, even
+the scarce shy Cossus Centerensis came to our very doors, apparently
+to fill a space awaiting him. Perhaps he was a Buddhist insect
+undergoing reincarnation, and was anxious to acquire merit by
+self-immolation. Anyhow, we acquired him, and I hope he acquired
+merit.</p>
+
+<p>We had scores of insects in the drying ovens. We had more and ever more
+in the breeding cages,&mdash;in our case <a name="Page_77"></a>simple home-made affairs of a keg
+or a box with a fine wire-netting over the food plant; or a lamp-chimney
+slipped over a potted plant with a bit of mosquito-netting tied over the
+top, for the smaller forms.</p>
+
+<p>These cages were a never-failing source of delight and interest to the
+children, and at their hands heaven rained caterpillars upon us that
+season. Even my mother grew interested in the work, though Cl&eacute;lie
+never ceased to look upon it as a horrid madness peculiar to white
+people.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All Buckrahs is funny in dey haids,&quot; Daddy January consoled her when
+she complained to him about it. &quot;Dey gets all kind o' fool notions
+'bout all kind o' fool t'ings. You ain't got to feel so bad&mdash;de Jedge
+is lots wuss'n yo' boss is. Yo' boss kin see de bugs he run atter, but
+my boss talk 'bout some kind o' bug he call Germ. I ax um what kind o'
+bug is dat; an' he 'low you can't see um wid yo' eye. I ain't say so
+to de Jedge, but <i>I</i> 'low when you see bug you can't see wid yo' eye,
+you best not seem um 'tall&mdash;case he must be some kind o' spook, an'
+Gawd knows I ain't want to see no spook. Ef de bug ain't no spook, den
+he mus' be eenside yo' haid, 'stead o' outside um, an' to hab bug on
+de eenside o' yo' haid is de wuss kind o' bad luck. Anyhow, nobody but
+Buckrah talk an' ack like dat, niggers is got mo' sense.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We found, presently, a ready and a steady sale for our extra stock. We
+could supply caterpillars, butterflies and moths, or chrysalids and
+cocoons; we had some rather scarce ones; and then, our unmounted
+specimens were so perfect, and our mounted ones so exquisitely done,
+that we had but little trouble in disposing of them. Under the hand of
+John Flint these last were really <a name="Page_78"></a>works of art. Not for nothing had
+he boasted that he was handy with his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>The pretty common forms, framed hovering lifelike over delicately
+pressed ferns and flowers, found even a readier market, for they were
+really beautiful. Money had begun to come in&mdash;not largely, it is true,
+but still steadily and surely. You must know how to handle your stock,
+and you must be in touch with your market&mdash;scientists, students,
+collectors,&mdash;and this, of course, takes time. We could supply the
+larger dealers, too, although they pay less, and we had a modest
+advertisement in one or two papers published for the profession, which
+brought us orders. But let no one imagine that it is an easy task to
+handle these frail bodies, these gossamer wings, so that naturalists
+and collectors are glad to get them. Once or twice we lost valuable
+shipments.</p>
+
+<p>Long since&mdash;in the late spring, to be exact, John Flint had moved out
+of the Guest Room, needed for other occupants, into a two-roomed
+outbuilding across the garden. Some former pastor had had it built for
+an oratory and retreat, but now, covered with vines, it had stood for
+many years unused, save as a sort of lumber room.</p>
+
+<p>When the troublesome question of where we might properly house him had
+arisen, my mother hit upon these unused rooms as by direct
+inspiration. She had them cleaned, repainted, scoured, and turned into
+a pleasant well-lighted, airy workroom and living-room combined, and a
+smaller and rather austere bedroom, with an inexpensive but very good
+head of Christ over the mantel, and an old, old carved crucifix on the
+wall beside the white iron bed. Laurence took from his own room a
+Morris chair, whose somewhat frayed cushions my <a name="Page_79"></a>mother neatly
+re-covered. Mary Virginia contributed a rug, as well as dressing-gown
+and slippers. Miss Sally Ruth gave him outright a brand-new Bible, and
+loaned him an old cedar-wood wardrobe which had been her
+great-grandmother's, and which still smelt delicately of generations
+of rose-leaved and lavendered linen.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All I ask,&quot; said Miss Sally Ruth sharply, &quot;is that you'll read Paul
+with your eyes open and your mouth shut, and that you'll keep your
+clothes in that wardrobe and your moths out of it. If it was intended
+for anybody to teach you anything, then Paul will teach you; but it
+<i>wasn't</i> intended for a cedar-wood wardrobe to hold moths, and I hope
+you won't forget it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Major Cartwright sent over a fishing-rod, a large jar of tobacco, and
+a framed picture of General Lee.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because no man, suh, could live under the same roof with even his
+pictured semblance, and not be the bettah fo' it,&quot; said the major
+earnestly. &quot;I know. I've got to live with him myself. When I'm fair to
+middlin' he's in the dinin' room. When I've skidded off the straight
+an' narrow path I lock him up in the parlor, an' at such times I sleep
+out on the po'ch. But when I'm at peace with man an' God I take him
+into my bedroom an' look at him befo' retirin'. He's about as easy to
+live with as the Angel Gabriel, but he's mighty bracin', Marse Robert
+is: mighty bracin'!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thus equipped, John Flint settled himself in his own house. It had
+been a wise move, for he had the sense of proprietorship, privacy, and
+freedom. He could come and go as he pleased, with no one to question.
+He could work undisturbed, save for the children who brought him such
+things as they could find. He put his breeding <a name="Page_80"></a>cages out on the
+vine-covered piazzas surrounding two-sides of his house, arranged the
+cabinets and boxes which had been removed from my study to his own,
+nailed up a few shelves to suit himself, and set up housekeeping.</p>
+
+<p>My mother had been frankly delighted to have my creeping friends moved
+out of the Parish House, and Cl&eacute;lie abated in her dislike of the
+one-legged man because he had, in a way, removed from her a heretofore
+never-absent fear of waking up some night and finding a caterpillar
+under her bed. More yet, he entailed no extra work, for he flatly
+refused to have her set foot in his rooms for the purpose of cleaning
+them. He attended to that himself. The man was a marvel of neatness
+and order. Mesdames, permit me to here remark that when a man is neat
+and orderly no woman of Eve's daughters can compare with him. John
+Flint's rooms would arouse the rabid envy of the cleanest and most
+scourful she in Holland itself.</p>
+
+<p>Now as the months wore away there had sprung up between him, and Mary
+Virginia and Laurence, one of those odd comradely friendships which
+sometime unite the totally unlike with bonds hard to break. His
+spotless workroom had a fascination for the youngsters. They were
+always in and out, now with a cocoon, now an imago, now a larva, and
+then again to see how those they had already brought were getting
+along.</p>
+
+<p>The lame man was an unrivaled listener&mdash;a circumstance which endeared
+him to youthful Laurence, in whom thoughts and the urge to express
+these thoughts in words rose like sap. This fresh and untainted
+confidence, poured out so na&iuml;vely, taught John Flint more than any
+words or prayers of mine could have done. It <a name="Page_81"></a>opened to him a world
+into which, his eyes had not heretofore been permitted to look; and
+the result was all the more sure and certain, in that the children had
+no faintest idea of the effect they were producing. They had no end to
+gain, no ax to grind; they merely spoke the truth as they knew it, and
+this unselfish and hopeful truthfulness aroused his interest and
+curiosity; it even compelled his admiration. He couldn't dismiss
+<i>this</i> as &quot;hot air&quot;!</p>
+
+<p>I was more than glad to have him thus taught. It was a salutary
+lesson, tending to temper his overweening confidence and to humble his
+contemptuous pride. In his own world he had been supreme, a figure of
+sinister importance. Brash had been crook or cop who had taught or
+caught Slippy McGee! But in this new atmosphere, in which he breathed
+with difficulty, the young had been given him for guides. They led
+him, where a grownup had failed.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia was particularly fond of him. He had as little to say to
+her as to Laurence, but he looked at her with interested eyes that
+never lost a movement; she knew he never missed a word, either; his
+silence was friendly, and the little girl had a pleasant fashion of
+taking folk for granted. Hers was one of those large natures which
+give lavishly, shares itself freely, but does not demand much in
+return. She gave with an open hand to her quiet listener&mdash;her books,
+her music, her amusing and innocent views, her frank comments, her
+truthfulness, her sweet brave gaiety; and he absorbed it like a
+sponge. It delighted her to find and bring the proper food-plants for
+his cages. And she being one of those who sing while they work, you
+might hear her <a name="Page_82"></a>caroling like a lark, flitting about the old garden
+with her red setter Kerry at her heels.</p>
+
+<p>Laurence no longer read aloud to him, but instead gave Flint such
+books as he could find covering his particular study, and these were
+devoured and pored over, and more begged for. Flint would go without
+new clothes, neat as he was, and without tobacco, much as he liked to
+smoke,&mdash;to buy books upon lepidoptera.</p>
+
+<p>He helped my mother with her flowers and her vegetables, but refused
+to have anything to do with her chickens, remarking shortly that hens
+were such fools he couldn't help hating them. Madame said she liked to
+have him around, for he was more like some unobtrusive jinnee than a
+mere mortal. She declared that John Flint had what the negroes call a
+&quot;growing hand&quot;&mdash;he had only to stick a bit of green in the ground and
+it grew like Jonah's gourd.</p>
+
+<p>Since he had begun to hobble about, he had gradually come to be
+accepted by the town in general. They looked upon him as one who
+shared Father De Ranc&eacute;'s madness, a tramp who was a hunter of bugs. It
+explained his presence in the Parish House; I fancy it also explained
+to some why he had been a tramp!</p>
+
+<p>Folks got used to him, as one does to anything one sees daily. The
+pleasant conservative soft-voiced ladies who liked to call on Madame
+of an afternoon and gossip Christianly, and drink tea and eat Cl&eacute;lie's
+little cakes on our broad shady verandah, only glanced casually at the
+bent head and shoulders visible through the screened window across the
+garden. They said he was very interesting, of course, but painfully
+shy and bashful. As for him, he was as horribly afraid of them as they
+would <a name="Page_83"></a>have been of him, had they known. I could not always save
+myself from the sin of smiling at an ironic situation.</p>
+
+<p>Judge Mayne had at first eyed the man askance, watching him as his own
+cats might an interloping stray dog.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The fellow's not very prepossessing,&quot; he told me, of an evening when
+he had dined with us, &quot;but I've been on the bench long enough to be
+skeptical of any fixed good or bad type&mdash;I've found that the criminal
+type is any type that goes wrong; so I shouldn't go so far as to call
+this chap a bad egg. But&mdash;I hope you are reasonably sure of him,
+father?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Reasonably,&quot; said I, composedly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Laurence tells me Madame and Mary Virginia <i>like</i> the fellow. H'm!
+Well, I've acquired a little faith in the intuition of women&mdash;some
+women, understand, and some times. And mark you, I didn't say
+<i>judgment</i>. Let us hope that this is one of the times when faith in
+intuition will be justified.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Later, when he had had time to examine the work progressing under the
+flexible fingers of the silent workman, he withdrew with more respect.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose he's all right, if you think so, father. But I'd watch out
+for him, anyway,&quot; he advised.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is exactly what I intend to do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Rather he fell into your hands than mine. Better for him,&quot; said the
+judge, briefly. Then he launched into an intimate talk of Laurence,
+and in thus talking of the boy's future, forgot my helper.</p>
+
+<p>That was it, exactly. The man was so unobtrusive without in the least
+being furtive. Had so little to say; attended so strictly to his own
+business, and showed himself so utterly and almost inhumanly
+uninterested in <a name="Page_84"></a>anybody else's, that he kept in the background. He
+was there, and people knew it; they were, in a sense, interested in
+him, but not curious about him.</p>
+
+<p>One morning in early autumn&mdash;he had been with us then some eight or
+nine months&mdash;I went over to his rooms with a New York newspaper in my
+hand. It had news that set my heart to pounding sickeningly&mdash;news that
+at once simplified and yet complicated matters. I hesitated as to
+whether or not I should tell him, but decided that whatever effect
+that news might produce, I would deal with him openly, above board,
+and always with truth. He must act and judge for himself and with his
+eyes open. On my part there should be no concealment.</p>
+
+<p>The paper stated that the body of a man found floating in the East
+River had been positively identified by the police as that of Slippy
+McGee. That the noted crook had gotten back into New York through the
+cunning dragnet so carefully spread for him was another proof of his
+daring and dexterity. How he met the dark fate which set him adrift,
+battered and dreadful, in the East River, was another of those
+underworld crimes that remain unsolved. Cunning and dangerous,
+mysterious in his life, baffling all efforts to get at him, he was as
+evilly mysterious in his death. There was only one thing sure&mdash;that
+this dead wretch with the marks of violence upon him was Slippy McGee;
+and since his breath had ceased, the authorities could breathe easier.</p>
+
+<p>He read it deliberately; then re-read it, and sat and stared at the
+paper. A slow grim smile came to his lips, and he took his chin in his
+hand, musingly. The eyes narrowed, the face darkened, the jaw thrust
+itself forward.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_85"></a>Dead, huh?&quot; he grunted, and stared about him, with a slow, twisting
+movement of the head. &quot;Well&mdash;I might just as well be, as buried alive
+in a jay-dump at the tail-end of all creation!&quot; Once again the Powers
+of Darkness swooped down and wrestled with and for him; and knowing
+what I knew, sick at heart, I trembled for him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What am <i>I</i> doing here, anyhow?&quot; he snarled with his lips drawn back
+from his teeth. &quot;Piddling with bugs&mdash;<i>Me!</i> Patching up their dinky
+little wings and stretching out their dam' little legs and feelers&mdash;me
+being what I am, and they being what they are! Say, I've got to quit
+this, once for all I've got to quit it. I'm not a <i>man</i> any more. I'm
+a dead one, a he-granny cutting silo for lady-worms and drynursing
+their interesting little babies. My God! <i>Me!</i>&quot; And he threw his hands
+above his head with a gesture of rage and despair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hanging on here like a boob&mdash;no wonder they think I'm dead! If I
+could just make a getaway and pull off one more good job and land
+enough<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>&quot;You couldn't keep it, if you did land it&mdash;your sort can't. You know
+how it went before&mdash;the women and the sharks got it. There'd be always
+that same incentive to pull off just one more to keep you going&mdash;until
+you'd pulled yourself behind bars, and stayed there. And there's the
+drug-danger, too. If you escaped so far, it was because so far you had
+the strength to let drugs alone. But the drugs get you, sooner or
+later, do they not? Have you not told me over and over again that
+'nearly all dips are dopes'? That first the dope gets you&mdash;and then
+the law? No. You can't pull off anything that won't pull you into
+hell. We have gone over this thing often enough, haven't we?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_86"></a>No, we haven't. And I haven't had a chance to pull off
+anything&mdash;except leaves for bugs. <i>Me!</i> I want to get my hand in once
+more, I tell you! I want to pull off a stunt that'll make the whole
+bunch of bulls sit up and bellow for fair&mdash;and I can do it, easy as
+easy. Think I've croaked, do they? And they can all snooze on their
+peg-posts, now I'm a stiff? Well, by cripes, I just want half of a
+half of a chance, and I'll show 'em Slippy McGee's good and plenty
+alive!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come out into the garden, my son, and feel that you are good and
+plenty alive. Come out into the free air. Hold on tight, a little
+while longer!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laid my hand upon his shoulder compellingly, and although he glared
+at me, and ground his teeth, and lifted his lip, he came; unwillingly,
+swearing under his breath, he came. We tramped up and down the garden
+paths, up and down, and back again, his wooden peg making a round
+hole, like a hoofmark, in the earth. He stared down at it, spat
+savagely upon it, and swore horribly, but not too loudly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I want to feel like a live man!&quot; he gritted. &quot;A live man, not a
+one-legged mucker with a beard like a Dutch bomb-thrower's, puttering
+about a skypilot's backyard on the wrong side of everything!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stick it out a little longer, John Flint; hold fast!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hold fast to what?&quot; he demanded savagely. &quot;To a bug stuck on a
+needle?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. And to me who trusts you. To Madame who likes you. To the dear
+child who put bug and needle into your hand because she knew it was
+good work and trusted your hand to do it. And more than all, to that
+<a name="Page_87"></a>other Me you're finding&mdash;your own true self, John Flint! Hold fast,
+hold fast!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He stopped and stared at me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm believing him again!&quot; said he, grievously. &quot;I've been sat on
+while I was hot, and my number's marked on me, 23. I'm hoodooed,
+that's what!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Tramp, tramp, stump, stump, up and down, the two of us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All right, devil-dodger,&quot; said he wearily, after a long sullen
+silence. &quot;I'll stick it out a bit longer, to please you. You've been
+white&mdash;the lot of you. But look here&mdash;if I beat it some night ... with
+what I can find, why, I'm warning you: don't blame <i>me</i>&mdash;you're
+running your risks, and it'll be up to <i>you</i> to explain!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When you want to go, John Flint&mdash;when you really and truly want to
+go, why, take anything I have that you may fancy, my son. I give it
+you beforehand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't want anything given to me beforehand!&quot; he growled. &quot;I want to
+take what I want to take without anybody's leave!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well, then; take what you want to take, without anybody's leave!
+I shall be able to do without it, I dare say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He turned upon me furiously:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes, I guess you can! You'd do without eating and breathing too,
+I suppose, if you could manage it! You do without too blamed much
+right now, trying to beat yourself to being a saint! Of course I'd
+help myself and leave you to go without&mdash;you're enough to make a man
+ache to shoot some sense into you with a cannon! And for God's sake,
+<i>who</i> are you pinching and <a name="Page_88"></a>scraping and going without <i>for</i>? A bunch
+of hickey factory-shuckers that haven't got sense enough to talk
+American, and a lot of mill-hands with beans on 'em like bone buttons!
+They ain't worth it. While I'm in the humor, take it from me there
+ain't anybody worth anything anyhow!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Mr. Flint! What a shame and a sin!&quot; called another voice. &quot;Oh,
+Mr. Flint, I'm ashamed of you!&quot; There in the freedom of the Saturday
+morning sunlight stood Mary Virginia, her red Irish setter Kerry
+beside her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I came over,&quot; said she, &quot;to see how the baby-moths are getting on
+this morning, and to know if the last hairy gentleman I brought spins
+into a cocoon or buries himself in the ground. And then I heard Mr.
+Flint&mdash;and what he said is unkind, and untrue, and not a bit like him.
+Why, everybody's worth everything you can do for them&mdash;only some are
+worth more.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The wild wrath died out of his face. As usual, he softened at sight of
+her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, well, miss, I wasn't thinking of the like of you&mdash;and him,&quot; he
+jerked his head at me, half apologetically, &quot;nor young Mayne, nor the
+little Madame. You're different.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, no, we aren't, really,&quot; said Mary Virginia, puckering her brows
+adorably. &quot;We only <i>seem</i> to be different&mdash;but we are just exactly
+like everybody else, only <i>we</i> know it, and some people never can seem
+to find it out&mdash;and there's the difference! You see?&quot; That was the
+befuddled manner in which Mary Virginia very often explained things.
+If God was good to you, you got a little glimmer of what she meant and
+was trying <a name="Page_89"></a>to tell you. Mary Virginia often talked as the alchemists
+used to write&mdash;cryptically, abstrusely, as if to hide the golden truth
+from all but the initiate.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come and shake hands with Mr. Flint, Kerry,&quot; said she to the setter.
+&quot;I want you to help make him understand things it's high time he
+should know. Nobody can do that better than a good dog can.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Kerry looked a trifle doubtful, but having been told to do a certain
+thing, he obeyed, as a good dog does. Gravely he sat up and held out
+an obedient paw, which the man took mechanically. But meeting the
+clear hazel eyes, he dropped his hand upon the shining head with the
+gesture of one who desires to become friends. Accepting this, Kerry
+reached up a nose and nuzzled. Then he wagged his plumy tail.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There!&quot; said Mary Virginia, delightedly. &quot;Now, don't you see how
+horrid it was to talk the way you talked? Why, Kerry <i>likes</i> you, and
+Kerry is a sensible dog.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, miss,&quot; and he looked at Mary Virginia very much as the dog did,
+trustingly, but a little bewildered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aren't you sorry you said that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Y-e-s, seeing you seem to think it was wrong.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you'll know better from now on,&quot; said Mary Virginia,
+comfortingly. She looked at him searchingly for a minute, and he met
+her look without flinching. That had been the one hopeful sign, from
+the first&mdash;that he never refused to meet your glance, but gave you
+back one just as steady, if more suspicious.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Flint,&quot; said Mary Virginia, &quot;you've about made up your mind to
+stay on here with the Padre, haven't you? For a good long while, at
+any rate? <a name="Page_90"></a>You wouldn't like to leave the Padre, would you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He stiffened. One could see the struggle within him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, miss, I can't see but that I've just got to stay on&mdash;for
+awhile. Until he's tired of me and my ways, anyhow,&quot; he said gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia dismissed my tiredness with an airy wave of her hand.
+She smiled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you know,&quot; said she earnestly, &quot;I've had the funniest idea about
+you, from the very first time I saw you? Well, I have. I've somehow
+got the notion that you and the Padre <i>belong</i>. I think that's why you
+came. I think you belong right here, in that darling little house,
+studying butterflies and mounting them so beautifully they look alive.
+I think you're never going to go away anywhere any more, but that
+you're going to stay right here as long as you live!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His face turned an ugly white, and his mouth fell open. He looked at
+Mary Virginia almost with horror&mdash;Saul might have looked thus at the
+Witch of Endor when she summoned the shade of Samuel to tell him that
+the kingdom had been rent from his hand and his fate was upon him.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia nodded, thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I feel so sure of it,&quot; said she, confidently, &quot;that I'm going to ask
+you to do me a favor. I want you to take care of Kerry for me. You
+know I'm going away to school next week, and&mdash;he can't stay at home
+when I'm not there. My father's away frequently, and he couldn't take
+Kerry about with him, of course. And he couldn't be left with the
+servants&mdash;somehow he doesn't like the colored people. He always growls
+at them, and they're afraid of him. And my mother <a name="Page_91"></a>dislikes dogs
+intensely&mdash;she's afraid of them, except those horrible little
+toy-things that aren't <i>dogs</i> any more.&quot; The scorn of the real
+dog-lover was in her voice. &quot;Kerry's used to the Parish House. He
+loves the Padre, he'll soon love you, and he likes to play with
+Pitache, so Madame wouldn't mind his being here. And&mdash;I'd be more
+satisfied in my mind if he were with somebody that&mdash;that needed
+him&mdash;and would like him a whole lot&mdash;somebody like you,&quot; she finished.</p>
+
+<p>Now, Mary Virginia regarded Kerry even as the apple of her eye. The
+dog was a noble and beautiful specimen of his race, thoroughbred to
+the bone, a fine field dog, and the pride of the child's heart. He was
+what only that most delightful of dogs, a thoroughbred Irish setter,
+can be. John Flint gasped. Something perplexed, incredulous, painful,
+dazzled, crept into his face and looked out of his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Me</i>?&quot; he gasped. &quot;You mean you're willing to let me keep your dog
+for you? Yours?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I want to <i>give</i> him to you,&quot; said Mary Virginia bravely enough,
+though her voice trembled. &quot;I am perfectly sure you'll love
+him&mdash;better than any one else in the world would, except me myself. I
+don't know why I know that, but I do know it. If you wanted to go
+away, later on, why, you could turn him over to the Padre, because of
+course you wouldn't want to have a dog following you about everywhere.
+They're a lot of bother. But&mdash;somehow, I think you'll keep him. I
+think you'll love him. He&mdash;he's a darling dog.&quot; She was too proud to
+turn her head aside, but two large tears rolled down her cheeks, like
+dew upon a rose.</p>
+
+<p>John Flint stood stock-still, looking from her to the <a name="Page_92"></a>dog, and back
+again. Kerry, sensing that something was wrong with his little
+mistress, pawed her skirts and whined.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now I come to think of it,&quot; said John Flint slowly, &quot;I never had
+anything&mdash;anything alive, I mean&mdash;belong to me before.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia glanced up at him shrewdly, and smiled through her
+tears. Her smile makes a funny delicious red V of her lower lip, and
+is altogether adorable and seductive.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's just exactly why you thought nobody was worth anything,&quot; she
+said. Then she bent over her dog and kissed him between his beautiful
+hazel eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Kerry, dear,&quot; said she, &quot;Kerry, dear Kerry, you don't belong to me
+any more. I&mdash;I've got to go away to school&mdash;and you know you wouldn't
+be happy at home without me. You belong to Mr. Flint now, and I'm sure
+he needs you, and I know he'll love you almost as much as I do, and
+he'll be very, very good to you. So you're to stay with him,
+and&mdash;stand by him and be his dog, like you were mine. You'll remember,
+Kerry? Good-by, my dear, dear, darling dog!&quot; She kissed him again,
+patted him, and thrust his collar into his new owner's hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go&mdash;good-by, everybody!&quot; said she, in a muffled voice, and ran. I
+think she would have cried childishly in another moment; and she was
+trying hard to remember that she was growing up!</p>
+
+<p>John Flint stood staring after her, his hand on the dog's collar,
+holding him in. His face was still without a vestige of color, and his
+eyes glittered. Then his other hand crept out to touch the dog's
+head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_93"></a>It's wet&mdash;where she dropped tears on it! Parson ... she's given me
+her dog ... that she loves enough to cry over!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He's a very fine dog, and she has had him and loved him from his
+puppyhood,&quot; I reminded him. And I added, with a wily tongue: &quot;You can
+always turn him over to me, you know&mdash;if you decide to take to the
+road and wish to get rid of a troublesome companion. A dog is bad
+company for a man who wishes to dodge the police.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But he only shook his head. His eyes were troubled, and his forehead
+wrinkled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Parson,&quot; said he, hesitatingly, &quot;did you ever feel like you'd been
+caught by&mdash;by Something reaching down out of the dark? Something big
+that you couldn't see and couldn't ever hope to get away from, because
+it's always on the job? Ain't it a hell of a feeling?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; I agreed. &quot;I've felt&mdash;caught by that Something, too. And it is
+at first a terrifying sensation. Until&mdash;you learn to be glad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're caught&mdash;and you know under your hat you're never going to be
+able to get away any more. It'll hold you till you die!&quot; said he, a
+little wildly. &quot;My God! I'm caught! First It bit off a leg on me, so I
+couldn't run. Then It wished you and your bugs on me. And now&mdash;Yes,
+sir; I'm done for. That kid got my goat this morning. My God, who'd
+believe it? But it's true: I'm done for. She gave me her dog and she
+got my goat!&quot;</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Page_94"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_VI"></a><hr />
+<br />
+<h2>CHAPTER VI<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>&quot;THY SERVANT WILL GO AND FIGHT WITH THIS PHILISTINE&quot;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 20em;">1 Sam. 17: 32.</span></h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>Mary Virginia had gone, weeping and bewept, and the spirit of youth
+seemed to have gone with her, leaving the Parish House darkened
+because of its absence. A sorrowful quiet brooded over the garden that
+no longer echoed a caroling voice. Kerry, seeking vainly for the
+little mistress, would come whining back to John Flint, and look up
+mutely into his face; and finding no promise there, lie down,
+whimpering, at his feet. The man seemed as desolate as the dog,
+because of the child's departure.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When I come back,&quot; Mary Virginia said to him at parting, &quot;I expect
+you'll know more about moths and butterflies than anybody else in the
+world does. You're that sort. I'd love to be here, watching you grow
+up into it, but I've got to go away and grow up into something myself.
+I'm very glad you came here, Mr. Flint. You've helped me, lots.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Me?&quot; with husky astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You, of course,&quot; said the child, serenely. &quot;Because you are such a
+good man, Mr. Flint, and so patient, and you stick at what you try to
+do until you do it better than anybody else does. Often and often when
+I've been trying to do sums&mdash;I'm frightfully stupid about
+<a name="Page_95"></a>arithmetic&mdash;and I wanted to give up, I'd think of you over here just
+trying and trying and keeping right on trying, until you'd gotten what
+you wanted to know; and then <i>I'd</i> keep on trying, too. The funny part
+is, that I like you for making me do it. You see, I'm a very, very bad
+person in some things, Mr. Flint,&quot; she said frankly. &quot;Why, when my
+mother has to tell me to look at so and so, and see how well they
+behave, or how nicely they can do certain things, and how good they
+are, and why don't I profit by such a good example, a perfectly horrid
+raging sort of feeling comes all over me, and I want to be as naughty
+as naughty! I feel like doing and saying things I'd never want to do
+or say, if it wasn't for that good example. I just can't seem to
+<i>bear</i> being good-exampled. But you're different, thank goodness. Most
+really good people are different, I guess.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her, dumbly&mdash;he had no words at his command. She missed
+the irony and the tragedy, but she sensed the depths of feeling under
+that mute exterior.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm glad you're sorry I'm going away,&quot; said she, with the directness
+that was so engaging. &quot;I perfectly love people to feel sorry to part
+with me. I hope and <i>hope</i> they'll keep on being sorry&mdash;because
+they'll be that much gladder when I come back. I don't believe there's
+anything quite so wonderful and beautiful as having other folks like
+you, except it's liking other folks yourself!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I never had to be bothered about it, either way,&quot; said he dryly. His
+face twitched.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Maybe that's because you never stayed still long enough in any one
+place to catch hold,&quot; said she, and laughed at him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_96"></a>Good-by, Mr. Flint! I'll never see a butterfly or a moth, the whole
+time I'm gone, without making believe he's a messenger from Madame,
+and the Padre, and you, and Kerry. I'll play he's a carrier-butterfly,
+with a message tucked away under his wings: 'Howdy, Mary Virginia!
+I've just come from flying over the flowers in the Parish House
+garden; and the folks are all well, and busy, and happy. But they
+haven't forgotten you for a single solitary minute, and they miss you
+and wish you'd come back; and they send you their dear, dear love&mdash;and
+I'll carry your dear, dear love back to them!' So if you see a big,
+big, beautiful, strange fellow come sailing by your window some
+morning, why, that's mine, Mr. Flint! Remember!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then she was gone, and he had his first taste of unselfish human
+sorrow. Heretofore his worries had been purely personal and
+self-centered: this was different, and innocent. It shocked and
+terrified him to find out how intensely he could miss another being,
+and that being a mere child. He wasn't used to that sort of pain, and
+it bewildered him.</p>
+
+<p>Eustis himself had wanted the little girl sent to a preparatory school
+which would fit her for one of the women's colleges. He had visions of
+the forward sweep of women&mdash;visions which his wife didn't share. Her
+daughter should go to the Church School at which she herself had been
+educated, an exclusive and expensive institution where the daughters
+of the wealthy were given a finishing hand-polish with ecclesiastical
+emery, as a sort of social hall-mark. Mrs. Eustis had a horror of what
+she called, in quotation-marks, the modern non-religious method of
+educating young ladies.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_97"></a>The Eustis house was closed, and left in charge of the negro
+caretakers, for Mrs. Eustis couldn't stand the loneliness of the place
+after the child's departure, and Eustis himself found his presence
+more and more necessary at the great plantation he was building up.
+Mrs. Eustis left Appleboro, and my mother missed her. There was a vein
+of pure gold underlying the placid little woman's character, which the
+stronger woman divined and built upon.</p>
+
+<p>Laurence, too, entered college that Fall. I had coached him, in such
+hours as I could spare. He was conscientious enough, though his Greek
+was not the Greek of Homer and he vexed the soul of my mother with a
+French she said was spoke</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>full fair and fetisly<br /></span>
+<span>After ye schole of Strattford atte Bowe.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noin">But if he hadn't Mary Virginia's sensitiveness to all beauty, nor her
+playful fancy and vivid imagination, he was clear-brained and
+clean-thinking, with that large perspective and that practical
+optimism which seem to me so essentially American. He saw without
+confusion both the thing as it was and as it could become. With only
+enough humor to save him, he had a sternness more of the puritan than
+of the cavalier blood from which he had sprung. Above all was he
+informed with that new spirit brooding upon the face of all the
+waters, a spirit that for want of a better name one might call the
+Race Conscience.</p>
+
+<p>It was this last aspect of the boy's character that amazed and
+interested John Flint, who was himself too shrewd not to divine the
+sincerity, even the <a name="Page_98"></a>commonsense, of what Laurence called &quot;applied
+Christianity.&quot; Altruism&mdash;and Slippy McGee! He listened with a puzzled
+wonder.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wish,&quot; he grumbled to Laurence, &quot;that you'd come off the roof. It
+gives a fellow stiff neck rubbering up at you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'd rather stay up&mdash;the air's better, and you can see so much
+farther,&quot; said Laurence. And he added hospitably: &quot;There's plenty of
+room&mdash;come on up, yourself!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With one leg?&quot; sarcastically.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And two eyes,&quot; said the boy. &quot;Come on up&mdash;the sky's fine!&quot; And he
+laughed into the half-suspicious face.</p>
+
+<p>The gimlet eyes bored into him, and the frank and truthful eyes met
+them unabashed, unwavering, with a something in them which made the
+other blink.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When I got pitched into this burg,&quot; said the lame man thoughtfully,
+&quot;I landed all there&mdash;except a leg, but I never carried my brains in my
+legs. I hadn't got any bats in my belfry. But I'm getting 'em. I'm
+getting 'em so bad that when I hear some folks talk bughouse these
+days it pretty near listens like good sense to me. Why, kid, I'm nut
+enough now to dangle over the edge of believing you know what you're
+talking about!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fall over: I <i>know</i> I know what I'm talking about,&quot; said Laurence
+magnificently.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm double-crossed,&quot; said John Flint, soberly and sadly, &quot;Anyway I
+look at it<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span> he swept the horizon with a wide-flung gesture, &quot;it's
+bugs for mine. I began by grannying bugs for <i>him</i>,&quot; he tossed his
+head <a name="Page_99"></a>bull-like in my direction, &quot;and I stand around swallowing hot
+air from <i>you</i><span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span> He glared at Laurence, &quot;and what's the result? Why,
+that I've got bugs in the bean, that's what! Think of me licking an
+all-day sucker a kid dopes out! <i>Me!</i> Oh, he&mdash;venly saints!&quot; he
+gulped. &quot;Ain't I the nut, though?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, supposing?&quot; said Laurence, laughing. &quot;Buck up! You <i>could</i> be a
+bad egg instead of a good nut, you know!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>John Flint's eyes slitted, then widened; his mouth followed suit
+almost automatically. He looked at me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can you beat it?&quot; he wondered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Beating a bad egg would be a waste of time I wouldn't be guilty of,&quot;
+said I amusedly. &quot;But I hope to live to see the good nut grow into a
+fine tree.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do your damnedest&mdash;excuse me, parson!&quot; said he contritely. &quot;I mean,
+don't stop for a little thing like <i>me</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Laurence leaned forward. &quot;Man,&quot; said he, impressively, &quot;he won't have
+to! You'll be marking time and keeping step with him yourself before
+you know it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Huh!&quot; said John Flint, non-committally.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<p>Laurence came to spend his last evening at home with us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Padre,&quot; said he, when we walked up and down in the garden, after an
+old custom, after dinner, &quot;do you really know what I mean to do when
+I've finished college and start out on my own hook?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Put 'Mayne &amp; Son' on the judge's shingle and walk <a name="Page_100"></a>around the block
+forty times a day to look at it!&quot; said I, promptly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course,&quot; said he. &quot;That first. But a legal shingle can be turned
+into as handy a weapon as one could wish for, Padre, and <i>I'm</i> going
+to take that shingle and spank this sleepy-headed old town wide awake
+with it!&quot; He spoke with the conviction of youth, so sure of itself
+that there is no room for doubt. There was in him, too, a hint of
+latent power which was impressive. One did not laugh at Laurence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's my town,&quot; with his chin out. &quot;It could be a mighty good town.
+It's going to become one. I expect to live all my life right here,
+among my own people, and they've got to make it worth my while. I
+don't propose to cut myself down to fit any little hole: I intend to
+make that hole big enough to fit my possible measure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;May an old friend wish more power to your shovel?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It'll be a steam shovel!&quot; said he, gaily. Then his face clouded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Padre! I'm sick of the way things are run in Appleboro! I've talked
+with other boys and they're sick of it, too. You know why they want to
+get away? Because they think they haven't got even a fighting chance
+here. Because towns like this are like billion-ton old wagons sunk so
+deep in mudruts that nothing but dynamite can blow them out&mdash;and they
+are not dealers in dynamite. If they want to do anything that even
+<i>looks</i> new they've got to fight the stand-patters to a finish, and
+they're blockaded by a lot of reactionaries that don't know the
+earth's moving. There are a lot of folks in the South, Padre, who've
+<a name="Page_101"></a>been dead since the civil war, and haven't found it out themselves,
+and won't take live people's word for it. Well, now, I mean to <i>do</i>
+things. I mean to do them right here. And I certainly shan't allow
+myself to be blockaded by anybody, living or dead. You've got to fight
+the devil with fire;&mdash;I'm going to blockade those blockaders, and see
+that the dead ones are decently buried.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have tackled a big job, my son.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I like big jobs, Padre. They're worth while. Maybe I'll be able to
+keep some of the boys home&mdash;the town needs them. Maybe I can keep some
+of those poor kids out of the mills, too. Oh, yes, I expect a right
+lively time!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was silent. I knew how supinely Appleboro lay in the hollow of a
+hard hand. I had learned, too, how such a hand can close into a
+strangling fist.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course I can't clean up the whole state, and I can't reorganize
+the world,&quot; said the boy sturdily. &quot;I'm not such a fool as to try. But
+I can do my level best to disinfect my own particular corner, and make
+it fit for men and safe for women and kids to live and breathe in.
+Padre, for years there hasn't been a rotten deal nor a brazen steal in
+this state that the man who practically owns and runs this town hadn't
+a finger in, knuckle-deep. <i>He's got to go</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Goliath doesn't always fall at the hand of the son of Jesse, my
+little David,&quot; said I quietly. I also had dreamed dreams and seen
+visions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's about what my father says,&quot; said the boy. &quot;He wants me to be a
+successful man, a 'safe and sane citizen.' He thinks a gentleman
+should practise his <a name="Page_102"></a>profession decently and in order. But to believe,
+as I do, that you can wipe out corruption, that you can tackle poverty
+the same as you would any other disease, and prevent it, as smallpox
+and yellow fever are prevented, he looks upon as madness and a waste
+of time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He has had sorrow and experience, and he is kind and charitable, as
+well as wise,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's exactly where the hardest part comes in for us younger
+fellows. It isn't bucking the bad that makes the fight so hard: it's
+bucking the wrong-idea'd good. Padre, one good man on the wrong side
+is a stumbling-block for the stoutest-hearted reformer ever born. It's
+men like my father, who regard the smooth scoundrel that runs this
+town as a necessary evil, and tolerate him because they wouldn't soil
+their hands dealing with him, that do the greatest injury to the
+state. I tell you what, it wouldn't be so hard to get rid of the
+devil, if it weren't for the angels!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And how,&quot; said I, ironically, &quot;do you propose to set about smoothing
+the rough and making straight the crooked, my son?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Flatten 'em out,&quot; said he, briefly. &quot;Politics. First off I'm going to
+practice general law; then I'll be solicitor-general for this county.
+After that, I shall be attorney-general for the state. Later I may be
+governor, unless I become senator instead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; said I, cautiously, &quot;you'll be so toned down by that time that
+you might make a very good governor indeed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I couldn't very well make a worse one than some we've already had,&quot;
+said the boy sternly. There was something of the accusing dignity of a
+young archangel <a name="Page_103"></a>about him. I caught a glimpse of that newer America
+growing up about us&mdash;an America gone back to the older, truer,
+unbuyable ideals of our fathers.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I guess you'd better tell me good-by now, Padre,&quot; said he, presently.
+&quot;And bless me, please&mdash;it's a pretty custom. I won't see you again,
+for you'll be saying mass when I'm running for my train. I'll go tell
+John Flint good-by, too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He went over and rapped on the window, through which we could see
+Flint sitting at his table, his head bent over a book.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-by, John Flint&quot; said Laurence. &quot;Good luck to you and your leggy
+friends! When I come back you'll probably have mandibles, and you'll
+greet me with a nip, in pure Bugese.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-by,&quot; said John Flint, lifting his head. Then, with unwonted
+feeling: &quot;I'm horrible sorry you've got to go&mdash;I'll miss you something
+fierce. You've been very kind&mdash;thank you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mind you take care of the Padre,&quot; said the boy, waiving the thanks
+with a smile. &quot;Don't let him work too hard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who, me?&quot; Flint's voice took the knife-edge of sarcasm. &quot;Oh, sure! It
+don't need but one leg to keep up with a gent trying to run a
+thirty-six hour a day job with one-man power, does it? Son, take it
+from me, when a man's got the real, simonpure, no-imitation,
+soulsaving bug in his bean, a forty-legged cyclone couldn't keep up
+with him, much less a guy with one pedal short.&quot; He glared at me
+indignantly. From the first it has been one of his vainest notions
+that I am perversely working myself to death.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_104"></a>There's nothing to be done with the Padre, then, I'm afraid,&quot; said
+Laurence, chuckling.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I <i>might</i> soak him in the cyanide jar for ten minutes a day without
+killing him,&quot; mused Mr. Flint. &quot;But,&quot; disgustedly, &quot;what'd be the use?
+When he came to and found he'd been that long idle he'd die of
+heart-failure.&quot; He pushed aside the window screen, and the two shook
+hands heartily. Then the boy, wringing my hand again, walked away
+without another word. I felt a bit desolate&mdash;there are times when I
+could envy women their solace of tears&mdash;as if he figured in his
+handsome young person that newer, stronger, more conquering generation
+which was marching ahead, leaving me, older and slower and sadder,
+far, far behind it. Ah! To be once more that young, that strong, that
+hopeful!</p>
+
+<p>When I began to reflect upon what seemed visionary plans, I was
+saddened, foreseeing inevitable disillusion, perhaps even stark
+failure, ahead of him. That he would stubbornly try to carry out those
+plans I did not doubt: I knew my Laurence. He might accomplish a
+certain amount of good. But to overthrow Inglesby, the Boss of
+Appleboro&mdash;for he meant no less than this&mdash;why, that was a horse of
+another color!</p>
+
+<p>For Inglesby was our one great financial figure. He owned our bank;
+his was the controlling interest in the mills; he owned the factory
+outright; he was president of half a dozen corporations and chairman
+and director of many more.</p>
+
+<p>Did we have a celebration? There he was, in the center of the stage,
+with a jovial loud laugh and an ultra-benevolent smile to hide the
+menace of his little cold piglike eyes, and the meaning of his heavy
+jaw. <a name="Page_105"></a>Will the statement that he had a pew in every church in town
+explain him? He had one in mine, too; paid for, which many of them are
+not.</p>
+
+<p>At the large bare office in the mill he was easy of access, and would
+listen to what you had to say with flattering attention and sympathy.
+But it was in his private office over the bank that this large spider
+really spun the web of our politics. Mills, banks, churches, schools,
+lights, railroads, stores, heating, water-power&mdash;all these juicy flies
+apparently walked into his parlor of their own accord. He had made and
+unmade governors; he had sent his men to Washington. How? We
+suspected; but held our peace. If our Bible had bidden us Americans to
+suffer rascals gladly&mdash;instead of mere fools&mdash;we couldn't be more
+obedient to a mandate.</p>
+
+<p>Men like James Eustis and Judge Mayne despised Inglesby&mdash;but gave him
+a wide berth. They wouldn't be enmeshed. It was known that Major
+Appleby Cartwright had blackballed him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can stand a man, suh, that likes to get along in this world&mdash;within
+proper bounds. But Inglesby hasn't got any proper bounds. He's a&mdash;a
+cross between a Republican mule and a party-bolting boa-constrictor,
+an' a hybrid like that hasn't got any place in nature. On top of that
+he drinks ten cents a bottle grape juice and smokes five cent cigars.
+And he's got the brazen and offensive effrontery to offer 'em to
+self-respectin' men!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And here was Laurence, our little Laurence, training himself to
+overthrow this overgrown Goliath! Well, if the boy could not bring
+this Philistine to the earth, he might yet manage to give him a few
+manful clumps on <a name="Page_106"></a>the head; perhaps enough to insure a chronic
+headache.</p>
+
+<p>So thinking, I went in and watched John Flint finish a mounting-block
+from a plan in the book open upon the table, adding, however, certain
+improvements of his own.</p>
+
+<p>He laid the block aside and then took a spray of fresh leaves and fed
+it to a horned and hungry caterpillar prowling on a bit of bare stem
+at the bottom of his cage.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Get up there on those leaves, you horn-tailed horror! Move on,&mdash;you
+lepidopterous son of a wigglejoint, or I'll pull your real name on you
+in a minute and paralyze you stiff!&quot; He drew a long breath. &quot;You know
+how I'm beginning to remember their real names? I swear 'em half an
+hour a day. Next time you have trouble with those hickeys of yours,
+try swearing caterpillar at 'em, and you'll find out.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I laughed, and he grinned with me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say,&quot; said he, abruptly. &quot;I've been listening with both my ears to
+what that boy was talking to you about awhile ago. Thinks he can buck
+the Boss, does he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps he may,&quot; I admitted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nifty old bird, the Big Un,&quot; said Mr. Flint, squinting his eyes.
+&quot;And,&quot; he went on, reflectively, &quot;he's sure got your number in this
+burg. Take you by and large, you lawabiders are a real funny sort,
+ain't you? Now, there's Inglesby, handing out the little kids their
+diplomas come school-closing, and telling 'em to be real good, and
+maybe when they grow up he'll have a job in pickle for 'em&mdash;work like
+a mule in a treadmill, twelve hours, no unions, <i>and</i> the coroner to
+sit on the remains, free and gratis, for to ease the widow's mind.
+<a name="Page_107"></a>Inglesby's got seats in all your churches&mdash;first-aid to the parson's
+pants-pockets.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Inglesby's right there on the platform at all your spiel-fests,
+smirking at the women and telling 'em not to bother their nice little
+noddles about anything but holding down their natural jobs of being
+perfect ladies&mdash;ain't he and other gents just like him always right
+there holding down <i>their</i> natural jobs of protecting 'em and being
+influenced to do what's right? Sure he is! And nobody howls for the
+hook! You let him be It&mdash;him with a fist in the state's jeans up to
+the armpit!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look here, that Mayne kid's dead right. It's you good guys that are
+to blame. We little bad ones see you kowtowing to the big worse ones,
+and we get to thinking <i>we</i> can come in under the wires easy winners,
+too. However, let me tell you something while I'm in the humor to gas.
+It's this: <i>sooner or later everybody gets theirs</i>. My sort and
+Inglesby's sort, we all get ours. Duck and twist and turn and sidestep
+all we want, at the end it's right there waiting for us, with a loaded
+billy up its sleeve: <i>Ours!</i> Some fine day when we're looking the
+other way, thinking we've even got it on the annual turnout of the
+cops up Broadway for class, why, Ours gets up easy on its hind legs,
+spits on its mitt, and hands us exactly what's coming to us, biff! and
+we wake up sitting on our necks in the middle of day-before-yesterday
+and year-after-next. I got mine. If I was you I wouldn't be too
+cock-sure that kid don't give Inglesby his, some of these days, good
+and plenty.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Maybe so,&quot; said I, cautiously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gee, that'd be fly-time for all the good guys in this tank, wouldn't
+it?&quot; he grinned. &quot;Sure! I can see <a name="Page_108"></a>'em now, patting the bump on their
+beams where they think the brain-patch sprouts, and handing out hunks
+of con to the Lord about his being right on his old-time job of
+swatting sinners in their dinners. Yet they'll all of them go right on
+leading themselves up to be trimmed by the very next holdup that's got
+the nerve to do them! Friend, believe a goat when he tells you that
+you stillwater-and-greenpasture sheep are some bag of nuts!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you,&quot; said I, with due meekness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Keep the change,&quot; said he, unabashed. &quot;I wasn't meaning <i>you</i>,
+anyhow. I've got more manners, I hope, than to do such. And, parson,
+you don't need to have cold feet about young Mayne. If you ask me,
+<i>I'd</i> bet the limit on him. Why, I think so much of that boy that if
+he was a rooster I'd put the gaffs and my last dollar on him, and back
+him to whip everything in feathers clean up to baldheaded eagles.
+Believe me, he'd do it!&quot; he finished, with enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>Bewildered by a mental picture of a Laurence with ruffled
+neck-feathers and steel spurs, I hurriedly changed the subject to the
+saner and safer one of our own immediate affairs.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yep, ten orders in to-day's mail and seven in yesterday's; and good
+orders for the wasp-moths, single or together, and that house in New
+York wants steady supplies from now on. And here's a fancy shop wants
+a dozen trays, like that last one I finished. We're looking up,&quot; said
+he, complacently.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<p>The winter that followed was a trying one, and the Guest Rooms were
+never empty. I like to record that <a name="Page_109"></a>John Flint put his shoulder to the
+wheel and became Madame's right hand man and Westmoreland's faithful
+ally. His wooden leg made astonishingly little noise, and his entrance
+into a room never startled the most nervous patient. He went on
+innumerable errands, and he performed countless small services that in
+themselves do not seem to amount to much, but swell into a great
+total.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He may have only one leg,&quot; said Westmoreland, when Flint had helped
+him all of one night with a desperately ill millworker, &quot;but he
+certainly has two hands; he knows how to use his ears and eyes, he's
+dumb until he ought to speak, and then he speaks to the point. Father,
+Something knew what It was about when you and I were allowed to drag
+that tramp out of the teeth of death! Yes, yes, I'm certainly glad and
+grateful we were allowed to save John Flint.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>From that time forth the big man gave his ex-patient a liking which
+grew with his years. Absent-minded as he was, he could thereafter
+always remember to find such things as he thought might interest him.
+Appleboro laughs yet about the day Dr. Westmoreland got some small
+butterflies for his friend, and having nowhere else to put them,
+clapped them under his hat, and then forgot all about them; until he
+lifted his hat to some ladies and the swarm of insects flew out.</p>
+
+<p>Without being asked, and as unostentatiously as he did everything
+else, Flint had taken his place in church every Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because it'd sort of give you a black eye if I didn't,&quot; he explained.
+&quot;Skypiloting's your lay, father, and I'll see you through with it as
+far as I can. <a name="Page_110"></a>I couldn't fall down on any man that's been as white to
+me as you've been.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I must confess that his conception of religion was very, very hazy,
+and his notions of church services and customs barbarous. For
+instance, he disliked the statues of the saints exceedingly. They
+worried him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can't seem to stand a man dolled-up in skirts,&quot; he confessed. &quot;Any
+more than I'd be stuck on a dame with whiskers. It don't somehow look
+right to me. Put the he-saints in pants instead of those brown kimonas
+with gold crocheting and a rope sash, and I'd have more respect for
+'em.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When I tried to give him some necessary instructions, and to penetrate
+the heathen darkness in which he seemed immersed, he listened with the
+utmost respect and attention&mdash;and wrinkled his brow painfully, and
+blinked, and licked his lips.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's all right, father, that's all right. If you say it's so, I
+guess it's so. I'll take your word for it. If it's good enough for you
+and Madame, there's got to be something in it, and it's sure good
+enough for me. Look here: the little girl and young Mayne have got a
+different brand from yours, haven't they?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Neither of them is of the Old Faith.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Huh! Well, I tell you what you do: you just switch me in somewhere
+between you and Madame and him and her. That'll give me a line on all
+of you&mdash;and maybe it'll give all of you a line on me. See?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I saw, but as through a glass darkly. So the matter rested. And I must
+in all humility set down that I have never yet been able to get at
+what John Flint really believes he believes.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Page_111"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_VII"></a><hr />
+<br />
+<h2>CHAPTER VII<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE GOING OF SLIPPY MCGEE</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>Little by little, so quietly as to be unnoticeable in the working, but
+with, cumulative effect; built under the surface like those coral
+reefs that finally rear themselves into palm-crowned peaks upon the
+Pacific, during the years' slow upward march had John Flint grown.</p>
+
+<p>Nature had never meant him for a criminal. The evil conditions that
+society saddles upon the slums had set him wrong because they gave him
+no opportunity to be right. Now even among butterflies there are
+occasional aberrants, but they are the rare exceptions. Give the grub
+his natural food, his chance to grow, protect him from parasites in
+the meanwhile, and he will presently become the normal butterfly. That
+is the Law.</p>
+
+<p>At a crucial phase in this man's career his true talisman&mdash;a gray
+moth&mdash;had been put into his hand; and thereby he came into his
+rightful heritage.</p>
+
+<p>I count as one of my red-letter days that on which I found him
+brooding over the little gray-brown chrysalis of the Papilio
+Cresphontes, that splendid swallowtail whose hideous caterpillar we in
+the South call the orange puppy, from the fancied resemblance the hump
+upon it bears to the head of a young dog. Its chrysalis looks so much
+like a bit of snapped-off twig that the casual eye <a name="Page_112"></a>misses it,
+fastened to a stem by a girdle of silk or lying among fallen leaves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I watched it ooze out of an egg like a speck of dirty water. I
+watched it eat a thousand times its own weight and grow into the
+nastiest wretch that crawls. I saw it stop eating and spit its stomach
+out and shrivel up, and crawl out of its skin and pull its own head
+off, and bury itself alive in a coffin made out of itself, a coffin
+like a bit of rotting wood. Look at it! There it lies, stone-dead for
+all a man's eyes can see!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet this thing will answer a call no ears can hear and crawl out
+of its coffin something entirely different from what went into it!
+I've seen it with my own eyes, but how it's done I don't know; no, nor
+no man since the world was made knows, or could do it himself. What
+does it? What gives that call these dead-alive things hear in the
+dark? What makes a crawling ugliness get itself ready for what's
+coming&mdash;how does it <i>know</i> there's ever going to be a call, or that
+it'll hear it without fail?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Some of us call it Nature: but others call it God,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Search me! I don't know what It is&mdash;but I do know there's got to be
+Something behind these things, anyhow,&quot; said he, and turned the
+chrysalis over and over in his palm, staring down at it thoughtfully.
+He had used Westmoreland's words, once applied to his own case! &quot;Oh,
+yes, there's Something, because I've watched It working with grubs,
+getting 'em ready for five-inch moths and hand-colored butterflies,
+Something that's got the time and the patience and the know-how <a name="Page_113"></a>to
+build wings as well as worlds.&quot; He laid the little inanimate mystery
+aside.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's come to the point, parson, where I've just <i>got</i> to know more. I
+know enough now to know how much I don't know, because I've got a peep
+at how much there is to know. There's a God's plenty to find out, and
+it's up to me to go out and find it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Some of the best and brightest among men have given all the years of
+their lives to just that finding out and knowing more&mdash;and they found
+their years too few and short for the work. But such help as you need
+and we can get, you shall have, please God!&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm ready for the word to start, chief.&quot; And heaven knows he was.</p>
+
+<p>His passion transformed him; he forgot himself; took his mind off
+himself and his affairs and grievances and hatreds and fears; and thus
+had chance to expand and to grow, in those following years of
+patientest effort, of untiring research and observance, of lovingest
+study. Days in the open woods and fields burned his pale skin a good
+mahogany, and stamped upon it the windswept freshness of out of doors.
+The hunted and suspicious glance faded from his eyes, which took on
+more and more the student's absorbed intensity; the mouth lost its
+sinister straightness; and while it retained an uncompromising
+firmness, it learned how to smile. He was a familiar figure, tramping
+from dawn to dusk with Kerry at his heels, for the dog obeyed Mary
+Virginia's command literally. He looked upon John Flint as his special
+charge, and made himself his fourlegged red shadow. I am sure that if
+we had seen Kerry appear in <a name="Page_114"></a>the streets of Appleboro without John
+Flint, we would have incontinently stopped work, sounded a general
+alarm, and gone to hunt for his body. And to have seen John Flint
+without Kerry would have called forth condolences.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes&mdash;when I had time&mdash;I went with him moth-hunting at night; and
+never, never could either of us forget those enchanted hours under the
+stars!</p>
+
+<p>We moved in a quiet fresh and dewy, with the night wind upon us like a
+benediction. Sometimes we skirted a cypress swamp and saw the shallow
+black water with blacker trees reflected upon its bosom, and heard the
+frogs' canorous quarrelings, and the stealthy rustlings of creatures
+of the dark. We crossed dreaming fields, and smelt leaves and grasses
+and sleeping flowers. We saw the heart of the wood bared to the magic
+of the moon, which revealed a hidden and haunting beauty of places
+commonplace enough by day; as if the secret souls of things showed
+themselves only in the holy dark.</p>
+
+<p>For the world into which we stepped for a space was not our world, but
+the fairy world of the Little People, the world of the Children of the
+Moon. And oh, the moths! Now it was a tiger, with his body banded with
+yellow and his white opaque delicate wings spotted with black; now the
+great green silken Luna with long curved tails bordered with lilac or
+gold, and vest of ermine; now some quivering Catocala, with afterwings
+spread to show orange and black and crimson; now the golden-brown Io,
+with one great black velvet spot; and now some rarer, shyer fellow
+over which we gloated.</p>
+
+<p>How they flashed and fluttered about the lantern, or circled about the
+trees upon which the feast had been <a name="Page_115"></a>spread! The big yellow-banded
+sphinx whirred hither and thither on his owl-like wings, his large
+eyes glowing like rubies, hung quivering above some flower for a
+moment, and then was off again as swift as thought. The light drew the
+great Regalis, all burnished tawny brown, striped and spotted with raw
+gold; and the Cynthia, banded with lilac, her heavy body tufted with
+white. The darkness in which they moved, the light which, for a moment
+revealed them, seemed to make their colors <i>alive</i>; for they show no
+such glow and glory in the common day; they pale when the moon pales,
+and when the sun is up they are merely moths; they are no longer the
+fantastic, glittering, gorgeous, throbbing Children of the Dark.</p>
+
+<p>Home we would go, at an hour when the morning star blazed like a
+lighted torch, and the pearl-gray sky was flushing with pink. No haul
+he had ever made could have given him such joy as the treasures
+brought home in dawns like these, so free of evil that his heart was
+washed in the night dew and swept by the night wind.</p>
+
+<p>My mother, after her pleasant, housewifely fashion, baked a big iced
+cake for him on the day he replaced his clumsy wooden peg with the
+life-like artificial limb he himself had earned and paid for. I had
+wished more than once to hasten this desirable day; but prudently
+restrained myself, thinking it best for him to work forward unaided.
+It had taken months of patient work, of frugality, and planning, and
+counting, and saving, to cover a sum which, once on a time, he might
+have gotten in an hour's evil effort. And it represented no small
+achievement and marked no small advance, so that it <a name="Page_116"></a>was really the
+feast day we made of it. That limb restored him to a dignity he seemed
+to have abdicated. It hid his obvious misfortune&mdash;you could not at
+first glance tell that he was a cripple, a something of which he had
+been morbidly conscious and savagely resentful. He would never again
+be able to run, or even to walk rapidly for any length of time,
+although he covered the ground at a good and steady gait; and as he
+grew more and more accustomed to the limb there was only a slight limp
+to distinguish him. The use of the stick he thought best to carry
+became perfunctory. I have seen Kerry carrying that stick when his
+master had forgotten all about it.</p>
+
+<p>Meeting him now upon the streets, plainly but really well-dressed,
+scrupulously brushed, his linen immaculate, and with his trimmed red
+beard, his eyeglasses, and his soft hat, he conveyed the impression of
+being a professional man&mdash;say a pleasantly homely and scholarly
+college professor. There was a fixed sentiment in Appleboro that I
+knew very much more about Mr. Flint's past than I would tell&mdash;which
+was perfectly true, and went undenied by me; that he had seen better
+days; that he had been the black sheep of a good family, gotten into a
+scrape of some sort, and had then taken to traveling a rough road into
+a far country, eating husks with the swine, like many another
+prodigal; and that aware of this I had kept him with me until he found
+himself again.</p>
+
+<p>So when folks met him and Kerry they smiled and spoke, for we are
+friendly people and send no man to Coventry without great cause. And
+there wasn't a <a name="Page_117"></a>child, black or white, who didn't know and like the
+man with the butterfly net.</p>
+
+<p>The country people for miles around knew and loved him, too; for he
+walked up and down the earth and went to and fro in it, full of
+curious and valuable knowledge shared freely as the need arose. He
+would glance at your flower-garden, for instance, and tell you what
+insect visitors your flowers had, and what you should do to check
+their ravages. He'd walk about your out-buildings and commend
+white-wash, and talk about insecticides; and you'd learn that bees are
+partial to blue, but flies are not; and that mosquitoes seem to
+dislike certain shades of yellow. And then he'd leave you to digest
+it.</p>
+
+<p>He was a quiet evangelist, a forerunner of that Grand Army which will
+some day arise, not to murder and maim men, but to conquer man's
+deadliest foe and greatest economic menace&mdash;the injurious insect.</p>
+
+<p>It was he who spread the tidings of Corn and Poultry and Live Stock
+Clubs, stopping by many a lonely farm to whisper a word in the ears of
+discouraged boys, or to drop a hint to unenlightened fathers and
+mothers.</p>
+
+<p>He carried about in his pockets those invaluable reports and bulletins
+which the government issues for the benefit and enlightenment of
+farmers; and these were left, with a word of praise, where they would
+do the most good.</p>
+
+<p>Those same bulletins from the Bureau of Entomology had planted in John
+Flint's heart the seed which bore such fruit of good citizenship. The
+whole course of his early years had tended to make him suspicious of
+<a name="Page_118"></a>government, which spelt for him police and prison, the whole grim
+machinery which threatened him and which he in turn threatened. He had
+feared and hated it; it caught men and shut them up and broke them. If
+he ever asked himself, &quot;What can my government do for me?&quot; he had to
+answer: &quot;It can put me in prison and keep me there; it can even send
+me to the Chair.&quot; Wherefore government was a thing to hate, to injure&mdash;and to escape from.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing he had ever found worthy of respect and admiration in
+this same government was one of its bulletins.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where'd you get this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I asked for it, and the Bureau sent it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! You've got a friend there!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. The bulletins are free to any one interested enough to ask for
+them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You mean to say the government gets up things like this&mdash;pays men to
+find out and write 'em up&mdash;pays to have 'em printed&mdash;and then gives
+'em away to <i>anybody</i>? Why, they're valuable!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; but they are nevertheless quite free. I have a number, if you'd
+like to go over them. Or you can send for new ones.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But why do they do it? Where's the graft?&quot; he wondered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The graft in this case is common sense in operation. If farms can be
+run with less labor and loss and more profit and pleasure, why, the
+whole country is benefited, isn't it? Don't you understand, the
+government is trying to help those who need help, and therefore is
+willing to lend them the brains of its trained and picked <a name="Page_119"></a>experts? It
+isn't selfish thwart that aim, is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He said nothing. But he read and re-read the bulletins I had, and sent
+for more, which came to him promptly. They didn't know him, at the
+Bureau; they asked him no questions; he wasn't going to pay anybody so
+much as a penny. They assumed that the man who asked for advice and
+information was entitled to all they could reasonably give him, and
+they gave it as a matter of course. That is how and why he found
+himself in touch with his Uncle Sam, a source hitherto disliked and
+distrusted. This source was glad to put its trained intelligence at
+his service and the only reward it looked to was his increased
+capacity to succeed in his work! He simply couldn't dislike or
+distrust that which benefited him; and as his admiration and respect
+for the Department of Agriculture grew, unconsciously his respect and
+admiration for the great government behind it grew likewise. After
+all, it was <i>his</i> government which was reaching across intervening
+miles, conveying information, giving expert instruction, telling him
+things he wanted to know and encouraging him to go right on and find
+out more for himself!</p>
+
+<p><i>Now</i> if he had asked himself what his government could do for him, he
+had to answer: &quot;It can help me to make good.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And he began to understand that this was possible because he obeyed
+the law, and that only in intelligent obedience and co-operation is
+there any true freedom. The law no longer meant skulking by day and
+terror by night; it was protection and peace, and a chance to work in
+the open, and the sympathy and understanding and <a name="Page_120"></a>comradeship of
+decent folks. The government was no longer a brute force which
+arbitrarily popped men into prison; it was the common will of a free
+people, just as the law was the common conscience.</p>
+
+<p>I dare not say that he learned all this easily, or all at once, or
+even willingly. None of us learns our great lessons easily. We have to
+live them, breathe them, work them out with sweat and tears. That we
+do learn them, even inadequately, makes the glory and the wonder of
+man.</p>
+
+<p>And so John Flint went to school to the government of the United
+States, and carried its little text-books about with him and taught
+them to others in even more need that he; and heckled hopeless boys
+into Corn Clubs; and coaxed sullen mothers and dissatisfied girls into
+Poultry and Tomato Clubs; and was full of homely advice upon such
+living subjects as the spraying of fruit trees, and how to save them
+from blight and scale-insects, and how to get rid of flies, and
+cut-worms, and to fight the cattle-tick, which is our curse; and the
+preservation of birds, concerning which he was rabid. His liking for
+birds began with Miss Sally Ruth's pigeons and the friendly birds in
+our garden. And as he learned to know them his love for them grew. I
+have seen him daily visit a wren's nest without once alarming the
+little black-eyed mother. I have heard him give the red-bird's call,
+and heard that loveliest of all birds answer him. And I have seen the
+impudent jays, within reach of his hand, swear at him unabashed and
+unafraid, because he fed a vireo first.</p>
+
+<p>I like to think of his intimate friendship with the wholesome country
+children&mdash;not the least of his <a name="Page_121"></a>blessings. He was their chief visitor
+from the outside world. He knew wonderful secrets about things one
+hadn't noticed before, and he could make miracles with his quick
+strong fingers. He'd sit down, his stick and knapsack beside him, his
+glamorous dog at his feet, and while you and your sisters and brothers
+and friends and neighbors hung about him like a cluster of tow-headed
+bees, he'd turn a few sticks and bits of cloth and twine and a tack or
+two, and an old roller-skate wheel he took out of his pocket, into an
+air-ship! He could go down by your little creek and make you a
+water-wheel, or a windmill. He could make you marvelous little men,
+funny little women, absurd animals, out of corks or peanuts. He knew,
+too, just exactly the sort of knife your boy-heart ached for&mdash;and at
+parting you found that very knife slipped into your enraptured palm.
+You might save the pennies you earned by picking berries and gathering
+nuts, but you could never, never find at any store any candy that
+tasted like the sticks that came out of his pockets, and you needn't
+hope to try. He had the inviolable secret of that candy, and he
+imparted to it a divine flavor no other candy ever possessed. If you
+were a little doll-less girl, he didn't leave you with the provoking
+promise that Santa Claus would bring you one if you were good. He was
+so sure you were good that he made you right then and there a
+wonderful doll out of corn-husks, with shredded hair, and a frock of
+his own handkerchief. When he came again you got another doll&mdash;a store
+doll; but I think your child-heart clung to the corn-baby with the
+handkerchief dress. I have often wondered how many little cheeks
+snuggled against John Flint's home-made dollies, <a name="Page_122"></a>how many innocent
+breasts cradled them; how many a little fellow carried his knife to
+bed with him, afraid to let it get out of reach of a hard little hand,
+because he might wake up in the morning and find he had only dreamed
+it! No, I hardly think the country children were the least of John
+Flint's blessings. They would run to meet him, hold on to his hands,
+drag him here and there to show him what wonders their sharp eyes had
+discovered since his last visit; and give him, with shining eyes, such
+cocoons and caterpillars, and insects as they had found for him. It
+was they who called him the Butterfly Man, a name which spread over
+the whole country-side. If you had asked for John Flint, folks would
+have stared. And if you described him&mdash;a tall man in a Norfolk suit,
+with a red beard and a red dog, and an insect case:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, you mean the Butterfly Man! Sure. You'll find him about somewhere
+with the kids.&quot; If there was anything he couldn't have, in that
+county, it was because folks hadn't it to give if he should ask.</p>
+
+<p>At home his passion for work at times terrified me. When I protested:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was twenty-five years old when I landed here,&quot; he reminded me. &quot;So
+I've got twenty-five years' back-work to catch up with.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He had taken over a correspondence that had since become voluminous,
+and which included more and more names that stood for very much.
+Sometimes when I read aloud a passage from a letter that praised him,
+he turned red, and writhed like a little boy whose ears are being
+relentlessly washed by his elders.</p>
+
+<p>By this time he had learned to really classify; <a name="Page_123"></a>heavens, how
+unerringly he could place an insect in its proper niche! It was a sort
+of sixth sense with him. That cold, clear, incisive power of brain
+which on a time had made Slippy McGee the greatest cracksman in
+America, was, trained and disciplined in a better cause, to make John
+Flint in later years an international authority upon lepidoptera, an
+observer to whom other observers deferred, a naturalist whose dictum
+settled disputed points. And I knew it, I foresaw it!</p>
+
+<p><i>Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!</i> I grew as vain over his enlarging
+powers as if I had been the Mover of the Game, not a pawn. I felt,
+gloriously, that I had not lived for nothing. A great naturalist is
+not born every day, no, nor every year, nor even every century. And I
+had caught me a great burglar and I had hatched me a great naturalist!
+My Latin soul was enraptured with this ironic anomaly. I could not
+choose but love the man for that.</p>
+
+<p>I really had some cause for vanity. Others than myself had been
+gradually drawn to the unassuming Butterfly Man. Westmoreland loved
+him. A sympathetic listener who seldom contradicted, but often
+shrewdly suggested, Flint somehow knew how to bring out the big
+doctor's best; and in consequence found himself in contact with a mind
+above all meanness and a nature as big and clean as a spray-swept
+beach.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, my, my, my, what a surgeon gone to waste!&quot; Westmoreland would
+lament, watching the long, sure fingers at work. &quot;Well, I suppose it's
+all for the best that Father De Ranc&eacute; beat me to you&mdash;at least you've
+done less damage learning your trade.&quot; So absorbed would he become
+that he sometimes forget cross patients <a name="Page_124"></a>who were possibly fuming
+themselves into a fever over his delay.</p>
+
+<p>Eustis, who had met the Butterfly Man on the country roads and had
+stopped his horse for an informal chat, would thereafter go out of his
+way for a talk with him. These two reticent men liked each other
+immensely. At opposite poles, absolutely dissimilar, they yet had odd
+similarities and meeting-points. Eustis was nothing if not practical;
+he was never too busy to forget to be kind. Books and pamphlets that
+neither Flint nor I could have hoped to possess found their way to us
+through him. Scientific periodicals and the better magazines came
+regularly to John Flint's address. That was Eustis's way. This
+friendship put the finishing touch upon the Butterfly Man's repute. He
+was my associate, and my mother was devoted to him. Miss Sally Ruth,
+whose pet pear-tree he had saved and whose pigeons he had cured,
+approved of him, too, and said so with her usual openness.
+Westmoreland was known to be his firm friend; nobody could forget the
+incident of those butterflies in the doctor's hat! Major Cartwright
+liked him so much that he even bore with the dogs, though Pitache in
+particular must have sorely strained his patience. Pitache cherished
+the notion that it was his duty to pass upon all visitors to the
+Butterfly Man's rooms. For some reason, known only to himself, the
+little dog also cherished a deep-seated grudge against the major, the
+very sound of whose voice outside the door was enough to send him
+howling under the table, where he lay with his head on his paws, a
+wary eye cocked balefully, and his snarls punctuating the Major's
+remarks.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_125"></a>He smells my Unitarian soul, confound him!&quot; said the major. &quot;An' he's
+so orthodox he thinks he'll get chucked out of dog-heaven, if he
+doesn't show his disapproval.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The little dog did finally learn to accept the major's presence
+without outward protest; though the major declared that Pitache always
+hung down his tail when he came and hung it up when he left!</p>
+
+<p>The Butterfly Man accepted whatever friendliness was proffered without
+diffidence, but with no change in his natural reserve. You could tell
+him anything: he listened, made few comments and gave no advice, was
+absolutely non-shockable, and never repeated what he heard. The
+unaffected simplicity of his manner delighted my mother. She said you
+couldn't tell her&mdash;there was good blood in that man, and he had been
+more than any mere tramp before he fell into our hands! Why, just
+observe his manner, if you please! It was the same to everybody; he
+had, one might think, no sense whatever of caste, creed, age, sex, or
+color; and yet he neither gave offense nor received it.</p>
+
+<p>Those outbursts which had so terrified me at first came at rare and
+rarer intervals. If I were to live for a thousands years I should
+never be able to forget the last and worst; which fell upon him
+suddenly and without warning, on a fine morning while he sat on the
+steps of his verandah, and I beside him with my Book of Hours in my
+hand. In between the Latin prayers I sensed pleasantly the light wind
+that rustled the vines, and how the Mayne bees went grumbling from
+flower to flower, and how one single bird was singing to himself over
+and over the self-same song, as if he loved it; and how the <a name="Page_126"></a>sunlight
+fell in a great square, like a golden carpet, in front of the steps.
+It was all very still and peaceful. I was just turning a page, when
+John Flint jerked his pipe out of his mouth, swung his arm back, and
+hurled the pipe as far as he could. I watched it, involuntarily, and
+saw where it fell among our blue hydrangeas; from which a thin spiral
+of smoke arose lazily in the calm air. But Flint shoved his hat back
+on his head, sat up stiffly, and swore.</p>
+
+<p>He had been with me then nearly four years, and I had learned to know
+the symptoms:&mdash;restlessness, followed by hours of depressed and sullen
+brooding. So I had heretofore in a sense been forewarned, though I
+never witnessed one of these outbursts without being shaken to the
+depths. This one was different&mdash;as if the evil force had invaded him
+suddenly, giving him no time to resist. A glance at his face made me
+lay aside the book hurriedly; for this was no ordinary struggle. The
+words that had come to me at first came back now with redoubled
+meaning, and rang through my head like passing-bells:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood but against ... the
+rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of
+wickedness</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He tilted his head, looked upward, and swore steadily. As for me, my
+throat felt as if it had been choked with ashes. I could only stare at
+him, dumbly. If ever a man was possessed, he was. His voice rose,
+querulously:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I get up in the morning, and I catch bugs, and I study them, and I
+dry them&mdash;and I go to bed. I get up in the morning, and I catch bugs,
+and I study them, and I dry them&mdash;and I go to bed. I get up <i>every</i>
+<a name="Page_127"></a>morning, and I do the same damn thing, over and over and over and
+over, day in, day out, day in, day out. Nothing else.&nbsp;... No drinks, no
+lights, no girls, no sprees, no cards, no gang, no risks, no jobs, no
+bulls, no anything! God! I could say my prayers to Broadway, anywhere
+from the Battery up to Columbus Circle! I want it all so hard I could
+point my nose like a lost dog and howl for it!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;...&nbsp;There is a Dutchman got a restaurant down on Eighth Avenue, and I
+dream at nights about the hotdog-and-kraut, and the ham-and that they
+give you there, and the jane that slings it. Hips on her like a horse,
+she has, and an arm that shoves your eats under your nose in a way
+you've got to respect. I smell those eats in my sleep. I want some
+more Childs' bucks. I want to see the electrics winking on the roofs.
+I want to smell wet asphalt and see the taxis whizzing by in the rain.
+I want to see a seven-foot Mick cop with a back like a piano-box and a
+paw like a ham and a foot like a submarine with stove-polish on it. I
+want to see the subway in the rush hour and the dips and mollbuzzers
+going through the crowd like kids in a berry patch. I want to see a
+ninety-story building going up, and the wops crawling on it like ants.
+I want to see the breadline, and the panhandlers, and the bums in
+Union Square. I want a bellyful of the happy dust the old town hands
+out&mdash;the whole dope and all there is of it! My God! I want everything
+I haven't got!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me, wildly. He was trembling violently, and sweat poured
+down his face.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Parson,&quot; he rasped, &quot;I've bucked this thing for fair, but I've got to
+go back and see it and smell it and <a name="Page_128"></a>taste it and feel it and know it
+all again, or I'll go crazy. You're all of you so good down here
+you're too much for me. <i>I'm home-sick for hell</i>. It&mdash;it comes over
+me like fire over the damned. You don't fool yourself that folks who
+know what it is to be damned can stay on in heaven without freezing,
+do you? Well, they can't. I can't help it! I can't! I've got to
+go&mdash;this time I've got to go!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I sat and stared at him. Oh, what was it Paul had said we were to pray
+for, at such a time as this?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>And for me, that speech may be given to me ... that I may open my
+mouth with confidence</i>...&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the words wouldn't come.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've got to go! I've got to go, and try myself out!&quot; he gritted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You&mdash;understand your risks,&quot; I managed to say through stiff lips. I
+had always, in my secret heart, been more or less afraid of this.
+Always had I feared that the rulers of the world of darkness, swooping
+down and catching him unaware, might win the long fight in the end.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here you are safe. You are building up an honored name. You are
+winning the respect and confidence of all decent people&mdash;and you wish
+to undo it all. You wish to take such desperate chances&mdash;now!&quot; I
+groaned.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've got to go!&quot; he burst forth, white-lipped. &quot;You've never seen a
+dip cut off from his dope, have you? Well, I'm it, when the old town
+calls me loud enough for me to hear her plain. I've stood her off as
+long as I could&mdash;and now I'm that crazy for her I could wallow in her
+dust. Besides, there's not such a <a name="Page_129"></a>lot of risks. I don't have to leave
+my card at the station-house to let 'em know I'm calling, do I? They
+haven't been sitting on what they think is my grave to keep me from
+getting up before Gabriel beats 'em to it, have they? No, they're not
+expecting <i>me</i>. What I could do to 'em now would make the Big Uns look
+like a bunch of pikers&mdash;and their beans would have to turn inside out
+before they fell for it that <i>I'd</i> come back to my happy home and was
+on the job again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If&mdash;if you hadn't been so white, I'd have cut and run for it without
+ever putting you wise. But I want to play fair. I'd be a hog if I
+didn't play fair, and I'm trying to do it. I'm going because I can't
+stay. I've got enough of my own money, earned honest, saved up, to pay
+my way. Let me take it and go. And if I can come back, why, I'll
+come.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was stone deaf to entreaties, prayers, reasoning, argument. The
+four years of his stay with me, and all their work, and study, and
+endeavor, and progress, seemed to have slipped from him as if they had
+never been. They were swept aside like cobwebs. He broke away from me
+in the midst of my pleading, hurried into his bedroom, and began to
+sort into a grip a few necessities.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll leave on the three-o'clock,&quot; he flung over his shoulder to me,
+standing disconsolate in the door. &quot;I'll stop at the bank on my way.&quot;
+I could do nothing; he had taken the bit between his teeth and was
+bolting. I had for the time being lost all power of control over him,
+and before I might hope to recover it he would be out of my reach.
+Perhaps, I reflected wretchedly, the <a name="Page_130"></a>best thing to do under the
+circumstances, would simply be to give him his head. I had seen horses
+conquered like that. But the road before John Flint was so dark and so
+crooked&mdash;and at the end of it waited Slippy McGee!</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Page_131"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_VIII"></a><hr />
+<br />
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE BUTTERFLY MAN</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>It was just one-thirty by the placid little clock on his mantel. The
+express was due at three.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well,&quot; said I, forcing myself to face the inevitable without
+noise, &quot;you are free. If you must go, you must go.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've got to go! I've got to go!&quot; He repeated it as one repeats an
+incantation. &quot;I've got to go!&quot; And he went on methodically assorting
+and packing. Even at this moment of obsession his ingrained
+orderliness asserted itself; the things he rejected were laid back in
+their proper place with, the nicest care.</p>
+
+<p>I went over to tell my mother that John Flint had suddenly decided to
+go north. She expressed no surprise, but immediately fell to counting
+on her fingers his available shirts, socks, and underwear. She rather
+hoped he would buy a new overcoat in New York, his old one being
+hardly able to stand the strain of another winter. She was pleasantly
+excited; she knew he had many northern correspondents, with whom he
+must naturally be anxious to foregather. There was much to call him
+thither.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He really needs the change. A short trip will do him a world of
+good,&quot; she concluded equably. &quot;He is still quite a young man, and I'm
+sure it must be dull <a name="Page_132"></a>for him here at times, in spite of his work.
+Why, he hasn't been out of this county for over three years, and just
+think of the unfettered life he must have led before he came here!
+Yes, I'm sure New York will stimulate him. A dose of New York is a
+very good tonic. It regulates one's mental liver. Don't look so
+worried, Armand&mdash;you remind me of those hens who hatch ducklings. I
+should think a duckling of John Flint's size could be trusted to swim
+by himself, at his time of life!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She had not my cause for fear. Besides, in her secret heart, Madame
+was convinced that, rehabilitated, reclaimed, having more than proven
+his intrinsic worth, John Flint went to be reconciled with and
+received into the bosom of some preeminently proper parent, and to be
+acclaimed and applauded by admiring and welcoming friends. For
+although she had once heard the Butterfly Man gravely assure Miss
+Sally Ruth Dexter that the only ancestor his immediate Flints were
+sure of was Flint the pirate, my mother still clung firmly to the
+illusion of Family. Blood will tell!</p>
+
+<p>As for me, I was equally sure that blood was telling now; and telling
+in the atrocious tongue of the depths. I felt that the end had come.
+Vain, vain, all the labor, all the love, all the hope, the prayers,
+the pride! The submerged voice of his old life was calling him; the
+vampire extended her white and murderous arms in which many and many
+had died shamefully; she lifted to his her insatiable lips stained
+scarlet with the wine of hell. Against that siren smile, those
+beckoning hands, I could do nothing. The very fact that I was what I
+am, was no longer a help, but rather a hindrance; he recognized in the
+priest a deterring and detaining <a name="Page_133"></a>influence against which he rebelled,
+and which he wished to repudiate. He was, as he had said so terribly,
+&quot;home-sick for hell.&quot; He would go, and he would most inevitably be
+caught in the whirlpools; the naturalist, the scientist, the Butterfly
+Man, would be sucked into that boiling vortex and drowned beyond all
+hope of resuscitation; but from it the soul of Slippy McGee would
+emerge, with a larger knowledge and a clearer brain, a thousand-fold
+more deadly dangerous than of old; because this time he knew better
+and had deliberately chosen the evil and rejected the good. By the law
+of the pendulum he must swing as far backward into wrong as he had
+swung forward into right.</p>
+
+<p>I could not bring myself to speak to him, I dared not bid him the
+mockery of a Godspeed upon his journey, dreading as I did that
+journey's end. So I stood at a window and watched him as with suitcase
+in hand he walked down our shady street. At the corner he turned and
+lifted his hat in a last farewell salute to my mother, standing
+looking after him in the Parish House gate. Then he turned down the
+side-street, and so disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>From his closed rooms came a long wailing howl. For the first time
+Kerry might not follow his master; more yet, the master had thrust the
+astonished dog into his bedroom and shut the door upon him. He had
+refused to recognize the scratch at the door, the snuffling whine
+through the keyhole. The outer door had slammed. Kerry raced to the
+window. And the master was going, and going without him! He had
+neither net, knapsack, nor bottle-belt, but he carried a suitcase. He
+did not look back, nor whistle: he <i>meant</i> to leave him behind.
+Sensing that an untoward thing was occurring, a thing <a name="Page_134"></a>that boded no
+good to himself or his beloved, the red dog lifted his voice and
+howled a piercing protest.</p>
+
+<p>The sash was down, but the blinds had not yet been closed to. One saw
+Kerry standing with his forepaws on the window-sill, his nose against
+the glass, his ears lifted, his eyes anxious and distressed, his lip
+caught in his teeth. At intervals he threw back his head, and then
+came the howls.</p>
+
+<p>The catastrophe&mdash;for to me it was no less a thing&mdash;had come upon me so
+suddenly that I was fairly stunned. From sheer force of habit I went
+over to the church and knelt before the altar; but I could not pray; I
+could only kneel there dumbly. I heard the screech of the three
+o'clock express coming in, and, a few minutes later, its longer
+screech as it departed. He had gone, then! I was not dreaming it: it
+was true. Down and down and down went my heart. And down and down and
+down went my head, humbled and prostrate. Alas, the end of hope, the
+fall of pride! Alas and alas for the fair house built upon the sand,
+wrecked and scattered!</p>
+
+<p>When I rose from my knees I staggered. I walked draggingly, as one
+walks with fetters upon the feet. Oh, it was a cruel world, a world in
+which nothing but inevitable loss awaited one, in which one was
+foredoomed to disappointment; a world in which one was leaf by leaf
+stripped bare.</p>
+
+<p>I could not bear to look at his closed rooms, but turned my head aside
+as I passed them. Disconsolate Kerry barked at my passing step, and
+pawed frantically at the window, but I made no effort to release him.
+What comfort had I for the faithful creature, deserted by what he most
+loved?</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_135"></a>His dismal outcries rasped my nerves raw; it was exactly as if the dog
+howled for the dead. And that John Flint was dead I had no reasonable
+cause to doubt. <i>He was dead because Slippy McGee was alive</i>. That
+thought drove me as with a whip out into the garden, for as black an
+hour as I have ever lived through&mdash;the sort of hour that leaves a scar
+upon the soul. The garden was very still, steeped and drowsing in the
+bright clear sunlight; only the bees were busy there, calling from
+flower-door to flower-door, and sometimes a vireo's sweet whistle
+fluted through the leaves. Pitache lay on John Flint's porch, and
+dozed with his head between his paws; Judge Mayne's Panch sat on the
+garden fence, and washed his black face, and watched the little dog
+out of his emerald eyes. All along the fences the scarlet salvia shot
+up its vivid spikes, and when the wind stirred, the red petals fell
+from it like drops of blood.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to me incongruous and cruel that one should suffer on such a
+day; grief is for gray days; but the sunlight mocks sorrow, the soft
+wind makes light of it. I was out of tune with this harmony, as I
+walked up and down with my rosary in my hand. I knew that every flying
+minute took him farther and farther away from me and from hope and
+happiness and honor, and brought him nearer and nearer to the
+whirlpool and the pit. I beat my hands together and the crucifix cut
+into my palms. I walked more rapidly, as if I could get away from the
+misery within. My heart ached intolerably, a mist dimmed my sight, and
+a hideous choking lump rose in my throat; and it seemed to me that,
+old and futile and alone, I was set down, not in my garden, but in the
+midst of the abomination of desolation.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_136"></a>Through this aching desolation Kerry's cries stabbed like
+knife-thrusts.&nbsp;... And then little Pitache lifted his head, cocked a
+listening ear and an alert eye, perked up his black nose, thumped an
+expressive tail, and barked. It was a welcoming bark; Kerry, hearing
+it, stiffened statue-like at the window and fell to whining in his
+throat. The garden gate had clicked.</p>
+
+<p>Dreading that any mortal eye should see me thus in my grief, knowing
+it was beyond my power of endurance to meet calmly or to speak
+coherently with any human being at that moment, I turned, with the
+instinct of flight strong upon me. I knew I must be alone, to face
+this thing in its inevitableness, to fight it out, to get my bearings.
+The gate was turning upon its hinges; I could hear it creak.</p>
+
+<p>Hesitating which way to turn, I looked up to see who it was that was
+coming into the Parish House garden. And I fell to trembling, and
+rubbed my eyes, and stared again, unbelievingly. There had been plenty
+of time for him to have visited the bank and withdrawn his account;
+there had been plenty of time for him then to have caught the
+three-o'clock express. I had heard the train come and go this full
+hour since. Surely my wish was father to the thought that I saw him
+before me&mdash;my old eyes were playing me a trick&mdash;for I thought I saw
+John Flint walking up the garden path toward me! Pitache barked again,
+rose, stretched himself, and trotted to meet him, as he always did
+when the Butterfly Man came home.</p>
+
+<p>He walked with the limp most noticeable when he tried to hurry. He was
+flushed and perspiring and rumpled and well-nigh breathless; his coat
+was wrinkled, <a name="Page_137"></a>his tie awry, his collar wilted, and bits of grass and
+twigs and a leaf or so clung to his dusty clothes. The afternoon sun
+shone full on his thick, close-cropped hair, for he carried his hat in
+his hands, gingerly, carefully, as one might carry a fragile treasure;
+a clean pocket handkerchief was tied over it.</p>
+
+<p>He was making straight for his workroom. I do not think he saw me
+until I stepped into the path, directly in front of him. Then,
+stopping perforce, he looked at me with dancing eyes, wiped his red
+perspiring face with one hand, and nodded to the hat, triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Such an&mdash;aberrant!&quot; he panted. He was still breathing so rapidly he
+had to jerk his words out. &quot;I've got the&mdash;biggest, handsomest&mdash;most
+perfect and wonderful&mdash;specimen of&mdash;an aberrant swallow-tail&mdash;any man
+ever laid&mdash;his eyes on! I thought at first&mdash;I wasn't seeing things
+right. But I was. Parson, parson, I've seen many&mdash;butterflies&mdash;but
+never&mdash;another one like&mdash;this!&quot; He had to pause, to take breath. Then
+he burst out again, unable to contain his delight.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, it was the luckiest chance! I was standing on the end platform of
+the last car, and the train was pulling out, when I saw her go sailing
+by. I stared with all my eyes, shut 'em, stared again, and there she
+was! I knew there was never going to be such another, that if I lost
+her I'd mourn for the rest of my days. I knew I had to have her. So I
+measured my distance, risked my neck, and jumped for her. Game leg and
+all I jumped, landed in the pit of a nigger's stomach, went down on
+top of him, scrambled up again and was off in a jiffy, with the darky
+bawling he'd been killed and the station buzzing like the judge's bees
+on strike, and people <a name="Page_138"></a>hanging out of all the car windows to see who'd
+been murdered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She led me the devil's own chase, for I'd nothing but my hat to net
+her with. A dozen times I thought I had her, and missed. It was
+heart-breaking. I felt I'd go stark crazy if she got away from me. I
+had to get her. And the Lord was good and rewarded me for my patience,
+for I caught her at the end of a mile run. I was so blown by then that
+I had to lie down in the grass by the roadside and get my wind back.
+Then I slid my handkerchief easy-easy under my hat, tilted it up, and
+here she is! She hasn't hurt herself, for she's been quiet. She's
+perfect. She hasn't rubbed off a scale. She's the size of a bat. Her
+upper wings, and one lower wing, are black, curiously splotched with
+yellow, and one lower wing is all yellow. She's got the usual orange
+spots on the secondaries, only bigger, and blobs of gold, and the
+purple spills over onto the ground-color. She's a wonder. Come on in
+and let's gloat at our ease&mdash;I haven't half seen her yet! She's the
+biggest and most wonderful Turnus ever made. Why, Gabriel could wear
+her in his crown to make himself feel proud, because there'd be only
+one like her in heaven!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He took a step forward; but I could only stand still and blink,
+owlishly. My heart pounded and the blood roared in my ears like the
+wind in the pinetrees. My senses were in a most painful confusion,
+with but one thought struggling clear above the turmoil: that <i>John
+Flint had come back</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you didn't go!&quot; I stammered. &quot;Oh, John Flint, John Flint, you
+didn't go!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He snorted. &quot;Catch me running away like a fool <a name="Page_139"></a>when a six-inch
+off-color swallow-tail flirts herself under my nose and dares me to
+catch her! You'd better believe I didn't go!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then I knew with a great uprush of joy that Slippy McGee himself
+had gone instead, and the three-o'clock express was bearing him away,
+forever and forever, beyond recall or return. Slippy McGee had gone
+into the past; he was dead and done with. But John Flint the
+naturalist was vibrantly and vitally alive, built upon the living
+rock, a house not to be washed away by any wave of passion.</p>
+
+<p>This reaction from the black and bitter hour through which I had just
+passed, this turbulent joy and relief, overcame me. My knees shook and
+gave way; I tottered, and sank helplessly into the seat built around
+our great magnolia. And shaken out of all self-control I wept as I had
+not been permitted to weep over my own dead, my own overthrown hopes.
+Head to foot I was shaken as with some rending sickness. The sobs were
+torn out of my throat with gasps.</p>
+
+<p>He stood stone still. He went white, and his nostrils grew pinched,
+and in his set face only his eyes seemed alive and suffering. They
+blinked at me, as if a light had shone too strongly upon them. A sort
+of inarticulate whimper came from him. Then with extreme care he laid
+the handkerchief-covered hat upon the ground, and down upon his knees
+he went beside me, his arms about my knees. He, too, was trembling.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Father! ... <i>Father!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My son ... I was afraid ... you were lost ... gone ... into a far
+country.&nbsp;... It would have broken my heart!&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_140"></a>He said never a word; but hung his head upon his breast, and clung to
+my knees. When he raised his eyes to mine, their look was so piteous
+that I had to put my hand upon him, as one reassures one's child. So
+for a healing time we two remained thus, both silent. The garden was
+exquisitely still and calm and peaceful. We were shut in and canopied
+by walls and roof of waving green, lighted with great cream-colored
+flowers with hearts of gold, and dappled with sun and shadow. Through
+it came the vireo's fairy flute.</p>
+
+<p>God knows what thoughts went through John Flint's mind; but for me, a
+great peace stole upon me, mixed with a greater, reverent awe and
+wonder. Oh, heart of little faith! I had been afraid; I had doubted
+and despaired and been unutterably wretched; I had thought him lost
+whom the Powers of Darkness swooped upon, conquered, and led astray.
+And God had needed nothing stronger than a butterfly's fragile wing to
+bear a living soul across the abyss!</p>
+
+<p>We went together, after a while, to his rooms, and when he had
+submitted to Kerry's welcome, we carefully examined the beautiful
+insect he had captured. As he had said, she had not lost a scale; and
+she was by far the most astonishing aberrant I have ever seen, before
+or since. The Turnus is perhaps the most beautiful of our butterflies,
+and this off-color was larger than the normal, and more irregularly
+and oddly and brilliantly colored. Their natural coloring is gorgeous
+enough; but hers was like a seraph's head-jewels.</p>
+
+<p>I have her yet, with the date of her capture written under her. She is
+the only one of all our butterflies I <a name="Page_141"></a>claim personally. The gold has
+never been minted that could buy that Turnus.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I had the station agent wire for my grip,&quot; said Flint casually. &quot;And
+I gave the darky I knocked down fifty cents to soothe his feelings. He
+offered to let me do it again for a quarter.&quot; His eyes roved over the
+pleasant workroom with its books and cabinets, its air of homely
+comfort; through the open door one glimpsed the smaller bedroom, the
+crucifix on the white wall. He dropped his hand on Kerry's head, close
+against his knee, and drew a sharp breath.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Father,&quot; said he, quietly, and looked at me with steady eyes, &quot;you
+don't need to be afraid for me any more as you had to be to-day.
+To-day's the last of my&mdash;my dumfoolishness.&quot; After a moment he added:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Remember what that little girl said when she gave me her dog? Well, I
+reckon she was right. I reckon I'm here for keeps. I reckon, father,
+that you and I do belong.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said I; and looked over the cases of our butterflies, and the
+books we had gathered, and the table where we worked and studied
+together. &quot;Yes; you and I belong.&quot; And I left him with Kerry's head on
+his knees, and Kerry's eyes adoring him, and went over to the Parish
+House to tell Madame that John Flint had changed his mind and wouldn't
+go North just now, because an aberrant Turnus had beguiled him.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment my mother looked profoundly disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you sure,&quot; she asked, &quot;that this doesn't mean a loss to him,
+Armand?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_142"></a>Yes, I am sure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She watched my eyes, and of a sudden she reached out, caught my hand,
+and squeezed it. Her face softened with sympathetic and tolerant
+understanding, but she asked no questions, made no comment. If Solomon
+had been lucky enough to marry my mother, I am sure he would never
+have plagued himself with the nine hundred and ninety-nine. But then,
+neither would he have written Proverbs.</p>
+
+<p>Neither the Butterfly Man nor I have ever referred to that morning's
+incident; the witness of it we cherish; otherwise it pleases us to
+ignore it as if it had never happened. It had, of course, its results,
+for with a desperate intensity of purpose he plunged back into study
+and research; and as the work was broadening, and called for all his
+skill and patience, the pendulum swung him far forward again.</p>
+
+<p>I had been so fascinated, watching that transformation, even mere
+wonderful than any butterfly's, going on before my eyes; I was so
+enmeshed in the web of endless duties spun for me by my big poor
+parish that I did not have time to miss Mary Virginia as poignantly as
+I must otherwise have done, although my heart longed for her.</p>
+
+<p>My mother never ceased to mourn her absence; something went away from
+us with Mary Virginia, which could only come back to us with her. But
+it so happened that the ensuing summers failed to bring her back. The
+little girl spent her vacations with girl friends of whose standing
+her mother approved, or with relatives she thought it wise the child
+should cultivate. For <a name="Page_143"></a>the time being, Mary Virginia had vanished out
+of our lives.</p>
+
+<p>Laurence, however, spent all his vacations at home; and of Laurence we
+were immensely proud. Most of his holidays were spent, not with
+younger companions, but oddly enough with John Flint. That old
+friendship, renewed after every parting, seemed to have grown stronger
+with the boy's growth; the passing years deepened it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My boy's forever boasting of your Butterfly Man,&quot; said the judge,
+falling into step with me one morning on the street. &quot;He tells me
+Flint's been made a member of several learned societies; and that he's
+gotten out a book of sorts, telling all there is to tell about some
+crawling plague or other. And it seems this isn't all the wonderful
+Mr. Flint is capable of: Laurence insists that biologists will have to
+look Flintward pretty soon, on account of observations on what he
+calls insect allies&mdash;whatever <i>they</i> are.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you see, his work on insect allies is really unique and
+thorough, and it opens a door to even more valuable research,&quot; said I,
+as modestly as I could. &quot;Flint is one of its great pioneers, and he's
+blazing the way. Some day when the real naturalist comes into his own,
+he will rank far, far above tricky senators and mutable governors!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The judge smiled. &quot;Spoken like a true bughunter,&quot; said he. &quot;As a
+matter of fact, this fellow is a remarkable man. Does he intend to
+remain here for good?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said I, &quot;I think he intends to remain here&mdash;for good.&quot; I could
+not keep the pride out of my voice and eyes. Let me again admit my
+grave fault: I am a vain and proud old man, God forgive me!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_144"></a>Your goose turned out a butterfly,&quot; said the judge. &quot;One may well be
+pardoned a little natural vanity when one has engineered a feat like
+that! Common tramp, too, wasn't he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, he wasn't. He was a most uncommon one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I could envy the man his spontaneity and originality,&quot; admitted the
+judge, rubbing <i>his</i> nose. &quot;Well, father, I'm perfectly satisfied, so
+far, to have my only son tramp with him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So is my mother,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>At that the judge lifted his hat with a fine old-fashioned courtesy
+good to see in this age when a youth walks beside a maid and blows
+cigarette smoke in her face upon the public streets.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When such a lady approves of any man,&quot; said he, gallantly, &quot;it
+confers upon him letters patent of nobility.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall have to consider John Flint knighted, then,&quot; said my mother
+merrily, when I repeated the conversation. &quot;Let's see,&quot; she continued
+gaily. &quot;We'll put on his shield three butterflies, or, rampant on a
+field, azure; in the lower corner a net, argent. Motto, '<i>In Hoc Signo
+Vinces</i>.' There'll be no sign of the cyanide jar. I'll have nothing
+sinister shadowing; the Butterfly Man's escutcheon!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She knew nothing about the trust St. Stanislaus kept; she had never
+met Slippy McGee.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Page_145"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_IX"></a><hr />
+<br />
+<h2>CHAPTER IX<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>NESTS</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>Laurence at last hung out that shingle which was to tingle Appleboro
+into step with the Time-spirit. It was a very happy and important day
+for the judge and his immediate friends, though Appleboro at large
+looked on with but apathetic interest. One more little legal light
+flickering &quot;in our midst&quot; didn't make much difference; we literally
+have lawyers to burn. So we aren't too enthusiastic over our
+fledglings; we wait for them to show us&mdash;which is good for them, and
+sometimes better for us.</p>
+
+<p>This fledgling, however, was of the stuff which endures. Laurence was
+one of those dynamic and dangerous people who not only think
+independently themselves, but have the power to make other people
+think. No one who came in contact with him escaped this; it seemed to
+crackle electrically in the air around him; he was a sort of human
+thought-conductor, and he shocked many a smug and self-satisfied
+citizen into horrific life before he had done with him.</p>
+
+<p>If this young man had not been one of the irreproachable Maynes
+Appleboro might have set him down as a pestilent and radical theorist
+and visionary. But fortunately for us and himself he was a Mayne; and
+the Maynes have been from the dawn of things Carolinian &quot;a good
+family.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_146"></a>I don't think I have ever seen two people so mutually delight in each
+other's powers as did John Flint and Laurence Mayne. The Butterfly Man
+was immensely proud of Laurence's handsome person and his grace of
+speech and manner; he had even a more profound respect for his more
+solid attainments, for his own struggle upward had deepened his regard
+for higher education. As for Laurence, he thought his friend
+marvelous; what he had overcome and become made him in the younger
+man's eyes an incarnate proof of the power of will and of patience.
+The originality and breadth of his views fired the boy's imagination
+and broadened his personality. The two complemented each other.</p>
+
+<p>The Butterfly Man's workroom had a fascination for others than
+Laurence. It was a sort of Open Question Club. Here Westmoreland came
+to air his views with a free tongue and to ride his hobbies with a
+gallant zest; here the major, tugging at his goatee, his glasses far
+down on his nose, narrated in spicy chapters the Secret Social History
+of Appleboro. Here the judge&mdash;for he, too, had fallen into the habit
+of strolling over of an evening&mdash;sunk in the old Morris chair, his
+cigar gone cold in his fingers, reviewed great cases. And sometimes
+Eustis stopped by, spoke in his modest fashion of his experiments, and
+left us all the better for his quiet strength. And Flint, with his
+eyes alive and watchful behind his glasses, listened with that air
+which made one like to tell him things. Laurence declared that he got
+his post-graduate course in John Flint's workroom, and that the
+Butterfly Man wasn't the least of his teachers.</p>
+
+<p>I should dearly like to say that the Awakening of <a name="Page_147"></a>Appleboro began in
+that workroom; and in a way it did. But it really had its inception in
+a bird's nest John Flint had discovered and watched with great
+interest and pleasure. The tiny mother had learned to accept his
+approach, without fear; he said she knew him personally. She allowed
+him to approach close enough to touch her; she even took food out of
+his fingers. He had worked toward that friendliness with great skill
+and patience, and his success gave him infinite pleasure. He had a
+great tenderness for the little brown lady, and he looked forward to
+her babies with an almost grandfatherly eagerness. The nest was over
+in a corner of our garden, in a thick evergreen bush big enough to be
+called a young tree.</p>
+
+<p>Now on a sunny morning Laurence and I and the Butterfly Man walked in
+our garden. Laurence had gotten his first brief, and we two older
+fellows were somewhat like two old birds fluttering over an
+adventurous fledgling. I think we saw the boy sitting on the Supreme
+Court bench, that morning!</p>
+
+<p>As we neared the evergreen tree the Butterfly Man raised his hand to
+caution us to be silent. He wanted us to see his wee friend's
+reception of him, and so he went on a bit ahead, to let her know she
+needn't be afraid&mdash;we, too, were merely big friends come a-calling.
+And just then we heard shrill cries of distress, and above it the
+louder, raucous scream of the bluejay.</p>
+
+<p>The bluejay was entirely occupied with his own business of breaking
+into another bird's nest and eating the eggs. He scolded violently
+between mouthfuls; he had finished three eggs and begun on the fourth
+and last when we came upon the scene. He had no fear of us; <a name="Page_148"></a>he had
+seen us before, and he knew very well indeed that the red-bearded
+creature with the cane was a particular and peculiar friend of
+feathered folks. So he cocked a knowing head, with a cruel beak full
+of egg, and flirted a splendid tail at his friend; then swallowed the
+last morsel and rowed viciously with Laurence and me; for the bluejay
+is wholly addicted to billingsgate. He paid no attention to the
+distraught mother-bird, fluttering and crying on a limb nearby.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gosh, pal, I've sure had some meal!&quot; said the bluejay to John Flint.
+&quot;Chase that skirt, over there, please&mdash;she makes too much noise to
+suit me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But for once John Flint wasn't a friend to a bluejay&mdash;he uttered an
+exclamation of sorrow and dismay.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My nest!&quot; he cried tragically. &quot;My beautiful nest with the four eggs,
+that I've been watching day by day! And the little mother-thing that
+knew me, and let me touch her, and feed her, and wasn't afraid of me!
+Oh, you blue devil! You thief! You murderer!&quot; And in a great gust of
+sorrow and anger he lifted his stick to hurl it at the criminal.
+Laurence caught the upraised arm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But he doesn't know he's a thief and a murderer,&quot; said he, and looked
+at the handsome culprit with unwilling admiration. The jay, having
+finished the nest to his entire satisfaction, hopped down upon a limb
+and turned his attention to us. He screamed at Laurence, thrusting
+forward his impudent head; while the poor robbed mother, with
+lamentable cries, watched him from a safe distance. Full of his
+cannibal meal, Mister Bluejay callously ignored her. He was more
+interested in us. Down he came, nearer yet, with a flirt of fine
+wings, a <a name="Page_149"></a>spreading of barred tail, just above Flint's head, and
+talked jocularly to his friend in jayese.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're a thief and a robber!&quot; raged the Butterfly Man. &quot;You're a damn
+little bird-killer, that's what you are! I ought to wring your neck
+for you, and I'd do it if it would do the rest of your tribe any good.
+But it wouldn't. It wouldn't bring back the lost eggs nor the spoiled
+nest, either. Besides, you don't know any better. You're what you are
+because you were hatched like that, and there wasn't Anything to tell
+you what's right and wrong for a decent bird to do. The best one can
+do for you is to get wise to your ways and watch out that you can't do
+more mischief.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The bluejay, with his handsome crested head on one side, cocked his
+bright black eye knowingly, and passed derisive remarks. Any one who
+has listened attentively to a bluejay must be deeply grateful that the
+gift of articulate speech has been wisely withheld from him; he is a
+hooligan of a bird. He lifted his wings like half-playful fists. If he
+had fingers, be sure a thumb had been lifted profanely to his nose.</p>
+
+<p>The Butterfly Man watched him for a moment in silence; a furrow came
+to his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Damn little thief!&quot; he muttered. &quot;And you don't even have to care!
+No! It's not right. There ought to be some way to save the mothers and
+the nests from your sort&mdash;without having to kill you, either. But good
+Lord, how? That's what I want to know!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Beat 'em to it and stand 'em off,&quot; said Laurence, staring at the
+ravaged nest, the unhappy mother, the gorged impenitent thief. &quot;'Git
+thar fustest with the mostest men.' Have the nests so protected the
+thief <a name="Page_150"></a>can't get in without getting caught. Build Better Bird Houses,
+say, and enforce a Law of the Garden&mdash;Boom and Food for all, Pillage
+for None. You'd have to expect some spoiled nests, of course, for you
+couldn't be on guard all the time, and you couldn't make all the birds
+live in your Better Bird Houses&mdash;they wouldn't know how. But you'd
+save some of them, at any rate.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Think so?&quot; said John Flint. &quot;Huh! And what'd you do with <i>him</i>?&quot; And
+he jerked his head at the screaming jay.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let him alone, so long as he behaved. Shoo him outside when he
+didn't&mdash;and see that he kept outside,&quot; said Laurence. &quot;You see, the
+idea isn't so much to reform bluejays&mdash;it's to save the other birds
+from them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>John Flint's face was troubled. &quot;It's all a muddle, anyhow,&quot; said he.
+&quot;You can't blame the bluejay, because he was born so, and it's
+bluejay nature to act like that when it gets the chance. But there's
+the other bird&mdash;it looks bad. It is bad. For a thief to come into a
+little nest like that, that she'd been brooding on, and twittering to,
+and feeling so good and so happy about&mdash;Man, I'd have given a month's
+work and pay to have saved that nest! It's not fair. God! Isn't there
+<i>some</i> way to save the good ones from the bad ones?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There he stood, in the middle of the path, staring ruefully at the
+wrecked bit of twigs and moss and down that had been a wee home; and
+with more of sorrow than anger at the feathered crook who had done the
+damage. The thing was slight in itself, and more than common&mdash;just one
+of the unrecorded humble tragedies which daily <a name="Page_151"></a>engulf the Little
+Peoples. But I had seen a butterfly's wing save him alive; and so I
+did not doubt now that a little bird's nest could weigh down the
+balance which would put him definitely upon the side of good and of
+God.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think there is a way,&quot; said Laurence, gravely, &quot;and that is to beat
+them to it and stand them off. All the rest is talk and piffle&mdash;the
+only way to save is to save. There are no halfway measures; also, it's
+a lifetime job, full of kicks and cuffs and ingratitude and
+misunderstanding and failure and loneliness, and sometimes even worse
+things yet. But you do manage to sometimes save the nests and the
+fledglings, and you do sometimes escape the pain of hearing the
+mothers lamenting. And that's the only reward a decent mortal ought to
+hope for. I reckon it's about the best reward there is, this side of
+heaven.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Butterfly Man swallowed this a bit ungraciously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You've got a devil of a way of twisting things into parables. I'm
+talking birds and thinking birds, and here you must go and make my
+birds people! I wasn't thinking about people&mdash;that is, I wasn't, until
+you have to go and put the notion into my head. It's not fair. The
+thing's bad enough already, without your lugging folks into it and
+making it worse!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Laurence looked at him steadily. &quot;You've got to think of people, when
+you see things like that,&quot; said he, slowly; &quot;otherwise you only
+half-see. I have to think of people&mdash;of kids, particularly&mdash;and their
+mothers.&quot; He turned as he spoke, and stared out over our garden, with
+its sunny spaces, and its shrubs and flowers, and trees, to where,
+over in the sky a pillar of smoke rose <a name="Page_152"></a>steadily, endlessly, and
+merged into a cloud overhanging the quiet little town.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The pillar of cloud by day,&quot; said he &quot;that leads the children<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span> He
+stopped, and the whimsical smile faded from his face; his jaw set.</p>
+
+<p>The bluejay, having exhausted his vocabulary of jay-ribaldry,
+screeched one last outrageous bit of billingsgate into Flint's ears,
+shut up his tail like a fan, and darted off, a streak of blue and
+gray. The Butterfly Man's eyes followed him smilelessly; then they
+came back and dwelt for a moment upon the ruined nest and the
+fluttering mother-bird, still vexing the ear with her shrill
+lamentable futile protests. From her his eyes went, out over the trees
+and flowers to that pillar mounting lazily and inevitably into the
+sky. For a long moment he stared at that, too, fixedly. After an
+interval he clenched his hand upon his stick and struck the ground.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Nothing's</i> got any business to break up a nest! I'd rather sit up
+all night and watch than see what I've just seen and listen to that
+mother-thing calling to Something that's far-off and stone deaf and
+can't hear nor heed. Why, the little birds haven't got even the chance
+to get themselves born, much less grow up and sing! I&mdash;Say, you two go
+on a bit. I feel mighty bad about this. I'd been watching her. She
+knew me. She let me feed her. If only I'd thought about the jay, why,
+I might have saved her. But just when she needed me I wasn't there!&quot;
+He turned abruptly, and strode off toward his own rooms. Kerry
+followed with a drooping head and tail. But Laurence looked after him
+hopefully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Padre, the Butterfly Man's seen something this <a name="Page_153"></a>morning that will
+sink to the bottom of his soul and stay there: didn't you see his
+eyes? Now, which of those two have taught him the most&mdash;the happy
+thief and murderer, or the innocent unhappy victim? The bluejay's not
+a whit the worse for it, remember; in fact, he's all the better off,
+for his stomach is full and his mischief satisfied, and that's all
+that ever worries a bluejay. And there isn't any redress for the
+mother-bird. The thing's done, and can't be undone. But between them
+they've shown John Flint something that forces a man to take sides.
+Doesn't the bluejay deserve some little credit for that? And is there
+<i>ever</i> any redress for the mother-bird, Padre?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, the Church teaches<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span> I began.</p>
+
+<p>Laurence nodded. &quot;Yes, Padre, I know all that. But it can't teach away
+what's always happening here and now. At least not to the Butterfly
+Man and me, ... nor yet the mother-birds, Padre. No. We want to be
+shown how to head off the bluejays.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We walked along in silence, his hand upon my arm. His eyes were
+clouded with the vision that beckoned him. As for me, I was wondering
+just where, and how far, that bluejay was going to lead John Flint.</p>
+
+<p>It led him presently to my mother. All men learn their great lessons
+from women and in stress the race instinctively goes back to be taught
+by the mothers of it. There were long intimate talks between herself
+and the Butterfly Man, to which Laurence was also called. In her quiet
+way Madame knew by heart the whole mill district, good, bad and
+indifferent, for she was a woman among the women. She had supported
+wives parting <a name="Page_154"></a>from dying husbands; she had hushed the cries of
+frightened children, while I gave the last blessings to mothers whose
+feet were already on the confines of another world; she had taken dead
+children from frenzied women's arms. Just as the Butterfly Man had
+shown the country folks to Laurence, so now Madame showed them both
+the mill folks, the poor folks, the foreigners in a small town
+disdainful of them; and she did it with the added keenness of her
+woman's eyes and the diviner kindness of her woman's heart.</p>
+
+<p>The little lady had enormous influence in the parish. And as
+Laurence's plans and hopes and ambitions unfolded before her, she
+threw this potent influence, with all it implied, in the scale of the
+young lawyer's favor. They began their work at the bottom, as all
+great movements should begin. What struck me with astonishment was
+that so many quiet women seemed to be ready and waiting, as for a
+hoped for message, a bugle-call in the dawn, for just that which
+Laurence had to tell them.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A fellow with pull behind him,&quot; said John Flint, &quot;is what you might
+call a pretty fair probability. But a fellow with the women behind him
+is a steam-roller. There's nothing to do but clear the road and keep
+from under.&quot; And when he went on his rounds among the farm houses now
+it wasn't only the men and children he talked to. There was a message
+for the overworked women, the wives and daughters who had all the
+pains and none of the profits. Westmoreland, who had been a rather
+lonesome evangelist for many years, of a sudden found himself backed
+and supported by younger and stronger forces.</p>
+
+<p>The work was done very noiselessly; there was no <a name="Page_155"></a>outward
+disturbances, yet; but the women were in deadly earnest; there were
+far, far too many small graves in our cemetery, and they were being
+taught to ask why the children who filled them hadn't had a fair
+chance? The men might smile at many things, but fathers couldn't smile
+when mothers of lost children wanted to know why Appleboro hadn't
+better milk and sanitation. And there, under their eyes bulked the
+huge red mills, and every day from the bosom of this Moloch went up
+the smoke of sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>Behind all this gathering of forces stood an almost unguessed figure.
+Not the lovely white-haired lady of the Parish House; not big
+Westmoreland; not handsome Laurence, nor outspoken Miss Sally Ruth
+with a suffrage button on her black basque; but a limping man in gray
+tweeds with a soft felt hat pulled down over his eyes and a butterfly
+net in his hand. That net was symbolic. With trained eye and sure hand
+the naturalist caught and classified us, put each one in his proper
+place.</p>
+
+<p>Keener, shrewder far than any of us, no one, save I alone, guessed the
+part it pleased him to play. Laurence was hailed as the Joshua who was
+to lead all Appleboro into the promised land of better paving, better
+lighting, better schools, better living conditions, better city
+government&mdash;a better Appleboro. Behind Laurence stood the Butterfly
+Man.</p>
+
+<p>He seldom interfered with Laurence's plans; but every now and then he
+laid a finger unerringly upon some weak point which, unnoticed and
+uncorrected, would have made those plans barren of result. He amended
+and suggested. I have seen him breathe upon the dry bones <a name="Page_156"></a>of a
+project and make it live. It satisfied that odd sardonic twist in him
+to stand thus obscurely in the background and pull the strings. I
+think, too, that there must have been in his mind, since that morning
+he had watched the bluejay destroy his nest, some obscure sense of
+restitution. Once, in the dark, he had worked for evil. Still keeping
+himself hidden, it pleased him now to work for good. So there he sat
+in his workroom, and cast filaments here and there, and spun a web
+which gradually netted all Appleboro.</p>
+
+<p>There was, for instance, the <i>Clarion</i>. We had had but that one
+newspaper in our town from time immemorial. I suppose it might have
+been a fairly good county paper once,&mdash;but for some years it had
+spluttered so feebly that one wondered how it survived at all. In
+spite of this, nobody in our county could get himself decently born or
+married, or buried, without a due and proper notice in the <i>Clarion</i>.
+To the country folks an obituary notice in its columns was as much a
+matter of form as a clergyman at one's obsequies. It simply wasn't
+respectable to be buried without proper comment in the <i>Clarion</i>.
+Wherefore the paper always held open half a column for obituary
+notices and poetry.</p>
+
+<p>These dismal productions had first brought the <i>Clarion</i> to Mr.
+Flint's notice. He used to snigger at sight of the paper. He said it
+made him sure the dead walked. He cut out all those lugubrious and
+home-made verses and pasted them in a big black scrapbook. He had a
+fashion of strolling down to the paper's office and snipping out all
+such notices and poems from its country exchanges. A more ghoulish and
+fearsome collection than he acquired I never elsewhere beheld. It <a name="Page_157"></a>was
+a taste which astonished me. Sometimes he would gleefully read aloud
+one which particularly delighted him:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;A Christian wife and offspring seven<br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; Mourn for John Peters who has gone to heaven.<br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; But as for him we are sure he can weep no more,<br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; He is happy with the lovely angels on that bright shore.&quot;&#8224;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noin">&#8224; Heaven.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<p>My mother was horrified. She said, severely, that she couldn't to save
+her life see why any mortal man should snigger because a Christian
+wife and children seven mourned for John Peters who had gone to
+heaven. The Butterfly Man looked up, meekly. And of a sudden my mother
+stopped short, regarded him with open mouth and eyes, and retired
+hastily. He resumed his pasting.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've got a hankering for what you might call grave poetry,&quot; said he,
+pensively. &quot;Yes, sir; an obituary like that is like an all-day sucker
+to me. Say, don't you reckon they make the people they're written
+about feel glad they're dead and done for good with folks that could
+spring something like that on a poor stiff? Wait a minute, parson&mdash;you
+can't afford to miss Broken-hearted Admirer:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Miss Matty, I watched thee laid in the gloomy grave's embrace,<br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; Where nobody can evermore press your hand or your sweet face.<br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; When you were alive I often thought of thee with fond pride,<br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; And meant to call around some night &amp; ask you to be my loving Bride.<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;But alas, there is a sorrowful sadness in my bosom to-day,<br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; For I never did it &amp; now can never really know what you would say.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>&nbsp; Miss Matty, the time may come when I can remember thee as a brother,<br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; <a name="Page_158"></a>And lay my fond true heart at the loving feet of another.<br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; For though just at present I can do nothing but sigh &amp; groan,<br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; The Holy Bible tells us it is not good for a man to dwell alone.<br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; But even though, alas, I'm married, my poor heart will still be true,<br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; And oft in the lone night I will wake &amp; weep to think she never can be you.&quot;<br /></span>
+<span class="i7">&mdash;&quot;A Broken-hearted Admirer.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&quot;Ain't that sad and sweet, though?&quot; said the Butterfly Man admiringly.
+&quot;Don't you hope those loving feet will be extra loving when
+Broken-hearted makes 'em a present of his fond heart, parson? Wouldn't
+it be something fierce if they stepped on it! Gee, I cried in my hat
+when I first read that!&quot; Now wasn't it a curious coincidence that,
+even as Madame, I regarded John Flint with open mouth and eyes, and
+retired hastily?</p>
+
+<p>For some time the <i>Clarion</i> had been getting worse and worse; heaven
+knows how it managed to appear on time, and we expected each issue to
+be its last. It wasn't news to Appleboro that it was on its last legs.
+I was not particularly interested in its threatened demise, not having
+John Flint's madness for its obituaries; but he watched it narrowly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you know,&quot; he remarked to Laurence, &quot;that the poor old <i>Clarion</i>
+is ready to bust? It will have to write a death-notice for itself in a
+week or two, the editor told me this morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So?&quot; Laurence seemed as indifferent as I.</p>
+
+<p>The Butterfly Man shot him a freighted glance. &quot;Folks in this county
+will sort of miss the <i>Clarion</i>,&quot; he reflected. &quot;After all, it's the
+one county paper. Seems to me,&quot; he mused, &quot;that if <i>I</i> were going in
+head, <a name="Page_159"></a>neck and crop for the sweet little job of reformer-general, I'd
+first off get me a grappling-hook on my town's one newspaper.
+Particularly when grappling-hooks were going cheap.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hasn't Inglesby got a mortgage on it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If he had would he let it die in its bed so nice and ladylike? Not
+much! It'd kick out the footboard and come alive. Inglesby must be
+getting rusty in the joints not to reach out for the <i>Clarion</i>
+himself, right now. Maybe he figures it's not worth the price. Maybe
+he knows this town so well he's dead sure nobody that buys a newspaper
+here would have the nerve to print anything or think anything he
+didn't approve of. Yes, I guess that's it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Which is your gentle way,&quot; cut in Laurence, &quot;of telling me I'd better
+hustle out and gather in the <i>Clarion</i> before Inglesby beats me to it,
+isn't it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Me?&quot; The Butterfly Man looked pained. &quot;I'm not telling you to buy
+anything. <i>I'm</i> only thinking of the obituaries. Ask the parson.
+I'm&mdash;I'm addicted to 'em, like some people are to booze. But if you'd
+promise to keep open the old corner for them, why, I might come out
+and <i>beg</i> you to buy the <i>Clarion</i>, now it's going so cheap. Yep&mdash;all
+on account of the obituaries!&quot; And he murmured:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;<i>Our dear little Johnny was left alive</i><br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <i>To reach the interesting age of five</i><br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; <i>When</i>&mdash;&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&quot;That's just about as much as I can stand of that, my son!&quot; said I,
+hastily.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The parson's got an awful tender heart,&quot; the Butt<a name="Page_160"></a>erfly Man explained
+and Laurence was graceless enough to grin.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, as I was about to say: I happened to think Inglesby would be
+brute enough to choke out my pet column, or make folks pay for it, and
+things like that haven't got any business to have price tags on 'em.
+So I got to thinking of you. You're young and tender; also a college
+man; and you're itching to wash and iron Appleboro<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span> he took off his
+glasses and wiped them delicately and deliberately.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you also get to thinking,&quot; said Laurence, crisply, &quot;that I'm just
+about making my salt at present, and still you're suggesting that I
+tie a dead old newspaper about my neck and jump overboard? One might
+fancy you hankered to add my obituary to your collection!&quot; he finished
+with a touch of tartness.</p>
+
+<p>The Butterfly Man smiled ever so gently.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The <i>Clarion</i> is the county paper,&quot; he explained patiently. &quot;It was
+here first. It's been here a long time, and people are used to it. It
+knows by heart how they think and feel and how they want to be told
+they think and feel. And you ought to know Carolina people when it
+comes right down to prying them loose from something they're used to!&quot;
+He paused, to let that sink in.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There's no reason why the <i>Clarion</i> should keep on being a dead one,
+is there? There's plenty room for a live daily right here and now, if
+it was run right. Why, this town's blue-molded for a live paper! Look
+here: You go buy the <i>Clarion</i>. It won't cost you much. Believe me,
+you'll find it mighty handy&mdash;power of the press, all the usual guff,
+you know! I sha'n't <a name="Page_161"></a>have to worry about obituaries, but I bet you
+dollars to doughnuts some people will wake up some morning worrying a
+whole lot about editorials. Mayne&mdash;people like to think they think
+what they think themselves. They don't. They think what their home
+newspapers tell them to think. And this is your great big chance to
+get the town ear and shout into it good and loud.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A week or so later Mayne &amp; Son surprised Appleboro by purchasing the
+moribund <i>Clarion</i>. They didn't have to go into debt for it, either.
+They got it for an absurdly low sum, although folks said, with sniffs,
+that anything paid for that rag was too much.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nevertheless,&quot; said the Butterfly Man to me, complacently, &quot;that's
+the little jimmy that's going to grow up and crack some fat cribs.
+Watch it grow!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I watched; but, like most others, I was rather doubtful. It was true
+that the <i>Clarion</i> immediately showed signs of reviving life. And that
+Jim Dabney, a college friend from upstate, whom Laurence had induced
+to accept the rather precarious position of editor and manager, wrote
+pleasantly as well as pungently, and so set us all to talking.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose it was because it really had something to say, and that
+something very pertinent to our local interests and affairs, that we
+learned and liked to quote the <i>Clarion</i>. It made a neat appearance in
+new black type, and this pleased us. It had, too, a newer, clearer,
+louder note, which made itself heard over the whole county. The county
+merchants and farmers began once more to advertise in its pages, as
+John Flint, who watched it jealously&mdash;feeling responsible for
+Laurence's purchase of it&mdash;was happy to point out.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_162"></a>One thing, too, became more and more evident. The women were behind
+the <i>Clarion</i> in a solid phalanx. They knew it meant for them a voice
+which spoke articulately and publicly, an insistent voice which must
+be answered. It noticed every Mothers' Meeting, Dorcas activity,
+Ladies' Aid, Altar Guild, temperance gathering; spoke respectfully of
+the suffragists and hopefully of the &quot;public-spirited women&quot; of the
+new Civic League. And never, never, never omitted nor misplaced nor
+misspelled a name! The boy from up-state saw to that. He was wily as
+the serpent and simple as the dove. Over the local page appeared
+daily:</p>
+
+<span class="sc" style="margin-left: 15em;">&quot;Let's Get Together!&quot;</span><br />
+
+<p>After awhile we took him at his word and tried to ... and things began
+to happen in Appleboro.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here,&quot; said the Butterfly Man to me, &quot;is where the bluejay begins to
+get his.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For in most Appleboro houses insistent women were asking harassed and
+embarrassed men certain questions concerning certain things which
+ladies hadn't been supposed to know anything about, much less worry
+their heads over, since the state was a state. So determined were the
+women to have these questions fairly answered that they presently
+asked them in cold print, on the front page of the town paper. And
+Laurence told them. He had appalling lists and figures and names and
+dates. The &quot;chiel among us takin' notes&quot; printed them. Dabney's
+editorial comments were barbed.</p>
+
+<p>Now there are mills in the South which do obey the state laws and
+regulations as to hours, working conditions, wages, sanitation, safety
+appliances, child labor. <a name="Page_163"></a>But there are others which do not. Ours
+notoriously didn't.</p>
+
+<p>John Flint and my mother had had many a conference about deplorable
+cases which both knew, but were powerless to change. The best they had
+been able to do was to tabulate such cases, with names and facts and
+dates, but precious little had been accomplished for the welfare of
+the mill people, for those who might have helped had been too busy, or
+perhaps unwilling, to listen or to act.</p>
+
+<p>But, as Flint insisted, the new Civic League was ready and ripe to
+hear now what Madame had to tell. At one meeting, therefore, she took
+the floor and told them. When she had finished they named a committee
+to investigate mill conditions in Appleboro.</p>
+
+<p>That work was done with a painstaking thoroughness, and the
+committee's final report was very unpleasant reading. But the names
+signed to it were so unassailable, the facts so incontrovertible, that
+Dabney thought best to print it in full, and later to issue it in
+pamphlet form. It has become a classic for this sort of thing now, and
+it is always quoted when similar investigations are necessary
+elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>It was the Butterfly Man who had taken that report and had rewritten
+and revised it, and clothed it with a terrible earnestness and force.
+Its plain words were alive. It seemed to me, when I read them that I
+heard ... a bluejay's ribald screech ... and the heart-rending and
+piercing cries of a little brown motherbird whose nest had been
+ravaged and destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>Appleboro gasped, and sat up, and rubbed its eyes. That such things
+could be occurring here, in this pleasant <a name="Page_164"></a>little place, in the shadow
+of their churches, within reach of their homes! No one dared to even
+question the truth of that report, however, and it went before the
+Grand Jury intact. The Grand Jury very promptly called Mr. Inglesby
+before it. They were polite to him, of course, but they did manage to
+ask him some very unpleasant and rather personal questions, and they
+did manage to impress upon him that certain things mentioned in the
+Civic League's report must not be allowed to reoccur. One juror&mdash;he
+was a planter&mdash;had even had the temerity to say out loud the ugly word
+&quot;penetentiary.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Inglesby was shocked. He hadn't known. He was a man of large interests
+and he had to leave a great deal to the discretion of superintendents
+and foremen. It might be, yes, he could understand how it might very
+well be&mdash;that his confidence had been abused. He would look into these
+things personally hereafter. Why, he was even now busily engaged
+compiling a &quot;Book of Rules for Employees.&quot; He deplored the almost
+universal unrest among employees. It was a very bad sign. Very. Due
+almost entirely to agitators, too.</p>
+
+<p>He didn't come out of that investigation without some of its slime
+sticking to him, and this annoyed and irritated and enraged him more
+than we guessed, for we hadn't as yet learned the man's ambition.
+Also, the women kept following him up. They meant to make him comply
+with the strict letter of the law, if that were humanly possible.</p>
+
+<p>He was far too shrewd not to recognize this; for he presently called
+on my mother and offered her whatever aid he could reasonably give.
+Her work was <a name="Page_165"></a>invaluable; his foremen and superintendents had
+instructions to give her any information she asked for, to show her
+anything in the mills she wished to see, and to report to headquarters
+any suggestions as to the&mdash;er&mdash;younger employees, she might be kind
+enough to make. If that were not enough she might, he suggested, call
+on him personally. Really, one couldn't but admire the <i>savoir faire</i>
+of this large unctious being, so fluent, so plausible, until one
+happened to catch of a sudden that hard and ruthless gleam which, in
+spite of all his caution, would leap at times into his cold eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is he, or isn't he, a hypocrite pure and simple, or are such men
+self-deceived?&quot; mused my mother, puckering her brows. &quot;He will do
+nothing, I know, that he can well avoid. But&mdash;he gave me of his own
+accord his personal check for fifty dollars, for that poor consumptive
+Shivers woman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She contracted her disease working in his mill and living in one of
+his houses on the wages he paid her,&quot; said I, &quot;I might remind you to
+beware of the Greeks when they come bearing gifts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Proverb for proverb,&quot; said she. &quot;The hair of the dog is good for its
+bite.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fifty dollars isn't much for a woman's life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fifty dollars buys considerable comfort in the shape of milk and ice
+and eggs. When it's gone&mdash;if poor Shivers isn't&mdash;I shall take the
+Baptist minister's wife and Miss Sally Ruth Dexter with me, and go and
+ask him for another check. He'll give it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll make him bitterly repent ever having succumbed to the
+temptation of appearing charitable,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_166"></a>We were not left long in doubt that Inglesby had other methods of
+attack less pleasant than offering checks for charity. Its two largest
+advertisers simultaneously withdrew their advertisements from the
+<i>Clarion</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let's think this thing out,&quot; said John Flint to Laurence. &quot;Cutting
+out ads is a bad habit. It costs good money. It should be nipped in
+the bud. You've got to go after advertisers like that and make 'em see
+the thing in the right light. Say, parson, what's that thing you were
+saying the other day&mdash;the thing I asked you to read over, remember?&quot;</p>
+
+<p><i>&quot;When the scorner is punished, the simple is made wise; and when the
+wise is instructed, he receiveth knowledge,&quot;</i> I quoted Solomon.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's it, exactly. You see,&quot; he explained, &quot;there's always the right
+way out, if you've got sense enough to find it. Only you mustn't get
+rattled and try to make your getaway out the wrong door or the front
+window&mdash;that spoils things. The parson's given you the right tip. That
+old chap Solomon had a great bean on him, didn't he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A few days later there appeared, in the space which for years had been
+occupied by the bigger of the two advertisements, the following
+pleasant notice:</p>
+
+<p class="cen">
+People Who Disapprove of<br />
+Civic Cleanliness,<br />
+A Better Town,<br />
+Better Kiddies,<br />
+and<br />
+A Square Deal for Everybody,<br />
+<i>Also</i><br />
+Disapprove of<br />
+Advertising in the Clarion.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_167"></a>And the space once occupied by the other advertiser was headed:</p>
+
+<p class="cen">OBITUARIES</p>
+
+<p>That ghastly poetry in which the soul of the Butterfly Man reveled
+appeared in that column thereafter. It was a conspicuous space, and
+the horn of rural mourning in printer's ink was exalted among us. It
+was not very hard to guess whose hand had directed those
+counter-blows.</p>
+
+<p>When we met those two advertisers on the street afterward we greeted
+them with ironical smiles intended to enrage. They had at Inglesby's
+instigation been guilty of a tactical blunder of which the men behind
+the <i>Clarion</i> had taken fiendish and unexpected advantage. It had
+simply never occurred to either that a small town editor might dare to
+&quot;come back.&quot; The impossible had actually happened.</p>
+
+<p>I think it was this slackening of his power which alarmed Inglesby
+into action.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Inglesby,&quot; said the Butterfly Man to me one night, casually, &quot;has
+got him a new private secretary. He came this afternoon. His name's
+Hunter&mdash;J. Howard Hunter. He dresses as if he wrote checks for a
+living and he looks exactly like he dresses. Honest, he's the original
+he-god they use to advertise suspenders and collars and neverrips and
+that sort of thing in the classy magazines. I bet you Inglesby's got
+to fork over a man-sized bucket of dough per, to keep <i>him</i>. There'll
+be a flutter of calico in this burg from now on, for that fellow
+certainly knows how to wear his face. He's gilt-edged from start to
+finish!&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_168"></a>Laurence, lounging on the steps, looked up with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His arrival,&quot; said he, &quot;has been duly chronicled in to-day's press.
+Cease speaking in parables, Bughunter, and tell us what's on your
+mind.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Butterfly Man hesitated for a moment. Then:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, it's this way,&quot; said he, slowly. &quot;I&mdash;hear things. A bit here and
+there, you see, as folks tell me. I put what I've heard together, and
+think it over. Of course I didn't need anybody to tell me Inglesby was
+sore because the <i>Clarion</i> got away from him. He expected it to die.
+It didn't. He thought it wouldn't pay expenses&mdash;well, the sheriff
+isn't in charge yet. And he knows the paper is growing. He's too wise
+a guy to let on he's been stung for fair, once in his life, but he
+don't propose to let himself in for any more body blows than he can
+help. So he looks about a bit and he gets him an agent&mdash;older than
+you, Mayne, but young enough, too&mdash;and even better looking. That agent
+will be everywhere pretty soon. The town will fall for him. Say, how
+many of you folks know what Inglesby really wants, anyhow?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Everything in sight,&quot; said Laurence promptly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And something around the corner, too. He wants to come out in the
+open and be IT. He intends to be a big noise in Washington. Gentlemen,
+Senator Inglesby! Well, why not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He hasn't said so, has he?&quot; Laurence was skeptical.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He doesn't have to say so. He means to be it, and that's very much
+more to the point. However, it happens that he did peep, once or
+twice, and it buzzed <a name="Page_169"></a>about a bit&mdash;and that's how I happened to catch
+it in my net. This Johnny he's just got to help him is the first move.
+Private Secretary now. Campaign manager and press agent, later.
+Inglesby's getting ready to march on to Washington. You watch him do
+it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never!&quot; said Laurence, and set his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No?&quot; The Butterfly Man lifted his eyebrows. &quot;Well, what are you going
+to do about it? Fight him with your pretty little <i>Clarion</i>? It's not
+big enough, though you could make it a handy sort of brick to paste
+him in the eye with, if you aim straight and pitch hard enough. Go up
+against him yourself? You're not strong enough, either, young man,
+whatever you may be later on. You can prod him into firing some poor
+kids from his mills&mdash;but you can't make him feed 'em after he's fired
+'em, can you? And you can't keep him from becoming Senator Inglesby
+either, unless,&quot; he paused impressively, &quot;you can match him even with
+a man his money and pull can't beat. Now think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The young man bit his lip and frowned. The Butterfly Man watched him
+quizzically through his glasses.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't take it so hard,&quot; he grinned. &quot;And don't let the whole
+salvation of South Carolina hang too heavy on your shoulders. Leave
+<i>something</i> to God Almighty&mdash;He managed to pull the cocky little brute
+through worse and tougher situations than Inglesby! Also, He ran the
+rest of the world for a few years before you and I got here to help
+Him with it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're a cocky brute yourself,&quot; said Laurence, critically.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can afford to be, because I can open my hand this <a name="Page_170"></a>minute and show
+you the button. Why, the very man you need is right in your reach! If
+you could get <i>him</i> to put up his name against Inglesby's, the Big Un
+wouldn't be in it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Laurence stared. The Butterfly Man stared back at him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look here,&quot; said he slowly. &quot;You remember my nest, and what that
+bluejay did for it? And what you said? Well, I've looked about a bit,
+and I've seen the bluejay at work.&nbsp;... Oh, hell, I can't talk about
+this thing, but I've watched the putty-faced, hollow-chested,
+empty-bellied kids&mdash;that don't even have guts enough left to laugh.&nbsp;...
+Somebody ought to sock it to that brute, on account of those kids. He
+ought to be headed off ... make him feel he's to be shoo'd outside!
+And I think I know the one man that can shoo him.&quot; He paused again,
+with his head sunk forward. This was so new a John Flint to me that I
+had no words. I was too lost in sheer wonder.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The man I mean hates politics. I've been told he has said openly it's
+not a gentleman's game any more. You've got to make him see it can be
+made one. You've got to make him see it as a duty. Well, once make him
+see <i>that</i>, and he'll smash Inglesby.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You can't mean&mdash;for heaven's sake<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do mean. James Eustis.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Laurence got up, and walked about, whistling.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good Lord!&quot; said he, &quot;and I never even thought of him in that light.
+Why ... he'd sweep everything clean before him!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I am a priest. I am not even an Irish priest. Therefore politics do
+not interest me so keenly as they might <a name="Page_171"></a>another. But even to my slow
+mind the suitability of Eustis was apparent. Of an honored name, just,
+sure, kind, sagacious, a builder, a teacher, a pioneer, the plainer
+people all over the state leaned upon his judgment. A sane shrewd man
+of large affairs, other able men of affairs respected and admired him.
+The state, knowing what he stood for, what he had accomplished for her
+farmers, what he meant to her agricultural interests, admired and
+trusted him. If Eustis wanted any gift within the power of the people
+to give, he had but to signify that desire. And yet, it had taken my
+Butterfly Man to show us this!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bughunter,&quot; said Laurence, respectfully. &quot;If you ever take the notion
+to make me president, will you stand behind and show me how to run the
+United States on greased wheels?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I?&quot; John Flint was genuinely astounded. &quot;The boy's talking in his
+sleep: turn over&mdash;you 're lying on your back!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You won't?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will not!&quot; said the Butterfly Man severely. &quot;I have got something
+much more important on my hands than running states, I'll have you
+know. Lord, man, I'm getting ready some sheets that will tell pretty
+nearly all there is to tell about Catocala Moths!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I remembered that sunset hour, and the pretty child of James Eustis
+putting in this man's hand a gray moth. I think he was remembering,
+too, for his eyes of a sudden melted, as if he saw again her face that
+was so lovely and so young. Glancing at me, he smiled fleetingly.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Page_172"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_X"></a><hr />
+<br />
+<h2>CHAPTER X<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE BLUEJAY</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>When Mary Virginia was graduated, my mother sent her, to commemorate
+that very important and pleasant occasion, one of her few remaining
+treasures&mdash;a carved ivory fan which Le Brun had painted out of his
+heart of hearts for one of King Louis' loveliest ladies. It still
+exhaled, like a whiff of lost roses, something of her vanished grace.</p>
+
+<div style="margin-left: 2%; margin-right: 2%;">
+<p>&quot;I have a fancy,&quot; wrote my mother to Mary Virginia, &quot;that having been
+pressed against women's bosoms and held in women's hands, having been,
+as it were, symbols which expressed the hidden emotions of the heart,
+these exquisite toys have thus been enabled to gain a soul, a soul
+composed of sentience and of memory. I think that as they lie all the
+long, long years in those carved and scented boxes which are like
+little tombs, they remember the lights and the flowers and the
+perfumes, the glimmer and gleam of jewels and silks, the frothy fall
+of laces, the laughter and whispers and glances, the murmured word,
+the stifled sigh: and above all, the touch of soft lips that used to
+brush them lightly; and the poor things wonder a bit wistfully what
+has become of all that gay and lovely life, all that perished bravery
+and beauty that once they knew. So I am quite sure this apparently
+<a name="Page_173"></a>soulless bit of carved ivory sighs inaudibly to feel again the touch
+of a warm and young hand, to be held before gay and smiling eyes, to
+have a flower-fresh face bent over it once more.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Accept it, then, my child, with your old friend's love. Use it in
+your happy hours, dream over it a little, sigh lightly; and then smile
+to remember that this is your Hour, that you are young, and life and
+love are yours. It is in such youthful and happy smiles that we whose
+day declines may relive for a brief and bright space our golden noon.
+Shall I tell you a secret, before your time to know it? <i>Youth alone
+is eternal and immortal!</i> How do I know? <i>'Et Ego in Arcadia vixi!'</i>&quot;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia showed me that letter, long afterward, and I have
+inserted it here, although I suppose it really isn't at all relevant.
+But I shall let it stand, because it is so like my mother!</p>
+
+<p>John Flint made for the schoolgirl a most wonderful tray with handles
+and border of hammered and twisted copper. The tray itself was covered
+with a layer of silvery thistle-down; and on this, hovering above
+flowers, some of his loveliest butterflies spread their wings. So
+beautifully did their frail bodies fit into this airy bed, so
+carefully was the work done, that you might fancy only the glass which
+covered them kept them from escaping.</p>
+
+<div style="margin-left: 2%; margin-right: 2%;">
+<p style="margin-bottom: .2em;">&quot;You will remember telling me, when you were going away to grow up,&quot;
+wrote John Flint, &quot;to watch out for any big fine fellows that came by
+of a morning, because they'd be messengers from you to the Parish
+House people. Big and little they've come, and I've <a name="Page_174"></a>played like they
+were all of them your carriers. So you see we had word of you every
+single day of all these years you've been gone! Now I'm sending one or
+two of them back to you. Please play like my tray's a million times
+bigger and finer and that it's all loaded down with good messages and
+hopes; and believe that still it wouldn't be half big enough to hold
+all the good wishes the Parish House folks (you were right: I belong,
+and so does Kerry) send you to-day by the hand of your old friend,</p>
+
+<p class="sc" style="text-align: right; margin-top: .2em">The Butterfly Man.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia showed me that letter, too, because she was so delighted
+with it, and so proud of it. I like its English very well, but I like
+its Irishness even better.</p>
+
+<p>But, although she had at last finished and done with school, Mary
+Virginia didn't come home to us as we had hoped she would. Her mother
+had other plans, which failed to include little Appleboro. Why should
+a girl with such connections and opportunities be buried in a little
+town when great cities waited for just such with open and welcoming
+arms? The best we got then was a photograph of our girl in her
+graduation frock&mdash;slim wistful Mary Virginia, with much of her dear
+angular youthfulness still clinging to her.</p>
+
+<p>It was Mrs. Eustis herself who kept us posted, after awhile, of the
+girl's later triumphant progress; the sensation she created, the bored
+world bowing to her feet because she brought it, along with name and
+wealth, so fresh a spirit, so pure a beauty. There was a certain
+autocratic old Aunt of her mother's, a sort of awful high priestess in
+the inmost shrine of the sacred elect; <a name="Page_175"></a>this Begum, delighted with her
+young kinswoman, ordered the rest of her world to be likewise
+delighted, and the world agreeing with her verdict, Mary Virginia
+fared very well. She was f&ecirc;ted, photographed, and paragraphed. Her
+portrait, painted by a rather obscure young man, made the painter
+famous. In the hands of the Begum the pretty girl blossomed into a
+great beauty. The photograph that presently came to us quite took our
+breath away, she was so regal.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She will never, never again be at home in little Appleboro,&quot; said my
+mother, regretfully. &quot;That dear, simple, passionate, eager child we
+used to know has gone forever&mdash;life has taken her. This beautiful
+creature's place is not here&mdash;<i>she</i> belongs to a world where the women
+wear titles and tiaras, and the men wear kings' orders. No, we could
+never hope to hold her any more.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But we could love her, could we not? Perhaps even more than those
+fine ladies with tiaras and titles and those fine gentlemen with
+orders, whom your fancy conjures up for her,&quot; said I crisply, for her
+words stung. They found an echo in my own heart.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Love her? Oh, but of course! But&mdash;love counts for very, very little
+in the world which claims Mary Virginia now, Armand. Ambition stifles
+him.&quot; I was silent. I knew.</p>
+
+<p>As for John Flint, he looked at that photograph and turned red.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good Lord! To think I had nerve to send <i>her</i> a few butterflies last
+year ... told <i>her</i> to play like they meant more! I somehow couldn't
+get the notion in my head that she'd grown up.&nbsp;... I never could think
+of her except as a sort of kid-angel, because I <a name="Page_176"></a>couldn't seem to bear
+the idea of her ever being anything else but what she was. Well ...
+she's not, any more. And I've had the nerve to give a few insects to
+the Queen of Sheba!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bosh!&quot; said Laurence, sturdily. &quot;She ought to be glad and proud to
+get that tray, and I'll bet you Mary Virginia's delighted with it.
+She's her father's daughter as well as her mother's, please. As for
+Appleboro not being good enough for her, that's piffle, too, p'tite
+Madame, and I'm surprised at you! Her own town is good enough for any
+girl. If it isn't, let her just pitch in and help make it good enough,
+if she's worth her salt. Not that Mary Virginia isn't scrumptious,
+though. Lordy, who'd think this was the same kid that used to bump my
+head?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She turns heads now, instead of bumping them,&quot; said my mother.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, she's not the only head-turner Appleboro can boast of!&quot; said the
+young man grandly. &quot;We've always been long on good-lookers in
+Carolina, whatever else we may lack. They're like berries in their
+season.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But the berry season is short and soon over, my son: and there are
+seasons when there are no berries at all&mdash;except preserved ones,&quot;
+suggested my mother, with that swift, curious cattiness which so often
+astounds me in even the dearest of women.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dare you to tell that to the Civic League!&quot; chortled Laurence. &quot;I'll
+grant you that Mary Virginia's the biggest berry in the patch, at the
+height of a full season. But look at her getup! Don't doodads and
+fallals, and hen-feathers in the hair, and things twisted and tied,
+and a slithering train, and a clothesline length of pearls <a name="Page_177"></a>and such,
+count for something? How about Claire Dexter, for instance? She mayn't
+have a Figure like her Aunt Sally Ruth, but suppose you dolled Claire
+up like this? A flirt she was born and a flirt she will die, but isn't
+she a perfect peach? That reminds me&mdash;that ungrateful minx gave two
+dances rightfully mine to Mr. Howard Hunter last night. I didn't raise
+any ructions, because, to tell you the truth, I didn't much blame her.
+That fellow really knows how to dance, and the way he can convey to a
+girl the impression that he's only alive on her account makes me gnash
+my teeth with green-and-blue envy. No wonder they all dote on him! No
+home complete without this handsome ornament!&quot; he added.</p>
+
+<p>My mother's lips came firmly together.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is a great mistake to figure Mephistopheles as a rather blas&eacute;
+brunette,&quot; she remarked crisply. &quot;I am absolutely certain that if you
+could catch the devil without his mask you'd find him a perfect
+blonde.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nietzsche's blonde beast, then?&quot; suggested Laurence, amused at her
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That same blonde beast is perhaps the most magnificent of animals,&quot; I
+put in. For alone of my household I admired immensely Mr. Inglesby's
+secretary. He was the only man I have ever known to whom the term
+'beautiful' might be justly applied, and at the word's proper worth.
+Such a man as this, a two-handed sword gripped in his steel fists, a
+wolfskin across his broad shoulders and eagle-wings at either side the
+helmet that crowns his yellow hair, looks at one out of many a red,
+red page of the past with just such blue, dangerous, and cloudless
+eyes. Rolling and <a name="Page_178"></a>reeking decks have known him, and falling walls,
+and shrieks, and flames mounting skyward, and viking sagas, and
+drinking-songs roared from brass throats, and terrible hymns to Odin
+Allfather in the midwatches of Northern nights.</p>
+
+<p>He had called upon me shortly after his arrival, his ostensible reason
+being my work among his mill-people. I think he liked me, later. At
+any rate, I had seen much of him, and I was indebted to him for more
+than one shrewd and practical suggestion. If at times I was chilled by
+what seemed to me a ruthless and cold-blooded manner of viewing the
+whole great social question I was nevertheless forced to admire the
+almost mathematical perfection to which he had reduced his system.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you wish to deal with human beings as with figures in a sum,&quot; I
+objected once.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Figures,&quot; he smiled equably, &quot;are only stubborn&mdash;on paper. When
+they're alive they're fluid and any clever social chemist can reduce
+them to first principles. It's really very simple, as all great things
+are: <i>When in doubt, reach the stomach!</i> There you are! That's the
+universal eye-opener.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear friend,&quot; he added, laughing, &quot;don't look so horrified. <i>I</i>
+didn't make things as they are. Personally, I might even prefer to
+say, like Mr. Fox in the old story, <i>'It was not so. It is not so. And
+God forbid it should be so!'</i> But I can't, truthfully, and
+therefore&mdash;I don't. I accept what I can't help. Self-preservation, we
+all admit, is the first law of nature. Now I consider myself, and the
+class I represent, as beings much more valuable to the world than,
+let's say, your factory-hands, your mill-workers, your hewers of wood
+<a name="Page_179"></a>and drawers of water. Thus, should the occasion arise, I should most
+unhesitatingly use whatever weapons law, religion, civilization
+itself, put into my hands, without compunction and possibly what some
+cavilers might call without mercy; having at stake a very vital
+issue&mdash;the preservation of my kind, the protection of my class against
+Demos.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He spoke without heat, calmly, looking at me smilingly with his fine
+intelligent eyes: there was even much of truth in his frank statement
+of his case. Always has Dives spoken thus, law-protected, dining
+within; while without the doors of the sick civilization he has
+brought about, Lazarus lies, licked by the dogs of chance. No, this
+man was advocating no new theory; once, perhaps, I might have argued
+even thus myself, and done so with a clean conscience. This man was
+merely an opportunist. I knew he would never &quot;reach their stomachs&quot;
+unless he thought he had to. Indeed, since his coming, things had
+changed greatly at the mills, and for the better.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The day of the great god Gouge,&quot; he had said to Inglesby, &quot;is
+passing. It's bad business to overwork and underpay your hands into a
+state of chronic insurrection. That means losing time and scamping
+work. The square deal is not socialism nor charity nor a matter of any
+one man's private pleasure or conscience&mdash;it's cold hard common sense
+and sound scientific business. You get better results, and that's what
+you're after.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was because Appleboro offered, at that time, very little to
+amuse and interest that keen mind of his, that the Butterfly Man
+amused and interested Hunter so much. Or perhaps, proud as he was,
+even he could <a name="Page_180"></a>not wholly escape that curious likableness which drew
+men to John Flint.</p>
+
+<p>He was delighted with our collection. He could appreciate its scope
+and value, something to which all Appleboro else paid but passing
+heed. John Flint declared that most folks came to see our butterflies
+just as they would have run to see the dog-faced boy or the bearded
+lady&mdash;merely for something to see. But this man's appreciation and
+praise were both sincere and encouraging. And as he never allowed
+anything or anybody unusual or interesting to pass him by without at
+least sampling its savor, he formed the habit of strolling over to the
+Parish House to talk with the limping man who had come there a dying
+tramp, was now a scientist, with the manner and appearance of a
+gentleman, and who spoke at will the language of two worlds. That this
+once black sheep had strayed of his own will and pleasure from some
+notable fold Hunter didn't for a moment doubt. Like all Appleboro, he
+wouldn't have been at all surprised to see this prodigal son welcomed
+into the bosom of some Fifth Avenue father, and have the fatted calf
+dressed for him by a chef whose salary might have hired three college
+professors. Hunter had known one or two such black sheep in his time;
+he fancied himself none too shrewd in thus penetrating Flint's rather
+obvious secret.</p>
+
+<p>My mother watched the secretary's comings and goings at the Parish
+House speculatively. Not even the fact that he quoted her adored La
+Rochefoucauld, in flawless French, softened <i>her</i> estimate.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If he even had the semblance of a heart!&quot; said she, regretfully. &quot;But
+he is all head, that one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_181"></a>Now, I am a simple man, and this cultivated and handsome man of the
+world delighted me. To me immured in a mill town he brought the modern
+world's best. He was a window, for me, which let in light.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That great blonde!&quot; said Madame, wonderingly. &quot;He is so designedly
+fascinating I wonder you fail to see the wheels go 'round. However,
+let me admit that I thank God devoutly I am no longer young and
+susceptible. Consider the terrible power such a man might exert over
+an ardent and unsophisticated heart!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was Hunter who had brought me a slim book, making known to me a
+poet I had otherwise missed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are sure to like Bridges,&quot; he told me, &quot;for the sake of one
+verse. Have you ever thought <i>why</i> I like you, Father De Ranc&eacute;?
+Because you amuse me. I see in you one of life's subtlest ironies: A
+Greek beauty-worshiper posing as a Catholic priest&mdash;in Appleboro!&quot; He
+laughed. And then, with real feeling, he read in his resonant voice:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;I love all beautiful things:<br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; I seek and adore them.<br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; God has no better praise,<br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; And man in his hasty days,<br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; Is honored for them.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>When at times the secretary brought his guests to see what he
+pleasingly enough termed Appleboro's one claim to distinction, the
+Butterfly Man did the honors to the manner born. Drawer after drawer
+and box after box would he open, patiently answering and explaining.
+And indeed, I think the contents were worth coming far to see. Some of
+them had come to us from the ends of the earth; from China and Japan
+and India <a name="Page_182"></a>and Africa and Australia, from the Antilles and Mexico and
+South America and the isles of the Pacific; from many and many a
+lonely missionary station had they been sent us. Even as our
+collection grew, the library covering it grew with it. But this was
+merely the most showy and pleasing part of the work. That which had
+the greatest scientific worth and interest, that upon which John
+Flint's value and reputation were steadily mounting, was in less
+lovely and more destructive forms of insect life. Beside this last, a
+labor calling for the most unremitting, painstaking, persevering
+research, observation, and intelligence, the painted beauties of his
+butterflies were but as precious play. For in this last he was
+wringing from Nature's reluctant fingers some of her dearest and most
+deeply hidden secrets. He was like Jacob, wrestling all night long
+with an unknown angel, saying sturdily:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will not let thee go except thou tell me thy name!&quot; Like Jacob, he
+paid the price of going halt for his knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>I like to think that Hunter understood the enormous value of the
+naturalist's work. But I fancy the silent and absorbed student himself
+was to his mind the most interesting specimen, the most valuable
+study. It amused him to try to draw his reticent host into familiar
+and intimate conversation. Flint was even as his name.</p>
+
+<p>Oddly enough, Hunter shared the Butterfly Man's liking for that
+unspeakable Book of Obituaries, and I have seen him take a batch of
+them from his pocket as a free-will offering. I have seen him, who had
+all French, Russian and English literature at his fingers' ends, sit
+chuckling and absorbed for an hour over that fearful <a name="Page_183"></a>collection of
+lugubrious verse and worse grammar; pausing every now and then to cast
+a speculative and curious glance at his impassive host, who, paying
+absolutely no attention to him, bent his whole mind, instead, upon
+some tiny form in a balsam slide mount under his microscope.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why don't you admire Mr. Hunter?&quot; I was curious to know.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I do admire him.&quot; Flint was sincere.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then if you admire him, why don't you like him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He reflected.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't like the expression of his teeth,&quot; he admitted. &quot;They're too
+pointed. He looks like he'd bite. I don't think he'd care much who he
+bit, either; it would all depend on who got in his way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Seeing me look at him wonderingly, he paused in his work, stretched
+his legs under the table, and grinned up at me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm not saying he oughtn't to put his best foot foremost,&quot; he agreed.
+&quot;We'd all do that, if we only knew how. And I'm not saying he ought to
+tell on himself, or that anybody's got any business getting under his
+guard. I don't hanker to know anybody's faults, or to find out what
+they've got up their sleeves besides their elbows, unless I have to.
+Why, I'd as soon ask a fellow to take off his patent leathers to prove
+he hadn't got bunions, or to unbutton his collar, so I'd be sure it
+wasn't fastened onto a wart on the back of his neck. Personally I
+don't want to air anybody's bumps and bunions. It's none of my
+business. I believe in collars and shoes, myself. <i>But</i> if I see
+signs, I can believe all by my lonesome they've got 'em, can't I?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_184"></a>Exactly. Your deductions, my dear Sherlock, are really marvelous. A
+gentleman wears good shoes and clean collars&mdash;wherefore, you don't
+like the expression of his teeth!&quot; said I, ironically.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Slap me on the wrist some more, if it makes you feel good,&quot; he
+offered brazenly. &quot;For he may&mdash;and I sure don't.&quot; His grin faded, the
+old pucker came to his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Parson, maybe the truth is I'm not crazy over him because people like
+him get people like me to seeing too plainly that things aren't fairly
+dealt out. Why, think a minute. That man's got about all a man can
+have, hasn't he? In himself, I mean. And if there's anything more he
+fancies, he can reach out and get it, can't he? Well, then, some folks
+might get to thinking that folks like him&mdash;get more than they deserve.
+And some ... don't get any more than they deserve,&quot; he finished, with
+grim ambiguity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you like him yourself?&quot; he demanded, as I made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I admire him immensely.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Does Madame like him?&quot; he came back.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Madame is a woman,&quot; I said, cautiously. &quot;Also, you are to remember
+that if Madame doesn't, she is only one against many. All the rest of
+them seem to adore him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, the rest of them!&quot; grunted John Flint, and scowled. &quot;Huh! If it
+wasn't for Madame and a few more like her, I'd say women and hens are
+the two plum-foolest things God has found time to make yet. If you
+don't believe it, watch them stand around and cackle over the first
+big dunghill rooster that walks on his <a name="Page_185"></a>wings before them! There are
+times when I could wring their necks. Dern a fool, anyhow!&quot; He
+wriggled in his chair with impatience.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Liver,&quot; said I, outraged. &quot;You'd better see Dr. Westmoreland about
+it. When a man talks like you're talking now, it's just one of two
+things&mdash;a liver out of whack, or plain ugly jealousy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do sound like I've got a grouch, don't I?&quot; he admitted, without
+shame. &quot;Well ... maybe it's jealousy, and maybe it's not. The truth
+is, he rubs me rather raw at times, I don't know just how or why.
+Maybe it's because he's so sure of himself. He can afford to be sure.
+There isn't any reason why he shouldn't be. And it hurts my feelings.&quot;
+He looked up at me, shrewdly. &quot;He looks all right, and he sounds all
+right, and maybe he might be all right&mdash;but, parson, I've got the
+notion that somehow he's not!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good heavens! Why, look at what the man has done for the mill folks!
+Whatever his motives are, the result is right there, isn't it? His
+works praise him in the gates!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, sure! But he hasn't played his full hand out yet, friend. You
+just give him time. His sort don't play to lose; they can't afford to
+lose; losing is the other fellow's job. Parson, see here: there are
+two sides to all things; one of 'em's right and the other's wrong, and
+a man's got to choose between 'em. He can't help it. He's got to be on
+one side or the other, if he's a <i>man</i>. A neutral is a squashy It that
+both sides do right to kick out of the way. Now you can't do the right
+side any good if you're standing flatfooted on the wrong side, can
+you? No; you take sides according to what's <a name="Page_186"></a>in you. You know good and
+well one side is full of near-poors, and half-ways, and
+real-poors&mdash;the downandouters, the guys that never had a show,
+ditchers and sewercleaners and sweatshoppers and mill hands and
+shuckers, and overdriven mutts and starved women and kids. It's sure
+one hell of a road, but there's got to be a light somewhere about it
+or the best of the whole world wouldn't take to it for choice, would
+they? Yet they do! Like Jesus Christ, say. They turn down the other
+side cold, though it's nicer traveling. Why, you can hog that other
+road in an auto, you can run down the beggars and the kids, you can
+even shoot up the cops that want to make you keep the speed laws. You
+haven't <i>got</i> any speed laws there. It's your road. You own it, see?
+It's what it is because you've made it so, just to please yourself,
+and to hell with the hicks that have to leg it! But&mdash;you lose out on
+that side even when you think you've won. You get exactly what you go
+after, but you don't get any more, and so you lose out. Why? Because
+you're an egg-sucker and a nest-robber and a shrike, and a
+four-flusher and a piker, that's why!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The first road don't give you anything you can put your hands on;
+except that you think and hope maybe there's that light at the end of
+it. But, parson, I guess if <i>you're</i> man enough to foot it without a
+pay-envelope coming in on Saturdays, why, it's plenty good enough for
+<i>me</i>&mdash;and Kerry. But while I'm legging it I'll keep a weather eye
+peeled for crooks. That big blonde he-god is one of 'em. You soak that
+in your thinking-tank: he's one of 'em!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But look at what he's doing!&quot; said I, aghast. &quot;<a name="Page_187"></a>What he's doing is
+<i>good</i>. Even Laurence couldn't ask for more than good results, could
+he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Butterfly Man smiled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't get stung, parson. Why, you take me, myself. Suppose, parson,
+you'd been on the other side, like Hunter is, when I came along? Suppose
+you'd never stopped a minute, since you were born, to think of anything
+or anybody but yourself and your own interests&mdash;where would I be to-day,
+parson? Suppose you had the utility-and-nothing-but-business bug biting
+you, like that skate's got? Why, what do you suppose you'd have done
+with little old Slippy? I was considerable good business to look at
+then, wasn't I? No. You've got to have something in you that will let
+you take gambler's chances; you've got to be willing to bet the limit
+and risk your whole kitty on the one little chance that a roan will come
+out right, if you give him a fair show, just because he <i>is</i> a man; or
+you can't ever hope to help just when that help's needed. Right there is
+the difference between the Laurence-and-you sort and the Hunter-men,&quot;
+said John Flint, obstinately.</p>
+
+<p>As for Laurence, he and Hunter met continually, both being in constant
+social demand. If Laurence did not naturally gravitate toward that
+bright particular set of rather rapid young people which presently
+formed itself about the brilliant figure of Hunter, the two did not
+dislike each other, though Hunter, from an older man's sureness of
+himself, was the more cordial of the two. I fancy each watched the
+other more guardedly than either would like to admit. They represented
+opposite interests; one might at any moment become inimical to the
+other. Of this, however, no faintest trace was allowed <a name="Page_188"></a>to appear upon
+the calm unruffled surface of things.</p>
+
+<p>If Inglesby had chosen this man by design, it had been a wise choice.
+For he was undoubtedly very popular, and quite deservedly so. He had
+unassailable connections, as we all knew. He brought a broader
+culture, which was not without its effect. And in spite of the fact
+that he represented Inglesby, there was not a door in Appleboro that
+was not open to him. Inglesby himself seemed a less sinister figure in
+the light of this younger and dazzling personality. Thus the secretary
+gradually removed the thorns and briars of doubts and prejudices,
+sowing in their stead the seeds of Inglesby's ambition and
+rehabilitation, in the open light of day. He knew his work was well
+done; he was sure of ultimate success; he had always been successful,
+and there had been, heretofore, no one strong enough to actively
+oppose him. He could therefore afford to make haste slowly. Even had
+he been aware of the Butterfly Man's acrid estimate of him, it must
+have amused him. When all was said and done, what did a Butterfly
+Man&mdash;even such a one as ours&mdash;amount to, in the world of Big Business
+<i>He</i> hadn't stocks nor bonds nor power nor pull. He hadn't anything
+but a personality that arrested you, a setter dog, a slowly-growing
+name, a room full of insects in an old priest's garden. Of course
+Hunter would have smiled! And there wasn't a soul to tell him anything
+of Slippy McGee!</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Page_189"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XI"></a><hr />
+<br />
+<h2>CHAPTER XI<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>A LITTLE GIRL GROWN UP</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>Summer stole out a-tiptoe, and October had come among the live-oaks
+and the pines, and touched the wide marshes and made them brown, and
+laid her hand upon the barrens and the cypress swamps and set them
+aflame with scarlet and gold. October is not sere and sorrowful with
+us, but a ruddy and deep-bosomed lass, a royal and free-hearted
+spender and giver of gifts. Asters of imperial purple, golden rod fit
+for kings' scepters, march along with her in ever thinning ranks; the
+great bindweed covers fences and clambers up dying cornstalks; and in
+many a covert and beside the open ditches the Gerardia swings her pink
+and airy bells. All down the brown roads white lady's-lace and yarrow
+and the stiff purple iron-weed have leaped into bloom; under its faded
+green coat the sugar-cane shows purple; and sumac and sassafras and
+gums are afire. The year's last burgeoning of butterflies riots, a
+tangle of rainbow coloring, dancing in the mellow sunshine. And day by
+day a fine still deepening haze descends veil-like over the landscape
+and wraps it in a vague melancholy which most sweetly invades the
+spirit. It is as if one waits for a poignant thing which must happen.</p>
+
+<p>Upon such a perfect afternoon, I, reading my worn old breviary under
+our great magnolia, heard of a <a name="Page_190"></a>sudden a voice of pure gold call me,
+very softly, by my name; and looking up met eyes of almost
+unbelievable blue, and the smile of a mouth splendidly young and red.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose the tall girl standing before me was fashionably and
+expensively clad; heaven knows <i>I</i> don't know what she wore, but I do
+know that whatever it was it became her wonderfully; and although it
+seemed to me very simple, and just what such a girl ought to wear, my
+mother says you could tell half a mile away that those clothes smacked
+of super-tailoring at its costliest. Hat and gloves she held in her
+slim white ringless hand. One thus saw her waving hair, framing her
+warm pale face in living ebony.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Padre!&quot; said she. &quot;Oh, dear, dear, Padre!&quot; and down she dropped
+lightly beside me, and cradled her knees in her arms, and looked up,
+with an arch and tender friendliness. That childish action, that
+upward glance, brought back the darling child I had so greatly loved.
+This was no Queen-of-Sheba, as John Flint had thought. This was not
+the regal young beauty whose photograph graced front pages. This was
+my own girl come back. And I knew I hadn't lost Mary Virginia.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I remembered this place, and I knew&mdash;I just knew in my heart&mdash;you'd
+be sitting here, with your breviary in your hand. I knew just how
+you'd be looking up, every now and then, smiling at things because
+they're lovely and you love them. So I stole around by the back
+gate&mdash;and there you were!&quot; said she, her eyes searching me. &quot;Padre,
+Padre, how more than good to see you again! And I'm sure that's the
+same cassock I left you wearing. You could wear it a couple of
+lifetimes without getting a single spot on it&mdash;you were always such a
+<a name="Page_191"></a>delightful old maid, Padre! Where and how is Madame? Who's in the
+Guest Rooms? How is John Flint since he's come to be a Notable? Has
+Miss Sally Ruth still got a Figure? How are the judge's cats, and the
+major's goatee? How is everything and everybody?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you know you'd have to make room for me, Padre? Well, you will. I
+picked up and fairly ran away from everything and everybody, because
+the longing for home grew upon me intolerably. When I was in Europe,
+and I used to think that three thousand miles of water lay between me
+and Appleboro, I used to cry at nights. I hope John Flint's
+butterflies told him what I told them to tell him for me, when they
+came by! How beautiful the old place looks! Padre, you're <i>thin</i>. Why
+will you work so hard? Why doesn't somebody stop you? And&mdash;you're
+gray, but how perfectly beautiful gray hair is, and how thick and wavy
+yours is, too! Gray hair was invented and intended for folks with
+French blood and names. Nobody else can wear it half so gracefully.
+Now tell me first of all you're glad as glad can be to see me, Padre.
+Say you haven't forgotten me&mdash;and then you can tell me everything
+else!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She paused, fanned herself with her hat, and laughed, looking up at me
+with her blue, blue eyes that were so heavily fringed with black.</p>
+
+<p>I was so startled by her sudden appearance&mdash;as if she had walked out
+of my prayers, like an angel; and, above all, by that resemblance to
+the one long since dust and unremembered of all men's hearts save
+mine, that I could hardly bear to look upon her. That other one seemed
+to have stepped delicately out of her untimely grave; to sit once more
+beside me, and thus to look at <a name="Page_192"></a>me once more with unforgotten eyes.
+Thou knowest, my God, before whom all hearts are bare, that I could
+not have loved thee so singly nor served thee without fainting, all
+these years, if for one faithless moment I could have forgotten her!</p>
+
+<p>My mother came out of the house with a garden hat tied over her white
+hair, and big garden gloves on her hands. At sight of the girl she
+uttered a joyful shriek, flung scissors and trowel and basket aside,
+and rushed forward. With catlike quickness the girl leaped to her feet
+and the two met and fell into each other's arms. I wished when I saw
+the little woman's arms close so about the girl, and the look that
+flashed into her face, that heaven had granted her a daughter.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mother complained that I should at least have the decency to wire you
+I was coming&mdash;she said I was behaving like a child. But I wanted to
+walk in unannounced. I was so sure, you see, that there'd be welcome
+and room for me at the Parish House.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The little room you used to like so much is waiting for you,&quot; said my
+mother, happily.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Next to yours, all in blue and white, with the Madonna of the Chair
+over the mantelpiece and the two china shepherdesses under her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you shall see the new baby in the bigger Guest Room, and the
+crippled Polish child in the small one,&quot; said my mother. &quot;The baby's
+name is Smelka Zurawawski, but she's all the better for it&mdash;I never
+saw a nicer baby. And the little boy is so patient and so intelligent,
+and so pretty! Dr. Westmoreland thinks he can be cured, and we hope to
+be able to send him on to Johns Hopkins, after we've got him in good
+shape. <a name="Page_193"></a>Where is your luggage? How long may we keep you? But first of
+all you shall have tea and some of Cl&eacute;lie's cakes. Cl&eacute;lie has grown
+horribly vain of her cakes. She expects to make them in heaven some of
+these days, for the most exclusive of the cherubim and seraphim, and
+the lordliest of the principalities and powers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia smiled at the pleased old servant. &quot;I've half a dozen
+gorgeous Madras head-handkerchiefs for you, Cl&eacute;lie, and a perfect duck
+of a black frock which you are positively to make up and wear now&mdash;you
+are <i>not</i> to save it up to be buried in!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No'm, Miss Mary Virginia. I won't get buried in it. I'll maybe get
+married in it,&quot; said Cl&eacute;lie calmly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Married! Cl&eacute;lie!&quot; said my mother, in consternation. &quot;Do you mean to
+tell me you're planning to leave me, at this time of our lives?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Cl&eacute;lie was indignant. &quot;You think I have no mo'sense than to leave you
+and M'sieu Armand, for some strange nigger? Not me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who are you going to marry, Cl&eacute;lie?&quot; Mary Virginia was delighted.
+&quot;And hadn't you better let me give you another frock? Black is hardly
+appropriate for a bride.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm not exactly set in my mind who he's going to be yet, Miss Mary
+Virginia, but he's got to be somebody or other. There's been lots
+after me, since it got out I'm such a grand cook and save my wages.
+But I've got a sort of taste for Daddy January. He's old, but he's
+lively. He's a real ambitious old man like that. Besides, I'm sure of
+his family,&mdash;I always did like Judge Mayne and Mister Laurence, and I
+do like 'ristocratic connections, Miss Mary Virginia. That big nigger
+that <a name="Page_194"></a>drives one of the mill trucks had the impudence to tell me he'd
+give me a church wedding and pay for it himself, but I told him I was
+raised a Catholic; and what you think he said? He said, 'Oh, well,
+you've been christened in the face already. We can dip the rest of you
+easy enough, and then you'll be a real Christian, like me!' I'd just
+scalded my chickens and was picking them, and I was that mad I upped
+and let him have that dish pan full of hot water and wet feathers in
+his face. 'There,' says I, 'you're christened in the face now
+yourself,' I says. 'You can go and dip the rest of yourself,' says I,
+'but see you do it somewhere else besides my kitchen,' I says. I don't
+think he's crazy to marry me any more, and Daddy January's sort of
+soothing to my feelings, besides being close to hand. Yes'm, I guess
+you'd better give me the black dress, Miss Mary Virginia, if you don't
+mind: it'd come in awful handy if I had to go in mourning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The black dress it shall be,&quot; said Mary Virginia, gaily. She turned
+to my mother. &quot;And what do you think, p'tite Madame? I've a rare
+butterfly for John Flint, that an English duke gave me for him! The
+duke is a collector, too, and he'd gotten some specimens from John
+Flint. The minute he learned I was from Appleboro he asked me all
+about him. He said nobody else under the sky can 'do' insects so
+perfectly, and that nobody except the Lord and old Henri Fabre knew as
+much about certain of them as John Flint does. Folks thought the duke
+was taken up with <i>me</i>, of course, and I was no end conceited! I
+hadn't the ghost of an idea you and John Flint were such astonishingly
+learned folks, Padre! But of course if a duke thought so, I <a name="Page_195"></a>knew I'd
+better think so, too&mdash;and so I did and do! Think of a duke knowing
+about folks in little Appleboro! And he was such a nice old man, too.
+Not a bit dukey, after you knew him!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We come in touch with collectors everywhere,&quot; I explained.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And so John Flint has written some sort of a book, describing the
+whole life history of something or other, and <i>you've</i> done all the
+drawings! Isn't it lovely? Why, it sounds like something out of a
+pleasant book. Mayn't I see collector and collection in the morning?
+And oh, where's Kerry?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Kerry,&quot; said my mother gravely, &quot;is a most important personage. He's
+John Flint's bodyguard. He doesn't actually sleep in his master's bed,
+because he has one of his own right next it. Cl&eacute;lie was horrified at
+first. She said they'd be eating together next, but the Butterfly Man
+reminded her that Kerry likes dog-biscuit and he doesn't. I figure
+that in the order of his affections the Butterfly Man ranks Kerry
+first, Armand and myself next, and Laurence a close third.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Laurence,&quot; said Mary Virginia. &quot;I'll be so glad to see Laurence
+again, if only to quarrel with him. Is he just as logical as ever? Has
+he given the sun a black eye with his sling-shot? My father's always
+praising Laurence in his letters.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now my mother adores Laurence. She patterns upon this model every
+young man she meets, and if they are not Laurence-sized she does not
+include them in her good graces. But she seldom lifts her voice in
+praise of her favorite. She is far, far too wise.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Laurence generally looks in upon us during the <a name="Page_196"></a>evening, if he is not
+too busy,&quot; she said, non-committally. &quot;You see, people are beginning
+to find out what a really fine lawyer Laurence is, so cases are coming
+to him steadily.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The trunks had arrived, and Mary Virginia changed into white, in which
+she glowed and sparkled like a fire opal. We three dined together, and
+as she became more and more animated, a pink flush stole into her
+rather pale cheeks and her eyes deepened and darkened. She was vividly
+alive. One could see why Mary Virginia was classed as a great beauty,
+although, strictly speaking, she was no such thing. But she had that
+compelling charm which one simply cannot express in words. It was
+there, and you felt it. She did not take your heart by storm,
+willynilly. You watched her, and presently you gave her your heart
+willingly, delighted that a creature so lovely and so unaffected and
+worth loving had crossed your path.</p>
+
+<p>She chatted with my mother about that world which the older woman had
+once graced, and my mother listened without a shade to darken her
+smooth forehead. But I do not think I ever so keenly appreciated the
+many sacrifices she had made for me, until that night.</p>
+
+<p>The autumn evening had grown chilly, and we had a fire in the
+clean-swept fireplace. The old brass dogs sparkled in the blaze, and
+the shadows flickered and danced on the walls, and across the faces of
+De Ranc&eacute; portraits; the pleasant room was full of a ruddy, friendly
+glow. My mother sat in her low rocker, making something or other out
+of pink and white wools for the baby upstairs. Mary Virginia, at the
+old square piano, sang <a name="Page_197"></a>for us. She had a charming voice, carefully
+cultivated and sweet, and she played with great feeling.</p>
+
+<p>Kerry barked at the gate, as he always does when home is reached. My
+mother, dropping her work, ran to the window which gives upon the
+garden, and called. A moment later the Butterfly Man, with Laurence
+just back of him, and Kerry squeezing in between them, stood in the
+door. Mary Virginia, lips parted, eyes alight, hands outstretched,
+arose. The light of the whole room seemed not so much to gather upon
+her, as to radiate from her.</p>
+
+<p>The dog reached her first. Outdoor exercise, careful diet, perfect
+grooming, had kept Kerry in fine shape. His age told only in an added
+dignity, a slower movement.</p>
+
+<p>The girl went down on her knees, and hugged him. Pitache, aroused by
+Kerry's unwonted demonstrations, circled about them, rushing in every
+now and then to bestow an indiscriminate lick.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, it's Mary Virginia!&quot; exclaimed Laurence, and helped her to her
+feet. The two regarded each other, mutually appraising. He towered
+above her, head and shoulders, and I thought with great satisfaction
+that, go where she would, she could nowhere find a likelier man than
+this same Laurence of ours. Like David in his youth, he was ruddy and
+of a beautiful countenance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, Laurence! What a Jack-the-Giant-killer! Mercy, how big the boy's
+grown!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, Mary Virginia! What a heart-smasher! Mercy, how pretty the
+girl's grown!&quot; he came back, holding her hand and looking down at her
+with equally frank delight. &quot;When I remember the pigtailed, leggy,
+<a name="Page_198"></a>tonguey minx that used to fetch me clumps over the head&mdash;and then
+regard this beatific vision&mdash;I'm afraid I'll wake up and you'll be
+gone!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you'll kindly give me back my hand, I might be induced to fetch
+you another clump or two, just to prove my reality,&quot; she suggested,
+with a delightful hint of the old truculence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'T is she! This is indeed none other than our long-lost child!&quot;
+burbled Laurence. &quot;Lordy, I wish I could tell her how more than good
+it is to see her again&mdash;and to see her as she is!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now all this time John Flint had stood in the doorway; and when my
+mother beckoned him forward, he came, I fancied, a bit unwillingly.
+His limp was for once painfully apparent, and whether from the
+day-long tramp, or from some slight indisposition, he was very pale;
+it showed under his deep tan.</p>
+
+<p>But I was proud of him. His manner had a pleasant shyness, which was a
+tribute to the young girl's beauty. It had as well a simple dignity.
+And one was impressed by the fine and powerful physique of him, so
+lean and springy, so boyishly slim about the hips and waist, so deeply
+stamped with clean living of days in the open, of nights under the
+stars. The features had thinned and sharpened, and his red beard
+became him; the hair thinning on the temples increased the breadth of
+the forehead, and behind his glasses the piercing blue eyes&mdash;something
+like an eagle's eyes&mdash;were clear, direct, and kind. He wore his
+clothes well, with a sort of careless carefulness, more like an
+Englishman than an American, who is always welldressed, but rather
+gives the impression of being conscious of it.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_199"></a>Mary Virginia's lips parted, her eyes widened, for a fraction of a
+second. But if, remembering him as she had first seen and known him,
+she was astonished to find him as he was now, she gave no further
+outward sign. Instead, she gave him her hand as to an equal, and in a
+few gracious words let him know that she knew and was proud of what he
+had done and what he was yet to do. She repeated, too, with a pretty
+air of personal triumph, the old nobleman's praise. Indeed, it had
+been he who had told her of the book, which he had lately purchased
+and studied, she said. And oh, hadn't she just <i>swelled</i> with pride!
+She had been that conceited!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You don't know how much obliged to you I should be, for if he hadn't
+accidentally learned I was from Appleboro, the town in which dwelt his
+most greatly prized correspondent&mdash;that's what he said, Mr.
+Flint!&mdash;why, I'm sure he wouldn't have noticed me any more than he
+noticed any other girl&mdash;which is, not at all; he being a toplofty and
+serious Personage addicted to people who do things and write things,
+particularly things about things that crawl and fly. And if he hadn't
+noticed me so pointedly&mdash;he actually came to see us!&mdash;why, I shouldn't
+have had such a perfectly gorgeous time. It was a great feather in my
+cap,&quot; she crowed. &quot;Everybody envied me desperately!&quot; She managed to
+make us understand that this was really a compliment to the Butterfly
+Man, not to herself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If the little book served you for one minute it was well worth the
+four years it took me to gather the materials together and write it,&quot;
+said he, pleasantly. And even the courtly Hunter couldn't have said it
+with a manlier grace.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_200"></a>Mary Virginia,&quot; said Laurence slyly, &quot;when you've had your fill of
+bugs, make him show you the Book of Obituaries. He thereby stands
+revealed in his true colors. Why, he made me buy the old <i>Clarion</i> and
+hire Jim Dabney to run it, so his supply of mortuary gems shouldn't be
+cut off untimely. To-day he culled this one:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>Phileola dear, we cry because thou hast gone and left us,<br /></span>
+<span>But well we know it is a merciful heaven which has bereft us.<br /></span>
+<span>We tried five doctors and everything else we knew of you to save,<br /></span>
+<span>But alas, nothing did you any good, and to-day you are in your grave!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noin">He's got it in his pocket now. Dabney calls him Mister Bones,&quot; grinned
+Laurence.</p>
+
+<p>My mother looked profoundly uncomfortable. The Butterfly Man reddened
+guiltily under her reproachful glance, but Mary Virginia giggled
+irrepressibly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I choose the Book of Obituaries first!&quot; said she promptly, with
+dancing eyes. Flint drew a breath of relief.</p>
+
+<p>He sat by silently enough, while Laurence and Madame and Mary Virginia
+talked of everything under heaven. His whole manner was that of an
+amused, tolerant, sympathetic listener&mdash;a manner which spurs
+conversation to its happiest and best. Not for nothing had Major
+Cartwright called him the most discriminatin' listener in Carolina.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, by the way, Flint! Hunter came by this morning to see Dabney. He
+is going to give a series of Plain Talks to Workingmen this winter,
+and of course he wants the <i>Clarion</i> to cover them. What do you think,
+Padre?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_201"></a>I think they will be eminently sensible talks and well worth
+listening to,&quot; said I promptly.</p>
+
+<p>The Butterfly Man smiled crookedly, and shot me a freighted glance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course,&quot; said Laurence, easily. &quot;Where's your father these days,
+Mary Virginia?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He was at the plantation this morning, but he'll be here to-morrow,
+because I wired him to come. I've just got to have him for awhile,
+business or no business.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You did me a favor, then. I want to see him, too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Anything very particular?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Politics.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How silly! You know very well he never meddles with politics, thank
+goodness! He thinks he has something better to do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's just what I want to see him about,&quot; said Laurence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You mentioned a&mdash;a Mr. Hunter.&quot; Mary Virginia spoke after a short
+pause. &quot;This is the first time I've heard of any Mr. Hunter in
+Appleboro. Who is Mr. Hunter?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Inglesby's right-bower, and the king-card of the pack,&quot; said Laurence
+promptly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One of them which set up golden images in high places and make all
+Israel for to sin,&quot; said my mother. &quot;<i>That's</i> what Howard Hunter is!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, ... Howard Hunter!&quot; said she. &quot;What sort of a person may he be?
+And what is he doing here in Appleboro?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We told her according to our lights. Only the Butterfly Man sat silent
+and imperturbable.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you'll meet him everywhere,&quot; finished my <a name="Page_202"></a>mother. &quot;He's
+everything a man should be to the naked eye, and I sincerely hope,&quot;
+she added piously, &quot;that you won't like him at all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia leaned back in her chair, and glanced thoughtfully down
+at the slim ringless hands clasped in her white lap.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; said she, as if to herself. &quot;There couldn't by any chance be two
+such men in this one world. That is he, himself.&quot; And she lifted her
+head, and glanced at my mother, with a level and proud look. &quot;I think
+I have met this Mr. Hunter,&quot; said she, smiling curiously. &quot;And if that
+is true, your hope is realized, p'tite Madame. I shan't.&quot;</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Page_203"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XII"></a><hr />
+<br />
+<h2>CHAPTER XII<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>JOHN FLINT, GENTLEMAN</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>Almost up to Christmas the weather had been so mild and warm that
+folks lived out of doors. Girls clothed like the angels in white
+raiment fluttered about and blessed the old streets with their fresh
+and rosy faces. In the bright sunshine the flowers seemed to have lost
+all thought of winter; they forgot to fade; and roses rioted in every
+garden as if it were still summer. Nobody but the Butterfly Man
+grumbled at this springlike balminess, and he only because he was
+impatient to resume experiments carried over from year to year&mdash;the
+effect of varying degrees of natural cold upon the colors of
+butterflies whose chrysalids were exposed to it. He generally used the
+chrysalids of the Papilio Turnus, whose females are dimorphic, that
+is, having two distinct forms. He did not care to resort to artificial
+freezing, preferring to allow Nature herself to work for him. And the
+jade repaid him, as usual, by showing him what she could do but
+refusing to divulge the moving why she did it. She gave him for his
+pains sometimes a light, and sometimes a dark butterfly, with
+different degrees of blurred or enlarged and vivid markings, from
+chrysalids subjected to exactly the same amount of exposure.</p>
+
+<p>The Butterfly Man was burning to complete his notes, <a name="Page_204"></a>already assuming
+the proportions of that very exact and valuable book they were
+afterward to become. He chafed at the enforced delay, and wished
+himself at the North Pole.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime, having nothing else on hand just then, it occurred to
+him to put some of these notes, covering the most interesting and
+curious of the experiments, into papers which the general run of folks
+might like to read. Dabney had been after him for some time to do some
+such work as this for the <i>Clarion</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I think Flint himself was genuinely surprised when he read over those
+enchanting papers, though he did not then and never has learned to
+appreciate their unique charm and value. Instead, however, of sending
+them to Dabney, he thought they might possibly interest a somewhat
+wider public, and with great diffidence, and some misgivings, he sent
+one or two of them to certain of the better known magazines. They did
+not come back. He received checks instead, and a request for more.</p>
+
+<p>Now the book and the several monographs he had already gotten out had
+been, although very interesting, strictly scientific; they could
+appeal only to students and scholars. But these papers were entirely
+different. Scientific enough, very clear and lucid and most quaintly
+flavored with what Laurence called Flintishness, they were so well
+received, and the response of the reading public to this fresh and new
+presentment of an ever-fascinating subject was so immediate and so
+hearty, that the Butterfly Man found himself unexpectedly confronting
+a demand he was hard put to it to supply.</p>
+
+<p>He was very much more modest about this <a name="Page_205"></a>achievement than we were. My
+mother's pride was delicious to witness. You see, it also invested
+<i>me</i> with a very farsighted wisdom! Here was it proven to all that
+Father De Ranc&eacute; had been right in holding fast to the man who had come
+to him in such sorry plight.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose it was this which moved Madame to take the step she had long
+been contemplating. Knowing her Butterfly Man, she began with infinite
+wile.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Armand,&quot; said she, one bright morning in early November, &quot;<i>I</i> am
+going to entertain, too&mdash;everybody else has done so, and now it's my
+turn. The weather is so ideal, and my garden so gorgeous with all
+those chrysanthemums and salvias and geraniums and roses, that it
+would be sinful not to take advantage of such conditions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have saved enough out of my house-money to meet the expenses&mdash;and I
+am <i>not</i> going to be charitable and do my Christian duty with that
+money! I'm going to entertain. I really owe that much attention to
+Mary Virginia.&quot; She laid her hand on my arm. &quot;I must see John Flint;
+go over to his rooms, and bring him back with you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I thought she merely needed his help and counsel, for she is always
+consulting him; she considers that whatever barque is steered by John
+Flint must needs come home to harbor. He obeyed her summons with
+alacrity, for it delights him to assist Madame. He did not know what
+fate overshadowed him!</p>
+
+<p>My mother sat in her low rocker, a lace apron lending piquancy to her
+appearance. She looked unusually pretty&mdash;there wasn't a girl in
+Appleboro who didn't envy Madame De Ranc&eacute;'s complexion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_206"></a>Well,&quot; said the Butterfly Man cheerfully, unconsciously falling under
+the spell of this feminine charm, &quot;the Padre tells me there's a party
+in the wind. Good! Now what am I to do? How am I to help you out?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My mother leaned forward and compelled him to meet direct her eyes
+that were friendly and clear and candid as a child's.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Flint,&quot; said she artlessly, ignoring his questions, &quot;Mr. Flint,
+you've been with Armand and me quite a long time now, have you not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A couple of lifetimes,&quot; said he, wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A couple of lifetimes,&quot; she mused, still holding his eyes, &quot;is a
+fairly long time. Long enough, at least, to know and to be known,
+shouldn't you think?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He awaited enlightenment. He never asks unnecessary questions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am going,&quot; said my mother, with apparent irrelevance, &quot;to entertain
+in honor of Mary Virginia Eustis. I shall probably have all Appleboro
+here. I sent for you to explain that you and Armand are to be present,
+too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Butterfly Man almost fell out of his chair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Me?&quot; he gasped.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You,&quot; with deadly softness. &quot;You.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Horror and anguish encompassed him. Perspiration appeared on his
+forehead, and he gripped the arms of his chair as one bracing himself
+for torture. He looked at the little lady with the terror of one to
+whom the dentist has just said: &quot;That jaw tooth must come out at once.
+Open your mouth wider, please, so I can get a grip!&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_207"></a>My mother regarded this painful emotion heartlessly enough. She said
+coolly:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You don't need to look as if I were sentencing you to be hanged
+before sundown. I am merely inviting you to be present at a very
+pleasant affair.&quot; But the Butterfly Man, with his mouth open, wagged
+his head feebly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And this,&quot; said my mother, turning the screw again, &quot;is but the
+beginning. After this, I shall manage it so that all invitations to
+the Parish House include Mr. John Flint. There is no reason under
+heaven why you should occupy what one might call an ambiguous
+position. I am determined, too, that you shall no longer rush away to
+the woods like a scared savage, the minute more than one or two ladies
+appear. No, nor have Armand hurrying away as quickly as he can,
+either, to bury or to marry somebody. All feminine Appleboro shall be
+here at once, and you two shall be here at the same time!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;John Flint, regard me: if the finest butterfly that ever crawled a
+caterpillar on this earth has the impertinence to fly by my garden the
+afternoon I'm entertaining for Mary Virginia, it can fly, but you
+shan't.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Armand: nobody respects Holy Orders more than I do: but there isn't
+anybody alive going to get born or baptized or married or buried, or
+anything else, in this parish, on that one afternoon. If they are
+selfish enough to do it anyhow, why, they can do it without your
+assistance. You are going to stay home with me: both of you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My <i>dear</i> mother&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good Lord! Madame&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am not to be dearmothered nor goodlorded! Heaven knows I ask little
+enough of either of you. <i>I</i> <a name="Page_208"></a>am at <i>your</i> beck and call, every day in
+the year. It does seem to me that when I wish to be civilized, and
+return for once some of the attentions I have received from my
+friends, I might at least depend upon you two for one little
+afternoon!&quot; Could anything be more artfully unanswerable?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, but Madame&mdash;&quot; began Flint, horrified by such an insinuation as
+his unwillingness to do anything at any time for this adored lady.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Particularly,&quot; continued my mother, inexorably, &quot;when I have your
+best interest at heart, too, John Flint! Monsieur the Butterfly Man,
+you will please to remember that you are a member of my household. You
+are almost like a son to me. You are the apple of that foolish
+Armand's eye&mdash;do not look so astounded, it is true! Also, you will
+have a great name some of these days. So far, so good. But&mdash;you are
+making the grievous error of shunning society, particularly the
+society of women. This is wrong; it makes for queerness, it evolves
+the 'crank,' it spoils many an otherwise very nice man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Flint sagged in his chair, and clasped and unclasped his hands, which
+trembled visibly. Madame regarded him without pity, with even a touch
+of scorn.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, it is indeed high time to reclaim you!&quot; she decided, with the
+fearsome zeal of the female reformer of a man. &quot;You silly man, you!
+Have you no proper pride? Have you absolutely no idea of your own
+worth? Well, then, if you haven't, <i>I</i> have. You <i>shall</i> take your
+place and play your part!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But,&quot; said Flint, and a gleam of hope irradiated his stricken face,
+&quot;but I don't think I've got the clothes to <a name="Page_209"></a>wear to parties. And I
+really can't afford to spend any more money right now, either. I spent
+a lot on that old 1797 Abbot &amp; Smith's 'Natural History of the Rarer
+Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia.' It cost like the dickens, although
+I really got it for about half what it's worth. I had to take it when
+I got the chance, and I'd be willing to wear gunny-sacking for a year
+to pay for those plates! I need them: I want them. But I don't need a
+party. I don't want a party! Madame, don't, don't make me go to any
+party!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nonsense!&quot; said my mother. &quot;Clothes, indeed! I shouldn't worry about
+clothes, if I were you, John Flint. You came into this world knowing
+exactly what to wear and how to wear it. Why, you have an air! That is
+a very great mercy, let me tell you, and one not always vouchsafed to
+the deserving, either.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have a cage full of grubs&mdash;most awfully particular grubs, and
+they've got to be watched like a sick kid with the&mdash;with the whatever
+it is sick kids have, anyhow. Why, if I were to leave those grubs one
+whole afternoon<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>&quot;You just let me see a single solitary grub have the temerity to hatch
+himself out that one afternoon, that's all! They have all the rest of
+their nasty little lives to hatch out!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Besides, there's a boy lives about five miles from here, and he's
+likely to bring me word any minute about something I simply have to
+have<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>&quot;I want to see that boy!&quot; She pointed her small forefinger at him,
+with the effect of a pistol leveled at his head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are coming to my affair!&quot; said she, sternly. &quot;<a name="Page_210"></a>If you have no
+regard whatsoever for Mary Virginia and me, you shall have some for
+yourself; if you have none for yourself, then you shall have some for
+<i>us!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This took the last puff of wind from the Butterfly Man's sails.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All right!&quot; he gulped, and committed himself irremediably. &quot;I&mdash;I'll
+be right here. You say so, and of course I've got to!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course you will,&quot; said my mother, smiling at him charmingly. &quot;I
+knew I had only to present the matter in its proper light, and you'd
+see it at once. You are so sensible, John Flint. It's such a comfort,
+when the gentlemen of one's household are so amenable to reason, and
+so ready to stand by one!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Having said her say, and gotten her way&mdash;as she was perfectly sure she
+would&mdash;Madame left the gentlemen of her household to their own
+reflections and devices.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Parson!&quot; The Butterfly Man seemed to come out of a trance. &quot;Remember
+the day you made me let a caterpillar crawl up my hand?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, my son.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Parson, there's a horrible big teaparty crawling up my pants' leg
+this minute!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Just keep still,&quot; I couldn't help laughing at him, &quot;and it will come
+down after awhile without biting you. Remember, you got used to the
+others in no time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Some of 'em stung like the very devil,&quot; he reminded me, darkly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, but those were the hairy fellows. This is a stingless, hairless,
+afternoon party! It won't hurt you at all!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's walking up my pants' leg, just the same. And <a name="Page_211"></a>I'm scared of it:
+I'm horrible scared of it! My God! <i>Me!</i> At a jane-junket! ... all the
+thin ones diked out with doodads where the bones come through ...
+stoking like sailors on shore leave ... all the fat ones grouchy about
+their shapes and thinking it's their souls....&quot; And he broke out, in
+a fluttering falsetto:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Oh, Mr. Flint, do please let us see your lovely butterflies! Aren't
+they just too perfectly sweet for anything! I wonder why they don't
+trim hats with butterflies? Do you know <i>all</i> their names, you awfully
+clever man? Do <i>they</i> know their names, too, Mr. Flint? Butterflies
+must be so very interesting! And so decorative, particularly on china
+and house linen! How you have the heart to kill them, I can't imagine.
+Just think of taking the poor mother-butterflies away from the dear
+little baby-ones!' ...&mdash;and me having to stand there and behave like a
+perfect gentleman!&quot; He looked at me, scowling:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, you look here: I can stand 'em single-file, but if I'm made to
+face 'em in squads, why, you blame nobody but yourself if I foam at
+the mouth and chase myself in a circle and snap at legs, you hear me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hear you,&quot; said I, coldly. &quot;You didn't get your orders from <i>me</i>. <i>I</i>
+think your proper place is in the woods. You go tell Madame what
+you've just told me&mdash;or should you like me to warn her that you're
+subject to rabies?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For the love of Mike, parson! Have a heart! Haven't I got troubles
+enough?&quot; he asked bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are behaving more like an unspanked brat than a grown man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wasn't weaned on teaparties,&quot; said he, sulkily, &quot;<a name="Page_212"></a>and it oughtn't
+to be expected I can swallow 'em at sight without making a face and<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whining,&quot; I finished for him. And I added, with a reminiscent air:
+&quot;Rule 1: Can the Squeal!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He glared at me, but as I met the glare unruffled, his lip presently
+twisted into a grin of desperate humor. His shoulders squared.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All right,&quot; said he, resignedly. And after an interval of dejected
+silence, he remarked: &quot;I've sort of got a glimmer of how Madame feels
+about this. She generally knows what's what, Madame does, and I
+haven't seen her make a mistake yet. If she thinks it's my turn to
+come on in and take a hand in any game she's playing, why, I guess I'd
+better play up to her lead the best I know how ... and trust God to
+slip me over an ace or two when I need them. You tell her she can
+depend on me not to fall down on her ... and Miss Eustis.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No need to tell Madame what she already knows.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Huh!&quot; With his chin in his hand and his head bent, he stared out over
+the autumn garden with eyes which did not see its flaming flowers. Of
+a sudden his shoulders twitched; he laughed aloud.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What are you laughing at?&quot; I was startled out of a revery of my own.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Everything,&quot; said the Butterfly Man, succinctly, and stood up and
+shook himself. &quot;And everybody. And me in particular. <i>Me!</i> Oh, good
+Lord, think of <i>Me!</i>&quot; He whistled for Kerry, and took himself off. I
+watched him walk down the street, and saw Judge Mayne's familiar
+greeting; and Major Cartwright stop him, and with his hand on the
+Butterfly Man's arm, walk off with <a name="Page_213"></a>him. Major Cartwright had kept
+George Inglesby out of two coveted clubs, for all his wealth; he was
+stiff as the proverbial poker to Howard Hunter, for all that
+gentleman's impeccable connections; he met John Flint, not as through
+a glass darkly, but face to face.</p>
+
+<p>My mother, coming out of the house with her cherished manuscript
+cookbook in her hand, looked after them thoughtfully:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; it is high time for that man to know his proper place!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And does he not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I suppose so, Armand. In a man's way, though&mdash;not a woman's. It's
+the woman's way that really matters, you see. When women acknowledge
+that man socially&mdash;and I mean it to happen&mdash;his light won't be hidden
+under a bushel basket. He will climb up into his candlestick and
+shine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That sense of bewilderment which at times overwhelmed me when the case
+of John Flint pressed hard, overtook me now, with its ironic humor. As
+he himself had expressed it, I felt myself caught by a Something too
+big to withstand. I was afraid to do anything, to say anything, for or
+against, this launching of his barque upon the social sea. I felt that
+the affair had been once more lifted out of my power; that my serving
+now was but to stand and wait.</p>
+
+<p>And in the meanwhile my mother, with her own hands, washed and darned
+the priceless old lace that was her chiefest pride; had something done
+to a frock; got out her sacredest treasures of linen and china and
+silver; requisitioned the Mayne and the Dexter spoons as well; had the
+Parish House scoured until it glittered; did <a name="Page_214"></a>everything to the garden
+but wash and iron it; spent momentous and odorous hours with Cl&eacute;lie
+over the making of toothsome delights; and on a golden afternoon gave
+a tea on the flower-decked verandahs and in the glorious garden, to
+which all Appleboro, in its best bib and tucker, came as one. And
+there, in the heart and center of it, cool, calm, correct, collected,
+hiding whatever mortal qualms he might have felt under a demeanor as
+perfect as Hunter's own, apparently at home and at ease, behold the
+Butterfly Man!</p>
+
+<p>Everybody seemed to know him. Everybody had something pleasant to say
+to him. Folks simply accepted him at sight as one of themselves. And
+the Butterfly Man accepted them quite as simply, with no faintest
+trace of embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>If Appleboro had cherished the legend that this was a prodigal well on
+his way home, that afternoon settled it for them into a positive fact.
+His manner was perfect. It was as if one saw the fine and beautiful
+grain of a piece of rare wood come out as the varnish that disfigured
+it was removed. Here was no veneer to scratch and crack at a touch,
+but the solid, rare thing itself. My mother had been right, as always.
+John Flint stepped into his proper place. Appleboro was acknowledging
+it officially.</p>
+
+<p>The garden was full of laughter and chatter and perfumes, and women in
+pretty clothes, and young girls dainty as flowers, and the smiling
+faces of men. But I am no longer of the party age. I stole away to a
+favorite haunt of mine at the back of the garden, behind the spireas
+and the holly tree, where there is a dilapidated old seat we have been
+threatening to remove any time this <a name="Page_215"></a>five years. Here, some time
+later, the Butterfly Man himself came stealthily, and seemed
+embarrassed to find the place pre&euml;mpted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; said I, making room for him beside me, &quot;it isn't so bad after
+all, is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. I'm glad I was let in for it,&quot; he admitted frankly, &quot;though I'd
+hate to have to come to parties for a living. Still, this afternoon
+has nailed down a thought that's been buzzing around loose in my mind
+this long time. It's this: people aren't anything but people, after
+all. Men and women and kids, the best and the worst of 'em, they're
+nothing but people, the same as everybody else. No, I'll never be
+scared to meet anybody, after this. <i>I'm</i> people, too!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The same as everybody else.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The same as everybody else,&quot; he repeated, soberly. &quot;Not but what
+there's lots of difference between folks. And there are things it's
+good to know, too ... things that women like Madame ... and Miss Mary
+Virginia Eustis ... expect a man to know, if they're not going to be
+ashamed of him.&quot; He thought about this awhile, then:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I tell you what, father,&quot; he remarked, tentatively, &quot;it must be a
+mighty fine thing to know you've got the right address written on you,
+good and plain, and the right number of stamps, and the sender's name
+somewhere on a corner, to keep you from going astray or to the Dead
+Letter Office; and not to be scrawled in lead-pencil, and misspelt,
+and finger-smutched, and with a couple of postage-due stamps stuck on
+you crooked, and the Lord only knows who and where from.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, yes,&quot; said I, &quot;that's true, and one does well <a name="Page_216"></a>to consider it.
+But the main thing, the really important thing, is the letter
+itself&mdash;what's written inside, John Flint.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But what's written inside wouldn't be any the worse if it was written
+clearer and better, and the outside was cleaner and on nice paper? And
+in pen-and-ink, not lead-pencil scratches?&quot; he insisted earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's what I've been thinking lately, father. Somehow, I always did
+like things to have some class to 'em. I remember how I used to lean
+against the restaurant windows when I was a kid, and watch the folks
+inside, how they dressed and acted, and the way the nicest of 'em
+handled table-tools. They weren't swells, of course, and plenty of 'em
+made plenty of mistakes&mdash;I've seen stunts done with a common
+table-knife that had the best of the sword-swallowing gents skinned a
+mile&mdash;but I wasn't a fool, and I learned some. Then when I&mdash;er&mdash;began
+to make real money (parson, I made it in wads and gobs and lumps those
+days!) why, I got me the real thing in glad rags from the real thing
+in tailors, and I used to blow a queen that'd been a swell herself
+once, to the joint where the gilt-edged bunch eat and show off their
+clothes and the rest of themselves. My jane looked the part to the
+life, I had the kale and the clothes and was chesty as a head-waiter,
+being considerably stuck on yours truly along about then, so we put it
+over. I had the chance to get hep to the last word in clothes and
+manners; that's what I'd gone for, though I didn't tell that to the
+skirt I was buying the eats for. And it was good business, too, for
+more than once when some precinct bonehead that pipe-dreamed <a name="Page_217"></a>he was a
+detective was pussy-catting some cold rat-hole, there was me
+vanbibbering in the white light at the swellest joints in little old
+New York! Funny, wasn't it? And handy! And I was learning,
+too&mdash;learning things worth good money to know. I saw that the best
+sort didn't make any noise about anything. They went about their
+business, whatever it was, easy-easy, same as me in my line. But,
+parson, though I'd got hep to the outside, and had sense enough to
+copy what I'd seen, I wasn't wise to the inside difference&mdash;the things
+that make the best what it is, I mean&mdash;because I'd never been close
+enough to find out that there's more to it than looks and duds and
+manners. It took the Parish House people to soak that into me. People
+aren't anything but people&mdash;but the best are&mdash;well, different.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We fell silent; a happy silence, into which, as from another planet,
+there drifted light laughter, and sweet gay voices of girls, and the
+stir and rustle of many people moving about. On the Mayne fence the
+judge's black Panch sat, neck outstretched, emerald eyes aslant, ears
+cocked uneasily at these unwonted noises. At a little distance a
+bluejay watched him with bright malevolent eyes, every now and then
+screaming insults at the whole tribe of cats, and black Panch in
+particular. Flint snapped his fingers, and Panch, with a spring, was
+off the fence and on his friend's knees. It seemed to me it had only
+needed the sleek beastie to make that hour perfect;&mdash;for cats in the
+highest degree make for a sense of homely, friendly intimacy. Flint,
+feeling this, stroked the black head contentedly. Panch purred for the
+three of us.</p>
+
+<p>Into this presently broke Miss Sally Ruth Dexter, and <a name="Page_218"></a>bore down on
+John Flint like a frigate with all sails spread. At sight of her Panch
+spat and fled, and took the happy spell with him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here you are, cuddling that old pirate of a black cat!&quot; said she,
+briskly. &quot;I told Madame you'd be mooning about somewhere. Here's some
+cocoanut cake for you both. Father, Madame's been looking for you. Did
+you know,&quot; she sank her voice to a piercing whisper, &quot;that George
+Inglesby's here? Well, he is! He's talking to Mary Virginia Eustis,
+this very minute! They do say he's running after Mary Virginia, and
+I'm sure I wouldn't be surprised, for if ever a mortal man had the
+effrontery of Satan that man's George Inglesby! I must admit he's
+improved since Mr. Hunter took him in hand. He's not nearly so stout
+and red-faced, and he hasn't half the jowl, though Lord knows he'll
+have to get rid of a few tons more of his blubber&quot; (Miss Sally Ruth
+has a free and fetterless tongue) &quot;if he wants to look <i>human</i>. As I
+say, what's the use of being a millionaire if you've got a shape like
+a rainbarrel? I often tell myself, 'Maybe you haven't been given such
+a lot of this world's goods as some, Sally Ruth Dexter, but you can
+thank your sweet Redeemer you've at least got a Figure!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Butterfly Man cast a speculative eye over her generous
+proportions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes'm, you certainly have a whole lot to be thankful for,&quot; he agreed,
+so wholeheartedly that Miss Sally Ruth laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Get along with you, you impudent fellow!&quot; said she, in high good
+humor. &quot;Go and look at that old scamp of an Inglesby making eyes at a
+girl young enough to <a name="Page_219"></a>be his daughter! I heard this morning that Mr.
+Hunter has orders to get him, by hook or crook, an invitation to
+anything Mary Virginia goes to. I declare, it's scandalous! Come to
+think of it, though, I never saw any man yet, no matter how old or
+ugly or outrageous he might be, who didn't really believe he stood a
+perfectly good chance to win the affections of the handsomest young
+woman alive! If you ask <i>me</i>, <i>I</i> think George Inglesby had better
+join the church and get himself ready to meet his God, instead of
+gallivanting around girls. If he feels he has to gallivant, why don't
+he pick out somebody nearer his own age?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why should you make him choose mutton when he wants lamb?&quot; asked the
+Butterfly Man, unexpectedly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because he's an old bellwether, that's why!&quot; snapped Miss Sally Ruth,
+scandalized. &quot;I wonder at Annabelle Eustis allowing him to come near
+Mary Virginia, millionaire or no millionaire. I bet you James Eustis
+will have something to say, if Mary Virginia herself doesn't!&quot; And she
+sailed off again, leaving us, as the saying is, with a bug in the ear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now what in the name of heaven,&quot; I wondered, &quot;can Miss Sally Ruth
+mean? Mary Virginia ... Inglesby.&nbsp;... The thing's sacrilegious.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Butterfly Man rose abruptly. &quot;Suppose we stroll about a bit?&quot; he
+suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I thought,&quot; said my mother, when we approached her, &quot;that you had
+disobeyed orders, and run away!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We were afraid to,&quot; said John Flint. &quot;We knew you'd make us go to bed
+without supper.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you know,&quot; said my mother, hurriedly, for Cl&eacute;lie was making signs
+to her, &quot;that George Inglesby is <a name="Page_220"></a>here? The invitation was merely
+perfunctory, just sent along with Mr. Hunter's. I never dreamed the
+man would accept it. You can't imagine how astonished I was when he
+presented himself!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A few moments later, the Butterfly Man said in a low voice: &quot;Look
+yonder!&quot; And turning, I saw Hunter. He was for the moment alone, and
+stood with his head bent slightly forward, his bright cold glance
+intent upon the two persons approaching&mdash;Mary Virginia and George
+Inglesby. His white teeth showed in a smile. I remembered,
+disagreeably, Flint's &quot;I don't like the expression of his teeth: he
+looks like he'd bite.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Until that afternoon I had not seen the secretary for some time, for
+he had been kept unusually busy. Those eminently sensible talks to the
+mill workers had been well received, and were to be followed by others
+along the same line. He had done even more: he had induced the owners
+to recognize the men's Union, and all future complaints and demands
+were to be submitted to arbitration. Inglesby had undoubtedly gained
+ground enormously by that move. Hunter had done well. And
+yet&mdash;catching that sharp-toothed smile, I felt my faith in him for the
+first time shaken by one of those unaccountable uprushes of intuition
+which perplex and disturb.</p>
+
+<p>I knew, too, that Laurence had had several long and serious
+conferences with Eustis, and I could well imagine the arguments he had
+brought to bear, the rousing of a sense of duty, and of state pride.</p>
+
+<p>Eustis was obstinate. He had many interests. He was a very, very busy
+man. He didn't want to be a Senator; he wanted to be let alone to
+attend to his own business in his own way. But, insisted Laurence,
+when <a name="Page_221"></a>a thing must be done, and you can do it in a manner which
+benefits all and injures none; when your own people ask you to do it
+for them, isn't <i>that</i> your business?</p>
+
+<p>A cold damning resume of Inglesby's entire career made Eustis
+hesitate. A vivid picture of what the state might expect at Inglesby's
+hands roused him to just anger. Such as this fellow represent
+Carolina? Never! When Inglesby's name should be put up, Eustis
+unwillingly agreed to oppose him.</p>
+
+<p>And here was Inglesby, in my garden, making himself agreeable to
+Eustis's daughter! He was so plainly desirous to please her, that it
+troubled me, although it made his secretary smile.</p>
+
+<p>The Mary Virginia walking beside Inglesby was not the Mary Virginia
+<i>we</i> knew: this was the regal one, the great beauty. Her whole manner
+was subtly charged with a sort of arrogant hauteur; her fairness
+itself changed, tinged with pride as with an inward fire, until she
+glowed with a cold, jewel-like brightness, hard and clear. Her very
+skirts rustled pridefully. Her glance at the man beside her was
+insulting in its disdainful indifference.</p>
+
+<p>What would have saddened a nobler spirit enchanted Inglesby. He was
+dazzled by her. Her interest in what he was saying was coolly
+impersonal, the fixed habit of trained politeness. He could even
+surmise that she was mentally yawning behind her hand. When she looked
+at him her eyes under her level brows held a certain scornfulness. And
+this, too, delighted him. He groveled to it. His red face glowed with
+pleasure; he swelled with a pride very different from Mary Virginia's.
+I thought <a name="Page_222"></a>he had an upholstered look in his glossy clothes, reminding
+me unpleasantly of horsehair furniture.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He looks like a day coach in July,&quot; growled the Butterfly Man in my
+ear, disgustedly.</p>
+
+<p>Inglesby at this moment perceived Hunter and beamed upon him, as well
+he might! Who but this priceless secretary had pulled the strings
+which set him beside this glorious creature, in the Parish House
+garden? He turned to the girl, with heavy jauntiness:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My good right hand, Miss Eustis, I assure you!&quot; he beamed. &quot;But I am
+sure you two need no dissertations upon each other's merits!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;None whatever,&quot; said Miss Eustis, and looked over Mr. Hunter's head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Miss Eustis and I are really old acquaintances!&quot; smiled the
+secretary. &quot;We know each other very well indeed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia made no reply. Instead, she looked about her,
+indifferently enough, until her glance encountered the Butterfly
+Man's. What he saw in her's I do not know. But he instantly moved
+toward her, and swept me with him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Father De Ranc&eacute; and I,&quot; said he, easily, &quot;haven't had chance to speak
+to you all afternoon, Miss Eustis.&quot; He acknowledged Hunter's friendly
+greeting pleasantly enough.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And I've been looking for you both.&quot; The hauteur faded from the young
+face. Our own Mary Virginia appeared, changed in the twinkling of an
+eye.</p>
+
+<p>Inglesby favored me with condescending effusiveness. Flint got off
+with a smirking stare.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And this,&quot; said Inglesby in the sort of voice some <a name="Page_223"></a>people use in
+addressing strange children to whom they desire to be patronizingly
+nice and don't know how, &quot;this is the Butterfly Man!&quot; Out came the
+jovial smile in its full deadliness. The Butterfly Man's lips drew
+back from his teeth and his eyes narrowed to gimlet points behind his
+glasses. &quot;I have heard of you from Mr. Hunter. And so you collect
+butterflies! Very interesting and active occupation for any one
+that&mdash;ahem! likes that sort of thing. Very.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He collects obituaries, too,&quot; said Hunter, immensely amused. &quot;You
+mustn't overlook the obituaries, Mr. Inglesby.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Inglesby favored the collector of butterflies <i>and</i> obituaries
+with another speculative, piglike stare. You could see the thought
+behind it: &quot;Trifling sort of fellow! Idiotic! Very.&quot; Aloud he merely
+mumbled:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Singular taste. Very. Collecting obituaries, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Fascinating things to collect. Very,&quot; said the Butterfly Man,
+sweetly. &quot;Not to be laughed at. I might add yours to 'em, too, you
+know, some of these fine days!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed!&quot; murmured Hunter. Mr. Inglesby,
+however, was visibly ruffled and annoyed. Who was this fellow braying
+of obituaries as if he, Inglesby, were on the highroad to oblivion
+already, when he was, in reality, still quite a young man? And right
+before Miss Eustis! He turned purple.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My obituary?&quot; he spluttered. &quot;<i>Mine</i>? Mine?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sure, if it's worth while,&quot; said the Butterfly Man, amiably. Mary
+Virginia barely suppressed a smile.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Madame would like to see you, Miss Eustis,&quot; he told her.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_224"></a>Mary Virginia, bowing distantly to the millionaire and his secretary,
+walked off with him, I following.</p>
+
+<p>Once free of them, her spirits rose soaringly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's been a lovely afternoon, and I've enjoyed it all&mdash;except Mr.
+Inglesby. I don't <i>like</i> Mr. Inglesby, Padre. He's amusing enough, I
+suppose, at times, but one can't seem to get rid of him&mdash;he's a
+perfect Old Man of the Sea,&quot; she told us, confidentially. &quot;And you
+can't imagine how detestably youthful he is, Mr. Flint! He told me
+half a dozen times this afternoon that after all, years don't
+matter&mdash;it is the heart which is young. And he takes cold tubs and is
+proud of himself, and plays golf&mdash;for exercise!&quot; The scorn of the
+lithe and limber young was in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's the use of being a millionaire, if you have a shape like the
+rainbarrel?&quot; I quoted pensively.</p>
+
+<p>Later that night, when &quot;the lights were fled, the garlands dead, and
+all but me departed,&quot; I went over for my usual last half-hour with
+John Flint. Very often we have nothing whatever to say, and we are
+even wise enough not to say it. We sit silently, he with Kerry's noble
+old head against his foot, each busy with his own thoughts and
+reflections, but each conscious of the friendly nearness of the other.
+You have never had a friend, if you have never known one with whom you
+might sit a silent, easy hour. To-night he sucked savagely at his old
+pipe, and his eyes were somber.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You got the straight tip from Miss Sally Ruth, father,&quot; he said,
+coming out of a brown study. &quot;What do you suppose that piker's trying
+to crawl out of his cocoon for? He never wanted to caper around
+Appleboro women before, did he? No. And here he's been <a name="Page_225"></a>muldooning to
+get some hog-fat off and some wind and waistline back. Now, why? To
+please himself? <i>He</i> don't have to care a hoot what he looks like. To
+please some girl? That's more likely. Parson: that girl's Mary
+Virginia Eustis.&quot; He added, through his teeth: &quot;Hunter knows. Hunter's
+steering.&quot; And then, with quiet conviction: &quot;They're both as crooked
+as hell!&quot; he finished.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But the thing's absurd on the face of it! Why, the mere notion is
+preposterous!&quot; I insisted, angrily.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have seen worse things happen,&quot; said he, shortly. &quot;But there,&mdash;keep
+your hair on! Things don't happen unless they're slated to happen, so
+don't let it bother you too much. You go turn in and forget everything
+except that you need a night's sleep.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I tried to follow his sound advice, but although I needed a night's
+sleep and there was no tangible reason why I shouldn't have gotten it,
+I didn't. The shadow of Inglesby haunted my pillow.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Page_226"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XIII"></a><hr />
+<br />
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>&quot;EACH IN HIS OWN COIN&quot;</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>With the New Year had descended upon John Flint an obsessing and
+tormenting spirit which made him by fits and starts moody, depressed,
+nervous, restless, or wholly silent and abstracted. I have known him
+to come in just before dawn, snatch a few hours' sleep, and be off
+again before day had well set in, though he must already have been far
+afield, for Kerry heeled him with lagging legs and hanging head. Or he
+would shut himself up, and refusing himself to all callers, fall into
+a cold fury of concentrated effort, sitting at his table hour after
+hour, tireless, absorbed, accomplishing a week's overdue work in a day
+and a night. Often his light burned all night through. Some of the
+most notable papers bearing his name, and research work of
+far-reaching significance, came from that workroom then&mdash;as if lumps
+of ambergris had been tossed out of a whirlpool.</p>
+
+<p>All this time, too, he was working in conjunction with the Washington
+Bureau, experimenting with remedies for the boll-weevil, and fighting
+the plague of the cattle-tick. This, and the other outside work in
+which he was so immensely interested, could not be allowed to hang
+fire. Like many another, he found himself for his salvation caught in
+the great human net he himself had <a name="Page_227"></a>helped to spin. It was not only
+the country people who held him. Gradually, as he passed to and from
+on his way among them, and became acquainted with their children,
+there had sprung up a most curious sort of understanding between the
+Butterfly Man on the one side, and the half-articulate foreigners in
+the factory and the sly secretive mill-workers on the other.</p>
+
+<p>People I had never been able to get at humanly, people who resisted
+even Madame, not only chose to open their doors but their mouths, to
+Meester Fleent. Uncouth fumbling men, slip-shod women, dirty-faced
+children, were never dumb and suspicious or wholly untruthful and
+evasive, where the Butterfly Man was concerned. He was one to whom
+might be told, without shame, fear, or compunction, the plain, blunt,
+terrible truth. <i>He understood.</i></p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wish you'd look up Petronovich's boy, father,&quot; he might tell me,
+or, &quot;Madame, have a woman-talk with Lovena Smith's girl at the mills,
+will you? Lovena's a fool, and that girl's up against things.&quot; And we
+went, and wondered, afterwards, what particularly tender guardian
+angels kept close company with our Butterfly Man.</p>
+
+<p>Then occurred the great event which put Meester Fleent in a place
+apart in the estimation of all Appleboro, forever settled his status
+among the mill-hands and the &quot;hickeys,&quot; and incidentally settled a
+tormenting doubt of himself in his own mind. I mean the settling of
+the score against Big Jan.</p>
+
+<p>Half-Russian Jan was to the Poles what a padrone too often is to the
+Italian laborers, a creature who herded them together and mercilessly
+worked them for the profit <a name="Page_228"></a>of others, and incidentally his own, an
+exacting tyrant against whose will it was useless to rebel. He had a
+little timid wife with red eyes&mdash;perhaps because she cried so much
+over the annual baby which just as annually died. He made a good deal
+of money, but the dark Slav passion for whisky forced him to spend
+what he earned, and this increased a naturally sullen temper. He was
+the thorn in the Parish side; that we could do so little for the Poles
+was due in a large measure to Jan's stubborn hindering.</p>
+
+<p>His people lived in terror of him. When they displeased him he beat
+them. It was not a light beating, and once or twice we had in the
+Guest Rooms nursed its victims back into some semblance of humanity.
+But what could we do? Jan was so efficient a foreman that Inglesby's
+power was always behind him. So when Jan chose to get very drunk, and
+sang long, monotonous songs, particularly when he sang through his
+teeth, lugubriously:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<span>&quot;<i>Yeszeze Polska nie Zginela</i><br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; <i>Poki my Zygemy</i>&nbsp;...&quot;<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noin">men and women trembled. Poland might not be lost, but somebody's skin
+always paid for that song.</p>
+
+<p>In passing one morning&mdash;it was a holiday&mdash;through the Poles' quarters,
+an unpleasant enough stretch which other folks religiously avoided,
+the Butterfly Man heard shrieks coming from Michael Karski's back
+yard. It was Michael's wife and children who screamed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is the Boss who beats Michael, Meester Fleent,&quot; a man volunteered.
+&quot;The Boss, he is much drunk. Karski's woman, she did not like the ways
+of him in her <a name="Page_229"></a>house, and Michael said, 'I will to send for the
+police.' So Big Jan beats Michael, and Michael's woman, she hollers
+like hell.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>John Flint knew inoffensive, timid Michael; he knew his broad-bosomed,
+patient, cowlike wife, and he liked the brood of shockheaded
+youngsters who plodded along patient in old clothes, bare-footed, and
+with scanty enough food. He had made a corn-cob doll for the littlest
+girl and a cigar-box wagon with spool wheels for the littlest boy.
+Perhaps that is why he turned and went with the rest to Michael's yard
+where Big Jan was knocking Michael about like a ten-pin, grunting
+through his teeth: &quot;Now! Sen' for those policemens, you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Michael was no pretty thing to look upon, for Jan was in an uglier
+mood than usual, and Michael had greatly displeased him; therefore it
+was Michael's turn to pay. Nobody interfered, for every one was
+horribly afraid Big Jan would turn upon <i>him</i>. Besides, was not he the
+Boss, and could he not say Go, and then must not a man go, short of
+pay, and with his wife and children crying? Of a verity!</p>
+
+<p>The Butterfly Man slipped off his knapsack and laid his net aside.
+Then he pushed his way through the scared onlookers.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Meester Fleent! For God's love, save my man, Meester Flint!&quot;
+Michael's wife Katya screamed at him.</p>
+
+<p>By way of answer Meester Fleent very deliberately handed her his
+eye-glasses. Then one saw that his eyes, slitted in his head, were
+cold and bright as a snake's; his chin thrust forward, and in his red
+beard his lips made a straight line like a clean knife-cut. Two
+bright <a name="Page_230"></a>red spots had jumped into his tanned cheeks. His lean hands
+balled.</p>
+
+<p>He said no word; but the crumpled thing that was Michael was of a
+sudden plucked bodily out of Big Jan's hands and thrust into the
+waiting woman's. The astonished Boss found himself confronting a pale
+and formidable face with a pair of eyes like glinting sword-blades.</p>
+
+<p>Kerry had followed his master, and was now close to his side. For the
+moment Flint had forgotten him. But Big Jan's evil eyes caught sight
+of him. He knew the Butterfly Man's dog very well. He snickered. A
+huge foot shot out, there was a howl of anguish and astonishment, and
+Kerry went flying through the air as if shot from a catapult.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So!&quot; Jan grunted like a satisfied hog, &quot;I feex <i>you</i> like that in one
+meenute, me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The red jumped from John Flint's cheeks to his eyes, and stayed there.
+Why, this hulking brute had hurt <i>Kerry!</i> His breath exhaled in a
+whistling sigh. He seemed to coil himself together; with a tiger-leap
+he launched himself at the great hulk before him. It went down. It had
+to.</p>
+
+<p>I know every detail of that historic fight. Is it not written large in
+the Book of the Deeds of Appleboro, and have I not heard it by word of
+mouth from many a raving eye-witness? Does not Dr. Walter Westmoreland
+lick his lips over it unto this day?</p>
+
+<p>A long groaning sigh went up from the onlookers. Meester Fleent was a
+great and a good man; but he was a crippled man. Death was very close
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>Big Jan was not too drunk to fight savagely, but he was in a most
+horrible rage, and this weakened him. He <a name="Page_231"></a>meant to kill this impudent
+fellow who had taken Michael away from him before he had half-finished
+with him. But first he would break every bone in the crippled man's
+body, take him in his hands and break his back over one knee as one
+does a slat. A man with one leg to balk him, Big Jan? That called for
+a killing. Jan had no faintest idea he might not be able to make good
+this pleasant intention.</p>
+
+<p>It was a stupendous fight, a Homeric fight, a fight against odds,
+which has become a town tradition. If Jan was formidable, a veritable
+bison, his opponent was no cringing workman scared out of his wits and
+too timid to defend himself. John Flint knew his own weakness, knew
+what he could expect at Jan's hands, and it made him cool, collected,
+wary, and deadly. He was no more the mild-mannered, soft-spoken
+Butterfly Man, but another and a more primal creature, fighting for
+his life. Big Jan, indeed, fancied he had nobody but the Butterfly Man
+to deal with; as a matter of fact he was tackling Slippy McGee.</p>
+
+<p>Skilled, watchful, dangerous, that old training saved him. Every time
+Jan came to his feet, roaring, thrashing his arms like flails, making
+head-long, bull-like rushes, the Butterfly Man managed to send him
+sprawling again. Then he himself caught one well-aimed blow, and went
+staggering; but before slow-moving and raging Jan could follow up his
+advantage, with a lightning-like quickness the Butterfly Man made a
+battering ram of his head, caught Jan in the pit of the stomach, and
+even as he fell Jan went down, too, and went down underneath.
+Desperately, fighting like a fiend, John Flint kept him down. And
+presently using every wrestler's <a name="Page_232"></a>trick that he knew, and bringing to
+bear every ounce of his saved and superb strength, in a most orderly,
+businesslike, cold-blooded manner he proceeded to pound Big Jan into
+pulp. The devil that had been chained these seven years was a-loose at
+last, rampant, fully aroused, and not easily satisfied. Besides, had
+not Jan most brutally and wantonly tried to kill Kerry!</p>
+
+<p>If it was a well deserved it was none the less a most drastic
+punishment, and when it was over Big Jan lay still. He would lie prone
+for many a day, and he would carry marks of it to his grave.</p>
+
+<p>When the tousled victor, with a reeling head, an eye fast closing, and
+a puffed and swollen lip, staggered upright and stood swaying on his
+feet, he found himself surrounded by a great quiet ring of men and
+women who regarded him with eyes of wonder and amaze. He was
+superhuman; he had accomplished the impossible; paid the dreaded Boss
+in his own coin, yea, given him full measure to the running over
+thereof! No man of all the men Jan had beaten in his time had received
+such as Jan himself had gotten at this man's hands to-day. The reign
+of the Boss was over: and the conqueror was a crippled man! A great
+sighing breath of sheer worshipful admiration went up; they were too
+profoundly moved to cheer him; they could only stand and stare. When
+they wished, reverently, to help him, he waved them aside.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where's my dog?&quot; he demanded thickly through his swollen lips.
+&quot;Where's Kerry? If he's dead<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span> he cast upon fallen Jan a menacing
+glare.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your dog's in bed with the baby, and Ma's give him milk with brandy
+in it, and he drank it and growled at <a name="Page_233"></a>her, and the boys is holding
+him down now to keep him from coming out to you, and he ain't much
+hurt nohow,&quot; squealed one of Michael's big-eyed children.</p>
+
+<p>John Flint, stretching his arms above his head, drew in a great
+gulping mouthful of air, exhaled it, and laughed a deepchested,
+satisfied laugh, for all he was staggering like a drunken man. Here
+Michael's wife Katya came puffing out of her house like a traction
+engine&mdash;such was the shape in which nature formed her&mdash;and falling on
+her knees, caught his hand to her vast bosom, weeping like the
+overflowing of a river and blubbering uncouth sounds.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Get up, you crazy woman!&quot; snarled John Flint, his face going
+brick-red. &quot;Stop licking my hand, and get up!&quot; Although he did not
+know it, Katya symbolized the mental attitude of every laborer in
+Appleboro toward him from that hour.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here's Doctor Westmoreland! And here comes the po-lice!&quot; yelled a
+boy, joyous with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>Westmoreland cast one by no means sympathetic glance at the wreck on
+the ground, and his big arms went about John Flint; his fingers flew
+over him like an apprehensive father's.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's all this? Who's been fighting here, you people?&quot; demanded the
+town marshal's brisk voice. &quot;Big Jan? And&mdash;good Lord! <i>Mister Flint!</i>&quot;
+His eyes bulged. He looked from Big Jan on the ground to the Butterfly
+Man under Westmoreland's hands, with an almost ludicrous astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm sure sorry, Mr. Flint, if I have to give you a little trouble for
+awhile, but<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you'll be considerably sorrier if you do it,&quot; said <a name="Page_234"></a>Dr. Walter
+Westmoreland savagely. &quot;You take that hulk over there to the jail,
+until I have time to see him. I can't have him sent home to his wife
+in that shape. And look here, Marshal: Jan got exactly what he
+deserved; it's been coming to him this long time. If Inglesby's bunch
+tries to take a hand in this, <i>I'll</i> try to make Appleboro too hot to
+hold somebody. Understand?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The marshal was a wise enough man, and he understood. Inglesby's pet
+foreman had been all but killed, and Inglesby would be furiously
+angry. But&mdash;Mr. Flint had done it, and behind Mr. Flint were powers
+perhaps as potent as Inglesby's. One thing more may have influenced
+the marshal: The hitherto timid and apathetic people had merged into a
+compact and ominous ring around the Butterfly Man and the doctor. A
+shrill murmur arose, like the wind in the trees presaging a storm.
+There would be riot in staid Appleboro if one were so foolish as to
+lay a detaining hand upon John Flint this day. More yet, the beloved
+Westmoreland himself would probably begin it. Never had the marshal
+seen Westmoreland look so big and so raging.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All right, Doctor,&quot; said he, hastily backing off. &quot;I reckon you're
+man enough to handle this.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Some proud worshiper brought Mr. Flint his hat, knapsack, and net, and
+the mountainous Katya insisted upon tenderly placing his glasses upon
+his nose&mdash;upside down. Westmoreland used to say afterward that for a
+moment he feared Flint was going to bite her hand! Then man and dog
+were placed in the doctor's car and hurried home to my mother; who
+made no comment, but put both in the larger Guest Room, the whimpering
+dog on a comfort <a name="Page_235"></a>at the foot of his master's bed. Kerry had a broken
+rib, but outside of this he was not injured. He would be out and all
+right again in a week, Westmoreland assured his anxious master.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, you <i>man</i>, you!&quot; crowed Westmoreland. &quot;John, John, if anything
+were needed to make me love you, this would clinch it! Prying open
+nature's fist, John, having butterflies bear your name, working hand
+in glove with your government, boosting boys, writing books, are all
+of them fine big grand things. But if along with them one's man enough
+to stand up, John, with the odds against him, and punish a bully and a
+scoundrel, the only way a bully and a scoundrel can feel punishment,
+that's a heart-stirring thing, John! It gets to the core of my heart.
+It isn't so much the fight itself, it's being able to take care of
+oneself and others when one has to. Yes, yes, yes. A fight like that
+is worth a million dollars to the man who wins it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Westmoreland may be president of the Peace League, and tell us that
+force is all wrong. Nevertheless, his great-grandmother was born in
+Tipperary.</p>
+
+<p>We kept the Butterfly Man indoors for a week, while Westmoreland
+doctored a viciously black eye and sewed up his lip. Morning and
+afternoon Appleboro called, and left tribute of fruit and flowers.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gad, suh, he behaved like one of Stonewall Jackson's men!&quot; said Major
+Cartwright, pridefully. &quot;No yellow in <i>him</i>; he's one of <i>us</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At nights came the Polish folks, and these people whom he had once
+despised because they &quot;hadn't got sense enough to talk American,&quot; he
+now received with a complete and friendly understanding.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_236"></a>I just come by and see how you make to feel, Meester.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I feel fine, Joe, thank you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There would be an interval of absolute silence, which, did not seem to
+embarrass either visited or visitor. Then:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Baby better now?&quot; Meester would ask, interestedly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That beeg doctor, he oil heem an' make heem well all right.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After awhile: &quot;I mebbe go now, Meester.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-night,&quot; said the host, briefly.</p>
+
+<p>At the door the Pole would turn, and look back, with the wistfully
+animal look of the Under Dog.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Those cheeldren, they make to get you the leetle bug. You mebbe like
+that, Meester, yes? They make to get you plenty much bug, those
+cheeldren. We <i>all</i> make to get you the bug, Meester, thank you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's mighty nice of you folks.&quot; Then one felt the note in the quiet
+voice which explained his hold upon people.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hell, no. We <i>like</i> to do that for you, Meester. Thank you.&quot; And
+closing the door gently after him, he would slink off.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They don't need to be so allfired grateful,&quot; said John Flint frankly.
+&quot;Parson, I'm the guy to be grateful. I got a whole heap more out of
+that shindy than a black eye and a pretty mouth. I was bluemolding for
+a man-tussle, and that scrap set me up again. You see&mdash;I wasn't sure
+of myself any more, and it was souring on my stomach. Now I know I
+haven't lost out, I feel like a white man. Yep, it gives a fellow the
+holiday-heart to be dead sure he's plenty able to use his <a name="Page_237"></a>fists if
+he's got to. Westmoreland's right about that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was discreetly silent. God forgive me, in my heart I also was most
+sinfully glad my Butterfly Man could and would use his fists when he
+had to. I do not believe in peace at any price. I know very well that
+wrong must be conquered before right can prevail. But I shouldn't have
+been so set up!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here,&quot; said he one morning. &quot;Ask Madame to give this to Jan's wife.
+And say, beg her for heaven's sake to buy some salve for her eyelids,
+will you?&quot; &quot;This&quot; was a small roll of bills. &quot;I owe it to Jan,&quot; he
+explained, with his twistiest smile.</p>
+
+<p>Westmoreland's skill removed all outward marks of the fray, and the
+Butterfly Man went his usual way; but although he had laid at rest one
+cruel doubt, he was still in deep waters. Because of his stress his
+clothes had begun to hang loosely upon him.</p>
+
+<p>Now the naturalist who knows anything at all of those deep mysterious
+well-springs underlying his great profession, understands that he is a
+'prentice hand learning his trade in the workshop of the Almighty;
+wherein &quot;<i>the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world
+are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made</i>.&quot; As
+Paul on a time reminded the Romans.</p>
+
+<p>Wherefore I who had learned somewhat from the Little Peoples now
+applied what they had taught me, and when I saw my man grow restless,
+move about aimlessly, withdraw into himself and become as one blind
+and dumb and unhearing, I understood he was facing a change, making
+ready to project himself into some larger phase of existence as yet in
+the womb of the future. So I did not question what wind drove him
+forth before <a name="Page_238"></a>it like a lost leaf. The loving silent companionship of
+red Kerry, the friendly faces of young children to whom he was kind,
+the eyes of poor men and women looking to him for help, these were
+better for him now than I.</p>
+
+<p>But my mother was not a naturalist, and she was provoked with John
+Flint. He ate irregularly, he slept as it pleased God. He was &quot;running
+wild&quot; again. This displeased her, particularly as Appleboro had at her
+instigation included Mr. John Flint in its most exclusive list, and
+there were invitations she was determined he should accept. She had
+put her hand to the social plow in his behalf, and she had no faintest
+notion of withdrawing it. Once fairly aroused, Madame had that
+able-bodied will heaven seems to have lavished so plenteously upon
+small women: In recompense, I dare say, for lack of size.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore Mr. Flint duteously appeared at intervals among the elect,
+and appeared even to advantage. And my mother remarked, complacently,
+that blood will tell: he had the air! He was not expected to dance,
+but he was a superb cardplayer. He never told jokes, and so avoided
+deadly repetition. He had in a large measure that virtue the Chinese
+extol&mdash;the virtue of allowing others to save their faces in peace. Was
+it any wonder Mr. Flint's social position was soon solidly
+established?</p>
+
+<p>He played the game as my mother forced it upon him, though at times, I
+think, it bored and chafed him sorely. What chafed him even more
+sorely was the unprecedented interest many young ladies&mdash;and some old
+enough to know better&mdash;suddenly evinced in entomology.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Flint almost overnight developed a savage cunning in eluding the
+seekers of entomological lore. One <a name="Page_239"></a>might suppose a single man would
+rejoice to see his drab workroom swarm with these brightly-colored
+fluttering human butterflies; he bore their visits as visitations,
+displaying the chastened resignation Job probably showed toward the
+latest ultra-sized carbuncle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cheer up!&quot; urged Laurence, who was watching this turn of affairs with
+unfeeling mirth. &quot;The worst is yet to come. These are only the
+chickens: wait until the hens get on your trail!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Flint,&quot; said Mary Virginia one afternoon, rubbing salt into his
+smarting wounds, &quot;Mr. Flint, I am so glad all the girls like you so
+much. You fascinate them. They say you are such a profoundly clever
+and interesting man, Mr. Flint! Why, some of those girls are perfectly
+demented about you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Demented,&quot; said he, darkly, &quot;is the right word for them when it comes
+down to fussing about <i>me</i>.&quot; Now Laurence had just caught him in his
+rooms, and, declaring that he looked overworked and pale, had dragged
+him forcibly outside on the porch, where we were now sitting. Mary
+Virginia, in a white skirt, sport coat, and a white felt hat which
+made her entrancingly pretty, had been visiting my mother and now
+strolled over to John Flint's, after her old fashion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I feel like making the greatest sort of a fuss about you myself,&quot; she
+said honestly. &quot;Anyhow, I'm mighty glad girls like you. It's a good
+sign.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If they do&mdash;though God knows I can't see why&mdash;I'm obliged to them,
+seeing it pleases <i>you</i>!&quot; said Flint, without, however, showing much
+gratitude in eyes or voice. &quot;To tell you the truth, it looks to me at
+times as if they were wished on me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_240"></a>Mary Virginia tried to look horrified, and giggled instead.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I could only make any of them understand anything!&quot; said the
+Butterfly Man desperately, &quot;but I can't. If only they really wanted to
+know, I'd be more than glad to teach them. But they don't. I show them
+and show them and tell them and tell them, over and over and over
+again, and the same thing five minutes later, and they haven't even
+listened! They don't care. What do they take up my time and say they
+like my butterflies for, when they don't like them at all and don't
+want to know anything about them? That's what gets me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Laurence winked at Mary Virginia, shamelessly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bugs!&quot; said he, inelegantly. &quot;That's what's intended to get you, you
+old duffer!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Flint,&quot; said Mary Virginia, with dancing eyes. &quot;I don't blame
+those girls one single solitary bit for wanting to know all
+about&mdash;butterflies.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But they don't want to know, I tell you!&quot; Mr. Flint's voice rose
+querulously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear creature, I'd be stuck on you myself if I were a girl,&quot; said
+Laurence sweetly. &quot;Padre, prepare yourself to say, 'Bless you, my
+children!' I see this innocent's finish.&quot; And he began to sing, in a
+lackadaisical manner, through his nose:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;Now you're married you must obey,<br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; You must be true to all you say,<br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; Live together all your life&mdash;&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>No answering smile came to John Flint's lips. He made no reply to the
+light banter, but stiffened, and <a name="Page_241"></a>stared ahead of him with a set face
+and eyes into which crept an expression of anguish. Mary Virginia,
+with a quick glance, laid her hand on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't mind Laurence and me, we're a pair of sillies. You and the
+Padre are too good to put up with us the way you do,&quot; she said,
+coaxingly. &quot;And&mdash;we girls do like you, Mr. Flint, whether we're wished
+on you or not.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That seductive &quot;we&quot; in that golden voice routed him, horse and foot.
+He looked at the small hand on his arm, and his glance went swiftly to
+the sweet and innocent eyes looking at him with such frank
+friendliness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's better than I deserve,&quot; he said, gently enough. &quot;And it isn't
+I'm not grateful to the rest of them for liking me,&mdash;if they do. It's
+that I want to box their ears when they pretend to like my insects,
+and don't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Being a gentleman has its drawbacks,&quot; said I, tentatively.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Believe <i>me</i>!&quot; he spoke with great feeling. &quot;It's nothing short of
+doing a life-stretch!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The boy and girl laughed gaily. When he spoke thus it added to his
+unique charm. So profoundly were they impressed with what he had
+become, that even what he had been, as they remembered it, increased
+their respect and affection. That past formed for him a somber
+background, full of half-lights and shadows, against which he stood
+out with the revealing intensity of a Rembrandt portrait.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What I came over to tell you, is that Madame says you're to stay home
+this evening, Mr. Flint,&quot; said Mary Virginia, comfortably. &quot;I'm
+spending the night with Madame, you're to know, and we're planning a
+nice <a name="Page_242"></a>folksy informal sort of a time; and you're to be home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Orders from headquarters,&quot; commented Laurence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All right,&quot; agreed the Butterfly Man, briefly.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia shook out her white skirts, and patted her black hair
+into even more distractingly pretty disorder.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've got to get back to the office&mdash;mean case I'm working on,&quot;
+complained Laurence. &quot;Mary Virginia, walk a little way with me, won't
+you? Do, child! It will sweeten all my afternoon and make my work
+easier.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You haven't grown up a bit&mdash;thank goodness!&quot; said Mary Virginia. But
+she went with him.</p>
+
+<p>The Butterfly Man looked after them speculatively.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mrs. Eustis,&quot; he remarked, &quot;is an ambitious sort of a lady, isn't
+she? Thinks in millions for her daughter, expects her to make a great
+match and all that. Miss Sally Ruth told me she'd heard Mrs. Eustis
+tried once or twice to pull off a match to suit herself, but Miss Mary
+Virginia wouldn't stand for it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, naturally, Mrs. Eustis would like to see the child well settled
+in life,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, you don't have to be a Christian <i>all</i> the time,&quot; said he calmly.
+&quot;I know Mrs. Eustis, too. She talked to me for an hour and a half
+without stopping, one night last week. See here, parson: Inglesby's
+got a roll that outweighs his record. Suppose he wants to settle down
+and reform&mdash;with a young wife to help him do it&mdash;wouldn't it be a real
+Christian job to lady's-aid him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I eyed him askance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now there's Laurence,&quot; went on the Butterfly Man, speculatively.
+&quot;Laurence is making plenty of trouble, but not so much money. No, Mrs.
+Eustis wouldn't faint <a name="Page_243"></a>at the notion of Inglesby, but she'd keel over
+like a perfect lady at the bare thought of Laurence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't see,&quot; said I, crossly, &quot;why she should be called upon to
+faint for either of them. Inglesby's&mdash;Inglesby. That makes him
+impossible. As for the boy, why, he rocked that child in her cradle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That didn't keep either of them from growing up a man and a woman.
+Looks to me as if they were beginning to find it out, parson.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I considered his idea, and found it so eminently right, proper, and
+beautiful, that I smiled over it. &quot;It would be ideal,&quot; I admitted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Her mother wouldn't agree with you, though her father might,&quot; he said
+dryly. And he asked:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ever had a hunch?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A presentiment, you mean?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; a hunch. Well, I've got one. I've got a hunch there's trouble
+ahead for that girl.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This seemed so improbable, in the light of her fortunate days, that I
+smiled cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, if there should be,&mdash;here are you and I to stand by.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sure,&quot; said he, laconically, &quot;that's all we're here for&mdash;to stand
+by.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Although it was January, the weather was again springlike. All day the
+air was like a golden wine, drenched in a golden sun. All day in the
+cedars' dark and vivid green the little wax-wings flew in and out, and
+everywhere the blackberry bramble that &quot;would grace the parlors of
+heaven&quot; was unfolding its crisp red leaves and white buds; and all the
+roads and woods were gay with the scarlet berries of the casida, which
+the <a name="Page_244"></a>robins love. And the nights were clear and still and starry,
+nights of a beauty so vital one sensed it as something alive.</p>
+
+<p>Because Mary Virginia was to spend that night at the Parish House,
+Mrs. Eustis having been called away and the house for once free of
+guests, my mother had seized the occasion to call about her the youth
+in which her soul delighted. To-night she was as rosy and bright-eyed
+as any one of her girl-friends. She beamed when she saw the old rooms
+alive and alight with fresh and laughing faces and blithe figures.
+There was Laurence, with that note in his voice, that light in his
+eyes, that glow and glory upon him, which youth alone knows; and
+Dabney, with his black hair, as usual, on end, and his intelligent
+eyes twinkling behind his glasses; and Claire Dexter, colored like a
+pearl set in a cluster of laughing girls; and Mary Virginia, all in
+white, so beautiful that she brought a mist to the eyes that watched
+her. All the other gay and charming figures seemed but attendants for
+this supremer loveliness, snow-white, rose-red, ebony-black, like the
+queen's child in the fairy-tale.</p>
+
+<p>The Butterfly Man had obediently put in his appearance. With the
+effect which a really strong character produces, he was like an
+insistent deep undernote that dominates and gives meaning to a lighter
+and merrier melody. All this bright life surged, never away from, but
+always toward and around him. Youth claimed him, shared itself with
+him, gave him lavishly of its best, because he fascinated and ensnared
+its fresh imagination. Though he should live to be a thousand it would
+ever pay homage to some nameless magic quality of spirit which was
+his.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_245"></a>Are you writing something new? Have you found another butterfly?&quot;
+asked the young things, full of interest and respect.</p>
+
+<p>Well, he <i>had</i> promised a certain paper by a certain time, though what
+people could find to like so much in what he had to say about his
+insects&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because,&quot; said Dabney, &quot;you create in us a new feeling for them.
+They're living things with a right to their lives, and you show us
+what wonderful little lives most of them are. You bring them close to
+us in a way that doesn't disgust us. I guess, Butterfly Man, the truth
+is you've found a new way of preaching the old gospel of One Father
+and one life; and the common sense of common folks understands what
+you mean, thanks you for it, likes you for it, and&mdash;asks you to tell
+us some more.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whenever a real teacher appears, always the common people hear him
+gladly,&quot; said I, reflectively.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only,&quot; said Mary Virginia, quickly, &quot;when the teacher himself is just
+as uncommon as he can be, Padre.&quot; She smiled at John Flint with a
+sincerity that honored him.</p>
+
+<p>He stood abashed and silent before this na&iuml;ve appreciation. It was at
+once his greatest happiness and his deepest pain&mdash;that open admiration
+of these clean-souled youngsters.</p>
+
+<p>When he had gone, I too slipped away, for the still white night
+outside called me. I went around to that favorite retreat of mine, the
+battered seat shut in among spireas and syringas. I like to say my
+rosary out of doors. The beads slipping through my fingers soothed me
+with their monotonous insistent petition. Prayer <a name="Page_246"></a>brought me closer to
+the heart of the soft and shining night, and the big still stars.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p class="noin"><i>They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; yea, all of them
+     shall wax old as a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change
+     them, and they shall be changed; but thou art the same and
+     thy years shall have no end</i>.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The surety of the beautiful words brought the great overshadowing
+Presence near me. And I fell into a half-revery, in which the
+hailmarys wove themselves in and out, like threads in a pattern.</p>
+
+<p>Dreamily enough, I heard the youthful guests depart, in a gale of
+laughter and flute-like goodnights. And I noted, too, that no light as
+yet shone in the Butterfly Man's rooms. Well&mdash;he would hurl himself
+into the work to-morrow, probably, and clear it up in an hour or two.
+He was like that.</p>
+
+<p>My retreat was just off the path, and near the little gate between our
+grounds and Judge Mayne's. Thus, though I was completely hidden by the
+screening bushes and the shadow of the holly tree as well, I could
+plainly see the two who presently came down the bright open path. Of
+late it had given me a curious sense of comfort to see Laurence with
+Mary Virginia, and, I reflected, he had been her shadow recently. I
+liked that. His strength seemed to shield her from Hunter's ambiguous
+smile, from Inglesby's thoughts, even from her own mother's ambition.</p>
+
+<p>I could see my girl's dear dark head outlined with a circle of
+moonlight as with a halo, and it barely reached my tall boy's
+shoulder. Her hand lay lightly on his arm, and he bent toward her,
+bringing his close-cropped brown head nearer hers. I couldn't have
+risen or <a name="Page_247"></a>spoken then, without interrupting them. I merely glanced out
+at them, smilingly, with my rosary in my finger.</p>
+
+<p>I reached the end of a decade: &quot;<i>As it was in the beginning, is now,
+and ever shall be</i><span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>They stopped at the gate, and fell silent for a space, the girl with
+her darling face uplifted. The fleecy wrap she wore fell about her
+slim shoulders in long lines, glinting with silver. She did not give
+the effect of remoteness, but of being near and dear and desirable and
+beautiful. The boy, looking upon her with his heart in his eyes, drew
+nearer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mary Virginia,&quot; said he, eagerly and huskily and passionately and
+timidly and hopefully and despairingly, &quot;Mary Virginia, are you going
+to marry anybody?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia came back from the stars in the night sky to the stars
+in the young man's eyes. &quot;Why, yes, I hope I am,&quot; said she lightly
+enough, but one saw she had been startled. &quot;What a funny boy you are,
+Laurence, to be sure! You don't expect me to remain a spinster, do
+you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are going to be married?&quot; This time despair was uppermost.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I most certainly am!&quot; said Mary Virginia stoutly. &quot;Why, I confided
+<i>that</i> to you years and years and years ago! Don't you remember I
+always insisted he should have golden hair, and sea-blue eyes, and a
+classic brow, and a beautiful willingness to go away somewhere and die
+of a broken heart if I ordered him to?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who is who?&quot; she parried provokingly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The chap you're going to marry?&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_248"></a>Mary Virginia appeared to reflect deeply and anxiously. She put out a
+foot, with the eternal feminine gesture, and dug a neat little hole in
+the graveled walk with her satin toe.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Laurence,&quot; said she. &quot;I'm going to tell you the truth. The truth is,
+Laurence, that I simply hate to have to tell you the truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mary Virginia!&quot; he stammered wretchedly. &quot;You hate to have to tell
+<i>me</i> the truth? Oh, my dear, why? Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But because why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because,&quot; said the dear hussy, demurely, &quot;I don't know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Laurence's arms fell to his sides, helplessly; he craned his neck and
+stared.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mary Virginia!&quot; said he, in a breathless whisper.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia nodded. &quot;It's really none of your business, you know,&quot;
+she explained sweetly; &quot;but as you've asked me, why, I'll tell you.
+That same question plagues and fascinates me, too, Laurence. Why, just
+consider! Here's a whole big, big world full of men&mdash;tall men, short
+men, lean men, fat men, silly men, wise men, ugly men, handsome men,
+sad men, glad men, good men, bad men, rich men, poor men,&mdash;oh, all
+sorts and kinds and conditions and complexions of men: any one of whom
+I might wake up some day and find myself married to: and I don't know
+which one! It delights and terrifies and fascinates and amuses and
+puzzles me when I begin to think about it. Here I've got to marry
+Somebody and I don't know any more than Adam's <a name="Page_249"></a>housecat who and where
+that Somebody is, and he might pop from around the corner at me, any
+minute! It makes the thing so much more interesting, so much more like
+a big risky game of guess, when you don't know, don't you think?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No: it makes you miserable,&quot; said Laurence, briefly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I'm not miserable at all!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're not, because you don't have to be. But I am!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You? Why, Laurence! Why should <i>you</i> be miserable?&quot; Her voice lost
+its blithe lightness; it was a little faint. She said hastily, without
+waiting for his reply: &quot;I guess I'd better run in. It was silly of me
+to walk to the gate with you at this hour. I think Madame's calling
+me. Goodnight, Laurence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, you don't,&quot; said he. &quot;And it wasn't silly of you to come, either;
+it was dear and delightful, and I prayed the Lord to put the notion
+into your darling head, and He did it. And now you're here you don't
+budge from this spot until you've heard what I've got to say.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mary Virginia, I reckon you're just about the most beautiful girl in
+the world. You've been run after and courted and flattered and
+followed until it was enough to turn any girl's head, and it would
+have turned any girl's head but yours. You could say to almost any man
+alive, Come, and he'd come&mdash;oh, yes, he'd come quick. You've got the
+earth to pick and choose from&mdash;but I'm asking you to pick and choose
+<i>me</i>. I haven't got as much to offer you as I shall have some of these
+days, but I've got me myself, body and brain and heart and <a name="Page_250"></a>soul,
+sound to the core, and all of me yours, and I think that counts most,
+if you care as I do. Mary Virginia, will you marry me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, but, Laurence! Why&mdash;Laurence&mdash;I&mdash;indeed, I didn't know&mdash;I didn't
+think<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span> stammered the girl. &quot;At least, I didn't dream you cared&mdash;like
+that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Didn't you? Well, all I can say is, you've been mighty blind, then.
+For I do care. I guess I've always cared like that, only, somehow,
+it's taken this one short winter to drive home what I'd been learning
+all my life?&quot; said he, soberly. &quot;I reckon I've been just like other
+fool-boys, Mary Virginia. That is, I spooned a bit around every good
+looking girl I ran up against, but I soon found out it wasn't the real
+thing, and I quit. Something in me knew all along I belonged to
+somebody else. To you. I believe now&mdash;Mary Virginia, I believe with
+all my heart&mdash;that I cared for you when you were squalling in your
+cradle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! ... Did I squall, really?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Squall</i>? Sometimes it was tummy and sometimes it was temper. Between
+them you yelled like a Comanche,&quot; said this astonishing lover.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia tilted her head back, adorably.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was very, very noble of you to mind me&mdash;under the circumstances,&quot;
+she conceded, graciously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Believe me, it was,&quot; agreed Laurence. &quot;I didn't know it, of course,
+but even at that tender age my fate was upon me, for I <i>liked</i> to mind
+you. Even the bawling didn't daunt me, and I adored you when you
+resembled a squab. Yes, I was in love with you then. I'm in love with
+you now. My girl, my own girl, I'll go out of this world and into the
+next one loving you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_251"></a>Then why,&quot; she asked reproachfully, &quot;haven't you said so?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why haven't I said what?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, you know. That you&mdash;loved me, Laurence.&quot; Her rich voice had sunk
+to a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good Lord, haven't I been saying it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, you haven't! You've been merely asking me to marry you. But you
+haven't said a word about loving me, until this very minute!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you must know perfectly well that I'm crazy about you, Mary
+Virginia!&quot; said the boy, and his voice trembled with bewilderment as
+well as passion. &quot;How in heaven's name could I help being crazy about
+you? Why, from the beginning of things, there's never been anybody
+else, but just you. I never even pretended to care for anybody else.
+No, there's nobody but you. Not for me. You're everything and all,
+where I'm concerned. And&mdash;please, please look up, beautiful, and tell
+me the truth: look at me, Mary Virginia!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The white-clad figure moved a hair's breadth nearer; the uplifted
+lovely face was very close.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do I really mean that to you, Laurence? All that, really and truly?&quot;
+she asked, wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes! And more. And more!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll be the unhappiest girl in the world: I'll be the most miserable
+woman alive&mdash;if you ever change your mind, Laurence,&quot; said she.</p>
+
+<p>There was a quivering pause. Then:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You care?&quot; asked the boy, almost breathlessly. &quot;Mary Virginia, you
+care?&quot; He laid his hands upon her shoulders and bent to search the
+alluring face.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Laurence!&quot; said Mary Virginia, with a tremulous, <a name="Page_252"></a>half-tearful laugh,
+&quot;Laurence, it's taken this one short winter to teach me, too. And&mdash;you
+were mistaken, utterly mistaken about those symptoms of mine. It
+wasn't tummy, Laurence. And it wasn't temper. I think&mdash;I am sure&mdash;that
+what I was trying so hard to squall to you in my cradle was&mdash;that I
+cared, Laurence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The young man's arms closed about her, and I saw the young mouths
+meet. I saw more than that: I saw other figures steal out into the
+moonlight and stand thus entwined, and one was the ghost of what once
+was I. That other, lost Armand De Ranc&eacute;, looked at me wistfully with
+his clear eyes; and I was very, very sorry for him, as one may be
+poignantly sorry for the innocent, beautiful dead. My hand tightened
+on my beads, and the feel of my cassock upon me, as a uniform,
+steadied and sustained me.</p>
+
+<p>Those two had drawn back a little into the shadows as if the night had
+reached out its arms to them. Such a night belonged to such as these;
+they invest it, lend it meaning, give it intelligible speech. As for
+me, I was an old priest in an old cassock, with all his fond and
+foolish old heart melting in his breast. Youth alone is eternal and
+immortal. And as for love, it is of God.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without
+end, Amen</i>.&quot; I had finished the decade. And then as one awakes from a
+trance I rose softly and as softly crept back to the Parish House,
+happy and at peace, because I had seen that which makes the morning
+stars rejoice when they sing together.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Armand,&quot; said my mother, sleepily, &quot;is that you, dear? I must have
+been nodding in my chair. Mary Virginia's just walked to the gate with
+Laurence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_253"></a>My goodness,&quot; said she, half an hour later. &quot;What on earth can that
+child mean? Hadn't you better call her in, Armand?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; said I, decidedly.</p>
+
+<p>Laurence brought her back presently. There must have been something
+electrical in the atmosphere, for my mother of a sudden sat bolt
+upright in her chair. Women are like that. That is one of the reasons
+why men are so afraid of them.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Padre, and p'tite Madame,&quot; began Laurence, &quot;you've been like a father
+and mother to me&mdash;and&mdash;and<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>&quot;And we thought you ought to know,&quot; said Mary Virginia.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My children!&quot; cried my mother, ecstatically, &quot;it is the wish of my
+heart! Always have I prayed our good God to let this happen&mdash;and you
+see?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But it's a great secret: it's not to be <i>breathed</i>, yet,&quot; said Mary
+Virginia.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Except, of course, my father<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span> began Laurence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And the Butterfly Man,&quot; I added, firmly. Well knowing none of us
+could keep such news from <i>him</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As for me,&quot; said my mother, gloriously reckless, &quot;I shall open one of
+the two bottles of our great-grandfather's wine!&quot; The last time that
+wine had been opened was the day I was ordained. &quot;Armand, go and bring
+John Flint.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When I reached his rooms Kerry was whining over a huddled form on the
+porch steps. John Flint lay prone, his arms outstretched, horribly
+suggestive of one crucified. At my step he struggled upright. I had my
+arms about him in another moment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_254"></a>Are you hurt? sick? John, John, my son, what is it? What is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no, I'm all right. I&mdash;was just a little shaky for the minute.
+There, there, don't you be scared, father.&quot; But his voice shook, and
+the hand I held was icy cold.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My son, my dear son, what is wrong with you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He controlled himself with a great effort. &quot;Oh, I've been a little off
+my feed of late, father, that's all. See, I'm perfectly all right,
+now.&quot; And he squared his shoulders and tried to speak in his natural
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My mother wanted you to come over for a few minutes, there's
+something you're to know. But if you don't feel well enough<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>He seemed to brace himself. &quot;Maybe I know it already. However, I'm
+quite able to walk over and hear&mdash;anything I'm to be told,&quot; he said,
+composedly.</p>
+
+<p>In the lighted parlor his face showed up pale and worn, and his eyes
+hollow. But his smile was ready, his voice steady, and the hand which
+received the wine Mary Virginia herself brought him, did not tremble.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is to our great, great happiness we wish you to drink, old
+friend,&quot; said Laurence. Intoxicated with his new joy, glowing,
+shining, the boy was magnificent.</p>
+
+<p>The Butterfly Man turned and looked at him; steadily, deliberately, a
+long, searching, critical look, as if measuring him by a new standard.
+Laurence stood the test. Then the man's eyes came back to the girl,
+rose-colored, radiant, star-eyed, and lingered upon her. He arose, and
+held up the glass in which our old wine seemed to leap upward in
+little amber-colored flames.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll understand,&quot; said the Butterfly Man, &quot;that <a name="Page_255"></a>I haven't the
+words handy to my tongue to say what's in my heart. I reckon I'd have
+to be God for awhile, to make all I wish for you two come true.&quot; There
+was in look and tone and manner something so sweet and reverent that
+we were touched and astonished.</p>
+
+<p>When my mother had peremptorily sent Laurence home to the judge, and
+carried Mary Virginia off to talk the rest of the night through, I
+went back to his rooms with John Flint, in spite of the lateness of
+the hour: for I was uneasy about him.</p>
+
+<p>I think my nearness soothed him. For with that boyish diffident
+gesture of his he reached over presently and held me by the sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Parson,&quot; he asked, abruptly, &quot;is a man born with a whole soul, or
+just a sort of shut-up seed of one? Is one given him free, or has he
+got to earn and pay for one before he gets it, parson? I want to
+know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We all want to know that, John Flint. And the West says Yes, and the
+East, No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've been reading a bit,&quot; said he, slowly and thoughtfully. &quot;I wanted
+to hear what both sides had to say. Paul is pretty plain, on his side
+of the fence. But, parson, some chaps that talk as if they knew quite
+as much as Paul does, say you don't get anything in this universe for
+nothing; you have to pay for what you get. As near as I can figure it
+out, you land here with a chance to earn yourself. You can quit or you
+can go on&mdash;it's all up to you. If you're a sport and play the game
+straight, why, you stand to win yourself a water-tight fire-proof
+soul. Because, you see, you've earned and paid for it, parson. That
+sounded like good sense to me. Looked to me as if I was sort of doing
+it myself. <a name="Page_256"></a>But when I began to go deeper into the thing, why, I got
+stuck. For I can't deny I'd been doing it more because I had to than
+because I wanted to. But&mdash;which-ever way it is, I'm paying! Oh, yes,
+I'm paying!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, but so is everybody else, my son,&quot; said I, sadly. &quot;...&nbsp;each in
+his own coin.&nbsp;... But after all isn't oneself worth while, whatever
+the cost?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know,&quot; said he. &quot;That's where I'm stuck. Is the whole show a
+skin game or is it worth while? But, parson, whatever it is, you pay a
+hell of a price when you buy yourself on the instalment plan, believe
+me!&quot; his voice broke, as if on a suppressed groan. &quot;If I could get it
+over and done with, pay for my damned little soul in one big gob, I
+wouldn't mind. But to have to buy what I'm buying, to have to pay what
+I'm paying<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are ill,&quot; said I, deeply concerned. &quot;I was afraid of this.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed, more like a croak.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sure I'm sick. I'm sick to the core of me, but you and Westmoreland
+can't dose me. Nobody can do anything for me, I have to do it myself
+or go under. That's part of paying on the instalment plan, too,
+parson.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't think I exactly understand<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, you wouldn't. <i>You</i> paid in a lump sum, you see. And you got what
+you got. Whatever it was that got <i>you</i>, parson, got the best of the
+bargain.&quot; His voice softened.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are talking in parables,&quot; said I, severely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I'm not paying in parables, parson. I'm paying in <i>me</i>,&quot; said he,
+grimly. And he laughed again, a <a name="Page_257"></a>laugh of sheer stark misery that
+raised a chill echo in my heart. His hand crept back to my sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I&mdash;can't always can the squeal,&quot; he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If only I could help you!&quot; I grieved.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You do,&quot; said he, quickly. &quot;You do, by being you. I hang on to you,
+parson. And say, look here! Don't you think I'm such a hog I can't
+find time to be glad other folks are happy even if I'm not. If there's
+one thing that could make me feel any sort of way good, it's to know
+those two who were made for each other have found it out. It sort of
+makes it look as if some things do come right, even if others are
+rotten wrong. I'm glad till it hurts me. I'd like you to believe
+that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do believe it. And, my son! if you can find time to be glad of
+others' happiness, without envy, why, you're bound to come right,
+because you're sound at the core.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You reckon I'm worth my price, then, parson?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I reckon you're worth your price, whatever it is. I don't worry about
+you, John Flint.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And somehow, I did not. I left him with Kerry's head on his knee. His
+hand was humanly warm again, and the voice in which he told me
+goodnight was bravely steady. He sat erect in his doorway, fronting
+the night like a soldier on guard. If he were buying his soul on the
+instalment plan I was sure he would be able to meet the payments,
+whatever they were, as they fell due.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Page_258"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XIV"></a><hr />
+<br />
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE WISHING CURL</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>With February the cold that the Butterfly Man had wished for came with
+a vengeance. The sky lost its bright blue friendliness and changed
+into a menacing gray, the gray of stormy water. Overnight the flowers
+vanished, leaving our gardens stripped and bare, and our birds that
+had been so gay were now but sorry shivering balls of ruffled
+feathers, with no song left in them. When rain came the water froze in
+the wagon-ruts, and ice-covered puddles made street-corners dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>This intense cold, damp, heavy, penetrating, coming upon the heels of
+the unseasonably warm weather, seemed to bring to a head all the
+latent sickness smoldering in the mill-parish, for it suddenly burst
+forth like a conflagration. If the Civic League had not already done
+so much to better conditions in the poorer district, we must have had
+a very serious epidemic, as Dr. Westmoreland bluntly told the Town
+Council.</p>
+
+<p>As it was, things were pretty bad for awhile, and the inevitable white
+hearse moved up and down, stopping now at this door, now at that. In
+one narrow street, I remember, it moved in the exact shape of a figure
+eight within the week. I do not like to recall those days. I buried
+the children with the seal of Holy Mother Church upon their innocence;
+I repeated over them &quot;The Lord <a name="Page_259"></a>hath given, the Lord hath taken
+away&quot;&mdash;and knew in my heart that it was man-made want, the greed of
+money-madness, that had taken them untimely out of their mothers'
+laps. And the earth was like iron; it opened unwillingly to receive
+the babes of the poor.</p>
+
+<p>In and out of stricken mill-houses and shabby shacks, as regularly as
+Westmoreland and I, whose business and duty lay there, came John
+Flint. He made no effort to comfort parents, although these seemed to
+derive a curious consolation from his presence. He did not even come
+because he wanted to; he came because the children begged to see the
+Butterfly Man and one may not refuse a sick child. He had made friends
+with them, made toys for them; and now he saw dull eyes brighten at
+his approach and pale faces try to smile; languid and fever-hot hands
+were held out to him. All the force of the affection of young
+children, their dazzling faith, the almost unthinkable power upon
+their plastic minds of those whom they trust, came home to him. He
+could not, in such an hour, accept lightly, with a careless smile, the
+fact that children loved him. And once or twice a small hand that
+clung to him grew cold in his clasp, and under his eyes a child's
+closed to this world.</p>
+
+<p>Now, something that saw straight, thought like a naked sword-blade,
+ate like a testing acid into shams and hated evasions and half-truths
+and subterfuges, had of late been showing more and more behind John
+Flint's reserve; and I think it might have hardened into a mentality
+cold and bright and barren, hard and cutting as a diamond, had it not
+been for the children whom he had to see suffer and die.</p>
+
+<p>There was one child of whom he was particularly fond&mdash;<a name="Page_260"></a>a child with
+the fairest of fair hair, deep and sweet blue eyes, and the quickest,
+shyest, most fleeting of smiles to lighten flashingly her small pale
+serious face. She had been one of the first of the mill folks'
+children to make friends with the Butterfly Man. She used to watch for
+him, and then, holding on to one of his fingers, she liked to trot
+sedately down the street beside him.</p>
+
+<p>This child's going was sudden and rather painful. Westmoreland did
+what he could, but there was no stamina in that frail body, so her's
+had been one of the small hands to fall limp and still out of John
+Flint's. The doll he had made for her lay in the crook of her arm; it
+had on a red calico dress, very garish in the gray room, and against
+the child's whiteness.</p>
+
+<p>Westmoreland stood, big and compassionate, at the foot of the bed. His
+ruddy face showed wan and behind his glasses his gray tired eyes
+winked and blinked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There must be,&quot; said the Doctor, as if to himself, &quot;some eternal vast
+reservoir somewhere, that stores up all this terrible total of
+unnecessary suffering&mdash;the cruel and needless suffering inflicted upon
+children and animals, in particular. Perhaps it's a spiritual serum
+used for the saving of the race. Perhaps races higher up than we use
+it&mdash;as <i>we</i> use rabbits and guinea-pigs. No, no, nothing's wasted;
+there's a forward end to pain, somewhere.&quot; He looked down at the child
+and shook his head doubtfully:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But when all is said and done,&quot; he muttered, &quot;what do such as these
+get out of it? Nothing&mdash;so far as we can see. They're victims, they
+and the innocent beasts, thrust into a world which tortures and
+devours them. Why? Why? Why?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_261"></a>There is nothing to do but leave that everlasting Why to God,&quot; said
+I, painfully.</p>
+
+<p>The Butterfly Man looked up and one saw that cold sword-straight,
+diamond-hard something in his eyes:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Parson,&quot; said he, grimly, &quot;you're a million miles off the right
+track&mdash;and you know it. Leaving things to God&mdash;things like poor kids
+dying because they're gouged out of their right to live&mdash;is just about
+as rotten stupid and wrong as it can well be. God's all right; he does
+his part of the job. You do yours, and what happens? Why, my
+butterflies answer that! I'm punk on your catechism, and if <i>this</i> is
+all it can teach I hope I die punk on it; but as near as I can make
+out, original sin is leaving things like this&quot;&mdash;and he looked at his
+small friend with her doll on her arm<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span>to God, instead of tackling
+the job yourself and straightening it out.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The child's mother, a gaunt creature without a trace of youth left in
+her, although she could not have been much more than thirty, shambled
+over to a chair on the other side of the bed. She wore a faded red
+calico wrapper&mdash;a scrap of it had made the doll's frock&mdash;and a
+blue-checked apron with holes in it. Her hair was drawn painfully back
+from her forehead, and there was a wispy fringe of it on the back of
+her scraggy neck. In her dull eyes glimmered nothing but the innate
+uneasiness of those who are always in need, and her mouth had drawn
+itself into the shape of a horseshoe. There is no luck in a horseshoe
+hung thus on a woman's face. One might fancy she felt no emotion, her
+whole demeanor was so apathetic; but of a sudden she leaned over and
+took up one of the thick shining curls; half smiling, she began to
+wrap it about her finger.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_262"></a>I useter be right smart proud o' Louisa's hair,&quot; she remarked in a
+drawling, listless voice. &quot;She come by it from them uppidy folks o'
+her pa's. I've saw her when she wasn't much more 'n hair an' eyes,
+times her pa was laid up with the misery in his chest, an' me with
+nothin' but piecework weeks on end.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;...&nbsp;She was a cu'rus kind o' child, Louisa was. She sort o'
+'spicioned things wasn't right, but you think that child ever let a
+squeal out o' her? Not her! Lemme tell you-all somethin', jest to show
+what kind o' a heart that child had, suhs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With a loving and mothering motion she moved the bright curl about and
+about her hard finger. She spoke half intimately, half garrulously;
+and from the curl she would lift her faded eyes to the Butterfly
+Man's.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'T was a Sarrerday night, an' I was a-walkin' up an' down, account o'
+me bein' awful low in the mind.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Ma,' says Louisa, 'I'm reel hungry to-night. You reckon I could have
+a piece o' bread with butter on it? I wisht I could taste some bread
+with butter on it,' says she.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Darlin',' says I, turrible sad, 'Po' ma c'n give yo' the naked bread
+an' thanks to God I got even that to give,' I says. 'But they ain't a
+scrap o' butter in this house, an' no knowin' how to git any. Oh,
+darlin', ma's so sorry!'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She looks up with that quick smile o' her'n. Yes, suh, Mr. Flint, she
+ups and smiles. 'You don't belong to be sorry any, ma,' says she,
+comfortin'. 'Don't you mind none at all. Why, ma, darlin', <i>I just
+love naked bread without no butter on it!</i>' says she. My God, Mr.
+Flint, I bust out a-cryin' in her face. Seemed like I <a name="Page_263"></a>natchelly
+couldn't stand no mo'!&quot; And smiling vaguely with her poor old
+down-curved mouth, she went on fingering the curl.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Will you-all look a' that!&quot; she murmured, with pride. &quot;Even her
+hair's lovin', an' sort o' holds on like it wants you should touch it.
+My Lord o' glory, I'm glad her pa ain't livin' to see this day! He had
+his share o' misery, po' man, him dyin' o' lung-fever an' all....</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Six head o' young ones we'd had, me an' him. An' they'd all dropped
+off. Come spring, an' one'd be gone. I kep' a-comfortin' that man best
+I could they was better off, angels not bein' pindlin' an' hungry an'
+barefoot, an' thanks be, they ain't no mills in heaven. But their pa
+he couldn't see it thataway nohow. He was turrible sot on them
+children, like us pore folks gen'rally is. They was reel fine-lookin'
+at first.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When all the rest of 'em had went, her pa he sort o' sot his heart on
+Louisa here. 'For we ain't got nothin' else, ma,' says he. 'An' please
+the good Lord, we're a-goin' to give this one book-learnin' an' sich,
+an' so be she'll miss them mills,' he says. 'Ma, less us aim to make a
+lady o' our Louisa. Not that the Lord ain't done it a'ready,' says her
+pa, 'but we got to he'p Him keep on an' finish the job thorough.' An'
+here's him an' her both gone, an' me without a God's soul belongin' to
+me this day! My God, Mr. Flint, ain't it something turrible the things
+happens to us pore folks?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Butterfly Man looked from her to Westmoreland and me: doctor of
+bodies, doctor of souls, naturalist, what had we to say to this woman
+stripped of all? But she, with the greater wisdom of the poor, spoke
+for herself <a name="Page_264"></a>and for us. A sort of veiled light crept into her sodden
+face.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It ain't I ain't grateful to you-all,&quot; said she. &quot;God knows I be. You
+was good to Louisa. Doctor, you remember that day you give her a ride
+in your ottermobile an' forgot to bring her home for more 'n a hour?
+My, but that child was happy!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Ma,' says she when I come home that night, 'you know what heaven
+is?'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Child,' says I, 'folks like me mostly knows what it ain't.'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'I beat you, ma!' says she, clappin' her hands. 'Heaven ain't nothin'
+much but country an' roads an' trees an' butterflies, an' things like
+that,' says she. 'An' God's got ottermobiles, plenty an' plenty
+ottermobiles, an' you ride free in 'em long's you feel like it, 'cause
+that's what they's <i>for</i>. An', ma,' says she, 'God's, showfers is all
+of 'em Dr. Westmorelands and Mr. Flints.' Yea, suh, you-all been
+mighty kind to Louisa. But I reckon,&quot; she drawled, &quot;it was Mr. Flint
+Louisa loved best, him bein' a childern's kind o' man, an' on account
+o' Loujaney.&quot; She laid a hand upon the rag doll lying on the little
+girl's arm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;From the first day you give her that doll, Mr. Flint&mdash;which she named
+Loujaney, for her an' me both&mdash;that child ain't been parted from it.&quot;
+She smiled down at the two. I could almost have prayed she would weep
+instead. It would have been easier to bear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The King's Daughters, they give her a mighty nice doll off their
+Christmas tree last year, but Louisa, she didn't take to it like she
+done to Loujaney.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'<i>That</i> doll's jest a visitin' lady,' says she, 'but <a name="Page_265"></a>Loujaney, she's
+<i>my child</i>. Mr. Flint made her a-purpose for me, same's God made me
+for you, ma, an' she's mine by bornation. I can live with Loujaney. I
+ain't a mite ashamed afore her when we ain't got nothin', but I turn
+'tother's face to the wall so she won't know. Loujaney's pore folks
+same's you an' me, an' she knows prezac'ly how 't is. That's why I
+love her so much.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;An' day an' night,&quot; resumed the drawling voice, &quot;them two's been
+together. She jest lived an' et an' slept with that doll. If ever a
+doll gits to grow feelin's, Loujaney's got 'em. I s'pose I'd best give
+that visitin' doll to some child that wants it bad, but I ain't got
+the heart to take Loujaney away from her ma. I'm a-goin' to let them
+two go right on sleepin' together.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Flint, suh, seein' Louisa liked you so much, an' it's you she'd
+want to have it<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span> she leaned over, pushed the thick fair hair aside,
+and laid her finger upon a very whimsy of a curl, shorter, paler,
+fairer than the others, just above the little right ear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Her pa useter call that the wishin' curl,&quot; said she, half
+apologetically. &quot;You see, suh, he was a comical sort of man, an' a great
+hand for pertendin' things. I never could pertend. Things is what they
+is an' pertendin' don't change 'em none. But him an' her was different.
+That's how come him to pertend the Lord'd put the rainbow's pot o' gold
+in Louisa's hair with a wish in it, an' that ridic'lous curl one side
+her head, like a mark, was the wishin' curl. He'd pertend he could pull
+it twict an' say whisperin', '<i>Bickery-ickery-ee&mdash;my wish is comin' to
+me</i>,' an' he'd git it. An' she liked to pertend 'twas so an' she could
+wish things on it for me an' git 'em.&nbsp;... Clo'es an' shoes an' fire an'
+cake an' <a name="Page_266"></a>beefsteak an' butter an' stayin' home.&nbsp;... Just pertendin', you
+see.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Flint, suh, <i>I</i> ain't got a God's thing any more to wish for, but
+you bein' the sort o' man you are, I'd rather 'twas you had Louisa's
+wishin' curl, to remember her by.&quot; Snip! went the scissors; and there
+it lay, pale as the new gold of spring sunlight, curling as young
+grape-tendrils, in the Butterfly Man's open palm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee</i>,&quot; said
+the great Apostle to the lame man who lay beside the gate of the
+temple that is called, Beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I ain't got nothin' else,&quot; said the common mill-woman; and laid in
+John Flint's hand Louisa's wishing-curl.</p>
+
+<p>He stared at it, and turned as pale as the child on her pillow. The
+human pity of the thing, its sheer stark piercing simplicity, squeezed
+his heart as with a great hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My God!&quot; he choked. &quot;My&mdash;God!&quot; and a rending sob tore loose from his
+throat. For the first time in his life he had to weep; uncontrolled,
+unashamed, childlike, fatherly, brotherly. For he had experienced,
+unselfishly, on account of one of the humblest of God's creatures, one
+of the great divine emotions. And when that happens to a man it is as
+if his soul were winnowed by the wind of an archangel's wings.</p>
+
+<p>Westmoreland and I slipped out and left him with the woman. She would
+know what further thing to say to him.</p>
+
+<p>Outside in the bleak bitter street, the Doctor laid his hand on my
+shoulder. He winked his eyes rapidly. &quot;<a name="Page_267"></a>Father,&quot; said he, earnestly,
+&quot;when I witness such a thing as we've seen this morning, I do not lose
+faith. I gain it.&quot; And he gripped me heartily with his big gloved
+hand. &quot;Tell John Flint,&quot; he added, &quot;that sometimes a rag doll is a
+mighty big thing for a man to have to his credit.&quot; Then he was gone,
+with a tear freezing on his cheek.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Angels,&quot; John Flint had said more than once, &quot;are not middle-aged
+doctors with shoulders on them like a barn-door, and ribs like a dray;
+angels don't have bald heads and wear a red tie and tan shoes. But I'd
+pass them all up, from Gabriel down, wings and tailfeathers, for one
+Walter Westmoreland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I would, too. And I walked along, thinking of what I had just
+witnessed; sensing its time value. To those slight and fragile things
+which had, for John Flint, outweighed the scales of evil&mdash;a gray moth,
+a butterfly's wing, a bird's nest&mdash;I added a child's fair hair, and a
+rag doll that was going to sleep with its ma.</p>
+
+<p>There were but few people on the freezing streets, for folks preferred
+to stay indoors and hug the fire. Fronting the wind, I walked with a
+lowered head, and thus collided with a lady who turned a corner at the
+same time I did.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't apologize, Padre,&quot; said Mary Virginia, for it was she. &quot;It was
+my fault&mdash;I wasn't looking where I was going.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you by any chance bound for the Parish House? Because my mother
+will be on her way to a poor thing that's just lost her only child.
+Where have you been these past weeks? I haven't seen you for ages.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I've been rather busy, too, Padre. And I <a name="Page_268"></a>haven't been quite
+well<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span> she hesitated. I thought I understood. For, possibly from some
+servant who had overheard Mrs. Eustis expostulating with her daughter,
+the news of Mary Virginia's unannounced engagement had sifted pretty
+thoroughly throughout the length and breadth of Appleboro; a town
+where an unfledged and callow rumor will start out of a morning and
+come home to roost at night with talons and tailfeathers.</p>
+
+<p>That Mary Virginia had all James Eustis's own quiet will-power,
+everybody knew. She would not, perhaps, marry Laurence in the face of
+her mother's open opposition. Neither would she marry anybody else to
+please her mother in defiance of her own heart. There was a pretty
+struggle ahead, and Appleboro took sides for and against, and settled
+itself with eager expectancy to watch the outcome.</p>
+
+<p>So I concluded that Mary Virginia had not been having a pleasant time.
+Indeed, it struck me that she was really unwell. One might even
+suspect she had known sleepless nights, from the shadowed eyes and the
+languor of her manner.</p>
+
+<p>Just then, swinging down the street head erect, shoulders square, the
+freezing weather only intensifying his glowing fairness, came Howard
+Hunter. The man was clear red and white. His gold hair and beard
+glittered, his bright blue eyes snapped and sparkled. He seemed to
+rejoice in the cold, as if some Viking strain in him delighted in its
+native air.</p>
+
+<p>As he paused to greet us a coldness not of the weather crept into Mary
+Virginia's eyes. She did not speak, but bowed formally. Mr. Hunter,
+holding her gaze for a moment, lifted his brows whimsically and
+smiled; then, <a name="Page_269"></a>bowing, he passed on. She stood looking after him, her
+lips closed firmly upon each other.</p>
+
+<p>Tucking her hand in my arm, she walked with me to the Parish House
+gate. No, she said, she couldn't come in. But I was to give her
+regards to the Butterfly Man, and her love to Madame.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Parson,&quot; the Butterfly Man asked me that night, &quot;have you seen Mary
+Virginia recently?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I saw her to-day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I saw her to-day, too. She looked worried. She hasn't been here
+lately, has she?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. She hasn't been feeling well. I hear Mrs. Eustis has been very
+outspoken about the engagement, and I suppose that's what worries Mary
+Virginia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't think so. She knew she had to go up against that, from the
+first. She's more than a match for her mother. There's something else.
+Didn't I tell you I had a hunch there was going to be trouble? Well,
+I've got a hunch it's here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nonsense!&quot; said I, shortly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know,&quot; said he, stubbornly. And he added, irrelevantly: &quot;It's
+generally known, parson, that Eustis will be nominated. Inglesby's
+managed to gain considerable ground, thanks to Hunter, and folks say
+if it wasn't for Eustis he'd win. As it is, he'll be swamped. I hear
+he was thunderstruck when he got wind of what Mayne was going to play
+against him&mdash;for he knows Laurence brought Eustis out. Inglesby's
+mighty sore. He's the sort that hates to have to admit he can't get
+what he wants.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then he'd better save himself the trouble of having to put it to the
+test,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_270"></a>I'm wondering,&quot; said John Flint. &quot;I wish I hadn't got that hunch!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I did not see Mary Virginia again for some time. Just then I moved
+breathlessly in a horrid round of sickbeds, for the wave had reached
+its height; already it had swept seventeen of my flock out of time
+into eternity.</p>
+
+<p>I came home on one of the last of those heavy evenings, to find
+Laurence waiting for me in my study. He was standing in the middle of
+the room, his hands clasped behind his back.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Padre,&quot; said he by way of greeting, &quot;have you seen Mary Virginia
+lately? Has Madame?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, except for a chance meeting one morning on the street. But she
+has been sending me help right along, bless her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Has Madame heard anything from her, Padre?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, I don't think so. But we've been frightfully busy of late, you
+understand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, neither of you know,&quot; said Laurence, in a low voice. &quot;You
+wouldn't know. Padre, I&mdash;don't look at me like that, please; I'm not
+ill. But, without reason&mdash;swear to you before God, without any reason
+whatever, that I can conjure up&mdash;she has thrown me over, jilted
+me&mdash;Mary Virginia, Padre! And I'm to forget her. <i>I'm to forget her,
+you understand?</i> Because she can't marry me.&quot; He spoke in a level,
+quiet, matter of fact voice. Then laughter shook him like a nausea.</p>
+
+<p>I laid my hand upon him. &quot;Now tell me,&quot; said I, &quot;what you have to tell
+me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I've really told you all I know,&quot; said Laurence. &quot;Day before
+yesterday she sent for me. You can't think how happy it made me to
+have her send for me, how <a name="Page_271"></a>happy I've been since I knew she cared! I
+felt as if there wasn't anything I couldn't do. There was nothing too
+great to be accomplished&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I went. She was standing in the middle of the long
+drawing-room. There was a fire behind her. She was so like ice I
+wonder now she didn't thaw. All in white, and cold, and frozen. And
+she said she couldn't marry me. That's why she had sent for me&mdash;to
+tell me that she meant to break our engagement: <i>Mary Virginia</i>!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wanted to know why. I was within my rights in asking that, was I
+not? And she wouldn't let me get close to her, Padre. She waved me
+away. I got out of her that there were reasons: no, she wouldn't say
+what those reasons were; but there were reasons. Her reasons, of
+course. When I began to talk, to plead with her, she begged me not to
+make things harder for her, but to be generous and go away. She just
+couldn't marry me, didn't I understand? So I must release her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He hung his head. The youth of him had been dimmed and darkened.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you said&mdash;?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I said,&quot; said Laurence simply, &quot;that she was mine as much as I was
+hers, and that I'd go just then because she asked me to, but I was
+coming back. I tried to see her again yesterday. She wouldn't see me.
+She sent down word she wasn't at home. But I knew all along she was.
+Mary Virginia, Padre!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I tried again. I haven't got any pride where she's concerned. Why
+should I? She's&mdash;she's my soul, I think. I can't put it into words,
+because you can't put feelings into words, but she's the pith of life.
+Then I wrote her. Half a dozen times I wrote her. I got <a name="Page_272"></a>down to the
+level of bribing the colored maid to take the notes to her, one every
+hour, like a medicine, and slip them under her door. I know she
+received them. I repeated it again to-day. It's Mary Virginia at
+stake, and I can't take chances, can I? And this afternoon she sent
+this.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p style="font-size: 90%;">&quot;Oh, Laurence, be generous and spare me the torment of
+     questions. So far you have not reproached me; spare me that,
+     too! Don't you understand? I cannot marry you. Accept the
+     inevitable as I do. Forgive me and forget me. M.V.E.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The writing showed extreme nervousness, haste, agitation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; said Laurence. But I stood staring at the crumpled bit of
+paper. I knew what I knew. I knew what my mother had thought fit to
+reveal to me of the girl's feelings: Mary Virginia had been very sure.
+I remembered what my eyes had seen, my ears heard. I was sure she was
+faithful, for I knew my girl. And yet&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>There came back to me a morning in spring and I riding gaily off in
+the glad sunshine, full of faith and of hope. To find what I had
+found. I handed the note back, in silence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, why, why, why?&quot; burst out the boy, in a gust of acute torment.
+&quot;For God's sake, why? Think of her eyes and her mouth, Padre&mdash;and her
+forehead like a saint's&mdash;No, she's not false. God never made such eyes
+as hers untruthful. I believe in her. I've got to believe in her. I
+tell you, I belong to her, body and soul.&quot; He began to walk up and
+down the room, and his shoulders twitched, as if a lash were laid over
+them. &quot;I could forgive her for not loving me, if she doesn't love me
+and found it out, and said so. Women change, <a name="Page_273"></a>do they not? But&mdash;to
+take a man that loves her&mdash;and tear his living soul to shreds and
+tatters&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If <i>she's</i> a liar and a jilt, who and what am I to believe? Why
+should she do it, Padre&mdash;to me that love her? Oh, my God, think of it:
+to be betrayed by the best beloved! No, I can't think it. This isn't
+just any light girl: this is Mary Virginia!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I put my hand on his shoulder. He is a head over me, and once again as
+broad, perhaps. We two fell into step. I did not attempt to counsel or
+console.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here I come like a whining kid, Padre,&quot; said he, remorsefully,
+&quot;piling my troubles upon your shoulders that carry such burdens
+already. Forgive me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shouldn't be able to forgive you if you didn't come,&quot; said I. Up
+and down the little room, up and down, the two of us.</p>
+
+<p>Came a light tap at the door. The Butterfly Man's head followed it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Didn't I hear Laurence talking?&quot; asked he, smiling. The smile froze
+at sight of the boy's face. He closed the door, and leaned against it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's wrong with her?&quot; he asked, quickly. It did not occur to us to
+question his right to ask, or to wonder how he knew.</p>
+
+<p>In a dull voice Laurence told him. He held out his hand for the note,
+read it in silence, and handed it back.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you make of it?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Trouble,&quot; said he, curtly; and he asked, reproachfully, &quot;Don't you
+know her, both of you, by this time?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know,&quot; said Laurence, &quot;that she has sent me away from her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_274"></a>Because she wants to, or because she thinks she has to?&quot; asked John
+Flint.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why should she do so unless it pleased her?&quot; I asked sorrowfully.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes flashed. &quot;Why, she's <i>herself</i>! A girl like her couldn't play
+anybody false because there's no falseness in her to do it with. What
+are you going to do about it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is nothing to do,&quot; said Laurence, &quot;but to release her; a
+gentleman can do no less.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>John Flint's lips curled. &quot;Release her? I'd hang on till hell froze
+over and caught me in the ice! I'd wait. I'd write and tell her she
+didn't need to make herself unhappy about me, I was unhappy enough
+about her for the two of us, because she didn't trust me enough to
+tell me what her trouble was, so I could help her. That first and
+always I was her friend, right here, whenever she needed me and
+whatever she needed me for. And I'd stand by. What else is a man good
+for?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I believe,&quot; said I, &quot;that John Flint has given you the right word,
+Laurence. Just hold fast and be faithful.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Laurence lifted his haggard face. &quot;There isn't any question of my
+being faithful to her, Padre. And I couldn't make myself believe that
+she's less so than I. What Flint says tallies with my own intuition.
+I'll write her to-night.&quot; He laid his hand on John Flint's arm.
+&quot;You're all right, Bughunter,&quot; said he, earnestly. &quot;'Night, Padre.&quot;
+Then he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you think,&quot; said John Flint, when he had rejected every conjecture
+his mind presented as the possible cause of Mary Virginia's action,
+&quot;that Inglesby could be at the bottom of this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_275"></a>I think,&quot; said I, &quot;that you have an obsession where that man is
+concerned. He is a disease with you. Good heaven, what could Inglesby
+possibly have to do with Mary Virginia's affairs?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's what I'm wondering. Well, then, who is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps,&quot; said I, unwillingly, &quot;it is Mary Virginia herself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Forget it! She's not that sort.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is a woman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ain't it the truth, though?&quot; he jeered. &quot;What a peach of a reason for
+not acting like herself, looking like herself, being like herself!
+She's a woman! So are all the rest of the folks that weren't born men,
+if you'll notice. They're women; we're men: and both of us are people.
+Get it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I get it,&quot; said I, annoyed. &quot;Your attitude, John Flint, is a vulgar
+platitude. And permit me to<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll permit you to do anything except get cross,&quot; said he, quickly.
+The ghost of a smile touched his face. &quot;Being bad-tempered, parson,
+suits you just about as well as plaid pants and a Hello Bill button.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am a human being,&quot; I began, frigidly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And I'm another. And so is Mary Virginia. And there we are, parson.
+I'm troubled. I don't like the looks of things. It's no use telling
+myself this is none of my business; it is very much my business. You
+remember ... when I came here&nbsp;...&quot; he hesitated, for this is a subject
+we do not like to discuss, &quot;what you were up against ... parson, I've
+thought you must have been caught and crucified yourself, and learned
+things on the cross, and that's why you held on to me. <a name="Page_276"></a>But with the
+kids, it was different&mdash;particularly the little girl. The first thing
+I ever got from her was a lovely look, the first time ever I set eyes
+on her she came with an underwing moth. I'd be a poor sort that
+wouldn't be willing to be spilt like water and scattered like dust, if
+she needed me now, wouldn't I?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But,&quot; said I, perplexed, &quot;what can you do? A young lady has seen fit
+to break her engagement; young ladies often see fit to do that, my
+dear fellow. This isn't an uncommon case. Also, one doesn't interfere
+in a lady's private affairs, not even when one is an old priest who
+has loved her since her childhood, nor yet a Butterfly Man who is her
+devoted friend. Don't you see?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I see there's something wrong,&quot; said he, doggedly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps. But that doesn't give one the right to pry into something
+she evidently doesn't wish to reveal,&quot; I told him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose,&quot; said he, heavily, &quot;you are right. But if you hear
+anything, let me know, won't you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I promised; but I found out nothing, save that it had not been Mrs.
+Eustis who influenced her daughter's action. This came out in a call
+Mrs. Eustis made at the Parish House.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear,&quot; she told my mother, &quot;when she told me she had broken that
+engagement, I was astounded! But I can't say I wasn't pleased.
+Laurence is a dear boy; and his family's as good as ours&mdash;no one can
+take that away from the Maynes. But Mary Virginia should have done
+better.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I quarreled with her, argued with her, pleaded with her. I cried and
+cried. But she's James Eustis to the <a name="Page_277"></a>life&mdash;you might as well try to
+move the Rock of Gibraltar. Then one morning she came to my room and
+told me she found she couldn't marry Laurence! And she had already
+told him so, and broken her engagement, and I wasn't to ask her any
+questions. I didn't. I was too glad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And&mdash;Laurence&mdash;?&quot; asked my mother, ironically.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Laurence? Laurence is a <i>man</i>. Men get over that sort of thing. I've
+known a man to be perfectly mad over his wife&mdash;and marry, six months
+after her death. They're like that. They always get over it. It's
+their nature.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let us hope, then, for Laurence's peace of mind,&quot; said my mother,
+&quot;that he'll get over it&mdash;like all the rest of his sex. Though I
+shouldn't call Laurence fickle, or faithless, if you ask me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is a very fine boy. I always liked him myself and James adores
+him. If I had two or three daughters, I'd be willing to let one of
+them marry Laurence&mdash;after awhile. But having only one I must say I
+want her to do better.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I see,&quot; said my mother. To me she said later:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet, Armand, although I condemn it, I can quite appreciate Mrs.
+Eustis's point of view. I was somewhat like that myself, once upon a
+time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You? Never!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My mother smiled tolerantly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, but you never offered me a daughter-in-law I did not relish. It
+was much easier for me to bear the Church!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That night I went over to John Flint's, for I thought <a name="Page_278"></a>that the fact
+of Mary Virginia's deliberately choosing to act as she had done would
+in a measure settle the matter and relieve his anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>There was a cedar wood fire before which Kerry lay stretched; little
+white Pitache, grown a bit stiff of late, occupied a chair he had
+taken over for his own use and from which he refused to be dislodged.
+Major Cartwright had just left, and the room still smelt of his cigar,
+mingling pleasantly with the clean smell of the burning cedar.</p>
+
+<p>On the table, within reach of his hand, was ranged the Butterfly Man's
+entire secular library: Andrew Lang's translation of Homer; Omar;
+Richard Burton's Kasidah; Saadi's Gulistan, over which he chuckled;
+Robert Burns; Don Quixote; Joan of Arc, and Huckleberry Finn; Treasure
+Island; the Bible Miss Sally Ruth had given him&mdash;I never could induce
+him to change it for my own Douai version&mdash;; one or two volumes of
+Shakespeare; the black Obituary Book, grown loathsomely fat; and the
+&quot;Purely Original Verse of James Gordon Coogler,&quot; which a light-minded
+professor of mathematics at the University of South Carolina had given
+him, and in which he evilly delighted. Other books came and went, but
+these remained. To-night it was the Bible which lay open, at the Book
+of Psalms.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look at this.&quot; He laid his finger on a verse of the nineteenth: &quot;The
+testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The times I've turned that over in my mind, out in the woods by night
+and the fields by day!&quot; said the Butterfly Man, musingly. &quot;The simple
+is <i>me</i>, parson, and the testimony is green things growing, and
+butterf<a name="Page_279"></a>lies and moths, and Kerry, and people, and trouble, and
+Louisa's hair, and&mdash;well, about everything, I reckon.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, everything's testimony, and it can make wise the simple&mdash;if he's
+not too simple. I reckon, parson, the simple is lumped in three
+lots&mdash;the fool for a little while, the fool for half the day, and the
+life-everlasting twenty-four-hours-a-day, dyed-in-the-wool damn-fool.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Some of us are the life-everlasting kind, the kind that used to make
+old man Solomon wall his eyes and throw fits and then get busy and
+hatch out proverbs with stings in their tails. A lot of us are
+half-the-day fools; and all the rest are fools for a little while.
+There's nobody born that hasn't got his times and seasons for being a
+fool for a while. But that's the sort of simple the testimony slams
+some sense into. Like <i>me</i>,&quot; he added earnestly, and closed the great
+Book.</p>
+
+<p>I told him presently what I had heard; that, as he surmised, Mrs.
+Eustis was not responsible for Mary Virginia's change of mind&mdash;or
+perhaps of heart. He nodded. But he offered no comment. Now, since I
+had come in, he had been from time to time casting at me rather
+speculative and doubtful glances. He drummed on the table, smiled
+sheepishly, and presently reached for a package, unwrapped it, and
+laid before me a book.</p>
+
+<p>'&quot;The Relation of Insect Life to Human Society,'&quot; I read, &quot;By John
+Flint and Rev. Armand Jean De Ranc&eacute;. With notes and drawings by Father
+De Ranc&eacute;.&quot; It bore the imprint of a great publishing house.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You suggested it more than once,&quot; said John Flint. &quot;Off and on, these
+two years, I've been working on it. All the notes I particularly asked
+you for were for this. Mighty fine and acute notes they are,
+too&mdash;you'd never <a name="Page_280"></a>have been willing to do it if you'd known they were
+for publication&mdash;I know you. And I saved the drawings. I'm vain of
+those illustrations. Abbot's weren't in it, next to yours.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact I have a pretty talent for copying plant and
+insect. I have but little originality, but this very limitation made
+the drawings more valuable. They were almost painfully exact, the
+measurements and coloration being as approximately perfect as I could
+get them.</p>
+
+<p>Now that the book has been included in all standard lists I needn't
+speak of it at length&mdash;the reviewers have given it what measure of
+bricks and bouquets it deserved. But it is a clever, able,
+comprehensive book, and that is why it has made its wide appeal.</p>
+
+<p>Every least credit that could possibly be given to me, he had
+scrupulously rendered. He had made full use of note and drawing. He
+made light enough of his own great labor of compilation, but his
+preface was quick to state his &quot;great indebtedness to his patient and
+wise teacher.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>One sees that the situation was not without irony. But I could not
+cloud his pleasure in my co-authorship nor dim his happiness by
+disclaiming one jot or tittle of what he had chosen to accredit me
+with. It is more blessed to give than to receive, but much more
+difficult to receive than to give.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you like it?&quot; he asked, hopefully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am most horribly proud of it,&quot; said I, honestly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sure, parson? Hand on your heart?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sure. Hand on my heart.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All right, then,&quot; said he, sighing with relief.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_281"></a>Here's your share of the loot,&quot; and he pushed a check across the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span> I hesitated, blinking, for it was a check of sorts.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But nothing. Blow it in. Say, I'm curious. What are you going to do
+with yours?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What are you going to do with yours?&quot; I asked in return.</p>
+
+<p>He reddened, hesitated; then his head went up.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I figure it, parson, that by way of that rag-doll I'm kin to Louisa's
+ma. As near as I can get to it, Louisa's ma's my widow. It's a devil
+of a responsibility for a live man to have a widow. It worries him.
+Just to get her off my mind I'm going to invest my share of this book
+for her. She'll at least be sure of a roof and fire and shoes and
+clothes and bread with butter on it and staying home sometimes. She'll
+have to work, of course; anyway you looked at it, it wouldn't be right
+to take work away from her. She'll work, then; but she won't be
+worked. Louisa's managed to pull something out of her wishin' curl for
+her ma, after all. I'm sure I hope they'll let the child know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I could not speak for a moment; but as I looked at him, the red in his
+tanned cheek deepened.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As a matter of fact, parson,&quot; he explained, &quot;somebody ought to do
+something for a woman that looks like that, and it might just as well
+be me. I'm willing to pay good money to have my widow turn her mouth
+the other way up, and I hope she'll buy a back-comb for those bangs on
+her neck.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And all this,&quot; said I, &quot;came out of one little wishin' curl,
+Butterfly Man?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_282"></a>But what else could I do?&quot; he wondered, &quot;when I'm kin to Loujaney by
+bornation?&quot; and to hide his feeling, he asked again:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now what are you going to do with yours?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I reflected. I watched his clever, quizzical eyes, out of which the
+diamond-bright hardness had vanished, and into which I am sure that
+dear child's curl had wished this milder, clearer light.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You want to know what I am going to do with mine?&quot; said I, airily.
+&quot;Well; as for me, the very first thing I am going to do is to
+purchase, in perpetuity, a fine new lamp for St. Stanislaus!&quot;</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Page_283"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XV"></a><hr />
+<br />
+<h2>CHAPTER XV<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>Timid tentative rifts and wedges of blue had ventured back into the
+cold gray sky, and a stout-hearted robin or two heralded spring. One
+morning coming from mass I saw in the thin watery sunshine the painted
+wings of the Red Admiral flash by, and I welcomed him as one welcomes
+the long-missed face of a friend. I cannot choose but love the Red
+Admiral. He has always stirred my imagination, for frail as his gay
+wings are they have nevertheless borne this dauntless small Columbus
+of butterflies across unknown seas and around uncharted lands, until
+like his twin-sister the Painted Lady he has all but circled the
+globe. A few days later a handful of those gold butterflies that
+resemble nothing so much as new bright dandelions in the young grass,
+dared the unfriendly days before their time as if to coax the lagging
+spring to follow.</p>
+
+<p>The sad white streamers disappeared from doors and for a space the
+little white hearse ceased to go glimmering by. Then at many windows
+appeared small faces bearing upon them the mark of the valley of the
+shadow through which they had just passed. Although they were on side
+streets in the dingy mill district, far removed from our pleasant
+windows that looked out upon trees and flowers, all Appleboro was
+watching these wan visages with wiser and kinder eyes.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_284"></a>Perhaps the most potent single factor in the arousing of our civic
+conscience was a small person who might have justly thought we hadn't
+any: I mean Loujaney's little ma, whose story had crept out and gone
+from lip to lip and from home to home, making an appeal to which there
+could be no refusal.</p>
+
+<p>When Major Cartwright heard it, the high-hearted old rebel hurried
+over to the Parish House and thrust into my hand a lean roll of bills.
+And the major is by no means a rich man.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's not tainted money,&quot; said the major, &quot;though some mighty good
+Bourbon is goin' to turn into pap on account of it. However, it's an
+ill wind that doesn't blow somebody good&mdash;Marse Robert can come on
+back upstairs now an' thaw himself out while watchin' me read the
+Lamentations of Jeremiah&mdash;who was evidently sufferin' from a dry spell
+himself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On the following Sunday the Baptist minister chose for his text that
+verse of Matthew which bids us take heed that we despise not one of
+these little ones because in heaven their angels do always behold the
+face of our Father. And then he told his people of that little one who
+had pretended to love dry bread when she couldn't get any butter&mdash;in
+Appleboro. And who had gone to her rest holding to her thin breast a
+rag-doll that was kin to her by bornation, Loujaney being poor folks
+herself and knowing prezactly how't was.</p>
+
+<p>Over the heads of loved and sheltered children the Baptist brethren
+looked at each other. Of course, it wasn't their fault any more than
+anybody else's.&mdash;In a very husky voice their pastor went on to tell
+them of the curl which the woman who hadn't a God's thing left <a name="Page_285"></a>to
+wish for had given as a remembrance to &quot;that good and kind man, our
+brother John Flint, sometimes known as the Butterfly Man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Dabney put the plain little discourse into print and heightened its
+effect by an editorial couched in the plainest terms. We were none of
+us in the humor to hear a spade called an agricultural implement just
+then, and Dabney knew it; particularly when the mill dividends and the
+cemetery both showed a marked increase.</p>
+
+<p>Something had to be done, and quickly, but we didn't exactly know how
+nor where to begin doing it. Laurence, insisting that this was really
+everybody's business, called a mass-meeting at the schoolhouse, and
+the <i>Clarion</i> requested every man who didn't intend to bring his
+women-folks to that meeting to please stay home himself. Wherefore
+Appleboro town and county came with the wife of its bosom&mdash;or maybe
+the wife came and fetched it along.</p>
+
+<p>Laurence called the meeting to order, and his manner of addressing the
+feminine portion of his audience would have made his gallant
+grandfather challenge him. He hadn't a solitary pretty phrase to
+tickle the ears of the ladies&mdash;he spoke of and to them as women.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And did you see how they fell for him?&quot; rejoiced the Butterfly Man,
+afterward. &quot;From the kid in a middy up to the great old girl with
+three chins and a prow like an ocean liner, they were with him. When
+you're in dead earnest, can the ladies; just go after women as women
+and they're with you every time. They know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A Civic Leaguer followed Laurence, then Madame, and after her a girl
+from the mills, whose two small brothers <a name="Page_286"></a>went in one night. There
+were no set speeches. Everybody who spoke had something to say; and
+everybody who had something to say spoke. Then Westmoreland, who like
+Saul the king was taller by the head and shoulders than all Israel,
+bulked up big and good and begged us to remember that we couldn't do
+anything of permanent value until we first learned how to reach those
+folks we had been ignoring and neglecting. He said gruffly that
+Appleboro had dumped its whole duty in this respect upon the frail
+shoulders of one old priest, and that the Guest Rooms were overworked.
+Didn't the town want to do its share now? The town voted, unanimously,
+that it did.</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. Laurence asked if anybody else had anything to say?
+Apparently, anybody else hadn't.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, then,&quot; said Laurence, smiling, &quot;before we adjourn, is there
+anybody in particular that Appleboro County here assembled wants to
+hear?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And at that came a sort of stir, a murmur, as of an immense multitude
+of bees:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>The Butterfly Man!</i>&quot; And louder: &quot;The Butterfly Man!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Followed a great hand-clapping, shrill whistles, the stamping of feet.
+And there he was, with Westmoreland and Laurence behind him as if to
+keep him from bolting. His face expressed a horrified astonishment.
+Twice, thrice, he opened his lips, and no words came. Then:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>I?</i>&quot; in a high and agonized falsetto.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You!&quot; Appleboro County settled back with rustles of satisfaction.
+&quot;Speech! Speech!&quot; From a corn-club man, joyfully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_287"></a>Oh, marmar, look! It's the Butterfly Man, marmar!&quot; squealed a child.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A-a-h! Talk weeth us, Meester Fleent!&quot; For the first time a &quot;hand&quot;
+felt that he might speak out openly in Appleboro.</p>
+
+<p>John Flint stood there staring owlishly at all these people who ought
+to know very well that he hadn't anything to say: what should he have
+to say? He was embarrassed; he was also most horribly frightened. But
+then, after all, they weren't anything but people, just folks like
+himself! When he remembered that his panic subsided. For a moment he
+reflected; as if satisfied, he nodded slightly and thrust his hand
+into his breast pocket.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Instead of having to listen to me you'd better just look at this,&quot;
+said the Butterfly Man. &quot;Because this can talk louder and say more in
+a minute than I could between now and Judgment.&quot; And he held out
+Louisa's dear fair whimsy of a curl; the sort of curl mothers tuck
+behind a rosy ear of nights, and fathers lean to and kiss. &quot;<i>I</i>
+haven't got anything to say,&quot; said the Butterfly Man. &quot;The best I can
+do is just to wish for the children all that Louisa pretended to pull
+out of her wishin' curl&mdash;and never got. I wish on it that all the kids
+get a square deal&mdash;their chance to grow and play and be healthy and
+happy and make good. And I wish again,&quot; said the Butterfly Man,
+looking at his hearers with his steady eyes, &quot;I wish that you folks,
+every God-blessed one of you, will help to make that wish come true,
+so far as lies in your power, from now until you die!&quot; His funny,
+twisty smile flashed out. He put the fairy tress <a name="Page_288"></a>back into his breast
+pocket, made a casual gesture to imply that he had concluded his
+wishes for the present; and walked off in the midst of the deepest
+silence that had ever fallen upon an Appleboro audience.</p>
+
+<p>But however willing we might be, we discovered that we could not do
+things as quickly or as well as might be wished. People who wanted to
+help blundered tactlessly. People who wanted to be helped had to be
+investigated. People who ought to be helped were suspicious and
+resentful, couldn't always understand or appreciate this sudden
+interest in their affairs, were inclined to slam doors, or, when
+cornered, to lie stolidly, with wooden faces and expressionless eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Ensued an awkward pause, until the Butterfly Man came unobtrusively
+forward, discovering in himself that amazing diplomacy inherent in the
+Irish when they attend to anybody's business but their own. It was
+amusing to watch the only democrat in a solidly Democratic county
+infusing something of his own unabashed humanness into proceedings
+which but for him might have sloughed into</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>Organized charity, carefully iced,<br /></span>
+<span>In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Having done what was to be done, he went about his own affairs. Nobody
+gushed over him, and he escaped that perilous popularity which is as a
+millstone around a man's neck. Nevertheless the Butterfly Man had
+stumbled upon the something divine in his fellows, and they
+entertained for him a feeling that wasn't any more tangible, say, than
+pure air, and no more emotional than pure water, but was just about as
+vital and life-giving.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_289"></a>I was enchanted to have a whole county endorse my private judgment. I
+rose so in my own estimation that I fancy I was a bit condescending to
+St. Stanislaus! I was vain of the Butterfly Man's standing&mdash;folks
+couldn't like him too much, to please me. And I was greatly interested
+in the many invitations that poured in upon him, invitations that
+ranged all the way from a birthday party at Michael Karski's to a
+state dinner at the Eustis's.</p>
+
+<p>From Michael's he came home gaily, a most outrageous posy pinned upon
+him by way of honor, and whistling a Slavic love song so dismal that
+one inferred love must be something like toothache for painfulness. He
+had had such a bully time, he told me. Big Jan had been there with his
+wife, an old friend of Michael's Katya. Although pale, and still
+somewhat shaky as to legs, Jan had willingly enough shaken hands with
+his conqueror.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed quite right and natural that he and Jan should presently
+enter into a sort of Dual Alliance. Meester Fleent was to be
+Arbitrator Extraordinary. When he stipulated that thereafter Big Jan
+was only to tackle a man his own size, everybody cheered madly, and
+Mrs. Jan herself beamed red-eyed approval. She said her prayers to the
+man who had trounced Jan into righteousness.</p>
+
+<p>But from the Eustis dinner, to which he went with my mother, he came
+home somber and heavy-hearted. Laurence was conspicuously absent; it
+is true he was away, defending his first big case in another part of
+the State. But Mr. George Inglesby was just as conspicuously present,
+apparently on the best of all possible terms with himself, the world
+in general, and Mrs. James <a name="Page_290"></a>Eustis in particular. His presence in that
+house, in the face of persistent rumors, made at least two guests
+uneasy. Mrs. Eustis showed him a most flattering attention. She was
+deeply impressed by him. He had just aided her pet mission in
+China&mdash;what he had given the heathen would have buttered my children's
+bread for many a day. Also, he was all but lyrical in his voicing of
+the shibboleth that Woman's Sphere is the Home, wherein she should be
+adored, enshrined, and protected. Woman and the Home! All the innate
+chivalry of Southern manhood&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I don't know that Louisa's Ma was ever enshrined or protected by the
+chivalry of any kind of manhood, no, nor any of the mill women. Their
+kind don't know the word. But Mrs. Eustis was, and she agreed with Mr.
+Inglesby's noble sentiments.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Parson, you should have heard him!&quot; raved the Butterfly Man. &quot;There's
+a sort of man down here that's got chivalry like another sort's got
+hookworm, and he makes the man that hasn't got either want to set up
+an image to the great god Dam!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'd think being chivalrous would be enough for him, wouldn't you?&quot;
+continued the Butterfly Man, bitterly. &quot;Nix! What's he been working
+the heavy charity lay for, except that it's his turn to be a
+misunderstood Christian? Doesn't charity cover a multitude of skins,
+though? And doesn't it beat a jimmy when it comes to breaking into
+society!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia, he added in an altered voice, had been exquisite in a
+frock all silver lace and shimmery stuffs like moonbeams, and with a
+rope of pearls about her throat, and in her black hair. Appleboro
+folks do not <a name="Page_291"></a>affect orchids, but Mary Virginia wore a huge cluster of
+those exotics. She had been very gracious to the Butterfly Man and
+Madame. But only for a brief bright minute had she been the Mary
+Virginia they knew. All the rest of the evening she seemed to grow
+statelier, colder, more dazzlingly and imperially regal. And her eyes
+were like frozen sapphires under her level brows, and her mouth was
+the red splendid bow of Pride.</p>
+
+<p>Watching her, my mother was pained and puzzled; as for the Butterfly
+Man, his heart went below zero. Those who loved Mary Virginia had
+cause for painful reflections.</p>
+
+<p>Blinded by her beauty, were we judging her by the light of affection,
+instead of the colder light of reason? We couldn't approve of her
+behavior to Laurence, nor was it easy to refrain from disapproval of
+what appeared to be a tacit endurance of Inglesby's attention. She
+couldn't plead ignorance of what was open enough to be town talk&mdash;the
+man's shameless passion for herself, a passion he seemed to take
+delight in flaunting. And she made no effort to explain; she seemed
+deliberately to exclude her old friends from the confidence once so
+freely given. She hadn't visited the Parish House since she had broken
+her engagement.</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>And all the while the spring that hadn't time for the little concerns
+of mortals went secretly about her immortal business of rejuvenation.
+The blue that had been so timid and so tentative overspread the sky;
+more robins came, and after them bluebirds and redbirds and
+Peterbirds, and the impudent screaming robber jay that is so beautiful
+and so bold, and flute-voiced vireos, and nuth<a name="Page_292"></a>atches, and the darling
+busybody wren fussing about her house-building in the corners of our
+piazzas. The first red flowers of the Japanese quince opened
+flame-like on the bare brown bushes. When the bridal-wreath by the
+gate saw that, she set industriously to work upon her own
+wedding-gown. The yellow jessamine was full of waxy gold buds; and
+long since those bold frontiersmen of the year, the Judas-trees, had
+flaunted it in bravest scarlet, and the slim-legged scouts of the
+pines showed shoulder-straps and cockades of new gay green above
+gallant brown leggings.</p>
+
+<p>One brand new morning the Butterfly Man called me aside and placed in
+my hands a letter. The American Society of Natural History invited Mr.
+John Flint, already a member of the Entomological Society of France, a
+Fellow of the Entomological Society of London, and a member of the
+greatest of Dutch and German Associations, to speak before it and its
+guests, at a most notable meeting to be held in the Society's splendid
+Museum in New York City. Not to mention two mere ex-Presidents, some
+of the greatest scientific names of the Americas were included in that
+list. And it was before such as these that my Butterfly Man was to
+speak. Behold me rocking on my toes!</p>
+
+<p>The first effect of this invitation was to please me immensely, I
+being a puffed-up old man and carnal-minded at times; nor do I seem to
+improve with age. The plaudits of the world, for anybody I admire and
+love, ring most sweetly in my foolish ears. Now the honors he had
+gotten from abroad were fine and good in their way, but this meant
+that the value of his work was <a name="Page_293"></a>recognized and his position
+established in his own country, in his own time. It meant a widening
+of his horizon, association with clever men and women, ennobling
+friendships to broaden his life. A just measure of appreciation from
+the worthwhile sweetens toil and encourages genius. And yet&mdash;our eyes
+met, and mine had to ask an old question.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Would you better accept it?&quot; I wondered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can't afford not to,&quot; said he resolutely. &quot;The time's come for me
+to get out in the open, and I might just as well face the music, and
+Do it Now. Risks? I hardly think so. I never hunted in couples,
+remember&mdash;I always went by my lonesome and got away with it. Besides,
+who's remembering Slippy? Nobody. He's drowned and dead and done with.
+But, however, and nevertheless, and because, I shall go.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again we looked at each other; and his look was untroubled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The pipe-dreams I've had about slipping back into little old New
+York! But if anybody had told me I'd go back like I'm going, with the
+sort of folks waiting for me that will be waiting now, I'd have passed
+it up. Well, you never can tell, can you? And in a way it's funny&mdash;now
+isn't it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, you never can tell,&quot; said I, soberly. &quot;But I do not think it at
+all funny. Quite the contrary.&quot; Suppose, oh, suppose, that after all
+these years, when a well-earned success was in his grasp, it should
+happen&mdash;I turned pale. He read my fear in my face and his smile might
+have been borrowed from my mother's mouth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_294"></a>Don't you get cold feet, parson,&quot; he counseled kindly. &quot;Be a sport!
+Besides, it's all in the Game, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sure!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And worth while, John?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He laughed. &quot;Believe me! It's the worthwhilest thing under the sun to
+sit in the Game, with a sport's interest in the hands dealt out,
+taking yours as it comes to you, bluffing all you can when you've got
+to, playing your cards for all they're worth when it's your turn. No
+reneging. No squealing when you lose. No boasting how you did it when
+you win. There's nothing in the whole universe so intensely and
+immensely worth while as being <i>you</i> and alive, with yourself the
+whole kitty and the sky your limit! It's one great old Game, and I'm
+for thanking the Big Dealer that I'da whack at playing it.&quot; And his
+eyes snapped and his lean brown face flushed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you are really willing to&mdash;to stake yourself now, my son?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lord, parson, you ought to know! And you a dead ringer for the real
+thing in a classy sport yourself!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My <i>dear</i> son&mdash;!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My dear son waved his fine hand, and chuckled in his red beard.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Would <i>you</i> back down if this was your call? Why, you're the sort
+that would tackle the biggest noise in the ring, even if you knew
+you'd be dragged out on your pantry in the first half of the first
+round, if you thought you'd got holy orders to do it! If you saw me
+getting jellyfish of the spine now, you'd curl up and die&mdash;<a name="Page_295"></a>wouldn't
+you, honest Injun?&quot; His eyes crinkled and he grinned so infectiously
+that my fears subsided. I had an almost superstitious certainty that
+nothing really evil could happen to a man who could grin like that.
+Fate and fortune are perfectly powerless before the human being who
+can meet them with the sword of a smile.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; I admitted cautiously, &quot;jellyfish of the spine must be an
+unlovely ailment; not that I ever heard of it before.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're willing for me to go, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'd go anyhow, would you not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Forget it!&quot; said he roughly. &quot;If you think I'd do anything I knew
+would cause you uneasiness, you've got another thing coming to you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, go, for heaven's sake!&quot; said I, sharply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All right. I'll go for heaven's sake,&quot; he agreed cheerfully. &quot;And now
+it's formally decided I'm to go, and talk, the question arises&mdash;what
+they really want me to talk about? <i>I</i> don't know how to deal in
+glittering generalities. A chap on the trail of truth has got to let
+generalities go by the board. The minute he tackles the living Little
+People he chucks theories and bucks conditions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Suppose I tell the truth as I see it: that most so-called authorities
+are like cats chasing their tails&mdash;because they accept theories that
+have never been really proven, run after them, and so never get
+anywhere? And that facts dug up in the open under the sunlight don't
+always fit in with notions hatched out in libraries under the electric
+light?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Suppose I say that after they've run everything <a name="Page_296"></a>down to that plasma
+they're so fond of beginning and ending with, there is still something
+behind it all their theories can't explain away? Protoplasm doesn't
+explain Life any more than the battery explains electricity. Instinct?
+Evolution? The survival of the fittest? Well, nothing is tagged for
+fair, and I'm more than willing to be shown. For the more I find out
+from the living things themselves,&mdash;you can't get truth from death,
+you've got to get it from life&mdash;the more self-evident it seems to me
+that to exist at all insects must have arrived on the scene complete,
+handfinished, with the union label of the Great Workshop on them by
+way of a trade-mark.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, one God, world
+without end, Amen!&quot; said I, smiling. I have never thought it necessary
+to explain or excuse the Creator. God is; things are.</p>
+
+<p>But he shook his head, wrinkling his forehead painfully. &quot;I wish I
+<i>knew</i>,&quot; said he, wistfully. &quot;You're satisfied to believe, but I have
+got to know. Oh, great Power behind Things, I want to know! I want to
+<i>know</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ah, but I also do most passionately wish to know! If, however, the
+Insect has taught me anything in my lifelong study of it, it is to
+recognize the Unknowable, to know there is that which I cannot hope to
+know. But if under the law of its world, so different from ours and
+yet so alike because so inevitable, the Insect must move in a fixed
+circle within which it is safe, a circle whose very limitation
+preserves it from error and thus from destruction, may not a like
+fixed circle beyond which <i>we</i> may not penetrate preserve us, too? Are
+these mountain <a name="Page_297"></a>peaks of the Unknowable, the Impassable, which
+encompass the skyline of our humanity, these heights so mysterious and
+so unscalable, not rather bulwarks between man's pride and the abyss?</p>
+
+<p>Something of this I said to the Butterfly Man, and he nodded, but did
+not answer. He fell into a brown study; then plunged from the room
+without further look or word and made for his own desk. I was not
+afraid of what the Butterfly Man, fresh from little Appleboro's woods
+and fields, would have to say to the scholars and scientists gathered
+to hear him!</p>
+
+<p>Apparently he was not either, for after he had gotten a few notes
+together he wisely turned the whole affair over to that mysterious
+Self that does our work and solves our problems for us. On the surface
+he busied himself with a paper setting forth the many reasons why the
+County of Appleboro should appropriate adequate funds for a common
+dipping vat, and hurried this to Dabney, who was holding open a space
+in the <i>Clarion</i> for it. Then there were new breeding cages to be
+made, for the supply of eggs and cocoons on hand would require
+additional quarters, once they began to emerge.</p>
+
+<p>By the Saturday he had finished all this; and as I had that afternoon
+free we spent some beautiful hours with the microscope and slide
+mounts. I completed, too, the long delayed drawings of some diurnal
+wasp-moths and their larv&aelig;. We worked until my mother interrupted us
+with a summons to an early dinner, for Saturday evening belongs to the
+confessional and I was shortly due at the church.</p>
+
+<p>I left Flint with Madame and Miss Sally Ruth, who had run over after
+the neighborly Appleboro wont with <a name="Page_298"></a>a plate of fresh sponge-cake and a
+bowl of fragrant custard. Miss Sally Ruth is nothing if not generous,
+but there are times when one could wish upon her the affliction of
+dumbness. As I slipped into my cassock in the study, I could hear her
+uplifted voice, a voice so insistent and so penetrating that it can
+pierce closed doors and come through a ceiling:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I declare to goodness, I don't know what to believe any more! She's
+got money enough in her own right, hasn't she? For heaven's sake,
+then, why should she marry for more money? But you never really know
+people, do you? Why, folks say<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>I hurried out of the house and ran the short distance to the church. I
+wished I hadn't heard; I wished Miss Sally Ruth, good as she is, would
+sometimes hold her tongue. She will set folks by the ears in heaven
+some of these days if she doesn't mend her ways before she gets there.</p>
+
+<p>It must have been all of ten o'clock when I got back to the Parish
+House. Madame had retired; John Flint's rooms were dark. The night
+itself was dark, though in between the clouds that a brisk wind
+pulleyhauled about the skies, one saw many stars.</p>
+
+<p>Too tired to sleep, I sat beside my window and breathed the repose
+that lay like a benediction upon the little city. I found myself
+praying; for Mary Virginia, whom I loved and over whom I was sorely
+troubled; for Laurence, even now walking such a road as I also once
+had to travel with feet as young but no more steadfast; and then with
+a thankfulness too deep for words, I thought a prayer for the
+Butterfly Man. So thinking and so praying, with a glow in my heart
+because of him, <a name="Page_299"></a>I closed my window, and crept into bed and into
+sleep.</p>
+
+<p>I awoke with a start. Somebody was in the room. There was an urgent
+voice whispering my name, an urgent hand upon me. A pocket light
+flashed, and in its pale circle appeared the face of John Flint.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Get up!&quot; said he in an intense whisper. &quot;And come. Come!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, what in the name of heaven<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't make a row!&quot; he snarled, and brought his face close. &quot;Here&mdash;let
+me help you. Heaven, man, how slow you are!&quot; With furious haste he
+forced my clothes upon me and even as I mechanically struggled to
+adjust them he was hustling me toward the door, through the dark hall,
+and down the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Easy there&mdash;careful of that step!&quot; he breathed in my ear, guiding me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But what is the matter?&quot; I whispered back impatiently. I do not
+relish mystery and I detest being led willynilly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In my rooms,&quot; said he briefly, and hustled me across the garden on
+the double run, I with my teeth chattering, for I had been dragged out
+of my sleep, and the night air was cold.</p>
+
+<p>He fairly lifted me up his porch-steps, unlocked his door, and pushed
+me inside. With the drawn shades and the flickering firelight, the
+room was peaceful and pleasant enough. Then Kerry caught my astonished
+gaze, for the dog stood statue-like beside the Morris chair, and when
+I saw what Kerry guarded I crossed myself. Sunk into the chair, the
+Butterfly Man's old gray overcoat partly around her, was Mary
+Virginia.</p>
+
+<p>At my involuntary exclamation she raised her head <a name="Page_300"></a>and regarded me. A
+great sigh welled from her bosom and I could see her eyes dilate and
+her lips quiver.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Padre, Padre!&quot; Down went her head, and she began to cry childishly,
+with sobs.</p>
+
+<p>I watched her helplessly, too bewildered to speak. But the other man's
+face was the face of one crucified. I saw his eyes, and something I
+had been all too blind to rushed upon me overwhelmingly. This, then,
+was what had driven him forth for a time, this was what had left its
+indelible imprint upon him! He had hung upon his cross and I had not
+known. Oh, Butterfly Man, I had not known!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She'll be able to talk to you in a few minutes now, parson.&quot; He was
+so perfectly unconscious of himself that he had no idea he had just
+made mute confession. He added, doubtfully: &quot;She said she had to come
+to you, about something&mdash;I don't know what. It's up to you to find
+out&mdash;she's got to talk to you, parson.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But&mdash;I wanted to talk to you, Padre. That's why I&mdash;ran away from home
+in the middle of the night.&quot; She sat suddenly erect. &quot;I just couldn't
+stand things, any more&mdash;by myself<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>Gone was the fine lady, the great beauty, the proud jilt who had
+broken Laurence's heart and maddened and enslaved Inglesby. Here was
+only a piteous child with eyes heavy from weeping, with a pale and sad
+face and drooping childish lips. And yet she was so dear and so
+lovely, for all her reddened eyelids and her reddened little nose,
+that one could have wept with her. The Butterfly Man, with an intake
+of breath, stood up.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall leave you with the Padre now,&quot; he said evenly, &quot;to tell him
+what you wanted to tell him. <a name="Page_301"></a>Father, understand: there's something
+rotten wrong, as I've been telling you all along. Now she's got to
+tell you what it is and all about it. Everything. Whether she likes to
+or not, and no matter what it is, she's got to tell you. You
+understand that, Mary Virginia?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She fixed him with a glance that had in it something hostile and
+oblique. Even with those dearest of women whom I adore, there are
+moments when I have the impression that they have, so to speak, their
+ears laid back flat, and I experience what I may justly term cat-fear.
+I felt it then.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, don't have too much consideration for my feelings, Mr. Flint!&quot;
+said she, with that oblique and baffling glance, and the smile Old
+Fitz once likened to the Curve in the Cat's Tail. &quot;Indeed, why should
+you go? Why don't you stay and find out <i>why</i> I wanted to run to the
+Padre&mdash;to beg him to find some way to help me, since I can't fall like
+a plum into Mr. Inglesby's hand when Mr. Hunter shakes the Eustis
+family tree!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His breath came whistlingly between his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Parson! You hear?&quot; he slapped his leg with his open palm. &quot;Oh, I knew
+it, I knew it!&quot; And he turned upon her a kindling glance:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I knew all along it was never in you to be anything but true!&quot; said
+the Butterfly Man.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Page_302"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XVI"></a><hr />
+<br />
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>&quot;WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR&quot;</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>It is impossible for me to put down in her own words what Mary
+Virginia told the Butterfly Man and me. Also, I have had to fill in
+gaps here and there, supplying what was lacking, from my intimate
+knowledge of the actors and from such chance words and hints and bits
+of detail as came to me afterward. But what I have added has been
+necessary, in order to do greater justice to everybody concerned.</p>
+
+<p>If it be true that the boy is father to the man, it is even more
+tritely true that the girl is mother to the woman, there being here
+less chance for change. So it was with Mary Virginia. That gracious
+little girlhood of hers, lived among the birds and bees and blossoms
+of an old Carolina garden, had sent her into the Church School with a
+settled and definite idealism as part of her nature. Her creed was
+simple enough: The world she knew was the best of all possible worlds,
+its men good, its women better; and to be happy and loved one had only
+to be good and loving.</p>
+
+<p>The school did not disabuse her of this pleasing optimism. It was a
+very expensive school and could afford to have optimisms of its own.
+For one thing, it had no pupils poor enough to apply the acid test.</p>
+
+<p>When Mary Virginia was seventeen, Mrs. Eustis perceived with dismay
+that her child who had promised <a name="Page_303"></a>beauty was instead become angular,
+awkward, and self-conscious; and promptly packed the unworldly one off
+to spend a saving summer with a strenuously fashionable cousin, a
+widow, of whom she herself was very fond. She liked the idea of
+placing the gauche girl under so vigorous and seasoned a wing as
+Estelle Baker's. As for Mrs. Baker herself, that gay and good-humored
+lady laughed at the leggy and serious youngster and promptly took her
+education in hand along lines not laid down in Church Schools.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Baker was delighted with her own position&mdash;the reasonably young,
+handsome, and wealthy widow of a man she had been satisfied to marry
+and later to bury. She had an unimpaired digestion and no illusions, a
+kind heart, and the power of laughter. Naturally, she found life
+interesting. A club-woman, an ultra-modernist, vitally alive, she was
+fully abreast of her day. Her small library skimmed the cream of the
+insurgents and revolutionaries of genius; and here the shy and
+reticent schoolgirl with the mark of the churchly checkrein fresh upon
+her, was free to browse, for her cousin had no slightest notion of
+playing censor. Mrs. Baker thought that the sooner one was allowed to
+slough off the gaucheries of the Young Person, the better. She did not
+gauge the real and tumultuous depths of feeling concealed under the
+young girl's simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>The revolutionaries and the insurgent and free poets didn't trouble
+Mary Virginia very much. Although she sensed that something was wrong
+with somebody somewhere&mdash;hence these lyrical lamentations&mdash;she could
+not, to save her, tell what all the pother was about, for as yet she
+saw the world <i>couleur de rose</i>. Some one or <a name="Page_304"></a>two of the French and
+Germans pleased her; she fell into long reveries over the Gael, who
+has the sound of the sea in his voice and whose eyes are full of a
+haunting light, as of sunsets upon graves. But it was the Russians who
+electrified and dazzled her. When she glimpsed with her eyes of a
+young girl those strange souls simple as children's and yet mosaiced
+with unimaginable and barbarous splendors, she stood blinking and half
+blinded, awed, fascinated, and avid to know more of that sky-scaling
+passion with which they burned.</p>
+
+<p>And in that crucial moment she chanced upon the &quot;Diary of Marie
+Bashkirtseff,&quot; so frank and so astounding that it took her breath away
+and swept her off her feet. She was stirred into a vague and trembling
+expectancy; she had the sense of waiting for something to happen. Life
+instantly became more colorful and more wonderful than she had dreamed
+could be possible, and she wished passionately to experience all these
+emotions, so powerful and so poignant. The Russian's morbid and
+disease-bright genius acted upon her as with the force and intensity
+of a new and potent toxin. She could not lay the book aside, but
+carried it up to her room to be pored and pondered over. She failed to
+understand that, untried as she was, it was impossible for her to
+understand it. Had the book come later, it had been harmless enough;
+but it came at a most critical moment of that seething period when
+youth turns inward to question the universe, and demands that the
+answer shall be personal to itself. The first long ground-swell of
+awakening emotion swept over her, sitting in the pleasant chintz-hung
+room, with the Russian woman's wild and tameless heart beating through
+the book open upon her <a name="Page_305"></a>knees. And these waves of emotion that at
+recurrent intervals surge over the soul, come from the shores of a
+farther country than any earthly seas have touched, and recede to
+depths so profound that only the eyes of God may follow their ebb and
+flow.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Baker, however, saw nothing about which to give herself any
+concern. If she perceived the girl intense and preoccupied, she smiled
+indulgently&mdash;at Mary Virginia's age one is apt to be like that, and
+one recovers from that phase as one gets over mumps and measles. Mrs.
+Baker did think it advisable, though, to subtly detach the girl from
+books for awhile. She amused herself by allowing her wide-eyed
+glimpses of the larger life of grown-ups, by way of arousing and
+initiation. Thus it happened that one afternoon at the country-club,
+where Mary Virginia, at the green-fruit stage, found herself playing
+gooseberry instead of golf, Mrs. Baker sauntered up with a tall and
+very blonde man.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here,&quot; said she gaily, indicating with a wave of her hand her
+sulky-eyed young cousin, &quot;is a marvel and a wonder&mdash;a girl who accepts
+on faith everything and everybody! My dear Howard, in all probability
+she will presently even believe in <i>you</i>!&quot; With that she left them,
+whisked off by a waiting golfer.</p>
+
+<p>The man and the girl appraised each other. The man saw young
+bread-and-butter with the raw sugar of beauty sprinkled upon it
+promisingly. What the girl saw was not so much a faultlessly groomed
+and handsome man as the most beautiful person in the world. And
+suddenly she was aware that that for which she had been waiting had
+come. Something divine and wonderful was happening, and there was fire
+before her eyes and the <a name="Page_306"></a>noise of unloosed winds and great waters in
+her ears, and her knees trembled and her heart fluttered. A vivid red
+flamed into her pale cheeks, a soft and trembling light suffused her
+blue eyes. That happens when the sweet and virginal freshness of youth
+is brought face to face with the bright shadow of love.</p>
+
+<p>He drew her out of her shyness and made her laugh, and after awhile,
+when there was dancing, he danced with her. He did not behave to her
+as other men of Estelle's acquaintance had more than once behaved&mdash;as
+though they bestowed the lordly honor of their society upon her out of
+the sheer goodness of their hearts and their desire to please Mrs.
+Baker. Mary Virginia was uncompromising and stiff-necked enough then,
+and she bored most of her cousin's friends unconsciously. Now this
+man, as much their superior as the sun is to farthing dips, was
+exerting himself to please her. That was the one thing Mary Virginia
+needed to arouse her.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Baker admired Mr. Hunter for a grace of manner almost Latin in
+its charm. If at times he puzzled her, he at least never bored her or
+anybody else, and for this she praised him in the gates. Her respect
+for him deepened when she perceived that he never allowed himself to
+be absorbed or monopolized.</p>
+
+<p>The pleasant widow did not take him too seriously. She only asked that
+he amuse and interest her. He did both, to a superlative degree. That
+is why and how he saw so much of the school-girl cousin whose na&iuml;vete
+made him smile, it was so absurdly sincere.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Baker was glad enough to have Howard take her charge off her
+hands occasionally. She thought contact with this fine pagan an
+excellent thing for the girl who <a name="Page_307"></a>took herself so seriously. She was
+really fond of Mary Virginia, but she must have found her hand-grenade
+directness a bit disconcerting at times. She wanted the child's visit
+to be pleasant, and she considered it very amiable of Howard to help
+her make it so. She had no faintest notion of danger&mdash;to her Mary
+Virginia was nothing but a child, a little girl one indulged with
+pickles and pound-cake and the bliss of staying up later than the
+usual bedtime. As for Hunter, his was the French attitude toward the
+Young Person; she had heard him say he preferred his flowers in full
+bloom and his fruit ripe&mdash;one then knows what one is getting; one
+isn't deceived by canker in the closed bud and worm in the green
+fruit. No, Howard wasn't the sort that hankered for verjuice.</p>
+
+<p>None the less, although Mrs. Baker didn't know it, Mary Virginia was
+engaged to the godlike Howard when she returned to school. It was to
+be a state secret until after she was graduated, and in the meantime
+he was to &quot;make himself worthier of her love.&quot; She hadn't any notion
+he could be improved upon, but it pleased her to hear him say that.
+Humility in the superman is the ultimate proof of perfection.</p>
+
+<p>The maid who attended her room at school arranged for the receipt of
+his letters and mailed Mary Virginia's. The maid was sentimental, and
+delighted to play a part smacking of those dime novels she spoiled her
+brains with.</p>
+
+<p>The little schoolgirl who was in love with love, and secretly
+betrothed to a man who had stepped alive out of old knightly romance,
+walked in the Land of April Rainbows and felt the whole joyous
+universe suffused <a name="Page_308"></a>with a delicious and quivering glow of light and
+sound and scent. Surcharged with an emotion that she was irresistibly
+urged to express, and unable to do so by word of mouth, she was driven
+to the necessity of putting it down on paper for him. And she put it
+down in the burning words, the fiery phrases, of those anarchists of
+art who had intoxicated and obsessed her.</p>
+
+<p>Just a little later,&mdash;even a year later&mdash;and Mary Virginia could never
+have written those letters. But now, very ignorant, very innocent,
+very impassioned, she accomplished a miracle. She was like one
+speaking an unknown tongue, perfectly sure that the spirit moved her,
+but quite unable to comprehend what it was that it moved her to say.</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Baker insisted that her young cousin should come back to her
+for the Christmas holidays, the girl was more than eager to go. Seeing
+him again only deepened her infatuation.</p>
+
+<p>That holiday visit was an unusually gay one, for Mrs. Baker was really
+fond of Mary Virginia&mdash;the young girl's tenderness and simplicity
+touched the woman of the world. She gave a farewell dance the night
+before Mary Virginia was to return to school. It was an informal
+affair, with enough college boys and girls to lend it a junior air,
+but there was a goodly sprinkling of grown-ups to deepen it, for the
+hostess said frankly that she simply couldn't stand the Very Young
+except in broken doses and in bright spots.</p>
+
+<p>Hunter, of course, was to be one of the grownups. He had sent Mary
+Virginia the flowers she was to wear. And she had a new dancing frock,
+quite the loveliest and fluffiest and laciest she had ever worn.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_309"></a>He was somewhat late. And so engrossed with him were all her thoughts,
+so eager was she to see him, that she was a disappointing companion
+for anybody else. She couldn't talk to anybody else. She flitted in
+and out of laughing groups like a blue-and-silver butterfly, and
+finally managed to slip away to the stair nook behind what Mrs. Baker
+liked to call the conservatory. This was merely a portion of the big
+back hall glassed in and hung with a yellow silk curtain; it had a
+tiny round crystal fountain in the center and one or two carved seats,
+but one wouldn't think so small a space could hold so much bloom and
+fragrance. From the nook where Mary Virginia sat, one could hear every
+word spoken in the flower-room, though the hearer remained hidden by
+the paneled stairway.</p>
+
+<p>Hands in her lacy lap, eyes abstracted, she fell into the dreams that
+youth dreams; in which a girl&mdash;one's self, say,&mdash;walks hand in hand
+through an enchanted world with a being very, very little lower than
+the angels and twice as dear. They are such innocent dreams, such
+impossible dreams, so untouched of all reality; but I wonder, oh I
+wonder, if life can ever give us anything to repay their loss!</p>
+
+<p>Somebody spoke in the conservatory and she looked up, startled.
+Through a parting in the silk curtain she glimpsed the woman and
+recognized one of Estelle's friends, handsome and fashionable, but a
+woman she had never liked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You provoke me. You try my patience too much!&quot; she was saying, in a
+tone of suppressed anger. &quot;People are beginning to say that you have a
+serious affair with that sugar-candy chit. I want to know if that is
+true?&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_310"></a>The man laughed, a lazy, pleasant, disarming laugh. She knew that
+laugh among a million, and her heart began to beat, but not with doubt
+or distrust. She wondered how she had missed him, and if he had been
+looking for her; she thought of the exquisite secret that bound them
+together, and wondered how he was going to protect it without evasions
+or untruthfulness. And she thought the woman abominable.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You're so suspicious, Evie!&quot; he said smilingly. &quot;Why bother about
+what can give you no real concern? Why discuss it here, at all? It's
+not the thing, really.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The woman stamped her foot. She had an able-bodied temper.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will know, and I will know now. I have to know,&quot; said she, and her
+voice shook. Mary Virginia would have coughed then, would have made
+her presence known had she been able; but something held her silent.
+&quot;Remember, you're not dealing with a love-sick school-girl now,
+Howard: you are dealing with <i>me</i>. Have you made that little fool
+think you're in love with her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, and what then?&quot; he asked coolly. &quot;I like the child. Of course
+she is without form and void as yet, but there's quite a lot to that
+girl.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes! Quite a lot!&quot; said she, with sarcasm. &quot;That's what made me
+take notice. James Eustis's girl&mdash;and barrels of money. She'll be a
+catch. You are clever, Howard! But what of <i>me</i>?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia's heart fluttered. Indeed, what of this other woman?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, well, there's nothing definite yet, Evie,&quot; said he soothingly. A
+hint of impatience was betrayed in his voice. Plainly, it irked him to
+be held up and <a name="Page_311"></a>questioned point-blank, at such a time and place. Just
+as plainly, he wished to conciliate his jealous questioner. &quot;My dear
+girl, it would be all of two or three years before the affair could be
+considered. Let well enough alone, Evie. Let's talk about something
+else.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. We will talk about this. You are offering me a two or three
+years' reprieve, are you not? Well, and then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, and then suppose I do marry the little thing,&mdash;if she hasn't
+changed her little mind?&quot; said he, exasperated into punishing her. &quot;It
+wouldn't be a bad thing for me, remember, and she's temptingly easy to
+deal with&mdash;that girl has more faith than the twelve apostles. Heavens,
+Evie, don't look like that! My dearest girl, <i>you</i> don't have to
+worry, anyhow. If your&mdash;er&mdash;impediment hasn't stood in my way, why
+should mine in yours?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He spoke with a half-impatient, half-playful reproach. The woman
+uttered a little cry. To soothe and silence her, he kissed her. It was
+very risky, of course, but then the whole situation was risky, and he
+took his chance like the bold player he was. The girl crouching behind
+the paneled wall clenched her hands in her lap, felt her heart and
+brain on fire, and wondered why the sky did not fall upon the world
+and blot it out.</p>
+
+<p>When those two had left the conservatory and she could command her
+trembling limbs and whip her senses back into some semblance of order,
+she went upstairs and got his letters. When she came downstairs again
+he was standing in the hall, and he came forward eager, smiling,
+tender, as if his heart welcomed her; as perhaps it did, men having
+catholic hearts. She put her hand on <a name="Page_312"></a>his arm and whispered: &quot;Come
+into the conservatory.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The hall was quite empty. From drawing-room and library and
+dining-room came the laughter and chatter of many people. Then the
+music struck up a gay and popular air. The lilt and swing of it made
+her giddy. But the little flower-room was cool and sweet, and she drew
+a breath of relief.</p>
+
+<p>Hunter bent his fair head, but she pushed him away with her hands
+against his chest. A horror of his beauty, his deliberate fascination,
+the falseness of him, came over her. For the first time she had been
+brought face to face with sin and falsehood, and hers was the
+unpardoning white condemnation of an angel to whom sin is unknown and
+falsehood impossible. That such knowledge should have come through him
+of all men made the thing more unbearable. Surprised and irritated by
+the pale tragedy of her aspect, Hunter stared, waiting for her to
+speak.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was on the stairs. I heard you&mdash;and that woman,&quot; said she with the
+directness that was sometimes so appalling. &quot;And I <i>know</i>.&quot; Her face
+turned burning red before it paled again. She was ashamed for him with
+the noble shame of the pure in heart.</p>
+
+<p>His face, too, went red and white with rage and astonishment. It was a
+damnable trap for a man to be caught in, and he was furious with the
+two women who had pushed him into it&mdash;he could have beaten them both
+with rods. Innocent as this girl was, he could not hope to deceive her
+as to the real truth. She had heard too much. But he thought he could
+manage her; women were as wax in Hunter's hands. To begin with, they
+<i>wanted</i> to believe him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_313"></a>I hate to have to say it&mdash;but the lady is jealous,&quot; he said frankly
+enough, with a disarming smile; and shrugged his shoulders, quite as
+if that simple statement explained and excused everything.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, she need not be afraid&mdash;of me!&quot; said the girl, with white-hot
+scorn. &quot;I'd rather die by inches of leprosy than belong to you now.
+You are clever, though. And I <i>was</i> easy to deal with, wasn't I? And I
+cared so much! I dare say it was really your hair and beard, but I
+honestly thought you a sort of Archangel! Well, you're not. You're not
+anything I thought you&mdash;not good nor kind nor honorable nor
+truthful&mdash;not anything but just a rather paltry sort of liar. You're
+not even loyal to <i>her</i>. I think I could respect you more if you were.
+But I <i>am</i> James Eustis's girl&mdash;and that's my salvation, Mr. Hunter.
+Please take your letters. You will send me back mine to-morrow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He stroked his short gold beard. The color had come back into his face
+and a new light flashed into his cold blue eyes. He laughed. &quot;Why, you
+game little angel!&quot; he said delightedly. &quot;Gad, I never thought you had
+it in you&mdash;never. I begin to adore you, Mary Virginia, upon my soul I
+do! Now listen to reason, my too-good child, and don't be so
+puritanical. You've got to take folks as they are and not as you'd
+like them to be, you know. Men are not angels, no, nor women, either.
+You must learn to be charitable&mdash;a virtue very good people seldom
+practice and never properly appreciate.&quot; And he added, leaning lower:
+&quot;Mary Virginia! Give me another chance ... you won't be sorry,
+Ladybird.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But she stood unmoved, stonily silent, holding out the letters. And
+when he still ignored this silent insistence, she thrust them into his
+hands and left him.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_314"></a>Mary Virginia was to go back to school the next night. All day she
+waited for her letters. Instead came a note and a huge bunch of
+violets. The note said he couldn't allow those precious letters which
+meant so much to him to pass even into her hands who had written them.
+When he could summon up the courage, he would presently destroy them
+himself. And she had treated him with great harshness, and wouldn't
+she be a good little girl and let him see her, if only for a few
+minutes, before she went away?</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia tore up the note and returned the violets by way of
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>When she returned to school, the superioress regretted that she had
+been allowed to visit Mrs. Baker again, because too much gaiety wasn't
+good for her, and she was falling off in her studies. The other girls
+said she had lost all her looks, for in truth she was wan and peaked
+and hollow-eyed. Seventeen suffers frightfully, when it suffers at
+all. Eighteen enjoys its blighted affection, revels in its broken
+heart, would like to crochet a black edging on its immortal soul, and
+wouldn't exchange its secret sorrow for a public joy. Nineteen is
+convalescent&mdash;pride would come to its rescue even if life itself did
+not beguile it into being happy.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia got back her color and her appetite and forgot to
+remember that her heart was incurably broken and that she could never
+love again. She liked to think her painful experience had made her
+very wise. Then she went abroad, and her cure was complete. The result
+of it all was that poise and pride which had so greatly delighted the
+autocratic old kinswoman whose fiat had set the last seal of social
+success upon her.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_315"></a>When one of life's little jokes flung Hunter into Appleboro and she
+had to observe him with impartial and less ingenuous eyes, she forgave
+the simple schoolgirl's natural mistake. He had not changed, and she
+perceived his effect upon others older and wiser than herself. And her
+pride chose neither to slight nor to ignore him now, but rather to
+meet him casually, with indifference, as a stranger in whom she was
+not at all interested.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Inglesby she did not take seriously. She did not dream that a
+possible menace to herself lay in this stout man whom she considered
+fatuous and absurd, when she thought of him at all. That her mother
+should be completely taken in by his specious charity and his
+plausible presentment of himself, did not surprise her. She was
+inclined to smile scornfully and so dismiss him.</p>
+
+<p>She underestimated Inglesby.</p>
+
+<p>The very fact that there was such an obstacle in the way as a young
+fellow with whom she fancied herself in love only deepened Inglesby's
+passion for Mary Virginia. She was in her proper person all that he
+coveted and groveled to. To possess her in addition to his own
+wealth&mdash;what more could a man ask? Let Eustis become senator,
+governor, president, anything he chose. But let Inglesby have Mary
+Virginia by way of fair exchange.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Inglesby was well aware that Miss Eustis would not for one moment
+consider him&mdash;unless she had to. He proposed to so arrange affairs
+that she had to. Naturally, he looked to his private secretary to help
+him bring about this desirable end. And at this opportune moment fate
+played into his hands in a manner that left Mr. Hunter's assent a
+matter of course.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hunter had very expensive tastes which his salary <a name="Page_316"></a>was not always
+sufficient to cover. Wherefore, like many another, he speculated. When
+he was lucky, it was easy money; but it was never enough. Of late he
+had not been fortunate, and he found himself confronted by the high
+cost of living as he chose to live. This annoyed him. So when there
+came his way what appeared to be an absolute certainty of not only
+recouping all his losses but of making some real money as well, Hunter
+plunged, with every dollar he could manage to get hold of. But Wall
+Street is a lane that has many crooked and devious turnings, and Mr.
+Hunter's investments took a very wrong turn. And this time it was not
+only all his own money that had been lost. The bottom might have
+dropped out of things then, except for Inglesby.</p>
+
+<p>When Hunter had to tell him the truth the financier listened with an
+unmoved face. Then he swung around in his chair, lifted an eyebrow,
+grunted, and remarked briefly: &quot;Very unsafe thing to do, Hunter.
+Very.&quot; And shoved his personal check across the desk. Nobody knew
+anything about it, except the head bookkeeper of the bank.</p>
+
+<p>Inglesby had no illusions, however. He understood that to have in his
+power an immensely clever man who knew as much about his private
+affairs as Hunter did, was good business, to say the least. He simply
+invested in Mr. Hunter's brains and personality for his own immediate
+ends, and he expected his brilliant and expensive secretary to prove
+the worth of the investment.</p>
+
+<p>Inglesby had not risen to his present heights by beating about the
+bush in his dealings with others. He had seized Success by the
+windpipe and throttled it into obedience, and he ruthlessly bent
+everything and <a name="Page_317"></a>everybody to his own purposes. The task he set before
+Hunter now was to steer the Inglesby ship through a perilous passage
+into the matrimonial harbor he had in mind. Let Hunter do that&mdash;no
+matter how&mdash;and the pilot's future was assured. Inglesby would be no
+niggardly rewarder. But let the venture come to shipwreck and Hunter
+must go down with it. Hunter was not left in any doubt upon that
+score.</p>
+
+<p>Brought face to face with the situation as it affected his fortune and
+misfortune, Hunter must have had a very bad half an hour. I am sure he
+had not dreamed of such a contretemps, and he must have been startled
+and amazed by the cold calculation and the raw fury of passion he had
+to deal with. I do not think he relished his task. His was the sort of
+conscience that would dislike such a course, not because it was
+dishonorable or immoral in itself, but because its details offended
+his fastidiousness. I think he would have extricated himself honorably
+if he could. It just happened that he couldn't.</p>
+
+<p>Give a sufficient shock to a man's pocket-nerve and you electrify his
+brain-cells, which automatically receive orders to work overtime.
+Hunter's brain worked then because it had to, self-preservation being
+the first law of nature. And this service for Inglesby not only spelt
+safety; it meant the golden key to the heights, the power to gratify
+those fine tastes which only a rich and able man can afford. Inglesby
+had promised that, and he had just had a fair example of what
+Inglesby's support meant.</p>
+
+<p>One must try to consider the case from Mr. Hunter's point of view. To
+refuse Inglesby meant disaster. And <a name="Page_318"></a>who was Laurence, who was Mary
+Virginia, that he should quixotically wreck his prospects for them?
+Why should he lose Inglesby's goodwill or gain Inglesby's enmity for
+them or anybody else? Forced to choose, Hunter made the only choice
+possible to him.</p>
+
+<p><i>Voe victis!</i></p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Page_319"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XVII"></a><hr />
+<br />
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>&quot;&mdash;SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>Now I am only an old priest and no businessman, so of course I do not
+know just how Hunter was set like a hound upon the track of those
+circumstances that, properly manipulated, helped him toward a solution
+of his problem&mdash;the getting of a girl apparently as unreachable as
+Mary Virginia Eustis.</p>
+
+<p>To start with, he had two assets, the first being Eustis pride.
+Shrewdly working upon that, Hunter played with skill and finesse.</p>
+
+<p>When he was ready, it was easy enough to meet Miss Eustis on the
+street of an afternoon. Although her greeting was disconcertingly
+cold, he fell into step beside her. And presently, in a low and
+intimate voice, he began to quote certain phrases that rang in her
+astonished ears with a sort of hateful familiarity.</p>
+
+<p>A glance at her face made him smile. &quot;I wonder,&quot; he questioned, &quot;if
+you have changed, dear puritan? You are engaged to Mayne now, I hear.
+Very clever chap, Mayne. The moving power behind your father, I
+understand. And engaged to you! You're so intense and interesting when
+you're in love that one is tempted to envy Mayne. Do you write <i>him</i>
+letters, too?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia's level eyes regarded him with haughty surprise. The
+situation was rather unbelievable.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_320"></a>Miss Eustis<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span> he paused to bow and smile to some passing girls who
+plainly envied Mary Virginia, &quot;Miss Eustis, you must come to my
+office, say to-morrow afternoon. We must have a heart-to-heart talk. I
+have something you will find it to your interest to discuss with me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She disdained to reply, to ask him to leave her; her attitude did not
+even suggest that he should explain himself. Seeming to be perfectly
+content with this attitude, he sauntered along beside her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you know,&quot; he smiled, &quot;that with you the art of writing genuine
+love-letters amounts to a gift? I am sure your father&mdash;and let's say
+Mayne&mdash;would be astonished and delighted to read the ones I have. They
+are unequaled. Human documents, heart-interest, delicate and piquant
+sex-tang&mdash;the very sort of thing the dear public devours. I told you
+once they meant a great deal to me, remember? They're going to mean
+more. Come about four, please.&quot; He lifted his hat, bowed, and was
+gone.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia went to his office at four o'clock the next afternoon,
+as he had planned she should. She wanted to know exactly what he
+meant, and she fancied he meant to make her buy back the letters he
+claimed not to have destroyed. The bare idea of anybody on earth
+reading those insane vaporings sickened her.</p>
+
+<p>Hunter's manner subtly allowed her to understand that he had known she
+would come, and this angered her inexpressibly; it gave him an
+advantage.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Instead of wasting time in idle persiflage,&quot; he said when he had
+handed her a chair, &quot;let's get right down to brass tacks. You
+naturally desire to know why I kept your letters? For one reason,
+because they are a bit of <a name="Page_321"></a>real literature. However, I propose to
+return them now&mdash;for a consideration.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He leaned forward, idly drumming on the polished desk, and regarded
+her with a sort of impersonal speculation. A little smile crept to his
+lip.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The whirligig of time does bring in its revenges, doesn't it?&quot; he
+mused aloud. Mary Virginia's lips curled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not follow you,&quot; she said coldly. &quot;I am not even sure you have
+the letters&mdash;that is why I am here. I must see them with my own eyes
+before I agree to pay for them. That is what you expect me to do, is
+it not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I have them all right&mdash;that is very easily proven,&quot; said he,
+unruffled. &quot;Now listen carefully, please, while I explain the real
+reason for your presence here this afternoon. Mr. Inglesby, for
+reasons of his own, desires to don the senatorial toga; why not? Also,
+even more vehemently, Mr. Inglesby desires to lead to the altar Miss
+Mary Virginia Eustis: yourself, dear lady, your charming self: again,
+why not? Who can blame him for so natural and laudable an ambition?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As to his ever persuading you to become Mrs. Inglesby, without
+some&mdash;ah&mdash;moral suasion, why, you know what his chance would be better
+than I do. As to his persuading the state to send him to Washington,
+it would have been a certainty, a sure thing, if our zealous young
+friend Mayne hadn't egged your father into the game. How Mayne managed
+that, heaven knows, particularly with your father's affairs in the
+condition they are. Now, Eustis is a fine man. Far too fine to be lost
+in the shuffle at Washington, where he'd be a condemned
+<a name="Page_322"></a>nuisance&mdash;just as he sometimes is here at home. Do you begin to
+comprehend?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, no,&quot; said she, blankly. &quot;And I certainly fail to see where my
+silly letters<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let me make it plainer. You and your silly letters put the game into
+Mr. Inglesby's hands, swing the balance in his favor. <i>You</i> pay <i>me</i>?
+Heavens, no! <i>We</i> pay <i>you</i>&mdash;and a thumping price at that!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For a long moment they looked at each other.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear Miss Eustis,&quot; he put the tips of his fine fingers together,
+bent forward over them, and favored her with a white-toothed smile,
+&quot;behold in me Mr. Inglesby's ambassador&mdash;the advocate of Cupid. Plainly,
+I am authorized to offer you Mr. Inglesby's heart, his hand, and&mdash;his
+check-book. Let us suppose you agree to accept&mdash;no, don't interrupt me
+yet, please. And keep your seat, Miss Eustis. You may smile, but I would
+advise you to consider very seriously what I am about to say to you, and
+to realize once for all that Mr. Inglesby is in dead earnest and
+prepared to go to considerable lengths. Well, then, as I was about to
+say: suppose you agree to accept his proposal! Being above all things a
+business man, Mr. Inglesby realizes that gilt-edged collateral should be
+put up for what you have to offer&mdash;youth, beauty, charm, health,
+culture, family name, desirable and influential connections, social
+position of the highest. In exchange he offers the Inglesby millions,
+his absolute devotion to yourself, and his hearty support to all your
+father's plans and interests. Observe the last, please; it is highly
+important. Besides this, Mayne and Eustis want reform, progress,
+Demos-with-a-full-dinner-pail, all the wearisome rest of that uplift
+stuff? Inglesby will <a name="Page_323"></a>see that they get an undiluted dose of it. More
+yet: if you have any scruples about Mayne, Inglesby will get behind that
+young man and boost him until he can crow on the weathervane&mdash;when you
+are Mrs. Inglesby. A chap like Mayne would be valuable, properly
+expurgated. Come, Miss Eustis, that's fair enough. If you refuse&mdash;well,
+it's up to you to make Eustis understand that he must eliminate himself
+from politics&mdash;and look out for himself,&quot; he finished ominously.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia rose impetuously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am no longer seventeen, Mr. Hunter. What, do you honestly think you
+can frighten a grown woman into believing that a handful of silly
+letters could possibly be worth all that? Well, you can't. And&mdash;let me
+remind you that blackmailing women isn't smiled upon in Carolina. A
+hint of this and you'd be ostracized.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So would you. And why use such an extreme term as blackmailing for
+what really is a very fair offer?&quot; said he, equably. &quot;The letters are
+not the only arrows in my quiver, Miss Eustis. But as you are more
+interested in them than anything else just now, suppose we run over a
+few, just to remind you of their amazing nature?&quot; He rose leisurely,
+opened the safe in a corner of the room, took from the steel
+money-vault a package, and Mary Virginia recognized her own writing.
+Always keeping them under his own hand, he yet allowed her to lean
+forward and verify what he chose to read.</p>
+
+<p>Her face burned and tears of mortification stung her eyes. Good
+heavens, had she been as silly and as sentimental as all that? But as
+she listened to his smooth remorseless voice, mortification merged
+into amazement and amazement into consternation. Older and wiser <a name="Page_324"></a>now,
+she saw what ignorance and infatuation had really accomplished, and
+she realized that a fool can unwittingly pull the universe about her
+ears.</p>
+
+<p>She was appalled. It was as if her waking self were confronted by an
+incredible something her dreaming self had done. She knew enough of
+the world now to realize how such letters would be received&mdash;with
+smiles intended to wound, with the raised eyebrow, the shrugged
+shoulder. She wondered, with a chill of panic, how she could ever hope
+to make anybody understand what she admitted she herself couldn't
+explain. For heaven's sake, <i>what</i> had she been trying to tell this
+man? She didn't know any more, except that it hadn't been what these
+letters seemed to reveal.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; said the lazy, pleasant voice, &quot;don't you agree with me that
+it would have been barbarous to destroy them? Wonderful, aren't they?
+Who would credit a demure American schoolgirl with their supreme art?
+A French court lady might have written them, in a day when folks made
+a fine art of love and weren't afraid nor ashamed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I must have been stark mad!&quot; said she, twisting her fingers. &quot;How
+could I ever have done it? Oh, how?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, we all have our moments of genius!&quot; said he, airily.</p>
+
+<p>As he faced her, smiling and urbane, she noted woman-fashion the
+superfine quality of his linen, the perfection of every detail of his
+appearance, the grace with which he wore his clothes. His manner was
+gracious, even courtly. Yet there was about him something so
+relentless that for the first time she felt a quiver of fear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If my father&mdash;or Mr. Mayne&mdash;knew this, you would <a name="Page_325"></a>undoubtedly be
+shot!&quot; said she, and her eyes flashed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Unwritten law, chivalry, all the rest of that rot? I am well aware
+that the Southern trigger-finger is none too steady, where lovely
+woman is concerned,&quot; he admitted, with a faint sneer. &quot;But when one
+plays for high stakes, Miss Eustis, one runs the risks. Granted I do
+get shot? That wouldn't give you the letters: it would simply hand
+them over to prosecuting attorneys and the public press, and they'd be
+damning with blood upon them. No, I don't think there'll be any
+fireworks&mdash;just a sensible deal, in which everybody benefits and
+nobody loses.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The thing is impossible, perfectly impossible.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't see why. Everything has its price and I'm offering you a
+pretty stiff one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I would rather be burned alive. Marry Mr. Inglesby? <i>I</i>? Why, he is
+impossible, perfectly impossible!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is nothing of the kind. And he is very much in love with you&mdash;you
+amount to a grand passion with Inglesby. Also, he has twenty
+millions.&quot; He added dryly: &quot;You are hard to please.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia waved aside grand passion and twenty millions with a
+gesture of ineffable disdain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Even if I were weak and silly enough to take you seriously, do you
+imagine my father would ever consent? He would despise me. He would
+rather see me dead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no, he wouldn't. Nobody can afford to despise a woman with twenty
+millions. It isn't in human nature. Particularly when you save Mr.
+James Eustis himself from coming a breakneck cropper, to say the very
+least.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_326"></a>For the moment she missed the significance of that last remark.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I repeat that I would rather be burned alive. I despise the man!&quot;
+said she, passionately.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no, you wouldn't.&quot; His manner was a bit contemptuous. &quot;And you'd
+soon get used to him. Women and cats are like that. They may squall
+and scratch a bit at first, but the saucer of cream reconciles them,
+and presently they are quite at home and purring, the sensible
+creatures! You'll end by liking him very well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The girl ignored this Job's comforting.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What shall I say to my father?&quot; she asked directly. &quot;Tell him you
+kept the foolish letters written you by an ignorant child&mdash;and the
+price is either his or my selling out to Mr. Inglesby?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is your lookout. You can't expect us to let your side whip us,
+hands down, can you? Mr. Inglesby does not propose to submit tamely to
+<i>everything</i>.&quot; His face hardened, a glacial glint snapped into his
+eyes. &quot;Inglesby's no worse than anybody else would be that had to hold
+down his job. He's got virtues, plenty of solid good-citizen,
+church-member, father-of-a-family virtues, little as you seem to
+realize it. Also, let me repeat&mdash;he has twenty millions. To buy up a
+handful of letters for twenty million dollars looks to me about the
+biggest price ever paid since the world began. Don't be a fool!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I refuse. I refuse absolutely and unconditionally. I shall
+immediately send for my father&mdash;and for Mr. Mayne<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>&quot;I give you credit for better sense,&quot; said he, with a razor-edged
+smile. &quot;Eustis is honorable and Mayne is <a name="Page_327"></a>in love with you, and when
+you spring this they'll swear they believe you: <i>but will they</i>? Do
+men ever believe women, without the leaven of a little doubt? Speaking
+as a man for men, I wouldn't put them to the test. No, dear lady, I
+hardly think you are going to be so silly. Now let us pass on to
+something of greater moment than the letters. Did you think I had
+nothing else to urge upon you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What, more?&quot; said she, derisively. &quot;I don't think I understand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am sure you don't. Permit me, then, to enlighten you.&quot; He paused a
+moment, as if to reflect. Then, impressively:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hitherto, Miss Eustis, you have had the very button on Fortune's
+cap,&quot; he told her. &quot;Suppose, however, that fickle goddess chose to
+whisk herself off bodily, and left you&mdash;<i>you</i>, mind you! to face the
+ugly realities of poverty, and poverty under a cloud?&quot; And while she
+stared at him blankly, he asked: &quot;What do you know of your father's
+affairs?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact she knew very little. But something in the deadly
+pleasantness of his voice, something in his eyes, startled her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you mean, Mr. Hunter?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, now we get down to bedrock: your father's affairs,&quot; he said evenly.
+&quot;Your father, Miss Eustis, is a very remarkable man, a man with one
+idea. In other words, a fanatic. Only a fanatic could accomplish what
+Eustis has accomplished. His one idea is the very sound old idea that
+people should remain on the land. He starts in to show his people how to
+do it successfully. Once started, the work grows like Jonah's gourd. He
+<a name="Page_328"></a>becomes a sort of rural white hope. So far, so good. But reclamation
+work, experimenting, blooded stock, up-to-the-minute machinery,
+labor-saving devices, chemicals, high-priced experts, labor itself, all
+that calls for money, plenty of money. Your father's work grew to its
+monumental proportions because he'd gotten other men interested in
+it&mdash;all sorts and conditions of men, but chiefly&mdash;and here's at once his
+strength and weakness&mdash;farmers, planters, small-town merchants and
+bankers. They backed him with everything they had&mdash;and they haven't
+lost&mdash;yet.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;However, there are such things as bad seasons, labor troubles,
+boll-weevil, canker, floods, war. He lost ship-loads of cotton. He
+lost heavily on rice. Remember those last floods? In some of his
+places they wiped the work of years clean off the map. He had to begin
+all over, and he had to do it on borrowed money; which in lean and
+losing years is expensive. Floods may come and crops may go, but
+interest on borrowed money goes on forever. He mortgaged all he could
+mortgage, risked everything he could risk, took every chance&mdash;and now
+everything is at stake with him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you realize what it would mean if Eustis went under? A smash to
+shake the state! Consider, too, the effect of failure upon the man
+himself! He can't fail, though&mdash;<i>if Mr. Inglesby chooses to lend a
+hand</i>. Now do you begin to comprehend?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In spite of her distrust, he impressed her profoundly. He did not
+over-estimate her father's passionate belief in himself and the value
+of his work. If anything, Hunter had slurred the immense influence
+Eustis exerted, and the calamitous effect his failure would have upon
+<a name="Page_329"></a>the plain people who looked up to him with such unlimited trust. They
+would not only lose their money; they would lose something no money
+could pay for&mdash;their faith.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, but that just simply couldn't happen!&quot; said Mary Virginia, and
+her chin went up.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It could very easily happen. It may happen shortly,&quot; he contradicted
+politely. &quot;Heavens, girl, don't you know that the Eustis house is
+mortgaged to the roof, that Rosemount Plantation is mortgaged from the
+front fences to the back ditches? No, I suppose he wouldn't want his
+women-folks to know. He thinks he can tide it over. They always
+believe they can tide it over, those one-idea chaps. And he could,
+too, for he's a born winner, is Eustis. Give him time and a good
+season and he'd be up again, stronger than ever.&quot; While he spoke he
+was taking from a drawer a handful of papers, which he spread out on
+the desk. She could see upon all of them a bold clear &quot;<i>James
+Eustis</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One place mortgaged to prop up another, and that in turn mortgaged to
+save a third. Like links in a chain. Any chain is only as strong as
+its weakest link, remember. And we've got the links. Look at these,
+please.&quot; He laid before her two or three slips of paper. Mary
+Virginia's eyes asked for enlightenment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;These,&quot; explained Hunter, &quot;are promissory notes. You will see that
+some of them are about due&mdash;and the amounts are considerable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! And <i>he</i> had to do that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course. What else could he do? We kept a very close watch since we
+got the first inkling that things were not breaking right for him. Mr.
+Inglesby's own <a name="Page_330"></a>interests are pretty extensive&mdash;and we set them to
+work. It wasn't hard to manage, after things began to shape: a word
+here, a hint there, an order somewhere else; and once or twice, of
+course, a bit of pressure was brought to bear, in obdurate instances.
+But the man with money is always the man with the whip hand. Eustis
+got the help he had to have&mdash;and presently we got these. All perfectly
+legitimate, all in the course of the day's work.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, promissory notes are dangerous instruments should a holder
+desire to use them dangerously. Mr. Inglesby could give Eustis an
+extension of time, or he could demand full payment and immediately
+foreclose. You see, it's entirely optional with Mr. Inglesby.&quot; And he
+leaned back in his chair, perfectly self-possessed, entirely at his
+ease, and waited for her to speak.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You could do that&mdash;anybody could do that&mdash;to my father?&quot; she was
+only half-convinced.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I assure you we can send him under&mdash;with a lot of other men's money
+tied around his neck to keep him down.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But even you would hesitate to do a thing like that!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All is fair,&quot; said Hunter, &quot;in love and war.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Fair</i>?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Legitimate, then.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But if he is in Mr. Inglesby's way and in his power at the same time,
+why not remove him in the ordinary course of business? Why drag in me
+and my letters?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why? Because it's the letters that enable us to reach <i>you</i>. My dear
+girl, Mr. Inglesby doesn't really give a hang whether Eustis sinks or
+swims. He'd as lief back him as not, for in the long run it's good
+business to back a winner. But it's <i>you</i> he's playing for, <a name="Page_331"></a>and on
+that count all is fish that comes to his net. <i>Now</i> do you begin to
+see?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia began to see. She looked at the unruffled man before her
+a bit wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what do <i>you</i> get out of this?&quot; she asked, unexpectedly. &quot;Mr.
+Inglesby is to get me, I am to get his money and a package of letters,
+my father is to get time to save himself; well then, what do <i>you</i>
+get? The pleasure of doing something wrong? Revenge?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But Hunter looked at her with cold astonishment. &quot;You surprise me,&quot; he
+said. &quot;You talk as if you'd been going to see too many of those
+insufferable screen-plays that make the proletariat sniffle and the
+intelligent swear. I am merely a business man, Miss Eustis, and
+attending to this particular affair for my employer is all in the
+course of the day's work. I&mdash;er&mdash;am not in a position to refuse to
+obey orders or to be captious, particularly since Mr. Inglesby has
+agreed to double my present salary. That in itself is no light
+inducement&mdash;but I get more. I get Mr. Inglesby's personal backing,
+which means an assured future to me; as it will mean to you and your
+father, if you have got the sense you were born with. This is
+business. Kindly omit melodrama&mdash;crude, and not at all your style,
+really,&quot; he finished, critically.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is nothing short of villainy. And not at all too crude for
+<i>your</i> style,&quot; said Mary Virginia.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed good-humoredly. &quot;Bad temper is vastly becoming to you,&quot; he
+told her. &quot;It gives you a magnificent color.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And at that Mary Virginia looked at him with eyes in which the shadow
+of fear was deepening. Hard as nails, <a name="Page_332"></a>cold as ice, to him she was
+merely a means to an end. He did not even hate her. The guillotine
+does not hate those whom it decapitates, either; none the less it
+takes off their heads once they get in the way of the descending
+knife.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suggest,&quot; said Hunter, rising, &quot;that you go home now and think the
+matter over carefully. Weigh what you and your father stand to gain
+against what you stand to lose. I do not press you for an immediate
+decision. You shall have a reasonable time for consideration.&quot; It was
+a threat and a command, thinly veiled.</p>
+
+<p>All that night, unable to sleep, she did think the matter over
+carefully; she turned and twisted it about and about and saw it now
+from this angle and now from that; and the more she studied it in all
+its bearings the worse it grew. There was no escape from it.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose, although she knew she could never, never hope to
+satisfactorily explain them, she nevertheless told her father about
+those letters and the part they were to be made play, now that his own
+affairs had reached a crisis? She could fancy herself telling him that
+he must shield himself behind her skirts if he would save himself from
+ruin. That ... to James Eustis!</p>
+
+<p>Suppose that the Carolina trigger-finger slipped, as Hunter had
+nonchalantly admitted might happen: what then? But it is the woman in
+the case who always suffers the most and the longest; it is the woman,
+always, who pays the greater price. Her fears magnified the imagined
+evil, her pride was crucified.</p>
+
+<p>What tortured her most was that they were actually making her party to
+a wreck that could easily be averted. Hunter had admitted that Eustis
+could weather the storm, <a name="Page_333"></a>if he were given time. Oh, to gain time for
+him, then! And she lay there, staring into the dark with wet eyes. How
+could she help him, she who was also snared?</p>
+
+<p>And in desperation she hit upon a forlorn hope. She dared not speak
+out openly to anybody, she dared not flatly refuse Inglesby's
+pretensions, for that would be to invite the avalanche. What she
+proposed to herself was to hold him off as long as she could. She
+would not be definite until the last possible minute. Always there was
+the chance that by some miracle of mercy Eustis might be able to meet
+those notes when they fell due. Let him do that, and she would then
+tell him everything. But not now. He was bearing too much, without
+that added burden.</p>
+
+<p>It cost her a supreme effort to face the situation as it affected
+herself and Laurence. Life without Laurence! The bare thought of it
+tested her heart and showed her how inalienably it belonged to him.
+But under all his lovingness and his boyishness, Laurence had a
+sternness, a ruggedness as adamantine as one of Cromwell's Iron-sides.
+With him to know would be to act. Well&mdash;he mustn't know. It terrified
+her to think of just what might happen, if Laurence knew.</p>
+
+<p>Under the circumstances there seemed but one course open to her&mdash;to
+give up Laurence, and that without explanations. For his own sake she
+had to keep silent&mdash;just as Hunter had known she would. What Laurence
+must think of her, even the loss of his affection and respect, would
+be part of the price paid for having been a fool.</p>
+
+<p>In the most unobtrusive manner they kept in touch with her. Hunter had
+so adroitly wirepulled, and so <a name="Page_334"></a>deftly softened and toned down
+Inglesby's crudities, that Mrs. Eustis had become the latter's open
+champion. Condescending and patronizing, she liked the importance of
+lending a very rich man her social countenance. She insisted that he
+was misunderstood. Men of great fortunes are always misunderstood.
+Nobody considers it a virtue to be charitable to the rich&mdash;they save
+all their charity for the poor, who as often as not are undeserving,
+and are generally insanitary as well. Mrs. Eustis thanked her heavenly
+Father she was a woman of larger vision, and never thought ill of a
+man just because he happened to be a millionaire. Millionaires have
+got souls, she hoped? And hearts? Mrs. Eustis said she knew Mr.
+Inglesby's noble heart, my dear, whether others did or not.</p>
+
+<p>Compelled to apparently jilt Laurence, Mary Virginia sank deeper and
+deeper into the slough of despond. A terror of Inglesby's power, as of
+something supernatural, was growing upon her, a terror almost childish
+in its intensity. He had begun to occupy the niche vacated by the
+Boogerman her Dah had threatened her with in her nursery. She could
+barely conceal this terror, save that an instinct warned her that to
+let him know she feared him would be fatal. And she felt for him a
+physical repulsion strong enough to be nauseating.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that she disdained and perhaps even disliked him and made no
+effort to conceal her feelings, did not in the least ruffle his bland
+complacency nor affront his pride. He knew that not even an Inglesby
+could hope to find a Mary Virginia more than once in a lifetime, and
+the haughtier she was the more she pleased him; <a name="Page_335"></a>it added to his
+innate sense of power, and this in itself endeared her to him
+inexpressibly.</p>
+
+<p>But as the girl still held out stubbornly, trying to evade the final
+word that would force a climax disastrous any way she viewed it,
+Inglesby's patience was exhausted. He was determined to make her come
+to terms by the word of her own mouth, and he had no doubt that her
+final word must be Yes; perhaps a Yes reluctant enough, but
+nevertheless one to which he meant to hold her.</p>
+
+<p>To make that final demand more impressive, Hunter was not entrusted
+with the interview. Hunter may have been doubtful as to the wisdom of
+this, but Inglesby could no longer forego the delight of dealing with
+Mary Virginia personally. On the Saturday night, then, Mrs. Eustis
+being absent, Mr. Inglesby, manicured, massaged, immaculate, shaven
+and shorn, called in person; and not daring to refuse, Mary Virginia
+received him, wondering if for her the end of the world had not come.</p>
+
+<p>He made a mistake, for Mary Virginia had her back against the wall,
+literally waiting for the Eustis roof to fall. But he could not forego
+the pleasure of witnessing her pride lower its crest to him. He did
+not relish a go-between, even such a successful one as his secretary.
+He had made up his mind that she should have until to-morrow night,
+Sunday, to come to a decision&mdash;just that long, and not another hour.
+He was not getting younger; he wanted to marry, to found a great
+establishment as whose mistress Mary Virginia should shine. And she
+was making him lose time.</p>
+
+<p>What Inglesby succeeded in doing was to bring her <a name="Page_336"></a>terror to a head,
+and to fill her with a sick loathing of him. Under the smooth
+protestations, the promises, the threats veiled with hateful and oily
+smiles, the man himself was revealed: crude, brutal, dominant,
+ruthless, a male animal bull-necked and arrogant, with small eyes,
+wide nostrils, cruel moist lips, sensual fat white hands she hated.
+And he was so sure of her! Mary Virginia found herself smarting under
+that horrible sureness.</p>
+
+<p>Perfectly at his ease, inclined to be familiar and jocose, he looked
+insolently about the lovely old room that had never before held such a
+suitor for a daughter of that house. Watching her with the complacent
+eyes of an accepted lover, assuming odious airs of proprietorship such
+as made one wish to throttle him, he was in no hurry to go. It seemed
+to her that black and withering years rolled over her head before he
+could bring himself to rise to take his departure. Death could hardly
+be colder to a mortal than she had been to this man all the evening,
+and yet it had not disconcerted him in the least!</p>
+
+<p>He stood for a moment regarding her with the eyes of possession. &quot;And
+to think that to-morrow night I shall have the right to openly claim
+you as my promised wife!&quot; he exulted. &quot;You can't realize what it means
+to a man to be able to say to the world that the most beautiful woman
+in it is his!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Directly in front of her hung the portrait of the founder of the house
+in Carolina, the cavalier who had fled to the new world when Charles
+Stuart's head fell in the old one. It was a fine and proud face, the
+eyes frank and brave, the mouth firm and sweet. The girl looked from
+it to George Inglesby's, and found herself unable to speak. But as she
+stood before him, tall and <a name="Page_337"></a>proud and pale, the loveliness, the
+appealing charm of her, went like a strong wine to the man's head.
+With a quick and fierce movement he seized her hand and covered it
+with hot and hateful kisses.</p>
+
+<p>At the touch of his lips cold horror seized her. She dragged her hand
+free and waved him back with a splendid indignation. But Inglesby was
+out of hand; he had taken the bit between his teeth, and now he
+bolted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you think I'm made of stone?&quot; he bellowed, and the mask slipped
+altogether. There was no hypocrisy about Inglesby now; this was
+genuine. &quot;Well, I'm not! I'm a man, a flesh-and-blood man, and I'm
+crazy for you&mdash;and you're <i>mine</i>! You're <i>mine</i>, and you might just as
+well face the music and get acquainted with me, first as last.
+Understand?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm not such a bad sort&mdash;what's the matter with me, anyhow? Why ain't
+I good enough for you or any other woman? Suppose I'm not a young
+whippersnapper with his head full of nonsense and his pockets full of
+nothing, can the best popinjay of them all do for you what <i>I</i> can?
+Can any of 'em offer you what <i>I</i> can offer? Let him try to: I'll
+raise his bid!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here&mdash;don't you stand there staring at me as if I'd tried to slit
+your throat just because I've kissed your hand. Suppose I did? Why
+shouldn't I kiss your hand if I want to? It's my hand, when all's said
+and done, and I'll kiss it again if I feel like it. No, no, beauty, I
+won't, not if it's going to make you look at me like that! Why, queen,
+I wouldn't frighten you for worlds! I love you too much to want to do
+anything but please you. I'd do anything, everything, just to please
+you, to make you like me! You'll believe that, <a name="Page_338"></a>won't you?&quot; And he
+held out his hands with a supplicating and impassioned gesture.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why can't we be friends? Try to be friends with me, Mary Virginia!
+You would, if you only knew how much I love you. Why, I've loved you
+ever since that first day I saw you, after you'd come back home. I was
+going into the bank, and I turned, and there you were! You had on a
+gray dress, and you wore violets, a big bunch of them. I can smell
+them yet. God! It was all up with me! I was crazy about you from the
+start, and it's been getting worse and worse ... worse and worse!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You don't know all I mean to do for you, beauty! I'm going to give
+you this little old world to play with. Nothing's too good for <i>you</i>.
+Look at me! I'm not an old man yet&mdash;I've only just <i>begun</i> to make
+money for you. Now be a little kind to me. You've got to marry me, you
+know. Look here: you kiss me good-night, just once, of your own free
+will, and I swear you shall have anything under the sky you ask me
+for. Do you want a string of pearls that will make yours look like a
+child's playpretty? I'll hang a million dollars around that white
+throat of yours!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But there came into the girl's eyes that which gave him pause. They
+stood staring at each other; and slowly the wine-dark flush faded from
+his face and left him livid. Little dents came about his nose, and his
+lips puckered as if the devil had pinched them together.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No?&quot; said he thickly, and his jaw hardened, and his eyes narrowed
+under his square forehead. &quot;No? You won't, eh? Too fine and proud? My
+lady, you'll learn to kiss me when I tell you to, and glad enough of
+the <a name="Page_339"></a>chance, before you and I finish with each other! Why, you&mdash;I&mdash;Oh,
+good God! Why do you rouse the devil in me, when I only want to be
+friends with you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But she, with a ghastly face, turned swiftly and with her head held
+high walked out of the room, passed through the wide hall, and
+ascended the stairs, without even bidding him goodnight. Let him take
+his dismissal as he would&mdash;she could stand no more!</p>
+
+<p>Once in her own room, Mary Virginia dismissed Nancy for the night. She
+had to be alone, and the colored woman was an irrepressible magpie.
+Furiously she scrubbed her hands, as if to remove the taint of his
+touch. That he had dared! Her teeth chattered. She could barely save
+herself from screaming aloud. She bathed her face, dashed some toilet
+water over herself, and fell into a chair, limp and unnerved.</p>
+
+<p><i>One day!</i></p>
+
+<p>She was facing the end and she knew it. Because she had to say No. She
+had never for one minute admitted to herself the possibility of her
+own surrender. She could give up Laurence, since she had to; but she
+could not accept Inglesby. Anything rather than that! At the most, all
+she had hoped was to evade that final No until the last moment, in
+order to give Eustis what poor respite she could. Only her great love
+for him had enabled her to do that much. And it had not helped. When
+she thought of the wreck that must come, she beat her hands together,
+softly, in sheer misery. It was like standing by and watching some
+splendid ship being pounded to pieces on the rocks.</p>
+
+<p>Only her innate bravery and her real and deep religious instinct saved
+her from altogether sinking into <a name="Page_340"></a>inertia and despair. She <i>had</i> to
+arouse herself. Other women had faced situations equally as impossible
+and unbearable as hers, and the best of them had not allowed
+themselves to be whipped into tame and abject submission. Even at the
+worst they had snatched the great chance to live their own lives in
+their own way. As for her, surely there must be some way out of this
+snarl, some immediate way that led to honorable freedom, even without
+hope. But how and where was she to find any way open to her, between
+now and to-morrow night?</p>
+
+<p>On her dressing table, with a handful of trinkets upon it, lay the
+tray that the Butterfly Man had sent her when she was graduated. Chin
+in hands, Mary Virginia stared absently enough at the brightly colored
+butterflies she had been told to remember were messengers bearing on
+their wings the love of the Parish House people. Why&mdash;why&mdash;of course!
+The Parish House people! They had blamed her, because they hadn't
+understood. But if she were to ask the Parish House people for any
+help within their power, she could be sure of receiving it without
+stint.</p>
+
+<p>If she could get to the Parish House without anybody knowing where she
+was, Inglesby and Hunter would be balked of that interview to-morrow
+night. The worst was going to happen anyhow, but if she couldn't save
+herself from anything else, at least she could save herself from
+facing them alone. To be able to do that, she would go now, in the
+middle of the night, and tell the Padre everything. Unnerved as she
+was, she couldn't face the hours between now and to-morrow morning
+here, by herself. She had to get to the Parish House.</p>
+
+<p>It was then after eleven. Nancy having been <a name="Page_341"></a>dismissed for the night,
+she had no fear of being interrupted. She made her few preparations,
+switched off the light, and sat down to wait until she could be sure
+that all the servants were abed, and the streets deserted. She felt as
+if she were a forlorn castaway upon a pinpoint of land, with
+immeasurable dark depths upon either side.</p>
+
+<p>The midnight express screeched and was gone. She switched on the light
+for a last look about her pretty, pleasant room. There was a snapshot
+of the Parish House people upon her mantel, and she nodded to it,
+gravely, before she once more plunged the room into darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Noiselessly she slipped downstairs and let herself out. The midnight
+air was bitingly cold, but she did not feel it. With one handsatchel
+holding all she thought she could honestly lay claim to, Mary Virginia
+turned her back upon the home that had sheltered her all her life, but
+that wouldn't be able to shelter its own people much longer, because
+Inglesby was going to take it away from them. It made her wince to
+think of him as master under that roof. The old house deserved a
+happier fate.</p>
+
+<p>At best the Parish House could be only a momentary stopping-place.
+What lay beyond she didn't know. What her fate held further of evil
+she couldn't guess. But at least, she thought, it would be in her own
+hands. It wasn't. Unexpectedly and mercifully was it put into the
+abler and stronger hands of the Butterfly Man.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<p>Now, that night Flint had found himself unable to work. He was
+unaccountably depressed. He couldn't read; even the Bible, opened at
+his favorite John, hadn't any comfort for him. He shoved the book
+aside, snatched <a name="Page_342"></a>hat and overcoat, and fled to his refuge the healing
+out-of-doors.</p>
+
+<p>He trudged the country roads for awhile, then turned toward town,
+intending to pass by the Eustis house. It wasn't the first time he had
+passed the Eustis house at night of late, and just to see it asleep in
+the midst of its gardens steadied him and made him smile at the vague
+fears he entertained.</p>
+
+<p>He was almost up to the gate when a girl emerged from it, and he
+stiffened in his tracks, for it was Mary Virginia. A second later, and
+they stood face to face.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't be alarmed, it is I, Flint,&quot; he said in his quiet voice. And
+then he asked directly: &quot;Why are you out alone at this hour? Where are
+you going?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To&mdash;to the Parish House,&quot; she stammered. She was greatly startled by
+his sudden appearance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Exactly,&quot; said the Butterfly Man, with meaning, and relieved her of
+her satchel. He asked no questions, offered no comments; but as
+quickly as he could he got her to his own rooms, put Kerry on guard,
+and ran for help.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Page_343"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a><hr />
+<br />
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>ST. STANISLAUS CROOKS HIS ELBOW</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>Mary Virginia's voice trailed into silence and she sank back into her
+chair, staring somberly at the fire. Her face marked with tears, the
+long braids of her hair over her shoulders, she looked so like a sad
+and chidden child that the piteousness of her would have moved and
+melted harder hearts than ours.</p>
+
+<p>The Butterfly Man had listened without an interruption. He sat leaning
+slightly forward, knees crossed, the left arm folded to support the
+elbow of the right, and his chin in his cupped right hand. His eyes
+had the piercing clear directness of an eagle's; they burned with an
+unwavering pale flame. Shrewder far than I, he saw the great advantage
+of knowing the worst, of at last thoroughly understanding Hunter and
+Inglesby and the motives which moved them. He had, too, a certain
+tolerance. These two had merely acted according to their lights; he
+had not expected any more or less, therefore he was not surprised now
+into an undue condemnation.</p>
+
+<p>But the fighting instinct rose rampant in me. My hands are De Ranc&eacute;
+hands, the hands of soldiers as well as of priests, and they itched
+for a weapon, preferably a sword. Horrified and astonished,
+suffocating with <a name="Page_344"></a>anger, I had no word at command to comfort this
+victim of abominable cunning. Indeed, what could I say; what could I
+do? I looked helplessly at the Butterfly Man, and the stronger man
+looked back at me, gravely and impassively.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But what is to be done?&quot; I groaned.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to know, for he said at once:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Call Madame. Tell her to bring some extra wraps. I am going to take
+Mary Virginia home, and Madame will go with us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But why shouldn't she stay here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because she'd better be at home to-morrow morning, parson. We're not
+supposed to know anything of her affairs, and I'd rather she didn't
+appear at the Parish House. Also, she needs sleep right now more than
+she needs anything else, and one sleeps better in one's own bed.
+Madame will see that she goes to hers and stays there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was perfectly willing to commit the affair into John Flint's hands.
+But Mary Virginia demurred.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. I want to stay here! I don't want to go home, Padre.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Flint shook his head. &quot;I'm sorry,&quot; he said mildly, &quot;but I'm going to
+take you home.&quot; He looked so inexorable that Mary Virginia shrugged
+her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, all right, Mr. Flint, I'll go,&quot; said she. &quot;What difference does
+it make? I'll even go to bed&mdash;as I'm told.&quot; And she added in a tone of
+indescribable bitterness: &quot;I have read that men lie down and sleep
+peacefully the night before they are hanged. Well, I suppose they
+could: they hadn't anything but death to face on the morrow, but I<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span>
+and she caught her breath.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_345"></a>Why not take it for granted to-night that you'll be looked after
+to-morrow?&quot; suggested Flint. &quot;Mary Virginia, nothing's ever so bad as
+it's going to be.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes, I'll be looked after to-morrow!&quot; said she, bitingly. &quot;Mr.
+Inglesby will see to that!&quot; She covered her face with her hands.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I don't know!&quot; The Butterfly Man shut his mouth on the words like
+a knife. &quot;Inglesby may think he's going to, but somehow <i>I</i> think he
+won't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; said she scornfully. &quot;Perhaps <i>you'll</i> be able to stop him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps,&quot; he agreed. &quot;If I don't, somebody or something else will.
+It's very unlucky to be too lucky too long. You see, everybody's got
+to get what's coming to them, and it generally comes hardest when
+they've tied themselves up to the notion they're It. Somehow I fancy
+Mr. Inglesby's due to come considerable of a cropper around about
+now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Between now and to-morrow night?&quot; she wondered, with sad contempt.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why not? Anything can happen between a night and a night.&quot; He looked
+at her with shrewd appreciation: &quot;You have taken yourself so
+seriously,&quot; said he, &quot;that you've pretty nearly muddled yourself into
+being tragic. Those fellows knew who they were dealing with when they
+tackled <i>you</i>. They could bet the limit you'd never tell. So long as
+you didn't tell, so long as they had nobody but you to deal with, they
+had you where they wanted you. But now maybe things might happen that
+haven't been printed in the program.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What things?&quot; she mocked somberly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know, yet,&quot; he admitted, &quot;But I do know <a name="Page_346"></a>there is always a
+way out of everything except the grave. The thing is to find the right
+way. That's up to the Padre and me. Parson, would you mind going after
+Madame now, please? The sooner we go the better.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Have I not said my mother is the most wonderful of women? I waked her
+in the small hours with the startling information that Mary Virginia
+was downstairs in John Flint's workroom, and that she herself must
+dress and accompany her home. And my mother, though she looked her
+stark bewilderment, plagued me with no questions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is in great trouble, and she needs you. Hurry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Madame slid out of her bed and reached for her neatly folded garments.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wait in the hall, Armand; I will be with you in ten minutes.&quot; And she
+was, wrapped and hatted.</p>
+
+<p>Once in the workroom, she cast a deep and searching woman-glance at
+the pale girl in the chair. Her face was so sweet with motherliness
+and love and pity, and that profound comprehension the best women show
+to each other, that I felt my throat contract. Gathered into Madame's
+embrace, Mary Virginia clung to her old friend dumbly. Madame had but
+one question:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My child, have you told John Flint and my son what this trouble of
+yours is?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; I had to, I had to!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank the good God for that!&quot; said my mother piously. &quot;Now we will go
+home, dearest, and you can sleep in peace&mdash;you have nothing more to
+worry about!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The clasp of the comforting arms, the sweet serenity of the mild eyes,
+and above all the little lady's perfect confidence, aroused Mary
+Virginia out of her torpor. <a name="Page_347"></a>She felt that she no longer stood alone
+at the mercy of the merciless. Bundled in the wraps my mother had
+provided, she paused at the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think you will forgive me any trouble I may cause you, because I am
+sure all of you love me. And whatever comes, I will be brave enough to
+face and to bear it. Padre, dear Padre, you understand, don't you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My child, my darling child, I understand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll be back in half an hour, parson,&quot; the Butterfly Man remarked
+meaningly. Then the three melted into the night.</p>
+
+<p>Left alone, I was far from sharing Madame's simple faith in our
+ability to untangle this miserable snarl. I knew now the temper of the
+men we had to deal with. I also understood that in cases like this the
+Southern trigger-finger is none too steady. Seen from a certain point
+of view, if ever men deserved an unconditional and thorough killing,
+these two did. Yet this homicidal specter turned me cold, for Mary
+Virginia's sake.</p>
+
+<p>For Eustis himself I could see nothing but ruin ahead, but I wished
+passionately to help the dear girl who had come to me in her stress.
+But what was one to do? How should one act?</p>
+
+<p>I sat there dismally enough, my chin sunk upon my breast; for as a
+plotter, a planner, a conspirator, I am a particularly hopeless
+failure. I have no sense of intrigue, and the bare idea of plotting
+reduces me to stupefaction.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps because I am a priest by instinct, I always discover in myself
+the instant need of prayer when confronted by the unusual and the
+difficult. I have prayed over seemingly hopeless problems in my time
+and I think <a name="Page_348"></a>I have been led to a clear solution of many of them.
+Major Cartwright insists that this is merely because I bring desire
+and will to bear upon a given point and so release an irresistible
+natural force. He says prayer is as much a science as, say,
+mathematics&mdash;such and such its units, and such and such its fixed
+results. Well, maybe so. All I know is that when I beseech aid I think
+I receive it.</p>
+
+<p>So I ran over to the church and let myself in. I felt that at least
+for a few minutes I must kneel before the altar and implore help for
+her who was like my own child to me.</p>
+
+<p>The empty church was quite black save for the sanctuary lamp and the
+little red votive lights burning before the statues of the saints and
+of our Lady. All these many little lights only cast the veriest ghosts
+of brightness upon the darkness, but the white altar was revealed by
+the larger glow of the sanctuary lamp. There it shone with a mild and
+pure luster, unfailing, calm, steady, burning through the night, the
+sign and symbol of that light of Love which cannot fail, but burns and
+burns and burns forever and forever before an altar that is the
+infinite universe itself.</p>
+
+<p>My little-faith, my ready-to-halt faith, raised its head above the
+encompassing waters; the wild turmoil and torment died away: ... after
+the earthquake and the fire and the whirlwind, the still small
+voice.&nbsp;...</p>
+
+<p>Then I, to whom life at best can only be working and waiting, was for
+a space able to pray for her to whom life should be &quot;<i>as the light of
+the morning, when the sun riseth, even a clear morning without clouds;
+and as the tender grass by clear shining after rain</i>.&quot; I remembered
+<a name="Page_349"></a>her as she had first come to me, a little loving child to fill my
+empty heart, the poor clay heart that cannot even hold fast to the
+love of God but by these frail all-powerful ties of simple human
+affection. And when I thought of her now, so young and so sore-beset,
+a bird caught in the snare of the fowler, I beat my breast for pity
+and for grief. Oh, how should I help her, how!</p>
+
+<p>I turned my head, and there stood St. Stanislaus upon his pedestal,
+the memorial lights flickering upon his long robe, his smooth boy's
+face, his sheaf of lilies. I regarded him rather absently. Something
+stirred in my consciousness; something I always had to remember in
+connection with St. Stanislaus.&nbsp;...</p>
+
+<p>Across my mind as across a screen flashed a series of pictures&mdash;a
+mangled tramp carried into the Parish House, my mother watching with a
+concerned and shocked face, and the hall mud-stained by the trampling
+feet of the clumsy bearers; the shaggy Poles, caps off, turning over
+to me as to high authority the heavy oilskin package they had found; I
+opening that package later and standing amazed and startled before its
+contents; and that same package, hidden under my cassock, carried over
+to the church and placed for security and secrecy in the keeping of
+the little saint. Well, that had been quite right; there had been
+nothing else to do; one had to be secret and careful when one had in
+one's keeping the tools of that notorious burglar, Slippy McGee.</p>
+
+<p>Small wonder that I did not connect those pictures with the fate of
+Mary Virginia Eustis! No, I did not immediately grasp their tremendous
+bearing upon the petitions I was repeating. And all the while, with a
+dull insistence, an enraging persistence, they flickered <a name="Page_350"></a>before the
+eyes of my memory&mdash;the Poles, the screaming cursing tramp;
+Westmoreland pondering aloud as to why he had been permitted to save
+so apparently worthless a life; and the little saint hiding from the
+eyes of men all traces of lost Slippy McGee. Nor, more curiously yet,
+did I connect them with the Butterfly Man. The Butterfly Man was
+somebody else altogether, another and a different person, a man of
+whom even one's secretest thoughts were admiring and respectful. He
+was so far removed from the very shadow of such things as these, that
+it did one's conscience a sort of violence to think of him in
+connection with them. I tried to dismiss the memories from my mind. I
+wished to concentrate wholly upon the problem of Mary Virginia.</p>
+
+<p>And then that mysterious, hidden self-under-self that lives in us far,
+far beneath thought and instinct and conscience and heredity and even
+consciousness itself, rose to the surface with a message:</p>
+
+<p><i>Slippy McGee had been the greatest cracksman in all America.&nbsp;...</i>
+&quot;Honest to God, skypilot, I can open any box made, easy as easy!&quot; ...
+<i>And even as his tools were hidden in St. Stanislaus, Slippy McGee
+himself was hidden in John Flint</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Recoiling, I clung to the altar railing. What dreadful thing was I
+contemplating, what fearful temptation was assailing me, here under
+the light of the sanctuary lamp? I looked reproachfully at St.
+Stanislaus, as if that seraphic youth had betrayed my confidence. I
+suspected him of being too anxious to rid himself of the ambiguous
+trust imposed upon him without so much as a by-your-leave. Perhaps he
+was secretly irked at the use to which his painted semblance had been
+put, and seized this first <a name="Page_351"></a>opportunity to extricate himself from a
+position in which the boldest saint of them all might well hesitate to
+find himself.</p>
+
+<p>I began to consider John Flint as he was, the work he had
+accomplished, the splendid structure of that life slowly and
+laboriously made over and lived so cleanly in the light of day. Not
+only had that old evil personality been sloughed off like a larval
+skin; he had come forth from it another creature, a being lovable,
+wise, tender, full of charm. Even the hint of melancholy that was
+becoming more and more a part of him endeared him to others, for the
+broader and brighter the light into which he was steadily mounting,
+the more marked and touching was this softening shadow.</p>
+
+<p>And I who had been the <i>accoucheur</i> of his genius, I who had watched
+and prayed and ministered beside the cradle of his growth, was I of
+all men to threaten his overthrow? Alas, what madness was upon me that
+I was evoking before the very altar the grim ghost of Slippy McGee?</p>
+
+<p>There passed before me in procession the face of Laurence with all its
+boyish bloom stripped from it and the glory of its youth vanished; and
+the bowed and humbled head of James Eustis, one of the large and noble
+souls of this world; and the innocent beauty of Mary Virginia,
+wistfully appealing; followed them the beautiful ruthless face of
+Hunter, dazzlingly blonde, gold-haired as Baldur; and the piglike eyes
+and heavy jowl of Inglesby, brutally dominant; and then the dear
+whimsical visage of the Butterfly Man himself. They passed; and I fell
+to praying, with a sort of still desperation, for all of us.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_352"></a>And all the while the steady and rosy light of the sanctuary lamp fell
+upon me, and the little lights flickered before the silent saints. I
+took myself in hand, forced myself into self-control. I did not
+minimize one risk nor slur one danger. I knew exactly what was at
+stake. And having done this, I decided upon my course:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If he has thought of this himself, then I will help. But if he has
+not, I will not suggest it, no, no matter what happens.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I told myself I would say ten more Hailmarys, and I said them, with an
+Ourfather at the end. And without further praying I got to my feet.
+The church seemed to be full of breathless whisperings, as if it
+watched and listened while I moved over to Stanislaus and tipped him
+backward. He is a rather heavy and sizable boy for all his saintly
+slimness. Up in the hollow inside, in the crook of his arm, lay the
+oilskin package he had kept these long years through, waiting for
+to-night.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If ever you prayed for mortals in peril, pray, for the love of God,
+for all of us this night!&quot; I told him. And with the package in a fold
+of my cassock I went back across the dark garden and let myself into
+the Butterfly Man's rooms, and was hardly inside the door when he
+himself returned.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Didn't meet a soul. And they got in without waking anybody in the
+house,&quot; said he complacently, rubbing his hands before the fire. &quot;I
+waited until they showed a light upstairs. She's all right, now
+Madame's with her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you&mdash;have you thought of anything&mdash;any way, John?&quot; I quavered,
+and wondered if he heard my heart dunting against my ribs.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_353"></a>Why, I've thought that she's got until to-morrow night to come to
+terms,&quot; said he, and turned to face me. &quot;And she can't accept them.
+Nobody could&mdash;that is, not a girl like her. As for Inglesby, he might
+push Eustis under, but he wouldn't have been so cocksure of <i>her</i> if
+it wasn't for those letters. She's been afraid of what might happen if
+Eustis or Laurence found out about them&mdash;somebody ran the risk of
+being put to bed with a shovel. There's where they had her. A bit
+unbearable to think of, isn't it?&quot; He spoke so mildly that I looked up
+with astonishment and some disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why,&quot; said I, ruefully, &quot;if that's as far as you've gone, we are
+still at the starting point.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No need to go farther and fare worse, parson,&quot; said he, equably. &quot;I
+saw that the first minute I could see anything but red. Yet do you
+know, when she was telling us about it, I thought like a fool of
+everything but the right thing, from sandbagging and shanghaing
+Inglesby, down to holding up Hunter with an automatic?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When I got my reason on straight, I went back to the starting
+point&mdash;the letters, parson, the letter in the safe in Hunter's office.
+Given the letters she'd be free&mdash;the one thing Inglesby doesn't want
+to happen. We've got to have those letters.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My mouth was parched as with fever and I saw him through a blur.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know,&quot; he went on, &quot;if you agree with me, parson, but to my
+mind the best way to fight the devil is with fire. What did you do
+with those tools?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Tools?</i>&quot; in a dry whisper. &quot;<i>Tools</i>, John?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tools. Kit. Layout. You had them. Could you <a name="Page_354"></a>put your hand on them in
+a hurry to-night? Don't stare so, man! And for the Lord's love don't
+you tell me you destroyed them! What did you do with my tools?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The four winds roared in my ears, and one lifted the hair on my scalp,
+as if the Rider on the Pale Horse had passed by. By way of reply I
+placed a heavy package on the table before him, slumped into my chair,
+and covered my face with my hands. Oh, Stanislaus, little saint, what
+had we done between us to-night to the Butterfly Man?</p>
+
+<p>When I looked up again he had risen. With his hands gripping the edge
+of the table until the knuckles showed white, and his neck stretched
+out, he was staring with all his eyes. A low whistle escaped him.
+Wonder, incredulity, a sort of ironic amusement, and a growing,
+iron-jawed determination, expressed themselves in his changing
+countenance. Once or twice he wet his lips and swallowed. Then he sat
+down again, deliberately, and fixed upon me a long and somewhat
+disconcerting stare, as if he were rearranging and tabulating his
+estimate of Father Armand Jean De Ranc&eacute;. He took his head in his
+hands, and with slitted eyes considered the immediate course of action
+to which the possession of that package committed him. One surmised
+that he was weighing and providing for every possible contingency.</p>
+
+<p>Tentatively he spread out his fine hands, palms uppermost, and flexed
+them; then, turning them, he laid them flat upon the table and again
+spread out his fingers. They were notable hands&mdash;shapely, supple,
+strong as steel, the thin-skinned fingertips as delicate and sensitive
+of touch as the antenn&aelig; he was used to handling. They <a name="Page_355"></a>were even more
+capable than of old, because of the exquisite work they had been
+trained to accomplish, work to which only the most skilled lapidary's
+is comparable. Apparently satisfied, he drew the bundle toward him.
+Before he opened it he lifted those cool, blue, and ironic eyes to
+mine; and I am sure I was by far the paler and more shaken of the two.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They were in the crook of St. Stanislaus' arm.&quot; I tried to keep my
+voice steady. &quot;I was praying&mdash;when you were gone.&quot; Somehow, I did not
+find it easy to explain to him. &quot;And ... I remembered.&nbsp;... And I
+brought them with me ... so in case you also ... remembered<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span> I could
+go no further. I broke into a sort of groaning cry: &quot;Oh, John, John!
+My son, my son!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Steady!&quot; said he. &quot;Of course you remembered, parson. It's the only
+way. Didn't I tell her there's always a way out? Well, here it is!&quot;
+His funny, twisted smile came to his lips; it twisted the heart in my
+breast. No thought of himself, of what this thing might mean to him,
+seemed to cross his mind.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I prayed,&quot; said I, almost sobbing, &quot;I prayed. And, John, there stood
+St. Stanislaus<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span> I stopped again, choking.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded, understandingly. He was methodically spreading out the not
+unbeautiful instruments. And as he picked them up one by one, handling
+them with his strong and expert fingers and testing each with a
+hawk-eyed scrutiny, a most curious and subtle change stole over the
+Butterfly Man.</p>
+
+<p>I felt as if I were witnessing the evocation of something superhuman.
+Horrified and fascinated, I saw <a name="Page_356"></a>what might be called the apotheosis
+of Slippy McGee, so far above him was it, come back and subtly and
+awfully blend with my scientist. It was as if two strong and powerful
+individualities had deliberately joined forces to forge a more vital
+being than either, since the training, knowledge, skill and intellect
+of both would be his to command. If such a man as <i>this</i> ever stepped
+over the deadline he would not be merely &quot;the slickest cracksman in
+America&quot;; he would be one of the master criminals of the earth. I
+fancy he must have felt this intoxicating new access of power, for
+there emanated from him something of a fierce and exalted delight. A
+potentiality, as yet neither good nor evil, he suggested a spiritual
+and physical dynamo.</p>
+
+<p>He gave a tigerish purr of pleasure over the tools, handling them with
+the fingers of the artist and admiring them with the eyes of the
+connoisseur. &quot;The best I could get. All made to order. Tested blue
+steel. I never kicked at the price, and you wouldn't believe me if I
+told you what this layout cost in cold cash. But they paid. Good stuff
+always pays in the long run. It was lucky I winded the cops on that
+last job, or I'd have had to leave them. As it was, I just had time to
+grab them up before I hit the trail for the skyline. They don't need
+anything but a little rubbing&mdash;a saint's elbow must be a snug berth. I
+wish I had some juice, though.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Juice?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nitroglycerine,&quot; very gently, as to a child. &quot;It does not make very
+much noise and it saves time when you're in a hurry&mdash;as you generally
+are, in this business,&quot; he smiled at me quizzically. &quot;Not that one
+can't <a name="Page_357"></a>get along without it.&quot; The swift fingers paused for a fraction
+of a second to give a steel drill an affectionate pat. &quot;I used to know
+one of the best ever, who never used anything but a particular drill,
+a pet bit, and his ear. Somebody snitched though, so the last I heard
+of him he was doing a twenty-year stretch. Pity, too. He was an artist
+in his line, that fellow. And his taste in neckties I have never seen
+equaled.&quot; The Butterfly Man's voice, evenly pitched and pleasantly
+modulated, a cultivated voice, was quite casual.</p>
+
+<p>He gathered his tools together and replaced them in the old worn case.
+&quot;Wonder if that safe is a side-bolt?&quot; he mused. &quot;Most likely. I dare
+say it's only the average combination. A one-armed yegg could open
+most of the boxes in this town with a tin button-hook. Anyhow, it
+would have to be a new-laid lock <i>I</i> couldn't open. If he's left the
+letters in the safe we're all right&mdash;so here's hoping he has. I
+certainly don't want to go to his room unless I have to. Hunter's not
+the sort to sit on his hands, and I'm not feeling what you'd call real
+amiable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A glance at his face, with little glinting devil-lights shining far
+back in his eyes, set me to babbling:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no, no, no, no, that would never do! God forbid that you should
+go to his rooms! He must have left them in the safe! He had to leave
+them in the safe!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sure he's left them in the safe: why shouldn't he?&quot; he made light of
+my palpable fears. Slipping into his gray overcoat, he pulled on his
+felt hat, thrust his hands into his wellworn dogskin gloves, and
+picked up the package. Nobody in the world ever looked less like a
+criminal than this brown-faced, keen-eyed man with his <a name="Page_358"></a>pleasant
+bearing. Why, this was John Flint, the kindly bug-hunter all Appleboro
+loved, &quot;that good and kind and Christian man, our brother John Flint,
+sometimes known as the Butterfly Man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, don't you worry any at all, parson,&quot; he was saying. &quot;There's
+nothing to be afraid of. I'll take care of myself, and I'll get those
+letters if they're in existence. I've got to get them. What else was I
+born for, I'd like to know?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The question caught me like a lash across the face.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You were born,&quot; I said violently, &quot;to win an honored name, to do a
+work of inestimable value. And you are deliberately and quixotically
+risking it, and I allow you to risk it, because a girl's happiness
+hangs in the balance! If you are detected it means your own ruin, for
+you could never explain away those tools. Yes! You are facing possible
+ruin and disgrace. You might have to give up your work for years&mdash;have
+you considered that? Oh, John Flint, stop a moment, and reflect! There
+is nothing in this for you, John, nothing but danger. No, there's
+nothing in it for you, except<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>He held up his hand, with a gesture of dignity and reproach.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;&mdash;except that I get my big chance to step in and save the girl I
+happen to love, from persecution and wretchedness, if not worse,&quot; said
+he simply. &quot;If I can do that, what the devil does it matter what
+happens to <i>me</i>? You talk about name and career! Man, man, what could
+anything be worth to me if I had to know she was unhappy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The tides of emotion rushed over him and flooded his face into a
+shining-eyed passion nakedly unashamed and <a name="Page_359"></a>beautiful. And I had
+thought him casual, carelessly accepting a risk!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Parson,&quot; he wondered, &quot;didn't you <i>know</i>? No, I suppose it wouldn't
+occur to anybody that a man of my sort should love a girl of hers. But
+I do. I think I did the first time I ever laid eyes on her, and she a
+girl-kid in a red jacket, with curls about her shoulders and a face
+like a little new rose in the morning. Remember her eyes, parson, how
+blue they were? And how she looked at me, so friendly&mdash;<i>me</i>, mind you,
+as I was! And she handed me a Catocala moth, and she gave me Kerry.
+'You're such a good man, Mr. Flint!' says she, and by God, she meant
+it! Little Mary Virginia! And she got fast hold of something in me
+that was never anybody's but hers, that couldn't ever belong to
+anybody but her, no, not if I lived for a thousand years and had the
+pick of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It wasn't until she came back, though, that I knew I belonged to her
+who could never belong to me. If I was dead at one end of the world
+and she dead at the other, we couldn't be any farther apart than life
+has put us two who can see and speak to each other every day!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet&mdash;&quot; he looked at me now and laughed boyishly, &quot;and yet it
+isn't for Mayne, that she loves, it isn't for you, nor Eustis, nor any
+man but me alone to help her, by being just what I am and what I have
+been! Risks? Fail her? <i>I?</i> I couldn't fail her. I'll get those
+letters for her to-night, if Hunter has hidden them in the beam of his
+eye!&quot; He turned to me with a sudden white glare of ferocity that
+appalled me. &quot;I could kill him with my hands,&quot; said he, with a quiet
+cold deadliness to chill one's marrow, &quot;and Inglesby after him, for
+<a name="Page_360"></a>what they've made her endure! When I think of to-night&mdash;that brute
+daring to touch <i>her</i> with his swine's mouth&mdash;I&mdash;I<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>His face was convulsed; but after a moment's fierce struggle the
+disciplined spirit conquered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, there's been enough trouble for her without that, so they're safe
+from me, the both of them. I wouldn't do anything to imperil her
+happiness to save my own life. She was born to be happy&mdash;and she's
+going to have her chance. <i>I'll</i> see to that, Mary Virginia!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The man seemed to grow, to expand, to tower giant-like before me. Next
+to the white heat of this lava-flow of pure feeling, all other loves
+lavished upon Mary Virginia during her fortunate life seemed dwarfed
+and petty. Beside it Inglesby's furious desire shrunk into a loathsome
+thing, small and crawling; and my own affection was only an old
+priest's; and even the strong and faithful love of Laurence appeared
+pale and boyish in the light of this majestic passion which gave all
+and in return asked only the right to serve and to save.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm; for
+love is strong as death</i> ...</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if
+a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would
+utterly be contemned</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Trying desperately to cling to such rags and tatters of common sense
+as I could lay hold upon:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is your duty to yourself,&quot; I managed to say. &quot;Yes, yes, one
+owes a great duty to oneself and one's work, John. You are risking too
+much&mdash;name, friends, honor, work, freedom. For God's sake, John, do
+not <a name="Page_361"></a>underestimate the danger. You have not had time to consider it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ho! Listen to the parson preaching self-interest!&quot; he mocked. &quot;He's a
+fine one to do that&mdash;at this hour of his life!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I tell you you endanger everything,&quot; I insisted. I might bring that
+package, but at least he shouldn't rush upon the knife unwarned.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know that&mdash;I'm no fool. And <i>I</i> tell <i>you</i> it's worth while.
+To-night makes me and my whole life worth while, the good and the bad
+of it together. Risks? I'll take all that's coming. You stay here and
+say some prayers for me, parson, if it makes you feel any better. As
+for me, I'm off.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At that I lost my every last shred of commonplace everyday sanity, and
+let myself swing without further reserve into the wild current of the
+night.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, very well!&quot; said I shrilly. &quot;You will take chances, you will run
+risks, <i>hein?</i> My friend, you do not stir out of this house this night
+without <i>me</i>!&quot; He stared, as well he might, but I folded my arms and
+stared back. Let him leave me, bent on such an errand? I to sit at
+home idly, awaiting the issue, whatever it might be?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I mean it, John Flint. I am going with you. Was it not I, then, who
+saved those tools and had them ready to your hand? Whatever happens to
+you now happens to me as well. It is quite useless for you to argue,
+to scowl, to grind the teeth, to swear like that. And it will be
+dangerous to try to trick me: I am going!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For he was protesting, violently and profanely. His profanity was so
+sincere, so earnest, so heartfelt, that it <a name="Page_362"></a>mounted into heights of
+real eloquence. Also, he did everything but knock me down and lock me
+indoors.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whatever happens to you happens to me,&quot; I repeated doggedly, and I
+was not to be moved. I had a hazy notion that somehow my being with
+him might protect him in case of any untoward happening, and minimize
+his risks.</p>
+
+<p>I ran into his bedroom and clapped his best hat on my head, leaving my
+biretta on his bed; and I put on his new dark overcoat over my
+cassock. Both the borrowed garments were too big for me, the hat
+coming down over my ears, the coat-sleeves over my hands. I being as
+thin as a peeled willow-wand, and the clothes hanging upon me as on a
+clothes-rack, I dare say I cut a sad and ludicrous figure enough.
+Flint, standing watching me with his burglarious bundle under his arm,
+gave an irrepressible chuckle and his eyes crinkled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Parson,&quot; said he solemnly, &quot;I've seen all sorts and sizes and colors
+and conditions of crooks, up and down the line, in my time and
+generation, but take it from me you're a libel and an outrage on the
+whole profession. Why, you crazy he-angel, you'd break their hearts
+just to look at you!&quot; And he grinned. At a moment like that, he
+grinned, with a sort of gay and light-hearted <i>diablerie</i>. They are a
+baffling and inexplicable folk, the Irish. I suppose God loves the
+Irish because He doesn't really know how else to take them.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It will break my own heart, and possibly my mother's and Mary
+Virginia's will break to keep it company, if anything evil happens to
+you this night,&quot; said I, severely. I was in no grinning humor, me.</p>
+
+<p>He reached over and carefully buttoned, with one <a name="Page_363"></a>hand, the too-big
+collar about my throat. For a moment, with that odd, little-boy
+gesture of his, he held on to my sleeve. He looked down at me; and his
+eyes grew wide, his face melted into a whimsical tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When you get to heaven, parson, you'll keep them all busy a hundred
+years and a day trying to cut and make a suit of sky clothes big
+enough to fit your real measure,&quot; said he, irrelevantly. &quot;You real
+thing in holy sports, come on, since you've got to!&quot; With that he blew
+out the light, and we stepped into the cold and windy night. It was
+ten minutes after three.</p>
+
+<p>Armed with bottle-belt, knapsack, and net, many a happy night had I
+gone forth with the Butterfly Man a-hunting for such as we might find
+of our chosen prey. Armed now with nothing more nor less formidable
+than the black rosary upon which my hand shut tightly, I, Armand De
+Ranc&eacute;, priest and gentleman, walked forth with Slippy McGee in those
+hours when deep sleep falls upon the spirit of man, for to aid and
+encourage and abet and assist and connive at, nothing more nor less
+than burglary.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Page_364"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XIX"></a><hr />
+<br />
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE I O U OF SLIPPY MCGEE</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>The wind that precedes the dawn was blowing, a freakish and impish
+wind though not a vicious one. One might imagine it animated by those
+sportive and capricious nature-spirits an old Father of the church
+used to call the monkeys of God. Every now and then a great deluge of
+piled-up clouds broke into tossing billows and went rolling and
+tumbling across the face of the sky, and in and out of these swirling
+masses the high moon played hide-and-seek and the stars showed like
+pin-points. Such street lights as we have being extinguished at
+midnight, the tree-shaded sidewalks were in impenetrable shadow, the
+gardens that edged them were debatable ground, full of grotesque
+silhouettes, backgrounded by black bulks of silent houses all
+profoundly asleep. As for us, we also were shadows, whose feet were
+soundless on the sandy sidewalks. We moved in the dark like travelers
+in the City of Dreadful Night.</p>
+
+<p>And so we came at last to the red-brick bank, approaching it by the
+long stretch of the McCall garden which adjoins it. For years there
+have been battered &quot;For Sale&quot; signs tacked onto its trees and fences,
+but no one ever came nearer purchasing the McCall property than asking
+the price. Folks say the McCalls believe that Appleboro is going to
+rival New York some <a name="Page_365"></a>of these days, and are holding their garden for
+sky-scraper sites.</p>
+
+<p>I was very grateful to the McCall estimate of Appleboro's future, for
+the long stretch shadowed by their overgrown shrubbery brought us to
+the door leading to the upstair offices, without any possible danger
+of detection.</p>
+
+<p>The bank had been a stately old home before business seized upon it,
+tore out its whole lower floors, and converted it into a strong and
+commodious bank. It is the one building in all Appleboro that keeps a
+light burning all night, a proceeding some citizens regard as
+unnecessary and extravagant; for is not Old Man Jackson there employed
+as night watchman? Old Man Jackson lost a finger and a piece of an ear
+before Appomattox, and the surrender deprived him of all opportunity
+to repay in kind. It was his cherished hope that &quot;some smartybus
+crooks 'd try to git in my bank some uh these hyuh nights&mdash;an' I
+cert'nly hope to God they'll be Yankees, that's all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Somehow, they hadn't tried. Perhaps they had heard of Old Man
+Jackson's watchful waiting and knew he wasn't at all too proud to
+fight. His quarters was a small room in the rear of the building,
+which he shared with a huge gray tomcat named Mosby. With those two on
+guard, Appleboro knew its bank was as impregnable as Gibraltar. But as
+nobody could possibly gain entrance to the vaults from above, the
+upper portion of the building, given over to offices, was of course
+quite unguarded.</p>
+
+<p>One reached these upper offices by a long walled passageway to the
+left, where the sidewall of the bank <a name="Page_366"></a>adjoins the McCall garden. The
+door leading to this stairway is not flush with the street, but is set
+back some feet; this forms a small alcove, which the light flickering
+through the bank's barred windows does not quite reach.</p>
+
+<p>John Flint stepped into this small cavern and I after him. As if by
+magic the locked door opened, and we moved noiselessly up the narrow
+stairs with tin signs tacked on them. At the head of the flight we
+paused while the flashlight gave us our bearings. Here a short passage
+opens into the wide central hall. Inglesby's offices are to the left,
+with the windows opening upon the tangled wilderness of the McCall
+place.</p>
+
+<p>Right in front of us half a dozen sets of false teeth, arranged in a
+horrid circle around a cigar-box full of extracted molars such as made
+one cringe, grinned bitingly out of a glass case before the dentist's
+office door. The effect was of a lipless and ghastly laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Before the next door a fatuously smiling pink-and-white bust simpered
+out of the Beauty Parlor's display-case, a bust elaborately coiffured
+with pounds of yellow hair in which glittered rhinestone buckles. Hair
+of every sort and shade and length was clustered about her, as if she
+were the presiding genius of some barbarian scalping-cult. Seen at
+that hour, in the pale luster of the flashlight, this sorry plunder of
+lost teeth and dead hair made upon one a melancholy impression,
+disparaging to humanity. I had scant time to moralize on hair and
+teeth, however, for Flint was stopping before a door the neat brass
+plate of which bore upon it:</p>
+
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;"><i>Mr. Inglesby</i>.</span><br />
+
+<p><a name="Page_367"></a>Mr. Inglesby had a desk downstairs in the bank, in the little pompous
+room marked &quot;President's Office,&quot; where at stated hours and times he
+presided grandly; just as he had a big bare office at the mills, where
+he was rather easy of access, willing to receive any one who might
+chance to catch him in. But these rooms we were entering without
+permission were the sanctum sanctorum, the center of that wide web
+whose filaments embraced and ensnared the state. It would be about as
+easy to stroll casually into the Vatican for an informal chat with the
+Holy Father, to walk unannounced into the presence of the Dalai Lama,
+or to drop in neighborly on the Tsar of all the Russias, as to
+penetrate unasked into these offices during the day.</p>
+
+<p>We stepped upon the velvet square of carpet covering the floor of what
+must have once been a very handsome guest chamber and was now a very
+handsome private office. One had to respect the simple and solid
+magnificence of the mahogany furnishings, the leather-covered chairs,
+the big purposeful desk. Above the old-fashioned marble mantel hung a
+life-sized portrait in oils of Inglesby himself. The artist had done
+his sitter stern justice&mdash;one might call the result retribution; and
+one wondered if Inglesby realized how immensely revealing it was.
+There he sat, solid, successful, informed with a sort of brutal
+egotism that never gives quarter. In despite of a malevolent
+determination to look pleasant, his smile was so much more of a threat
+than a promise that one could wish for his own sake he had scowled
+instead. He is a throaty man, is Inglesby; and this, with an
+uncompromising squareness of forehead, a <a name="Page_368"></a>stiffness of hair, and a
+hard hint of white in the eyes, lent him a lowering likeness to an
+unpedigreed bull.</p>
+
+<p>John Flint cast upon this charming likeness one brief and pregnant
+glance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Regular old Durham shorthorn, isn't he?&quot; he commented in a low voice.
+&quot;Wants to charge right out of his frame and trample. Take a look at
+that nose, parson&mdash;like a double-barreled shotgun, for all the world!
+Beautiful brute, Inglesby. Makes you think of that minotaur sideshow
+they used to put over on the Greeks.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In view of Laurence and of Mary Virginia, I saw the resemblance.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hunter's office was less formal than Mr. Inglesby's, and furnished
+with an exact and critical taste alien to Appleboro, where many a
+worthy citizen's office trappings consist of an alpaca coat, a chair
+and a pine table, three or four fly-specked calendars and shabby
+ledgers, and a box of sawdust. To these may sometimes be added a pot
+of paste with a dead cockroach in it, or a hound dog either scratching
+fleas or snapping at flies.</p>
+
+<p>Here the square of carpet was brown as fallen pine-needles in October,
+the walls were a soft tan, the ceiling and woodwork ivory-toned. One
+saw between the windows a bookcase filled with handsomely bound books,
+and on top of it a few pieces of such old china as would enrapture my
+mother. The white marble mantel held one or two signed photographs in
+silver frames, a pair of old candlesticks of quaint and pleasing
+design, and a dull red pottery vase full of Japanese quince. There
+were a few good pictures on the walls&mdash;a gay impudent Detaille Lancer
+whose hardy face of a fighting <a name="Page_369"></a>Frenchman warmed one's heart; some
+sketches signed with notable American names; and above the mantel a
+female form clothed only in the ambient air, her long hair swept back
+from her shoulders, and a pearl-colored dove alighting upon her
+outstretched finger.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose one might call the whole room beautiful, for even the desk
+was of that perfection of simplicity whose cost is as rubies. It was
+not, however, a womanish room; there was no slightest hint of
+femininity in its uncluttered, sane, forceful orderliness. It was
+rather like Hunter himself&mdash;polished, perfect, with a note of finality
+and of fitness upon it like a hall-mark. Nothing out of keeping,
+nothing overdone. Even the red petal fallen from the pottery vase on
+the white marble mantel was a last note of perfection.</p>
+
+<p>Flint glanced about him with the falcon-glance that nothing escapes.
+For a moment the light stayed upon the nude figure over the
+mantel&mdash;the one real nude in all Appleboro, which cherishes family
+portraits of rakehelly old colonials in wigs, chokers, and
+tight-fitting smalls, and lolloping ladies with very low necks and
+sixteen petticoats, but where scandalized church-goers have been known
+to truss up a little plaster copy of the inane Greek Slave in a
+pocket-handkerchief, by way of needful drapery.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What I want to know is, <i>why</i> a lady should have to strip to the buff
+just to play with a pigeon?&quot; breathed John Flint, and his tone was
+captious.</p>
+
+<p>It did not strike me as being to the last degree whimsical,
+improbable, altogether absurd, that such a man should pause at such a
+time to comment upon art as he thinks it isn't. On the contrary it was
+a consistent <a name="Page_370"></a>and coherent feature of that astounding nightmare in
+which we figured. The absurd and the impossible always happen in
+dreams. I am sure that if the dove on the woman's finger had opened
+its painted bill and spoken, say about the binomial theorem, or the
+Effect of Too Much Culture upon Women's Clubs, I should have listened
+with equal gravity and the same abysmal absence of surprise. I
+pattered platitudinously:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The greatest of the Greeks considered the body divine in itself, my
+son, and so their noblest art was nude. Some moderns have thought
+there is no real art that is not nude. Truth itself is naked.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aha!&quot; said my son, darkly. &quot;I see! You take off your pants when you
+go out to feed your chickens, say, and you're not bughouse. You're
+art. Well, if Truth is naked, thank God the rest of us are liars!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What I have here set down was but the matter of a moment. Flint
+brushed it aside like a cobweb and set briskly about his real
+business. Over in the recess next to the fireplace was the safe, and
+before this he knelt.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hold the light!&quot; he ordered in a curt whisper. &quot;There&mdash;like that.
+Steady now.&quot; My hand closed as well upon the rosary I carried, and I
+clung to the beads as the shipwrecked cling to a spar. The familiar
+feel of them comforted me.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know to this day the make of that safe, nor its actual
+strength, and I have always avoided questioning John Flint about it. I
+do know it seemed incredibly strong, big, heavy, ungetatable. There
+was a dark-colored linen cover on top of it, embroidered with yellow
+marguerites and their stiff green leaves. And there was a brass
+fern-jar with claw feet, and rings on the sides <a name="Page_371"></a>that somehow made me
+think of fetters upon men's wrists.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A little lower&mdash;to the left. So!&quot; he ordered, and with steady fingers
+I obeyed. He stood out sharply in the clear oval&mdash;the &quot;cleverest crook
+in all America&quot; at work again, absorbed in his task, expert, a
+mind-force pitting itself against inanimate opposition. He was
+smiling.</p>
+
+<p>The tools lay beside him and quite by instinct his hand reached out
+for anything it needed. I think he could have done his work
+blindfolded. Once I saw him lay his ear against the door, and I
+thought I heard a faint click. A gnawing rat might have made something
+like the noise of the drill biting its way. With this exception an
+appalling silence hung over the room. I could hardly breathe in it. I
+gripped the rosary and told it, bead after bead.</p>
+
+<p><i>&quot;Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></i></p>
+
+<p>There are moments when time loses its power and ceases to be; before
+our hour we seem to have stepped out of it and into eternity, in which
+time does not exist, and wherein there can be no relation of time
+between events. They stand still, or they stretch to indefinite and
+incredible lengths&mdash;all, all outside of time, which has no power upon
+them. So it was now. Every fraction of every second of every minute
+lengthened into centuries, eternities passed between minutes. The
+hashish-eater knows something of this terror of time, and I seemed to
+have eaten hashish that night.</p>
+
+<p>I could still see him crouching before the safe; and all the while the
+eternities stretched and stretched on <a name="Page_372"></a>either side of us, infinities I
+could only partly bridge over with Hailmarys and Ourfathers.</p>
+
+<p><i>&quot;And lead us not into temptation ... but deliver us from evil&nbsp;...&quot;</i></p>
+
+<p>Although I watched him attentively, being indeed unable to tear my
+eyes away from him, and although I held the light for him with such a
+steady hand, I really do not know what he did, nor how he forced that
+safe. I understand it took him a fraction over fourteen minutes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here she comes!&quot; he breathed, and the heavy door was open, revealing
+the usual interior, with ledgers, and a fairsized steel money-vault,
+which also came open a moment later. Flint glanced over the contents,
+and singled out from other papers two packages of letters held
+together by stout elastic bands, and with pencil notations on the
+corner of each envelope, showing the dates. He ran over both, held up
+the smaller of the two, and I saw, with a grasp of inexpressible
+relief, the handwriting of Mary Virginia.</p>
+
+<p>He locked the vault, shut the heavy door of the rifled safe, and began
+to gather his tools together.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have forgotten to put the other packages back,&quot; I reminded him. I
+was in a raging fever of impatience to be gone, to fly with the
+priceless packet in my hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, I'm not forgetting. I saw a couple of the names on the envelopes
+and I rather think these letters will be a whole heap interesting to
+look over,&quot; said he, imperturbably. &quot;It's a hunch, parson, and I've
+gotten in the habit of paying attention to hunches. I'll risk it on
+these, anyhow. They're in suspicious company and <a name="Page_373"></a>I'd like to know
+why.&quot; And he thrust the package into the crook of his arm, along with
+the tools.</p>
+
+<p>The light was carefully flashed over every inch of the space we had
+traversed, to make sure that no slightest trace of our presence was
+left. As we walked through Inglesby's office John Flint ironically
+saluted the life-like portrait:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You've had a ring twisted in your nose for once, old sport!&quot; said he,
+and led me into the dark hall. We moved and the same exquisite caution
+we had exercised upon entering, for we couldn't afford to have Dan
+Jackson's keen old ears detect footfalls overhead at that hour of the
+morning. Now we were at the foot of the long stairs, and Flint had
+soundlessly opened and closed the last door between us and freedom.
+And now we were once more in the open air, under the blessed shadow of
+the McCall trees, and walking close to their old weather-beaten fence.
+The light was still shining in the bank, and I knew that that
+redoubtable old rebel of a watchman was peacefully sleeping with his
+gray guerilla of a marauding cat beside him. He could afford to sleep
+in peace. He had not failed in his trust, for the intruders had no
+designs upon the bank's gold. Questioned, he could stoutly swear that
+nobody had entered the building. In proof, were not all doors locked?
+Who should break into a man's office and rob his safe just to get a
+package of love-letters&mdash;if Inglesby made complaint?</p>
+
+<p>I remember we stood leaning against the McCall fence for a few
+minutes, for my strength had of a sudden failed, my head spun like a
+top, and my legs wavered under me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_374"></a>Buck up!&quot; said Flint's voice in my ear. &quot;It's all over, and the
+baby's named for his Poppa!&quot; His arm went about me, an arm like a
+steel bar. Half led, half carried, I went staggering on beside him
+like a drunken man, clutching a rosary and a packet of love-letters.</p>
+
+<p>The streets were still dark and deserted, the whole town slept. But
+over in the east, when one glimpsed the skies above the trees, a
+nebulous gray was stealing upon the darkness; and the morning star
+blazed magnificently, in a space that seemed to have been cleared for
+it. Somewhere, far off, an ambitious rooster crowed to make the sun
+rise.</p>
+
+<p>It took us a long time to reach home. It was all of a quarter past
+four when we turned into the Parish House gate, cut across the garden,
+and reached Flint's rooms. Faint, trembling in every limb, I fell into
+a chair, and through a mist saw him kneel and blow upon the coals of
+the expiring fire, upon which he dropped a lightwood knot. A ruddy
+glow went dancing up the chimney. Then he was beside me again. Very
+gently he removed hat and overcoat. And then I was sitting peacefully
+in the Morris chair, in my old cassock, and with my own old biretta on
+my head; and there was no longer that thin buzzing, shrill and
+torturing as a mosquito's, singing in my ears. At my knee stood Kerry,
+with his beautiful hazel eyes full of a grave concern; and beside him,
+calm and kind and matter-of-fact, the Butterfly Man himself stood
+watching me with an equal regard. I rubbed my forehead. The incredible
+had happened, and like all incredible things it had been almost
+ridiculously simple and easy of accomplishment. Here we were, we two,
+priest and naturalist, in our own workroom, with <a name="Page_375"></a>an old dog wagging
+his tail beside us. Could anything be more commonplace? The last trace
+of nightmare vanished, as smoke dispelled by the wind. If Mary
+Virginia's letters had not been within reach of my hand I would have
+sworn I was just awake out of a dream of that past hour.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She has escaped from them, they cannot touch her, she is free!&quot; I
+exulted. &quot;John, John, you have saved our girl! No matter what they do
+to Eustis they can't drag her into the quicksands <i>now</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But he went walking up and down, shoulders squared, face uplifted. One
+might think that after such a night he would have been humanly tired,
+but he had clean forgotten his body. His eyes shone as with a flame
+lit from inward, and I think there was on him what the Irish people
+call the <i>Aisling</i>, the waking vision. For presently he began to
+speak, as to Somebody very near him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Lord God!&quot; said the Butterfly Man, with a reverent and fierce
+joy, &quot;she's going to have her happiness now, and it wasn't holy priest
+nor fine gentleman you picked out to help her toward it&mdash;it was me,
+Slippy McGee, born in the streets and bred in the gutter, with the
+devil knows who for his daddy and a name that's none of his own! For
+that I'm Yours for keeps: <i>You've got me</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You've done all even God Almighty can do, given me more than I ever
+could have asked You for&mdash;and now it's up to me to make good&mdash;and I'll
+do it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There came to listening me something of the emotion I experienced when
+I said my first Mass&mdash;as if I had been brought so close to our Father
+that I could have put out my hand and touched Him. Ah! I had <a name="Page_376"></a>had a
+very small part to play in this man's redemption. I knew it now, and
+felt humbled and abashed, and yet grateful that even so much had been
+allowed me. Not I, but Love, had transformed a sinner and an outlaw
+into a great scientist and a greater lover. And I remembered Mary
+Virginia's childish hand putting into his the gray-winged Catocala,
+and how the little moth, raising the sad-colored wings worn to suit
+his surroundings, revealed beneath that disfiguring and disguising
+cloak the exquisite and flower-like loveliness of the underwings.</p>
+
+<p>He paused in his swinging stride, and looked down at me a bit shyly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Parson&mdash;you see how it is with me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I see. And I think she is the greater lady for it and you the finer
+gentleman,&quot; said I stoutly. &quot;It would honor her, if she were ten times
+what she is&mdash;and she is Mary Virginia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is Mary Virginia,&quot; said the Butterfly Man, &quot;and I am&mdash;what I am.
+Yet somehow I feel sure I can care for her, that I can go right on
+caring for her to the end of time, without hurt to her or sorrow to
+me.&quot; And after a pause, he added, deliberately:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I found something better than a package of letters to-night, parson.
+I found&mdash;<i>Me</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For awhile neither of us spoke. Then he said, speculatively:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Folks give all sorts of things to the church&mdash;dedicate them in
+gratitude for favors they fancy they've received, don't they? Lamps,
+and models of ships, and glass eyes and wax toes and leather hands,
+and crutches and braces, and that sort of plunder? Well, I'm moved to
+make a free-will offering myself. I'm going to give <a name="Page_377"></a>the church my
+kit, and you can take it from me the old Lady will never get her
+clamps on another set like that until Gabriel blows his trumpet in the
+morning. Parson, I want you to put those tools back where you had
+them, for I shall never touch them again. I couldn't. They&mdash;well,
+they're sort of holy from now on. They're my IOU. Will you do it for
+me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes!&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I might have known you would!&quot; said he, smiling. &quot;Just one more
+favor, parson&mdash;may I put her letters in her hands, myself?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My son, my son, who but you should do that?&quot; I pushed the package
+across the table.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Great Scott, parson, here it is striking five o'clock, and you've
+been up all night!&quot; he exclaimed, anxiously. &quot;Here&mdash;no more gassing.
+You come lie down on my bed and snooze a bit. I'll call you in plenty
+of time for mass.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I was far too spent and tired to move across the garden to the Parish
+House. I suffered myself to be put to bed like a child, and had my
+reward by falling almost immediately into a dreamless sleep, nor did I
+stir until he called me, a couple of hours later. He himself had not
+slept, but had employed the time in going through the letters open on
+his table. He pointed to them now, with a grim smile.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Parson!&quot; said he, and his eyes glittered. &quot;Do you know what we've
+stumbled upon? Dynamite! Man, anybody holding that bunch of mail could
+blow this state wide open! So much for a hunch, you see!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You mean<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>&quot;I mean I've got the cream off Inglesby's most <a name="Page_378"></a>private deals, that's
+what I mean! I mean I could send him and plenty of his pals to the
+pen. Everybody's been saying for years that there hasn't been a rotten
+deal pulled off that he didn't boss and get away with it. But nobody
+could prove it. He's had the men higher-up eating out of his
+hand&mdash;sort of you pat my head and I'll pat yours arrangement&mdash;and
+here's the proof, in black and white. Don't you understand? Here's the
+proof: these get him with the goods!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;These,&quot; he slapped a letter, &quot;would make any Grand Jury throw fits,
+make every newspaper in the state break out into headlines like a kid
+with measles, and blow the lid off things in general&mdash;if they got out.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Inglesby's going to shove Eustis under, is he? Not by a jugfull. He's
+going to play he's a patent life-preserver. He's going to <i>be</i> that
+good Samaritan he's been shamming. Talk about poetic justice&mdash;this
+will be like wearing shoes three sizes too small for him, with a
+bunion on every toe!&quot; And when I looked at him doubtfully, he laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You can't see how it's going to be managed? Didn't you ever hear of
+the grapevine telegraph? Well then, dear George receives a grapevine
+wireless bright and early to-morrow morning. A word to the wise is
+sufficient.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He will employ detectives,&quot; said I, uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>The Butterfly Man looked at me quizzically.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>With</i> an eagle eye and a walrus mustache,&quot; said he, grinning. &quot;Sure.
+But if the plainclothes nose around, are they going to sherlock the
+parish priest and the town bughunter? <i>We</i> haven't got any interest in
+Mr. Inglesby's private correspondence, have we? Suppose <a name="Page_379"></a>Miss Eustis's
+letters are returned to her, what does that prove? Why, nothing at
+all,&mdash;except that it wasn't her correspondence the fellows that
+cracked that safe were after. We should worry!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say, though, don't you wish you could see them when they stroll down
+to those beautiful offices and go for to open that nice burglar-proof
+safe with the little brass flower-pot on top of it? What a joke! Holy
+whiskered black cats, what a joke!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm afraid Mr. Inglesby's sense of humor isn't his strong point,&quot;
+said I. &quot;Not that I have any sympathy for him. I think he is getting
+only what he deserves.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Alexander the coppersmith wrought me much evil. May God requite him
+according to his works!</i>&quot; murmured the Butterfly Man, piously, and
+chuckled. &quot;Don't worry, parson&mdash;Alexander's due to fall sick with the
+pip to-day or to-morrow. What do you bet he don't get it so bad he'll
+have to pull up all his pretty plans by the roots, leave Mr. Hunter in
+charge, and go off somewhere to take mudbaths for his liver? Believe
+me, he'll need them! Why, the man won't be able to breathe easy any
+more&mdash;he'll be expecting one in the solar plexus any minute, not
+knowing any more than Adam's cat who's to hand it to him. He can't
+tell who to trust and who to suspect. If you want to know just how
+hard Alexander's going to be requited according to his works, take a
+look at these.&quot; He pointed to the letters.</p>
+
+<p>I did take a look, and I admit I was frightened. It seemed to me
+highly unsafe for plain folks like us to know such things about such
+people. I was amazed to the point of stupefaction at the corruption
+those <a name="Page_380"></a>communications betrayed, the shameless and sordid disregard of
+law and decency, the brutal and cynical indifference to public
+welfare. At sight of some of the signatures my head swam&mdash;I felt
+saddened, disillusioned, almost in despair for humanity. I suppose
+Inglesby had thought it wiser to preserve these letters&mdash;possibly for
+his own safety; but no wonder he had locked them up! I looked at the
+Butterfly Man openmouthed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You wouldn't think folks wearing such names could be that rotten,
+would you? Some of them pillars of the church, too, and married to
+good women, and the fathers of nice kids! Why, I have known crooks
+that the police of a dozen states were after, that wouldn't have been
+caught dead on jobs like some of these. Inglesby won't know it, but he
+ought to thank his stars <i>we've</i> got his letters instead of the State
+Attorney, for I shan't use them unless I have to.&nbsp;... Parson, you
+remember a bluejay breaking up a nest on me once, and what Laurence
+said when I wanted to wring the little crook's neck? That the thing
+isn't to reform the jay but to keep him from doing it again? That's
+the cue.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He gathered up the scattered letters, made a neat package of them, and
+put it in a table drawer behind a stack of note-books. And then he
+reached over and touched the other package, the letters written in
+Mary Virginia's girlish hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here's her happiness&mdash;long, long years of it ahead of her,&quot; he said
+soberly. &quot;As for you, you take back those tools, and go say mass.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Outside it was broad bright day, a new beautiful day, and the breath
+of the morning blew sweetly over the world. The Church was full of a
+clear and early light, <a name="Page_381"></a>the young pale gold of the new Spring sun.
+None of the congregation had as yet arrived. Before I went into the
+sacristy to put on my vestments, I gave back into St. Stanislaus'
+hands the IOU of Slippy McGee.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="Page_382"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_XX"></a><hr />
+<br />
+<h2>CHAPTER XX<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>BETWEEN A BUTTERFLY'S WINGS</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>There was a glamour upon it. One knew it was going to grow into one of
+those wonderful and shining days in whose enchanted hours any
+exquisite miracle might happen. I am perfectly sure that the Lord God
+walked in the garden in the cool of an April day, and that it was a
+morning in spring when the angels visited Abraham, sitting watchful in
+the door of his tent.</p>
+
+<p>There was in the air itself something long-missed and come back, a
+heady and heart-moving delight, a promise, a thrill, a whisper of
+&quot;<i>April! April!</i>&quot; that the Green Things and the hosts of the Little
+People had heard overnight. In the dark the sleeping souls of the
+golden butterflies had dreamed it, known it was a true Word, and now
+they were out, &quot;Little flames of God&quot; dancing in the Sunday sunlight.
+The Red Gulf Fritillary had heard it, and here she was, all in her
+fine fulvous frock besmocked with black velvet, and her farthingale
+spangled with silver. And the gallant Red Admiral, the brave beautiful
+Red Admiral that had dared unfriendlier gales, trimmed his painted
+sails to a wind that was the breath of spring.</p>
+
+<p>Over by the gate the spirea had ventured into showering sprays
+exhaling a shy and fugitive fragrance, and <a name="Page_383"></a>what had been a blur of
+gray cables strung upon the oaks had begun to bud with emerald and
+blossom with amethyst&mdash;the wisteria was a-borning. And one knew there
+was Cherokee rose to follow, that the dogwood was in white, and the
+year's new mintage of gold dandelions was being coined in the fresh
+grass.</p>
+
+<p>There wasn't a bird that wasn't caroling <i>April!</i> at the top of his
+voice from the full of his heart; for wasn't the world alive again,
+wasn't it love-time and nest-time, wasn't it Spring?</p>
+
+<p>Even to the tired faces of my work-folks that shining morning lent a
+light that was hope. Without knowing it, they felt themselves a vital
+part of the reborn world, sharers in its joy because they were the
+children of the common lot, the common people for whom the world is,
+and without whom no world could be. Classes, creeds, nations, gods,
+all these pass and are gone; God, and the common people, and the
+spring remain.</p>
+
+<p>When I was young I liked as well as another to dwell overmuch upon the
+sinfulness of sin, the sorrow of sorrow, the despair of death. Now
+that these three terrible teachers have taught me a truer wisdom and a
+larger faith, I like better to turn to the glory of hope, the wisdom
+of love, and the simple truth that death is just a passing phase of
+life. So I sent my workers home that morning rejoicing with the truth,
+and was all the happier and hopefuller myself because of it.</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards, when Cl&eacute;lie was giving me my coffee and rolls, the
+Butterfly Man came in to breakfast with me, a huge roll of those New
+York newspapers which contain what are mistakenly known as Comic
+Supplements tucked under his arm.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_384"></a>He said he bought them because they &quot;tasted like New York&quot; which they
+do not. Just as Major Cartwright explains his purchase of them by the
+shameless assertion that it just tickles him to death &quot;to see what
+Godforsaken idjits those Yankees can make of themselves when they
+half-way try. Why, suh, one glance at their Sunday newspapers ought to
+prove to any right thinkin' man that it's safer an' saner to die in
+South Carolina than to live in New York!&quot;</p>
+
+<p><i>I</i> think the Butterfly Man and Major Cartwright buy those papers
+because they think they are <i>funny</i>! After they have read and
+sniggered, they donate them to Cl&eacute;lie and Daddy January. And presently
+Cl&eacute;lie distributes them to a waiting colored countryside, which
+wallpapers its houses with them. I have had to counsel the erring and
+bolster the faith of the backsliding under the goggle eyes of inhuman
+creations whose unholy capers have made futile many a prayer. And yet
+the Butterfly Man likes them! Is it not to wonder?</p>
+
+<p>He laid them tenderly upon the table now, and smiled slyly to see me
+eye them askance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you know,&quot; said he, over his coffee, &quot;that Laurence came in this
+morning on the six-o'clock? January had him out in the garden showing
+off the judge's new patent hives, and I stopped on my way to church
+and shook hands over the fence. It was all I could do to keep from
+shouting that all's right with the world, and all he had to do was to
+be glad. I didn't know how much I cared for that boy until this
+morning. Parson, it's a&mdash;a terrible thing to love people, when you
+come to think about it, isn't it? I told him you were honing to see
+him: and that we'd be looking for him along about <a name="Page_385"></a>eleven. And I
+intimated that if he didn't show up then I'd go after him with a gun.
+He said he'd be here on the stroke.&quot; After a moment, he added gently:
+&quot;I figured they'd be here by then&mdash;Madame and Mary Virginia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What! You have induced Laurence to come while she is here&mdash;without
+giving him any intimation that he is likely to meet her?&quot; I said,
+aghast. &quot;You are a bold man, John Flint!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The study windows were open and the sweet wind and the warm sun poured
+in unchecked. The stir of bees, the scent of honey-locust just
+opening, drifted in, and the slow solemn clangor of church bells, and
+lilts and flutings and calls and whistlings from the tree-tops. We
+could see passing groups of our neighbors, fathers and mothers
+shepherding little flocks of children in their Sunday best, trotting
+along with demure Sabbath faces on their way to church. The Butterfly
+Man looked out, waved gaily to the passing children, who waved back a
+joyous response, nodded to their smiling parents, followed the flight
+of a tanager's sober spouse, and sniffed the air luxuriously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, somebody's got to stage-manage, parson,&quot; he said at last, lightly
+enough, but with a hint of tiredness in his eyes. &quot;And then vanish
+behind the scenes, leaving the hero and heroine in the middle of the
+spotlight, with the orchestra tuning up 'The Voice that Breathed o'er
+Eden,'&quot; he finished, without a trace of bitterness. &quot;So I sent Madame
+a note by a little nigger newsie.&quot; His eyes crinkled, and he quoted
+the favorite aphorism of the colored people, when they seem to
+exercise a meticulous care: &quot;Brer Rabbit say, 'I trus' no mistake.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<a name="Page_386"></a>You are a bold man,&quot; said I again, with a respect that made him
+laugh. Then we went over to his rooms to wait, and while we waited I
+tried to read a chapter of a book I was anxious to finish, but
+couldn't, my eyes being tempted by the greener and fresher page
+opening before them. Flint smoked a virulent pipe and read his papers.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he laid his finger upon a paragraph and handed me the
+paper.&nbsp;... And I read where one &quot;Spike&quot; Frazer had been shot to death
+in a hand-to-hand fight with the police who were raiding a dive
+suspected of being the rendezvous of drug-fiends. Long wanted and at
+last cornered, Frazer had fought tigerishly and died in his tracks,
+preferring death to capture. A sly and secretive creature, he had had
+a checkered career in the depths. It was his one boast that more than
+anybody else he had known and been a sort of proteg&eacute; of the once
+notorious Slippy McGee, that King of Crooks whose body had been found
+in the East River some years since, and whose daring and mysterious
+exploits were not yet altogether forgotten by the police or the
+underworld.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Sic transit gloria mundi!</i>&quot; said the Butterfly Man in his gentle
+voice, and looked out over the peaceful garden and the Sunday calm
+with inscrutable eyes. I returned the paper with a hand that shook. It
+seemed to me that a deep and solemn hush fell for a moment upon the
+glory of the day, while the specter of what might have been gibbered
+at us for the last time.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the heart of that hush walked two women&mdash;one little and rosy
+and white-haired, one tall and pale and beautiful with the beauty upon
+which sorrow has placed its haunting imprint. Her black hair framed
+her face as <a name="Page_387"></a>in ebony, and her blue, blue eyes were shadowed. By an
+odd coincidence she was dressed this morning just as she had been when
+the Butterfly Man first saw her&mdash;in white, and over it a scarlet
+jacket. Kerry and little Pitache rose, met them at the gate, and
+escorted them with grave politeness. The Butterfly Man hastily emptied
+his pipe and laid aside his newspapers.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your note said we were to come, that everything was all right,&quot; said
+my mother, looking up at him with bright and trustful eyes. &quot;Such a
+relief! Because I know you never say anything you don't mean, John.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, and with a wave of the hand beckoned us into the workroom.
+Madame followed him eagerly and expectantly&mdash;she knew her John Flint.
+Mary Virginia came listlessly, dragging her feet, her eyes somber in a
+smileless face. She could not so quickly make herself hope, she who
+had journeyed so far into the arid country of despair. But he, with
+something tender and proud and joyful in his looks, took her
+unresisting hand and drew her forward.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mary Virginia!&quot; I had not known how rich and deep the Butterfly Man's
+voice could be. &quot;Mary Virginia, we promised you last night that if you
+would trust us, the Padre and me, we'd find the right way out, didn't
+we? Now this is what happened: the Padre took his troubles to the
+Lord, and the Lord presently sent him back to <i>me</i>&mdash;with the beginning
+of the answer in his hand! And here's the whole answer, Mary
+Virginia.&quot; And he placed in her hand the package of letters that meant
+so much to her.</p>
+
+<p>My mother gave a little scream. &quot;Armand!&quot; she said, fearfully. &quot;She
+has told me all. <i>Mon Dieu</i>, how <a name="Page_388"></a>have you two managed this, between
+midnight and morning? My son, you are a De Ranc&eacute;: look me in the eyes
+and tell me there is nothing wrong, that there will be no ill
+consequences<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>&quot;There won't be any comebacks,&quot; said John Flint, with engaging
+confidence. &quot;As for you, Mary Virginia, you don't have to worry for
+one minute about what those fellows can do&mdash;because they can't do
+anything. They're double-crossed. Now listen: when you see Hunter, you
+are to say to him, '<i>Thank you for returning my letters</i>.' Just that
+and no more. If there's any questioning, <i>stare</i>. Stare hard. If
+there's any threatening about your father, <i>smile</i>. You can afford to
+smile. They can't touch him. But <i>how</i> those letters came into your
+hands you are never to tell, you understand? They did come and that's
+all that interests you.&quot; He began to laugh, softly. &quot;All Hunter will
+want to know is that you've received them. He's too game not to lose
+without noise, and he'll make Inglesby swallow his dose without
+squealing, too. So&mdash;you're finished and done with Mr. Hunter and Mr.
+Inglesby!&quot; His voice deepened again, as he added gently: &quot;It was just
+a bad dream, dear girl. It's gone with the night. Now it's morning,
+and you're awake.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But Mary Virginia, white as wax, stared at the letters in her hand,
+and then at me, and trembled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Trust us, my child,&quot; said I, somewhat troubled. &quot;And obey John Flint
+implicitly. Do just what he tells you to do, say just what he tells
+you to say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia looked from one to the other, thrust the package upon
+me, walked swiftly up to him, and, laying her hands upon his arms
+stared with passionate <a name="Page_389"></a>earnestness into his face: the kind, wise,
+lovable face that every child in Appleboro County adores, every woman
+trusts, every man respects. Her eyes clung to his, and he met that
+searching gaze without faltering, though it seemed to probe for the
+root of his soul. It was well for Mary Virginia that those brave eyes
+had caught something from the great faces that hung upon his walls and
+kept company and counsel with him day and night, they that conquered
+life and death and turned defeat into victory because they had first
+conquered themselves!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes!&quot; said she, with a deep sigh of relief. &quot;I trust you! Thank God
+for just how much I can believe and trust you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I think that meeting face to face that luminous and unfaltering
+regard, Mary Virginia must have divined that which had heretofore been
+hidden from her by the man's invincible modesty and reserve; and being
+most generous and of a large and loving soul herself, I think she
+realized to the uttermost the magnitude of his gift. Her name, her
+secure position, her happiness, the hopes that the coming years were
+to transform into realities&mdash;oh, I like to think that Mary Virginia
+saw all this, in one of those lightning-flashes of spiritual insight
+that reveal more than all one's slower years; I like to think she saw
+it given her freely, nobly, with joy, a glorious love-gift from the
+limping man into whose empty hand she had one day put a little gray
+underwing!</p>
+
+<p>I glanced at my mother, and saw by her most expressive face that she
+knew and understood. She had known and understood, long before any of
+us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I might offer a suggestion,&quot; I said in as matter-of-fact a voice
+as I could command, &quot;it would be, <a name="Page_390"></a>that the sooner those letters are
+destroyed, the better.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mary Virginia took them from me and dropped them on the coals
+remaining from last night's fire&mdash;the last fire of the season. They
+did not ignite quickly, though they began to turn brown, and thin
+spirals of smoke arose from them. The Butterfly Man knelt, thrust a
+handful of lightwood splinters under the pile, and touched a match
+here and there. When the resinous wood flared up, the letters blazed
+with it. They blazed and then they crumbled; they disappeared in bits
+of charred and black paper that vanished at a touch; they were gone
+while we watched, the girl kneeling upon the hearthrug with her hand
+on Flint's arm, and I with my old heart singing like a skylark in my
+breast, and my mother's mild eyes upon us all.</p>
+
+<p>Life and color and beauty flowed back into Mary Virginia's face and
+music's self sang again in her voice. She was like the day itself,
+reborn out of a dark last night. When the last bit of blackened paper
+went swirling up the chimney, and the two of them had risen, the most
+beautiful and expressive eyes under heaven looked up like blue and
+dewy flowers into the Butterfly Man's face. She was too wise and too
+tender to try to thank him in words, and never while they two lived
+would this be again referred to so much as once by either; but she
+took his hand, palm upward, gave him one deep long upward glance, and
+then bent her beautiful head and dropped into the center of his palm a
+kiss, and closed the fingers gently over it for everlasting keeping
+and remembrance. The eyes brimmed over then, and two large tears fell
+upon his hand and washed her kiss in, indelibly.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_391"></a>None of us four had the power of speech left us. Heaven knows what we
+should have done, if Laurence hadn't opened the door at that moment
+and walked in upon us. I don't think he altogether sensed the
+tenseness of the situation which his coming relieved, but he went pale
+at sight of Mary Virginia, and he would have left incontinently if my
+mother, with a joyous shriek, hadn't pounced upon him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Laurence! Why, Laurence! But we didn't expect you home until
+to-morrow night!&quot; said she, kissing him motherly. &quot;My dear, dear boy,
+how glad I am to see you! What happy wind blew you home to-day,
+Laurence?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I finished my work ahead of schedule and got away just as soon as
+I could,&quot; Laurence briefly and modestly explained thus that he had won
+his case. He edged toward the door, avoiding Mary Virginia's eyes. He
+had bowed to her with formal politeness. He wondered at the usually
+tactful Madame's open effort to detain him. It was a little too much
+to expect of him!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I just ran in to see how you all were,&quot; he tried to be very casual.
+&quot;See you later, Padre. 'By, p'tite Madame. 'By, Flint.&quot; He bowed again
+to Mary Virginia, whose color had altogether left her, and who stood
+there most palpably nervous and distressed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Laurence!&quot; The Butterfly Man spoke abruptly. &quot;Laurence, if a chap was
+dying of thirst and the water of life was offered him, he'd be
+considerable of a fool to turn his head aside and refuse to see it,
+wouldn't he?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Laurence paused. Something in the Butterfly Man's face, something in
+mine and Madame's, but, above all, <a name="Page_392"></a>something in Mary Virginia's,
+arrested him. He stood wavering, and my mother released his arm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I take it,&quot; said John Flint, boldly plunging to the very heart of the
+matter, &quot;I take it, Laurence, that you still care a very great deal
+for this dear girl of ours?&quot; And now he had taken her hand in his and
+held it comfortingly. &quot;More, say, than you could ever care for anybody
+else, if you lived to rival Methusaleh? So much, Laurence, that not to
+be able to believe she cares the same way for you takes the core out
+of life?&quot; His manner was simple and direct, and so kind that one could
+only answer him in a like spirit. Besides, Laurence loved the
+Butterfly Man even as Jonathan loved David.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said the boy honestly, &quot;I still care for her&mdash;like that. I
+always did. I always will. She knows.&quot; But his voice was toneless.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course you do, kid brother,&quot; said Flint affectionately. &quot;Don't you
+suppose I know? But it's just as well for you to say it out loud every
+now and then. Fresh air is good for everything, particularly feelings.
+Keeps 'em fresh and healthy. Now, Mary Virginia, you feel just the
+same way about Laurence, don't you?&quot; And he added: &quot;Don't be ashamed
+to tell the most beautiful truth in the world, my dear. Well?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She went red and white. She looked entreatingly into the Butterfly
+Man's face. She didn't exactly see why he should drive her thus, but
+she caught courage from his. One saw how wise Flint had been to have
+snared Laurence here just now. One moment she hesitated. Then:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes!&quot; said she, and her head went up proudly. &quot;Yes, oh, yes, I
+care&mdash;like that. Only much, much more! <a name="Page_393"></a>I shall always care like that,
+although he probably won't believe me now when I say so. And I can't
+blame him for doubting me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But it just happens that I have never been able to make myself doubt
+you,&quot; said Laurence gravely. &quot;Why, Mary Virginia, you are <i>you</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then, Laurence,&quot; said the Butterfly Man, quickly, &quot;will you take your
+old friends' word for it&mdash;mine, Madame's, the Padre's&mdash;that you were
+most divinely right to go on believing in her and loving her, because
+she never for one moment ceased to be worthy of faith and affection?
+No, not for one moment! She couldn't, you know. She's Mary Virginia!
+And will you promise to listen with all your patience to what she may
+think best to tell you presently&mdash;and then forget it? You're big
+enough to do that! She's been in sore straits, and she needs all the
+love you have, to help make up to her. Can she be sure of it,
+Laurence?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Laurence flushed. He looked at his old friend with reproach in his
+fine brown eyes. &quot;You have known me all my life, all of you,&quot; said he,
+stiffly. &quot;Have I ever given any of you any reason to doubt me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, and we don't. Not one of us. But it's good for your soul to say
+things out loud,&quot; said Flint comfortably. &quot;And now you've said it,
+don't you think you two had better go on over to the Parish House
+parlor, which is a nice quiet place, and talk this whole business over
+and out&mdash;together?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Laurence looked at Mary Virginia and what he saw electrified him.
+Boyishness flooded him, youth danced in his eyes, beauty was upon him,
+like sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mary Virginia!&quot; said the boy lover to the girl <a name="Page_394"></a>sweetheart, &quot;is it
+really so? I was really right to believe all along that you&mdash;care?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Laurence, Laurence!&quot; she was half-crying. &quot;Oh, Laurence, are you sure
+<i>you</i> care&mdash;yet? You are sure, Laurence? You are <i>sure</i>? Because&mdash;I&mdash;I
+don't think I could stand things now if&mdash;if I were mistaken<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>I don't know whether the boy ran to the girl at that, or the girl to
+the boy. I rather think they ran to each other because, in another
+moment, perfectly regardless of us, they were clinging to each other,
+and my mother was walking around them and crying heartily and
+shamelessly, and enjoying herself immensely. Mary Virginia began to
+stammer:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Laurence, if you only knew&mdash;Laurence, if it wasn't for John
+Flint&mdash;and the Padre<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span> The two of them had the two of us, each by an
+arm; and the Butterfly Man was brick-red and furiously embarrassed, he
+having a holy horror of being held up and thanked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I did what I did,&quot; said he, uncomfortably. &quot;But,&quot;&mdash;he brightened
+visibly<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span>if you <i>will</i> have the truth, have it. If it wasn't for this
+blessed brick of a parson I'd never have been in a position to do
+anything for anybody. Don't you forget that!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What ridiculous nonsense the man talks!&quot; said I, exasperated by this
+shameless casuistry. &quot;John Flint raves. As for me<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>&quot;As for you,&quot; said he with deep reproach, &quot;you ought to know better
+than to tell such a thumping lie at this time of your life. I'm
+ashamed of you, parson! Why, you know good and well<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span></p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, John Flint, you<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span> I began, aghast.</p>
+
+<p>My mother began to laugh. &quot;For heaven's sake, <a name="Page_395"></a>thank them both and
+have done with it!&quot; said she, a bit hysterically. &quot;God alone knows how
+they managed, but this thing lies between them, the two great geese.
+Did one ever hear the like?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Madame is right, as always,&quot; said Laurence gravely. &quot;Remember, I
+don't know anything yet, except that somehow you've brought Mary
+Virginia and me back to each other. That's enough for <i>me</i>. I haven't
+got any questions to ask.&quot; His voice faltered, and he gripped us by
+the hand in turn, with a force that made me, for one, wince and
+cringe. &quot;And Padre&mdash;Bughunter, you both know that I<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span> he couldn't
+finish.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That we<span style="white-space: nowrap;">&mdash;&quot;</span> choked Mary Virginia.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sure we know,&quot; said the Butterfly Man hastily. &quot;Don't you know you're
+our kids and we've got to know?&quot; He began to edge them towards the
+door. I think his courage was getting a little raw about the corners.
+&quot;Yes, you two go on over to the Parish House parlor, where you'll have
+a chance to talk without being interrupted&mdash;Madame will see to
+that&mdash;and don't you show your noses outside of that room until
+everything's settled the one and only way everything ought to be
+settled.&quot; His eyes twinkled as he manoeuvered them outside, and then
+stood in the doorway to watch them walk away&mdash;beautiful, youthful,
+radiantly happy, and very close together, the girl's head just on the
+level of the boy's shoulder. He was still faintly smiling when he came
+back to us; if there was pain behind that smile, he concealed it. My
+mother ran to him, impulsively.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;John Flint!&quot; said she, profoundly moved and earnest. &quot;John Flint, the
+good God never gave me but one child, though I prayed for more. Often
+and often <a name="Page_396"></a>have I envied her silly mother Mary Virginia. But now.
+John, I know that if I could have had another child that, after
+Armand, I'd love best and respect most and be proudest of in this
+world, it would be <i>you</i>. Yes, <i>you</i>. John Flint, you are the best
+man, and the bravest and truest and most unselfish, and the finest
+gentleman, outside of my husband and my son, that I have ever known.
+What makes it all the more wonderful is that you're a genius along
+with it. I am proud of you, and glad of you, and I admire and love you
+with all my heart. And I really wish you'd call me mother. You should
+have been born a De Ranc&eacute;!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This, from my mother! I was amazed. Why, she would think she was
+flattering one of the seraphim if she had said to him, &quot;You might have
+been a De Ranc&eacute;!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Madame!&quot; stammered Flint, &quot;why, Madame!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, well, never mind, then. Let it go at Madame, since it would
+embarrass you to change. But I look upon you as my son, none the less.
+I claim you from this hour,&quot; said she firmly, as one not to be
+gainsaid.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm beginning to believe in fairy-stories,&quot; said Flint. &quot;The beggar
+comes home&mdash;and he isn't a beggar at all, he's a Prince. Because the
+Queen is his mother.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>My mother looked at him approvingly. The grace of his manner, and the
+unaffected feeling of his words, pleased her. But she said no more of
+what was in her heart for him. She fell back, as women do, upon the
+safe subject of housekeeping matters.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose,&quot; she mused, &quot;that those children will remain with us
+to-day? Yes, of course. Armand, we shall have the last of your
+great-grandfather's wine. <a name="Page_397"></a>And I am going to send over for the judge.
+Let me see: shall I have time for a cake with frosting? H'm! Yes, I
+think so. Or would you prefer wine jelly with whipped cream, John?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He considered gravely, one hand on his hip, the other stroking his
+beard.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Couldn't we have both!&quot; he wondered hopefully. &quot;Please! Just for this
+once?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We could! We shall!&quot; said my mother, grandly, recklessly,
+extravagantly. &quot;Adieu, then, children of my heart! I go to confer with
+Cl&eacute;lie.&quot; She waved her hand and was gone.</p>
+
+<p>The place shimmered with sun. Old Kerry lay with his head between his
+paws and dozed and dreamed in it, every now and then opening his hazel
+eyes to make sure that all was well with his man. All outdoors was one
+glory of renewing life, of stir and growth, of loving and singing and
+nest-building, and the budding of new green leaves and the blossoming
+of April boughs. Just such April hopes were theirs who had found each
+other again this morning. All of life at its best and fairest
+stretched sunnily before those two, the fairer for the cloud that had
+for a time darkened it, the dearer and diviner for the loss that had
+been so imminent.</p>
+
+<p>... That was a redbird again. And now a vireo. And this the
+mockingbird, love-drunk, emptying his heart of a troubadour in a song
+of fire and dew. And on a vagrant air, a gipsy air, the scent of the
+honey-locust. The spring for all the world else. But for him I
+loved,&mdash;what?</p>
+
+<p>I suppose my wistful eyes betrayed me, for used to the changing
+expressions of my thin visage, he smiled; <a name="Page_398"></a>and stood up, stretching
+his arms above his head. He drew in great mouthfuls of the sweet air,
+and expanded his broad chest.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I feel full to the brim!&quot; said he gloriously. &quot;I've got almost too
+much to hold with both hands! Parson, parson, it isn't possible you're
+fretting over <i>me</i>? Sorry for <i>me</i>? Why, man, consider!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ah, but had I not considered? I knew, I thought, what he had to hold
+fast to. Honor, yes. And the friendship of some and the admiration of
+many and the true love of the few, which is all any man may hope for
+and more than most attain. Outside of that, a gray moth, and a
+butterfly's wing, and a torn nest, and a child's curl, and a ragdoll
+in her grave; and now a girl's kiss on the palm and a tear to hallow
+it. But I who had greatly loved and even more greatly lost and
+suffered, was it not for me of all men to know and to understand?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I have got the thing itself,&quot; said the Butterfly Man, &quot;that makes
+everything else worth while. Why, I have been taught how to love! My
+work is big&mdash;but by itself it wasn't enough for me. I needed something
+more. So I was swept and empty and ready and waiting&mdash;when she came.
+Now hadn't there got to be something fine and decent in me, when it
+was she alone out of all the world I was waiting for and could love?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, yes. But oh, my son, my son!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, it was bad and bitter enough at first, parson. Because I wanted
+her so much! Great God, I was like a soul in hell! After awhile I
+crawled out of hell&mdash;on my hands and knees. But I'd begun to
+understand things. I'd been taught. It'd been burnt into me <a name="Page_399"></a>past
+forgetting. Maybe that's what hell is for, if folks only knew it.
+Could anything ever happen to anybody any more that I couldn't
+understand and be sorry for, I wonder?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, don't you worry any about me. I wouldn't change places with
+anybody alive, I'm too glad for everything that's ever happened to me,
+good and bad. I'm not ashamed of the beginning, no, nor I'm not afraid
+of the end.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Will you believe me, though, when I tell you what worried me like the
+mischief for awhile? Family, parson! You can't live in South Carolina
+without having the seven-years' Family-itch wished on you, you know. I
+felt like a mushroom standing up on my one leg all by myself among a
+lot of proper garden plants&mdash;until I got fed up on the professional
+Descendant banking on his boneyard full of dead ones; then I quit
+worrying. I'm Me and alive&mdash;and I should worry about ancestors! Come
+to think about it, everybody's an ancestor while you wait. I made up
+my mind I'd be my own ancestor and my own descendant&mdash;and make a good
+job of both while I was at it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But I was too sad to smile. And after awhile he asked gently:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you grieving because you think I've lost love? Parson, did you
+ever know something you didn't know how you knew, but you know you
+know it because it's true? Well then&mdash;I know that girl's mine and I
+came here to find her, though on the face of it you'd think I'd lost
+her, wouldn't you? Somewhere and sometime I'll come again&mdash;and when I
+do, she'll know <i>me</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_400"></a>And to save my life I couldn't tell him I didn't believe it! His
+manner even more than his words impressed me. He didn't look
+improbable.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One little life and one little death,&quot; said the Butterfly Man,
+&quot;couldn't possibly be big enough for something like this to get away
+from a man forever. I have got the thing too big for a dozen lives to
+hold. Isn't that a great deal for a man to have, parson?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot; said I. &quot;It is a great deal for a man to have.&quot; But I foresaw
+the empty, empty places, in the long, long years ahead. I added
+faintly: &quot;Having that much, you have more than most.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You only have what you are big enough not to take,&quot; said he. &quot;And I'm
+not fooling myself I shan't be lonesome and come some rough tumbles at
+times. The difference is, that if I go down now I won't stay down. If
+there was one thing I could grieve over, too, it would be&mdash;kids. I'd
+like kids. My own kids. And I shall never have any. It&mdash;well, it just
+wouldn't be fair to the kids. Louisa'll come nearest to being mine by
+bornation&mdash;though I'm thinking she's managed to wish me everybody
+else's, on her curl.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So! You are your own ancestor and your own descendant, and
+everybody's kids are yours! You are modest, <i>hein</i>? And what else have
+you got?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His eyes suddenly danced. &quot;Nothing but the rest of the United States,&quot;
+said the Butterfly Man, magnificently. And when I stared, he laughed
+at me.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's quite true, parson: I have got the whole United States to work
+for. Uncle Sam. U.S. <i>Us!</i> I've been drafted into the Brigade that
+hasn't any commander, <a name="Page_401"></a>nor any colors, nor honors, nor even a name;
+but that's never going to be mustered out of service, because we that
+enlist and belong can't and won't quit.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Parson, think of <i>me</i> representing the Brigade down here on the
+Carolina coast, keeping up the work, fighting things that hurt and
+finding out things that help Lord, what a chance! A hundred millions
+to work for, a hundred millions of one's own people&mdash;and a trail to
+blaze for the unborn millions to come!&quot; His glance kindled, his face
+was like a lighted lamp. The vision was upon him, standing there in
+the April sunlight, staring wide-eyed into the future.</p>
+
+<p>Its reflected light illumined me, too&mdash;a little. And I saw that in a
+very large and splendid sense, this was the true American. He stood
+almost symbolically for that for which America stands&mdash;the fighting
+chance to overcome and to grow, the square deal, the spirit that looks
+eagle-eyed and unafraid into the sunrise. And above all for unselfish
+service and unshakable faith, and a love larger than personal love,
+prouder than personal pride, higher than personal ambition. They do
+not know America who do not know and will not see this spirit in her,
+going its noble and noiseless way apart.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The whole world to work for, and a whole lifetime to do it in!&quot; said
+the voice of America, exultant. &quot;Lord God, that's a man-sized job, but
+You just give me hands and eyes and time, and I'll do the best I can.
+You've done Your part by me&mdash;stand by, and I'll do mine by You!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Are those curious coincidences, those circumstances which occur at
+such opportune moments that they leave <a name="Page_402"></a>one with a sense of a guiding
+finger behind the affairs of men&mdash;are they, after all, only fortuitous
+accidents, or have they a deeper and a diviner significance?</p>
+
+<p>There stood the long worktable, with orderly piles of work on it; the
+microscope in its place; the books he had opened and pushed aside last
+night; and some half-dozen small card-board boxes in a row, containing
+the chrysalids he had been experimenting with, trying the effect of
+cold upon color. The cover of one box had been partially pushed off,
+possibly when he had moved the books. And while we had been paying
+attention to other things, one of these chrysalids had been paying
+strict attention to its own business, the beautiful and important
+business of becoming a butterfly. Flint discovered it first, and gave
+a pleased exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look! Look! A Turnus, father! The first Turnus of the year!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The insect had been out for an hour or two, but was not yet quite
+ready to fly. It had crawled out of the half-opened box, dragged its
+wormy length across the table, over intervening obstacles, seeking
+some place to climb up and cling to.</p>
+
+<p>Now the Butterfly Man had left the Bible open, merely shoving it aside
+without shutting it, when he had found no comfort for himself last
+night in what John had to say. Protected by piled-up books and propped
+almost upright by the large inkstand, it gave the holding-place the
+insect desired. The butterfly had walked up the page and now clung to
+the top.</p>
+
+<p>There she rested, her black-and-yellow body quivering like a tiny live
+dynamo from the strong force of circulation, that was sending vital
+fluids upward into the wings <a name="Page_403"></a>to give them power and expansion. We had
+seen the same thing a thousand and one times before, we should see it
+a thousand and one times again. But I do not think either of us could
+ever forego the delight of watching a butterfly's wings shaping
+themselves for flight, and growing into something of beauty and of
+wonder. The lovely miracle is ever new to us.</p>
+
+<p>She was a big butterfly, big even for the greatest of Carolina
+swallow-tails; not the dark dimorphic form, but the true Tiger Turnus
+itself, her barred yellow upper wings edged with black enamel indented
+with red gold, her tailed lower wings bordered with a wider band of
+black, and this not only set with lunettes of gold but with purple
+amethysts, and a ruby on the upper and lower edges. Her wings moved
+rhythmically; a constant quivering agitated her, and her antenn&aelig; with
+their flattened clubs seemed to be sending and receiving wireless
+messages from the shining world outside.</p>
+
+<p>And as the wings had dried and grown firmer in the mild warm current
+of air and the bright sunlight, she moved them with a wider and bolder
+sweep. The heavy, unwieldy body, thinned by the expulsion of those
+currents driven upward to give flying-power to the wings, had taken on
+a slim and tapering grace. She had reached her fairy perfection. She
+was ready now for flight and light and love and freedom and the
+uncharted pathways of the air, ready to carry out the design of the
+Creator who had fashioned her so wondrously and so beautiful, and had
+sent ahead of her the flowers for that marvelous tongue of hers to
+sip.</p>
+
+<p>Waiting still, opening and closing her exquisite wings, trying them,
+spreading them flat, the splendid <a name="Page_404"></a>swallow-tail clung to the page of
+the book open at the Gospel of John. And I, idly enough, leaned
+forward, and saw between the opening and the closing wings, words. The
+which John Flint, bending forward beside me, likewise saw. &quot;<i>Work</i>,&quot;
+flashed out. And on a lower line, &quot;<i>while it is day</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I grasped the edge of the table; his knuckles showed white beside
+mine.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;<i>I must work the works of him</i><br /></span>
+<span>&nbsp; <i>that sent me, while it is day.</i>&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>His eyes grew larger and deeper. A sort of inward light, a serene and
+joyous acceptance and assurance, flowed into them. I that had dared to
+be despondent felt a sense of awe. The Voice that had once spoken
+above the Mercy Seat and between the wings of the cherubim was
+speaking now in immortal words between, the wings of a butterfly.</p>
+
+<p>She was poising herself for her first flight, the bright and lovely
+Lady of the Sky. Now she spread her wings flat, as a fan is unfurled.
+And now she had lifted them clear and uncovered her message. The
+Butterfly Man watched her, hanging absorbed upon her every movement.
+And he read, softly:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span>&quot;<i>I must work</i><br /></span>
+<span><i>... while it is day</i>.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Lightly as a flower, a living and glorious flower, she lifted and
+launched herself into the air, flew straight and sure for the outside
+light, hung poised one gracious moment, and was gone.</p>
+
+<p>He turned to me the sweetest, clearest eyes I have ever <a name="Page_405"></a>seen in a
+mortal countenance, the eyes of a little child. His face had caught a
+sort of secret beauty, that was never to leave it any more.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Parson!&quot; said the Butterfly Man, in a whisper that shook with the
+beating of his heart behind it: &quot;Parson! <i>Don't it beat hell?</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I rocked on my toes. Then I flung my arms around him, with a jubilant
+shout:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It does! It does! Oh, Butterfly Man, by the grace and the glory and
+the wonder of God, it beats hell!&quot;</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<p class="cen">THE END</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the
+Butterfly Man, by Marie Conway Oemler
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the
+Butterfly Man, by Marie Conway Oemler
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man
+
+Author: Marie Conway Oemler
+
+Release Date: May 17, 2005 [EBook #15843]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SLIPPY MCGEE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Janet Kegg, Jeannie Howse and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net).
+
+
+
+
+
+{~--- UTF-8 BOM ---~}
+     SLIPPY McGEE
+
+     SOMETIMES KNOWN AS
+     THE BUTTERFLY MAN
+
+     BY
+     MARIE CONWAY OEMLER
+
+
+     NEW YORK
+     THE CENTURY CO.
+     1920
+
+
+     1917, by
+     THE CENTURY CO.
+
+
+     Published, April, 1917.
+     Reprinted, August, 1917; February, 1918;
+     August, 1918; March, 1919; August, 1919;
+     November, 1919; February, 1920.
+
+
+     TO
+     ELIZABETH AND ALAN OEMLER
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+    I have known life and love, I have known death and disaster;
+    Foregathered with fools, succumbed to sin, been not unacquainted
+        with shame;
+    Doubted, and yet held fast to a faith no doubt could o'ermaster.
+    Won and lost:--and I know it was all a part of the Game.
+
+    Youth and the dreams of youth, hope, and the triumph of sorrow:
+    I took as they came, I played them all; and I trumped the trick
+        when I could.
+    And now, O Mover of Men, let the end be to-day or to-morrow--
+    I have staked and played for Myself, and You and the Game were good!
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                                      PAGE
+
+    I APPLEBORO                                                 3
+   II THE COMING OF SLIPPY McGEE                               19
+  III NEIGHBORS                                                37
+   IV UNDERWINGS                                               48
+    V ENTER KERRY                                              65
+   VI "THY SERVANT WILL GO AND FIGHT WITH THIS PHILISTINE."
+      1 SAM. 17-32                                             94
+  VII THE GOING OF SLIPPY McGEE                               111
+ VIII THE BUTTERFLY MAN                                       131
+   IX NESTS                                                   145
+    X THE BLUEJAY                                             172
+   XI A LITTLE GIRL GROWN UP                                  189
+  XII JOHN FLINT, GENTLEMAN                                   203
+ XIII "EACH IN HIS OWN COIN"                                  226
+  XIV THE WISHING CURL                                        258
+   XV IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT                              283
+  XVI "WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR"                          302
+ XVII "--SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY--"                        319
+XVIII ST. STANISLAUS CROOKS HIS ELBOW                         343
+  XIX THE I O U OF SLIPPY McGEE                               364
+   XX BETWEEN A BUTTERFLY'S WINGS                             382
+
+
+
+
+SLIPPY McGEE
+
+
+
+
+CHARACTERS
+
+
+FATHER ARMAND JEAN DE RANCE, Catholic Priest of Appleboro, South Carolina
+MADAME DE RANCE, his Mother
+CLELIE, their Servant
+LAURENCE MAYNE, the Boy
+MARY VIRGINIA EUSTIS, the Girl
+JAMES EUSTIS, Man of the New South
+MRS. EUSTIS, a Lady
+DOCTOR WALTER WESTMORELAND, the Beloved Physician
+JIM DABNEY, Editor of the Appleboro "Clarion"
+MAJOR APPLEBY CARTWRIGHT }
+MISS SALLY RUTH DEXTER   } Neighbors
+JUDGE HAMMOND MAYNE      }
+GEORGE INGLESBY, the Boss of Appleboro
+J. HOWARD HUNTER, his Private Secretary
+KERRY, an Irish Setter
+PITACHE, the Parish House Dog
+THE MOTHS AND BUTTERFLIES OF SOUTH CAROLINA
+THE CHILDREN, THE MILL-HANDS, THE FACTORY FOLKS, and
+SLIPPY MCGEE, sometimes known as the Butterfly Man
+
+
+
+
+SLIPPY McGEE
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+APPLEBORO
+
+
+"Now there was my cousin Eliza," Miss Sally Ruth Dexter once said to
+me, "who was forced to make her home for thirty years in Vienna! She
+married an attache of the Austrian legation, you know; met him while
+she was visiting in Washington, and she was such a pretty girl and he
+was such a charming man that they fell in love with each other and got
+married. Afterward his family procured him a very influential post at
+court, and of course poor Cousin Eliza had to stay there with him.
+Dear mama often said she considered it a most touching proof of
+woman's willingness to sacrifice herself--for there's no doubt it must
+have been very hard on poor Cousin Eliza. She was born and raised
+right here in Appleboro, you see."
+
+Do not think that Miss Sally Ruth was anything but most transparently
+sincere in thus sympathizing with the sad fate of poor Cousin Eliza,
+who was born and raised in Appleboro, South Carolina, and yet
+sacrificed herself by dragging out thirty years of exile in the court
+circles of Vienna! Any trueborn Appleboron would be equally sorry for
+Cousin Eliza for the same reason that Miss Sally Ruth was. Get
+yourself born in South Carolina and you will comprehend.
+
+"What did you see in your travels that you liked most?" I was curious
+to discover from an estimable citizen who had spent a summer abroad.
+
+"Why, General Lee's standin' statue in the Capitol an' his recumbent
+figure in Washington an' Lee chapel, of co'se!" said the colonel
+promptly. "An' listen hyuh, Father De Rance, I certainly needed him to
+take the bad taste out of my mouth an' the red out of my eye after
+viewin' Bill Sherman on a brass hawse in New York, with an angel
+that'd lost the grace of God prancin' on ahead of him!" He added
+reflectively: "I had my own ideah as to where any angel leadin' _him_
+was most likely headed for!"
+
+"Oh, I meant in Europe!" hastily.
+
+"Well, father, I saw pretty near everything in Europe, I reckon;
+likewise New York. But comin' home I ran up to Washington an' Lee to
+visit the general lyin' there asleep, an' it just needed one glance to
+assure me that the greatest an' grandest work of art in this round
+world was right there before me! What do folks want to rush off to
+foreign parts for, where they can't talk plain English an' a man can't
+get a satisfyin' meal of home cookin', when we've got the greatest
+work of art an' the best hams ever cured, right in Virginia? See
+America first, I say. Why, suh, I was so glad to get back to good old
+Appleboro that I let everybody else wait until I'd gone around to the
+monument an' looked up at our man standin' there on top of it, an' I
+found myself sayin' over the names he's guardin' as if I was sayin' my
+prayers: _our names_.
+
+"Uh huh, Europe's good enough for Europeans an' the Nawth's a God's
+plenty good enough for Yankees, but Appleboro for me. Why, father,
+they haven't got anything like our monument to their names!"
+
+They haven't. And I should hate to think that any Confederate living
+or dead ever even remotely resembled the gray granite one on our
+monument. He is a brigandish and bearded person in a foraging cap,
+leaning forward to rest himself on his gun. His long skirted coat is
+buckled tightly about his waist to form a neat bustle effect in the
+back, and the solidity of his granite shoes and the fell rigidity of
+his granite breeches are such as make the esthetic shudder; one has to
+admit that as a work of art he is almost as bad as the statues
+cluttering New York City. But in Appleboro folks are not critical;
+they see him not with the eyes of art but with the deeper vision of
+the heart. He stands for something that is gone on the wind and the
+names he guards are our names.
+
+This is not irrelevant. It is merely to explain something that is
+inherent in the living spirit of all South Carolina; wherefore it
+explains my Appleboro, the real inside-Appleboro.
+
+Outwardly Appleboro is just one of those quiet, conservative, old
+Carolina towns where, loyal to the customs and traditions of their
+fathers, they would as lief white-wash what they firmly believe to be
+the true and natural character of General William Tecumseh Sherman as
+they would their own front fences. Occasionally somebody will give a
+backyard henhouse a needed coat or two; but a front fence? Never! It
+isn't the thing. Nobody does it. All normal South Carolinians come
+into the world with a native horror of paint and whitewash and they
+depart hence even as they were born. In consequence, towns like
+Appleboro take on the venerable aspect of antiquity, peacefully
+drowsing among immemorial oaks draped with long, gray, melancholy
+moss.
+
+Not that we are cut off from the world, or that we have escaped the
+clutch of commerce. We have the usual shops and stores, even an
+emporium or two, and street lights until twelve, and the mills and
+factory. We have the river trade, and two railroads tap our rich
+territory to fetch and carry what we take and give. And, except in the
+poor parish of which I, Armand De Rance, am pastor, and some few
+wealthy families like the Eustises, Agur's wise and noble prayer has
+been in part granted to us; for if it has not been possible to remove
+far from us all vanity and lies, yet we have been given neither
+poverty nor riches, and we are fed with food convenient for us.
+
+In Appleboro the pleasant and prejudiced Old looks askance at the
+noisy and intruding New, before which, it is forced to retreat--always
+without undue or undignified haste, however, and always unpainted and
+unreconstructed. It is a town where families live in houses that have
+sheltered generations of the same name, using furniture that was not
+new when Marion's men hid in the swamps and the redcoats overran the
+country-side. Almost everybody has a garden, full of old-fashioned
+shrubs and flowers, and fine trees. In such a place men and women grow
+old serenely and delightfully, and youth flourishes all the fairer for
+the rich soil which has brought it forth.
+
+One has twenty-four hours to the day in a South Carolina town--plenty
+of time to live in, so that one can afford to do things unhurriedly
+and has leisure to be neighborly. For you do have neighbors here. It
+is true that they know all your business and who and what your
+grandfather was and wasn't, and they are prone to discuss it with a
+frankness to make the scalp prickle. But then, you know theirs, too,
+and you are at liberty to employ the same fearsome frankness, provided
+you do it politely and are not speaking to an outsider. It is
+perfectly permissible for _you_ to say exactly what you please about
+your own people to your own people, but should an outsider and an
+alien presume to do likewise, the Carolina code admits of but one
+course of conduct; borrowing the tactics of the goats against the
+wolf, they close in shoulder to shoulder and present to the audacious
+intruder an unbroken and formidable front of horns.
+
+And it is the last place left in all America where decent poverty is
+in nowise penalized. You can be poor pleasantly--a much rarer and far
+finer art than being old gracefully. Because of this, life in South
+Carolina sometimes retains a simplicity as fine and sincere as it is
+charming.
+
+I deplore the necessity, but I will be pardoned if I pause here to
+become somewhat personal, to explain who and what I am and how I came
+to be a pastor in Appleboro. To explain myself, then, I shall have to
+go back to a spring morning long ago, when I was not a poor parish
+priest, no, nor ever dreamed of becoming one, but was young Armand De
+Rance, a flower-crowned and singing pagan, holding up to the morning
+sun the chalice of spring; joyous because I was of a perishable
+beauty, dazzled because life gave me so much, proud of an old and
+honored name, secure in ancestral wealth, loving laughter so much that
+I looked with the raised eyebrow and the twisted lip at austerities
+and prayers.
+
+If ever I reflected at all, it was to consider that I had nothing to
+pray for, save that things might ever remain as they were: that I
+should remain me, myself, young Armand De Rance, loving and above all
+beloved of that one sweet girl whom I loved with all my heart. Young,
+wealthy, strong, beautiful, loving, and beloved! To hold all that,
+crowded into the hollow of one boyish hand! Oh, it was too much!
+
+I do not think I had ever felt my own happiness so exquisitely as I
+did upon that day which was to see the last of it. I was to go
+a-Maying with her who had ever been as my own soul, since we were
+children playing together. So I rode off to her home, an old house set
+in its walled inclosure by the river. At the door somebody met me,
+calling me by my name. I thought at first it had been a stranger. It
+was her mother. And while I stood staring at her changed face she took
+me by the hand and began to whisper in my ear ... what I had to know.
+Blindly, like one bludgeoned on the head, I followed her into a
+darkened room, and saw what lay there with closed eyes and hair still
+wet from the river into which my girl had cast herself.
+
+No, I cannot put into words just what had happened; indeed, I never
+really knew all. There was no public scandal, only great sorrow. But I
+died that morning. The young and happy part of me died, and, only
+half-alive I walked about among the living, dragging about with me the
+corpse of what had been myself. Crushed by this horrible burden which
+none saw but I, I was blind to the beauties of earth and deaf to the
+mercies of heaven, until a great Voice called me to come out of the
+sepulcher of myself; and I came--alive again, and free, of a strong
+spirit, but with youth gone from it. Out of the void of an
+irremediable disaster God had called me to His service, chastened and
+humbled.
+
+"_Who is weak and I am not weak? who is offended and I burn not?_"
+
+And yet, although I knew my decision was irrevocable, I did not find
+it easy to tell my mother. Then:
+
+"Little mother of my heart," I blurted, "my career is decided. I have
+been called. I am for the Church."
+
+We were in her pleasant morning room, a beautiful room, and the lace
+curtains were pushed aside to allow free ingress of air and sunlight.
+Between the windows hung two objects my mother most greatly
+cherished--one an enameled Petitot miniature, gold-framed, of a man in
+the flower of his youth. His hair, beautiful as the hair of Absalom,
+falls about his haughty, high-bred face, and so magnificently is he
+clothed that when I was a child I used to associate him in my mind
+with those "_captains and rulers, clothed most gorgeously, all of them
+desirable young men, ... girdled with a girdle upon their loins,
+exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look
+to" ... whom Aholibah "doted upon when her eyes saw them portrayed
+upon the walls in vermilion_."
+
+The other is an Audran engraving of that same man grown old and
+stripped of beauty and of glory, as the leaf that falls and the flower
+that fades. The somber habit of an order has replaced scarlet and
+gold; and sackcloth, satin. Between the two pictures hangs an old
+crucifix. For that is Armand De Rance, glorious sinner, handsomest,
+wealthiest, most gifted man of his day--and his a day of glorious men;
+and this is Armand De Rance, become the sad austere reformer of La
+Trappe.
+
+My mother rose, walked over to the Abbe's pictures, and looked long
+and with rather frightened eyes at him. Perhaps there was something in
+the similarity to his of the fate which had come upon me who bore his
+name, which caused her to turn so pale. I also am an Armand De Rance,
+of a cadet branch of that great house, which emigrated to the New
+World when we French were founding colonies on the banks of the
+Mississippi.
+
+Her hand went to her heart. Turning, she regarded me pitifully.
+
+"Oh, no, not that!" I reassured her. "I am at once too strong and not
+strong enough for solitude and silence. Surely there is room and work
+for one who would serve God through serving his fellow men, in the
+open, is there not?"
+
+At that she kissed me. Not a whimper, although I am an only son and
+the name dies with me, the old name of which she was so beautifully
+proud! She had hoped to see my son wear my father's name and face and
+thus bring back the lost husband she had so greatly loved; she had
+prayed to see my children about her knees, and it must have cost her a
+frightful anguish to renounce these sweet and consoling dreams, these
+tender and human ambitions. Yet she did so, smiling, and kissed me on
+the brow.
+
+Three months later I entered the Church; and because I was the last
+De Rance, and twenty four, and the day was to have been my
+wedding-day, there fell upon me, sorely against my will, the halo of
+sad romance.
+
+Endeared thus to the young, I suppose I grew into what I might call a
+very popular preacher. Though I myself cannot see that I ever did much
+actual good, since my friends praised my sermons for their "fine
+Gallic flavor," and I made no enemies.
+
+But there was no rest for my spirit, until the Call came again, the
+Call that may not be slighted, and bade me leave my sheltered place,
+my pleasant lines, and go among the poor, to save my own soul alive.
+
+That is why and how the Bishop, my old and dear friend, after long
+argument and many protests, at length yielded and had me transferred
+from fashionable St. Jean Baptiste's to the poverty-stricken
+missionary parish of sodden laboring folk in a South Carolina
+coast-town: he meant to cure me, the good man! I should have the worst
+at the outset.
+
+"And I hope you understand," said he, sorrowfully, "that this step
+practically closes your career. Such a pity, for you could have gone
+so far! You might even have worn the red hat. It is not hoping too
+much that the last De Rance, the namesake of the great Abbe, might
+have finished as an American cardinal! But God's will be done. If you
+must go, you must go."
+
+I said, respectfully, that I had to go.
+
+"Well, then, go and try it out to the uttermost," said the Bishop.
+"And it may be that, if you do not kill yourself with overwork, you
+may return to me cured, when you see the futility of the task you
+wish to undertake." But I was never again to see his kind face in this
+world.
+
+And then, as if to cut me off yet more completely from all ties, as if
+to render my decision irrevocable, it was permitted of Providence that
+the wheel of my fortune should take one last revolution. Henri Dupuis
+of the banking house which bore his name shot himself through the head
+one fine morning, and as he had been my guardian and was still the
+executor of my father's estate, the whole De Rance fortune went down
+with him. All of it. Even the old house went, the old house which had
+sheltered so many of the name these two hundred years. If I could have
+grieved for anything it would have been that. Nothing was left except
+the modest private fortune long since secured to my mother by my
+father's affection. It had been a bridal gift, intended to cover her
+personal expenses, her charities, and her pretty whims. Now it was to
+stand between her and want.
+
+Stripped all but bare, and with one servant left of all our staff, we
+turned our backs upon our old life, our old home, and faced the world
+anew, in a strange place where nothing was familiar, and where I who
+had begun so differently was destined to grow into what I have since
+become--just an old priest, with but small reputation outside of his
+few friends and poor working-folks. There! That is quite enough of
+_me_!
+
+There was one pleasant feature of our new home that rejoiced me for my
+mother's sake. From the very first she found neighbors who were
+friendly and charming. Now my mother, when we came to Appleboro, was
+still a beautiful woman, fair and rosy, with a profusion of _blonde
+cendre_ curls just beginning to whiten, a sweet and arch face, and
+eyes of clearest hazel, valanced with jet. She had been perhaps the
+loveliest and most beloved woman of that proud and select circle which
+is composed of families descended from the old noblesse, the most
+exclusive circle of New Orleans society. And, as she said, nothing
+could change nor alter the fact that no matter _what_ happened to us,
+we were still De Rances!
+
+"Ah! And was it, then, a De Rance who had the holy Mother of God
+painted in a family picture, with a scroll issuing from her lips
+addressing him as 'My Cousin'?" I asked, slyly.
+
+"If it was, nobody in the world had a better right!" said she stoutly.
+
+Thus the serene and unquestioning faith of their estimate of
+themselves in the scheme of things, as evidenced by these Carolina
+folk around her, caused Madame De Rance neither surprise nor
+amusement. She understood. She shared many of their prejudices, and
+she of all women could appreciate a pride that was almost equal to her
+own. When they initiated her into the inevitable and inescapable
+Carolina game of Matching Grandfathers, she always had a Roland for
+their Oliver; and as they generally came back with an Oliver to match
+her Roland, all the players retired with equal honors and mutual
+respect. Every door in Appleboro at once opened wide to Madame De
+Rance. The difference in religion was obviated by the similarity of
+Family.
+
+Fortunately, too, the Church and Parish House were not in the mill
+district itself, a place shoved aside, full of sordid hideousness,
+ribboned with railroad tracks, squalid with boarding-houses never free
+from the smell of bad cooking, sinister with pawnshops, miserable with
+depressingly ugly rows of small houses where the hands herded, and all
+of it darkened by the grim shadow of the great red brick mills
+themselves. Instead, our Church sits on a tree-shaded corner in the
+old town, and the roomy white-piazza'd Parish House is next door,
+embowered in the pleasantest of all gardens.
+
+That garden reconciled my mother to her exile, for I am afraid she had
+regarded Appleboro with somewhat of the attitude of the castaway
+sailor toward a desert island--a refuge after shipwreck, but a desert
+island nevertheless, a place which cuts off one from one's world. And
+when at first the poor, uncouth, sullen creatures who were a part of
+my new charge, frightened and dismayed her, there was always the
+garden to fly to for consolation. If she couldn't plant seeds of order
+and cleanliness and morality and thrift in the sterile soil of poor
+folks' minds, she could always plant seeds of color and beauty and
+fragrance in her garden and be surer of the result. That garden was my
+delight, too. I am sure no other equal space ever harbored so many
+birds and bees and butterflies; and its scented dusks was the paradise
+of moths. Great wonderful fellows clothed in kings' raiment, little
+chaps colored like flowers and seashells and rainbows, there the airy
+cohorts of the People of the Sky wheeled and danced and fluttered. Now
+my grandfather and my father had been the friends of Audubon and of
+Agassiz, and I myself had been the correspondent of Riley and Scudder
+and Henry Edwards, for I love the People of the Sky more than all
+created things. And when I watched them in my garden, I am sure it was
+they who lent my heart their wings to lift it above the misery and
+overwork and grief which surrounded me; I am sure I should have sunk
+at times, if God had not sent me my little friends, the moths and
+butterflies.
+
+Our grounds join Miss Sally Ruth Dexter's on one side and Judge
+Hammond Mayne's are just behind us; so that the Judge's black Daddy
+January can court our yellow Clelie over one fence, with coy and
+delicate love-gifts of sugar-cane and sweet-potato pone in season; and
+Miss Sally Ruth's roosters and ours can wholeheartedly pick each
+other's eyes out through the other all the year round. These are fowls
+with so firm a faith in the Mosaic code of an eye for an eye that when
+Miss Sally Ruth has six blind of the right eye we have five blind of
+the left. We are at times stung by the Mayne bees, but freely and
+bountifully supplied with the Mayne honey, a product of fine flavor.
+And our little dog Pitache made it the serious business of his life to
+keep the Mayne cats in what he considered their proper bounds.
+
+Major Appleby Cartwright, our neighbor to the other side of Miss Sally
+Ruth, has a theory that not alone by our fruits, but by our animals,
+shall we be known for what we are. He insists that Pitache wags his
+tail and barks in French and considers all cats Protestants, and that
+Miss Sally Ruth's hens are all Presbyterians at heart, in spite of the
+fact that her roosters are Mormons. The Major likewise insists that
+you couldn't possibly hope to know the real Judge Hammond Mayne unless
+you knew his pet cats. You admire that calm and imperturbable
+dignity, that sphinxlike and yet vigilant poise of bearing which has
+made Judge Mayne so notable an ornament of the bench? It is purely
+feline: "He caught it from his cats, suh: he caught every God-blessed
+bit of it from his cats!"
+
+As one may perceive, we have delicious neighbors!
+
+When we had been settled in Appleboro a little more than a year, and I
+had gotten the parish wheels running fairly smooth, we discovered that
+by my mother's French house-keeping, that exquisitely careful
+house-keeping which uses everything and wastes nothing, my salary was
+going to be quite sufficient to cover our modest menage, thus leaving
+my mother's own income practically intact. We could use it in the
+parish; but there was so much to be done for that parish that we were
+rather at a loss where to begin, or what one thing to accomplish among
+so many things crying aloud. But finally, tackling what seemed to us
+the worst of these crying evils, we were able to turn the two empty
+rooms upstairs into what Madame pleasantly called Guest Rooms, thus
+remedying, to the best of our ability, the absolute lack of any
+accommodation for the sick and injured poor. And as time passed, these
+Guest Rooms, so greatly needed, proved not how much but how little we
+could do. We could only afford to maintain two beds on our small
+allowance, for they had to be absolutely free, to help those for whom
+they were intended--poor folks in immediate and dire need, for whom
+the town had no other place except an insanitary room in the jail. You
+could be born and baptized in the Guest Rooms, or shriven and sent
+thence in hope. More often you were coaxed back to health under my
+mother's nursing and Clelie's cooking and the skill of Doctor Walter
+Westmoreland.
+
+No bill ever came to the Parish House from Dr. Walter Westmoreland,
+whom my poor people look upon as a direct act of Providence in their
+behalf. He is an enormous man, big and ruddy and baldheaded and
+clean-shaven, with the shoulders of a coal-heaver and legs like a pair
+of twin oaks. He is rather absent-minded, but he never forgets the
+down-and-out Guest Roomers, and he has a genius for remembering the
+mill-children. These are his dear and special charge.
+
+Westmoreland is a great doctor who chooses to live in a small town; he
+says you can save as many lives in a little town as a big one, and
+folks need you more. He is a socialist who looks upon rich people as
+being merely poor people with money; an idealist, who will tell you
+bluntly that revelations haven't ceased; they've only changed for the
+better.
+
+Westmoreland has the courage of a gambler and the heart of a little
+child. He likes to lay a huge hand upon my shoulder and tell me to my
+teeth that heaven is a habit of heart and hell a condition of liver. I
+do not always agree with him; but along with everybody else in
+Appleboro, I love him. Of all the many goodnesses that God has shown
+me, I do not count it least that this good and kind man was sent in
+our need, to heal and befriend the broken and friendless waifs and
+strays who found for a little space a resting place in our Guest
+Rooms.
+
+And when I look back I know now that not lightly nor fortuitously was
+I uprooted from my place and my people and sent hither to impinge upon
+the lives of many who were to be dearer to me than all that had gone
+before; I was not idly sent to know and love Westmoreland, and Mary
+Virginia, and Laurence; and, above all, Slippy McGee, whom we of
+Appleboro call the Butterfly Man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE COMING OF SLIPPY MCGEE
+
+
+On a cold gray morning in December two members of my flock, Poles who
+spoke but little English and that little very badly, were on their way
+to their daily toil in the canning factory. It is a long walk from the
+Poles' quarters to the factory, and the workpeople must start early,
+for one is fined half an hour's time if one is five minutes late. The
+short-cut is down the railroad tracks that run through the mill
+district--for which cause we bury a yearly toll of the children of the
+poor.
+
+Just beyond the freight sheds, signal tower, and water tank, is a
+grade crossing where so many terrible things have happened that the
+colored people call that place Dead Man's Crossin' and warn you not to
+go by there of nights because the signal tower is haunted and Things
+lurk in the rank growth behind the water tank, coming out to show
+themselves after dark. If you _must_ pass it then you would better
+turn your coat inside out, pull down your sleeves over your hands, and
+be very careful to keep three fingers twisted for a Sign. This is a
+specific against most ha'nts, though by no means able to scare away
+all of them. Those at Dead Man's Crossin' are peculiarly malignant and
+hard to scare. Maum Jinkey Delette saw one there once, coming down the
+track faster than an express train, bigger than a cow, and waving
+both his legs in his hands. Poor old Maum Jinkey was so scared that
+she chattered her new false teeth out of her mouth, and she never
+found those teeth to the day of her death, but had to mumble along as
+best she could without them.
+
+Hurrying by Dead Man's Crossin', the workmen stumbled over a man lying
+beside the tracks; his clothing was torn to shreds, he was wet with
+the heavy night dew and covered with dirt, cinders, and partly
+congealed blood, for his right leg had been ground to pulp. Peering at
+this horrible object in the wan dusk of the early morning, they
+thought he was dead like most of the others found there.
+
+For a moment the men hesitated, wondering whether it wouldn't be
+better to leave him there to be found and removed by folks with more
+time at their disposal. One doesn't like to lose time and be
+consequently fined, on account of stopping to pick up a dead tramp;
+particularly when Christmas is drawing near and money so much needed
+that every penny counts.
+
+The thing on the ground, regaining for a fraction of a second a glint
+of half-consciousness, quivered, moaned feebly, and lay still again.
+Humanity prevailing, the Poles looked about for help, but as yet the
+place was quite deserted. Grumbling, they wrenched a shutter off the
+Agent's window, lifted the mangled tramp upon it, and made straight
+for the Parish House; when accidents such as this happened to men such
+as this, weren't the victims incontinently turned over to the Parish
+House people? Indeed, there wasn't any place else for them, unless one
+excepted the rough room at the jail; and the average small town
+jail--ours wasn't any exception to the rule--is a place where a
+decent veterinary would scruple to put a sick cur. With him the Poles
+brought his sole luggage, a package tied up in oilskin, which they had
+found lying partly under him.
+
+We had become accustomed to these sudden inroads of misfortune, so he
+was carried upstairs to the front Guest Room, fortunately just then
+empty. The Poles turned over to me the heavy package found with him,
+stolidly requested a note to the Boss explaining their necessary
+tardiness, and hurried away. They had done what they had to do, and
+they had no further interest in him. Nobody had any interest in one of
+the unknown tramps who got themselves killed or crippled at Dead Man's
+Crossin'.
+
+The fellow was shockingly injured and we had some strenuous days and
+nights with him, for that which had been a leg had to come off at the
+knee; he had lain in the cold for some hours, he had sustained a
+frightful shock, and he had lost considerable blood. I am sure that in
+the hands of any physician less skilled and determined than
+Westmoreland he must have gone out. But Westmoreland, with his jaw
+set, followed his code and fenced with death for this apparently
+worthless and forfeited life, using all his skill and finesse to
+outwit the great Enemy; in spite of which, so attenuated was the man's
+chance that we were astonished when he turned the corner--very, very
+feebly--and we didn't have to place another pine box in the potter's
+field, alongside other unmarked mounds whose occupants were other
+unknown men, grim causes of Dead Man's Crossin's sinister name.
+
+The effects of the merciful drugs that had kept him quiet in time wore
+away. Our man woke up one forenoon clear-headed, if hollow-eyed and
+mortally weak. He looked about the unfamiliar room with wan curiosity,
+then his eyes came to Clelie and myself, but he did not return the
+greetings of either. He just stared; he asked no questions. Presently,
+very feebly, he tried to move,--and found himself a cripple. He fell
+back upon his pillow, gasping. A horrible scream broke from his
+lips--a scream of brute rage and mortal fear, as of a trapped wild
+beast. He began to revile heaven and earth, the doctor, myself.
+Clelie, clapping her hands over her outraged ears, fled as if from
+fiends. Indeed, never before nor since have I heard such a frightful,
+inhuman power of profanity, such hideous oaths and threats. When
+breath failed him he lay spent and trembling, his chest rising and
+falling to his choking gasps.
+
+"You had better be thankful your life is spared you, young man," I
+said a trifle sharply, my nerves being somewhat rasped; for I had
+helped Westmoreland through more than one dreadful night, and I had
+sat long hours by his pillow, waiting for what seemed the passing of a
+soul.
+
+He glared. "Thankful?" he screamed, "Thankful, hell! I've got to have
+two good legs to make any sort of a getaway, haven't I? Well, have I
+got 'em? I'm down and out for fair, that's what! Thankful? You make me
+sick! Honest to God, when you gas like that I feel like bashing in
+your brain, if you've got any! You and your thankfulness!" He turned
+his quivering face and stared at the wall, winking. I wondered,
+heartsick, if I had ever seen a more hopelessly unprepossessing
+creature.
+
+It was not so much physical, his curious ugliness; the dreadful thing
+was that it seemed to be his spirit which informed his flesh, an
+inherent unloveliness of soul upon which the body was modeled, worked
+out faithfully, and so made visible. Figure to yourself one with the
+fine shape of the welter-weight, steel-muscled, lithe, powerful,
+springy, slim in the hips and waist, broad in the shoulders; the arms
+unusually long, giving him a terrible reach, the head round,
+well-shaped, covered with thick reddish hair; cold, light, and
+intelligent eyes, full of animosity and suspicion, reminding you
+unpleasantly of the rattlesnake's look, wary, deadly, and ready to
+strike. When he thought, his forehead wrinkled. His lips shut upon
+each other formidably and without softness, and the jaws thrust
+forward with the effect as of balled fists. One ear was slightly
+larger than the other, having the appearance of a swelling upon the
+lobe. In this unlovely visage, filled with distrust and concentrated
+venom, only the nose retained an incongruous and unexpected niceness.
+It was a good straight nose, yet it had something of the pleasant
+tiptiltedness of a child's. It was the sort of nose which should have
+complemented a mouth formed for spontaneous laughter. It looked
+lonesome and out of place in that set and lowering countenance, to
+which the red straggling stubble of beard sprouting over jaws and
+throat lent a more sinister note.
+
+We had had many a sad and terrible case in our Guest Rooms, but
+somehow this seemed the saddest, hardest and most hopeless we had yet
+encountered.
+
+For three weary weeks had we struggled with him, until the doctor,
+sighing with physical relief, said he was out of danger and needed
+only such nursing as he was sure to get.
+
+"One does one's duty as one finds it, of course," said the big doctor,
+looking down at the unpromising face on the pillow, and shaking his
+head. "Yes, yes, yes, one must do what's right, on the face of it,
+come what will. There's no getting around _that!_" He glanced at me, a
+shadow in his kind gray eyes. "But there are times, my friend, when I
+wonder! Now, this morning I had to tell a working man his wife's got
+to die. There's no help and no hope--she's got to die, and she a
+mother of young children. So I have to try desperately," said the
+doctor, rubbing his nose, "to cling tooth and claw to the hope that
+there is Something behind the scenes that knows the forward-end of
+things--sin and sorrow and disease and suffering and death things--and
+uses them always for some beneficent purpose. But in the meantime the
+mother dies, and here you and I have been used to save alive a poor
+useless devil of a one-legged tramp, probably without his consent and
+against his will, because it had to be and we couldn't do anything
+else! Now, why? I can't help but wonder!"
+
+We looked down again, the two of us, at the face on the pillow. And I
+wondered also, with even greater cause than the doctor; for I had
+opened the oilskin package the Poles found, and it had given me
+occasion for fear, reflection, and prayer. I was startled and alarmed
+beyond words, for it contained tools of a curious and unusual
+type,--not such tools as workmen carry abroad in the light of day.
+
+There was no one to whom I might confide that unpleasant discovery. I
+simply could not terrify my mother, nor could I in common decency
+burden the already overburdened doctor. Nor is our sheriff one to turn
+to readily; he is not a man whose intelligence or heart one may
+admire, respect, or depend upon. My guest had come to me with empty
+pockets and a burglar's kit; a hint of that, and the sheriff had
+camped on the Parish House front porch with a Winchester across his
+knees and handcuffs jingling in his pockets. No, I couldn't consult
+the law.
+
+I had yet a deeper and a better reason for waiting, which I find it
+rather hard to set down in cold words. It is this: that as I grow
+older I have grown more and more convinced that not fortuitously, not
+by chance, never without real and inner purposes, are we allowed to
+come vitally into each other's lives. I have walked up the steep sides
+of Calvary to find out that when another wayfarer pauses for a space
+beside us, it is because one has something to give, the other
+something to receive.
+
+So, upon reflection, I took that oilskin package weighted down with
+the seven deadly sins over to the church, and hid it under the statue
+of St. Stanislaus, whom my Poles love, and before whom they come to
+kneel and pray for particular favors. I tilted the saint back upon his
+wooden stand, and thrust that package up to where his hands fold over
+the sheaf of lilies he carries. St. Stanislaus is a beautiful and most
+holy youth. No one would ever suspect _him_ of hiding under his brown
+habit a burglar's kit!
+
+When I had done this, and stopped to say three Hail Marys for
+guidance, I went back to the little room called my study, where my
+books and papers and my butterfly cabinets and collecting outfits
+were kept, and set myself seriously to studying my files of
+newspapers, beginning at a date a week preceding my man's appearance.
+Then:
+
+             Slippy McGee
+     Makes Good His Name Once More.
+       Slips One Over On The Police.
+         Noted Burglar Escapes.
+
+said the glaring headlines in the New York papers. The dispatches were
+dated from Atlanta, and when I turned to the Atlanta papers I found
+them, too, headlining the escape of "Slippy McGee."
+
+I learned that "the slickest crook in America" finding himself
+somewhat hampered in his native haunts, the seething underworld of New
+York, because the police suspected him of certain daring and
+mysterious burglaries although they had no positive proof against him,
+had chosen to shift his base of operations South for awhile. But the
+Southern authorities had been urgently warned to look out for him; in
+consequence they had been so close upon his heels that he had been
+surrounded while "on a job." Half an hour later, and he would have
+gotten away with his plunder; but, although they were actually upon
+him, by what seemed a miracle of daring and of luck he slipped through
+their fingers, escaped under their very noses, leaving no clue to his
+whereabouts. He was supposed to be still in hiding in Atlanta, though
+as he had no known confederates and always worked alone and unaided,
+the police were at a loss for information. The man had simply
+vanished, after his wont, as if the earth had opened and swallowed
+him. The papers gave rather full accounts of some of his past
+exploits, from which one gathered that Slippy McGee was a very noted
+personage in his chosen field. I sat for a long time staring at those
+papers, and my thoughts were uneasy ones. What should I do?
+
+I presently decided that I could and must question my guest. So far he
+had volunteered no information beyond the curt statement that his name
+was John Flint and he was a hobo because he liked the trade. He had
+been stealing a ride and he had slipped--and when he woke up we had
+him and he hadn't his leg. And if some people knew how to be obliging
+they'd make a noise like a hoop and roll away, so's other people could
+pound their ear in peace, like that big stiff of a doctor ordered them
+to do.
+
+As I stood by the bed and studied his sullen, suspicious, unfriendly
+face, I came to the conclusion that if this were not McGee himself it
+could very well be some one quite as dangerous.
+
+"Friend," said I, "we do not as a rule seek information about the
+guests in these rooms. We do not have to; they explain themselves. I
+should never question your assertion that your name is Flint, and I
+sincerely hope it is Flint; but--there are reasons why I must and do
+ask you for certain definite information about yourself."
+
+The hand lying upon the coverlet balled into a fist.
+
+"If John Flint's not fancy enough for you," he suggested truculently,
+"suppose you call me Percy? Some peach of a moniker, Percy, ain't it?"
+
+"Percy?"
+
+"Sure, Percy," he grinned impudently. "But if you got a grouch against
+Percy, can it, and make me Algy. _I_ don't mind. It's not _me_
+beefing about monikers; it's you."
+
+"I am also," said I, regarding him steadily and ignoring his
+flippancy, "I am also obliged to ask you what is your occupation--when
+you are not stealing rides?"
+
+"Looks like it might be answering questions just now, don't it? What
+you want to know for? Whatever it is, I'm not able to do it now, am I?
+But as you're so naturally bellyaching to know, why, I've been in the
+ring."
+
+"So I presumed. Thank you," said I, politely. "And your name is John
+Flint, or Percy, or Algy, just as I choose. Percy and Algy are rather
+unusual names for a gentleman who has been in the ring, don't you
+think?"
+
+"I think," he snarled, turned suddenly ferocious, "that I'm named what
+I dam' please to be named, and no squeals from skypilots about it,
+neither. Say! what you driving at, anyhow? If what I tell you ain't
+satisfying, suppose you slip over a moniker to suit yourself--and go
+away!"
+
+"Oh! Suppose then," said I, without taking my eyes from his, "suppose,
+then, that I chose to call you--_Slippy McGee_?"
+
+I am sure that only his bodily weakness kept him from flying at my
+throat. As it was, his long arms with the hands upon them outstretched
+like a beast's claws, shot out ferociously. His face contracted
+horribly, and of a sudden the sweat burst out upon it so blindingly
+that he had to put up an arm and wipe it away. For a moment he lay
+still, glaring, panting, helpless; while I stood and watched him
+unmoved.
+
+"Ain't you the real little Sherlock Holmes, though?" he jeered
+presently. "Got Old Sleuth skinned for fair and Nick Carter eating
+out of your hand! You damned skypilot!" His voice cracked. "You're all
+alike! Get a man on his back and then put the screws on him!"
+
+I made no reply; only a great compassion for this mistaken and
+miserable creature surged like a wave over my heart.
+
+"For God's sake don't stand there staring like a bughouse owl!" he
+gritted. "Well, what you going to do? Bawl for the bulls? What put you
+wise?"
+
+"Help you to get well. No. I opened your bag--and looked up the
+newspapers," I answered succinctly.
+
+"Huh! A fat lot of good it'll do me to get well now, won't it? You
+think I ought to thank you for butting in and keeping me from dying
+without knowing anything about it, don't you? Well, you got another
+think coming. I don't. Ever hear of a pegleg in the ring? Ever hear of
+a one-hoofed dip! A long time I'd be Slippy McGee playing
+cat-and-mouse with the bulls, if I had to leave some of my legs home
+when I needed them right there on the job, wouldn't I? Oh, sure!"
+
+"And was it," I wondered, "such a fine thing to be Slippy McGee,
+flying from the police, that one should lament his--er--disappearance?"
+
+His eyes widened. He regarded me with pity as well as astonishment.
+
+"Didn't you read the papers?" he wondered in his turn. "There don't
+many travel in _my_ class, skypilot! Why, I haven't _got_ any
+equals--the best of them trail a mile behind. Ask the bulls, if you
+want to know about Slippy McGee! And I let the happy dust alone. Most
+dips are dopes, but I was too slick; I cut it out. I knew if the dope
+once gets you, then the bulls get next. Not for Slippy. I've kept my
+head clear, and that's how I've muddled theirs. They never get next to
+anything until I've cleaned up and dusted. Why, honest to God, I can
+open any box made, easy as easy, just like I can put it all over any
+bull alive! That is," a spasm twisted his face and into his voice
+crept the acute anguish of the artist deprived of all power to create,
+"that is, I could--until I made that last getaway on a freight, and
+this happened."
+
+"I am sorry," said I soothingly, "that you have lost your leg, of
+course. But better to lose your leg than your soul, my son. Why, how
+do you know--"
+
+He writhed. "Can it!" he implored. "Cut it out! Ain't I up against
+enough now, for God's sake? Down and out--and nothing to do but have
+my soul curry-combed and mashfed by a skypilot with _both_ his legs
+and _all_ his mouth on him! Ain't it hell, though? Say, you better
+send for the cops. I'd rather stand for the pen than the preaching.
+What'd you do with my bag, anyway?"
+
+"But I really have no idea of preaching to you; and I would rather not
+send for the police--afterwards, when you are better, you may do so if
+you choose. You are a free agent. As for your bag, why--it is--it
+is--in the keeping of the Church."
+
+"Huh!" said he, and twisted his mouth cynically. "Huh! Then it's
+good-bye tools, I suppose. I'm no churchmember, thank God, but I've
+heard that once the Church gets her clamps on anything worth while all
+hell can't pry her loose."
+
+Now I don't know why, but at that, suddenly and inexplicably, as if I
+had glimpsed a ray of light, I felt cheered.
+
+"Why, that's it exactly!" said I, smiling. "Once the Church gets real
+hold of a thing--or a man--worth while, she holds on so fast that all
+hell can't pry her loose. Won't you try to remember that, my son!"
+
+"If it's a joke, suck the marrow out of it yourself," said he sourly.
+"It don't listen so horrible funny to me. And you haven't peeped yet
+about what you're going to do. I'm waiting to hear. I'm real
+interested."
+
+"Why, I really don't know yet," said I, still cheerfully. "Suppose we
+wait and see? Here you are, safe and harmless enough for the present.
+And God is good; perhaps He knows that you and I may need each other
+more than you and the police need each other--who can tell? I should
+simply set myself strictly to the task of getting entirely well, if I
+were you--and let it go at that."
+
+He appeared to reflect; his forehead wrinkled painfully.
+
+"Devil-dodger," said he, after a pause, "are you just making a noise
+with your face, or is that on the level?"
+
+"That's on the level."
+
+His hard and suspicious eyes bored into me. And as I held his glance,
+a hint of wonder and amazement crept into his face.
+
+"God A'mighty! I believe him!" he gasped. And then, as if ashamed of
+that real feeling, he scowled.
+
+"Say, if you're really on the level, I guess you'd better not be
+flashing the name of Slippy McGee around promiscuous," he suggested
+presently. "It won't do either you or me any good, see? And say,
+parson,--forget Percy and Algy. How was I to know you'd be so white?
+And look here: I did know a gink named John Flint, once. Only he was
+called Reddy, because he'd got such a blazing red head and whiskers.
+He's croaked, so he wouldn't mind me using his moniker, seeing it's
+not doing him any good now."
+
+"Let us agree upon John Flint," I decided.
+
+"Help yourself," he agreed, equably.
+
+Clelie, with wrath and disapproval written upon every stiffened line,
+brought him his broth, which he took with a better grace than I had
+yet witnessed. He even added a muttered word of thanks.
+
+"It's funny," he reflected, when the yellow woman had left the room
+with the empty bowl, "it's sure funny, but d'ye know, I'm lots easier
+in my mind, knowing you know, and not having to think up a hard-luck
+gag to hand out to you? I hate like hell to have to lie, except of
+course when I need a smooth spiel for the cops. I guess I'll snooze a
+bit now," he added, as I rose to leave the room. And as I reached the
+door:
+
+"Parson?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Why--er--come in a bit to-night, will you? That is, if you've got
+time. And look here: don't you get the notion in your bean I'm just
+some little old two-by-four guy of a yegg or some poor nut of a dip.
+I'm _not_. Why, I've been the whole show _and_ manager besides. Yep,
+I'm Slippy McGee himself."
+
+He paused, to let this sink into my consciousness. I must confess that
+I was more profoundly impressed than even he had any idea of. And
+then, magnanimously, he added: "You're sure some white man, parson."
+
+"Thank you, John Flint," said I, with due modesty.
+
+Heaven knows why I should have been pleased and hopeful, but I was. My
+guest was a criminal; he hadn't shown the slightest sign of
+compunction or of shame; instead, he had betrayed a brazen pride. And
+yet--I felt hopeful. Although I knew I was tacitly concealing a
+burglar, my conscience remained clear and unclouded, and I had a calm
+intuitive assurance of right. So deeply did I feel this that when I
+went over to the church I placed before St. Stanislaus a small lamp
+full of purest olive oil, which is expensive. I felt that he deserved
+some compensation for hiding that package under his sheaf of lilies.
+
+The authorities of our small town knew, of course, that another
+forlorn wretch was being cared for at the Parish House. But had not
+the Parish House sheltered other such vagabonds? The sheriff saw no
+reason to give himself the least concern, beyond making the most
+casual inquiry. If I wanted the fellow, he was only too glad to let me
+keep him. And who, indeed, would look for a notorious criminal in a
+Parish House Guest Room? Who would connect that all too common
+occurrence, a tramp maimed by the railroad, with, the mysterious
+disappearance of the cracksman, Slippy McGee? So, for the present, I
+could feel sure that the man was safe.
+
+And in the meantime, in the orderly proceeding of everyday life, while
+he gained strength under my mother's wise and careful nursing and
+Westmoreland's wise and careful overseeing, there came to him those
+who were instruments for good--my mother first, whom, like Clelie, he
+never called anything but "Madame" and whom, like Clelie, he presently
+obeyed with unquestioning and childlike readiness. Now, Madame is a
+truly wonderful person when she deals with people like him. Never for
+a moment lowering her own natural and beautiful dignity, but without a
+hint of condescension, Madame manages to find the just level upon
+which both can stand as on common ground; then, without noise, she
+helps, and she conveys the impression that thus noiselessly to help is
+the only just, natural and beautiful thing for any decent person to
+do, unless, perhaps, it might be to receive in the like spirit.
+
+Judge Mayne's son, Laurence, full of a fresh and boyish enthusiasm,
+was such another instrument. He had a handsome, intelligent face, a
+straight and beautiful body, and the pleasantest voice in the world.
+His mother in her last years had been a fretful invalid, and to meet
+her constant demands the judge and his son had developed an angelic
+patience with weakness. They were both rather quiet and
+undemonstrative, this father and son; the older man, in fact had a
+stern visage at first glance, until one learned to know it as the face
+of a man trained to restraint and endurance. As for the boy, no one
+could long resist the shrewd, kind youngster, who could spend an hour
+with the most unlikely invalid and leave him all the better for it. I
+was unusually busy just then, Clelie frankly hated and feared the man
+upstairs, my mother had her hands full, and there were many heavy and
+lonesome hours which Laurence set himself the task of filling. I left
+this to the boy himself, offering no suggestions.
+
+"Padre," said the boy to me, some time later, "that chap upstairs is
+the hardest nut I ever tried to crack. There've been times when I felt
+tempted to crack him with a sledge-hammer, if you want the truth. You
+know, he always seemed to like me to read to him, but I've never been
+able to discover whether or not he liked what I read. He never asked
+me a single question, he never seemed interested enough to make a
+comment. But I think that I've made a dent in him at last."
+
+"A dent! In Flint? With what adamantine pick, oh hardiest of miners!"
+
+"With a book. Guess!"
+
+"I couldn't. I give up."
+
+"The Bible!" said Laurence.
+
+The Bible! Had _I_ chosen to read it to him, he would have resented
+it, been impervious, suspicious, hostile. I looked at the boy's
+laughing face, and wondered, and wondered.
+
+"And how," said I, curious, "did you happen to pitch on the Bible?"
+
+"Why, I got to studying about this chap. I wanted something that'd
+_reach him_. I was puzzled. And then I remembered hearing my father
+say that the Bible is the most interesting book in the world because
+it's the most personal. There's something in it for everybody. So I
+thought there'd be something in it for John Flint, and I tried it on
+him, without telling him what I was giving him. I just plunged right
+in, head over heels. Lord, Padre, it _is_ a wonderful old book, isn't
+it? Why, I got so lost in it myself that I forgot all about John
+Flint, until I happened to glance up and see that he was up to the
+eyes in it, just like I was! He likes the fights and he gloats over
+the spoils. He's asking for more. I think of turning Paul loose on
+him."
+
+"Well, if after the manner of men Paul fought with wild beasts at
+Ephesus," I said hopefully. "I dare say he'll be able to hold his own
+even with John Flint."
+
+"I like Paul best of all, myself," said Laurence. "You see, Padre, my
+father and I have needed a dose of Paul more than once--to stiffen our
+backbones. So I'm going to turn the fighting old saint loose on John
+Flint. 'By, Padre;--I'll look in to-morrow--I left poor old Elijah up
+in a cave with no water, and the ravens overdue!"
+
+He went down our garden path whistling, his cap on the back of his
+head, and I looked after him with the warm and comforting sense that
+the world is just that much better for such as he.
+
+The boy was now, in his last high school year, planning to study
+law--all the Maynes took to law as a duck to water. Brave,
+simple-hearted, direct, clear-thinking, scrupulously honorable,--this
+was one of the diamonds used to cut the rough hard surface of Slippy
+McGee.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+NEIGHBORS
+
+
+On a morning in late March, with a sweet and fresh wind blowing, a
+clear sun shining, and a sky so full of soft white woolly clouds that
+you might fancy the sky-people had turned their fleecy flock out to
+graze in the deep blue pastures, Laurence Mayne and I brought John
+Flint downstairs and rolled him out into the glad, green garden, in
+the comfortable wheel-chair that the mill-people had given us for a
+Christmas present; my mother and Clelie followed, and our little dog
+Pitache marched ahead, putting on ridiculous airs of responsibility;
+he being a dog with a great idea of his own importance and wholly
+given over to the notion that nothing could go right if he were not
+there to superintend and oversee it.
+
+The wistaria was in her zenith, girdling the tree-tops with amethyst;
+the Cherokee rose had just begun to reign, all in snow-white velvet,
+with a gold crown and a green girdle for greater glory; the greedy
+brown grumbling bees came to her table in dusty cohorts, and over her
+green bowers floated her gayer lovers the early butterflies, clothed
+delicately as in kings' raiment. In the corners glowed the
+ruby-colored Japanese quince, and the long sprays of that flower I
+most dearly love, the spring-like spirea which the children call
+bridal wreath, brushed you gently as you passed the gate. I never see
+it deck itself in bridal white, I never inhale its shy, clean scent,
+without a tightening of the throat, a misting of the eyes, a melting
+of the heart.
+
+Across our garden and across Miss Sally Ruth Dexter's you could see in
+Major Appleby Cartwright's yard the peach trees in pink party dresses,
+ruffled by the wind. Down the paths marched my mother's daffodils and
+hyacinths, with honey-breathing sweet alyssum in between. Robins and
+wrens, orioles and mocking-birds, blue jays and jackdaws, thrushes and
+blue-birds and cardinals, all were busy house-building; one heard
+calls and answers, saw flashes of painted wings, followed by outbursts
+of ecstasy. If one should lay one's ear to the ground on such a
+morning I think one might hear the heart of the world.
+
+"_Hallelujah! Risen! Risen!_" breathed the glad, green things, pushing
+from the warm mother-mold.
+
+"_Living! Living! Loving! Loving!_" flashed and fluted the flying
+things, joyously.
+
+We wheeled our man out into this divine freshness of renewed life,
+stopping the chair under a glossy, stately magnolia. My mother and
+Clelie and Laurence and I bustled about to make him comfortable.
+Pitache stood stock still, his tail stuck up like a sternly
+admonishing forefinger, a-bossing everything and everybody. We spread
+a light shawl over the man's knees, for it is not easy to bear a cruel
+physical infirmity, to see oneself marred and crippled, in the growing
+spring. He looked about him, snuffed, and wrinkled his forehead; his
+eyes had something of the wistful, wondering satisfaction of an
+animal's. He had never sat in a garden before, in all his life! Think
+of it!
+
+Whenever we bring one of our Guest Roomers downstairs, Miss Sally Ruth
+Dexter promptly comes to her side of the fence to look him over. She
+came this morning, looked at our man critically, and showed plain
+disapproval of him in every line of her face.
+
+On principle Miss Sally Ruth disapproves of most men and many women.
+She does not believe in wasting too much sympathy upon people either;
+she says folks get no more than they deserve and generally not half as
+much.
+
+Miss Sally Ruth Dexter is a rather important person in Appleboro. She
+is fifty-six years old, stout, brown-eyed, suffers from a congenital
+incapacity to refrain from telling the unwelcome truth when people are
+madly trying to save their faces,--she calls this being frank,--is
+tactless, independent, generous, and the possessor of what she herself
+complacently refers to as "a Figure."
+
+For a woman so convinced we're all full of natural and total
+depravity, unoriginal sinners, worms of the dust, and the devil's
+natural fire-fodder, Miss Sally Ruth manages to retain a simple and
+unaffected goodness of practical charity toward the unelect, such as
+makes one marvel. You may be predestined to be lost, but while you're
+here you shall lack no jelly, wine, soup, chicken-with-cream,
+preserves, gumbo, neither such marvelous raised bread as Miss Sally
+Ruth knows how to make with a perfection beyond all praise.
+
+She has a tiny house and a tiny income, which satisfies her; she has
+never married. She told my mother once, cheerfully, that she guessed
+she must be one of those born eunuchs of the spirit the Bible
+mentions--it was intended for her, and she was glad of it, for it had
+certainly saved her a sight of worry and trouble.
+
+There is a cherished legend in our town that Major Appleby Cartwright
+once went over to Savannah on a festive occasion and was there
+joyously entertained by the honorable the Chatham Artillery. The
+Chatham Artillery brews a Punch; insidious, delectable, deceptive, but
+withal a pernicious strong drink that is raging, a wine that mocketh
+and maketh mad. And they gave it to Major Appleby Cartwright in
+copious draughts.
+
+Coming home upon the heels of this, the major arose, put on his Prince
+Albert, donned his top hat, picked a huge bunch of zinnias, and at
+nine o'clock in the morning marched over to Miss Sally Ruth Dexter's.
+
+We differ as to certain unimportant details of that historic call, but
+we are in the main agreed upon the conversation that ensued.
+
+"Sally Ruth," said the major, depositing his bulky person in a rocking
+chair, his hat upon the floor, and wiping his forehead with a spotless
+handkerchief the size of a respectable sheet, "Sally Ruth, you like
+Old Maids?" Here he presented the zinnias.
+
+"Why, I've got a yard full of 'em myself, Major. Whatever made you
+bother to pick 'em? But to whom much hath more shall be given, I
+suppose," said she, resignedly, and put them on the whatnot.
+
+"Sally Ruth," said the major solemnly, ignoring this indifferent
+reception of his offering. "Sally Ruth, come to think of it, an Old
+Maid's a miserable, stiff, scentless sort of a flower. You might
+think, when you first glance at 'em, that they're just like any other
+flowers, but they're not; they're without one single, solitary
+redeemin' particle of sweetness! The Lord made 'em for a warnin' to
+women.
+
+"What good under God's sky does it do you to be an old maid, Sally
+Ruth? You're flyin' in the face of Providence. No lady should fly in
+the face of Providence--she'd a sight better fly to the bosom of some
+man, where she belongs. This mawnin' I looked out of my window and my
+eye fell upon these unfortunate flowers. Right away I thought of you,
+livin' over here all alone and by yourself, with no man's bosom to
+lean on--you haven't really got anything but a few fowls and the Lord
+to love, have you? And, Sally Ruth, tears came to my eyes. Talk not of
+tears till you have seen the tears of warlike men! I believe it would
+almost scare you to death to see me cryin', Sally Ruth! I got to
+thinkin', and I said to myself: 'Appleby Cartwright, you have always
+done your duty like a man. You charged up to the very muzzle of Yankee
+guns once, and you weren't scared wu'th a damn! Are you goin' to be
+scared now? There's a plain duty ahead of you; Sally Ruth's a fine
+figure of a woman, and she ought to have a man's bosom to lean on. Go
+offer Sally Ruth yours!' So here I am, Sally Ruth!" said the major
+valiantly.
+
+Miss Sally Ruth regarded him critically; then:
+
+"You're drunk, Appleby Cartwright, that's what's the matter with you.
+You and your bosom! Why, it's not respectable to talk like that! At
+your age, too! I'm ashamed of you!"
+
+"I was a little upset, over in Savannah," admitted the major. "Those
+fellows must have gotten me to swallow over a gallon of their infernal
+brew--and it goes down like silk, too. Listen at me: don't you ever
+let 'em make you drink a gallon of that punch, Sally Ruth."
+
+"I've seen its effects before. Go home and sleep it off," said Miss
+Sally Ruth, not unkindly. "If you came over to warn me about filling
+up on Artillery Punch, your duty's done--I've never been entertained
+by the Chatham Artillery, and I don't ever expect to be. I suppose it
+was intended for you to be a born goose, Appleby, so it'd be a waste
+of time for me to fuss with you about it. Go on home, now, do, and let
+Caesar put you to bed. Tell him to tie a wet rag about your head and to
+keep it wet. That'll help to cool you off."
+
+"Sally Ruth," said the major, laying his hand upon his heart and
+trying desperately to focus her with an eye that would waver in spite
+of him, "Sally Ruth, _somebody's_ got to do something for you, and it
+might as well be me. My God, Sally Ruth, _you're settin' like
+clabber!_ It's a shame; it's a cryin' shame, for you're a fine woman.
+I don't mean to scare or flutter you, Sally Ruth,--no gentleman ought
+to scare or flutter a lady--but I'm offerin' you my hand and heart;
+here's my bosom for you to lean on."
+
+"That Savannah brew is worse even than I thought--it's run the man
+stark crazy," said Miss Sally Ruth, viewing him with growing concern.
+
+"Me crazy! Why, I'm askin' you," said the major with awful dignity,
+"I'm askin' you to marry me!"
+
+"Marry _you_? Marry fiddlesticks! Shucks!" said the lady.
+
+"You won't?" Amazement made him sag down in his chair. He stared at
+her owl-like. "Woman," said he solemnly, "when I see my duty I try to
+do it. But I warn you--it's your last chance."
+
+"I hope," said Miss Sally Ruth tartly, "that it's my last chance to
+make a born fool of myself. Why, you old gasbag, if I had to stay in
+the same house with you I'd be tempted to stick a darning needle in
+you to hear you explode! Appleby, I'm like that woman that had a
+chimney that smoked, a dog that growled, a parrot that swore, and a
+cat that stayed out nights; _she_ didn't need a man--and no more do
+I."
+
+"Sally Ruth," said the major feelingly, "when I came here this mawnin'
+it wasn't for my own good--it was for yours. And to think this is all
+the thanks I get for bein' willin' to sacrifice myself! My God! The
+ingratitude of women!"
+
+He looked at Miss Sally Ruth, and Miss Sally Ruth looked at him. And
+then suddenly, without a moment's warning, Miss Sally Ruth rose, and
+took Major Appleby Cartwright, who on a time had charged Yankee guns
+and hadn't been scared wu'th a damn, by the ear. She tugged, and the
+major rose, as one pulled upward by his bootstraps.
+
+"Ouch! Turn loose! I take it back! The devil! It wasn't intended for
+any mortal man to marry you--Sally Ruth, I wouldn't marry you now for
+forty billion dollars and a mule! Turn loose, you hussy! Turn loose!"
+screeched the major.
+
+Unheeding his anguished protests, which brought Judge Hammond Mayne on
+the run, thinking somebody was being murdered, Miss Sally Ruth marched
+her suitor out of her house and led him to her front gate. Here she
+paused, jaws firmly set, eyes glittering, and, as with hooks of
+steel, took firm hold upon the gallant major's other ear. Then she
+shook him; his big crimson countenance, resembling a huge overripe
+tomato, waggled deliriously to and fro.
+
+"I was born"--_shake_--"an old maid,"--_shake, shake, shake_--"I have
+lived--by the grace of God"--_shake, shake, shake_--"an old maid, and
+I expect"--_shake_--"to die an old maid! I don't propose to
+have"--_shake_--"an old windbag offering _me_ his blubbery old
+bosom"--_shake, shake, SHAKE_--"at this time of my life!--and don't
+you forget it, Appleby Cartwright! _THERE!_ You go back home"--_shake,
+shake, shake_--"and sober up, you old gander, you!"
+
+Major Appleby Cartwright stood not upon the order of his going, but
+went at once, galloping as if a company of those Yankees with whom he
+had once fought were upon his hindquarters with fixed bayonets.
+
+However, they being next-door neighbors and friends of a lifetime's
+standing, peace was finally patched up. In Appleboro we do not mention
+this historic meeting when either of the participants can hear us,
+though it is one of our classics and no home is complete without it.
+The Major ever afterward eschewed Artillery Punch.
+
+This morning, over the fence, Miss Sally Ruth addressed our invalid
+directly and without prelude, after her wont. She doesn't believe in
+beating about the bush:
+
+"The wages of walking up and down the earth and going to and fro in
+it, tramping like Satan, is a lost leg. Not that it wasn't intended
+you should lose yours--and I hope and pray it will be a lesson to
+you."
+
+"Well, take it from me," he said grimly, "there's nobody but me
+collecting my wages."
+
+A quick approval of this plain truth showed in Miss Sally Ruth's
+snapping eyes.
+
+"Come!" said she, briskly. "If you've got sense enough to see _that_,
+you're not so far away from the truth as you might be. Collecting your
+wages is the good and the bad thing about life, I reckon. But
+everything's intended, so you don't need to be too sorry for yourself,
+any way you look at it. And you could just as well have lost _both_
+legs while you were at it, you know." She paused reflectively. "Let's
+see: I've got chicken-broth and fresh rolls to-day--I'll send you over
+some, after awhile." She nodded, and went back to her housework.
+
+Laurence went on to High School, Madame had her house to oversee, I
+had many overdue calls; so we left Pitache and John Flint together,
+out in the birdhaunted, sweet-scented, sun-dappled garden, in the
+golden morning hours. No one can be quite heartless in a green garden,
+quite hopeless in the spring, or quite desolate when there's a dog's
+friendly nose to be thrust into one's hand.
+
+I am afraid that at first he missed all this; for he could think of
+nothing but himself and that which had befallen him, coming upon him
+as a bolt from the blue. He had had, heretofore, nothing but his
+body--and now his body had betrayed him! It had become, not the
+splendid engine which obeyed his slightest wish, but a drag upon him.
+Realizing this acutely, untrained, undisciplined, he was savagely
+sullen, impenetrably morose. He tired of Laurence's reading--I think
+the boy's free quickness of movement, his well-knit, handsome body,
+the fact that he could run and jump as pleased him, irked and chafed
+the man new and unused to his own physical infirmity.
+
+He seemed to want none of us; I have seen him savagely repulse the
+dog, who, shocked and outraged at this exhibition of depravity,
+withdrew, casting backward glances of horrified and indignant
+reproach.
+
+But as the lovely, peaceful, healing days passed, that bitter and
+contracted heart had to expand somewhat. Gradually the ferocity faded,
+leaving in its room an anxious and brooding wonder. God knows what
+thoughts passed through that somber mind in those long hours, when,
+concentrated upon himself, he must have faced the problem of his
+future and, like one before an impassable stone wall, had to fall
+back, baffled. He could be sure of only one thing: that never again
+could he be what he had been once--"the slickest cracksman in
+America." This in itself tortured him. Heretofore, life had been
+exactly what he chose to make it: he had put himself to the test, and
+he had proven himself the most daring, the coolest, shrewdest, most
+cunning, in that sinister world in which he had shone with so evil a
+light. _He had been Slippy McGee_. Sure of himself, his had been that
+curious inverted pride which is the stigmata of the criminal.
+
+More than once I saw him writhe in his chair, tormented, shaken, spent
+with futile curses, impotently lamenting his lost kingdom. He still
+had the skill, the cold calculating brain, the wit, the will; and now,
+by a cruel chance and a stupid accident, he had lost out! The end had
+come for him, and he in his heyday! There were moments when, watching
+him, I had the sensation as of witnessing almost visibly, here in our
+calm sunny garden, the Dark Powers fighting openly for a soul.
+
+_"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against
+principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of
+this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+UNDERWINGS
+
+
+If I have not heretofore spoken of Mary Virginia, it is because all
+that winter she and Mrs. Eustis had been away; and in consequence
+Appleboro was dull enough. For the Eustises are our wealthiest and
+most important family, just as the Eustis house, with its pillared,
+Greek-temple-effect front, is by far the handsomest house in town.
+When we have important folks to entertain, we look to the Eustises to
+save our faces for us by putting them up at their house.
+
+One afternoon, shortly after we had gotten settled in Appleboro, I
+came home to find my mother entertaining no less a personage than Mrs.
+Eustis; she wasn't calling on the Catholic priest and his mother, you
+understand; far from it! She was recognizing Armand De Rance and Adele
+de Marsignan!
+
+Mrs. Eustis was a fair, plump little partridge of a woman, so
+perfectly satisfied with herself that brains, in her case, would have
+amounted to a positive calamity. She is an instance of the fascination
+a fool seems to have for men of undoubted powers of mind and heart,
+for Eustis, who had both to an unusual degree, loved her devotedly,
+even while he smiled at her. She had, after some years of
+childlessness, laid him under an everlasting obligation by presenting
+him with a daughter, an obligation deepened by the fact that the
+child was in every sense her father's child, not her mother's.
+
+That afternoon she brought the little girl with her, to make our
+acquaintance. When the child, shyly friendly, looked up, it seemed to
+me for an anguished moment as if another little girl had walked out of
+the past, so astonishingly like was she to that little lost playmate
+of my youth. Right then and there Mary Virginia walked into my heart
+and took possession, as of a place swept and garnished and long
+waiting her coming.
+
+When we knew her better my mother used to say that if she could have
+chosen a little girl instead of the little boy that had been I, she
+must have chosen Mary Virginia Eustis out of all the world.
+
+Like Judge Mayne's Laurence, she chose to make the Parish House her
+second home--for indeed my mother ever seemed to draw children to her,
+as by some delightful magic. Here, then, the child learned to sew and
+to embroider, to acquire beautiful housewifely accomplishments, and to
+speak French with flawless perfection; she reaped the benefit of my
+mother's girlhood spent in a convent in France; and Mrs. Eustis was
+far too shrewd not to appreciate the value of this. And so we acquired
+Mary Virginia.
+
+I watched the lovely miracle of her growth with an almost painful
+tenderness. Had I not become a priest, had I realized those spring
+hopes of mine; and had there been little children resembling their
+mother, then my own little girls had been like this one. Even thus had
+been their blue eyes, and theirs, too, such hair of such curling
+blackness.
+
+The hours I spent with the little girl and Laurence helped me as well
+as them; these fresh souls and growing minds freshened and revived
+mine, and kept me young in heart.
+
+"We are all made of dust," said my mother once. "But Mary Virginia's
+is star dust. Star dust, and dew, and morning gold," she added
+musingly.
+
+"She simply cannot imagine evil, much less see it in anything or in
+anybody," I told Madame, for at times the child's sheer innocence
+troubled me for her. "One is puzzled how to bring home to this naive
+soul the ugly truth that all is not good. Now, Laurence is better
+balanced. He takes people and events with a saving grain of
+skepticism. But Mary Virginia is divinely blind."
+
+My mother regarded me with a tolerant smile. "Do not worry too much
+over that divinely blind one, my son," said she. "I assure you, she is
+quite capable of seeing a steeple in daylight! Observe this: yesterday
+Laurence angered her, and she seized him by the hair and bumped his
+head against the study wall--no mild thump, either! She has in her
+quite enough of the leaven of unrighteousness to save her, at a
+pinch--for Laurence was entirely right, she entirely wrong. Yet--she
+made him apologize before she consented to forgive him, and he did it
+gratefully. She allowed him to understand how magnanimous she was in
+thus pardoning him for her own naughtiness, and he was deeply
+impressed, as men-creatures should be under such circumstances. Such
+wisdom, and she but a child! I was enchanted!"
+
+"Good heavens! Surely, Mother, I misunderstand you! Surely you
+reproved her!"
+
+"Reprove her?" My mother's voice was full of astonishment. "Why should
+I reprove her? She was perfectly right!"
+
+"Perfectly right? Why, you said--indeed, I assure you, you said that
+Laurence had been entirely right, she entirely wrong!"
+
+"Oh, _that!_ I see; well, as for that, she was."
+
+"Then, surely--"
+
+"My son, a woman who is in the wrong is entirely right when she makes
+the man apologize," said my mother firmly. "That is the Law, fixed as
+the Medes' and the Persians', and she who forgets or ignores it is
+ground between the upper and the nether millstones. Mary Virginia
+remembered and obeyed. When she grows up you will all of you adore her
+madly. Why, then, should she be reproved?"
+
+I have never been able to reflect upon Laurence getting his head
+bumped and then gratefully apologizing to the darling shrew who did
+it, without a cold wind stirring my hair. And yet--Laurence, and I,
+too, love her all the more dearly for it! _Miserere, Domine!_
+
+It was May when Mary Virginia came back to Appleboro. She had written
+us a bubbling letter, telling us just when we were to expect her, and
+how happy she was at the thought of being home once more. We, too,
+rejoiced, for we had missed her sadly. My mother was so happy that she
+planned a little intimate feast to celebrate the child's return.
+
+I remember how calm and mild an evening it was. At noon there had been
+a refreshing shower, and the air was deliciously pure and clear, and
+full of wet woodsy scents. The raindrops fringing the bushes became
+prisms, a spiderweb was a fairy foot-bridge; and all our birds,
+leaving for a moment such household torments as squalling insatiable
+mouths that must be filled, became jubilant choristers. "The opulent
+dyepots of the angels" had been emptied lavishly across the sky, and
+the old Parish House lay steeped in a serene and heavenly glow, every
+window glittering diamond-bright to the west.
+
+Next door Miss Sally Ruth was feeding and scolding her cooing pigeons,
+which fluttered about her, lighting upon her shoulder, surrounding her
+with a bright-colored living cloud; the judge's black cat Panch lay
+along the Mayne side of the fence and blinked at them regretfully with
+his slanting emerald eyes. From the Mayne kitchen-steps came, faintly,
+Daddy January's sweet quavering old voice:
+
+    "--Gwine tuh climb up higher 'n' higher,
+         Some uh dese days--"
+
+John Flint, silent, depressed, with folded lips and somber eyes,
+hobbled about awkwardly, savagely training himself to use the crutches
+Westmoreland had lately brought him. Very unlovely he looked, dragging
+himself along like a wounded beast. The poor wretch struck a
+discordant note in the sweet peacefulness of the spring evening; nor
+could we say anything to comfort him, we who were not maimed.
+
+Came a high, sweet, shrill call at the gate; a high yelp of delight
+from Pitache, hurtling himself forward like a woolly white cannonball;
+a sound of light and flying feet; and Mary Virginia ran into the
+garden, the little overjoyed dog leaping frantically about her. She
+wore a white frock, and over it a light scarlet jacket. Her blue eyes
+were dancing, lighting her sweet and fresh face, colored like a rose.
+The gay little breeze that came along with her stirred her skirts, and
+fluttered her scarlet ribbons, and the curls about her temples. You
+might think Spring herself had paused for a lovely moment in the
+Parish House garden and stood before you in this gracious and virginal
+shape, at once delicate and vital.
+
+Miss Sally Ruth, scattering pigeons right and left, dashed to the
+fence to call greetings. My mother, seizing the child by the arms,
+held her off a moment, to look her over fondly; then, drawing her
+closer, kissed her as a daughter is kissed.
+
+I laid my hand on the child's head, happy with that painful happiness
+her presence always occasioned me, when she came back after an
+absence--as if the Other Girl flashed into view for a quick moment,
+and then was gone. Laurence, who had followed, stood looking down at
+her with boyish condescension.
+
+"Huh! I can eat hominy off her head!" said he, aggravatingly.
+
+"Old Mister Biggity!" flashed Mary Virginia. And then she turned and
+met, face to face, the fixed stare of John Flint, hanging upon his
+crutches as one might upon a cross,--a stare long, still, intent,
+curious, speculative, almost incredulous.
+
+"You are the Padre's last guest, aren't you?" her eyes were full of
+gravest sympathy. "I'm so sorry you met with such a misfortune--but
+I'm gladder you're alive. It's so good just to be alive in the spring,
+isn't it?" She smiled at him directly, taking him, as it were, into a
+pleasant confidence. She seemed perfectly unconscious of the evil
+unloveliness of him; Mary Virginia always seemed to miss the evil,
+passing it over as if it didn't exist. Instead, diving into the depths
+of other personalities, always she brought to the surface whatever
+pearl of good might lie concealed at the bottom. To her this sinister
+cripple was simply another human being, with whose misfortune one must
+sympathize humanly.
+
+Clelie, in a speckless white apron and a brand-new red-and-white
+bandanna to do greater honor to the little girl whom she adored, set a
+table under the trees and spread it with the thin dainty sandwiches,
+the delectable little cakes, and the fine bonbons she and my mother
+had made to celebrate the child's return. And we had tea, making very
+merry, for she had a thousand amusing things to tell us, every airy
+trifle informed with something of her own brave bright mirthful
+spirit. John Flint sat nearby in the wheel chair, his crutches lying
+beside it, and looked on silently and ate his cake and drank his tea
+stolidly, as if it were no unusual thing for him to break bread in
+such company.
+
+"Padre," said Mary Virginia with deep gravity. "My aunt Jenny says I'm
+growing up. She says I'll have to put up my hair and let down my
+frocks pretty soon, and that I'll probably be thinking of beaux in
+another year, though she hopes to goodness I won't, until I've got
+through with school at least."
+
+The almost unconscious imitation of Miss Jenny's pecking, birdlike
+voice made me smile.
+
+"Beaux! Long skirts! Put up hair! Great Scott, will you listen to the
+kid!" scoffed Laurence. "You everlasting little silly, you! P'tite
+Madame, these cakes are certainly all to the good. May I have another
+two or three, please!"
+
+"I'm 'most thirteen years old, Laurence Mayne," said Mary Virginia,
+with dignity. "You're only seventeen, so you don't need to give
+yourself such hateful airs. You're not too old to be greedy, anyhow.
+Padre, _am_ I growing up?"
+
+"I fear so, my child," said I, gloomily.
+
+"You're not glad, either, are you, Padre?"
+
+"But you were such a delightful child," I temporized.
+
+"Oh, lovely!" said Laurence, eying her with unflattering
+brotherliness. "And she had so much feeling, too, Mary Virginia! Why,
+when I was sick once, she wanted me to die, so she could ride to my
+funeral in the front carriage; she doted on funerals, the little
+ghoul! She was horribly disappointed when I got better--she thought it
+disobliging of me, and that I'd done it to spite her. Once, too, when
+I tried to reason with her--and Mary Virginia needed reason if ever a
+kid did--she bumped my head until I had knots on it. There's your
+delightful Mary Virginia for you!"
+
+"Anyhow, you didn't die and become an angel--you stayed disagreeably
+alive and you're going to become a lawyer," said Mary Virginia, too
+gently. "And your head was bumpable, Laurence, though I'm sorry to say
+I don't ever expect to bump it again. Why, I'm going away to school
+and when I come back I'll be Miss Eustis, and you'll be Mr. Mayne!
+Won't it be funny, though?"
+
+"I don't see anything funny in calling you Miss Eustis," said
+Laurence, with boyish impatience. "And I'm certainly not going to
+notice you if you're silly enough to call me Mister Mayne. I hope you
+won't be a fool, Mary Virginia. So many girls are fools." He ate
+another cake.
+
+"Not half as big fools as boys are, though," said she,
+dispassionately. "My father says the man is always the bigger fool of
+the two."
+
+Laurence snorted. "I wonder what we'll be like, though--both of us?"
+he mused.
+
+"You? You're biggity now, but you'll be lots worse, then," said Mary
+Virginia, with unflattering frankness. "I think you'll probably strut
+like a turkey, and you'll be baldheaded, and wear double-lensed horn
+spectacles, and spats, and your wife will call you 'Mr. Mayne' to your
+face and 'Your Poppa' to the children, and she'll perfectly _despise_
+people like Madame and the Padre and me!"
+
+"You never did have any reasoning power, Mary Virginia," said
+Laurence, with brotherly tact. "Our black cat Panch would put it all
+over you. Allow me to inform you I'm _not_ biggity, miss! I'm
+logical--something a girl can't understand. And I'd like to know what
+you think _you're_ going to grow up to be?"
+
+"Oh, let's quit talking about it," she said petulantly. "I hate to
+think of growing up. Grown ups don't seem to be happy--and _I_ want to
+be happy!" She turned her head, and met once more the absorbed and
+watchful stare of the man in the wheel-chair.
+
+"Weren't you sorry when you had to stop being a little boy and grow
+up?" she asked him, wistfully.
+
+"Me?" he laughed harshly. "I couldn't say, miss. I guess I was born
+grown up." His face darkened.
+
+"That wasn't a bit fair," said she, with instant sympathy.
+
+"There's a lot not fair," he told her, "when you're born and brought
+up like I was. The worst is not so much what happens to you, though
+that's pretty bad; it's that you don't know it's happening--and
+there's nobody to put you wise. Why," his forehead puckered as if a
+thought new to him had struck him, "why, your very looks get to be
+different!"
+
+Mary Virginia started. "Oh, looks!" said she, thoughtfully. "Now,
+isn't it curious for you to say just that, right now, for it reminds
+me that I brought something to the Padre--something that set me to
+thinking about people's looks, too,--and how you never can tell. Wait
+a minute, and I'll show you." She reached for the pretty crocheted bag
+she had brought with her, and drew from it a small pasteboard box.
+None of us, idly watching her, dreamed that a moment big with fate was
+upon us. I have often wondered how things would have turned out if
+Mary Virginia had lost or forgotten that pasteboard box!
+
+"I happened to put my hand on a tree--and this little fellow moved,
+and I caught him. I thought at first he was a part of the tree-trunk,
+he looked so much like it," said the child, opening the little box.
+Inside lay nothing more unusual than a dark-colored and rather ugly
+gray moth, with his wings folded down.
+
+"One wouldn't think him pretty, would one?" said she, looking down at
+the creature.
+
+"No," said Flint, who had wheeled nearer, and craned his neck over the
+box. "No, miss, I shouldn't think I'd call something like that
+pretty,"--he looked from the moth to Mary Virginia, a bit
+disappointedly.
+
+Mary Virginia smiled, and picking up the little moth, held his body,
+very gently, between her finger-tips. He fluttered, spreading out his
+gray wings; and then one saw the beautiful pansy-like underwings, and
+the glorious lower pair of scarlet velvet barred and bordered with
+black.
+
+"I brought him along, thinking the Padre might like him, and tell me
+something about him," said the little girl. "The Padre's crazy about
+moths and butterflies, you must understand, and we're always on the
+lookout to get them for him. I never found this particular one before,
+and you can't imagine how I felt when he showed me what he had hidden
+under that gray cloak of his!"
+
+"He's a member of a large and most respectable family, the Catocalae,"
+I told her. "I'll take him, my dear, and thank you--there's always a
+demand for the Catocalae. And you may call him an Underwing, if you
+prefer--that's his common name."
+
+"I got to thinking," said the little girl, thoughtfully, lifting her
+clear and candid eyes to John Flint's. "I got to thinking, when he
+threw aside his plain gray cloak and showed me his lovely underwings,
+that he's like some people--people you'd think were very common, you
+know. You couldn't be expected to know what was underneath, could you?
+So you pass them by, thinking how ordinary, and matter of fact, and
+uninteresting and even ugly they are, and you feel rather sorry for
+them--because you don't know. But if you can once get close enough to
+touch them--why, then you find out!" Her eyes grew deeper, and
+brighter, as they do when she is moved; and the color came more
+vividly to her cheek. "Don't you reckon," said she naively, "that
+plenty of folks are like him? They're the sad color of the
+street-dust, of course, for things do borrow from their surroundings,
+didn't you know that? That's called protective mimicry, the Padre
+says. So you only think of the dust-colored outside--and all the while
+the underwings are right there, waiting for you to find them! Isn't it
+wonderful and beautiful? And the best of all is, it's true!"
+
+The cripple in the chair put out his hand with a hint of timidity in
+his manner; he was staring at Mary Virginia as if some of the light
+within her had dimly penetrated his grosser substance.
+
+"Could I hold it--for a minute--in my own hand?" he asked, turning
+brick-red.
+
+"Of course you may," said Mary Virginia pleasantly. "I see by the
+Padre's face this isn't a rare moth--he's been here all along, only my
+eyes have just been opened to him. I don't want him to go in any
+collection. I don't want him to go anywhere, except back into the
+air--I owe him that for what he taught me. So I'm sure the Padre won't
+mind, if you'd like to set him free, yourself."
+
+She put the moth on the man's finger, delicately, for a Catocala is a
+swift-winged little chap; it spread out its wings splendidly, as if to
+show him its loveliness; then, darting upward, vanished into the cool
+green depth of the shrubbery.
+
+"I remember running after a butterfly once, when I was a kid," said
+he. "He came flying down our street, Lord knows where from, or why,
+and I caught him after a chase. I thought he was the prettiest thing
+ever my eyes had seen, and I wanted the worst way in the world to keep
+him with me. A brown fellow he was, all sprinkled over with little
+splotches of silver, as if there'd been plenty of the stuff on hand,
+and it'd been laid on him thick. But after awhile I got to thinking
+he'd feel like he was in jail, shut up in my hot fist. I couldn't bear
+that, so I ran to the end of the street, to save him from the other
+kids, and then I turned him loose and watched him beat it for the sky.
+They're pretty things, butterflies. Somehow I always liked them better
+than any other living creatures." He was staring after the moth, his
+forehead wrinkled. He spoke almost unconsciously, and he certainly had
+no idea that he had given us cause for a hopeful astonishment.
+
+Now, Mary Virginia's eyes had fallen, idly enough, upon John Flint's
+hands lying loosely upon his knees. Her face brightened.
+
+"Padre," she suggested suddenly, "why don't you let him help you with
+your butterflies? Look at his hands! Why, they're just exactly the
+right sort to handle setting needles and mounting blocks, and to
+stretch wings without loosening a scale. He could be taught in a few
+lessons, and just think what a splendid help he could be! And you do
+so need help with those insects of yours, Padre--I've heard you say
+so, over and over."
+
+The child was right--John Flint did have good hands--large enough,
+well-shaped, steel-muscled, powerful, with flexible, smooth-skinned,
+sensitive fingers, the fingers of an expert lapidary rather than a
+prize-fighter.
+
+"If you think there's any way I could help the parson for awhile, I'd
+be proud to try, miss. It's true," he added casually, with a
+sphinx-like immobility of countenance, "that I'm what might be called
+handy with my fingers."
+
+"We'll call it settled, then," said Mary Virginia happily.
+
+Laurence took her home at dusk; it was a part of his daily life to
+look after Mary Virginia, as one looks after a cherished little
+sister. When they were younger the boy had often complained that she
+might as well be his sister, she quarreled with him so much; and the
+little girl said, bitterly, he was as disagreeable as if he'd been a
+brother. In spite of which the little girl, for all her delicious
+impertinences, looked up to the boy; and the boy had adored her, from
+the time she gurgled at him from her cradle.
+
+My mother left us, and John Flint and I sat outdoors in the pleasant
+twilight, he smoking the pipe Laurence had given him.
+
+"Parson," said he, abruptly, "Parson, you folks are swells, ain't you?
+The real thing, I mean, you and Madame? Even the yellow nigger's a
+lady nigger, ain't she?"
+
+"I am a poor priest, such as you see, my son, Madame is--Madame. And
+Clelie is a good servant."
+
+"But you were born a swell, weren't you?" he persisted. "Old family,
+swell diggings, trained flunkies, and all that?"
+
+"I was born a gentleman, if that is what you mean. Of an old family,
+yes. And there was an old house--once."
+
+"How'd _you_ ever hit the trail for the Church? I wonder! But say,
+you never asked me any more questions than you had to, so you can tell
+me to shut up, if you want to. Not that I wouldn't like to know how
+the Sam Hill the like of you ever got nabbed by the skypilots."
+
+"God called me through affliction, my son."
+
+"Oh," said my son, blankly. "Huh! But I bet you the best crib ever
+cracked you were some peach of a boy before you got that 'S.O.S.'"
+
+"I was, like the young, the thoughtless young, a sinner."
+
+"I suppose," said he tentatively, after a pause, "that _I'm_ one hell
+of a sinner myself, according to Hoyle, ain't I?"
+
+"I do not think it would injure you to change your--course of life,
+nor yet your way of mentioning it," I said, feeling my way cautiously.
+"But--we are bidden to remember there is more joy in heaven over one
+sinner saved than over the ninety-and-nine just men."
+
+"Is that so? Well, it listens like good horse-sense to me," said Mr.
+Flint, promptly. "Because, look here: you can rake in ninety-and-nine
+boobs any old time--there's one born every time the clock ticks,
+parson--but they don't land something like me every day, believe me!
+And I bet you a stack of dollar chips a mile high there was some
+song-and-dance in the sky-joint when they put one over on _you_ for
+fair. Sure!" He puffed away at his pipe, and I, having nothing to say
+to this fine reasoning, held my peace.
+
+"Parson, that kid's a swell, too, ain't she? And the boy?"
+
+"Laurence is the son of Judge Hammond Mayne."
+
+"And the little girl?" Insensibly his voice softened.
+
+"I suppose," I agreed, "that the little girl is what you might call a
+swell, too."
+
+"I never," said he, reflectively, "came what you might call _talking_
+close to real swells before. I've seen 'em, of course--at a distance.
+Some of 'em, taking 'em by and large, looked pretty punk, to me; some
+of 'em was middling, and a few looked as if they might have the goods.
+But none of 'em struck me as being real live breathing _people_, same
+as other folks. Why, parson, some of those dames'd throw a fit,
+fancying they was poisoned, if they had to breathe the same air with
+folks like me--me being what I am and they being--what they think they
+are. Yet here's you and Madame, the real thing--and the boy--and the
+little girl--the little girl--" he stopped, staring at me dumbly, as
+the vision of Mary Virginia rose before him.
+
+"She is, indeed, a dear, dear child," said I. His words stung me
+somewhat, for once upon a time, I myself would have resented that such
+as he should have breathed the same air with Mary Virginia.
+
+"I'd almost think I'd dreamed her," said he, thoughtfully, "that is,
+if I was good enough to have dreams like that," he added hastily, with
+his first touch of shame. "I've seen 'em from the Battery up, and some
+of 'em was sure-enough queens, but I didn't know they came like this
+one. She's bran-new to me, parson. Say, you just show me what she
+wants me to help you with, and I'll do it. She seems to think I can,
+and it oughtn't to be any harder than opening a time-vault, ought it?"
+
+"No," said I gravely, "I shouldn't think it would be. Though I never
+opened a time-vault, you understand, and I hope and pray you'll never
+touch one again, either. I'd rather you wouldn't even refer to it,
+please. It makes me feel, rather--well, let's say _particeps
+criminis_."
+
+"I suppose that's the polite for punching you in the wind," said he,
+just as gravely. "And I didn't think you'd ever monkeyed with a vault;
+why, you couldn't, not if you was to try till Gabriel did his little
+turn in the morning--not unless you'd been caught when you were softer
+and put wise. Man, it's a bigger job than you think, and you've got to
+have the know-how and the nerve before you can put it over. But
+there--I'll keep it dark, seeing you want me to." He stretched out his
+hands, regarding them speculatively. "They _are_ classy mitts," he
+remarked impersonally. "Yep, seemed like they were just naturally made
+to--do what they did. They were built for fine work." At that his jaw
+snapped; a spasm twitched his face; it darkened.
+
+"The work little Miss Eustis suggested for you," I insinuated hastily,
+"is what very many people consider very fine work indeed. About one in
+a thousand can do it properly."
+
+"Lead me to it," said he wearily, and without enthusiasm, "and turn me
+loose. I'll do what I can, to please her. At least, until I can make a
+getaway for keeps."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ENTER KERRY
+
+
+When I was first seen prowling along the roads and about the fields
+stalking butterflies and diurnal moths with the caution of a red
+Indian on the warpath and the stealth of a tiger in the jungle; when
+mystified folk met me at night, a lantern suspended from my neck, a
+haversack across my shoulders, a bottle-belt about my waist, and armed
+with a butterfly net, the consensus of opinion was that poor Father De
+Rance was stark staring mad. Appleboro hadn't heretofore witnessed the
+proceedings of the Brethren of the Net, and I had to do much patient
+explaining; even then I am sure I must have left many firmly convinced
+that I was not, in their own phrase, "all there."
+
+"Hey, you! Mister! Them worms is pizen! Them's _fever_-worms!" was
+shrieked at me frenziedly by the country-folks, black and white, when
+I was caught scooping up the hairy caterpillars of the tiger moths.
+Even when it was understood that I wished caterpillars, cocoons, and
+chrysalids, for the butterflies and moths they would later make, looks
+of pitying contempt were cast upon me. That a grown man--particularly
+a minister of the gospel, with not only his own but other people's
+souls to save--should spend time hunting for worms, with which he
+couldn't even bait a hook, awakened amazement.
+
+"What any man in his right mind wants with a thing that ain't nothin'
+but wriggles an' hair on the outside an' sqush on the inside, beats
+me!" was said more than once.
+
+"But all of them are interesting, some are valuable, and many grow
+into very beautiful moths and butterflies," I ventured to defend
+myself.
+
+"S'posin' they do? You can't eat 'em or wear 'em or plant 'em, can
+you?" And really, you understand, I couldn't!
+
+"An' you mean to tell me to my face," said a scandalized farmer,
+watching me assorting and naming the specimens taken from my field
+box, "you mean to tell me you're givin' every one o' them bugs a
+_name_, same's a baptized Christian? Adam named every livin' thing,
+an' Adam called them things Caterpillars an' Butterflies. If it suited
+him an' Eve and God A'mighty to have 'em called that an' nothin' else,
+looks to me it had oughter suit anybody that's got a grain o'real
+religion. If you go to call 'em anythin' else it's sinnin' agin the
+Bible. I've heard all my life you Cath'lics don't take as much stock
+in the Scripters as you'd oughter, but this thing o'callin' a wurrum
+Adam named plain Caterpillar a--a--_what'd_ you say the dum beast's
+name was? _My sufferin' Savior!_ is jest about the wust dern
+foolishness yet! I lay it at the Pope's door, every mite o' it, an'
+you'd better believe he'll have to answer for sech carryin's on, some
+o' these days!"
+
+So many other things having been laid at the Pope's door, I held my
+peace and made no futile attempt to clear the Holy Father of the dark
+suspicion of having perpetrated their names upon certain of the
+American lepidoptera.
+
+I had yet other darker madnesses; had I not been seen spreading upon
+trees with a whitewash brush a mixture of brown sugar, stale beer, and
+rum?
+
+Asked to explain this lunatic proceeding I could only say that I was
+sugaring for moths; these airy fairy gentlemen having a very human
+liking for a "wee drappie o't."
+
+"That amiable failin'," Major Appleby Cartwright decided, "is a credit
+to them an' commends them to a respectful hearin'. On its face it
+would seem to admit them to the ancient an' honorable brotherhood of
+convivial man. But, suh, there's another side to this question, an'
+it's this:--a creature that's got six perfectly good legs, not to
+mention wings, an' still can't carry his liquor without bein' caught,
+deserves his fate. It's not in my line to offer suggestions to an
+allwise Providence, or I _might_ hint that a scoop-net an' a killing
+jar in pickle for some two-legged topers out huntin' free drinks
+wouldn't be such a bad idea at all."
+
+But as I pursued my buggy way--and displayed, save in this one
+particular, what might truthfully be called ordinary common
+sense--people gradually grew accustomed to it, looking upon me as a
+mild and harmless lunatic whose inoffensive mania might safely be
+indulged--nay, even humored. In consequence I was from time to time
+inundated with every common thing that creeps, crawls, and flies. I
+accepted gifts of bugs and caterpillars that filled my mother with
+disgust and Clelie with horror; both of them hesitated to come into my
+study, and I have known Clelie to be afraid to go to bed of a night
+because the great red-horned "Hickory devil" was downstairs in a box,
+and she was firmly convinced that this innocent worm harbored a
+cold-blooded desire to crawl upstairs and bite her. That silly woman
+will depart this life in the firm faith that all crawling creatures
+came into the world with the single-hearted hope of biting her, above
+all other mortals; and that having achieved the end for which they
+were created, both they and she will immediately curl up and die.
+
+But alas, I had but scant time to devote to this enchanting and
+engrossing study, which, properly pursued, will fill a man's days to
+the brim. I gathered my specimens as I could and classified and
+mounted them as it pleased God--until the advent of John Flint.
+
+Now, I must, with great reluctance, here set down the plain truth that
+he, too, looked upon me at first with amaze not unmixed with rage and
+contempt. Most caterpillars, you understand, feed upon food of their
+own arbitrary choosing; and when they are in captivity one must
+procure this particular aliment if one hopes to rear them.
+
+_Slippy McGee feeding bugs!_ It was about as hideous and devil-born a
+contretemps as, say, putting a belted earl to peel potatoes or asking
+an archbishop to clean cuspidors. The man boiled with offended dignity
+and outraged pride. One could actually see him swell. He had expected
+something quite different, and this apparently offensive triviality
+disgusted and shocked him. I could see myself falling forty thousand
+fathoms in his esteem, and I think he would have incontinently turned
+his back upon me save for his promise to Mary Virginia.
+
+It is true that many of the caterpillars are ugly and formidable, poor
+things, to the uninitiated eye, which fails to recognize under this
+uncomely disguise the crowned and glorious citizens of the air. I had
+just then a great Cecropia, an able-bodied green gentleman armed with
+twelve thorn-like, sizable horns, and wearing, along with other
+agreeable adornments, three yellow and four red arrangements like
+growths of dwarf cactus plants on the segments behind his hard round
+green head.
+
+Mr. Flint, with an ejaculation of horror, backed off on one crutch and
+clubbed the other.
+
+"My God!" said he, "Kill it! Kill it!" I saved my green friend in the
+nick of time. The man, with staring eyes, looked from me to the
+caterpillar; then he leaned over and watched it, in grim silence.
+
+He knotted his forehead, made slits of his eyes, gulped, screwed his
+mouth into the thin red line of deadly determination, and with every
+nerve braced, even as a martyr braces himself for the stake or the
+sword, put out his hand, up which the formidable-looking worm walked
+leisurely. Death not immediately resulting from this daring act, he
+controlled his shudders and breathed easier. The worm became less and
+less terrifying; no longer appearing, say, the size of the boa
+constrictor. A few moments of this harmless meandering about Mr.
+Flint's hand and arm, and of a sudden he wore his true colors of an
+inoffensive and law-abiding larva, anxious only to attend strictly to
+his own legitimate business, the Gargantuan feeding of himself into
+the pupa from which he would presently emerge one of the most
+magnificent of native moths. Gingerly Mr. Flint picked him up between
+thumb and fore-finger, and as gingerly dropped him back into the
+breeding-cage. He squared his shoulders, wiped his brow, and drew a
+long whistling breath.
+
+"Phe-ew! It took all my nerve to do it!" said he, frankly. "I felt for
+a minute as if a strong-arm cop'd chased me up an alley and pulled his
+gun on me. The feeling of a bug's legs on your bare skin is something
+fierce at first, ain't it? But after _him_ none of 'em can scare me
+any more. I could play tag with pink monkeys with blue tails and green
+whiskers without sending in the hurry-call."
+
+The setting boards and blocks, the arrays of pins, needles, tubes,
+forceps, jars and bottles, magnifying-glasses, microscope, slides,
+drying-ovens, relaxing-box, cabinets, and above all, the mounted
+specimens, raised his spirits somewhat. This, at least, looked
+workman-like; this, at least, promised something better than stoking
+worms!
+
+If not hopefully, at least willingly enough, he allowed himself to be
+set to work. And that work had come in what some like to call the
+psychological moment. At least it came--or was sent--just when he
+needed it most.
+
+He soon discovered, as all beginners must, that there is very much
+more to it than one might think; that here, too, one must pay for
+exact knowledge with painstaking care and patient study and ceaseless
+effort. He discovered how fatally easy it is to spoil a good specimen;
+how fairy-fragile a wee wing is; how painted scales rub, and vanish
+into thin air; how delicate antennae break, and forelegs will
+fiendishly depart hence; and that proper mounting, which results in a
+perfect insect, is a task which requires practice, a sure eye, and an
+expert, delicate, and dexterous touch. Also, that one must be
+ceaselessly on guard lest the baleful little ant and other tiny curses
+evade one's vigilance and render void one's best work. He learned
+these and other salutary lessons, which tend to tone down an amateur's
+conceit of his half-knowledge; and this chastened him. He felt his
+pride at stake--he who could so expertly, with almost demoniac
+ingenuity, force the costliest and most cunningly constructed
+burglar-proof lock; he whose not idle boast was that he was handy with
+his fingers! Slippy McGee baffled, at bay before a butterfly? And in
+the presence of a mere priest and a girl-child? Never! He'd show us
+what he could do when he really tried to try!
+
+Presently he wanted to classify; and he wanted to do it alone and
+unaided--it looked easy enough. It irked him, pricked his pride, to
+have to be always asking somebody else "what is this?" And right then
+and there those inevitable difficulties that confront every earnest
+and conscientious seeker at the beginning of his quest, arose, as the
+fascinating living puzzles presented themselves for his solving.
+
+To classify correctly is not something one learns in a day, be he
+never so willing and eager; as one may discover who cares to take half
+a dozen plain, obscurely-colored small moths, and attempts to put them
+in their proper places.
+
+Mr. Flint tried it--and those wretched creatures _wouldn't_ stay put.
+It seemed to him that every time he looked at them they ought to be
+somewhere else; always there was something--a bar, a stripe, a small
+distinctive spot, a wing of peculiar shape, antennae, or palpi, or
+spur, to differentiate them.
+
+"Where the Sam Hill," he blazed, "do all these footy little devils
+come from, anyhow? Where am I to put a beast of a bug when the next
+one that's exactly like it is entirely different the next time you
+look at it? There's too much beginning and no end at all to this
+game!"
+
+For all that, he followed them up. I saw with pure joy that he refused
+to dismiss anything carelessly, while he scorned to split hairs. He
+had a regular course of procedure when he was puzzled. First he turned
+the new insect over and over and glared at it from every possible
+angle; then he rumpled his hair, gritted his teeth, squared his
+shoulders and hurled himself into work.
+
+There was, for instance, the common Dione Vanillae, that splendid Gulf
+Fritillary which haunts all the highways of the South. She's a
+long-wing, but she's not a Heliconian; she's a silver-spot, but she's
+not an Argynnis. She bears a striking family likeness to her fine
+relations, but she has certain structural peculiarities which
+differentiate her. Whose word should he take for this, and why?
+Wherein lay those differences? He began, patiently, with her
+cylinder-shaped yellow-brown, orange-spotted caterpillar, on the
+purple passion flowers in our garden; he watched it change into a
+dark-brown chrysalis marked with a few pale spots; he saw emerge from
+this the red-robed lady herself, with her long fulvous forewings, and
+her shorter hind wings smocked with black velvet, and her under-frock
+flushed with pinkish orange and spangled with silver. And yet, in
+spite of her long marvelous tongue--he was beginning to find out that
+no tool he had ever seen, and but few that God Himself makes, is so
+wonderful as a butterfly's tongue--she hadn't been able to tell him
+that about herself which he most wished to find out. _That_ called for
+a deeper knowledge than he as yet possessed.
+
+But he knew that other men knew. And he had to know. He meant to know.
+For the work gripped him as it does those marked and foreordained for
+its service. That marvelous world in which the Little People dwell--a
+world so absolutely different from ours that it might well be upon
+another planet--began to open, slowly, slowly, one of its many
+mysterious doors, allowing him just glimpse enough of what magic lay
+beyond to fire his heart and to whet his appetite. And he couldn't
+break into that world with a jimmy. It was burglar-proof. That portal
+was so impervious to even the facile fingers of Slippy McGee, that
+John Flint must pay the inevitable and appropriate toll to enter!
+
+Westmoreland had replaced his crutches with a wooden leg, and you
+might see him stumping about our grounds, minutely examining the
+underside of shrubs and bushes, the bark of trees, poking into corners
+and crannies, or scraping in the mold under the fallen leaves by the
+fences, for things which no longer filled him with aversion and
+disgust, but with the student's interest and pleasure.
+
+"Think of me being in the same world with 'em all these years and not
+knowing a thing about 'em when there's so much to know, and under my
+skin stark crazy to learn it, only I didn't know I even wanted to know
+what I really want to know more than anything else, until I had to
+get dumped down here to find it out! I get the funniest sort of a
+feeling, parson, that all along there's been a Me tucked away inside
+my hide that's been loving these things ever since I was born. Not
+just to catch and handle 'em, and stretch out their little wings, and
+remember the names some bughouse high-brow wished on 'em, though all
+that's in the feeling, too; it's something else, if I could make you
+understand what I mean."
+
+I laughed. "I think I do understand," said I. "I have a Me like that
+tucked away in mine, too, you know."
+
+He looked at me gravely. "Parson," said he, earnestly, "there's times
+I wish you had a dozen kids, and every one of 'em twins! It's a shame
+to think of some poor orphans swindled out of such a daddy as you'd
+have made!"
+
+"Why," said I, smiling, "_You_ are one of my twins."
+
+"Me?" He reflected. "Maybe half of me might be, parson," he agreed,
+"but it's not safe for a skypilot to be caught owning a twin like the
+other half."
+
+"I'm pinning my faith to _my_ half," said I, serenely.
+
+"Now, why?" he asked, with sudden fierceness. "I turn it over and over
+and over: it looks white on the outside, but I can't to save me figure
+out _why_ you're doing it. Parson, _what_ have you got up your
+sleeve?"
+
+"Nothing but my arm. What should you think?"
+
+"I don't know what to think, and that's the straight of it. What's
+your game, anyhow? What in the name of God are you after?"
+
+"Why, I think," said I, "that in the name of God I'm after--that other
+You that's been tucked away all these years, and couldn't get born
+until a Me inside mine, just like himself, called him to come out and
+be alive."
+
+He pondered this in silence. Then:
+
+"I'll take your word for it," said he. "Though if anybody'd ever told
+me I'd be eating out of a parson's hand, I'd have pushed his face in
+for him. Yep, I'm Fido! _Me!_"
+
+"At least you growl enough," said I, tartly.
+
+He eyed me askance.
+
+"Have I got to lick hands?" he snarled.
+
+I walked away, without a reply; through my shoulder-blades I could
+feel him glaring after me. He followed, hobbling:
+
+"Parson!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"If I'm not the sort that licks hands I'm not the sort that bites 'em,
+neither. I'll tell you--it's this way: I--sort of get to chewing on
+that infernal log of wood that's where my good leg used to grow
+and--and splinters get into my temper--and I've _got_ to snarl or
+burst wide open! You'd growl like the devil yourself, if you had to
+try holding down my job for awhile, skypilot or no skypilot!"
+
+"Why--I dare say I should," said I, contritely. "But," I added, after
+a pause, "I shouldn't be any the better for it, should you think?"
+
+"Not so you could notice," shortly. And after a moment he added, in an
+altered voice: "Rule 1: Can the Squeal!"
+
+I think he most honestly tried to. It was no easy task, and I have
+seen the sweat start upon his forehead and his face go pale, when in
+his eagerness he forgot for a moment the cruel fact that he could no
+longer move as lightly as of old--and the crippled body, betraying
+him, reminded him all too swiftly of his mistake.
+
+The work saved him. For it is the heaven-sent sort of work, to those
+ordained for it, that fills one's hours and leaves one eager for
+further tasks. It called for all his oldtime ingenuity. His tools, for
+instance--at times their limitations irked him, and he made others
+more satisfactory to himself; tools adjusted to an insect's frail
+body, not to a time-lock. Before that summer ended he could handle
+even the frailest and tiniest specimen with such nice care that it was
+delightful to watch him at work. The time was to come when he could
+mend a torn wing or fix a broken antennas with such exquisite fidelity
+to detail that even the most expert eye might well be deceived.
+
+I had only looked for a little temporary help, such as any intelligent
+amateur might be able to furnish. But I was not long unaware that this
+was more than a mere amateur. To quote himself, he had the goods, and
+I realized with a mounting heart that I had made a find, if I could
+only hold on to it. For the first time in years I could exchange
+specimens. My cabinets began to fill out--with such perfect insects,
+too! We added several rare ones, a circumstance to make any
+entomologist look upon the world through rosy spectacles. Why, even
+the scarce shy Cossus Centerensis came to our very doors, apparently
+to fill a space awaiting him. Perhaps he was a Buddhist insect
+undergoing reincarnation, and was anxious to acquire merit by
+self-immolation. Anyhow, we acquired him, and I hope he acquired
+merit.
+
+We had scores of insects in the drying ovens. We had more and ever more
+in the breeding cages,--in our case simple home-made affairs of a keg
+or a box with a fine wire-netting over the food plant; or a lamp-chimney
+slipped over a potted plant with a bit of mosquito-netting tied over the
+top, for the smaller forms.
+
+These cages were a never-failing source of delight and interest to the
+children, and at their hands heaven rained caterpillars upon us that
+season. Even my mother grew interested in the work, though Clelie
+never ceased to look upon it as a horrid madness peculiar to white
+people.
+
+"All Buckrahs is funny in dey haids," Daddy January consoled her when
+she complained to him about it. "Dey gets all kind o' fool notions
+'bout all kind o' fool t'ings. You ain't got to feel so bad--de Jedge
+is lots wuss'n yo' boss is. Yo' boss kin see de bugs he run atter, but
+my boss talk 'bout some kind o' bug he call Germ. I ax um what kind o'
+bug is dat; an' he 'low you can't see um wid yo' eye. I ain't say so
+to de Jedge, but _I_ 'low when you see bug you can't see wid yo' eye,
+you best not seem um 'tall--case he must be some kind o' spook, an'
+Gawd knows I ain't want to see no spook. Ef de bug ain't no spook, den
+he mus' be eenside yo' haid, 'stead o' outside um, an' to hab bug on
+de eenside o' yo' haid is de wuss kind o' bad luck. Anyhow, nobody but
+Buckrah talk an' ack like dat, niggers is got mo' sense."
+
+We found, presently, a ready and a steady sale for our extra stock. We
+could supply caterpillars, butterflies and moths, or chrysalids and
+cocoons; we had some rather scarce ones; and then, our unmounted
+specimens were so perfect, and our mounted ones so exquisitely done,
+that we had but little trouble in disposing of them. Under the hand of
+John Flint these last were really works of art. Not for nothing had
+he boasted that he was handy with his fingers.
+
+The pretty common forms, framed hovering lifelike over delicately
+pressed ferns and flowers, found even a readier market, for they were
+really beautiful. Money had begun to come in--not largely, it is true,
+but still steadily and surely. You must know how to handle your stock,
+and you must be in touch with your market--scientists, students,
+collectors,--and this, of course, takes time. We could supply the
+larger dealers, too, although they pay less, and we had a modest
+advertisement in one or two papers published for the profession, which
+brought us orders. But let no one imagine that it is an easy task to
+handle these frail bodies, these gossamer wings, so that naturalists
+and collectors are glad to get them. Once or twice we lost valuable
+shipments.
+
+Long since--in the late spring, to be exact, John Flint had moved out
+of the Guest Room, needed for other occupants, into a two-roomed
+outbuilding across the garden. Some former pastor had had it built for
+an oratory and retreat, but now, covered with vines, it had stood for
+many years unused, save as a sort of lumber room.
+
+When the troublesome question of where we might properly house him had
+arisen, my mother hit upon these unused rooms as by direct
+inspiration. She had them cleaned, repainted, scoured, and turned into
+a pleasant well-lighted, airy workroom and living-room combined, and a
+smaller and rather austere bedroom, with an inexpensive but very good
+head of Christ over the mantel, and an old, old carved crucifix on the
+wall beside the white iron bed. Laurence took from his own room a
+Morris chair, whose somewhat frayed cushions my mother neatly
+re-covered. Mary Virginia contributed a rug, as well as dressing-gown
+and slippers. Miss Sally Ruth gave him outright a brand-new Bible, and
+loaned him an old cedar-wood wardrobe which had been her
+great-grandmother's, and which still smelt delicately of generations
+of rose-leaved and lavendered linen.
+
+"All I ask," said Miss Sally Ruth sharply, "is that you'll read Paul
+with your eyes open and your mouth shut, and that you'll keep your
+clothes in that wardrobe and your moths out of it. If it was intended
+for anybody to teach you anything, then Paul will teach you; but it
+_wasn't_ intended for a cedar-wood wardrobe to hold moths, and I hope
+you won't forget it!"
+
+Major Cartwright sent over a fishing-rod, a large jar of tobacco, and
+a framed picture of General Lee.
+
+"Because no man, suh, could live under the same roof with even his
+pictured semblance, and not be the bettah fo' it," said the major
+earnestly. "I know. I've got to live with him myself. When I'm fair to
+middlin' he's in the dinin' room. When I've skidded off the straight
+an' narrow path I lock him up in the parlor, an' at such times I sleep
+out on the po'ch. But when I'm at peace with man an' God I take him
+into my bedroom an' look at him befo' retirin'. He's about as easy to
+live with as the Angel Gabriel, but he's mighty bracin', Marse Robert
+is: mighty bracin'!"
+
+Thus equipped, John Flint settled himself in his own house. It had
+been a wise move, for he had the sense of proprietorship, privacy, and
+freedom. He could come and go as he pleased, with no one to question.
+He could work undisturbed, save for the children who brought him such
+things as they could find. He put his breeding cages out on the
+vine-covered piazzas surrounding two-sides of his house, arranged the
+cabinets and boxes which had been removed from my study to his own,
+nailed up a few shelves to suit himself, and set up housekeeping.
+
+My mother had been frankly delighted to have my creeping friends moved
+out of the Parish House, and Clelie abated in her dislike of the
+one-legged man because he had, in a way, removed from her a heretofore
+never-absent fear of waking up some night and finding a caterpillar
+under her bed. More yet, he entailed no extra work, for he flatly
+refused to have her set foot in his rooms for the purpose of cleaning
+them. He attended to that himself. The man was a marvel of neatness
+and order. Mesdames, permit me to here remark that when a man is neat
+and orderly no woman of Eve's daughters can compare with him. John
+Flint's rooms would arouse the rabid envy of the cleanest and most
+scourful she in Holland itself.
+
+Now as the months wore away there had sprung up between him, and Mary
+Virginia and Laurence, one of those odd comradely friendships which
+sometime unite the totally unlike with bonds hard to break. His
+spotless workroom had a fascination for the youngsters. They were
+always in and out, now with a cocoon, now an imago, now a larva, and
+then again to see how those they had already brought were getting
+along.
+
+The lame man was an unrivaled listener--a circumstance which endeared
+him to youthful Laurence, in whom thoughts and the urge to express
+these thoughts in words rose like sap. This fresh and untainted
+confidence, poured out so naively, taught John Flint more than any
+words or prayers of mine could have done. It opened to him a world
+into which, his eyes had not heretofore been permitted to look; and
+the result was all the more sure and certain, in that the children had
+no faintest idea of the effect they were producing. They had no end to
+gain, no ax to grind; they merely spoke the truth as they knew it, and
+this unselfish and hopeful truthfulness aroused his interest and
+curiosity; it even compelled his admiration. He couldn't dismiss
+_this_ as "hot air"!
+
+I was more than glad to have him thus taught. It was a salutary
+lesson, tending to temper his overweening confidence and to humble his
+contemptuous pride. In his own world he had been supreme, a figure of
+sinister importance. Brash had been crook or cop who had taught or
+caught Slippy McGee! But in this new atmosphere, in which he breathed
+with difficulty, the young had been given him for guides. They led
+him, where a grownup had failed.
+
+Mary Virginia was particularly fond of him. He had as little to say to
+her as to Laurence, but he looked at her with interested eyes that
+never lost a movement; she knew he never missed a word, either; his
+silence was friendly, and the little girl had a pleasant fashion of
+taking folk for granted. Hers was one of those large natures which
+give lavishly, shares itself freely, but does not demand much in
+return. She gave with an open hand to her quiet listener--her books,
+her music, her amusing and innocent views, her frank comments, her
+truthfulness, her sweet brave gaiety; and he absorbed it like a
+sponge. It delighted her to find and bring the proper food-plants for
+his cages. And she being one of those who sing while they work, you
+might hear her caroling like a lark, flitting about the old garden
+with her red setter Kerry at her heels.
+
+Laurence no longer read aloud to him, but instead gave Flint such
+books as he could find covering his particular study, and these were
+devoured and pored over, and more begged for. Flint would go without
+new clothes, neat as he was, and without tobacco, much as he liked to
+smoke,--to buy books upon lepidoptera.
+
+He helped my mother with her flowers and her vegetables, but refused
+to have anything to do with her chickens, remarking shortly that hens
+were such fools he couldn't help hating them. Madame said she liked to
+have him around, for he was more like some unobtrusive jinnee than a
+mere mortal. She declared that John Flint had what the negroes call a
+"growing hand"--he had only to stick a bit of green in the ground and
+it grew like Jonah's gourd.
+
+Since he had begun to hobble about, he had gradually come to be
+accepted by the town in general. They looked upon him as one who
+shared Father De Rance's madness, a tramp who was a hunter of bugs. It
+explained his presence in the Parish House; I fancy it also explained
+to some why he had been a tramp!
+
+Folks got used to him, as one does to anything one sees daily. The
+pleasant conservative soft-voiced ladies who liked to call on Madame
+of an afternoon and gossip Christianly, and drink tea and eat Clelie's
+little cakes on our broad shady verandah, only glanced casually at the
+bent head and shoulders visible through the screened window across the
+garden. They said he was very interesting, of course, but painfully
+shy and bashful. As for him, he was as horribly afraid of them as they
+would have been of him, had they known. I could not always save
+myself from the sin of smiling at an ironic situation.
+
+Judge Mayne had at first eyed the man askance, watching him as his own
+cats might an interloping stray dog.
+
+"The fellow's not very prepossessing," he told me, of an evening when
+he had dined with us, "but I've been on the bench long enough to be
+skeptical of any fixed good or bad type--I've found that the criminal
+type is any type that goes wrong; so I shouldn't go so far as to call
+this chap a bad egg. But--I hope you are reasonably sure of him,
+father?"
+
+"Reasonably," said I, composedly.
+
+"Laurence tells me Madame and Mary Virginia _like_ the fellow. H'm!
+Well, I've acquired a little faith in the intuition of women--some
+women, understand, and some times. And mark you, I didn't say
+_judgment_. Let us hope that this is one of the times when faith in
+intuition will be justified."
+
+Later, when he had had time to examine the work progressing under the
+flexible fingers of the silent workman, he withdrew with more respect.
+
+"I suppose he's all right, if you think so, father. But I'd watch out
+for him, anyway," he advised.
+
+"That is exactly what I intend to do."
+
+"Rather he fell into your hands than mine. Better for him," said the
+judge, briefly. Then he launched into an intimate talk of Laurence,
+and in thus talking of the boy's future, forgot my helper.
+
+That was it, exactly. The man was so unobtrusive without in the least
+being furtive. Had so little to say; attended so strictly to his own
+business, and showed himself so utterly and almost inhumanly
+uninterested in anybody else's, that he kept in the background. He
+was there, and people knew it; they were, in a sense, interested in
+him, but not curious about him.
+
+One morning in early autumn--he had been with us then some eight or
+nine months--I went over to his rooms with a New York newspaper in my
+hand. It had news that set my heart to pounding sickeningly--news that
+at once simplified and yet complicated matters. I hesitated as to
+whether or not I should tell him, but decided that whatever effect
+that news might produce, I would deal with him openly, above board,
+and always with truth. He must act and judge for himself and with his
+eyes open. On my part there should be no concealment.
+
+The paper stated that the body of a man found floating in the East
+River had been positively identified by the police as that of Slippy
+McGee. That the noted crook had gotten back into New York through the
+cunning dragnet so carefully spread for him was another proof of his
+daring and dexterity. How he met the dark fate which set him adrift,
+battered and dreadful, in the East River, was another of those
+underworld crimes that remain unsolved. Cunning and dangerous,
+mysterious in his life, baffling all efforts to get at him, he was as
+evilly mysterious in his death. There was only one thing sure--that
+this dead wretch with the marks of violence upon him was Slippy McGee;
+and since his breath had ceased, the authorities could breathe easier.
+
+He read it deliberately; then re-read it, and sat and stared at the
+paper. A slow grim smile came to his lips, and he took his chin in his
+hand, musingly. The eyes narrowed, the face darkened, the jaw thrust
+itself forward.
+
+"Dead, huh?" he grunted, and stared about him, with a slow, twisting
+movement of the head. "Well--I might just as well be, as buried alive
+in a jay-dump at the tail-end of all creation!" Once again the Powers
+of Darkness swooped down and wrestled with and for him; and knowing
+what I knew, sick at heart, I trembled for him.
+
+"What am _I_ doing here, anyhow?" he snarled with his lips drawn back
+from his teeth. "Piddling with bugs--_Me!_ Patching up their dinky
+little wings and stretching out their dam' little legs and feelers--me
+being what I am, and they being what they are! Say, I've got to quit
+this, once for all I've got to quit it. I'm not a _man_ any more. I'm
+a dead one, a he-granny cutting silo for lady-worms and drynursing
+their interesting little babies. My God! _Me!_" And he threw his hands
+above his head with a gesture of rage and despair.
+
+"Hanging on here like a boob--no wonder they think I'm dead! If I
+could just make a getaway and pull off one more good job and land
+enough--"
+
+"You couldn't keep it, if you did land it--your sort can't. You know
+how it went before--the women and the sharks got it. There'd be always
+that same incentive to pull off just one more to keep you going--until
+you'd pulled yourself behind bars, and stayed there. And there's the
+drug-danger, too. If you escaped so far, it was because so far you had
+the strength to let drugs alone. But the drugs get you, sooner or
+later, do they not? Have you not told me over and over again that
+'nearly all dips are dopes'? That first the dope gets you--and then
+the law? No. You can't pull off anything that won't pull you into
+hell. We have gone over this thing often enough, haven't we?"
+
+"No, we haven't. And I haven't had a chance to pull off
+anything--except leaves for bugs. _Me!_ I want to get my hand in once
+more, I tell you! I want to pull off a stunt that'll make the whole
+bunch of bulls sit up and bellow for fair--and I can do it, easy as
+easy. Think I've croaked, do they? And they can all snooze on their
+peg-posts, now I'm a stiff? Well, by cripes, I just want half of a
+half of a chance, and I'll show 'em Slippy McGee's good and plenty
+alive!"
+
+"Come out into the garden, my son, and feel that you are good and
+plenty alive. Come out into the free air. Hold on tight, a little
+while longer!"
+
+I laid my hand upon his shoulder compellingly, and although he glared
+at me, and ground his teeth, and lifted his lip, he came; unwillingly,
+swearing under his breath, he came. We tramped up and down the garden
+paths, up and down, and back again, his wooden peg making a round
+hole, like a hoofmark, in the earth. He stared down at it, spat
+savagely upon it, and swore horribly, but not too loudly.
+
+"I want to feel like a live man!" he gritted. "A live man, not a
+one-legged mucker with a beard like a Dutch bomb-thrower's, puttering
+about a skypilot's backyard on the wrong side of everything!"
+
+"Stick it out a little longer, John Flint; hold fast!"
+
+"Hold fast to what?" he demanded savagely. "To a bug stuck on a
+needle?"
+
+"Yes. And to me who trusts you. To Madame who likes you. To the dear
+child who put bug and needle into your hand because she knew it was
+good work and trusted your hand to do it. And more than all, to that
+other Me you're finding--your own true self, John Flint! Hold fast,
+hold fast!"
+
+He stopped and stared at me.
+
+"I'm believing him again!" said he, grievously. "I've been sat on
+while I was hot, and my number's marked on me, 23. I'm hoodooed,
+that's what!"
+
+Tramp, tramp, stump, stump, up and down, the two of us.
+
+"All right, devil-dodger," said he wearily, after a long sullen
+silence. "I'll stick it out a bit longer, to please you. You've been
+white--the lot of you. But look here--if I beat it some night ... with
+what I can find, why, I'm warning you: don't blame _me_--you're
+running your risks, and it'll be up to _you_ to explain!"
+
+"When you want to go, John Flint--when you really and truly want to
+go, why, take anything I have that you may fancy, my son. I give it
+you beforehand."
+
+"I don't want anything given to me beforehand!" he growled. "I want to
+take what I want to take without anybody's leave!"
+
+"Very well, then; take what you want to take, without anybody's leave!
+I shall be able to do without it, I dare say."
+
+He turned upon me furiously:
+
+"Oh, yes, I guess you can! You'd do without eating and breathing too,
+I suppose, if you could manage it! You do without too blamed much
+right now, trying to beat yourself to being a saint! Of course I'd
+help myself and leave you to go without--you're enough to make a man
+ache to shoot some sense into you with a cannon! And for God's sake,
+_who_ are you pinching and scraping and going without _for_? A bunch
+of hickey factory-shuckers that haven't got sense enough to talk
+American, and a lot of mill-hands with beans on 'em like bone buttons!
+They ain't worth it. While I'm in the humor, take it from me there
+ain't anybody worth anything anyhow!"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Flint! What a shame and a sin!" called another voice. "Oh,
+Mr. Flint, I'm ashamed of you!" There in the freedom of the Saturday
+morning sunlight stood Mary Virginia, her red Irish setter Kerry
+beside her.
+
+"I came over," said she, "to see how the baby-moths are getting on
+this morning, and to know if the last hairy gentleman I brought spins
+into a cocoon or buries himself in the ground. And then I heard Mr.
+Flint--and what he said is unkind, and untrue, and not a bit like him.
+Why, everybody's worth everything you can do for them--only some are
+worth more."
+
+The wild wrath died out of his face. As usual, he softened at sight of
+her.
+
+"Oh, well, miss, I wasn't thinking of the like of you--and him," he
+jerked his head at me, half apologetically, "nor young Mayne, nor the
+little Madame. You're different."
+
+"Why, no, we aren't, really," said Mary Virginia, puckering her brows
+adorably. "We only _seem_ to be different--but we are just exactly
+like everybody else, only _we_ know it, and some people never can seem
+to find it out--and there's the difference! You see?" That was the
+befuddled manner in which Mary Virginia very often explained things.
+If God was good to you, you got a little glimmer of what she meant and
+was trying to tell you. Mary Virginia often talked as the alchemists
+used to write--cryptically, abstrusely, as if to hide the golden truth
+from all but the initiate.
+
+"Come and shake hands with Mr. Flint, Kerry," said she to the setter.
+"I want you to help make him understand things it's high time he
+should know. Nobody can do that better than a good dog can."
+
+Kerry looked a trifle doubtful, but having been told to do a certain
+thing, he obeyed, as a good dog does. Gravely he sat up and held out
+an obedient paw, which the man took mechanically. But meeting the
+clear hazel eyes, he dropped his hand upon the shining head with the
+gesture of one who desires to become friends. Accepting this, Kerry
+reached up a nose and nuzzled. Then he wagged his plumy tail.
+
+"There!" said Mary Virginia, delightedly. "Now, don't you see how
+horrid it was to talk the way you talked? Why, Kerry _likes_ you, and
+Kerry is a sensible dog."
+
+"Yes, miss," and he looked at Mary Virginia very much as the dog did,
+trustingly, but a little bewildered.
+
+"Aren't you sorry you said that?"
+
+"Y-e-s, seeing you seem to think it was wrong."
+
+"Well, you'll know better from now on," said Mary Virginia,
+comfortingly. She looked at him searchingly for a minute, and he met
+her look without flinching. That had been the one hopeful sign, from
+the first--that he never refused to meet your glance, but gave you
+back one just as steady, if more suspicious.
+
+"Mr. Flint," said Mary Virginia, "you've about made up your mind to
+stay on here with the Padre, haven't you? For a good long while, at
+any rate? You wouldn't like to leave the Padre, would you?"
+
+He stiffened. One could see the struggle within him.
+
+"Well, miss, I can't see but that I've just got to stay on--for
+awhile. Until he's tired of me and my ways, anyhow," he said gloomily.
+
+Mary Virginia dismissed my tiredness with an airy wave of her hand.
+She smiled.
+
+"Do you know," said she earnestly, "I've had the funniest idea about
+you, from the very first time I saw you? Well, I have. I've somehow
+got the notion that you and the Padre _belong_. I think that's why you
+came. I think you belong right here, in that darling little house,
+studying butterflies and mounting them so beautifully they look alive.
+I think you're never going to go away anywhere any more, but that
+you're going to stay right here as long as you live!"
+
+His face turned an ugly white, and his mouth fell open. He looked at
+Mary Virginia almost with horror--Saul might have looked thus at the
+Witch of Endor when she summoned the shade of Samuel to tell him that
+the kingdom had been rent from his hand and his fate was upon him.
+
+Mary Virginia nodded, thoughtfully.
+
+"I feel so sure of it," said she, confidently, "that I'm going to ask
+you to do me a favor. I want you to take care of Kerry for me. You
+know I'm going away to school next week, and--he can't stay at home
+when I'm not there. My father's away frequently, and he couldn't take
+Kerry about with him, of course. And he couldn't be left with the
+servants--somehow he doesn't like the colored people. He always growls
+at them, and they're afraid of him. And my mother dislikes dogs
+intensely--she's afraid of them, except those horrible little
+toy-things that aren't _dogs_ any more." The scorn of the real
+dog-lover was in her voice. "Kerry's used to the Parish House. He
+loves the Padre, he'll soon love you, and he likes to play with
+Pitache, so Madame wouldn't mind his being here. And--I'd be more
+satisfied in my mind if he were with somebody that--that needed
+him--and would like him a whole lot--somebody like you," she finished.
+
+Now, Mary Virginia regarded Kerry even as the apple of her eye. The
+dog was a noble and beautiful specimen of his race, thoroughbred to
+the bone, a fine field dog, and the pride of the child's heart. He was
+what only that most delightful of dogs, a thoroughbred Irish setter,
+can be. John Flint gasped. Something perplexed, incredulous, painful,
+dazzled, crept into his face and looked out of his eyes.
+
+"_Me_?" he gasped. "You mean you're willing to let me keep your dog
+for you? Yours?"
+
+"I want to _give_ him to you," said Mary Virginia bravely enough,
+though her voice trembled. "I am perfectly sure you'll love
+him--better than any one else in the world would, except me myself. I
+don't know why I know that, but I do know it. If you wanted to go
+away, later on, why, you could turn him over to the Padre, because of
+course you wouldn't want to have a dog following you about everywhere.
+They're a lot of bother. But--somehow, I think you'll keep him. I
+think you'll love him. He--he's a darling dog." She was too proud to
+turn her head aside, but two large tears rolled down her cheeks, like
+dew upon a rose.
+
+John Flint stood stock-still, looking from her to the dog, and back
+again. Kerry, sensing that something was wrong with his little
+mistress, pawed her skirts and whined.
+
+"Now I come to think of it," said John Flint slowly, "I never had
+anything--anything alive, I mean--belong to me before."
+
+Mary Virginia glanced up at him shrewdly, and smiled through her
+tears. Her smile makes a funny delicious red V of her lower lip, and
+is altogether adorable and seductive.
+
+"That's just exactly why you thought nobody was worth anything," she
+said. Then she bent over her dog and kissed him between his beautiful
+hazel eyes.
+
+"Kerry, dear," said she, "Kerry, dear Kerry, you don't belong to me
+any more. I--I've got to go away to school--and you know you wouldn't
+be happy at home without me. You belong to Mr. Flint now, and I'm sure
+he needs you, and I know he'll love you almost as much as I do, and
+he'll be very, very good to you. So you're to stay with him,
+and--stand by him and be his dog, like you were mine. You'll remember,
+Kerry? Good-by, my dear, dear, darling dog!" She kissed him again,
+patted him, and thrust his collar into his new owner's hand.
+
+"Go--good-by, everybody!" said she, in a muffled voice, and ran. I
+think she would have cried childishly in another moment; and she was
+trying hard to remember that she was growing up!
+
+John Flint stood staring after her, his hand on the dog's collar,
+holding him in. His face was still without a vestige of color, and his
+eyes glittered. Then his other hand crept out to touch the dog's
+head.
+
+"It's wet--where she dropped tears on it! Parson ... she's given me
+her dog ... that she loves enough to cry over!"
+
+"He's a very fine dog, and she has had him and loved him from his
+puppyhood," I reminded him. And I added, with a wily tongue: "You can
+always turn him over to me, you know--if you decide to take to the
+road and wish to get rid of a troublesome companion. A dog is bad
+company for a man who wishes to dodge the police."
+
+But he only shook his head. His eyes were troubled, and his forehead
+wrinkled.
+
+"Parson," said he, hesitatingly, "did you ever feel like you'd been
+caught by--by Something reaching down out of the dark? Something big
+that you couldn't see and couldn't ever hope to get away from, because
+it's always on the job? Ain't it a hell of a feeling?"
+
+"Yes," I agreed. "I've felt--caught by that Something, too. And it is
+at first a terrifying sensation. Until--you learn to be glad."
+
+"You're caught--and you know under your hat you're never going to be
+able to get away any more. It'll hold you till you die!" said he, a
+little wildly. "My God! I'm caught! First It bit off a leg on me, so I
+couldn't run. Then It wished you and your bugs on me. And now--Yes,
+sir; I'm done for. That kid got my goat this morning. My God, who'd
+believe it? But it's true: I'm done for. She gave me her dog and she
+got my goat!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+"THY SERVANT WILL GO AND FIGHT WITH THIS PHILISTINE"
+    1 Sam. 17: 32.
+
+
+Mary Virginia had gone, weeping and bewept, and the spirit of youth
+seemed to have gone with her, leaving the Parish House darkened
+because of its absence. A sorrowful quiet brooded over the garden that
+no longer echoed a caroling voice. Kerry, seeking vainly for the
+little mistress, would come whining back to John Flint, and look up
+mutely into his face; and finding no promise there, lie down,
+whimpering, at his feet. The man seemed as desolate as the dog,
+because of the child's departure.
+
+"When I come back," Mary Virginia said to him at parting, "I expect
+you'll know more about moths and butterflies than anybody else in the
+world does. You're that sort. I'd love to be here, watching you grow
+up into it, but I've got to go away and grow up into something myself.
+I'm very glad you came here, Mr. Flint. You've helped me, lots."
+
+"Me?" with husky astonishment.
+
+"You, of course," said the child, serenely. "Because you are such a
+good man, Mr. Flint, and so patient, and you stick at what you try to
+do until you do it better than anybody else does. Often and often when
+I've been trying to do sums--I'm frightfully stupid about
+arithmetic--and I wanted to give up, I'd think of you over here just
+trying and trying and keeping right on trying, until you'd gotten what
+you wanted to know; and then _I'd_ keep on trying, too. The funny part
+is, that I like you for making me do it. You see, I'm a very, very bad
+person in some things, Mr. Flint," she said frankly. "Why, when my
+mother has to tell me to look at so and so, and see how well they
+behave, or how nicely they can do certain things, and how good they
+are, and why don't I profit by such a good example, a perfectly horrid
+raging sort of feeling comes all over me, and I want to be as naughty
+as naughty! I feel like doing and saying things I'd never want to do
+or say, if it wasn't for that good example. I just can't seem to
+_bear_ being good-exampled. But you're different, thank goodness. Most
+really good people are different, I guess."
+
+He looked at her, dumbly--he had no words at his command. She missed
+the irony and the tragedy, but she sensed the depths of feeling under
+that mute exterior.
+
+"I'm glad you're sorry I'm going away," said she, with the directness
+that was so engaging. "I perfectly love people to feel sorry to part
+with me. I hope and _hope_ they'll keep on being sorry--because
+they'll be that much gladder when I come back. I don't believe there's
+anything quite so wonderful and beautiful as having other folks like
+you, except it's liking other folks yourself!"
+
+"I never had to be bothered about it, either way," said he dryly. His
+face twitched.
+
+"Maybe that's because you never stayed still long enough in any one
+place to catch hold," said she, and laughed at him.
+
+"Good-by, Mr. Flint! I'll never see a butterfly or a moth, the whole
+time I'm gone, without making believe he's a messenger from Madame,
+and the Padre, and you, and Kerry. I'll play he's a carrier-butterfly,
+with a message tucked away under his wings: 'Howdy, Mary Virginia!
+I've just come from flying over the flowers in the Parish House
+garden; and the folks are all well, and busy, and happy. But they
+haven't forgotten you for a single solitary minute, and they miss you
+and wish you'd come back; and they send you their dear, dear love--and
+I'll carry your dear, dear love back to them!' So if you see a big,
+big, beautiful, strange fellow come sailing by your window some
+morning, why, that's mine, Mr. Flint! Remember!"
+
+And then she was gone, and he had his first taste of unselfish human
+sorrow. Heretofore his worries had been purely personal and
+self-centered: this was different, and innocent. It shocked and
+terrified him to find out how intensely he could miss another being,
+and that being a mere child. He wasn't used to that sort of pain, and
+it bewildered him.
+
+Eustis himself had wanted the little girl sent to a preparatory school
+which would fit her for one of the women's colleges. He had visions of
+the forward sweep of women--visions which his wife didn't share. Her
+daughter should go to the Church School at which she herself had been
+educated, an exclusive and expensive institution where the daughters
+of the wealthy were given a finishing hand-polish with ecclesiastical
+emery, as a sort of social hall-mark. Mrs. Eustis had a horror of what
+she called, in quotation-marks, the modern non-religious method of
+educating young ladies.
+
+The Eustis house was closed, and left in charge of the negro
+caretakers, for Mrs. Eustis couldn't stand the loneliness of the place
+after the child's departure, and Eustis himself found his presence
+more and more necessary at the great plantation he was building up.
+Mrs. Eustis left Appleboro, and my mother missed her. There was a vein
+of pure gold underlying the placid little woman's character, which the
+stronger woman divined and built upon.
+
+Laurence, too, entered college that Fall. I had coached him, in such
+hours as I could spare. He was conscientious enough, though his Greek
+was not the Greek of Homer and he vexed the soul of my mother with a
+French she said was spoke
+
+    full fair and fetisly
+    After ye schole of Strattford atte Bowe.
+
+But if he hadn't Mary Virginia's sensitiveness to all beauty, nor her
+playful fancy and vivid imagination, he was clear-brained and
+clean-thinking, with that large perspective and that practical
+optimism which seem to me so essentially American. He saw without
+confusion both the thing as it was and as it could become. With only
+enough humor to save him, he had a sternness more of the puritan than
+of the cavalier blood from which he had sprung. Above all was he
+informed with that new spirit brooding upon the face of all the
+waters, a spirit that for want of a better name one might call the
+Race Conscience.
+
+It was this last aspect of the boy's character that amazed and
+interested John Flint, who was himself too shrewd not to divine the
+sincerity, even the commonsense, of what Laurence called "applied
+Christianity." Altruism--and Slippy McGee! He listened with a puzzled
+wonder.
+
+"I wish," he grumbled to Laurence, "that you'd come off the roof. It
+gives a fellow stiff neck rubbering up at you!"
+
+"I'd rather stay up--the air's better, and you can see so much
+farther," said Laurence. And he added hospitably: "There's plenty of
+room--come on up, yourself!"
+
+"With one leg?" sarcastically.
+
+"And two eyes," said the boy. "Come on up--the sky's fine!" And he
+laughed into the half-suspicious face.
+
+The gimlet eyes bored into him, and the frank and truthful eyes met
+them unabashed, unwavering, with a something in them which made the
+other blink.
+
+"When I got pitched into this burg," said the lame man thoughtfully,
+"I landed all there--except a leg, but I never carried my brains in my
+legs. I hadn't got any bats in my belfry. But I'm getting 'em. I'm
+getting 'em so bad that when I hear some folks talk bughouse these
+days it pretty near listens like good sense to me. Why, kid, I'm nut
+enough now to dangle over the edge of believing you know what you're
+talking about!"
+
+"Fall over: I _know_ I know what I'm talking about," said Laurence
+magnificently.
+
+"I'm double-crossed," said John Flint, soberly and sadly, "Anyway I
+look at it--" he swept the horizon with a wide-flung gesture, "it's
+bugs for mine. I began by grannying bugs for _him_," he tossed his
+head bull-like in my direction, "and I stand around swallowing hot
+air from _you_--" He glared at Laurence, "and what's the result? Why,
+that I've got bugs in the bean, that's what! Think of me licking an
+all-day sucker a kid dopes out! _Me!_ Oh, he--venly saints!" he
+gulped. "Ain't I the nut, though?"
+
+"Well, supposing?" said Laurence, laughing. "Buck up! You _could_ be a
+bad egg instead of a good nut, you know!"
+
+John Flint's eyes slitted, then widened; his mouth followed suit
+almost automatically. He looked at me.
+
+"Can you beat it?" he wondered.
+
+"Beating a bad egg would be a waste of time I wouldn't be guilty of,"
+said I amusedly. "But I hope to live to see the good nut grow into a
+fine tree."
+
+"Do your damnedest--excuse me, parson!" said he contritely. "I mean,
+don't stop for a little thing like _me_!"
+
+Laurence leaned forward. "Man," said he, impressively, "he won't have
+to! You'll be marking time and keeping step with him yourself before
+you know it!"
+
+"Huh!" said John Flint, non-committally.
+
+
+
+Laurence came to spend his last evening at home with us.
+
+"Padre," said he, when we walked up and down in the garden, after an
+old custom, after dinner, "do you really know what I mean to do when
+I've finished college and start out on my own hook?"
+
+"Put 'Mayne & Son' on the judge's shingle and walk around the block
+forty times a day to look at it!" said I, promptly.
+
+"Of course," said he. "That first. But a legal shingle can be turned
+into as handy a weapon as one could wish for, Padre, and _I'm_ going
+to take that shingle and spank this sleepy-headed old town wide awake
+with it!" He spoke with the conviction of youth, so sure of itself
+that there is no room for doubt. There was in him, too, a hint of
+latent power which was impressive. One did not laugh at Laurence.
+
+"It's my town," with his chin out. "It could be a mighty good town.
+It's going to become one. I expect to live all my life right here,
+among my own people, and they've got to make it worth my while. I
+don't propose to cut myself down to fit any little hole: I intend to
+make that hole big enough to fit my possible measure."
+
+"May an old friend wish more power to your shovel?"
+
+"It'll be a steam shovel!" said he, gaily. Then his face clouded.
+
+"Padre! I'm sick of the way things are run in Appleboro! I've talked
+with other boys and they're sick of it, too. You know why they want to
+get away? Because they think they haven't got even a fighting chance
+here. Because towns like this are like billion-ton old wagons sunk so
+deep in mudruts that nothing but dynamite can blow them out--and they
+are not dealers in dynamite. If they want to do anything that even
+_looks_ new they've got to fight the stand-patters to a finish, and
+they're blockaded by a lot of reactionaries that don't know the
+earth's moving. There are a lot of folks in the South, Padre, who've
+been dead since the civil war, and haven't found it out themselves,
+and won't take live people's word for it. Well, now, I mean to _do_
+things. I mean to do them right here. And I certainly shan't allow
+myself to be blockaded by anybody, living or dead. You've got to fight
+the devil with fire;--I'm going to blockade those blockaders, and see
+that the dead ones are decently buried."
+
+"You have tackled a big job, my son."
+
+"I like big jobs, Padre. They're worth while. Maybe I'll be able to
+keep some of the boys home--the town needs them. Maybe I can keep some
+of those poor kids out of the mills, too. Oh, yes, I expect a right
+lively time!"
+
+I was silent. I knew how supinely Appleboro lay in the hollow of a
+hard hand. I had learned, too, how such a hand can close into a
+strangling fist.
+
+"Of course I can't clean up the whole state, and I can't reorganize
+the world," said the boy sturdily. "I'm not such a fool as to try. But
+I can do my level best to disinfect my own particular corner, and make
+it fit for men and safe for women and kids to live and breathe in.
+Padre, for years there hasn't been a rotten deal nor a brazen steal in
+this state that the man who practically owns and runs this town hadn't
+a finger in, knuckle-deep. _He's got to go_."
+
+"Goliath doesn't always fall at the hand of the son of Jesse, my
+little David," said I quietly. I also had dreamed dreams and seen
+visions.
+
+"That's about what my father says," said the boy. "He wants me to be a
+successful man, a 'safe and sane citizen.' He thinks a gentleman
+should practise his profession decently and in order. But to believe,
+as I do, that you can wipe out corruption, that you can tackle poverty
+the same as you would any other disease, and prevent it, as smallpox
+and yellow fever are prevented, he looks upon as madness and a waste
+of time."
+
+"He has had sorrow and experience, and he is kind and charitable, as
+well as wise," said I.
+
+"That's exactly where the hardest part comes in for us younger
+fellows. It isn't bucking the bad that makes the fight so hard: it's
+bucking the wrong-idea'd good. Padre, one good man on the wrong side
+is a stumbling-block for the stoutest-hearted reformer ever born. It's
+men like my father, who regard the smooth scoundrel that runs this
+town as a necessary evil, and tolerate him because they wouldn't soil
+their hands dealing with him, that do the greatest injury to the
+state. I tell you what, it wouldn't be so hard to get rid of the
+devil, if it weren't for the angels!"
+
+"And how," said I, ironically, "do you propose to set about smoothing
+the rough and making straight the crooked, my son?"
+
+"Flatten 'em out," said he, briefly. "Politics. First off I'm going to
+practice general law; then I'll be solicitor-general for this county.
+After that, I shall be attorney-general for the state. Later I may be
+governor, unless I become senator instead."
+
+"Well," said I, cautiously, "you'll be so toned down by that time that
+you might make a very good governor indeed."
+
+"I couldn't very well make a worse one than some we've already had,"
+said the boy sternly. There was something of the accusing dignity of a
+young archangel about him. I caught a glimpse of that newer America
+growing up about us--an America gone back to the older, truer,
+unbuyable ideals of our fathers.
+
+"I guess you'd better tell me good-by now, Padre," said he, presently.
+"And bless me, please--it's a pretty custom. I won't see you again,
+for you'll be saying mass when I'm running for my train. I'll go tell
+John Flint good-by, too."
+
+He went over and rapped on the window, through which we could see
+Flint sitting at his table, his head bent over a book.
+
+"Good-by, John Flint" said Laurence. "Good luck to you and your leggy
+friends! When I come back you'll probably have mandibles, and you'll
+greet me with a nip, in pure Bugese."
+
+"Good-by," said John Flint, lifting his head. Then, with unwonted
+feeling: "I'm horrible sorry you've got to go--I'll miss you something
+fierce. You've been very kind--thank you."
+
+"Mind you take care of the Padre," said the boy, waiving the thanks
+with a smile. "Don't let him work too hard."
+
+"Who, me?" Flint's voice took the knife-edge of sarcasm. "Oh, sure! It
+don't need but one leg to keep up with a gent trying to run a
+thirty-six hour a day job with one-man power, does it? Son, take it
+from me, when a man's got the real, simonpure, no-imitation,
+soulsaving bug in his bean, a forty-legged cyclone couldn't keep up
+with him, much less a guy with one pedal short." He glared at me
+indignantly. From the first it has been one of his vainest notions
+that I am perversely working myself to death.
+
+"There's nothing to be done with the Padre, then, I'm afraid," said
+Laurence, chuckling.
+
+"I _might_ soak him in the cyanide jar for ten minutes a day without
+killing him," mused Mr. Flint. "But," disgustedly, "what'd be the use?
+When he came to and found he'd been that long idle he'd die of
+heart-failure." He pushed aside the window screen, and the two shook
+hands heartily. Then the boy, wringing my hand again, walked away
+without another word. I felt a bit desolate--there are times when I
+could envy women their solace of tears--as if he figured in his
+handsome young person that newer, stronger, more conquering generation
+which was marching ahead, leaving me, older and slower and sadder,
+far, far behind it. Ah! To be once more that young, that strong, that
+hopeful!
+
+When I began to reflect upon what seemed visionary plans, I was
+saddened, foreseeing inevitable disillusion, perhaps even stark
+failure, ahead of him. That he would stubbornly try to carry out those
+plans I did not doubt: I knew my Laurence. He might accomplish a
+certain amount of good. But to overthrow Inglesby, the Boss of
+Appleboro--for he meant no less than this--why, that was a horse of
+another color!
+
+For Inglesby was our one great financial figure. He owned our bank;
+his was the controlling interest in the mills; he owned the factory
+outright; he was president of half a dozen corporations and chairman
+and director of many more.
+
+Did we have a celebration? There he was, in the center of the stage,
+with a jovial loud laugh and an ultra-benevolent smile to hide the
+menace of his little cold piglike eyes, and the meaning of his heavy
+jaw. Will the statement that he had a pew in every church in town
+explain him? He had one in mine, too; paid for, which many of them are
+not.
+
+At the large bare office in the mill he was easy of access, and would
+listen to what you had to say with flattering attention and sympathy.
+But it was in his private office over the bank that this large spider
+really spun the web of our politics. Mills, banks, churches, schools,
+lights, railroads, stores, heating, water-power--all these juicy flies
+apparently walked into his parlor of their own accord. He had made and
+unmade governors; he had sent his men to Washington. How? We
+suspected; but held our peace. If our Bible had bidden us Americans to
+suffer rascals gladly--instead of mere fools--we couldn't be more
+obedient to a mandate.
+
+Men like James Eustis and Judge Mayne despised Inglesby--but gave him
+a wide berth. They wouldn't be enmeshed. It was known that Major
+Appleby Cartwright had blackballed him.
+
+"I can stand a man, suh, that likes to get along in this world--within
+proper bounds. But Inglesby hasn't got any proper bounds. He's a--a
+cross between a Republican mule and a party-bolting boa-constrictor,
+an' a hybrid like that hasn't got any place in nature. On top of that
+he drinks ten cents a bottle grape juice and smokes five cent cigars.
+And he's got the brazen and offensive effrontery to offer 'em to
+self-respectin' men!"
+
+And here was Laurence, our little Laurence, training himself to
+overthrow this overgrown Goliath! Well, if the boy could not bring
+this Philistine to the earth, he might yet manage to give him a few
+manful clumps on the head; perhaps enough to insure a chronic
+headache.
+
+So thinking, I went in and watched John Flint finish a mounting-block
+from a plan in the book open upon the table, adding, however, certain
+improvements of his own.
+
+He laid the block aside and then took a spray of fresh leaves and fed
+it to a horned and hungry caterpillar prowling on a bit of bare stem
+at the bottom of his cage.
+
+"Get up there on those leaves, you horn-tailed horror! Move on,--you
+lepidopterous son of a wigglejoint, or I'll pull your real name on you
+in a minute and paralyze you stiff!" He drew a long breath. "You know
+how I'm beginning to remember their real names? I swear 'em half an
+hour a day. Next time you have trouble with those hickeys of yours,
+try swearing caterpillar at 'em, and you'll find out."
+
+I laughed, and he grinned with me.
+
+"Say," said he, abruptly. "I've been listening with both my ears to
+what that boy was talking to you about awhile ago. Thinks he can buck
+the Boss, does he?"
+
+"Perhaps he may," I admitted.
+
+"Nifty old bird, the Big Un," said Mr. Flint, squinting his eyes.
+"And," he went on, reflectively, "he's sure got your number in this
+burg. Take you by and large, you lawabiders are a real funny sort,
+ain't you? Now, there's Inglesby, handing out the little kids their
+diplomas come school-closing, and telling 'em to be real good, and
+maybe when they grow up he'll have a job in pickle for 'em--work like
+a mule in a treadmill, twelve hours, no unions, _and_ the coroner to
+sit on the remains, free and gratis, for to ease the widow's mind.
+Inglesby's got seats in all your churches--first-aid to the parson's
+pants-pockets.
+
+"Inglesby's right there on the platform at all your spiel-fests,
+smirking at the women and telling 'em not to bother their nice little
+noddles about anything but holding down their natural jobs of being
+perfect ladies--ain't he and other gents just like him always right
+there holding down _their_ natural jobs of protecting 'em and being
+influenced to do what's right? Sure he is! And nobody howls for the
+hook! You let him be It--him with a fist in the state's jeans up to
+the armpit!
+
+"Look here, that Mayne kid's dead right. It's you good guys that are
+to blame. We little bad ones see you kowtowing to the big worse ones,
+and we get to thinking _we_ can come in under the wires easy winners,
+too. However, let me tell you something while I'm in the humor to gas.
+It's this: _sooner or later everybody gets theirs_. My sort and
+Inglesby's sort, we all get ours. Duck and twist and turn and sidestep
+all we want, at the end it's right there waiting for us, with a loaded
+billy up its sleeve: _Ours!_ Some fine day when we're looking the
+other way, thinking we've even got it on the annual turnout of the
+cops up Broadway for class, why, Ours gets up easy on its hind legs,
+spits on its mitt, and hands us exactly what's coming to us, biff! and
+we wake up sitting on our necks in the middle of day-before-yesterday
+and year-after-next. I got mine. If I was you I wouldn't be too
+cock-sure that kid don't give Inglesby his, some of these days, good
+and plenty."
+
+"Maybe so," said I, cautiously.
+
+"Gee, that'd be fly-time for all the good guys in this tank, wouldn't
+it?" he grinned. "Sure! I can see 'em now, patting the bump on their
+beams where they think the brain-patch sprouts, and handing out hunks
+of con to the Lord about his being right on his old-time job of
+swatting sinners in their dinners. Yet they'll all of them go right on
+leading themselves up to be trimmed by the very next holdup that's got
+the nerve to do them! Friend, believe a goat when he tells you that
+you stillwater-and-greenpasture sheep are some bag of nuts!"
+
+"Thank you," said I, with due meekness.
+
+"Keep the change," said he, unabashed. "I wasn't meaning _you_,
+anyhow. I've got more manners, I hope, than to do such. And, parson,
+you don't need to have cold feet about young Mayne. If you ask me,
+_I'd_ bet the limit on him. Why, I think so much of that boy that if
+he was a rooster I'd put the gaffs and my last dollar on him, and back
+him to whip everything in feathers clean up to baldheaded eagles.
+Believe me, he'd do it!" he finished, with enthusiasm.
+
+Bewildered by a mental picture of a Laurence with ruffled
+neck-feathers and steel spurs, I hurriedly changed the subject to the
+saner and safer one of our own immediate affairs.
+
+"Yep, ten orders in to-day's mail and seven in yesterday's; and good
+orders for the wasp-moths, single or together, and that house in New
+York wants steady supplies from now on. And here's a fancy shop wants
+a dozen trays, like that last one I finished. We're looking up," said
+he, complacently.
+
+
+
+The winter that followed was a trying one, and the Guest Rooms were
+never empty. I like to record that John Flint put his shoulder to the
+wheel and became Madame's right hand man and Westmoreland's faithful
+ally. His wooden leg made astonishingly little noise, and his entrance
+into a room never startled the most nervous patient. He went on
+innumerable errands, and he performed countless small services that in
+themselves do not seem to amount to much, but swell into a great
+total.
+
+"He may have only one leg," said Westmoreland, when Flint had helped
+him all of one night with a desperately ill millworker, "but he
+certainly has two hands; he knows how to use his ears and eyes, he's
+dumb until he ought to speak, and then he speaks to the point. Father,
+Something knew what It was about when you and I were allowed to drag
+that tramp out of the teeth of death! Yes, yes, I'm certainly glad and
+grateful we were allowed to save John Flint."
+
+From that time forth the big man gave his ex-patient a liking which
+grew with his years. Absent-minded as he was, he could thereafter
+always remember to find such things as he thought might interest him.
+Appleboro laughs yet about the day Dr. Westmoreland got some small
+butterflies for his friend, and having nowhere else to put them,
+clapped them under his hat, and then forgot all about them; until he
+lifted his hat to some ladies and the swarm of insects flew out.
+
+Without being asked, and as unostentatiously as he did everything
+else, Flint had taken his place in church every Sunday.
+
+"Because it'd sort of give you a black eye if I didn't," he explained.
+"Skypiloting's your lay, father, and I'll see you through with it as
+far as I can. I couldn't fall down on any man that's been as white to
+me as you've been."
+
+I must confess that his conception of religion was very, very hazy,
+and his notions of church services and customs barbarous. For
+instance, he disliked the statues of the saints exceedingly. They
+worried him.
+
+"I can't seem to stand a man dolled-up in skirts," he confessed. "Any
+more than I'd be stuck on a dame with whiskers. It don't somehow look
+right to me. Put the he-saints in pants instead of those brown kimonas
+with gold crocheting and a rope sash, and I'd have more respect for
+'em."
+
+When I tried to give him some necessary instructions, and to penetrate
+the heathen darkness in which he seemed immersed, he listened with the
+utmost respect and attention--and wrinkled his brow painfully, and
+blinked, and licked his lips.
+
+"That's all right, father, that's all right. If you say it's so, I
+guess it's so. I'll take your word for it. If it's good enough for you
+and Madame, there's got to be something in it, and it's sure good
+enough for me. Look here: the little girl and young Mayne have got a
+different brand from yours, haven't they?"
+
+"Neither of them is of the Old Faith."
+
+"Huh! Well, I tell you what you do: you just switch me in somewhere
+between you and Madame and him and her. That'll give me a line on all
+of you--and maybe it'll give all of you a line on me. See?"
+
+I saw, but as through a glass darkly. So the matter rested. And I must
+in all humility set down that I have never yet been able to get at
+what John Flint really believes he believes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE GOING OF SLIPPY MCGEE
+
+
+Little by little, so quietly as to be unnoticeable in the working, but
+with, cumulative effect; built under the surface like those coral
+reefs that finally rear themselves into palm-crowned peaks upon the
+Pacific, during the years' slow upward march had John Flint grown.
+
+Nature had never meant him for a criminal. The evil conditions that
+society saddles upon the slums had set him wrong because they gave him
+no opportunity to be right. Now even among butterflies there are
+occasional aberrants, but they are the rare exceptions. Give the grub
+his natural food, his chance to grow, protect him from parasites in
+the meanwhile, and he will presently become the normal butterfly. That
+is the Law.
+
+At a crucial phase in this man's career his true talisman--a gray
+moth--had been put into his hand; and thereby he came into his
+rightful heritage.
+
+I count as one of my red-letter days that on which I found him
+brooding over the little gray-brown chrysalis of the Papilio
+Cresphontes, that splendid swallowtail whose hideous caterpillar we in
+the South call the orange puppy, from the fancied resemblance the hump
+upon it bears to the head of a young dog. Its chrysalis looks so much
+like a bit of snapped-off twig that the casual eye misses it,
+fastened to a stem by a girdle of silk or lying among fallen leaves.
+
+"I watched it ooze out of an egg like a speck of dirty water. I
+watched it eat a thousand times its own weight and grow into the
+nastiest wretch that crawls. I saw it stop eating and spit its stomach
+out and shrivel up, and crawl out of its skin and pull its own head
+off, and bury itself alive in a coffin made out of itself, a coffin
+like a bit of rotting wood. Look at it! There it lies, stone-dead for
+all a man's eyes can see!
+
+"And yet this thing will answer a call no ears can hear and crawl out
+of its coffin something entirely different from what went into it!
+I've seen it with my own eyes, but how it's done I don't know; no, nor
+no man since the world was made knows, or could do it himself. What
+does it? What gives that call these dead-alive things hear in the
+dark? What makes a crawling ugliness get itself ready for what's
+coming--how does it _know_ there's ever going to be a call, or that
+it'll hear it without fail?"
+
+"Some of us call it Nature: but others call it God," said I.
+
+"Search me! I don't know what It is--but I do know there's got to be
+Something behind these things, anyhow," said he, and turned the
+chrysalis over and over in his palm, staring down at it thoughtfully.
+He had used Westmoreland's words, once applied to his own case! "Oh,
+yes, there's Something, because I've watched It working with grubs,
+getting 'em ready for five-inch moths and hand-colored butterflies,
+Something that's got the time and the patience and the know-how to
+build wings as well as worlds." He laid the little inanimate mystery
+aside.
+
+"It's come to the point, parson, where I've just _got_ to know more. I
+know enough now to know how much I don't know, because I've got a peep
+at how much there is to know. There's a God's plenty to find out, and
+it's up to me to go out and find it."
+
+"Some of the best and brightest among men have given all the years of
+their lives to just that finding out and knowing more--and they found
+their years too few and short for the work. But such help as you need
+and we can get, you shall have, please God!" said I.
+
+"I'm ready for the word to start, chief." And heaven knows he was.
+
+His passion transformed him; he forgot himself; took his mind off
+himself and his affairs and grievances and hatreds and fears; and thus
+had chance to expand and to grow, in those following years of
+patientest effort, of untiring research and observance, of lovingest
+study. Days in the open woods and fields burned his pale skin a good
+mahogany, and stamped upon it the windswept freshness of out of doors.
+The hunted and suspicious glance faded from his eyes, which took on
+more and more the student's absorbed intensity; the mouth lost its
+sinister straightness; and while it retained an uncompromising
+firmness, it learned how to smile. He was a familiar figure, tramping
+from dawn to dusk with Kerry at his heels, for the dog obeyed Mary
+Virginia's command literally. He looked upon John Flint as his special
+charge, and made himself his fourlegged red shadow. I am sure that if
+we had seen Kerry appear in the streets of Appleboro without John
+Flint, we would have incontinently stopped work, sounded a general
+alarm, and gone to hunt for his body. And to have seen John Flint
+without Kerry would have called forth condolences.
+
+Sometimes--when I had time--I went with him moth-hunting at night; and
+never, never could either of us forget those enchanted hours under the
+stars!
+
+We moved in a quiet fresh and dewy, with the night wind upon us like a
+benediction. Sometimes we skirted a cypress swamp and saw the shallow
+black water with blacker trees reflected upon its bosom, and heard the
+frogs' canorous quarrelings, and the stealthy rustlings of creatures
+of the dark. We crossed dreaming fields, and smelt leaves and grasses
+and sleeping flowers. We saw the heart of the wood bared to the magic
+of the moon, which revealed a hidden and haunting beauty of places
+commonplace enough by day; as if the secret souls of things showed
+themselves only in the holy dark.
+
+For the world into which we stepped for a space was not our world, but
+the fairy world of the Little People, the world of the Children of the
+Moon. And oh, the moths! Now it was a tiger, with his body banded with
+yellow and his white opaque delicate wings spotted with black; now the
+great green silken Luna with long curved tails bordered with lilac or
+gold, and vest of ermine; now some quivering Catocala, with afterwings
+spread to show orange and black and crimson; now the golden-brown Io,
+with one great black velvet spot; and now some rarer, shyer fellow
+over which we gloated.
+
+How they flashed and fluttered about the lantern, or circled about the
+trees upon which the feast had been spread! The big yellow-banded
+sphinx whirred hither and thither on his owl-like wings, his large
+eyes glowing like rubies, hung quivering above some flower for a
+moment, and then was off again as swift as thought. The light drew the
+great Regalis, all burnished tawny brown, striped and spotted with raw
+gold; and the Cynthia, banded with lilac, her heavy body tufted with
+white. The darkness in which they moved, the light which, for a moment
+revealed them, seemed to make their colors _alive_; for they show no
+such glow and glory in the common day; they pale when the moon pales,
+and when the sun is up they are merely moths; they are no longer the
+fantastic, glittering, gorgeous, throbbing Children of the Dark.
+
+Home we would go, at an hour when the morning star blazed like a
+lighted torch, and the pearl-gray sky was flushing with pink. No haul
+he had ever made could have given him such joy as the treasures
+brought home in dawns like these, so free of evil that his heart was
+washed in the night dew and swept by the night wind.
+
+My mother, after her pleasant, housewifely fashion, baked a big iced
+cake for him on the day he replaced his clumsy wooden peg with the
+life-like artificial limb he himself had earned and paid for. I had
+wished more than once to hasten this desirable day; but prudently
+restrained myself, thinking it best for him to work forward unaided.
+It had taken months of patient work, of frugality, and planning, and
+counting, and saving, to cover a sum which, once on a time, he might
+have gotten in an hour's evil effort. And it represented no small
+achievement and marked no small advance, so that it was really the
+feast day we made of it. That limb restored him to a dignity he seemed
+to have abdicated. It hid his obvious misfortune--you could not at
+first glance tell that he was a cripple, a something of which he had
+been morbidly conscious and savagely resentful. He would never again
+be able to run, or even to walk rapidly for any length of time,
+although he covered the ground at a good and steady gait; and as he
+grew more and more accustomed to the limb there was only a slight limp
+to distinguish him. The use of the stick he thought best to carry
+became perfunctory. I have seen Kerry carrying that stick when his
+master had forgotten all about it.
+
+Meeting him now upon the streets, plainly but really well-dressed,
+scrupulously brushed, his linen immaculate, and with his trimmed red
+beard, his eyeglasses, and his soft hat, he conveyed the impression of
+being a professional man--say a pleasantly homely and scholarly
+college professor. There was a fixed sentiment in Appleboro that I
+knew very much more about Mr. Flint's past than I would tell--which
+was perfectly true, and went undenied by me; that he had seen better
+days; that he had been the black sheep of a good family, gotten into a
+scrape of some sort, and had then taken to traveling a rough road into
+a far country, eating husks with the swine, like many another
+prodigal; and that aware of this I had kept him with me until he found
+himself again.
+
+So when folks met him and Kerry they smiled and spoke, for we are
+friendly people and send no man to Coventry without great cause. And
+there wasn't a child, black or white, who didn't know and like the
+man with the butterfly net.
+
+The country people for miles around knew and loved him, too; for he
+walked up and down the earth and went to and fro in it, full of
+curious and valuable knowledge shared freely as the need arose. He
+would glance at your flower-garden, for instance, and tell you what
+insect visitors your flowers had, and what you should do to check
+their ravages. He'd walk about your out-buildings and commend
+white-wash, and talk about insecticides; and you'd learn that bees are
+partial to blue, but flies are not; and that mosquitoes seem to
+dislike certain shades of yellow. And then he'd leave you to digest
+it.
+
+He was a quiet evangelist, a forerunner of that Grand Army which will
+some day arise, not to murder and maim men, but to conquer man's
+deadliest foe and greatest economic menace--the injurious insect.
+
+It was he who spread the tidings of Corn and Poultry and Live Stock
+Clubs, stopping by many a lonely farm to whisper a word in the ears of
+discouraged boys, or to drop a hint to unenlightened fathers and
+mothers.
+
+He carried about in his pockets those invaluable reports and bulletins
+which the government issues for the benefit and enlightenment of
+farmers; and these were left, with a word of praise, where they would
+do the most good.
+
+Those same bulletins from the Bureau of Entomology had planted in John
+Flint's heart the seed which bore such fruit of good citizenship. The
+whole course of his early years had tended to make him suspicious of
+government, which spelt for him police and prison, the whole grim
+machinery which threatened him and which he in turn threatened. He had
+feared and hated it; it caught men and shut them up and broke them. If
+he ever asked himself, "What can my government do for me?" he had to
+answer: "It can put me in prison and keep me there; it can even send me
+to the Chair." Wherefore government was a thing to hate, to injure--and
+to escape from.
+
+The first thing he had ever found worthy of respect and admiration in
+this same government was one of its bulletins.
+
+"Where'd you get this?"
+
+"I asked for it, and the Bureau sent it."
+
+"Oh! You've got a friend there!"
+
+"No. The bulletins are free to any one interested enough to ask for
+them."
+
+"You mean to say the government gets up things like this--pays men to
+find out and write 'em up--pays to have 'em printed--and then gives
+'em away to _anybody_? Why, they're valuable!"
+
+"Yes; but they are nevertheless quite free. I have a number, if you'd
+like to go over them. Or you can send for new ones."
+
+"But why do they do it? Where's the graft?" he wondered.
+
+"The graft in this case is common sense in operation. If farms can be
+run with less labor and loss and more profit and pleasure, why, the
+whole country is benefited, isn't it? Don't you understand, the
+government is trying to help those who need help, and therefore is
+willing to lend them the brains of its trained and picked experts? It
+isn't selfish thwart that aim, is it?"
+
+He said nothing. But he read and re-read the bulletins I had, and sent
+for more, which came to him promptly. They didn't know him, at the
+Bureau; they asked him no questions; he wasn't going to pay anybody so
+much as a penny. They assumed that the man who asked for advice and
+information was entitled to all they could reasonably give him, and
+they gave it as a matter of course. That is how and why he found
+himself in touch with his Uncle Sam, a source hitherto disliked and
+distrusted. This source was glad to put its trained intelligence at
+his service and the only reward it looked to was his increased
+capacity to succeed in his work! He simply couldn't dislike or
+distrust that which benefited him; and as his admiration and respect
+for the Department of Agriculture grew, unconsciously his respect and
+admiration for the great government behind it grew likewise. After
+all, it was _his_ government which was reaching across intervening
+miles, conveying information, giving expert instruction, telling him
+things he wanted to know and encouraging him to go right on and find
+out more for himself!
+
+_Now_ if he had asked himself what his government could do for him, he
+had to answer: "It can help me to make good."
+
+And he began to understand that this was possible because he obeyed
+the law, and that only in intelligent obedience and co-operation is
+there any true freedom. The law no longer meant skulking by day and
+terror by night; it was protection and peace, and a chance to work in
+the open, and the sympathy and understanding and comradeship of
+decent folks. The government was no longer a brute force which
+arbitrarily popped men into prison; it was the common will of a free
+people, just as the law was the common conscience.
+
+I dare not say that he learned all this easily, or all at once, or
+even willingly. None of us learns our great lessons easily. We have to
+live them, breathe them, work them out with sweat and tears. That we
+do learn them, even inadequately, makes the glory and the wonder of
+man.
+
+And so John Flint went to school to the government of the United
+States, and carried its little text-books about with him and taught
+them to others in even more need that he; and heckled hopeless boys
+into Corn Clubs; and coaxed sullen mothers and dissatisfied girls into
+Poultry and Tomato Clubs; and was full of homely advice upon such
+living subjects as the spraying of fruit trees, and how to save them
+from blight and scale-insects, and how to get rid of flies, and
+cut-worms, and to fight the cattle-tick, which is our curse; and the
+preservation of birds, concerning which he was rabid. His liking for
+birds began with Miss Sally Ruth's pigeons and the friendly birds in
+our garden. And as he learned to know them his love for them grew. I
+have seen him daily visit a wren's nest without once alarming the
+little black-eyed mother. I have heard him give the red-bird's call,
+and heard that loveliest of all birds answer him. And I have seen the
+impudent jays, within reach of his hand, swear at him unabashed and
+unafraid, because he fed a vireo first.
+
+I like to think of his intimate friendship with the wholesome country
+children--not the least of his blessings. He was their chief visitor
+from the outside world. He knew wonderful secrets about things one
+hadn't noticed before, and he could make miracles with his quick
+strong fingers. He'd sit down, his stick and knapsack beside him, his
+glamorous dog at his feet, and while you and your sisters and brothers
+and friends and neighbors hung about him like a cluster of tow-headed
+bees, he'd turn a few sticks and bits of cloth and twine and a tack or
+two, and an old roller-skate wheel he took out of his pocket, into an
+air-ship! He could go down by your little creek and make you a
+water-wheel, or a windmill. He could make you marvelous little men,
+funny little women, absurd animals, out of corks or peanuts. He knew,
+too, just exactly the sort of knife your boy-heart ached for--and at
+parting you found that very knife slipped into your enraptured palm.
+You might save the pennies you earned by picking berries and gathering
+nuts, but you could never, never find at any store any candy that
+tasted like the sticks that came out of his pockets, and you needn't
+hope to try. He had the inviolable secret of that candy, and he
+imparted to it a divine flavor no other candy ever possessed. If you
+were a little doll-less girl, he didn't leave you with the provoking
+promise that Santa Claus would bring you one if you were good. He was
+so sure you were good that he made you right then and there a
+wonderful doll out of corn-husks, with shredded hair, and a frock of
+his own handkerchief. When he came again you got another doll--a store
+doll; but I think your child-heart clung to the corn-baby with the
+handkerchief dress. I have often wondered how many little cheeks
+snuggled against John Flint's home-made dollies, how many innocent
+breasts cradled them; how many a little fellow carried his knife to
+bed with him, afraid to let it get out of reach of a hard little hand,
+because he might wake up in the morning and find he had only dreamed
+it! No, I hardly think the country children were the least of John
+Flint's blessings. They would run to meet him, hold on to his hands,
+drag him here and there to show him what wonders their sharp eyes had
+discovered since his last visit; and give him, with shining eyes, such
+cocoons and caterpillars, and insects as they had found for him. It
+was they who called him the Butterfly Man, a name which spread over
+the whole country-side. If you had asked for John Flint, folks would
+have stared. And if you described him--a tall man in a Norfolk suit,
+with a red beard and a red dog, and an insect case:
+
+"Oh, you mean the Butterfly Man! Sure. You'll find him about somewhere
+with the kids." If there was anything he couldn't have, in that
+county, it was because folks hadn't it to give if he should ask.
+
+At home his passion for work at times terrified me. When I protested:
+
+"I was twenty-five years old when I landed here," he reminded me. "So
+I've got twenty-five years' back-work to catch up with."
+
+He had taken over a correspondence that had since become voluminous,
+and which included more and more names that stood for very much.
+Sometimes when I read aloud a passage from a letter that praised him,
+he turned red, and writhed like a little boy whose ears are being
+relentlessly washed by his elders.
+
+By this time he had learned to really classify; heavens, how
+unerringly he could place an insect in its proper niche! It was a sort
+of sixth sense with him. That cold, clear, incisive power of brain
+which on a time had made Slippy McGee the greatest cracksman in
+America, was, trained and disciplined in a better cause, to make John
+Flint in later years an international authority upon lepidoptera, an
+observer to whom other observers deferred, a naturalist whose dictum
+settled disputed points. And I knew it, I foresaw it!
+
+_Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_ I grew as vain over his enlarging
+powers as if I had been the Mover of the Game, not a pawn. I felt,
+gloriously, that I had not lived for nothing. A great naturalist is
+not born every day, no, nor every year, nor even every century. And I
+had caught me a great burglar and I had hatched me a great naturalist!
+My Latin soul was enraptured with this ironic anomaly. I could not
+choose but love the man for that.
+
+I really had some cause for vanity. Others than myself had been
+gradually drawn to the unassuming Butterfly Man. Westmoreland loved
+him. A sympathetic listener who seldom contradicted, but often
+shrewdly suggested, Flint somehow knew how to bring out the big
+doctor's best; and in consequence found himself in contact with a mind
+above all meanness and a nature as big and clean as a spray-swept
+beach.
+
+"Oh, my, my, my, what a surgeon gone to waste!" Westmoreland would
+lament, watching the long, sure fingers at work. "Well, I suppose it's
+all for the best that Father De Rance beat me to you--at least you've
+done less damage learning your trade." So absorbed would he become
+that he sometimes forget cross patients who were possibly fuming
+themselves into a fever over his delay.
+
+Eustis, who had met the Butterfly Man on the country roads and had
+stopped his horse for an informal chat, would thereafter go out of his
+way for a talk with him. These two reticent men liked each other
+immensely. At opposite poles, absolutely dissimilar, they yet had odd
+similarities and meeting-points. Eustis was nothing if not practical;
+he was never too busy to forget to be kind. Books and pamphlets that
+neither Flint nor I could have hoped to possess found their way to us
+through him. Scientific periodicals and the better magazines came
+regularly to John Flint's address. That was Eustis's way. This
+friendship put the finishing touch upon the Butterfly Man's repute. He
+was my associate, and my mother was devoted to him. Miss Sally Ruth,
+whose pet pear-tree he had saved and whose pigeons he had cured,
+approved of him, too, and said so with her usual openness.
+Westmoreland was known to be his firm friend; nobody could forget the
+incident of those butterflies in the doctor's hat! Major Cartwright
+liked him so much that he even bore with the dogs, though Pitache in
+particular must have sorely strained his patience. Pitache cherished
+the notion that it was his duty to pass upon all visitors to the
+Butterfly Man's rooms. For some reason, known only to himself, the
+little dog also cherished a deep-seated grudge against the major, the
+very sound of whose voice outside the door was enough to send him
+howling under the table, where he lay with his head on his paws, a
+wary eye cocked balefully, and his snarls punctuating the Major's
+remarks.
+
+"He smells my Unitarian soul, confound him!" said the major. "An' he's
+so orthodox he thinks he'll get chucked out of dog-heaven, if he
+doesn't show his disapproval."
+
+The little dog did finally learn to accept the major's presence
+without outward protest; though the major declared that Pitache always
+hung down his tail when he came and hung it up when he left!
+
+The Butterfly Man accepted whatever friendliness was proffered without
+diffidence, but with no change in his natural reserve. You could tell
+him anything: he listened, made few comments and gave no advice, was
+absolutely non-shockable, and never repeated what he heard. The
+unaffected simplicity of his manner delighted my mother. She said you
+couldn't tell her--there was good blood in that man, and he had been
+more than any mere tramp before he fell into our hands! Why, just
+observe his manner, if you please! It was the same to everybody; he
+had, one might think, no sense whatever of caste, creed, age, sex, or
+color; and yet he neither gave offense nor received it.
+
+Those outbursts which had so terrified me at first came at rare and
+rarer intervals. If I were to live for a thousands years I should
+never be able to forget the last and worst; which fell upon him
+suddenly and without warning, on a fine morning while he sat on the
+steps of his verandah, and I beside him with my Book of Hours in my
+hand. In between the Latin prayers I sensed pleasantly the light wind
+that rustled the vines, and how the Mayne bees went grumbling from
+flower to flower, and how one single bird was singing to himself over
+and over the self-same song, as if he loved it; and how the sunlight
+fell in a great square, like a golden carpet, in front of the steps.
+It was all very still and peaceful. I was just turning a page, when
+John Flint jerked his pipe out of his mouth, swung his arm back, and
+hurled the pipe as far as he could. I watched it, involuntarily, and
+saw where it fell among our blue hydrangeas; from which a thin spiral
+of smoke arose lazily in the calm air. But Flint shoved his hat back
+on his head, sat up stiffly, and swore.
+
+He had been with me then nearly four years, and I had learned to know
+the symptoms:--restlessness, followed by hours of depressed and sullen
+brooding. So I had heretofore in a sense been forewarned, though I
+never witnessed one of these outbursts without being shaken to the
+depths. This one was different--as if the evil force had invaded him
+suddenly, giving him no time to resist. A glance at his face made me
+lay aside the book hurriedly; for this was no ordinary struggle. The
+words that had come to me at first came back now with redoubled
+meaning, and rang through my head like passing-bells:
+
+"_For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood but against ... the
+rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of
+wickedness_."
+
+He tilted his head, looked upward, and swore steadily. As for me, my
+throat felt as if it had been choked with ashes. I could only stare at
+him, dumbly. If ever a man was possessed, he was. His voice rose,
+querulously:
+
+"I get up in the morning, and I catch bugs, and I study them, and I
+dry them--and I go to bed. I get up in the morning, and I catch bugs,
+and I study them, and I dry them--and I go to bed. I get up _every_
+morning, and I do the same damn thing, over and over and over and
+over, day in, day out, day in, day out. Nothing else.... No drinks, no
+lights, no girls, no sprees, no cards, no gang, no risks, no jobs, no
+bulls, no anything! God! I could say my prayers to Broadway, anywhere
+from the Battery up to Columbus Circle! I want it all so hard I could
+point my nose like a lost dog and howl for it!
+
+"... There is a Dutchman got a restaurant down on Eighth Avenue, and I
+dream at nights about the hotdog-and-kraut, and the ham-and that they
+give you there, and the jane that slings it. Hips on her like a horse,
+she has, and an arm that shoves your eats under your nose in a way
+you've got to respect. I smell those eats in my sleep. I want some
+more Childs' bucks. I want to see the electrics winking on the roofs.
+I want to smell wet asphalt and see the taxis whizzing by in the rain.
+I want to see a seven-foot Mick cop with a back like a piano-box and a
+paw like a ham and a foot like a submarine with stove-polish on it. I
+want to see the subway in the rush hour and the dips and mollbuzzers
+going through the crowd like kids in a berry patch. I want to see a
+ninety-story building going up, and the wops crawling on it like ants.
+I want to see the breadline, and the panhandlers, and the bums in
+Union Square. I want a bellyful of the happy dust the old town hands
+out--the whole dope and all there is of it! My God! I want everything
+I haven't got!"
+
+He looked at me, wildly. He was trembling violently, and sweat poured
+down his face.
+
+"Parson," he rasped, "I've bucked this thing for fair, but I've got to
+go back and see it and smell it and taste it and feel it and know it
+all again, or I'll go crazy. You're all of you so good down here
+you're too much for me. _I'm home-sick for hell_. It--it comes over
+me like fire over the damned. You don't fool yourself that folks who
+know what it is to be damned can stay on in heaven without freezing,
+do you? Well, they can't. I can't help it! I can't! I've got to
+go--this time I've got to go!"
+
+I sat and stared at him. Oh, what was it Paul had said we were to pray
+for, at such a time as this?
+
+"_And for me, that speech may be given to me ... that I may open my
+mouth with confidence_..."
+
+But the words wouldn't come.
+
+"I've got to go! I've got to go, and try myself out!" he gritted.
+
+"You--understand your risks," I managed to say through stiff lips. I
+had always, in my secret heart, been more or less afraid of this.
+Always had I feared that the rulers of the world of darkness, swooping
+down and catching him unaware, might win the long fight in the end.
+
+"Here you are safe. You are building up an honored name. You are
+winning the respect and confidence of all decent people--and you wish
+to undo it all. You wish to take such desperate chances--now!" I
+groaned.
+
+"I've got to go!" he burst forth, white-lipped. "You've never seen a
+dip cut off from his dope, have you? Well, I'm it, when the old town
+calls me loud enough for me to hear her plain. I've stood her off as
+long as I could--and now I'm that crazy for her I could wallow in her
+dust. Besides, there's not such a lot of risks. I don't have to leave
+my card at the station-house to let 'em know I'm calling, do I? They
+haven't been sitting on what they think is my grave to keep me from
+getting up before Gabriel beats 'em to it, have they? No, they're not
+expecting _me_. What I could do to 'em now would make the Big Uns look
+like a bunch of pikers--and their beans would have to turn inside out
+before they fell for it that _I'd_ come back to my happy home and was
+on the job again."
+
+"If--if you hadn't been so white, I'd have cut and run for it without
+ever putting you wise. But I want to play fair. I'd be a hog if I
+didn't play fair, and I'm trying to do it. I'm going because I can't
+stay. I've got enough of my own money, earned honest, saved up, to pay
+my way. Let me take it and go. And if I can come back, why, I'll
+come."
+
+He was stone deaf to entreaties, prayers, reasoning, argument. The
+four years of his stay with me, and all their work, and study, and
+endeavor, and progress, seemed to have slipped from him as if they had
+never been. They were swept aside like cobwebs. He broke away from me
+in the midst of my pleading, hurried into his bedroom, and began to
+sort into a grip a few necessities.
+
+"I'll leave on the three-o'clock," he flung over his shoulder to me,
+standing disconsolate in the door. "I'll stop at the bank on my way."
+I could do nothing; he had taken the bit between his teeth and was
+bolting. I had for the time being lost all power of control over him,
+and before I might hope to recover it he would be out of my reach.
+Perhaps, I reflected wretchedly, the best thing to do under the
+circumstances, would simply be to give him his head. I had seen horses
+conquered like that. But the road before John Flint was so dark and so
+crooked--and at the end of it waited Slippy McGee!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE BUTTERFLY MAN
+
+
+It was just one-thirty by the placid little clock on his mantel. The
+express was due at three.
+
+"Very well," said I, forcing myself to face the inevitable without
+noise, "you are free. If you must go, you must go."
+
+"I've got to go! I've got to go!" He repeated it as one repeats an
+incantation. "I've got to go!" And he went on methodically assorting
+and packing. Even at this moment of obsession his ingrained
+orderliness asserted itself; the things he rejected were laid back in
+their proper place with, the nicest care.
+
+I went over to tell my mother that John Flint had suddenly decided to
+go north. She expressed no surprise, but immediately fell to counting
+on her fingers his available shirts, socks, and underwear. She rather
+hoped he would buy a new overcoat in New York, his old one being
+hardly able to stand the strain of another winter. She was pleasantly
+excited; she knew he had many northern correspondents, with whom he
+must naturally be anxious to foregather. There was much to call him
+thither.
+
+"He really needs the change. A short trip will do him a world of
+good," she concluded equably. "He is still quite a young man, and I'm
+sure it must be dull for him here at times, in spite of his work.
+Why, he hasn't been out of this county for over three years, and just
+think of the unfettered life he must have led before he came here!
+Yes, I'm sure New York will stimulate him. A dose of New York is a
+very good tonic. It regulates one's mental liver. Don't look so
+worried, Armand--you remind me of those hens who hatch ducklings. I
+should think a duckling of John Flint's size could be trusted to swim
+by himself, at his time of life!"
+
+She had not my cause for fear. Besides, in her secret heart, Madame
+was convinced that, rehabilitated, reclaimed, having more than proven
+his intrinsic worth, John Flint went to be reconciled with and
+received into the bosom of some preeminently proper parent, and to be
+acclaimed and applauded by admiring and welcoming friends. For
+although she had once heard the Butterfly Man gravely assure Miss
+Sally Ruth Dexter that the only ancestor his immediate Flints were
+sure of was Flint the pirate, my mother still clung firmly to the
+illusion of Family. Blood will tell!
+
+As for me, I was equally sure that blood was telling now; and telling
+in the atrocious tongue of the depths. I felt that the end had come.
+Vain, vain, all the labor, all the love, all the hope, the prayers,
+the pride! The submerged voice of his old life was calling him; the
+vampire extended her white and murderous arms in which many and many
+had died shamefully; she lifted to his her insatiable lips stained
+scarlet with the wine of hell. Against that siren smile, those
+beckoning hands, I could do nothing. The very fact that I was what I
+am, was no longer a help, but rather a hindrance; he recognized in the
+priest a deterring and detaining influence against which he rebelled,
+and which he wished to repudiate. He was, as he had said so terribly,
+"home-sick for hell." He would go, and he would most inevitably be
+caught in the whirlpools; the naturalist, the scientist, the Butterfly
+Man, would be sucked into that boiling vortex and drowned beyond all
+hope of resuscitation; but from it the soul of Slippy McGee would
+emerge, with a larger knowledge and a clearer brain, a thousand-fold
+more deadly dangerous than of old; because this time he knew better
+and had deliberately chosen the evil and rejected the good. By the law
+of the pendulum he must swing as far backward into wrong as he had
+swung forward into right.
+
+I could not bring myself to speak to him, I dared not bid him the
+mockery of a Godspeed upon his journey, dreading as I did that
+journey's end. So I stood at a window and watched him as with suitcase
+in hand he walked down our shady street. At the corner he turned and
+lifted his hat in a last farewell salute to my mother, standing
+looking after him in the Parish House gate. Then he turned down the
+side-street, and so disappeared.
+
+From his closed rooms came a long wailing howl. For the first time
+Kerry might not follow his master; more yet, the master had thrust the
+astonished dog into his bedroom and shut the door upon him. He had
+refused to recognize the scratch at the door, the snuffling whine
+through the keyhole. The outer door had slammed. Kerry raced to the
+window. And the master was going, and going without him! He had
+neither net, knapsack, nor bottle-belt, but he carried a suitcase. He
+did not look back, nor whistle: he _meant_ to leave him behind.
+Sensing that an untoward thing was occurring, a thing that boded no
+good to himself or his beloved, the red dog lifted his voice and
+howled a piercing protest.
+
+The sash was down, but the blinds had not yet been closed to. One saw
+Kerry standing with his forepaws on the window-sill, his nose against
+the glass, his ears lifted, his eyes anxious and distressed, his lip
+caught in his teeth. At intervals he threw back his head, and then
+came the howls.
+
+The catastrophe--for to me it was no less a thing--had come upon me so
+suddenly that I was fairly stunned. From sheer force of habit I went
+over to the church and knelt before the altar; but I could not pray; I
+could only kneel there dumbly. I heard the screech of the three
+o'clock express coming in, and, a few minutes later, its longer
+screech as it departed. He had gone, then! I was not dreaming it: it
+was true. Down and down and down went my heart. And down and down and
+down went my head, humbled and prostrate. Alas, the end of hope, the
+fall of pride! Alas and alas for the fair house built upon the sand,
+wrecked and scattered!
+
+When I rose from my knees I staggered. I walked draggingly, as one
+walks with fetters upon the feet. Oh, it was a cruel world, a world in
+which nothing but inevitable loss awaited one, in which one was
+foredoomed to disappointment; a world in which one was leaf by leaf
+stripped bare.
+
+I could not bear to look at his closed rooms, but turned my head aside
+as I passed them. Disconsolate Kerry barked at my passing step, and
+pawed frantically at the window, but I made no effort to release him.
+What comfort had I for the faithful creature, deserted by what he most
+loved?
+
+His dismal outcries rasped my nerves raw; it was exactly as if the dog
+howled for the dead. And that John Flint was dead I had no reasonable
+cause to doubt. _He was dead because Slippy McGee was alive_. That
+thought drove me as with a whip out into the garden, for as black an
+hour as I have ever lived through--the sort of hour that leaves a scar
+upon the soul. The garden was very still, steeped and drowsing in the
+bright clear sunlight; only the bees were busy there, calling from
+flower-door to flower-door, and sometimes a vireo's sweet whistle
+fluted through the leaves. Pitache lay on John Flint's porch, and
+dozed with his head between his paws; Judge Mayne's Panch sat on the
+garden fence, and washed his black face, and watched the little dog
+out of his emerald eyes. All along the fences the scarlet salvia shot
+up its vivid spikes, and when the wind stirred, the red petals fell
+from it like drops of blood.
+
+It seemed to me incongruous and cruel that one should suffer on such a
+day; grief is for gray days; but the sunlight mocks sorrow, the soft
+wind makes light of it. I was out of tune with this harmony, as I
+walked up and down with my rosary in my hand. I knew that every flying
+minute took him farther and farther away from me and from hope and
+happiness and honor, and brought him nearer and nearer to the
+whirlpool and the pit. I beat my hands together and the crucifix cut
+into my palms. I walked more rapidly, as if I could get away from the
+misery within. My heart ached intolerably, a mist dimmed my sight, and
+a hideous choking lump rose in my throat; and it seemed to me that,
+old and futile and alone, I was set down, not in my garden, but in the
+midst of the abomination of desolation.
+
+Through this aching desolation Kerry's cries stabbed like
+knife-thrusts.... And then little Pitache lifted his head, cocked a
+listening ear and an alert eye, perked up his black nose, thumped an
+expressive tail, and barked. It was a welcoming bark; Kerry, hearing
+it, stiffened statue-like at the window and fell to whining in his
+throat. The garden gate had clicked.
+
+Dreading that any mortal eye should see me thus in my grief, knowing
+it was beyond my power of endurance to meet calmly or to speak
+coherently with any human being at that moment, I turned, with the
+instinct of flight strong upon me. I knew I must be alone, to face
+this thing in its inevitableness, to fight it out, to get my bearings.
+The gate was turning upon its hinges; I could hear it creak.
+
+Hesitating which way to turn, I looked up to see who it was that was
+coming into the Parish House garden. And I fell to trembling, and
+rubbed my eyes, and stared again, unbelievingly. There had been plenty
+of time for him to have visited the bank and withdrawn his account;
+there had been plenty of time for him then to have caught the
+three-o'clock express. I had heard the train come and go this full
+hour since. Surely my wish was father to the thought that I saw him
+before me--my old eyes were playing me a trick--for I thought I saw
+John Flint walking up the garden path toward me! Pitache barked again,
+rose, stretched himself, and trotted to meet him, as he always did
+when the Butterfly Man came home.
+
+He walked with the limp most noticeable when he tried to hurry. He was
+flushed and perspiring and rumpled and well-nigh breathless; his coat
+was wrinkled, his tie awry, his collar wilted, and bits of grass and
+twigs and a leaf or so clung to his dusty clothes. The afternoon sun
+shone full on his thick, close-cropped hair, for he carried his hat in
+his hands, gingerly, carefully, as one might carry a fragile treasure;
+a clean pocket handkerchief was tied over it.
+
+He was making straight for his workroom. I do not think he saw me
+until I stepped into the path, directly in front of him. Then,
+stopping perforce, he looked at me with dancing eyes, wiped his red
+perspiring face with one hand, and nodded to the hat, triumphantly.
+
+"Such an--aberrant!" he panted. He was still breathing so rapidly he
+had to jerk his words out. "I've got the--biggest, handsomest--most
+perfect and wonderful--specimen of--an aberrant swallow-tail--any man
+ever laid--his eyes on! I thought at first--I wasn't seeing things
+right. But I was. Parson, parson, I've seen many--butterflies--but
+never--another one like--this!" He had to pause, to take breath. Then
+he burst out again, unable to contain his delight.
+
+"Oh, it was the luckiest chance! I was standing on the end platform of
+the last car, and the train was pulling out, when I saw her go sailing
+by. I stared with all my eyes, shut 'em, stared again, and there she
+was! I knew there was never going to be such another, that if I lost
+her I'd mourn for the rest of my days. I knew I had to have her. So I
+measured my distance, risked my neck, and jumped for her. Game leg and
+all I jumped, landed in the pit of a nigger's stomach, went down on
+top of him, scrambled up again and was off in a jiffy, with the darky
+bawling he'd been killed and the station buzzing like the judge's bees
+on strike, and people hanging out of all the car windows to see who'd
+been murdered.
+
+"She led me the devil's own chase, for I'd nothing but my hat to net
+her with. A dozen times I thought I had her, and missed. It was
+heart-breaking. I felt I'd go stark crazy if she got away from me. I
+had to get her. And the Lord was good and rewarded me for my patience,
+for I caught her at the end of a mile run. I was so blown by then that
+I had to lie down in the grass by the roadside and get my wind back.
+Then I slid my handkerchief easy-easy under my hat, tilted it up, and
+here she is! She hasn't hurt herself, for she's been quiet. She's
+perfect. She hasn't rubbed off a scale. She's the size of a bat. Her
+upper wings, and one lower wing, are black, curiously splotched with
+yellow, and one lower wing is all yellow. She's got the usual orange
+spots on the secondaries, only bigger, and blobs of gold, and the
+purple spills over onto the ground-color. She's a wonder. Come on in
+and let's gloat at our ease--I haven't half seen her yet! She's the
+biggest and most wonderful Turnus ever made. Why, Gabriel could wear
+her in his crown to make himself feel proud, because there'd be only
+one like her in heaven!"
+
+He took a step forward; but I could only stand still and blink,
+owlishly. My heart pounded and the blood roared in my ears like the
+wind in the pinetrees. My senses were in a most painful confusion,
+with but one thought struggling clear above the turmoil: that _John
+Flint had come back_.
+
+"But you didn't go!" I stammered. "Oh, John Flint, John Flint, you
+didn't go!"
+
+He snorted. "Catch me running away like a fool when a six-inch
+off-color swallow-tail flirts herself under my nose and dares me to
+catch her! You'd better believe I didn't go!"
+
+And then I knew with a great uprush of joy that Slippy McGee himself
+had gone instead, and the three-o'clock express was bearing him away,
+forever and forever, beyond recall or return. Slippy McGee had gone
+into the past; he was dead and done with. But John Flint the
+naturalist was vibrantly and vitally alive, built upon the living
+rock, a house not to be washed away by any wave of passion.
+
+This reaction from the black and bitter hour through which I had just
+passed, this turbulent joy and relief, overcame me. My knees shook and
+gave way; I tottered, and sank helplessly into the seat built around
+our great magnolia. And shaken out of all self-control I wept as I had
+not been permitted to weep over my own dead, my own overthrown hopes.
+Head to foot I was shaken as with some rending sickness. The sobs were
+torn out of my throat with gasps.
+
+He stood stone still. He went white, and his nostrils grew pinched,
+and in his set face only his eyes seemed alive and suffering. They
+blinked at me, as if a light had shone too strongly upon them. A sort
+of inarticulate whimper came from him. Then with extreme care he laid
+the handkerchief-covered hat upon the ground, and down upon his knees
+he went beside me, his arms about my knees. He, too, was trembling.
+
+"Father! ... _Father!_"
+
+"My son ... I was afraid ... you were lost ... gone ... into a far
+country.... It would have broken my heart!"
+
+He said never a word; but hung his head upon his breast, and clung to
+my knees. When he raised his eyes to mine, their look was so piteous
+that I had to put my hand upon him, as one reassures one's child. So
+for a healing time we two remained thus, both silent. The garden was
+exquisitely still and calm and peaceful. We were shut in and canopied
+by walls and roof of waving green, lighted with great cream-colored
+flowers with hearts of gold, and dappled with sun and shadow. Through
+it came the vireo's fairy flute.
+
+God knows what thoughts went through John Flint's mind; but for me, a
+great peace stole upon me, mixed with a greater, reverent awe and
+wonder. Oh, heart of little faith! I had been afraid; I had doubted
+and despaired and been unutterably wretched; I had thought him lost
+whom the Powers of Darkness swooped upon, conquered, and led astray.
+And God had needed nothing stronger than a butterfly's fragile wing to
+bear a living soul across the abyss!
+
+We went together, after a while, to his rooms, and when he had
+submitted to Kerry's welcome, we carefully examined the beautiful
+insect he had captured. As he had said, she had not lost a scale; and
+she was by far the most astonishing aberrant I have ever seen, before
+or since. The Turnus is perhaps the most beautiful of our butterflies,
+and this off-color was larger than the normal, and more irregularly
+and oddly and brilliantly colored. Their natural coloring is gorgeous
+enough; but hers was like a seraph's head-jewels.
+
+I have her yet, with the date of her capture written under her. She is
+the only one of all our butterflies I claim personally. The gold has
+never been minted that could buy that Turnus.
+
+"I had the station agent wire for my grip," said Flint casually. "And
+I gave the darky I knocked down fifty cents to soothe his feelings. He
+offered to let me do it again for a quarter." His eyes roved over the
+pleasant workroom with its books and cabinets, its air of homely
+comfort; through the open door one glimpsed the smaller bedroom, the
+crucifix on the white wall. He dropped his hand on Kerry's head, close
+against his knee, and drew a sharp breath.
+
+"Father," said he, quietly, and looked at me with steady eyes, "you
+don't need to be afraid for me any more as you had to be to-day.
+To-day's the last of my--my dumfoolishness." After a moment he added:
+
+"Remember what that little girl said when she gave me her dog? Well, I
+reckon she was right. I reckon I'm here for keeps. I reckon, father,
+that you and I do belong."
+
+"Yes," said I; and looked over the cases of our butterflies, and the
+books we had gathered, and the table where we worked and studied
+together. "Yes; you and I belong." And I left him with Kerry's head on
+his knees, and Kerry's eyes adoring him, and went over to the Parish
+House to tell Madame that John Flint had changed his mind and wouldn't
+go North just now, because an aberrant Turnus had beguiled him.
+
+For a moment my mother looked profoundly disappointed.
+
+"Are you sure," she asked, "that this doesn't mean a loss to him,
+Armand?"
+
+"Yes, I am sure."
+
+She watched my eyes, and of a sudden she reached out, caught my hand,
+and squeezed it. Her face softened with sympathetic and tolerant
+understanding, but she asked no questions, made no comment. If Solomon
+had been lucky enough to marry my mother, I am sure he would never
+have plagued himself with the nine hundred and ninety-nine. But then,
+neither would he have written Proverbs.
+
+Neither the Butterfly Man nor I have ever referred to that morning's
+incident; the witness of it we cherish; otherwise it pleases us to
+ignore it as if it had never happened. It had, of course, its results,
+for with a desperate intensity of purpose he plunged back into study
+and research; and as the work was broadening, and called for all his
+skill and patience, the pendulum swung him far forward again.
+
+I had been so fascinated, watching that transformation, even mere
+wonderful than any butterfly's, going on before my eyes; I was so
+enmeshed in the web of endless duties spun for me by my big poor
+parish that I did not have time to miss Mary Virginia as poignantly as
+I must otherwise have done, although my heart longed for her.
+
+My mother never ceased to mourn her absence; something went away from
+us with Mary Virginia, which could only come back to us with her. But
+it so happened that the ensuing summers failed to bring her back. The
+little girl spent her vacations with girl friends of whose standing
+her mother approved, or with relatives she thought it wise the child
+should cultivate. For the time being, Mary Virginia had vanished out
+of our lives.
+
+Laurence, however, spent all his vacations at home; and of Laurence we
+were immensely proud. Most of his holidays were spent, not with
+younger companions, but oddly enough with John Flint. That old
+friendship, renewed after every parting, seemed to have grown stronger
+with the boy's growth; the passing years deepened it.
+
+"My boy's forever boasting of your Butterfly Man," said the judge,
+falling into step with me one morning on the street. "He tells me
+Flint's been made a member of several learned societies; and that he's
+gotten out a book of sorts, telling all there is to tell about some
+crawling plague or other. And it seems this isn't all the wonderful
+Mr. Flint is capable of: Laurence insists that biologists will have to
+look Flintward pretty soon, on account of observations on what he
+calls insect allies--whatever _they_ are."
+
+"Well, you see, his work on insect allies is really unique and
+thorough, and it opens a door to even more valuable research," said I,
+as modestly as I could. "Flint is one of its great pioneers, and he's
+blazing the way. Some day when the real naturalist comes into his own,
+he will rank far, far above tricky senators and mutable governors!"
+
+The judge smiled. "Spoken like a true bughunter," said he. "As a
+matter of fact, this fellow is a remarkable man. Does he intend to
+remain here for good?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "I think he intends to remain here--for good." I could
+not keep the pride out of my voice and eyes. Let me again admit my
+grave fault: I am a vain and proud old man, God forgive me!
+
+"Your goose turned out a butterfly," said the judge. "One may well be
+pardoned a little natural vanity when one has engineered a feat like
+that! Common tramp, too, wasn't he?"
+
+"No, he wasn't. He was a most uncommon one."
+
+"I could envy the man his spontaneity and originality," admitted the
+judge, rubbing _his_ nose. "Well, father, I'm perfectly satisfied, so
+far, to have my only son tramp with him."
+
+"So is my mother," said I.
+
+At that the judge lifted his hat with a fine old-fashioned courtesy
+good to see in this age when a youth walks beside a maid and blows
+cigarette smoke in her face upon the public streets.
+
+"When such a lady approves of any man," said he, gallantly, "it
+confers upon him letters patent of nobility."
+
+"We shall have to consider John Flint knighted, then," said my mother
+merrily, when I repeated the conversation. "Let's see," she continued
+gaily. "We'll put on his shield three butterflies, or, rampant on a
+field, azure; in the lower corner a net, argent. Motto, '_In Hoc Signo
+Vinces_.' There'll be no sign of the cyanide jar. I'll have nothing
+sinister shadowing; the Butterfly Man's escutcheon!"
+
+She knew nothing about the trust St. Stanislaus kept; she had never
+met Slippy McGee.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+NESTS
+
+
+Laurence at last hung out that shingle which was to tingle Appleboro
+into step with the Time-spirit. It was a very happy and important day
+for the judge and his immediate friends, though Appleboro at large
+looked on with but apathetic interest. One more little legal light
+flickering "in our midst" didn't make much difference; we literally
+have lawyers to burn. So we aren't too enthusiastic over our
+fledglings; we wait for them to show us--which is good for them, and
+sometimes better for us.
+
+This fledgling, however, was of the stuff which endures. Laurence was
+one of those dynamic and dangerous people who not only think
+independently themselves, but have the power to make other people
+think. No one who came in contact with him escaped this; it seemed to
+crackle electrically in the air around him; he was a sort of human
+thought-conductor, and he shocked many a smug and self-satisfied
+citizen into horrific life before he had done with him.
+
+If this young man had not been one of the irreproachable Maynes
+Appleboro might have set him down as a pestilent and radical theorist
+and visionary. But fortunately for us and himself he was a Mayne; and
+the Maynes have been from the dawn of things Carolinian "a good
+family."
+
+I don't think I have ever seen two people so mutually delight in each
+other's powers as did John Flint and Laurence Mayne. The Butterfly Man
+was immensely proud of Laurence's handsome person and his grace of
+speech and manner; he had even a more profound respect for his more
+solid attainments, for his own struggle upward had deepened his regard
+for higher education. As for Laurence, he thought his friend
+marvelous; what he had overcome and become made him in the younger
+man's eyes an incarnate proof of the power of will and of patience.
+The originality and breadth of his views fired the boy's imagination
+and broadened his personality. The two complemented each other.
+
+The Butterfly Man's workroom had a fascination for others than
+Laurence. It was a sort of Open Question Club. Here Westmoreland came
+to air his views with a free tongue and to ride his hobbies with a
+gallant zest; here the major, tugging at his goatee, his glasses far
+down on his nose, narrated in spicy chapters the Secret Social History
+of Appleboro. Here the judge--for he, too, had fallen into the habit
+of strolling over of an evening--sunk in the old Morris chair, his
+cigar gone cold in his fingers, reviewed great cases. And sometimes
+Eustis stopped by, spoke in his modest fashion of his experiments, and
+left us all the better for his quiet strength. And Flint, with his
+eyes alive and watchful behind his glasses, listened with that air
+which made one like to tell him things. Laurence declared that he got
+his post-graduate course in John Flint's workroom, and that the
+Butterfly Man wasn't the least of his teachers.
+
+I should dearly like to say that the Awakening of Appleboro began in
+that workroom; and in a way it did. But it really had its inception in
+a bird's nest John Flint had discovered and watched with great
+interest and pleasure. The tiny mother had learned to accept his
+approach, without fear; he said she knew him personally. She allowed
+him to approach close enough to touch her; she even took food out of
+his fingers. He had worked toward that friendliness with great skill
+and patience, and his success gave him infinite pleasure. He had a
+great tenderness for the little brown lady, and he looked forward to
+her babies with an almost grandfatherly eagerness. The nest was over
+in a corner of our garden, in a thick evergreen bush big enough to be
+called a young tree.
+
+Now on a sunny morning Laurence and I and the Butterfly Man walked in
+our garden. Laurence had gotten his first brief, and we two older
+fellows were somewhat like two old birds fluttering over an
+adventurous fledgling. I think we saw the boy sitting on the Supreme
+Court bench, that morning!
+
+As we neared the evergreen tree the Butterfly Man raised his hand to
+caution us to be silent. He wanted us to see his wee friend's
+reception of him, and so he went on a bit ahead, to let her know she
+needn't be afraid--we, too, were merely big friends come a-calling.
+And just then we heard shrill cries of distress, and above it the
+louder, raucous scream of the bluejay.
+
+The bluejay was entirely occupied with his own business of breaking
+into another bird's nest and eating the eggs. He scolded violently
+between mouthfuls; he had finished three eggs and begun on the fourth
+and last when we came upon the scene. He had no fear of us; he had
+seen us before, and he knew very well indeed that the red-bearded
+creature with the cane was a particular and peculiar friend of
+feathered folks. So he cocked a knowing head, with a cruel beak full
+of egg, and flirted a splendid tail at his friend; then swallowed the
+last morsel and rowed viciously with Laurence and me; for the bluejay
+is wholly addicted to billingsgate. He paid no attention to the
+distraught mother-bird, fluttering and crying on a limb nearby.
+
+"Gosh, pal, I've sure had some meal!" said the bluejay to John Flint.
+"Chase that skirt, over there, please--she makes too much noise to
+suit me!"
+
+But for once John Flint wasn't a friend to a bluejay--he uttered an
+exclamation of sorrow and dismay.
+
+"My nest!" he cried tragically. "My beautiful nest with the four eggs,
+that I've been watching day by day! And the little mother-thing that
+knew me, and let me touch her, and feed her, and wasn't afraid of me!
+Oh, you blue devil! You thief! You murderer!" And in a great gust of
+sorrow and anger he lifted his stick to hurl it at the criminal.
+Laurence caught the upraised arm.
+
+"But he doesn't know he's a thief and a murderer," said he, and looked
+at the handsome culprit with unwilling admiration. The jay, having
+finished the nest to his entire satisfaction, hopped down upon a limb
+and turned his attention to us. He screamed at Laurence, thrusting
+forward his impudent head; while the poor robbed mother, with
+lamentable cries, watched him from a safe distance. Full of his
+cannibal meal, Mister Bluejay callously ignored her. He was more
+interested in us. Down he came, nearer yet, with a flirt of fine
+wings, a spreading of barred tail, just above Flint's head, and
+talked jocularly to his friend in jayese.
+
+"You're a thief and a robber!" raged the Butterfly Man. "You're a damn
+little bird-killer, that's what you are! I ought to wring your neck
+for you, and I'd do it if it would do the rest of your tribe any good.
+But it wouldn't. It wouldn't bring back the lost eggs nor the spoiled
+nest, either. Besides, you don't know any better. You're what you are
+because you were hatched like that, and there wasn't Anything to tell
+you what's right and wrong for a decent bird to do. The best one can
+do for you is to get wise to your ways and watch out that you can't do
+more mischief."
+
+The bluejay, with his handsome crested head on one side, cocked his
+bright black eye knowingly, and passed derisive remarks. Any one who
+has listened attentively to a bluejay must be deeply grateful that the
+gift of articulate speech has been wisely withheld from him; he is a
+hooligan of a bird. He lifted his wings like half-playful fists. If he
+had fingers, be sure a thumb had been lifted profanely to his nose.
+
+The Butterfly Man watched him for a moment in silence; a furrow came
+to his forehead.
+
+"Damn little thief!" he muttered. "And you don't even have to care!
+No! It's not right. There ought to be some way to save the mothers and
+the nests from your sort--without having to kill you, either. But good
+Lord, how? That's what I want to know!"
+
+"Beat 'em to it and stand 'em off," said Laurence, staring at the
+ravaged nest, the unhappy mother, the gorged impenitent thief. "'Git
+thar fustest with the mostest men.' Have the nests so protected the
+thief can't get in without getting caught. Build Better Bird Houses,
+say, and enforce a Law of the Garden--Boom and Food for all, Pillage
+for None. You'd have to expect some spoiled nests, of course, for you
+couldn't be on guard all the time, and you couldn't make all the birds
+live in your Better Bird Houses--they wouldn't know how. But you'd
+save some of them, at any rate."
+
+"Think so?" said John Flint. "Huh! And what'd you do with _him_?" And
+he jerked his head at the screaming jay.
+
+"Let him alone, so long as he behaved. Shoo him outside when he
+didn't--and see that he kept outside," said Laurence. "You see, the
+idea isn't so much to reform bluejays--it's to save the other birds
+from them."
+
+John Flint's face was troubled. "It's all a muddle, anyhow," said he.
+"You can't blame the bluejay, because he was born so, and it's
+bluejay nature to act like that when it gets the chance. But there's
+the other bird--it looks bad. It is bad. For a thief to come into a
+little nest like that, that she'd been brooding on, and twittering to,
+and feeling so good and so happy about--Man, I'd have given a month's
+work and pay to have saved that nest! It's not fair. God! Isn't there
+_some_ way to save the good ones from the bad ones?"
+
+There he stood, in the middle of the path, staring ruefully at the
+wrecked bit of twigs and moss and down that had been a wee home; and
+with more of sorrow than anger at the feathered crook who had done the
+damage. The thing was slight in itself, and more than common--just one
+of the unrecorded humble tragedies which daily engulf the Little
+Peoples. But I had seen a butterfly's wing save him alive; and so I
+did not doubt now that a little bird's nest could weigh down the
+balance which would put him definitely upon the side of good and of
+God.
+
+"I think there is a way," said Laurence, gravely, "and that is to beat
+them to it and stand them off. All the rest is talk and piffle--the
+only way to save is to save. There are no halfway measures; also, it's
+a lifetime job, full of kicks and cuffs and ingratitude and
+misunderstanding and failure and loneliness, and sometimes even worse
+things yet. But you do manage to sometimes save the nests and the
+fledglings, and you do sometimes escape the pain of hearing the
+mothers lamenting. And that's the only reward a decent mortal ought to
+hope for. I reckon it's about the best reward there is, this side of
+heaven."
+
+The Butterfly Man swallowed this a bit ungraciously.
+
+"You've got a devil of a way of twisting things into parables. I'm
+talking birds and thinking birds, and here you must go and make my
+birds people! I wasn't thinking about people--that is, I wasn't, until
+you have to go and put the notion into my head. It's not fair. The
+thing's bad enough already, without your lugging folks into it and
+making it worse!"
+
+Laurence looked at him steadily. "You've got to think of people, when
+you see things like that," said he, slowly; "otherwise you only
+half-see. I have to think of people--of kids, particularly--and their
+mothers." He turned as he spoke, and stared out over our garden, with
+its sunny spaces, and its shrubs and flowers, and trees, to where,
+over in the sky a pillar of smoke rose steadily, endlessly, and
+merged into a cloud overhanging the quiet little town.
+
+"The pillar of cloud by day," said he "that leads the children--" He
+stopped, and the whimsical smile faded from his face; his jaw set.
+
+The bluejay, having exhausted his vocabulary of jay-ribaldry,
+screeched one last outrageous bit of billingsgate into Flint's ears,
+shut up his tail like a fan, and darted off, a streak of blue and
+gray. The Butterfly Man's eyes followed him smilelessly; then they
+came back and dwelt for a moment upon the ruined nest and the
+fluttering mother-bird, still vexing the ear with her shrill
+lamentable futile protests. From her his eyes went, out over the trees
+and flowers to that pillar mounting lazily and inevitably into the
+sky. For a long moment he stared at that, too, fixedly. After an
+interval he clenched his hand upon his stick and struck the ground.
+
+"_Nothing's_ got any business to break up a nest! I'd rather sit up
+all night and watch than see what I've just seen and listen to that
+mother-thing calling to Something that's far-off and stone deaf and
+can't hear nor heed. Why, the little birds haven't got even the chance
+to get themselves born, much less grow up and sing! I--Say, you two go
+on a bit. I feel mighty bad about this. I'd been watching her. She
+knew me. She let me feed her. If only I'd thought about the jay, why,
+I might have saved her. But just when she needed me I wasn't there!"
+He turned abruptly, and strode off toward his own rooms. Kerry
+followed with a drooping head and tail. But Laurence looked after him
+hopefully.
+
+"Padre, the Butterfly Man's seen something this morning that will
+sink to the bottom of his soul and stay there: didn't you see his
+eyes? Now, which of those two have taught him the most--the happy
+thief and murderer, or the innocent unhappy victim? The bluejay's not
+a whit the worse for it, remember; in fact, he's all the better off,
+for his stomach is full and his mischief satisfied, and that's all
+that ever worries a bluejay. And there isn't any redress for the
+mother-bird. The thing's done, and can't be undone. But between them
+they've shown John Flint something that forces a man to take sides.
+Doesn't the bluejay deserve some little credit for that? And is there
+_ever_ any redress for the mother-bird, Padre?"
+
+"Why, the Church teaches--" I began.
+
+Laurence nodded. "Yes, Padre, I know all that. But it can't teach away
+what's always happening here and now. At least not to the Butterfly
+Man and me, ... nor yet the mother-birds, Padre. No. We want to be
+shown how to head off the bluejays."
+
+We walked along in silence, his hand upon my arm. His eyes were
+clouded with the vision that beckoned him. As for me, I was wondering
+just where, and how far, that bluejay was going to lead John Flint.
+
+It led him presently to my mother. All men learn their great lessons
+from women and in stress the race instinctively goes back to be taught
+by the mothers of it. There were long intimate talks between herself
+and the Butterfly Man, to which Laurence was also called. In her quiet
+way Madame knew by heart the whole mill district, good, bad and
+indifferent, for she was a woman among the women. She had supported
+wives parting from dying husbands; she had hushed the cries of
+frightened children, while I gave the last blessings to mothers whose
+feet were already on the confines of another world; she had taken dead
+children from frenzied women's arms. Just as the Butterfly Man had
+shown the country folks to Laurence, so now Madame showed them both
+the mill folks, the poor folks, the foreigners in a small town
+disdainful of them; and she did it with the added keenness of her
+woman's eyes and the diviner kindness of her woman's heart.
+
+The little lady had enormous influence in the parish. And as
+Laurence's plans and hopes and ambitions unfolded before her, she
+threw this potent influence, with all it implied, in the scale of the
+young lawyer's favor. They began their work at the bottom, as all
+great movements should begin. What struck me with astonishment was
+that so many quiet women seemed to be ready and waiting, as for a
+hoped for message, a bugle-call in the dawn, for just that which
+Laurence had to tell them.
+
+"A fellow with pull behind him," said John Flint, "is what you might
+call a pretty fair probability. But a fellow with the women behind him
+is a steam-roller. There's nothing to do but clear the road and keep
+from under." And when he went on his rounds among the farm houses now
+it wasn't only the men and children he talked to. There was a message
+for the overworked women, the wives and daughters who had all the
+pains and none of the profits. Westmoreland, who had been a rather
+lonesome evangelist for many years, of a sudden found himself backed
+and supported by younger and stronger forces.
+
+The work was done very noiselessly; there was no outward
+disturbances, yet; but the women were in deadly earnest; there were
+far, far too many small graves in our cemetery, and they were being
+taught to ask why the children who filled them hadn't had a fair
+chance? The men might smile at many things, but fathers couldn't smile
+when mothers of lost children wanted to know why Appleboro hadn't
+better milk and sanitation. And there, under their eyes bulked the
+huge red mills, and every day from the bosom of this Moloch went up
+the smoke of sacrifice.
+
+Behind all this gathering of forces stood an almost unguessed figure.
+Not the lovely white-haired lady of the Parish House; not big
+Westmoreland; not handsome Laurence, nor outspoken Miss Sally Ruth
+with a suffrage button on her black basque; but a limping man in gray
+tweeds with a soft felt hat pulled down over his eyes and a butterfly
+net in his hand. That net was symbolic. With trained eye and sure hand
+the naturalist caught and classified us, put each one in his proper
+place.
+
+Keener, shrewder far than any of us, no one, save I alone, guessed the
+part it pleased him to play. Laurence was hailed as the Joshua who was
+to lead all Appleboro into the promised land of better paving, better
+lighting, better schools, better living conditions, better city
+government--a better Appleboro. Behind Laurence stood the Butterfly
+Man.
+
+He seldom interfered with Laurence's plans; but every now and then he
+laid a finger unerringly upon some weak point which, unnoticed and
+uncorrected, would have made those plans barren of result. He amended
+and suggested. I have seen him breathe upon the dry bones of a
+project and make it live. It satisfied that odd sardonic twist in him
+to stand thus obscurely in the background and pull the strings. I
+think, too, that there must have been in his mind, since that morning
+he had watched the bluejay destroy his nest, some obscure sense of
+restitution. Once, in the dark, he had worked for evil. Still keeping
+himself hidden, it pleased him now to work for good. So there he sat
+in his workroom, and cast filaments here and there, and spun a web
+which gradually netted all Appleboro.
+
+There was, for instance, the _Clarion_. We had had but that one
+newspaper in our town from time immemorial. I suppose it might have
+been a fairly good county paper once,--but for some years it had
+spluttered so feebly that one wondered how it survived at all. In
+spite of this, nobody in our county could get himself decently born or
+married, or buried, without a due and proper notice in the _Clarion_.
+To the country folks an obituary notice in its columns was as much a
+matter of form as a clergyman at one's obsequies. It simply wasn't
+respectable to be buried without proper comment in the _Clarion_.
+Wherefore the paper always held open half a column for obituary
+notices and poetry.
+
+These dismal productions had first brought the _Clarion_ to Mr.
+Flint's notice. He used to snigger at sight of the paper. He said it
+made him sure the dead walked. He cut out all those lugubrious and
+home-made verses and pasted them in a big black scrapbook. He had a
+fashion of strolling down to the paper's office and snipping out all
+such notices and poems from its country exchanges. A more ghoulish and
+fearsome collection than he acquired I never elsewhere beheld. It was
+a taste which astonished me. Sometimes he would gleefully read aloud
+one which particularly delighted him:
+
+    "A Christian wife and offspring seven
+     Mourn for John Peters who has gone to heaven.
+     But as for him we are sure he can weep no more,
+     He is happy with the lovely angels on that bright shore."{~DAGGER~}
+
+{~DAGGER~} Heaven.
+
+My mother was horrified. She said, severely, that she couldn't to save
+her life see why any mortal man should snigger because a Christian
+wife and children seven mourned for John Peters who had gone to
+heaven. The Butterfly Man looked up, meekly. And of a sudden my mother
+stopped short, regarded him with open mouth and eyes, and retired
+hastily. He resumed his pasting.
+
+"I've got a hankering for what you might call grave poetry," said he,
+pensively. "Yes, sir; an obituary like that is like an all-day sucker
+to me. Say, don't you reckon they make the people they're written
+about feel glad they're dead and done for good with folks that could
+spring something like that on a poor stiff? Wait a minute, parson--you
+can't afford to miss Broken-hearted Admirer:
+
+    "Miss Matty, I watched thee laid in the gloomy grave's embrace,
+    Where nobody can evermore press your hand or your sweet face.
+    When you were alive I often thought of thee with fond pride,
+    And meant to call around some night & ask you to be my loving Bride.
+    "But alas, there is a sorrowful sadness in my bosom to-day,
+    For I never did it & now can never really know what you would say.
+
+    Miss Matty, the time may come when I can remember thee as a brother,
+    And lay my fond true heart at the loving feet of another.
+    For though just at present I can do nothing but sigh & groan,
+    The Holy Bible tells us it is not good for a man to dwell alone.
+    But even though, alas, I'm married, my poor heart will still be true,
+    And oft in the lone night I will wake & weep to think she never
+        can be you."
+           --"A BROKEN-HEARTED ADMIRER."
+
+"Ain't that sad and sweet, though?" said the Butterfly Man admiringly.
+"Don't you hope those loving feet will be extra loving when
+Broken-hearted makes 'em a present of his fond heart, parson? Wouldn't
+it be something fierce if they stepped on it! Gee, I cried in my hat
+when I first read that!" Now wasn't it a curious coincidence that,
+even as Madame, I regarded John Flint with open mouth and eyes, and
+retired hastily?
+
+For some time the _Clarion_ had been getting worse and worse; heaven
+knows how it managed to appear on time, and we expected each issue to
+be its last. It wasn't news to Appleboro that it was on its last legs.
+I was not particularly interested in its threatened demise, not having
+John Flint's madness for its obituaries; but he watched it narrowly.
+
+"Did you know," he remarked to Laurence, "that the poor old _Clarion_
+is ready to bust? It will have to write a death-notice for itself in a
+week or two, the editor told me this morning."
+
+"So?" Laurence seemed as indifferent as I.
+
+The Butterfly Man shot him a freighted glance. "Folks in this county
+will sort of miss the _Clarion_," he reflected. "After all, it's the
+one county paper. Seems to me," he mused, "that if _I_ were going in
+head, neck and crop for the sweet little job of reformer-general, I'd
+first off get me a grappling-hook on my town's one newspaper.
+Particularly when grappling-hooks were going cheap."
+
+"Hasn't Inglesby got a mortgage on it?"
+
+"If he had would he let it die in its bed so nice and ladylike? Not
+much! It'd kick out the footboard and come alive. Inglesby must be
+getting rusty in the joints not to reach out for the _Clarion_
+himself, right now. Maybe he figures it's not worth the price. Maybe
+he knows this town so well he's dead sure nobody that buys a newspaper
+here would have the nerve to print anything or think anything he
+didn't approve of. Yes, I guess that's it."
+
+"Which is your gentle way," cut in Laurence, "of telling me I'd better
+hustle out and gather in the _Clarion_ before Inglesby beats me to it,
+isn't it?"
+
+"Me?" The Butterfly Man looked pained. "I'm not telling you to buy
+anything. _I'm_ only thinking of the obituaries. Ask the parson.
+I'm--I'm addicted to 'em, like some people are to booze. But if you'd
+promise to keep open the old corner for them, why, I might come out
+and _beg_ you to buy the _Clarion_, now it's going so cheap. Yep--all
+on account of the obituaries!" And he murmured:
+
+    "_Our dear little Johnny was left alive
+       To reach the interesting age of five
+     When_--"
+
+"That's just about as much as I can stand of that, my son!" said I,
+hastily.
+
+"The parson's got an awful tender heart," the Butterfly Man explained
+and Laurence was graceless enough to grin.
+
+"Well, as I was about to say: I happened to think Inglesby would be
+brute enough to choke out my pet column, or make folks pay for it, and
+things like that haven't got any business to have price tags on 'em.
+So I got to thinking of you. You're young and tender; also a college
+man; and you're itching to wash and iron Appleboro--" he took off his
+glasses and wiped them delicately and deliberately.
+
+"Did you also get to thinking," said Laurence, crisply, "that I'm just
+about making my salt at present, and still you're suggesting that I
+tie a dead old newspaper about my neck and jump overboard? One might
+fancy you hankered to add my obituary to your collection!" he finished
+with a touch of tartness.
+
+The Butterfly Man smiled ever so gently.
+
+"The _Clarion_ is the county paper," he explained patiently. "It was
+here first. It's been here a long time, and people are used to it. It
+knows by heart how they think and feel and how they want to be told
+they think and feel. And you ought to know Carolina people when it
+comes right down to prying them loose from something they're used to!"
+He paused, to let that sink in.
+
+"There's no reason why the _Clarion_ should keep on being a dead one,
+is there? There's plenty room for a live daily right here and now, if
+it was run right. Why, this town's blue-molded for a live paper! Look
+here: You go buy the _Clarion_. It won't cost you much. Believe me,
+you'll find it mighty handy--power of the press, all the usual guff,
+you know! I sha'n't have to worry about obituaries, but I bet you
+dollars to doughnuts some people will wake up some morning worrying a
+whole lot about editorials. Mayne--people like to think they think
+what they think themselves. They don't. They think what their home
+newspapers tell them to think. And this is your great big chance to
+get the town ear and shout into it good and loud."
+
+A week or so later Mayne & Son surprised Appleboro by purchasing the
+moribund _Clarion_. They didn't have to go into debt for it, either.
+They got it for an absurdly low sum, although folks said, with sniffs,
+that anything paid for that rag was too much.
+
+"Nevertheless," said the Butterfly Man to me, complacently, "that's
+the little jimmy that's going to grow up and crack some fat cribs.
+Watch it grow!"
+
+I watched; but, like most others, I was rather doubtful. It was true
+that the _Clarion_ immediately showed signs of reviving life. And that
+Jim Dabney, a college friend from upstate, whom Laurence had induced
+to accept the rather precarious position of editor and manager, wrote
+pleasantly as well as pungently, and so set us all to talking.
+
+I suppose it was because it really had something to say, and that
+something very pertinent to our local interests and affairs, that we
+learned and liked to quote the _Clarion_. It made a neat appearance in
+new black type, and this pleased us. It had, too, a newer, clearer,
+louder note, which made itself heard over the whole county. The county
+merchants and farmers began once more to advertise in its pages, as
+John Flint, who watched it jealously--feeling responsible for
+Laurence's purchase of it--was happy to point out.
+
+One thing, too, became more and more evident. The women were behind
+the _Clarion_ in a solid phalanx. They knew it meant for them a voice
+which spoke articulately and publicly, an insistent voice which must
+be answered. It noticed every Mothers' Meeting, Dorcas activity,
+Ladies' Aid, Altar Guild, temperance gathering; spoke respectfully of
+the suffragists and hopefully of the "public-spirited women" of the
+new Civic League. And never, never, never omitted nor misplaced nor
+misspelled a name! The boy from up-state saw to that. He was wily as
+the serpent and simple as the dove. Over the local page appeared
+daily:
+
+          "LET'S GET TOGETHER!"
+
+After awhile we took him at his word and tried to ... and things began
+to happen in Appleboro.
+
+"Here," said the Butterfly Man to me, "is where the bluejay begins to
+get his."
+
+For in most Appleboro houses insistent women were asking harassed and
+embarrassed men certain questions concerning certain things which
+ladies hadn't been supposed to know anything about, much less worry
+their heads over, since the state was a state. So determined were the
+women to have these questions fairly answered that they presently
+asked them in cold print, on the front page of the town paper. And
+Laurence told them. He had appalling lists and figures and names and
+dates. The "chiel among us takin' notes" printed them. Dabney's
+editorial comments were barbed.
+
+Now there are mills in the South which do obey the state laws and
+regulations as to hours, working conditions, wages, sanitation, safety
+appliances, child labor. But there are others which do not. Ours
+notoriously didn't.
+
+John Flint and my mother had had many a conference about deplorable
+cases which both knew, but were powerless to change. The best they had
+been able to do was to tabulate such cases, with names and facts and
+dates, but precious little had been accomplished for the welfare of
+the mill people, for those who might have helped had been too busy, or
+perhaps unwilling, to listen or to act.
+
+But, as Flint insisted, the new Civic League was ready and ripe to
+hear now what Madame had to tell. At one meeting, therefore, she took
+the floor and told them. When she had finished they named a committee
+to investigate mill conditions in Appleboro.
+
+That work was done with a painstaking thoroughness, and the
+committee's final report was very unpleasant reading. But the names
+signed to it were so unassailable, the facts so incontrovertible, that
+Dabney thought best to print it in full, and later to issue it in
+pamphlet form. It has become a classic for this sort of thing now, and
+it is always quoted when similar investigations are necessary
+elsewhere.
+
+It was the Butterfly Man who had taken that report and had rewritten
+and revised it, and clothed it with a terrible earnestness and force.
+Its plain words were alive. It seemed to me, when I read them that I
+heard ... a bluejay's ribald screech ... and the heart-rending and
+piercing cries of a little brown motherbird whose nest had been
+ravaged and destroyed.
+
+Appleboro gasped, and sat up, and rubbed its eyes. That such things
+could be occurring here, in this pleasant little place, in the shadow
+of their churches, within reach of their homes! No one dared to even
+question the truth of that report, however, and it went before the
+Grand Jury intact. The Grand Jury very promptly called Mr. Inglesby
+before it. They were polite to him, of course, but they did manage to
+ask him some very unpleasant and rather personal questions, and they
+did manage to impress upon him that certain things mentioned in the
+Civic League's report must not be allowed to reoccur. One juror--he
+was a planter--had even had the temerity to say out loud the ugly word
+"penetentiary."
+
+Inglesby was shocked. He hadn't known. He was a man of large interests
+and he had to leave a great deal to the discretion of superintendents
+and foremen. It might be, yes, he could understand how it might very
+well be--that his confidence had been abused. He would look into these
+things personally hereafter. Why, he was even now busily engaged
+compiling a "Book of Rules for Employees." He deplored the almost
+universal unrest among employees. It was a very bad sign. Very. Due
+almost entirely to agitators, too.
+
+He didn't come out of that investigation without some of its slime
+sticking to him, and this annoyed and irritated and enraged him more
+than we guessed, for we hadn't as yet learned the man's ambition.
+Also, the women kept following him up. They meant to make him comply
+with the strict letter of the law, if that were humanly possible.
+
+He was far too shrewd not to recognize this; for he presently called
+on my mother and offered her whatever aid he could reasonably give.
+Her work was invaluable; his foremen and superintendents had
+instructions to give her any information she asked for, to show her
+anything in the mills she wished to see, and to report to headquarters
+any suggestions as to the--er--younger employees, she might be kind
+enough to make. If that were not enough she might, he suggested, call
+on him personally. Really, one couldn't but admire the _savoir faire_
+of this large unctious being, so fluent, so plausible, until one
+happened to catch of a sudden that hard and ruthless gleam which, in
+spite of all his caution, would leap at times into his cold eyes.
+
+"Is he, or isn't he, a hypocrite pure and simple, or are such men
+self-deceived?" mused my mother, puckering her brows. "He will do
+nothing, I know, that he can well avoid. But--he gave me of his own
+accord his personal check for fifty dollars, for that poor consumptive
+Shivers woman."
+
+"She contracted her disease working in his mill and living in one of
+his houses on the wages he paid her," said I, "I might remind you to
+beware of the Greeks when they come bearing gifts."
+
+"Proverb for proverb," said she. "The hair of the dog is good for its
+bite."
+
+"Fifty dollars isn't much for a woman's life."
+
+"Fifty dollars buys considerable comfort in the shape of milk and ice
+and eggs. When it's gone--if poor Shivers isn't--I shall take the
+Baptist minister's wife and Miss Sally Ruth Dexter with me, and go and
+ask him for another check. He'll give it."
+
+"You'll make him bitterly repent ever having succumbed to the
+temptation of appearing charitable," said I.
+
+We were not left long in doubt that Inglesby had other methods of
+attack less pleasant than offering checks for charity. Its two largest
+advertisers simultaneously withdrew their advertisements from the
+_Clarion_.
+
+"Let's think this thing out," said John Flint to Laurence. "Cutting
+out ads is a bad habit. It costs good money. It should be nipped in
+the bud. You've got to go after advertisers like that and make 'em see
+the thing in the right light. Say, parson, what's that thing you were
+saying the other day--the thing I asked you to read over, remember?"
+
+_"When the scorner is punished, the simple is made wise; and when the
+wise is instructed, he receiveth knowledge,"_ I quoted Solomon.
+
+"That's it, exactly. You see," he explained, "there's always the right
+way out, if you've got sense enough to find it. Only you mustn't get
+rattled and try to make your getaway out the wrong door or the front
+window--that spoils things. The parson's given you the right tip. That
+old chap Solomon had a great bean on him, didn't he?"
+
+A few days later there appeared, in the space which for years had been
+occupied by the bigger of the two advertisements, the following
+pleasant notice:
+
+       People Who Disapprove of
+         Civic Cleanliness,
+           A Better Town,
+          Better Kiddies,
+                and
+     A Square Deal for Everybody,
+             _Also_
+            Disapprove of
+     Advertising in the Clarion.
+
+And the space once occupied by the other advertiser was headed:
+
+          OBITUARIES
+
+That ghastly poetry in which the soul of the Butterfly Man reveled
+appeared in that column thereafter. It was a conspicuous space, and
+the horn of rural mourning in printer's ink was exalted among us. It
+was not very hard to guess whose hand had directed those
+counter-blows.
+
+When we met those two advertisers on the street afterward we greeted
+them with ironical smiles intended to enrage. They had at Inglesby's
+instigation been guilty of a tactical blunder of which the men behind
+the _Clarion_ had taken fiendish and unexpected advantage. It had
+simply never occurred to either that a small town editor might dare to
+"come back." The impossible had actually happened.
+
+I think it was this slackening of his power which alarmed Inglesby
+into action.
+
+"Mr. Inglesby," said the Butterfly Man to me one night, casually, "has
+got him a new private secretary. He came this afternoon. His name's
+Hunter--J. Howard Hunter. He dresses as if he wrote checks for a
+living and he looks exactly like he dresses. Honest, he's the original
+he-god they use to advertise suspenders and collars and neverrips and
+that sort of thing in the classy magazines. I bet you Inglesby's got
+to fork over a man-sized bucket of dough per, to keep _him_. There'll
+be a flutter of calico in this burg from now on, for that fellow
+certainly knows how to wear his face. He's gilt-edged from start to
+finish!"
+
+Laurence, lounging on the steps, looked up with a smile.
+
+"His arrival," said he, "has been duly chronicled in to-day's press.
+Cease speaking in parables, Bughunter, and tell us what's on your
+mind."
+
+The Butterfly Man hesitated for a moment. Then:
+
+"Why, it's this way," said he, slowly. "I--hear things. A bit here and
+there, you see, as folks tell me. I put what I've heard together, and
+think it over. Of course I didn't need anybody to tell me Inglesby was
+sore because the _Clarion_ got away from him. He expected it to die.
+It didn't. He thought it wouldn't pay expenses--well, the sheriff
+isn't in charge yet. And he knows the paper is growing. He's too wise
+a guy to let on he's been stung for fair, once in his life, but he
+don't propose to let himself in for any more body blows than he can
+help. So he looks about a bit and he gets him an agent--older than
+you, Mayne, but young enough, too--and even better looking. That agent
+will be everywhere pretty soon. The town will fall for him. Say, how
+many of you folks know what Inglesby really wants, anyhow?"
+
+"Everything in sight," said Laurence promptly.
+
+"And something around the corner, too. He wants to come out in the
+open and be IT. He intends to be a big noise in Washington. Gentlemen,
+Senator Inglesby! Well, why not?"
+
+"He hasn't said so, has he?" Laurence was skeptical.
+
+"He doesn't have to say so. He means to be it, and that's very much
+more to the point. However, it happens that he did peep, once or
+twice, and it buzzed about a bit--and that's how I happened to catch
+it in my net. This Johnny he's just got to help him is the first move.
+Private Secretary now. Campaign manager and press agent, later.
+Inglesby's getting ready to march on to Washington. You watch him do
+it!"
+
+"Never!" said Laurence, and set his mouth.
+
+"No?" The Butterfly Man lifted his eyebrows. "Well, what are you going
+to do about it? Fight him with your pretty little _Clarion_? It's not
+big enough, though you could make it a handy sort of brick to paste
+him in the eye with, if you aim straight and pitch hard enough. Go up
+against him yourself? You're not strong enough, either, young man,
+whatever you may be later on. You can prod him into firing some poor
+kids from his mills--but you can't make him feed 'em after he's fired
+'em, can you? And you can't keep him from becoming Senator Inglesby
+either, unless," he paused impressively, "you can match him even with
+a man his money and pull can't beat. Now think."
+
+The young man bit his lip and frowned. The Butterfly Man watched him
+quizzically through his glasses.
+
+"Don't take it so hard," he grinned. "And don't let the whole
+salvation of South Carolina hang too heavy on your shoulders. Leave
+_something_ to God Almighty--He managed to pull the cocky little brute
+through worse and tougher situations than Inglesby! Also, He ran the
+rest of the world for a few years before you and I got here to help
+Him with it."
+
+"You're a cocky brute yourself," said Laurence, critically.
+
+"I can afford to be, because I can open my hand this minute and show
+you the button. Why, the very man you need is right in your reach! If
+you could get _him_ to put up his name against Inglesby's, the Big Un
+wouldn't be in it."
+
+Laurence stared. The Butterfly Man stared back at him.
+
+"Look here," said he slowly. "You remember my nest, and what that
+bluejay did for it? And what you said? Well, I've looked about a bit,
+and I've seen the bluejay at work.... Oh, hell, I can't talk about
+this thing, but I've watched the putty-faced, hollow-chested,
+empty-bellied kids--that don't even have guts enough left to laugh....
+Somebody ought to sock it to that brute, on account of those kids. He
+ought to be headed off ... make him feel he's to be shoo'd outside!
+And I think I know the one man that can shoo him." He paused again,
+with his head sunk forward. This was so new a John Flint to me that I
+had no words. I was too lost in sheer wonder.
+
+"The man I mean hates politics. I've been told he has said openly it's
+not a gentleman's game any more. You've got to make him see it can be
+made one. You've got to make him see it as a duty. Well, once make him
+see _that_, and he'll smash Inglesby."
+
+"You can't mean--for heaven's sake--"
+
+"I do mean. James Eustis."
+
+Laurence got up, and walked about, whistling.
+
+"Good Lord!" said he, "and I never even thought of him in that light.
+Why ... he'd sweep everything clean before him!"
+
+I am a priest. I am not even an Irish priest. Therefore politics do
+not interest me so keenly as they might another. But even to my slow
+mind the suitability of Eustis was apparent. Of an honored name, just,
+sure, kind, sagacious, a builder, a teacher, a pioneer, the plainer
+people all over the state leaned upon his judgment. A sane shrewd man
+of large affairs, other able men of affairs respected and admired him.
+The state, knowing what he stood for, what he had accomplished for her
+farmers, what he meant to her agricultural interests, admired and
+trusted him. If Eustis wanted any gift within the power of the people
+to give, he had but to signify that desire. And yet, it had taken my
+Butterfly Man to show us this!
+
+"Bughunter," said Laurence, respectfully. "If you ever take the notion
+to make me president, will you stand behind and show me how to run the
+United States on greased wheels?"
+
+"I?" John Flint was genuinely astounded. "The boy's talking in his
+sleep: turn over--you 're lying on your back!"
+
+"You won't?"
+
+"I will not!" said the Butterfly Man severely. "I have got something
+much more important on my hands than running states, I'll have you
+know. Lord, man, I'm getting ready some sheets that will tell pretty
+nearly all there is to tell about Catocala Moths!"
+
+I remembered that sunset hour, and the pretty child of James Eustis
+putting in this man's hand a gray moth. I think he was remembering,
+too, for his eyes of a sudden melted, as if he saw again her face that
+was so lovely and so young. Glancing at me, he smiled fleetingly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE BLUEJAY
+
+
+When Mary Virginia was graduated, my mother sent her, to commemorate
+that very important and pleasant occasion, one of her few remaining
+treasures--a carved ivory fan which Le Brun had painted out of his
+heart of hearts for one of King Louis' loveliest ladies. It still
+exhaled, like a whiff of lost roses, something of her vanished grace.
+
+  "I have a fancy," wrote my mother to Mary Virginia, "that having
+  been pressed against women's bosoms and held in women's hands,
+  having been, as it were, symbols which expressed the hidden
+  emotions of the heart, these exquisite toys have thus been
+  enabled to gain a soul, a soul composed of sentience and of
+  memory. I think that as they lie all the long, long years in
+  those carved and scented boxes which are like little tombs, they
+  remember the lights and the flowers and the perfumes, the glimmer
+  and gleam of jewels and silks, the frothy fall of laces, the
+  laughter and whispers and glances, the murmured word, the stifled
+  sigh: and above all, the touch of soft lips that used to brush
+  them lightly; and the poor things wonder a bit wistfully what has
+  become of all that gay and lovely life, all that perished bravery
+  and beauty that once they knew. So I am quite sure this
+  apparently soulless bit of carved ivory sighs inaudibly to feel
+  again the touch of a warm and young hand, to be held before gay
+  and smiling eyes, to have a flower-fresh face bent over it once
+  more.
+
+  "Accept it, then, my child, with your old friend's love. Use it in
+  your happy hours, dream over it a little, sigh lightly; and then
+  smile to remember that this is your Hour, that you are young, and
+  life and love are yours. It is in such youthful and happy smiles
+  that we whose day declines may relive for a brief and bright space
+  our golden noon. Shall I tell you a secret, before your time to
+  know it? _Youth alone is eternal and immortal!_ How do I know?
+  _'Et Ego in Arcadia vixi!'_"
+
+Mary Virginia showed me that letter, long afterward, and I have
+inserted it here, although I suppose it really isn't at all relevant.
+But I shall let it stand, because it is so like my mother!
+
+John Flint made for the schoolgirl a most wonderful tray with handles
+and border of hammered and twisted copper. The tray itself was covered
+with a layer of silvery thistle-down; and on this, hovering above
+flowers, some of his loveliest butterflies spread their wings. So
+beautifully did their frail bodies fit into this airy bed, so
+carefully was the work done, that you might fancy only the glass which
+covered them kept them from escaping.
+
+  "You will remember telling me, when you were going away to grow
+  up," wrote John Flint, "to watch out for any big fine fellows
+  that came by of a morning, because they'd be messengers from you
+  to the Parish House people. Big and little they've come, and
+  I've played like they were all of them your carriers. So you see
+  we had word of you every single day of all these years you've
+  been gone! Now I'm sending one or two of them back to you. Please
+  play like my tray's a million times bigger and finer and that
+  it's all loaded down with good messages and hopes; and believe
+  that still it wouldn't be half big enough to hold all the good
+  wishes the Parish House folks (you were right: I belong, and so
+  does Kerry) send you to-day by the hand of your old friend,
+
+             THE BUTTERFLY MAN.
+
+Mary Virginia showed me that letter, too, because she was so delighted
+with it, and so proud of it. I like its English very well, but I like
+its Irishness even better.
+
+But, although she had at last finished and done with school, Mary
+Virginia didn't come home to us as we had hoped she would. Her mother
+had other plans, which failed to include little Appleboro. Why should
+a girl with such connections and opportunities be buried in a little
+town when great cities waited for just such with open and welcoming
+arms? The best we got then was a photograph of our girl in her
+graduation frock--slim wistful Mary Virginia, with much of her dear
+angular youthfulness still clinging to her.
+
+It was Mrs. Eustis herself who kept us posted, after awhile, of the
+girl's later triumphant progress; the sensation she created, the bored
+world bowing to her feet because she brought it, along with name and
+wealth, so fresh a spirit, so pure a beauty. There was a certain
+autocratic old Aunt of her mother's, a sort of awful high priestess in
+the inmost shrine of the sacred elect; this Begum, delighted with her
+young kinswoman, ordered the rest of her world to be likewise
+delighted, and the world agreeing with her verdict, Mary Virginia
+fared very well. She was feted, photographed, and paragraphed. Her
+portrait, painted by a rather obscure young man, made the painter
+famous. In the hands of the Begum the pretty girl blossomed into a
+great beauty. The photograph that presently came to us quite took our
+breath away, she was so regal.
+
+"She will never, never again be at home in little Appleboro," said my
+mother, regretfully. "That dear, simple, passionate, eager child we
+used to know has gone forever--life has taken her. This beautiful
+creature's place is not here--_she_ belongs to a world where the women
+wear titles and tiaras, and the men wear kings' orders. No, we could
+never hope to hold her any more."
+
+"But we could love her, could we not? Perhaps even more than those
+fine ladies with tiaras and titles and those fine gentlemen with
+orders, whom your fancy conjures up for her," said I crisply, for her
+words stung. They found an echo in my own heart.
+
+"Love her? Oh, but of course! But--love counts for very, very little
+in the world which claims Mary Virginia now, Armand. Ambition stifles
+him." I was silent. I knew.
+
+As for John Flint, he looked at that photograph and turned red.
+
+"Good Lord! To think I had nerve to send _her_ a few butterflies last
+year ... told _her_ to play like they meant more! I somehow couldn't
+get the notion in my head that she'd grown up.... I never could think
+of her except as a sort of kid-angel, because I couldn't seem to bear
+the idea of her ever being anything else but what she was. Well ...
+she's not, any more. And I've had the nerve to give a few insects to
+the Queen of Sheba!"
+
+"Bosh!" said Laurence, sturdily. "She ought to be glad and proud to
+get that tray, and I'll bet you Mary Virginia's delighted with it.
+She's her father's daughter as well as her mother's, please. As for
+Appleboro not being good enough for her, that's piffle, too, p'tite
+Madame, and I'm surprised at you! Her own town is good enough for any
+girl. If it isn't, let her just pitch in and help make it good enough,
+if she's worth her salt. Not that Mary Virginia isn't scrumptious,
+though. Lordy, who'd think this was the same kid that used to bump my
+head?"
+
+"She turns heads now, instead of bumping them," said my mother.
+
+"Oh, she's not the only head-turner Appleboro can boast of!" said the
+young man grandly. "We've always been long on good-lookers in
+Carolina, whatever else we may lack. They're like berries in their
+season."
+
+"But the berry season is short and soon over, my son: and there are
+seasons when there are no berries at all--except preserved ones,"
+suggested my mother, with that swift, curious cattiness which so often
+astounds me in even the dearest of women.
+
+"Dare you to tell that to the Civic League!" chortled Laurence. "I'll
+grant you that Mary Virginia's the biggest berry in the patch, at the
+height of a full season. But look at her getup! Don't doodads and
+fallals, and hen-feathers in the hair, and things twisted and tied,
+and a slithering train, and a clothesline length of pearls and such,
+count for something? How about Claire Dexter, for instance? She mayn't
+have a Figure like her Aunt Sally Ruth, but suppose you dolled Claire
+up like this? A flirt she was born and a flirt she will die, but isn't
+she a perfect peach? That reminds me--that ungrateful minx gave two
+dances rightfully mine to Mr. Howard Hunter last night. I didn't raise
+any ructions, because, to tell you the truth, I didn't much blame her.
+That fellow really knows how to dance, and the way he can convey to a
+girl the impression that he's only alive on her account makes me gnash
+my teeth with green-and-blue envy. No wonder they all dote on him! No
+home complete without this handsome ornament!" he added.
+
+My mother's lips came firmly together.
+
+"It is a great mistake to figure Mephistopheles as a rather blase
+brunette," she remarked crisply. "I am absolutely certain that if you
+could catch the devil without his mask you'd find him a perfect
+blonde."
+
+"Nietzsche's blonde beast, then?" suggested Laurence, amused at her
+manner.
+
+"That same blonde beast is perhaps the most magnificent of animals," I
+put in. For alone of my household I admired immensely Mr. Inglesby's
+secretary. He was the only man I have ever known to whom the term
+'beautiful' might be justly applied, and at the word's proper worth.
+Such a man as this, a two-handed sword gripped in his steel fists, a
+wolfskin across his broad shoulders and eagle-wings at either side the
+helmet that crowns his yellow hair, looks at one out of many a red,
+red page of the past with just such blue, dangerous, and cloudless
+eyes. Rolling and reeking decks have known him, and falling walls,
+and shrieks, and flames mounting skyward, and viking sagas, and
+drinking-songs roared from brass throats, and terrible hymns to Odin
+Allfather in the midwatches of Northern nights.
+
+He had called upon me shortly after his arrival, his ostensible reason
+being my work among his mill-people. I think he liked me, later. At
+any rate, I had seen much of him, and I was indebted to him for more
+than one shrewd and practical suggestion. If at times I was chilled by
+what seemed to me a ruthless and cold-blooded manner of viewing the
+whole great social question I was nevertheless forced to admire the
+almost mathematical perfection to which he had reduced his system.
+
+"But you wish to deal with human beings as with figures in a sum," I
+objected once.
+
+"Figures," he smiled equably, "are only stubborn--on paper. When
+they're alive they're fluid and any clever social chemist can reduce
+them to first principles. It's really very simple, as all great things
+are: _When in doubt, reach the stomach!_ There you are! That's the
+universal eye-opener."
+
+"My dear friend," he added, laughing, "don't look so horrified. _I_
+didn't make things as they are. Personally, I might even prefer to
+say, like Mr. Fox in the old story, _'It was not so. It is not so. And
+God forbid it should be so!'_ But I can't, truthfully, and
+therefore--I don't. I accept what I can't help. Self-preservation, we
+all admit, is the first law of nature. Now I consider myself, and the
+class I represent, as beings much more valuable to the world than,
+let's say, your factory-hands, your mill-workers, your hewers of wood
+and drawers of water. Thus, should the occasion arise, I should most
+unhesitatingly use whatever weapons law, religion, civilization
+itself, put into my hands, without compunction and possibly what some
+cavilers might call without mercy; having at stake a very vital
+issue--the preservation of my kind, the protection of my class against
+Demos."
+
+He spoke without heat, calmly, looking at me smilingly with his fine
+intelligent eyes: there was even much of truth in his frank statement
+of his case. Always has Dives spoken thus, law-protected, dining
+within; while without the doors of the sick civilization he has
+brought about, Lazarus lies, licked by the dogs of chance. No, this
+man was advocating no new theory; once, perhaps, I might have argued
+even thus myself, and done so with a clean conscience. This man was
+merely an opportunist. I knew he would never "reach their stomachs"
+unless he thought he had to. Indeed, since his coming, things had
+changed greatly at the mills, and for the better.
+
+"The day of the great god Gouge," he had said to Inglesby, "is
+passing. It's bad business to overwork and underpay your hands into a
+state of chronic insurrection. That means losing time and scamping
+work. The square deal is not socialism nor charity nor a matter of any
+one man's private pleasure or conscience--it's cold hard common sense
+and sound scientific business. You get better results, and that's what
+you're after."
+
+Perhaps it was because Appleboro offered, at that time, very little to
+amuse and interest that keen mind of his, that the Butterfly Man
+amused and interested Hunter so much. Or perhaps, proud as he was,
+even he could not wholly escape that curious likableness which drew
+men to John Flint.
+
+He was delighted with our collection. He could appreciate its scope
+and value, something to which all Appleboro else paid but passing
+heed. John Flint declared that most folks came to see our butterflies
+just as they would have run to see the dog-faced boy or the bearded
+lady--merely for something to see. But this man's appreciation and
+praise were both sincere and encouraging. And as he never allowed
+anything or anybody unusual or interesting to pass him by without at
+least sampling its savor, he formed the habit of strolling over to the
+Parish House to talk with the limping man who had come there a dying
+tramp, was now a scientist, with the manner and appearance of a
+gentleman, and who spoke at will the language of two worlds. That this
+once black sheep had strayed of his own will and pleasure from some
+notable fold Hunter didn't for a moment doubt. Like all Appleboro, he
+wouldn't have been at all surprised to see this prodigal son welcomed
+into the bosom of some Fifth Avenue father, and have the fatted calf
+dressed for him by a chef whose salary might have hired three college
+professors. Hunter had known one or two such black sheep in his time;
+he fancied himself none too shrewd in thus penetrating Flint's rather
+obvious secret.
+
+My mother watched the secretary's comings and goings at the Parish
+House speculatively. Not even the fact that he quoted her adored La
+Rochefoucauld, in flawless French, softened _her_ estimate.
+
+"If he even had the semblance of a heart!" said she, regretfully. "But
+he is all head, that one."
+
+Now, I am a simple man, and this cultivated and handsome man of the
+world delighted me. To me immured in a mill town he brought the modern
+world's best. He was a window, for me, which let in light.
+
+"That great blonde!" said Madame, wonderingly. "He is so designedly
+fascinating I wonder you fail to see the wheels go 'round. However,
+let me admit that I thank God devoutly I am no longer young and
+susceptible. Consider the terrible power such a man might exert over
+an ardent and unsophisticated heart!"
+
+It was Hunter who had brought me a slim book, making known to me a
+poet I had otherwise missed.
+
+"You are sure to like Bridges," he told me, "for the sake of one
+verse. Have you ever thought _why_ I like you, Father De Rance?
+Because you amuse me. I see in you one of life's subtlest ironies: A
+Greek beauty-worshiper posing as a Catholic priest--in Appleboro!" He
+laughed. And then, with real feeling, he read in his resonant voice:
+
+    "I love all beautiful things:
+    I seek and adore them.
+    God has no better praise,
+    And man in his hasty days,
+    Is honored for them."
+
+When at times the secretary brought his guests to see what he
+pleasingly enough termed Appleboro's one claim to distinction, the
+Butterfly Man did the honors to the manner born. Drawer after drawer
+and box after box would he open, patiently answering and explaining.
+And indeed, I think the contents were worth coming far to see. Some of
+them had come to us from the ends of the earth; from China and Japan
+and India and Africa and Australia, from the Antilles and Mexico and
+South America and the isles of the Pacific; from many and many a
+lonely missionary station had they been sent us. Even as our
+collection grew, the library covering it grew with it. But this was
+merely the most showy and pleasing part of the work. That which had
+the greatest scientific worth and interest, that upon which John
+Flint's value and reputation were steadily mounting, was in less
+lovely and more destructive forms of insect life. Beside this last, a
+labor calling for the most unremitting, painstaking, persevering
+research, observation, and intelligence, the painted beauties of his
+butterflies were but as precious play. For in this last he was
+wringing from Nature's reluctant fingers some of her dearest and most
+deeply hidden secrets. He was like Jacob, wrestling all night long
+with an unknown angel, saying sturdily:
+
+"I will not let thee go except thou tell me thy name!" Like Jacob, he
+paid the price of going halt for his knowledge.
+
+I like to think that Hunter understood the enormous value of the
+naturalist's work. But I fancy the silent and absorbed student himself
+was to his mind the most interesting specimen, the most valuable
+study. It amused him to try to draw his reticent host into familiar
+and intimate conversation. Flint was even as his name.
+
+Oddly enough, Hunter shared the Butterfly Man's liking for that
+unspeakable Book of Obituaries, and I have seen him take a batch of
+them from his pocket as a free-will offering. I have seen him, who had
+all French, Russian and English literature at his fingers' ends, sit
+chuckling and absorbed for an hour over that fearful collection of
+lugubrious verse and worse grammar; pausing every now and then to cast
+a speculative and curious glance at his impassive host, who, paying
+absolutely no attention to him, bent his whole mind, instead, upon
+some tiny form in a balsam slide mount under his microscope.
+
+"Why don't you admire Mr. Hunter?" I was curious to know.
+
+"But I do admire him." Flint was sincere.
+
+"Then if you admire him, why don't you like him?"
+
+He reflected.
+
+"I don't like the expression of his teeth," he admitted. "They're too
+pointed. He looks like he'd bite. I don't think he'd care much who he
+bit, either; it would all depend on who got in his way."
+
+Seeing me look at him wonderingly, he paused in his work, stretched
+his legs under the table, and grinned up at me.
+
+"I'm not saying he oughtn't to put his best foot foremost," he agreed.
+"We'd all do that, if we only knew how. And I'm not saying he ought to
+tell on himself, or that anybody's got any business getting under his
+guard. I don't hanker to know anybody's faults, or to find out what
+they've got up their sleeves besides their elbows, unless I have to.
+Why, I'd as soon ask a fellow to take off his patent leathers to prove
+he hadn't got bunions, or to unbutton his collar, so I'd be sure it
+wasn't fastened onto a wart on the back of his neck. Personally I
+don't want to air anybody's bumps and bunions. It's none of my
+business. I believe in collars and shoes, myself. _But_ if I see
+signs, I can believe all by my lonesome they've got 'em, can't I?"
+
+"Exactly. Your deductions, my dear Sherlock, are really marvelous. A
+gentleman wears good shoes and clean collars--wherefore, you don't
+like the expression of his teeth!" said I, ironically.
+
+"Slap me on the wrist some more, if it makes you feel good," he
+offered brazenly. "For he may--and I sure don't." His grin faded, the
+old pucker came to his forehead.
+
+"Parson, maybe the truth is I'm not crazy over him because people like
+him get people like me to seeing too plainly that things aren't fairly
+dealt out. Why, think a minute. That man's got about all a man can
+have, hasn't he? In himself, I mean. And if there's anything more he
+fancies, he can reach out and get it, can't he? Well, then, some folks
+might get to thinking that folks like him--get more than they deserve.
+And some ... don't get any more than they deserve," he finished, with
+grim ambiguity.
+
+"Do you like him yourself?" he demanded, as I made no reply.
+
+"I admire him immensely."
+
+"Does Madame like him?" he came back.
+
+"Madame is a woman," I said, cautiously. "Also, you are to remember
+that if Madame doesn't, she is only one against many. All the rest of
+them seem to adore him."
+
+"Oh, the rest of them!" grunted John Flint, and scowled. "Huh! If it
+wasn't for Madame and a few more like her, I'd say women and hens are
+the two plum-foolest things God has found time to make yet. If you
+don't believe it, watch them stand around and cackle over the first
+big dunghill rooster that walks on his wings before them! There are
+times when I could wring their necks. Dern a fool, anyhow!" He
+wriggled in his chair with impatience.
+
+"Liver," said I, outraged. "You'd better see Dr. Westmoreland about
+it. When a man talks like you're talking now, it's just one of two
+things--a liver out of whack, or plain ugly jealousy."
+
+"I do sound like I've got a grouch, don't I?" he admitted, without
+shame. "Well ... maybe it's jealousy, and maybe it's not. The truth
+is, he rubs me rather raw at times, I don't know just how or why.
+Maybe it's because he's so sure of himself. He can afford to be sure.
+There isn't any reason why he shouldn't be. And it hurts my feelings."
+He looked up at me, shrewdly. "He looks all right, and he sounds all
+right, and maybe he might be all right--but, parson, I've got the
+notion that somehow he's not!"
+
+"Good heavens! Why, look at what the man has done for the mill folks!
+Whatever his motives are, the result is right there, isn't it? His
+works praise him in the gates!"
+
+"Oh, sure! But he hasn't played his full hand out yet, friend. You just
+give him time. His sort don't play to lose; they can't afford to lose;
+losing is the other fellow's job. Parson, see here: there are two sides
+to all things; one of 'em's right and the other's wrong, and a man's got
+to choose between 'em. He can't help it. He's got to be on one side or
+the other, if he's a _man_. A neutral is a squashy It that both sides do
+right to kick out of the way. Now you can't do the right side any good
+if you're standing flatfooted on the wrong side, can you? No; you take
+sides according to what's in you. You know good and well one side is
+full of near-poors, and half-ways, and real-poors--the downandouters,
+the guys that never had a show, ditchers and sewercleaners and
+sweatshoppers and mill hands and shuckers, and overdriven mutts and
+starved women and kids. It's sure one hell of a road, but there's got to
+be a light somewhere about it or the best of the whole world wouldn't
+take to it for choice, would they? Yet they do! Like Jesus Christ, say.
+They turn down the other side cold, though it's nicer traveling. Why,
+you can hog that other road in an auto, you can run down the beggars and
+the kids, you can even shoot up the cops that want to make you keep the
+speed laws. You haven't _got_ any speed laws there. It's your road. You
+own it, see? It's what it is because you've made it so, just to please
+yourself, and to hell with the hicks that have to leg it! But--you lose
+out on that side even when you think you've won. You get exactly what
+you go after, but you don't get any more, and so you lose out. Why?
+Because you're an egg-sucker and a nest-robber and a shrike, and a
+four-flusher and a piker, that's why!
+
+"The first road don't give you anything you can put your hands on;
+except that you think and hope maybe there's that light at the end of
+it. But, parson, I guess if _you're_ man enough to foot it without a
+pay-envelope coming in on Saturdays, why, it's plenty good enough for
+_me_--and Kerry. But while I'm legging it I'll keep a weather eye
+peeled for crooks. That big blonde he-god is one of 'em. You soak that
+in your thinking-tank: he's one of 'em!"
+
+"But look at what he's doing!" said I, aghast. "What he's doing is
+_good_. Even Laurence couldn't ask for more than good results, could
+he?"
+
+The Butterfly Man smiled.
+
+"Don't get stung, parson. Why, you take me, myself. Suppose, parson,
+you'd been on the other side, like Hunter is, when I came along? Suppose
+you'd never stopped a minute, since you were born, to think of anything
+or anybody but yourself and your own interests--where would I be to-day,
+parson? Suppose you had the utility-and-nothing-but-business bug biting
+you, like that skate's got? Why, what do you suppose you'd have done
+with little old Slippy? I was considerable good business to look at
+then, wasn't I? No. You've got to have something in you that will let
+you take gambler's chances; you've got to be willing to bet the limit
+and risk your whole kitty on the one little chance that a roan will come
+out right, if you give him a fair show, just because he _is_ a man; or
+you can't ever hope to help just when that help's needed. Right there is
+the difference between the Laurence-and-you sort and the Hunter-men,"
+said John Flint, obstinately.
+
+As for Laurence, he and Hunter met continually, both being in constant
+social demand. If Laurence did not naturally gravitate toward that
+bright particular set of rather rapid young people which presently
+formed itself about the brilliant figure of Hunter, the two did not
+dislike each other, though Hunter, from an older man's sureness of
+himself, was the more cordial of the two. I fancy each watched the
+other more guardedly than either would like to admit. They represented
+opposite interests; one might at any moment become inimical to the
+other. Of this, however, no faintest trace was allowed to appear upon
+the calm unruffled surface of things.
+
+If Inglesby had chosen this man by design, it had been a wise choice.
+For he was undoubtedly very popular, and quite deservedly so. He had
+unassailable connections, as we all knew. He brought a broader
+culture, which was not without its effect. And in spite of the fact
+that he represented Inglesby, there was not a door in Appleboro that
+was not open to him. Inglesby himself seemed a less sinister figure in
+the light of this younger and dazzling personality. Thus the secretary
+gradually removed the thorns and briars of doubts and prejudices,
+sowing in their stead the seeds of Inglesby's ambition and
+rehabilitation, in the open light of day. He knew his work was well
+done; he was sure of ultimate success; he had always been successful,
+and there had been, heretofore, no one strong enough to actively
+oppose him. He could therefore afford to make haste slowly. Even had
+he been aware of the Butterfly Man's acrid estimate of him, it must
+have amused him. When all was said and done, what did a Butterfly
+Man--even such a one as ours--amount to, in the world of Big Business
+_He_ hadn't stocks nor bonds nor power nor pull. He hadn't anything
+but a personality that arrested you, a setter dog, a slowly-growing
+name, a room full of insects in an old priest's garden. Of course
+Hunter would have smiled! And there wasn't a soul to tell him anything
+of Slippy McGee!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A LITTLE GIRL GROWN UP
+
+
+Summer stole out a-tiptoe, and October had come among the live-oaks
+and the pines, and touched the wide marshes and made them brown, and
+laid her hand upon the barrens and the cypress swamps and set them
+aflame with scarlet and gold. October is not sere and sorrowful with
+us, but a ruddy and deep-bosomed lass, a royal and free-hearted
+spender and giver of gifts. Asters of imperial purple, golden rod fit
+for kings' scepters, march along with her in ever thinning ranks; the
+great bindweed covers fences and clambers up dying cornstalks; and in
+many a covert and beside the open ditches the Gerardia swings her pink
+and airy bells. All down the brown roads white lady's-lace and yarrow
+and the stiff purple iron-weed have leaped into bloom; under its faded
+green coat the sugar-cane shows purple; and sumac and sassafras and
+gums are afire. The year's last burgeoning of butterflies riots, a
+tangle of rainbow coloring, dancing in the mellow sunshine. And day by
+day a fine still deepening haze descends veil-like over the landscape
+and wraps it in a vague melancholy which most sweetly invades the
+spirit. It is as if one waits for a poignant thing which must happen.
+
+Upon such a perfect afternoon, I, reading my worn old breviary under
+our great magnolia, heard of a sudden a voice of pure gold call me,
+very softly, by my name; and looking up met eyes of almost
+unbelievable blue, and the smile of a mouth splendidly young and red.
+
+I suppose the tall girl standing before me was fashionably and
+expensively clad; heaven knows _I_ don't know what she wore, but I do
+know that whatever it was it became her wonderfully; and although it
+seemed to me very simple, and just what such a girl ought to wear, my
+mother says you could tell half a mile away that those clothes smacked
+of super-tailoring at its costliest. Hat and gloves she held in her
+slim white ringless hand. One thus saw her waving hair, framing her
+warm pale face in living ebony.
+
+"Padre!" said she. "Oh, dear, dear, Padre!" and down she dropped
+lightly beside me, and cradled her knees in her arms, and looked up,
+with an arch and tender friendliness. That childish action, that
+upward glance, brought back the darling child I had so greatly loved.
+This was no Queen-of-Sheba, as John Flint had thought. This was not
+the regal young beauty whose photograph graced front pages. This was
+my own girl come back. And I knew I hadn't lost Mary Virginia.
+
+"I remembered this place, and I knew--I just knew in my heart--you'd
+be sitting here, with your breviary in your hand. I knew just how
+you'd be looking up, every now and then, smiling at things because
+they're lovely and you love them. So I stole around by the back
+gate--and there you were!" said she, her eyes searching me. "Padre,
+Padre, how more than good to see you again! And I'm sure that's the
+same cassock I left you wearing. You could wear it a couple of
+lifetimes without getting a single spot on it--you were always such a
+delightful old maid, Padre! Where and how is Madame? Who's in the
+Guest Rooms? How is John Flint since he's come to be a Notable? Has
+Miss Sally Ruth still got a Figure? How are the judge's cats, and the
+major's goatee? How is everything and everybody?"
+
+"Did you know you'd have to make room for me, Padre? Well, you will. I
+picked up and fairly ran away from everything and everybody, because
+the longing for home grew upon me intolerably. When I was in Europe,
+and I used to think that three thousand miles of water lay between me
+and Appleboro, I used to cry at nights. I hope John Flint's
+butterflies told him what I told them to tell him for me, when they
+came by! How beautiful the old place looks! Padre, you're _thin_. Why
+will you work so hard? Why doesn't somebody stop you? And--you're
+gray, but how perfectly beautiful gray hair is, and how thick and wavy
+yours is, too! Gray hair was invented and intended for folks with
+French blood and names. Nobody else can wear it half so gracefully.
+Now tell me first of all you're glad as glad can be to see me, Padre.
+Say you haven't forgotten me--and then you can tell me everything
+else!"
+
+She paused, fanned herself with her hat, and laughed, looking up at me
+with her blue, blue eyes that were so heavily fringed with black.
+
+I was so startled by her sudden appearance--as if she had walked out
+of my prayers, like an angel; and, above all, by that resemblance to
+the one long since dust and unremembered of all men's hearts save
+mine, that I could hardly bear to look upon her. That other one seemed
+to have stepped delicately out of her untimely grave; to sit once more
+beside me, and thus to look at me once more with unforgotten eyes.
+Thou knowest, my God, before whom all hearts are bare, that I could
+not have loved thee so singly nor served thee without fainting, all
+these years, if for one faithless moment I could have forgotten her!
+
+My mother came out of the house with a garden hat tied over her white
+hair, and big garden gloves on her hands. At sight of the girl she
+uttered a joyful shriek, flung scissors and trowel and basket aside,
+and rushed forward. With catlike quickness the girl leaped to her feet
+and the two met and fell into each other's arms. I wished when I saw
+the little woman's arms close so about the girl, and the look that
+flashed into her face, that heaven had granted her a daughter.
+
+"Mother complained that I should at least have the decency to wire you
+I was coming--she said I was behaving like a child. But I wanted to
+walk in unannounced. I was so sure, you see, that there'd be welcome
+and room for me at the Parish House."
+
+"The little room you used to like so much is waiting for you," said my
+mother, happily.
+
+"Next to yours, all in blue and white, with the Madonna of the Chair
+over the mantelpiece and the two china shepherdesses under her?"
+
+"Then you shall see the new baby in the bigger Guest Room, and the
+crippled Polish child in the small one," said my mother. "The baby's
+name is Smelka Zurawawski, but she's all the better for it--I never
+saw a nicer baby. And the little boy is so patient and so intelligent,
+and so pretty! Dr. Westmoreland thinks he can be cured, and we hope to
+be able to send him on to Johns Hopkins, after we've got him in good
+shape. Where is your luggage? How long may we keep you? But first of
+all you shall have tea and some of Clelie's cakes. Clelie has grown
+horribly vain of her cakes. She expects to make them in heaven some of
+these days, for the most exclusive of the cherubim and seraphim, and
+the lordliest of the principalities and powers."
+
+Mary Virginia smiled at the pleased old servant. "I've half a dozen
+gorgeous Madras head-handkerchiefs for you, Clelie, and a perfect duck
+of a black frock which you are positively to make up and wear now--you
+are _not_ to save it up to be buried in!"
+
+"No'm, Miss Mary Virginia. I won't get buried in it. I'll maybe get
+married in it," said Clelie calmly.
+
+"Married! Clelie!" said my mother, in consternation. "Do you mean to
+tell me you're planning to leave me, at this time of our lives?"
+
+Clelie was indignant. "You think I have no mo'sense than to leave you
+and M'sieu Armand, for some strange nigger? Not me!"
+
+"Who are you going to marry, Clelie?" Mary Virginia was delighted.
+"And hadn't you better let me give you another frock? Black is hardly
+appropriate for a bride."
+
+"I'm not exactly set in my mind who he's going to be yet, Miss Mary
+Virginia, but he's got to be somebody or other. There's been lots
+after me, since it got out I'm such a grand cook and save my wages.
+But I've got a sort of taste for Daddy January. He's old, but he's
+lively. He's a real ambitious old man like that. Besides, I'm sure of
+his family,--I always did like Judge Mayne and Mister Laurence, and I
+do like 'ristocratic connections, Miss Mary Virginia. That big nigger
+that drives one of the mill trucks had the impudence to tell me he'd
+give me a church wedding and pay for it himself, but I told him I was
+raised a Catholic; and what you think he said? He said, 'Oh, well,
+you've been christened in the face already. We can dip the rest of you
+easy enough, and then you'll be a real Christian, like me!' I'd just
+scalded my chickens and was picking them, and I was that mad I upped
+and let him have that dish pan full of hot water and wet feathers in
+his face. 'There,' says I, 'you're christened in the face now
+yourself,' I says. 'You can go and dip the rest of yourself,' says I,
+'but see you do it somewhere else besides my kitchen,' I says. I don't
+think he's crazy to marry me any more, and Daddy January's sort of
+soothing to my feelings, besides being close to hand. Yes'm, I guess
+you'd better give me the black dress, Miss Mary Virginia, if you don't
+mind: it'd come in awful handy if I had to go in mourning."
+
+"The black dress it shall be," said Mary Virginia, gaily. She turned
+to my mother. "And what do you think, p'tite Madame? I've a rare
+butterfly for John Flint, that an English duke gave me for him! The
+duke is a collector, too, and he'd gotten some specimens from John
+Flint. The minute he learned I was from Appleboro he asked me all
+about him. He said nobody else under the sky can 'do' insects so
+perfectly, and that nobody except the Lord and old Henri Fabre knew as
+much about certain of them as John Flint does. Folks thought the duke
+was taken up with _me_, of course, and I was no end conceited! I
+hadn't the ghost of an idea you and John Flint were such astonishingly
+learned folks, Padre! But of course if a duke thought so, I knew I'd
+better think so, too--and so I did and do! Think of a duke knowing
+about folks in little Appleboro! And he was such a nice old man, too.
+Not a bit dukey, after you knew him!"
+
+"We come in touch with collectors everywhere," I explained.
+
+"And so John Flint has written some sort of a book, describing the
+whole life history of something or other, and _you've_ done all the
+drawings! Isn't it lovely? Why, it sounds like something out of a
+pleasant book. Mayn't I see collector and collection in the morning?
+And oh, where's Kerry?"
+
+"Kerry," said my mother gravely, "is a most important personage. He's
+John Flint's bodyguard. He doesn't actually sleep in his master's bed,
+because he has one of his own right next it. Clelie was horrified at
+first. She said they'd be eating together next, but the Butterfly Man
+reminded her that Kerry likes dog-biscuit and he doesn't. I figure
+that in the order of his affections the Butterfly Man ranks Kerry
+first, Armand and myself next, and Laurence a close third."
+
+"Oh, Laurence," said Mary Virginia. "I'll be so glad to see Laurence
+again, if only to quarrel with him. Is he just as logical as ever? Has
+he given the sun a black eye with his sling-shot? My father's always
+praising Laurence in his letters."
+
+Now my mother adores Laurence. She patterns upon this model every
+young man she meets, and if they are not Laurence-sized she does not
+include them in her good graces. But she seldom lifts her voice in
+praise of her favorite. She is far, far too wise.
+
+"Laurence generally looks in upon us during the evening, if he is not
+too busy," she said, non-committally. "You see, people are beginning
+to find out what a really fine lawyer Laurence is, so cases are coming
+to him steadily."
+
+The trunks had arrived, and Mary Virginia changed into white, in which
+she glowed and sparkled like a fire opal. We three dined together, and
+as she became more and more animated, a pink flush stole into her
+rather pale cheeks and her eyes deepened and darkened. She was vividly
+alive. One could see why Mary Virginia was classed as a great beauty,
+although, strictly speaking, she was no such thing. But she had that
+compelling charm which one simply cannot express in words. It was
+there, and you felt it. She did not take your heart by storm,
+willynilly. You watched her, and presently you gave her your heart
+willingly, delighted that a creature so lovely and so unaffected and
+worth loving had crossed your path.
+
+She chatted with my mother about that world which the older woman had
+once graced, and my mother listened without a shade to darken her
+smooth forehead. But I do not think I ever so keenly appreciated the
+many sacrifices she had made for me, until that night.
+
+The autumn evening had grown chilly, and we had a fire in the
+clean-swept fireplace. The old brass dogs sparkled in the blaze, and
+the shadows flickered and danced on the walls, and across the faces of
+De Rance portraits; the pleasant room was full of a ruddy, friendly
+glow. My mother sat in her low rocker, making something or other out
+of pink and white wools for the baby upstairs. Mary Virginia, at the
+old square piano, sang for us. She had a charming voice, carefully
+cultivated and sweet, and she played with great feeling.
+
+Kerry barked at the gate, as he always does when home is reached. My
+mother, dropping her work, ran to the window which gives upon the
+garden, and called. A moment later the Butterfly Man, with Laurence
+just back of him, and Kerry squeezing in between them, stood in the
+door. Mary Virginia, lips parted, eyes alight, hands outstretched,
+arose. The light of the whole room seemed not so much to gather upon
+her, as to radiate from her.
+
+The dog reached her first. Outdoor exercise, careful diet, perfect
+grooming, had kept Kerry in fine shape. His age told only in an added
+dignity, a slower movement.
+
+The girl went down on her knees, and hugged him. Pitache, aroused by
+Kerry's unwonted demonstrations, circled about them, rushing in every
+now and then to bestow an indiscriminate lick.
+
+"Why, it's Mary Virginia!" exclaimed Laurence, and helped her to her
+feet. The two regarded each other, mutually appraising. He towered
+above her, head and shoulders, and I thought with great satisfaction
+that, go where she would, she could nowhere find a likelier man than
+this same Laurence of ours. Like David in his youth, he was ruddy and
+of a beautiful countenance.
+
+"Why, Laurence! What a Jack-the-Giant-killer! Mercy, how big the boy's
+grown!"
+
+"Why, Mary Virginia! What a heart-smasher! Mercy, how pretty the
+girl's grown!" he came back, holding her hand and looking down at her
+with equally frank delight. "When I remember the pigtailed, leggy,
+tonguey minx that used to fetch me clumps over the head--and then
+regard this beatific vision--I'm afraid I'll wake up and you'll be
+gone!"
+
+"If you'll kindly give me back my hand, I might be induced to fetch
+you another clump or two, just to prove my reality," she suggested,
+with a delightful hint of the old truculence.
+
+"'T is she! This is indeed none other than our long-lost child!"
+burbled Laurence. "Lordy, I wish I could tell her how more than good
+it is to see her again--and to see her as she is!"
+
+Now all this time John Flint had stood in the doorway; and when my
+mother beckoned him forward, he came, I fancied, a bit unwillingly.
+His limp was for once painfully apparent, and whether from the
+day-long tramp, or from some slight indisposition, he was very pale;
+it showed under his deep tan.
+
+But I was proud of him. His manner had a pleasant shyness, which was a
+tribute to the young girl's beauty. It had as well a simple dignity.
+And one was impressed by the fine and powerful physique of him, so
+lean and springy, so boyishly slim about the hips and waist, so deeply
+stamped with clean living of days in the open, of nights under the
+stars. The features had thinned and sharpened, and his red beard
+became him; the hair thinning on the temples increased the breadth of
+the forehead, and behind his glasses the piercing blue eyes--something
+like an eagle's eyes--were clear, direct, and kind. He wore his
+clothes well, with a sort of careless carefulness, more like an
+Englishman than an American, who is always welldressed, but rather
+gives the impression of being conscious of it.
+
+Mary Virginia's lips parted, her eyes widened, for a fraction of a
+second. But if, remembering him as she had first seen and known him,
+she was astonished to find him as he was now, she gave no further
+outward sign. Instead, she gave him her hand as to an equal, and in a
+few gracious words let him know that she knew and was proud of what he
+had done and what he was yet to do. She repeated, too, with a pretty
+air of personal triumph, the old nobleman's praise. Indeed, it had
+been he who had told her of the book, which he had lately purchased
+and studied, she said. And oh, hadn't she just _swelled_ with pride!
+She had been that conceited!
+
+"You don't know how much obliged to you I should be, for if he hadn't
+accidentally learned I was from Appleboro, the town in which dwelt his
+most greatly prized correspondent--that's what he said, Mr.
+Flint!--why, I'm sure he wouldn't have noticed me any more than he
+noticed any other girl--which is, not at all; he being a toplofty and
+serious Personage addicted to people who do things and write things,
+particularly things about things that crawl and fly. And if he hadn't
+noticed me so pointedly--he actually came to see us!--why, I shouldn't
+have had such a perfectly gorgeous time. It was a great feather in my
+cap," she crowed. "Everybody envied me desperately!" She managed to
+make us understand that this was really a compliment to the Butterfly
+Man, not to herself.
+
+"If the little book served you for one minute it was well worth the
+four years it took me to gather the materials together and write it,"
+said he, pleasantly. And even the courtly Hunter couldn't have said it
+with a manlier grace.
+
+"Mary Virginia," said Laurence slyly, "when you've had your fill of
+bugs, make him show you the Book of Obituaries. He thereby stands
+revealed in his true colors. Why, he made me buy the old _Clarion_ and
+hire Jim Dabney to run it, so his supply of mortuary gems shouldn't be
+cut off untimely. To-day he culled this one:
+
+    Phileola dear, we cry because thou hast gone and left us,
+    But well we know it is a merciful heaven which has bereft us.
+    We tried five doctors and everything else we knew of you to save,
+    But alas, nothing did you any good, and to-day you are in your grave!
+
+He's got it in his pocket now. Dabney calls him Mister Bones," grinned
+Laurence.
+
+My mother looked profoundly uncomfortable. The Butterfly Man reddened
+guiltily under her reproachful glance, but Mary Virginia giggled
+irrepressibly.
+
+"I choose the Book of Obituaries first!" said she promptly, with
+dancing eyes. Flint drew a breath of relief.
+
+He sat by silently enough, while Laurence and Madame and Mary Virginia
+talked of everything under heaven. His whole manner was that of an
+amused, tolerant, sympathetic listener--a manner which spurs
+conversation to its happiest and best. Not for nothing had Major
+Cartwright called him the most discriminatin' listener in Carolina.
+
+"Oh, by the way, Flint! Hunter came by this morning to see Dabney. He
+is going to give a series of Plain Talks to Workingmen this winter,
+and of course he wants the _Clarion_ to cover them. What do you think,
+Padre?"
+
+"I think they will be eminently sensible talks and well worth
+listening to," said I promptly.
+
+The Butterfly Man smiled crookedly, and shot me a freighted glance.
+
+"Of course," said Laurence, easily. "Where's your father these days,
+Mary Virginia?"
+
+"He was at the plantation this morning, but he'll be here to-morrow,
+because I wired him to come. I've just got to have him for awhile,
+business or no business."
+
+"You did me a favor, then. I want to see him, too."
+
+"Anything very particular?"
+
+"Politics."
+
+"How silly! You know very well he never meddles with politics, thank
+goodness! He thinks he has something better to do."
+
+"That's just what I want to see him about," said Laurence.
+
+"You mentioned a--a Mr. Hunter." Mary Virginia spoke after a short
+pause. "This is the first time I've heard of any Mr. Hunter in
+Appleboro. Who is Mr. Hunter?"
+
+"Inglesby's right-bower, and the king-card of the pack," said Laurence
+promptly.
+
+"One of them which set up golden images in high places and make all
+Israel for to sin," said my mother. "_That's_ what Howard Hunter is!"
+
+"Oh, ... Howard Hunter!" said she. "What sort of a person may he be?
+And what is he doing here in Appleboro?"
+
+We told her according to our lights. Only the Butterfly Man sat silent
+and imperturbable.
+
+"And you'll meet him everywhere," finished my mother. "He's
+everything a man should be to the naked eye, and I sincerely hope,"
+she added piously, "that you won't like him at all."
+
+Mary Virginia leaned back in her chair, and glanced thoughtfully down
+at the slim ringless hands clasped in her white lap.
+
+"No," said she, as if to herself. "There couldn't by any chance be two
+such men in this one world. That is he, himself." And she lifted her
+head, and glanced at my mother, with a level and proud look. "I think
+I have met this Mr. Hunter," said she, smiling curiously. "And if that
+is true, your hope is realized, p'tite Madame. I shan't."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+JOHN FLINT, GENTLEMAN
+
+
+Almost up to Christmas the weather had been so mild and warm that
+folks lived out of doors. Girls clothed like the angels in white
+raiment fluttered about and blessed the old streets with their fresh
+and rosy faces. In the bright sunshine the flowers seemed to have lost
+all thought of winter; they forgot to fade; and roses rioted in every
+garden as if it were still summer. Nobody but the Butterfly Man
+grumbled at this springlike balminess, and he only because he was
+impatient to resume experiments carried over from year to year--the
+effect of varying degrees of natural cold upon the colors of
+butterflies whose chrysalids were exposed to it. He generally used the
+chrysalids of the Papilio Turnus, whose females are dimorphic, that
+is, having two distinct forms. He did not care to resort to artificial
+freezing, preferring to allow Nature herself to work for him. And the
+jade repaid him, as usual, by showing him what she could do but
+refusing to divulge the moving why she did it. She gave him for his
+pains sometimes a light, and sometimes a dark butterfly, with
+different degrees of blurred or enlarged and vivid markings, from
+chrysalids subjected to exactly the same amount of exposure.
+
+The Butterfly Man was burning to complete his notes, already assuming
+the proportions of that very exact and valuable book they were
+afterward to become. He chafed at the enforced delay, and wished
+himself at the North Pole.
+
+In the meantime, having nothing else on hand just then, it occurred to
+him to put some of these notes, covering the most interesting and
+curious of the experiments, into papers which the general run of folks
+might like to read. Dabney had been after him for some time to do some
+such work as this for the _Clarion_.
+
+I think Flint himself was genuinely surprised when he read over those
+enchanting papers, though he did not then and never has learned to
+appreciate their unique charm and value. Instead, however, of sending
+them to Dabney, he thought they might possibly interest a somewhat
+wider public, and with great diffidence, and some misgivings, he sent
+one or two of them to certain of the better known magazines. They did
+not come back. He received checks instead, and a request for more.
+
+Now the book and the several monographs he had already gotten out had
+been, although very interesting, strictly scientific; they could
+appeal only to students and scholars. But these papers were entirely
+different. Scientific enough, very clear and lucid and most quaintly
+flavored with what Laurence called Flintishness, they were so well
+received, and the response of the reading public to this fresh and new
+presentment of an ever-fascinating subject was so immediate and so
+hearty, that the Butterfly Man found himself unexpectedly confronting
+a demand he was hard put to it to supply.
+
+He was very much more modest about this achievement than we were. My
+mother's pride was delicious to witness. You see, it also invested
+_me_ with a very farsighted wisdom! Here was it proven to all that
+Father De Rance had been right in holding fast to the man who had come
+to him in such sorry plight.
+
+I suppose it was this which moved Madame to take the step she had long
+been contemplating. Knowing her Butterfly Man, she began with infinite
+wile.
+
+"Armand," said she, one bright morning in early November, "_I_ am
+going to entertain, too--everybody else has done so, and now it's my
+turn. The weather is so ideal, and my garden so gorgeous with all
+those chrysanthemums and salvias and geraniums and roses, that it
+would be sinful not to take advantage of such conditions.
+
+"I have saved enough out of my house-money to meet the expenses--and I
+am _not_ going to be charitable and do my Christian duty with that
+money! I'm going to entertain. I really owe that much attention to
+Mary Virginia." She laid her hand on my arm. "I must see John Flint;
+go over to his rooms, and bring him back with you."
+
+I thought she merely needed his help and counsel, for she is always
+consulting him; she considers that whatever barque is steered by John
+Flint must needs come home to harbor. He obeyed her summons with
+alacrity, for it delights him to assist Madame. He did not know what
+fate overshadowed him!
+
+My mother sat in her low rocker, a lace apron lending piquancy to her
+appearance. She looked unusually pretty--there wasn't a girl in
+Appleboro who didn't envy Madame De Rance's complexion.
+
+"Well," said the Butterfly Man cheerfully, unconsciously falling under
+the spell of this feminine charm, "the Padre tells me there's a party
+in the wind. Good! Now what am I to do? How am I to help you out?"
+
+My mother leaned forward and compelled him to meet direct her eyes
+that were friendly and clear and candid as a child's.
+
+"Mr. Flint," said she artlessly, ignoring his questions, "Mr. Flint,
+you've been with Armand and me quite a long time now, have you not?"
+
+"A couple of lifetimes," said he, wonderingly.
+
+"A couple of lifetimes," she mused, still holding his eyes, "is a
+fairly long time. Long enough, at least, to know and to be known,
+shouldn't you think?"
+
+He awaited enlightenment. He never asks unnecessary questions.
+
+"I am going," said my mother, with apparent irrelevance, "to entertain
+in honor of Mary Virginia Eustis. I shall probably have all Appleboro
+here. I sent for you to explain that you and Armand are to be present,
+too."
+
+The Butterfly Man almost fell out of his chair.
+
+"Me?" he gasped.
+
+"You," with deadly softness. "You."
+
+Horror and anguish encompassed him. Perspiration appeared on his
+forehead, and he gripped the arms of his chair as one bracing himself
+for torture. He looked at the little lady with the terror of one to
+whom the dentist has just said: "That jaw tooth must come out at once.
+Open your mouth wider, please, so I can get a grip!"
+
+My mother regarded this painful emotion heartlessly enough. She said
+coolly:
+
+"You don't need to look as if I were sentencing you to be hanged
+before sundown. I am merely inviting you to be present at a very
+pleasant affair." But the Butterfly Man, with his mouth open, wagged
+his head feebly.
+
+"And this," said my mother, turning the screw again, "is but the
+beginning. After this, I shall manage it so that all invitations to
+the Parish House include Mr. John Flint. There is no reason under
+heaven why you should occupy what one might call an ambiguous
+position. I am determined, too, that you shall no longer rush away to
+the woods like a scared savage, the minute more than one or two ladies
+appear. No, nor have Armand hurrying away as quickly as he can,
+either, to bury or to marry somebody. All feminine Appleboro shall be
+here at once, and you two shall be here at the same time!
+
+"John Flint, regard me: if the finest butterfly that ever crawled a
+caterpillar on this earth has the impertinence to fly by my garden the
+afternoon I'm entertaining for Mary Virginia, it can fly, but you
+shan't.
+
+"Armand: nobody respects Holy Orders more than I do: but there isn't
+anybody alive going to get born or baptized or married or buried, or
+anything else, in this parish, on that one afternoon. If they are
+selfish enough to do it anyhow, why, they can do it without your
+assistance. You are going to stay home with me: both of you."
+
+"My _dear_ mother--"
+
+"Good Lord! Madame--"
+
+"I am not to be dearmothered nor goodlorded! Heaven knows I ask little
+enough of either of you. _I_ am at _your_ beck and call, every day in
+the year. It does seem to me that when I wish to be civilized, and
+return for once some of the attentions I have received from my
+friends, I might at least depend upon you two for one little
+afternoon!" Could anything be more artfully unanswerable?
+
+"Oh, but Madame--" began Flint, horrified by such an insinuation as
+his unwillingness to do anything at any time for this adored lady.
+
+"Particularly," continued my mother, inexorably, "when I have your
+best interest at heart, too, John Flint! Monsieur the Butterfly Man,
+you will please to remember that you are a member of my household. You
+are almost like a son to me. You are the apple of that foolish
+Armand's eye--do not look so astounded, it is true! Also, you will
+have a great name some of these days. So far, so good. But--you are
+making the grievous error of shunning society, particularly the
+society of women. This is wrong; it makes for queerness, it evolves
+the 'crank,' it spoils many an otherwise very nice man."
+
+Flint sagged in his chair, and clasped and unclasped his hands, which
+trembled visibly. Madame regarded him without pity, with even a touch
+of scorn.
+
+"Yes, it is indeed high time to reclaim you!" she decided, with the
+fearsome zeal of the female reformer of a man. "You silly man, you!
+Have you no proper pride? Have you absolutely no idea of your own
+worth? Well, then, if you haven't, _I_ have. You _shall_ take your
+place and play your part!"
+
+"But," said Flint, and a gleam of hope irradiated his stricken face,
+"but I don't think I've got the clothes to wear to parties. And I
+really can't afford to spend any more money right now, either. I spent
+a lot on that old 1797 Abbot & Smith's 'Natural History of the Rarer
+Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia.' It cost like the dickens, although
+I really got it for about half what it's worth. I had to take it when
+I got the chance, and I'd be willing to wear gunny-sacking for a year
+to pay for those plates! I need them: I want them. But I don't need a
+party. I don't want a party! Madame, don't, don't make me go to any
+party!"
+
+"Nonsense!" said my mother. "Clothes, indeed! I shouldn't worry about
+clothes, if I were you, John Flint. You came into this world knowing
+exactly what to wear and how to wear it. Why, you have an air! That is
+a very great mercy, let me tell you, and one not always vouchsafed to
+the deserving, either."
+
+"I have a cage full of grubs--most awfully particular grubs, and
+they've got to be watched like a sick kid with the--with the whatever
+it is sick kids have, anyhow. Why, if I were to leave those grubs one
+whole afternoon--"
+
+"You just let me see a single solitary grub have the temerity to hatch
+himself out that one afternoon, that's all! They have all the rest of
+their nasty little lives to hatch out!"
+
+"Besides, there's a boy lives about five miles from here, and he's
+likely to bring me word any minute about something I simply have to
+have--"
+
+"I want to see that boy!" She pointed her small forefinger at him,
+with the effect of a pistol leveled at his head.
+
+"You are coming to my affair!" said she, sternly. "If you have no
+regard whatsoever for Mary Virginia and me, you shall have some for
+yourself; if you have none for yourself, then you shall have some for
+_us!_"
+
+This took the last puff of wind from the Butterfly Man's sails.
+
+"All right!" he gulped, and committed himself irremediably. "I--I'll
+be right here. You say so, and of course I've got to!"
+
+"Of course you will," said my mother, smiling at him charmingly. "I
+knew I had only to present the matter in its proper light, and you'd
+see it at once. You are so sensible, John Flint. It's such a comfort,
+when the gentlemen of one's household are so amenable to reason, and
+so ready to stand by one!"
+
+Having said her say, and gotten her way--as she was perfectly sure she
+would--Madame left the gentlemen of her household to their own
+reflections and devices.
+
+"Parson!" The Butterfly Man seemed to come out of a trance. "Remember
+the day you made me let a caterpillar crawl up my hand?"
+
+"Yes, my son."
+
+"Parson, there's a horrible big teaparty crawling up my pants' leg
+this minute!"
+
+"Just keep still," I couldn't help laughing at him, "and it will come
+down after awhile without biting you. Remember, you got used to the
+others in no time."
+
+"Some of 'em stung like the very devil," he reminded me, darkly.
+
+"Oh, but those were the hairy fellows. This is a stingless, hairless,
+afternoon party! It won't hurt you at all!"
+
+"It's walking up my pants' leg, just the same. And I'm scared of it:
+I'm horrible scared of it! My God! _Me!_ At a jane-junket! ... all the
+thin ones diked out with doodads where the bones come through ...
+stoking like sailors on shore leave ... all the fat ones grouchy about
+their shapes and thinking it's their souls. ..." And he broke out, in
+a fluttering falsetto:
+
+"'Oh, Mr. Flint, do please let us see your lovely butterflies! Aren't
+they just too perfectly sweet for anything! I wonder why they don't
+trim hats with butterflies? Do you know _all_ their names, you awfully
+clever man? Do _they_ know their names, too, Mr. Flint? Butterflies
+must be so very interesting! And so decorative, particularly on china
+and house linen! How you have the heart to kill them, I can't imagine.
+Just think of taking the poor mother-butterflies away from the dear
+little baby-ones!' ...--and me having to stand there and behave like a
+perfect gentleman!" He looked at me, scowling:
+
+"Now, you look here: I can stand 'em single-file, but if I'm made to
+face 'em in squads, why, you blame nobody but yourself if I foam at
+the mouth and chase myself in a circle and snap at legs, you hear me?"
+
+"I hear you," said I, coldly. "You didn't get your orders from _me_.
+_I_ think your proper place is in the woods. You go tell Madame what
+you've just told me--or should you like me to warn her that you're
+subject to rabies?"
+
+"For the love of Mike, parson! Have a heart! Haven't I got troubles
+enough?" he asked bitterly.
+
+"You are behaving more like an unspanked brat than a grown man."
+
+"I wasn't weaned on teaparties," said he, sulkily, "and it oughtn't
+to be expected I can swallow 'em at sight without making a face and--"
+
+"Whining," I finished for him. And I added, with a reminiscent air:
+"Rule 1: Can the Squeal!"
+
+He glared at me, but as I met the glare unruffled, his lip presently
+twisted into a grin of desperate humor. His shoulders squared.
+
+"All right," said he, resignedly. And after an interval of dejected
+silence, he remarked: "I've sort of got a glimmer of how Madame feels
+about this. She generally knows what's what, Madame does, and I
+haven't seen her make a mistake yet. If she thinks it's my turn to
+come on in and take a hand in any game she's playing, why, I guess I'd
+better play up to her lead the best I know how ... and trust God to
+slip me over an ace or two when I need them. You tell her she can
+depend on me not to fall down on her ... and Miss Eustis."
+
+"No need to tell Madame what she already knows."
+
+"Huh!" With his chin in his hand and his head bent, he stared out over
+the autumn garden with eyes which did not see its flaming flowers. Of
+a sudden his shoulders twitched; he laughed aloud.
+
+"What are you laughing at?" I was startled out of a revery of my own.
+
+"Everything," said the Butterfly Man, succinctly, and stood up and
+shook himself. "And everybody. And me in particular. _Me!_ Oh, good
+Lord, think of _Me!_" He whistled for Kerry, and took himself off. I
+watched him walk down the street, and saw Judge Mayne's familiar
+greeting; and Major Cartwright stop him, and with his hand on the
+Butterfly Man's arm, walk off with him. Major Cartwright had kept
+George Inglesby out of two coveted clubs, for all his wealth; he was
+stiff as the proverbial poker to Howard Hunter, for all that
+gentleman's impeccable connections; he met John Flint, not as through
+a glass darkly, but face to face.
+
+My mother, coming out of the house with her cherished manuscript
+cookbook in her hand, looked after them thoughtfully:
+
+"Yes; it is high time for that man to know his proper place!"
+
+"And does he not?"
+
+"Oh, I suppose so, Armand. In a man's way, though--not a woman's. It's
+the woman's way that really matters, you see. When women acknowledge
+that man socially--and I mean it to happen--his light won't be hidden
+under a bushel basket. He will climb up into his candlestick and
+shine."
+
+That sense of bewilderment which at times overwhelmed me when the case
+of John Flint pressed hard, overtook me now, with its ironic humor. As
+he himself had expressed it, I felt myself caught by a Something too
+big to withstand. I was afraid to do anything, to say anything, for or
+against, this launching of his barque upon the social sea. I felt that
+the affair had been once more lifted out of my power; that my serving
+now was but to stand and wait.
+
+And in the meanwhile my mother, with her own hands, washed and darned
+the priceless old lace that was her chiefest pride; had something done
+to a frock; got out her sacredest treasures of linen and china and
+silver; requisitioned the Mayne and the Dexter spoons as well; had the
+Parish House scoured until it glittered; did everything to the garden
+but wash and iron it; spent momentous and odorous hours with Clelie
+over the making of toothsome delights; and on a golden afternoon gave
+a tea on the flower-decked verandahs and in the glorious garden, to
+which all Appleboro, in its best bib and tucker, came as one. And
+there, in the heart and center of it, cool, calm, correct, collected,
+hiding whatever mortal qualms he might have felt under a demeanor as
+perfect as Hunter's own, apparently at home and at ease, behold the
+Butterfly Man!
+
+Everybody seemed to know him. Everybody had something pleasant to say
+to him. Folks simply accepted him at sight as one of themselves. And
+the Butterfly Man accepted them quite as simply, with no faintest
+trace of embarrassment.
+
+If Appleboro had cherished the legend that this was a prodigal well on
+his way home, that afternoon settled it for them into a positive fact.
+His manner was perfect. It was as if one saw the fine and beautiful
+grain of a piece of rare wood come out as the varnish that disfigured
+it was removed. Here was no veneer to scratch and crack at a touch,
+but the solid, rare thing itself. My mother had been right, as always.
+John Flint stepped into his proper place. Appleboro was acknowledging
+it officially.
+
+The garden was full of laughter and chatter and perfumes, and women in
+pretty clothes, and young girls dainty as flowers, and the smiling
+faces of men. But I am no longer of the party age. I stole away to a
+favorite haunt of mine at the back of the garden, behind the spireas
+and the holly tree, where there is a dilapidated old seat we have been
+threatening to remove any time this five years. Here, some time
+later, the Butterfly Man himself came stealthily, and seemed
+embarrassed to find the place preempted.
+
+"Well," said I, making room for him beside me, "it isn't so bad after
+all, is it?"
+
+"No. I'm glad I was let in for it," he admitted frankly, "though I'd
+hate to have to come to parties for a living. Still, this afternoon
+has nailed down a thought that's been buzzing around loose in my mind
+this long time. It's this: people aren't anything but people, after
+all. Men and women and kids, the best and the worst of 'em, they're
+nothing but people, the same as everybody else. No, I'll never be
+scared to meet anybody, after this. _I'm_ people, too!"
+
+"The same as everybody else."
+
+"The same as everybody else," he repeated, soberly. "Not but what
+there's lots of difference between folks. And there are things it's
+good to know, too ... things that women like Madame ... and Miss Mary
+Virginia Eustis ... expect a man to know, if they're not going to be
+ashamed of him." He thought about this awhile, then:
+
+"I tell you what, father," he remarked, tentatively, "it must be a
+mighty fine thing to know you've got the right address written on you,
+good and plain, and the right number of stamps, and the sender's name
+somewhere on a corner, to keep you from going astray or to the Dead
+Letter Office; and not to be scrawled in lead-pencil, and misspelt,
+and finger-smutched, and with a couple of postage-due stamps stuck on
+you crooked, and the Lord only knows who and where from."
+
+"Why, yes," said I, "that's true, and one does well to consider it.
+But the main thing, the really important thing, is the letter
+itself--what's written inside, John Flint."
+
+"But what's written inside wouldn't be any the worse if it was written
+clearer and better, and the outside was cleaner and on nice paper? And
+in pen-and-ink, not lead-pencil scratches?" he insisted earnestly.
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"That's what I've been thinking lately, father. Somehow, I always did
+like things to have some class to 'em. I remember how I used to lean
+against the restaurant windows when I was a kid, and watch the folks
+inside, how they dressed and acted, and the way the nicest of 'em
+handled table-tools. They weren't swells, of course, and plenty of 'em
+made plenty of mistakes--I've seen stunts done with a common
+table-knife that had the best of the sword-swallowing gents skinned a
+mile--but I wasn't a fool, and I learned some. Then when I--er--began
+to make real money (parson, I made it in wads and gobs and lumps those
+days!) why, I got me the real thing in glad rags from the real thing
+in tailors, and I used to blow a queen that'd been a swell herself
+once, to the joint where the gilt-edged bunch eat and show off their
+clothes and the rest of themselves. My jane looked the part to the
+life, I had the kale and the clothes and was chesty as a head-waiter,
+being considerably stuck on yours truly along about then, so we put it
+over. I had the chance to get hep to the last word in clothes and
+manners; that's what I'd gone for, though I didn't tell that to the
+skirt I was buying the eats for. And it was good business, too, for
+more than once when some precinct bonehead that pipe-dreamed he was a
+detective was pussy-catting some cold rat-hole, there was me
+vanbibbering in the white light at the swellest joints in little old
+New York! Funny, wasn't it? And handy! And I was learning,
+too--learning things worth good money to know. I saw that the best
+sort didn't make any noise about anything. They went about their
+business, whatever it was, easy-easy, same as me in my line. But,
+parson, though I'd got hep to the outside, and had sense enough to
+copy what I'd seen, I wasn't wise to the inside difference--the things
+that make the best what it is, I mean--because I'd never been close
+enough to find out that there's more to it than looks and duds and
+manners. It took the Parish House people to soak that into me. People
+aren't anything but people--but the best are--well, different."
+
+We fell silent; a happy silence, into which, as from another planet,
+there drifted light laughter, and sweet gay voices of girls, and the
+stir and rustle of many people moving about. On the Mayne fence the
+judge's black Panch sat, neck outstretched, emerald eyes aslant, ears
+cocked uneasily at these unwonted noises. At a little distance a
+bluejay watched him with bright malevolent eyes, every now and then
+screaming insults at the whole tribe of cats, and black Panch in
+particular. Flint snapped his fingers, and Panch, with a spring, was
+off the fence and on his friend's knees. It seemed to me it had only
+needed the sleek beastie to make that hour perfect;--for cats in the
+highest degree make for a sense of homely, friendly intimacy. Flint,
+feeling this, stroked the black head contentedly. Panch purred for the
+three of us.
+
+Into this presently broke Miss Sally Ruth Dexter, and bore down on
+John Flint like a frigate with all sails spread. At sight of her Panch
+spat and fled, and took the happy spell with him.
+
+"Here you are, cuddling that old pirate of a black cat!" said she,
+briskly. "I told Madame you'd be mooning about somewhere. Here's some
+cocoanut cake for you both. Father, Madame's been looking for you. Did
+you know," she sank her voice to a piercing whisper, "that George
+Inglesby's here? Well, he is! He's talking to Mary Virginia Eustis,
+this very minute! They do say he's running after Mary Virginia, and
+I'm sure I wouldn't be surprised, for if ever a mortal man had the
+effrontery of Satan that man's George Inglesby! I must admit he's
+improved since Mr. Hunter took him in hand. He's not nearly so stout
+and red-faced, and he hasn't half the jowl, though Lord knows he'll
+have to get rid of a few tons more of his blubber" (Miss Sally Ruth
+has a free and fetterless tongue) "if he wants to look _human_. As I
+say, what's the use of being a millionaire if you've got a shape like
+a rainbarrel? I often tell myself, 'Maybe you haven't been given such
+a lot of this world's goods as some, Sally Ruth Dexter, but you can
+thank your sweet Redeemer you've at least got a Figure!"
+
+The Butterfly Man cast a speculative eye over her generous
+proportions.
+
+"Yes'm, you certainly have a whole lot to be thankful for," he agreed,
+so wholeheartedly that Miss Sally Ruth laughed.
+
+"Get along with you, you impudent fellow!" said she, in high good
+humor. "Go and look at that old scamp of an Inglesby making eyes at a
+girl young enough to be his daughter! I heard this morning that Mr.
+Hunter has orders to get him, by hook or crook, an invitation to
+anything Mary Virginia goes to. I declare, it's scandalous! Come to
+think of it, though, I never saw any man yet, no matter how old or
+ugly or outrageous he might be, who didn't really believe he stood a
+perfectly good chance to win the affections of the handsomest young
+woman alive! If you ask _me_, _I_ think George Inglesby had better
+join the church and get himself ready to meet his God, instead of
+gallivanting around girls. If he feels he has to gallivant, why don't
+he pick out somebody nearer his own age?"
+
+"Why should you make him choose mutton when he wants lamb?" asked the
+Butterfly Man, unexpectedly.
+
+"Because he's an old bellwether, that's why!" snapped Miss Sally Ruth,
+scandalized. "I wonder at Annabelle Eustis allowing him to come near
+Mary Virginia, millionaire or no millionaire. I bet you James Eustis
+will have something to say, if Mary Virginia herself doesn't!" And she
+sailed off again, leaving us, as the saying is, with a bug in the ear.
+
+"Now what in the name of heaven," I wondered, "can Miss Sally Ruth
+mean? Mary Virginia ... Inglesby. ... The thing's sacrilegious."
+
+The Butterfly Man rose abruptly. "Suppose we stroll about a bit?" he
+suggested.
+
+"I thought," said my mother, when we approached her, "that you had
+disobeyed orders, and run away!"
+
+"We were afraid to," said John Flint. "We knew you'd make us go to bed
+without supper."
+
+"Did you know," said my mother, hurriedly, for Clelie was making signs
+to her, "that George Inglesby is here? The invitation was merely
+perfunctory, just sent along with Mr. Hunter's. I never dreamed the
+man would accept it. You can't imagine how astonished I was when he
+presented himself!"
+
+A few moments later, the Butterfly Man said in a low voice: "Look
+yonder!" And turning, I saw Hunter. He was for the moment alone, and
+stood with his head bent slightly forward, his bright cold glance
+intent upon the two persons approaching--Mary Virginia and George
+Inglesby. His white teeth showed in a smile. I remembered,
+disagreeably, Flint's "I don't like the expression of his teeth: he
+looks like he'd bite."
+
+Until that afternoon I had not seen the secretary for some time, for
+he had been kept unusually busy. Those eminently sensible talks to the
+mill workers had been well received, and were to be followed by others
+along the same line. He had done even more: he had induced the owners
+to recognize the men's Union, and all future complaints and demands
+were to be submitted to arbitration. Inglesby had undoubtedly gained
+ground enormously by that move. Hunter had done well. And
+yet--catching that sharp-toothed smile, I felt my faith in him for the
+first time shaken by one of those unaccountable uprushes of intuition
+which perplex and disturb.
+
+I knew, too, that Laurence had had several long and serious
+conferences with Eustis, and I could well imagine the arguments he had
+brought to bear, the rousing of a sense of duty, and of state pride.
+
+Eustis was obstinate. He had many interests. He was a very, very busy
+man. He didn't want to be a Senator; he wanted to be let alone to
+attend to his own business in his own way. But, insisted Laurence,
+when a thing must be done, and you can do it in a manner which
+benefits all and injures none; when your own people ask you to do it
+for them, isn't _that_ your business?
+
+A cold damning resume of Inglesby's entire career made Eustis
+hesitate. A vivid picture of what the state might expect at Inglesby's
+hands roused him to just anger. Such as this fellow represent
+Carolina? Never! When Inglesby's name should be put up, Eustis
+unwillingly agreed to oppose him.
+
+And here was Inglesby, in my garden, making himself agreeable to
+Eustis's daughter! He was so plainly desirous to please her, that it
+troubled me, although it made his secretary smile.
+
+The Mary Virginia walking beside Inglesby was not the Mary Virginia
+_we_ knew: this was the regal one, the great beauty. Her whole manner
+was subtly charged with a sort of arrogant hauteur; her fairness
+itself changed, tinged with pride as with an inward fire, until she
+glowed with a cold, jewel-like brightness, hard and clear. Her very
+skirts rustled pridefully. Her glance at the man beside her was
+insulting in its disdainful indifference.
+
+What would have saddened a nobler spirit enchanted Inglesby. He was
+dazzled by her. Her interest in what he was saying was coolly
+impersonal, the fixed habit of trained politeness. He could even
+surmise that she was mentally yawning behind her hand. When she looked
+at him her eyes under her level brows held a certain scornfulness. And
+this, too, delighted him. He groveled to it. His red face glowed with
+pleasure; he swelled with a pride very different from Mary Virginia's.
+I thought he had an upholstered look in his glossy clothes, reminding
+me unpleasantly of horsehair furniture.
+
+"He looks like a day coach in July," growled the Butterfly Man in my
+ear, disgustedly.
+
+Inglesby at this moment perceived Hunter and beamed upon him, as well
+he might! Who but this priceless secretary had pulled the strings
+which set him beside this glorious creature, in the Parish House
+garden? He turned to the girl, with heavy jauntiness:
+
+"My good right hand, Miss Eustis, I assure you!" he beamed. "But I am
+sure you two need no dissertations upon each other's merits!"
+
+"None whatever," said Miss Eustis, and looked over Mr. Hunter's head.
+
+"Oh, Miss Eustis and I are really old acquaintances!" smiled the
+secretary. "We know each other very well indeed."
+
+Mary Virginia made no reply. Instead, she looked about her,
+indifferently enough, until her glance encountered the Butterfly
+Man's. What he saw in her's I do not know. But he instantly moved
+toward her, and swept me with him.
+
+"Father De Rance and I," said he, easily, "haven't had chance to speak
+to you all afternoon, Miss Eustis." He acknowledged Hunter's friendly
+greeting pleasantly enough.
+
+"And I've been looking for you both." The hauteur faded from the young
+face. Our own Mary Virginia appeared, changed in the twinkling of an
+eye.
+
+Inglesby favored me with condescending effusiveness. Flint got off
+with a smirking stare.
+
+"And this," said Inglesby in the sort of voice some people use in
+addressing strange children to whom they desire to be patronizingly
+nice and don't know how, "this is the Butterfly Man!" Out came the
+jovial smile in its full deadliness. The Butterfly Man's lips drew
+back from his teeth and his eyes narrowed to gimlet points behind his
+glasses. "I have heard of you from Mr. Hunter. And so you collect
+butterflies! Very interesting and active occupation for any one
+that--ahem! likes that sort of thing. Very."
+
+"He collects obituaries, too," said Hunter, immensely amused. "You
+mustn't overlook the obituaries, Mr. Inglesby."
+
+Mr. Inglesby favored the collector of butterflies _and_ obituaries
+with another speculative, piglike stare. You could see the thought
+behind it: "Trifling sort of fellow! Idiotic! Very." Aloud he merely
+mumbled:
+
+"Singular taste. Very. Collecting obituaries, eh?"
+
+"Fascinating things to collect. Very," said the Butterfly Man,
+sweetly. "Not to be laughed at. I might add yours to 'em, too, you
+know, some of these fine days!"
+
+"Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed!" murmured Hunter. Mr. Inglesby,
+however, was visibly ruffled and annoyed. Who was this fellow braying
+of obituaries as if he, Inglesby, were on the highroad to oblivion
+already, when he was, in reality, still quite a young man? And right
+before Miss Eustis! He turned purple.
+
+"My obituary?" he spluttered. "_Mine_? Mine?"
+
+"Sure, if it's worth while," said the Butterfly Man, amiably. Mary
+Virginia barely suppressed a smile.
+
+"Madame would like to see you, Miss Eustis," he told her.
+
+Mary Virginia, bowing distantly to the millionaire and his secretary,
+walked off with him, I following.
+
+Once free of them, her spirits rose soaringly.
+
+"It's been a lovely afternoon, and I've enjoyed it all--except Mr.
+Inglesby. I don't _like_ Mr. Inglesby, Padre. He's amusing enough, I
+suppose, at times, but one can't seem to get rid of him--he's a
+perfect Old Man of the Sea," she told us, confidentially. "And you
+can't imagine how detestably youthful he is, Mr. Flint! He told me
+half a dozen times this afternoon that after all, years don't
+matter--it is the heart which is young. And he takes cold tubs and is
+proud of himself, and plays golf--for exercise!" The scorn of the
+lithe and limber young was in her voice.
+
+"What's the use of being a millionaire, if you have a shape like the
+rainbarrel?" I quoted pensively.
+
+Later that night, when "the lights were fled, the garlands dead, and
+all but me departed," I went over for my usual last half-hour with
+John Flint. Very often we have nothing whatever to say, and we are
+even wise enough not to say it. We sit silently, he with Kerry's noble
+old head against his foot, each busy with his own thoughts and
+reflections, but each conscious of the friendly nearness of the other.
+You have never had a friend, if you have never known one with whom you
+might sit a silent, easy hour. To-night he sucked savagely at his old
+pipe, and his eyes were somber.
+
+"You got the straight tip from Miss Sally Ruth, father," he said,
+coming out of a brown study. "What do you suppose that piker's trying
+to crawl out of his cocoon for? He never wanted to caper around
+Appleboro women before, did he? No. And here he's been muldooning to
+get some hog-fat off and some wind and waistline back. Now, why? To
+please himself? _He_ don't have to care a hoot what he looks like. To
+please some girl? That's more likely. Parson: that girl's Mary
+Virginia Eustis." He added, through his teeth: "Hunter knows. Hunter's
+steering." And then, with quiet conviction: "They're both as crooked
+as hell!" he finished.
+
+"But the thing's absurd on the face of it! Why, the mere notion is
+preposterous!" I insisted, angrily.
+
+"I have seen worse things happen," said he, shortly. "But there,--keep
+your hair on! Things don't happen unless they're slated to happen, so
+don't let it bother you too much. You go turn in and forget everything
+except that you need a night's sleep."
+
+I tried to follow his sound advice, but although I needed a night's
+sleep and there was no tangible reason why I shouldn't have gotten it,
+I didn't. The shadow of Inglesby haunted my pillow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+"EACH IN HIS OWN COIN"
+
+
+With the New Year had descended upon John Flint an obsessing and
+tormenting spirit which made him by fits and starts moody, depressed,
+nervous, restless, or wholly silent and abstracted. I have known him
+to come in just before dawn, snatch a few hours' sleep, and be off
+again before day had well set in, though he must already have been far
+afield, for Kerry heeled him with lagging legs and hanging head. Or he
+would shut himself up, and refusing himself to all callers, fall into
+a cold fury of concentrated effort, sitting at his table hour after
+hour, tireless, absorbed, accomplishing a week's overdue work in a day
+and a night. Often his light burned all night through. Some of the
+most notable papers bearing his name, and research work of
+far-reaching significance, came from that workroom then--as if lumps
+of ambergris had been tossed out of a whirlpool.
+
+All this time, too, he was working in conjunction with the Washington
+Bureau, experimenting with remedies for the boll-weevil, and fighting
+the plague of the cattle-tick. This, and the other outside work in
+which he was so immensely interested, could not be allowed to hang
+fire. Like many another, he found himself for his salvation caught in
+the great human net he himself had helped to spin. It was not only
+the country people who held him. Gradually, as he passed to and from
+on his way among them, and became acquainted with their children,
+there had sprung up a most curious sort of understanding between the
+Butterfly Man on the one side, and the half-articulate foreigners in
+the factory and the sly secretive mill-workers on the other.
+
+People I had never been able to get at humanly, people who resisted
+even Madame, not only chose to open their doors but their mouths, to
+Meester Fleent. Uncouth fumbling men, slip-shod women, dirty-faced
+children, were never dumb and suspicious or wholly untruthful and
+evasive, where the Butterfly Man was concerned. He was one to whom
+might be told, without shame, fear, or compunction, the plain, blunt,
+terrible truth. _He understood._
+
+"I wish you'd look up Petronovich's boy, father," he might tell me,
+or, "Madame, have a woman-talk with Lovena Smith's girl at the mills,
+will you? Lovena's a fool, and that girl's up against things." And we
+went, and wondered, afterwards, what particularly tender guardian
+angels kept close company with our Butterfly Man.
+
+Then occurred the great event which put Meester Fleent in a place
+apart in the estimation of all Appleboro, forever settled his status
+among the mill-hands and the "hickeys," and incidentally settled a
+tormenting doubt of himself in his own mind. I mean the settling of
+the score against Big Jan.
+
+Half-Russian Jan was to the Poles what a padrone too often is to the
+Italian laborers, a creature who herded them together and mercilessly
+worked them for the profit of others, and incidentally his own, an
+exacting tyrant against whose will it was useless to rebel. He had a
+little timid wife with red eyes--perhaps because she cried so much
+over the annual baby which just as annually died. He made a good deal
+of money, but the dark Slav passion for whisky forced him to spend
+what he earned, and this increased a naturally sullen temper. He was
+the thorn in the Parish side; that we could do so little for the Poles
+was due in a large measure to Jan's stubborn hindering.
+
+His people lived in terror of him. When they displeased him he beat
+them. It was not a light beating, and once or twice we had in the
+Guest Rooms nursed its victims back into some semblance of humanity.
+But what could we do? Jan was so efficient a foreman that Inglesby's
+power was always behind him. So when Jan chose to get very drunk, and
+sang long, monotonous songs, particularly when he sang through his
+teeth, lugubriously:
+
+    "_Yeszeze Polska nie Zginela
+     Poki my Zygemy_ ..."
+
+men and women trembled. Poland might not be lost, but somebody's skin
+always paid for that song.
+
+In passing one morning--it was a holiday--through the Poles' quarters,
+an unpleasant enough stretch which other folks religiously avoided,
+the Butterfly Man heard shrieks coming from Michael Karski's back
+yard. It was Michael's wife and children who screamed.
+
+"It is the Boss who beats Michael, Meester Fleent," a man volunteered.
+"The Boss, he is much drunk. Karski's woman, she did not like the ways
+of him in her house, and Michael said, 'I will to send for the
+police.' So Big Jan beats Michael, and Michael's woman, she hollers
+like hell."
+
+John Flint knew inoffensive, timid Michael; he knew his broad-bosomed,
+patient, cowlike wife, and he liked the brood of shockheaded
+youngsters who plodded along patient in old clothes, bare-footed, and
+with scanty enough food. He had made a corn-cob doll for the littlest
+girl and a cigar-box wagon with spool wheels for the littlest boy.
+Perhaps that is why he turned and went with the rest to Michael's yard
+where Big Jan was knocking Michael about like a ten-pin, grunting
+through his teeth: "Now! Sen' for those policemens, you!"
+
+Michael was no pretty thing to look upon, for Jan was in an uglier
+mood than usual, and Michael had greatly displeased him; therefore it
+was Michael's turn to pay. Nobody interfered, for every one was
+horribly afraid Big Jan would turn upon _him_. Besides, was not he the
+Boss, and could he not say Go, and then must not a man go, short of
+pay, and with his wife and children crying? Of a verity!
+
+The Butterfly Man slipped off his knapsack and laid his net aside.
+Then he pushed his way through the scared onlookers.
+
+"Meester Fleent! For God's love, save my man, Meester Flint!"
+Michael's wife Katya screamed at him.
+
+By way of answer Meester Fleent very deliberately handed her his
+eye-glasses. Then one saw that his eyes, slitted in his head, were
+cold and bright as a snake's; his chin thrust forward, and in his red
+beard his lips made a straight line like a clean knife-cut. Two
+bright red spots had jumped into his tanned cheeks. His lean hands
+balled.
+
+He said no word; but the crumpled thing that was Michael was of a
+sudden plucked bodily out of Big Jan's hands and thrust into the
+waiting woman's. The astonished Boss found himself confronting a pale
+and formidable face with a pair of eyes like glinting sword-blades.
+
+Kerry had followed his master, and was now close to his side. For the
+moment Flint had forgotten him. But Big Jan's evil eyes caught sight
+of him. He knew the Butterfly Man's dog very well. He snickered. A
+huge foot shot out, there was a howl of anguish and astonishment, and
+Kerry went flying through the air as if shot from a catapult.
+
+"So!" Jan grunted like a satisfied hog, "I feex _you_ like that in one
+meenute, me."
+
+The red jumped from John Flint's cheeks to his eyes, and stayed there.
+Why, this hulking brute had hurt _Kerry!_ His breath exhaled in a
+whistling sigh. He seemed to coil himself together; with a tiger-leap
+he launched himself at the great hulk before him. It went down. It had
+to.
+
+I know every detail of that historic fight. Is it not written large in
+the Book of the Deeds of Appleboro, and have I not heard it by word of
+mouth from many a raving eye-witness? Does not Dr. Walter Westmoreland
+lick his lips over it unto this day?
+
+A long groaning sigh went up from the onlookers. Meester Fleent was a
+great and a good man; but he was a crippled man. Death was very close
+to him.
+
+Big Jan was not too drunk to fight savagely, but he was in a most
+horrible rage, and this weakened him. He meant to kill this impudent
+fellow who had taken Michael away from him before he had half-finished
+with him. But first he would break every bone in the crippled man's
+body, take him in his hands and break his back over one knee as one
+does a slat. A man with one leg to balk him, Big Jan? That called for
+a killing. Jan had no faintest idea he might not be able to make good
+this pleasant intention.
+
+It was a stupendous fight, a Homeric fight, a fight against odds,
+which has become a town tradition. If Jan was formidable, a veritable
+bison, his opponent was no cringing workman scared out of his wits and
+too timid to defend himself. John Flint knew his own weakness, knew
+what he could expect at Jan's hands, and it made him cool, collected,
+wary, and deadly. He was no more the mild-mannered, soft-spoken
+Butterfly Man, but another and a more primal creature, fighting for
+his life. Big Jan, indeed, fancied he had nobody but the Butterfly Man
+to deal with; as a matter of fact he was tackling Slippy McGee.
+
+Skilled, watchful, dangerous, that old training saved him. Every time
+Jan came to his feet, roaring, thrashing his arms like flails, making
+head-long, bull-like rushes, the Butterfly Man managed to send him
+sprawling again. Then he himself caught one well-aimed blow, and went
+staggering; but before slow-moving and raging Jan could follow up his
+advantage, with a lightning-like quickness the Butterfly Man made a
+battering ram of his head, caught Jan in the pit of the stomach, and
+even as he fell Jan went down, too, and went down underneath.
+Desperately, fighting like a fiend, John Flint kept him down. And
+presently using every wrestler's trick that he knew, and bringing to
+bear every ounce of his saved and superb strength, in a most orderly,
+businesslike, cold-blooded manner he proceeded to pound Big Jan into
+pulp. The devil that had been chained these seven years was a-loose at
+last, rampant, fully aroused, and not easily satisfied. Besides, had
+not Jan most brutally and wantonly tried to kill Kerry!
+
+If it was a well deserved it was none the less a most drastic
+punishment, and when it was over Big Jan lay still. He would lie prone
+for many a day, and he would carry marks of it to his grave.
+
+When the tousled victor, with a reeling head, an eye fast closing, and
+a puffed and swollen lip, staggered upright and stood swaying on his
+feet, he found himself surrounded by a great quiet ring of men and
+women who regarded him with eyes of wonder and amaze. He was
+superhuman; he had accomplished the impossible; paid the dreaded Boss
+in his own coin, yea, given him full measure to the running over
+thereof! No man of all the men Jan had beaten in his time had received
+such as Jan himself had gotten at this man's hands to-day. The reign
+of the Boss was over: and the conqueror was a crippled man! A great
+sighing breath of sheer worshipful admiration went up; they were too
+profoundly moved to cheer him; they could only stand and stare. When
+they wished, reverently, to help him, he waved them aside.
+
+"Where's my dog?" he demanded thickly through his swollen lips.
+"Where's Kerry? If he's dead--" he cast upon fallen Jan a menacing
+glare.
+
+"Your dog's in bed with the baby, and Ma's give him milk with brandy
+in it, and he drank it and growled at her, and the boys is holding
+him down now to keep him from coming out to you, and he ain't much
+hurt nohow," squealed one of Michael's big-eyed children.
+
+John Flint, stretching his arms above his head, drew in a great
+gulping mouthful of air, exhaled it, and laughed a deepchested,
+satisfied laugh, for all he was staggering like a drunken man. Here
+Michael's wife Katya came puffing out of her house like a traction
+engine--such was the shape in which nature formed her--and falling on
+her knees, caught his hand to her vast bosom, weeping like the
+overflowing of a river and blubbering uncouth sounds.
+
+"Get up, you crazy woman!" snarled John Flint, his face going
+brick-red. "Stop licking my hand, and get up!" Although he did not
+know it, Katya symbolized the mental attitude of every laborer in
+Appleboro toward him from that hour.
+
+"Here's Doctor Westmoreland! And here comes the po-lice!" yelled a
+boy, joyous with excitement.
+
+Westmoreland cast one by no means sympathetic glance at the wreck on
+the ground, and his big arms went about John Flint; his fingers flew
+over him like an apprehensive father's.
+
+"What's all this? Who's been fighting here, you people?" demanded the
+town marshal's brisk voice. "Big Jan? And--good Lord! _Mister Flint!_"
+His eyes bulged. He looked from Big Jan on the ground to the Butterfly
+Man under Westmoreland's hands, with an almost ludicrous astonishment.
+
+"I'm sure sorry, Mr. Flint, if I have to give you a little trouble for
+awhile, but--"
+
+"But you'll be considerably sorrier if you do it," said Dr. Walter
+Westmoreland savagely. "You take that hulk over there to the jail,
+until I have time to see him. I can't have him sent home to his wife
+in that shape. And look here, Marshal: Jan got exactly what he
+deserved; it's been coming to him this long time. If Inglesby's bunch
+tries to take a hand in this, _I'll_ try to make Appleboro too hot to
+hold somebody. Understand?"
+
+The marshal was a wise enough man, and he understood. Inglesby's pet
+foreman had been all but killed, and Inglesby would be furiously
+angry. But--Mr. Flint had done it, and behind Mr. Flint were powers
+perhaps as potent as Inglesby's. One thing more may have influenced
+the marshal: The hitherto timid and apathetic people had merged into a
+compact and ominous ring around the Butterfly Man and the doctor. A
+shrill murmur arose, like the wind in the trees presaging a storm.
+There would be riot in staid Appleboro if one were so foolish as to
+lay a detaining hand upon John Flint this day. More yet, the beloved
+Westmoreland himself would probably begin it. Never had the marshal
+seen Westmoreland look so big and so raging.
+
+"All right, Doctor," said he, hastily backing off. "I reckon you're
+man enough to handle this."
+
+Some proud worshiper brought Mr. Flint his hat, knapsack, and net, and
+the mountainous Katya insisted upon tenderly placing his glasses upon
+his nose--upside down. Westmoreland used to say afterward that for a
+moment he feared Flint was going to bite her hand! Then man and dog
+were placed in the doctor's car and hurried home to my mother; who
+made no comment, but put both in the larger Guest Room, the whimpering
+dog on a comfort at the foot of his master's bed. Kerry had a broken
+rib, but outside of this he was not injured. He would be out and all
+right again in a week, Westmoreland assured his anxious master.
+
+"Oh, you _man_, you!" crowed Westmoreland. "John, John, if anything
+were needed to make me love you, this would clinch it! Prying open
+nature's fist, John, having butterflies bear your name, working hand
+in glove with your government, boosting boys, writing books, are all
+of them fine big grand things. But if along with them one's man enough
+to stand up, John, with the odds against him, and punish a bully and a
+scoundrel, the only way a bully and a scoundrel can feel punishment,
+that's a heart-stirring thing, John! It gets to the core of my heart.
+It isn't so much the fight itself, it's being able to take care of
+oneself and others when one has to. Yes, yes, yes. A fight like that
+is worth a million dollars to the man who wins it!"
+
+Westmoreland may be president of the Peace League, and tell us that
+force is all wrong. Nevertheless, his great-grandmother was born in
+Tipperary.
+
+We kept the Butterfly Man indoors for a week, while Westmoreland
+doctored a viciously black eye and sewed up his lip. Morning and
+afternoon Appleboro called, and left tribute of fruit and flowers.
+
+"Gad, suh, he behaved like one of Stonewall Jackson's men!" said Major
+Cartwright, pridefully. "No yellow in _him_; he's one of _us_!"
+
+At nights came the Polish folks, and these people whom he had once
+despised because they "hadn't got sense enough to talk American," he
+now received with a complete and friendly understanding.
+
+"I just come by and see how you make to feel, Meester."
+
+"Oh, I feel fine, Joe, thank you."
+
+There would be an interval of absolute silence, which, did not seem to
+embarrass either visited or visitor. Then:
+
+"Baby better now?" Meester would ask, interestedly.
+
+"That beeg doctor, he oil heem an' make heem well all right."
+
+After awhile: "I mebbe go now, Meester."
+
+"Good-night," said the host, briefly.
+
+At the door the Pole would turn, and look back, with the wistfully
+animal look of the Under Dog.
+
+"Those cheeldren, they make to get you the leetle bug. You mebbe like
+that, Meester, yes? They make to get you plenty much bug, those
+cheeldren. We _all_ make to get you the bug, Meester, thank you."
+
+"That's mighty nice of you folks." Then one felt the note in the quiet
+voice which explained his hold upon people.
+
+"Hell, no. We _like_ to do that for you, Meester. Thank you." And
+closing the door gently after him, he would slink off.
+
+"They don't need to be so allfired grateful," said John Flint frankly.
+"Parson, I'm the guy to be grateful. I got a whole heap more out of
+that shindy than a black eye and a pretty mouth. I was bluemolding for
+a man-tussle, and that scrap set me up again. You see--I wasn't sure
+of myself any more, and it was souring on my stomach. Now I know I
+haven't lost out, I feel like a white man. Yep, it gives a fellow the
+holiday-heart to be dead sure he's plenty able to use his fists if
+he's got to. Westmoreland's right about that."
+
+I was discreetly silent. God forgive me, in my heart I also was most
+sinfully glad my Butterfly Man could and would use his fists when he
+had to. I do not believe in peace at any price. I know very well that
+wrong must be conquered before right can prevail. But I shouldn't have
+been so set up!
+
+"Here," said he one morning. "Ask Madame to give this to Jan's wife.
+And say, beg her for heaven's sake to buy some salve for her eyelids,
+will you?" "This" was a small roll of bills. "I owe it to Jan," he
+explained, with his twistiest smile.
+
+Westmoreland's skill removed all outward marks of the fray, and the
+Butterfly Man went his usual way; but although he had laid at rest one
+cruel doubt, he was still in deep waters. Because of his stress his
+clothes had begun to hang loosely upon him.
+
+Now the naturalist who knows anything at all of those deep mysterious
+well-springs underlying his great profession, understands that he is a
+'prentice hand learning his trade in the workshop of the Almighty;
+wherein "_the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world
+are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made_." As
+Paul on a time reminded the Romans.
+
+Wherefore I who had learned somewhat from the Little Peoples now
+applied what they had taught me, and when I saw my man grow restless,
+move about aimlessly, withdraw into himself and become as one blind
+and dumb and unhearing, I understood he was facing a change, making
+ready to project himself into some larger phase of existence as yet in
+the womb of the future. So I did not question what wind drove him
+forth before it like a lost leaf. The loving silent companionship of
+red Kerry, the friendly faces of young children to whom he was kind,
+the eyes of poor men and women looking to him for help, these were
+better for him now than I.
+
+But my mother was not a naturalist, and she was provoked with John
+Flint. He ate irregularly, he slept as it pleased God. He was "running
+wild" again. This displeased her, particularly as Appleboro had at her
+instigation included Mr. John Flint in its most exclusive list, and
+there were invitations she was determined he should accept. She had
+put her hand to the social plow in his behalf, and she had no faintest
+notion of withdrawing it. Once fairly aroused, Madame had that
+able-bodied will heaven seems to have lavished so plenteously upon
+small women: In recompense, I dare say, for lack of size.
+
+Therefore Mr. Flint duteously appeared at intervals among the elect,
+and appeared even to advantage. And my mother remarked, complacently,
+that blood will tell: he had the air! He was not expected to dance,
+but he was a superb cardplayer. He never told jokes, and so avoided
+deadly repetition. He had in a large measure that virtue the Chinese
+extol--the virtue of allowing others to save their faces in peace. Was
+it any wonder Mr. Flint's social position was soon solidly
+established?
+
+He played the game as my mother forced it upon him, though at times, I
+think, it bored and chafed him sorely. What chafed him even more
+sorely was the unprecedented interest many young ladies--and some old
+enough to know better--suddenly evinced in entomology.
+
+Mr. Flint almost overnight developed a savage cunning in eluding the
+seekers of entomological lore. One might suppose a single man would
+rejoice to see his drab workroom swarm with these brightly-colored
+fluttering human butterflies; he bore their visits as visitations,
+displaying the chastened resignation Job probably showed toward the
+latest ultra-sized carbuncle.
+
+"Cheer up!" urged Laurence, who was watching this turn of affairs with
+unfeeling mirth. "The worst is yet to come. These are only the
+chickens: wait until the hens get on your trail!"
+
+"Mr. Flint," said Mary Virginia one afternoon, rubbing salt into his
+smarting wounds, "Mr. Flint, I am so glad all the girls like you so
+much. You fascinate them. They say you are such a profoundly clever
+and interesting man, Mr. Flint! Why, some of those girls are perfectly
+demented about you!"
+
+"Demented," said he, darkly, "is the right word for them when it comes
+down to fussing about _me_." Now Laurence had just caught him in his
+rooms, and, declaring that he looked overworked and pale, had dragged
+him forcibly outside on the porch, where we were now sitting. Mary
+Virginia, in a white skirt, sport coat, and a white felt hat which
+made her entrancingly pretty, had been visiting my mother and now
+strolled over to John Flint's, after her old fashion.
+
+"I feel like making the greatest sort of a fuss about you myself," she
+said honestly. "Anyhow, I'm mighty glad girls like you. It's a good
+sign."
+
+"If they do--though God knows I can't see why--I'm obliged to them,
+seeing it pleases _you_!" said Flint, without, however, showing much
+gratitude in eyes or voice. "To tell you the truth, it looks to me at
+times as if they were wished on me."
+
+Mary Virginia tried to look horrified, and giggled instead.
+
+"If I could only make any of them understand anything!" said the
+Butterfly Man desperately, "but I can't. If only they really wanted to
+know, I'd be more than glad to teach them. But they don't. I show them
+and show them and tell them and tell them, over and over and over
+again, and the same thing five minutes later, and they haven't even
+listened! They don't care. What do they take up my time and say they
+like my butterflies for, when they don't like them at all and don't
+want to know anything about them? That's what gets me!"
+
+Laurence winked at Mary Virginia, shamelessly.
+
+"Bugs!" said he, inelegantly. "That's what's intended to get you, you
+old duffer!"
+
+"Mr. Flint," said Mary Virginia, with dancing eyes. "I don't blame
+those girls one single solitary bit for wanting to know all
+about--butterflies."
+
+"But they don't want to know, I tell you!" Mr. Flint's voice rose
+querulously.
+
+"My dear creature, I'd be stuck on you myself if I were a girl," said
+Laurence sweetly. "Padre, prepare yourself to say, 'Bless you, my
+children!' I see this innocent's finish." And he began to sing, in a
+lackadaisical manner, through his nose:
+
+    "Now you're married you must obey,
+     You must be true to all you say,
+     Live together all your life--"
+
+No answering smile came to John Flint's lips. He made no reply to the
+light banter, but stiffened, and stared ahead of him with a set face
+and eyes into which crept an expression of anguish. Mary Virginia,
+with a quick glance, laid her hand on his arm.
+
+"Don't mind Laurence and me, we're a pair of sillies. You and the
+Padre are too good to put up with us the way you do," she said,
+coaxingly. "And--we girls do like you, Mr. Flint, whether we're wished
+on you or not."
+
+That seductive "we" in that golden voice routed him, horse and foot.
+He looked at the small hand on his arm, and his glance went swiftly to
+the sweet and innocent eyes looking at him with such frank
+friendliness.
+
+"It's better than I deserve," he said, gently enough. "And it isn't
+I'm not grateful to the rest of them for liking me,--if they do. It's
+that I want to box their ears when they pretend to like my insects,
+and don't."
+
+"Being a gentleman has its drawbacks," said I, tentatively.
+
+"Believe _me_!" he spoke with great feeling. "It's nothing short of
+doing a life-stretch!"
+
+The boy and girl laughed gaily. When he spoke thus it added to his
+unique charm. So profoundly were they impressed with what he had
+become, that even what he had been, as they remembered it, increased
+their respect and affection. That past formed for him a somber
+background, full of half-lights and shadows, against which he stood
+out with the revealing intensity of a Rembrandt portrait.
+
+"What I came over to tell you, is that Madame says you're to stay home
+this evening, Mr. Flint," said Mary Virginia, comfortably. "I'm
+spending the night with Madame, you're to know, and we're planning a
+nice folksy informal sort of a time; and you're to be home."
+
+"Orders from headquarters," commented Laurence.
+
+"All right," agreed the Butterfly Man, briefly.
+
+Mary Virginia shook out her white skirts, and patted her black hair
+into even more distractingly pretty disorder.
+
+"I've got to get back to the office--mean case I'm working on,"
+complained Laurence. "Mary Virginia, walk a little way with me, won't
+you? Do, child! It will sweeten all my afternoon and make my work
+easier."
+
+"You haven't grown up a bit--thank goodness!" said Mary Virginia. But
+she went with him.
+
+The Butterfly Man looked after them speculatively.
+
+"Mrs. Eustis," he remarked, "is an ambitious sort of a lady, isn't
+she? Thinks in millions for her daughter, expects her to make a great
+match and all that. Miss Sally Ruth told me she'd heard Mrs. Eustis
+tried once or twice to pull off a match to suit herself, but Miss Mary
+Virginia wouldn't stand for it."
+
+"Why, naturally, Mrs. Eustis would like to see the child well settled
+in life," said I.
+
+"Oh, you don't have to be a Christian _all_ the time," said he calmly.
+"I know Mrs. Eustis, too. She talked to me for an hour and a half
+without stopping, one night last week. See here, parson: Inglesby's
+got a roll that outweighs his record. Suppose he wants to settle down
+and reform--with a young wife to help him do it--wouldn't it be a real
+Christian job to lady's-aid him?"
+
+I eyed him askance.
+
+"Now there's Laurence," went on the Butterfly Man, speculatively.
+"Laurence is making plenty of trouble, but not so much money. No, Mrs.
+Eustis wouldn't faint at the notion of Inglesby, but she'd keel over
+like a perfect lady at the bare thought of Laurence."
+
+"I don't see," said I, crossly, "why she should be called upon to
+faint for either of them. Inglesby's--Inglesby. That makes him
+impossible. As for the boy, why, he rocked that child in her cradle."
+
+"That didn't keep either of them from growing up a man and a woman.
+Looks to me as if they were beginning to find it out, parson."
+
+I considered his idea, and found it so eminently right, proper, and
+beautiful, that I smiled over it. "It would be ideal," I admitted.
+
+"Her mother wouldn't agree with you, though her father might," he said
+dryly. And he asked:
+
+"Ever had a hunch?"
+
+"A presentiment, you mean?"
+
+"No; a hunch. Well, I've got one. I've got a hunch there's trouble
+ahead for that girl."
+
+This seemed so improbable, in the light of her fortunate days, that I
+smiled cheerfully.
+
+"Well, if there should be,--here are you and I to stand by."
+
+"Sure," said he, laconically, "that's all we're here for--to stand
+by."
+
+Although it was January, the weather was again springlike. All day the
+air was like a golden wine, drenched in a golden sun. All day in the
+cedars' dark and vivid green the little wax-wings flew in and out, and
+everywhere the blackberry bramble that "would grace the parlors of
+heaven" was unfolding its crisp red leaves and white buds; and all the
+roads and woods were gay with the scarlet berries of the casida, which
+the robins love. And the nights were clear and still and starry,
+nights of a beauty so vital one sensed it as something alive.
+
+Because Mary Virginia was to spend that night at the Parish House,
+Mrs. Eustis having been called away and the house for once free of
+guests, my mother had seized the occasion to call about her the youth
+in which her soul delighted. To-night she was as rosy and bright-eyed
+as any one of her girl-friends. She beamed when she saw the old rooms
+alive and alight with fresh and laughing faces and blithe figures.
+There was Laurence, with that note in his voice, that light in his
+eyes, that glow and glory upon him, which youth alone knows; and
+Dabney, with his black hair, as usual, on end, and his intelligent
+eyes twinkling behind his glasses; and Claire Dexter, colored like a
+pearl set in a cluster of laughing girls; and Mary Virginia, all in
+white, so beautiful that she brought a mist to the eyes that watched
+her. All the other gay and charming figures seemed but attendants for
+this supremer loveliness, snow-white, rose-red, ebony-black, like the
+queen's child in the fairy-tale.
+
+The Butterfly Man had obediently put in his appearance. With the
+effect which a really strong character produces, he was like an
+insistent deep undernote that dominates and gives meaning to a lighter
+and merrier melody. All this bright life surged, never away from, but
+always toward and around him. Youth claimed him, shared itself with
+him, gave him lavishly of its best, because he fascinated and ensnared
+its fresh imagination. Though he should live to be a thousand it would
+ever pay homage to some nameless magic quality of spirit which was
+his.
+
+"Are you writing something new? Have you found another butterfly?"
+asked the young things, full of interest and respect.
+
+Well, he _had_ promised a certain paper by a certain time, though what
+people could find to like so much in what he had to say about his
+insects--
+
+"Because," said Dabney, "you create in us a new feeling for them.
+They're living things with a right to their lives, and you show us
+what wonderful little lives most of them are. You bring them close to
+us in a way that doesn't disgust us. I guess, Butterfly Man, the truth
+is you've found a new way of preaching the old gospel of One Father
+and one life; and the common sense of common folks understands what
+you mean, thanks you for it, likes you for it, and--asks you to tell
+us some more."
+
+"Whenever a real teacher appears, always the common people hear him
+gladly," said I, reflectively.
+
+"Only," said Mary Virginia, quickly, "when the teacher himself is just
+as uncommon as he can be, Padre." She smiled at John Flint with a
+sincerity that honored him.
+
+He stood abashed and silent before this naive appreciation. It was at
+once his greatest happiness and his deepest pain--that open admiration
+of these clean-souled youngsters.
+
+When he had gone, I too slipped away, for the still white night
+outside called me. I went around to that favorite retreat of mine, the
+battered seat shut in among spireas and syringas. I like to say my
+rosary out of doors. The beads slipping through my fingers soothed me
+with their monotonous insistent petition. Prayer brought me closer to
+the heart of the soft and shining night, and the big still stars.
+
+     _They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; yea, all of them
+     shall wax old as a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change
+     them, and they shall be changed; but thou art the same and
+     thy years shall have no end_.
+
+The surety of the beautiful words brought the great overshadowing
+Presence near me. And I fell into a half-revery, in which the
+hailmarys wove themselves in and out, like threads in a pattern.
+
+Dreamily enough, I heard the youthful guests depart, in a gale of
+laughter and flute-like goodnights. And I noted, too, that no light as
+yet shone in the Butterfly Man's rooms. Well--he would hurl himself
+into the work to-morrow, probably, and clear it up in an hour or two.
+He was like that.
+
+My retreat was just off the path, and near the little gate between our
+grounds and Judge Mayne's. Thus, though I was completely hidden by the
+screening bushes and the shadow of the holly tree as well, I could
+plainly see the two who presently came down the bright open path. Of
+late it had given me a curious sense of comfort to see Laurence with
+Mary Virginia, and, I reflected, he had been her shadow recently. I
+liked that. His strength seemed to shield her from Hunter's ambiguous
+smile, from Inglesby's thoughts, even from her own mother's ambition.
+
+I could see my girl's dear dark head outlined with a circle of
+moonlight as with a halo, and it barely reached my tall boy's
+shoulder. Her hand lay lightly on his arm, and he bent toward her,
+bringing his close-cropped brown head nearer hers. I couldn't have
+risen or spoken then, without interrupting them. I merely glanced out
+at them, smilingly, with my rosary in my finger.
+
+I reached the end of a decade: "_As it was in the beginning, is now,
+and ever shall be_--"
+
+They stopped at the gate, and fell silent for a space, the girl with
+her darling face uplifted. The fleecy wrap she wore fell about her
+slim shoulders in long lines, glinting with silver. She did not give
+the effect of remoteness, but of being near and dear and desirable and
+beautiful. The boy, looking upon her with his heart in his eyes, drew
+nearer.
+
+"Mary Virginia," said he, eagerly and huskily and passionately and
+timidly and hopefully and despairingly, "Mary Virginia, are you going
+to marry anybody?"
+
+Mary Virginia came back from the stars in the night sky to the stars
+in the young man's eyes. "Why, yes, I hope I am," said she lightly
+enough, but one saw she had been startled. "What a funny boy you are,
+Laurence, to be sure! You don't expect me to remain a spinster, do
+you?"
+
+"You are going to be married?" This time despair was uppermost.
+
+"I most certainly am!" said Mary Virginia stoutly. "Why, I confided
+_that_ to you years and years and years ago! Don't you remember I
+always insisted he should have golden hair, and sea-blue eyes, and a
+classic brow, and a beautiful willingness to go away somewhere and die
+of a broken heart if I ordered him to?"
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"Who is who?" she parried provokingly.
+
+"The chap you're going to marry?"
+
+Mary Virginia appeared to reflect deeply and anxiously. She put out a
+foot, with the eternal feminine gesture, and dug a neat little hole in
+the graveled walk with her satin toe.
+
+"Laurence," said she. "I'm going to tell you the truth. The truth is,
+Laurence, that I simply hate to have to tell you the truth."
+
+"Mary Virginia!" he stammered wretchedly. "You hate to have to tell
+_me_ the truth? Oh, my dear, why? Why?"
+
+"Because."
+
+"But because why?"
+
+"Because," said the dear hussy, demurely, "I don't know."
+
+Laurence's arms fell to his sides, helplessly; he craned his neck and
+stared.
+
+"Mary Virginia!" said he, in a breathless whisper.
+
+Mary Virginia nodded. "It's really none of your business, you know,"
+she explained sweetly; "but as you've asked me, why, I'll tell you.
+That same question plagues and fascinates me, too, Laurence. Why, just
+consider! Here's a whole big, big world full of men--tall men, short
+men, lean men, fat men, silly men, wise men, ugly men, handsome men,
+sad men, glad men, good men, bad men, rich men, poor men,--oh, all
+sorts and kinds and conditions and complexions of men: any one of whom
+I might wake up some day and find myself married to: and I don't know
+which one! It delights and terrifies and fascinates and amuses and
+puzzles me when I begin to think about it. Here I've got to marry
+Somebody and I don't know any more than Adam's housecat who and where
+that Somebody is, and he might pop from around the corner at me, any
+minute! It makes the thing so much more interesting, so much more like
+a big risky game of guess, when you don't know, don't you think?"
+
+"No: it makes you miserable," said Laurence, briefly.
+
+"But I'm not miserable at all!"
+
+"You're not, because you don't have to be. But I am!"
+
+"You? Why, Laurence! Why should _you_ be miserable?" Her voice lost
+its blithe lightness; it was a little faint. She said hastily, without
+waiting for his reply: "I guess I'd better run in. It was silly of me
+to walk to the gate with you at this hour. I think Madame's calling
+me. Goodnight, Laurence."
+
+"No, you don't," said he. "And it wasn't silly of you to come, either;
+it was dear and delightful, and I prayed the Lord to put the notion
+into your darling head, and He did it. And now you're here you don't
+budge from this spot until you've heard what I've got to say.
+
+"Mary Virginia, I reckon you're just about the most beautiful girl in
+the world. You've been run after and courted and flattered and
+followed until it was enough to turn any girl's head, and it would
+have turned any girl's head but yours. You could say to almost any man
+alive, Come, and he'd come--oh, yes, he'd come quick. You've got the
+earth to pick and choose from--but I'm asking you to pick and choose
+_me_. I haven't got as much to offer you as I shall have some of these
+days, but I've got me myself, body and brain and heart and soul,
+sound to the core, and all of me yours, and I think that counts most,
+if you care as I do. Mary Virginia, will you marry me?"
+
+"Oh, but, Laurence! Why--Laurence--I--indeed, I didn't know--I didn't
+think--" stammered the girl. "At least, I didn't dream you cared--like
+that."
+
+"Didn't you? Well, all I can say is, you've been mighty blind, then.
+For I do care. I guess I've always cared like that, only, somehow,
+it's taken this one short winter to drive home what I'd been learning
+all my life?" said he, soberly. "I reckon I've been just like other
+fool-boys, Mary Virginia. That is, I spooned a bit around every good
+looking girl I ran up against, but I soon found out it wasn't the real
+thing, and I quit. Something in me knew all along I belonged to
+somebody else. To you. I believe now--Mary Virginia, I believe with
+all my heart--that I cared for you when you were squalling in your
+cradle."
+
+"Oh! ... Did I squall, really?"
+
+"_Squall?_ Sometimes it was tummy and sometimes it was temper. Between
+them you yelled like a Comanche," said this astonishing lover.
+
+Mary Virginia tilted her head back, adorably.
+
+"It was very, very noble of you to mind me--under the circumstances,"
+she conceded, graciously.
+
+"Believe me, it was," agreed Laurence. "I didn't know it, of course,
+but even at that tender age my fate was upon me, for I _liked_ to mind
+you. Even the bawling didn't daunt me, and I adored you when you
+resembled a squab. Yes, I was in love with you then. I'm in love with
+you now. My girl, my own girl, I'll go out of this world and into the
+next one loving you."
+
+"Then why," she asked reproachfully, "haven't you said so?"
+
+"Why haven't I said what?"
+
+"Why, you know. That you--loved me, Laurence." Her rich voice had sunk
+to a whisper.
+
+"Good Lord, haven't I been saying it?"
+
+"No, you haven't! You've been merely asking me to marry you. But you
+haven't said a word about loving me, until this very minute!"
+
+"But you must know perfectly well that I'm crazy about you, Mary
+Virginia!" said the boy, and his voice trembled with bewilderment as
+well as passion. "How in heaven's name could I help being crazy about
+you? Why, from the beginning of things, there's never been anybody
+else, but just you. I never even pretended to care for anybody else.
+No, there's nobody but you. Not for me. You're everything and all,
+where I'm concerned. And--please, please look up, beautiful, and tell
+me the truth: look at me, Mary Virginia!"
+
+The white-clad figure moved a hair's breadth nearer; the uplifted
+lovely face was very close.
+
+"Do I really mean that to you, Laurence? All that, really and truly?"
+she asked, wistfully.
+
+"Yes! And more. And more!"
+
+"I'll be the unhappiest girl in the world: I'll be the most miserable
+woman alive--if you ever change your mind, Laurence," said she.
+
+There was a quivering pause. Then:
+
+"You care?" asked the boy, almost breathlessly. "Mary Virginia, you
+care?" He laid his hands upon her shoulders and bent to search the
+alluring face.
+
+"Laurence!" said Mary Virginia, with a tremulous, half-tearful laugh,
+"Laurence, it's taken this one short winter to teach me, too. And--you
+were mistaken, utterly mistaken about those symptoms of mine. It
+wasn't tummy, Laurence. And it wasn't temper. I think--I am sure--that
+what I was trying so hard to squall to you in my cradle was--that I
+cared, Laurence."
+
+The young man's arms closed about her, and I saw the young mouths
+meet. I saw more than that: I saw other figures steal out into the
+moonlight and stand thus entwined, and one was the ghost of what once
+was I. That other, lost Armand De Rance, looked at me wistfully with
+his clear eyes; and I was very, very sorry for him, as one may be
+poignantly sorry for the innocent, beautiful dead. My hand tightened
+on my beads, and the feel of my cassock upon me, as a uniform,
+steadied and sustained me.
+
+Those two had drawn back a little into the shadows as if the night had
+reached out its arms to them. Such a night belonged to such as these;
+they invest it, lend it meaning, give it intelligible speech. As for
+me, I was an old priest in an old cassock, with all his fond and
+foolish old heart melting in his breast. Youth alone is eternal and
+immortal. And as for love, it is of God.
+
+"_As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without
+end, Amen_." I had finished the decade. And then as one awakes from a
+trance I rose softly and as softly crept back to the Parish House,
+happy and at peace, because I had seen that which makes the morning
+stars rejoice when they sing together.
+
+"Armand," said my mother, sleepily, "is that you, dear? I must have
+been nodding in my chair. Mary Virginia's just walked to the gate with
+Laurence."
+
+"My goodness," said she, half an hour later. "What on earth can that
+child mean? Hadn't you better call her in, Armand?"
+
+"No," said I, decidedly.
+
+Laurence brought her back presently. There must have been something
+electrical in the atmosphere, for my mother of a sudden sat bolt
+upright in her chair. Women are like that. That is one of the reasons
+why men are so afraid of them.
+
+"Padre, and p'tite Madame," began Laurence, "you've been like a father
+and mother to me--and--and--"
+
+"And we thought you ought to know," said Mary Virginia.
+
+"My children!" cried my mother, ecstatically, "it is the wish of my
+heart! Always have I prayed our good God to let this happen--and you
+see?"
+
+"But it's a great secret: it's not to be _breathed_, yet," said Mary
+Virginia.
+
+"Except, of course, my father--" began Laurence.
+
+"And the Butterfly Man," I added, firmly. Well knowing none of us
+could keep such news from _him_.
+
+"As for me," said my mother, gloriously reckless, "I shall open one of
+the two bottles of our great-grandfather's wine!" The last time that
+wine had been opened was the day I was ordained. "Armand, go and bring
+John Flint."
+
+When I reached his rooms Kerry was whining over a huddled form on the
+porch steps. John Flint lay prone, his arms outstretched, horribly
+suggestive of one crucified. At my step he struggled upright. I had my
+arms about him in another moment.
+
+"Are you hurt? sick? John, John, my son, what is it? What is it?"
+
+"No, no, I'm all right. I--was just a little shaky for the minute.
+There, there, don't you be scared, father." But his voice shook, and
+the hand I held was icy cold.
+
+"My son, my dear son, what is wrong with you?"
+
+He controlled himself with a great effort. "Oh, I've been a little off
+my feed of late, father, that's all. See, I'm perfectly all right,
+now." And he squared his shoulders and tried to speak in his natural
+voice.
+
+"My mother wanted you to come over for a few minutes, there's
+something you're to know. But if you don't feel well enough--"
+
+He seemed to brace himself. "Maybe I know it already. However, I'm
+quite able to walk over and hear--anything I'm to be told," he said,
+composedly.
+
+In the lighted parlor his face showed up pale and worn, and his eyes
+hollow. But his smile was ready, his voice steady, and the hand which
+received the wine Mary Virginia herself brought him, did not tremble.
+
+"It is to our great, great happiness we wish you to drink, old
+friend," said Laurence. Intoxicated with his new joy, glowing,
+shining, the boy was magnificent.
+
+The Butterfly Man turned and looked at him; steadily, deliberately, a
+long, searching, critical look, as if measuring him by a new standard.
+Laurence stood the test. Then the man's eyes came back to the girl,
+rose-colored, radiant, star-eyed, and lingered upon her. He arose, and
+held up the glass in which our old wine seemed to leap upward in
+little amber-colored flames.
+
+"You'll understand," said the Butterfly Man, "that I haven't the
+words handy to my tongue to say what's in my heart. I reckon I'd have
+to be God for awhile, to make all I wish for you two come true." There
+was in look and tone and manner something so sweet and reverent that
+we were touched and astonished.
+
+When my mother had peremptorily sent Laurence home to the judge, and
+carried Mary Virginia off to talk the rest of the night through, I
+went back to his rooms with John Flint, in spite of the lateness of
+the hour: for I was uneasy about him.
+
+I think my nearness soothed him. For with that boyish diffident
+gesture of his he reached over presently and held me by the sleeve.
+
+"Parson," he asked, abruptly, "is a man born with a whole soul, or
+just a sort of shut-up seed of one? Is one given him free, or has he
+got to earn and pay for one before he gets it, parson? I want to
+know."
+
+"We all want to know that, John Flint. And the West says Yes, and the
+East, No."
+
+"I've been reading a bit," said he, slowly and thoughtfully. "I wanted
+to hear what both sides had to say. Paul is pretty plain, on his side
+of the fence. But, parson, some chaps that talk as if they knew quite
+as much as Paul does, say you don't get anything in this universe for
+nothing; you have to pay for what you get. As near as I can figure it
+out, you land here with a chance to earn yourself. You can quit or you
+can go on--it's all up to you. If you're a sport and play the game
+straight, why, you stand to win yourself a water-tight fire-proof
+soul. Because, you see, you've earned and paid for it, parson. That
+sounded like good sense to me. Looked to me as if I was sort of doing
+it myself. But when I began to go deeper into the thing, why, I got
+stuck. For I can't deny I'd been doing it more because I had to than
+because I wanted to. But--which-ever way it is, I'm paying! Oh, yes,
+I'm paying!"
+
+"Ah, but so is everybody else, my son," said I, sadly. "... each in
+his own coin. ... But after all isn't oneself worth while, whatever
+the cost?"
+
+"I don't know," said he. "That's where I'm stuck. Is the whole show a
+skin game or is it worth while? But, parson, whatever it is, you pay a
+hell of a price when you buy yourself on the instalment plan, believe
+me!" his voice broke, as if on a suppressed groan. "If I could get it
+over and done with, pay for my damned little soul in one big gob, I
+wouldn't mind. But to have to buy what I'm buying, to have to pay what
+I'm paying--"
+
+"You are ill," said I, deeply concerned. "I was afraid of this."
+
+He laughed, more like a croak.
+
+"Sure I'm sick. I'm sick to the core of me, but you and Westmoreland
+can't dose me. Nobody can do anything for me, I have to do it myself
+or go under. That's part of paying on the instalment plan, too,
+parson."
+
+"I don't think I exactly understand--"
+
+"No, you wouldn't. _You_ paid in a lump sum, you see. And you got what
+you got. Whatever it was that got _you_, parson, got the best of the
+bargain." His voice softened.
+
+"You are talking in parables," said I, severely.
+
+"But I'm not paying in parables, parson. I'm paying in _me_," said he,
+grimly. And he laughed again, a laugh of sheer stark misery that
+raised a chill echo in my heart. His hand crept back to my sleeve.
+
+"I--can't always can the squeal," he whispered.
+
+"If only I could help you!" I grieved.
+
+"You do," said he, quickly. "You do, by being you. I hang on to you,
+parson. And say, look here! Don't you think I'm such a hog I can't
+find time to be glad other folks are happy even if I'm not. If there's
+one thing that could make me feel any sort of way good, it's to know
+those two who were made for each other have found it out. It sort of
+makes it look as if some things do come right, even if others are
+rotten wrong. I'm glad till it hurts me. I'd like you to believe
+that."
+
+"I do believe it. And, my son! if you can find time to be glad of
+others' happiness, without envy, why, you're bound to come right,
+because you're sound at the core."
+
+"You reckon I'm worth my price, then, parson?"
+
+"I reckon you're worth your price, whatever it is. I don't worry about
+you, John Flint."
+
+And somehow, I did not. I left him with Kerry's head on his knee. His
+hand was humanly warm again, and the voice in which he told me
+goodnight was bravely steady. He sat erect in his doorway, fronting
+the night like a soldier on guard. If he were buying his soul on the
+instalment plan I was sure he would be able to meet the payments,
+whatever they were, as they fell due.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE WISHING CURL
+
+
+With February the cold that the Butterfly Man had wished for came with
+a vengeance. The sky lost its bright blue friendliness and changed
+into a menacing gray, the gray of stormy water. Overnight the flowers
+vanished, leaving our gardens stripped and bare, and our birds that
+had been so gay were now but sorry shivering balls of ruffled
+feathers, with no song left in them. When rain came the water froze in
+the wagon-ruts, and ice-covered puddles made street-corners dangerous.
+
+This intense cold, damp, heavy, penetrating, coming upon the heels of
+the unseasonably warm weather, seemed to bring to a head all the
+latent sickness smoldering in the mill-parish, for it suddenly burst
+forth like a conflagration. If the Civic League had not already done
+so much to better conditions in the poorer district, we must have had
+a very serious epidemic, as Dr. Westmoreland bluntly told the Town
+Council.
+
+As it was, things were pretty bad for awhile, and the inevitable white
+hearse moved up and down, stopping now at this door, now at that. In
+one narrow street, I remember, it moved in the exact shape of a figure
+eight within the week. I do not like to recall those days. I buried
+the children with the seal of Holy Mother Church upon their innocence;
+I repeated over them "The Lord hath given, the Lord hath taken
+away"--and knew in my heart that it was man-made want, the greed of
+money-madness, that had taken them untimely out of their mothers'
+laps. And the earth was like iron; it opened unwillingly to receive
+the babes of the poor.
+
+In and out of stricken mill-houses and shabby shacks, as regularly as
+Westmoreland and I, whose business and duty lay there, came John
+Flint. He made no effort to comfort parents, although these seemed to
+derive a curious consolation from his presence. He did not even come
+because he wanted to; he came because the children begged to see the
+Butterfly Man and one may not refuse a sick child. He had made friends
+with them, made toys for them; and now he saw dull eyes brighten at
+his approach and pale faces try to smile; languid and fever-hot hands
+were held out to him. All the force of the affection of young
+children, their dazzling faith, the almost unthinkable power upon
+their plastic minds of those whom they trust, came home to him. He
+could not, in such an hour, accept lightly, with a careless smile, the
+fact that children loved him. And once or twice a small hand that
+clung to him grew cold in his clasp, and under his eyes a child's
+closed to this world.
+
+Now, something that saw straight, thought like a naked sword-blade,
+ate like a testing acid into shams and hated evasions and half-truths
+and subterfuges, had of late been showing more and more behind John
+Flint's reserve; and I think it might have hardened into a mentality
+cold and bright and barren, hard and cutting as a diamond, had it not
+been for the children whom he had to see suffer and die.
+
+There was one child of whom he was particularly fond--a child with
+the fairest of fair hair, deep and sweet blue eyes, and the quickest,
+shyest, most fleeting of smiles to lighten flashingly her small pale
+serious face. She had been one of the first of the mill folks'
+children to make friends with the Butterfly Man. She used to watch for
+him, and then, holding on to one of his fingers, she liked to trot
+sedately down the street beside him.
+
+This child's going was sudden and rather painful. Westmoreland did
+what he could, but there was no stamina in that frail body, so her's
+had been one of the small hands to fall limp and still out of John
+Flint's. The doll he had made for her lay in the crook of her arm; it
+had on a red calico dress, very garish in the gray room, and against
+the child's whiteness.
+
+Westmoreland stood, big and compassionate, at the foot of the bed. His
+ruddy face showed wan and behind his glasses his gray tired eyes
+winked and blinked.
+
+"There must be," said the Doctor, as if to himself, "some eternal vast
+reservoir somewhere, that stores up all this terrible total of
+unnecessary suffering--the cruel and needless suffering inflicted upon
+children and animals, in particular. Perhaps it's a spiritual serum
+used for the saving of the race. Perhaps races higher up than we use
+it--as _we_ use rabbits and guinea-pigs. No, no, nothing's wasted;
+there's a forward end to pain, somewhere." He looked down at the child
+and shook his head doubtfully:
+
+"But when all is said and done," he muttered, "what do such as these
+get out of it? Nothing--so far as we can see. They're victims, they
+and the innocent beasts, thrust into a world which tortures and
+devours them. Why? Why? Why?"
+
+"There is nothing to do but leave that everlasting Why to God," said
+I, painfully.
+
+The Butterfly Man looked up and one saw that cold sword-straight,
+diamond-hard something in his eyes:
+
+"Parson," said he, grimly, "you're a million miles off the right
+track--and you know it. Leaving things to God--things like poor kids
+dying because they're gouged out of their right to live--is just about
+as rotten stupid and wrong as it can well be. God's all right; he does
+his part of the job. You do yours, and what happens? Why, my
+butterflies answer that! I'm punk on your catechism, and if _this_ is
+all it can teach I hope I die punk on it; but as near as I can make
+out, original sin is leaving things like this"--and he looked at his
+small friend with her doll on her arm--"to God, instead of tackling
+the job yourself and straightening it out."
+
+The child's mother, a gaunt creature without a trace of youth left in
+her, although she could not have been much more than thirty, shambled
+over to a chair on the other side of the bed. She wore a faded red
+calico wrapper--a scrap of it had made the doll's frock--and a
+blue-checked apron with holes in it. Her hair was drawn painfully back
+from her forehead, and there was a wispy fringe of it on the back of
+her scraggy neck. In her dull eyes glimmered nothing but the innate
+uneasiness of those who are always in need, and her mouth had drawn
+itself into the shape of a horseshoe. There is no luck in a horseshoe
+hung thus on a woman's face. One might fancy she felt no emotion, her
+whole demeanor was so apathetic; but of a sudden she leaned over and
+took up one of the thick shining curls; half smiling, she began to
+wrap it about her finger.
+
+"I useter be right smart proud o' Louisa's hair," she remarked in a
+drawling, listless voice. "She come by it from them uppidy folks o'
+her pa's. I've saw her when she wasn't much more 'n hair an' eyes,
+times her pa was laid up with the misery in his chest, an' me with
+nothin' but piecework weeks on end.
+
+"... She was a cu'rus kind o' child, Louisa was. She sort o'
+'spicioned things wasn't right, but you think that child ever let a
+squeal out o' her? Not her! Lemme tell you-all somethin', jest to show
+what kind o' a heart that child had, suhs."
+
+With a loving and mothering motion she moved the bright curl about and
+about her hard finger. She spoke half intimately, half garrulously;
+and from the curl she would lift her faded eyes to the Butterfly
+Man's.
+
+"'T was a Sarrerday night, an' I was a-walkin' up an' down, account o'
+me bein' awful low in the mind.
+
+"'Ma,' says Louisa, 'I'm reel hungry to-night. You reckon I could have
+a piece o' bread with butter on it? I wisht I could taste some bread
+with butter on it,' says she.
+
+"'Darlin',' says I, turrible sad, 'Po' ma c'n give yo' the naked bread
+an' thanks to God I got even that to give,' I says. 'But they ain't a
+scrap o' butter in this house, an' no knowin' how to git any. Oh,
+darlin', ma's so sorry!'
+
+"She looks up with that quick smile o' her'n. Yes, suh, Mr. Flint, she
+ups and smiles. 'You don't belong to be sorry any, ma,' says she,
+comfortin'. 'Don't you mind none at all. Why, ma, darlin', _I just
+love naked bread without no butter on it_!' says she. My God, Mr.
+Flint, I bust out a-cryin' in her face. Seemed like I natchelly
+couldn't stand no mo'!" And smiling vaguely with her poor old
+down-curved mouth, she went on fingering the curl.
+
+"Will you-all look a' that!" she murmured, with pride. "Even her
+hair's lovin', an' sort o' holds on like it wants you should touch it.
+My Lord o' glory, I'm glad her pa ain't livin' to see this day! He had
+his share o' misery, po' man, him dyin' o' lung-fever an' all....
+
+"Six head o' young ones we'd had, me an' him. An' they'd all dropped
+off. Come spring, an' one'd be gone. I kep' a-comfortin' that man best
+I could they was better off, angels not bein' pindlin' an' hungry an'
+barefoot, an' thanks be, they ain't no mills in heaven. But their pa
+he couldn't see it thataway nohow. He was turrible sot on them
+children, like us pore folks gen'rally is. They was reel fine-lookin'
+at first.
+
+"When all the rest of 'em had went, her pa he sort o' sot his heart on
+Louisa here. 'For we ain't got nothin' else, ma,' says he. 'An' please
+the good Lord, we're a-goin' to give this one book-learnin' an' sich,
+an' so be she'll miss them mills,' he says. 'Ma, less us aim to make a
+lady o' our Louisa. Not that the Lord ain't done it a'ready,' says her
+pa, 'but we got to he'p Him keep on an' finish the job thorough.' An'
+here's him an' her both gone, an' me without a God's soul belongin' to
+me this day! My God, Mr. Flint, ain't it something turrible the things
+happens to us pore folks?"
+
+The Butterfly Man looked from her to Westmoreland and me: doctor of
+bodies, doctor of souls, naturalist, what had we to say to this woman
+stripped of all? But she, with the greater wisdom of the poor, spoke
+for herself and for us. A sort of veiled light crept into her sodden
+face.
+
+"It ain't I ain't grateful to you-all," said she. "God knows I be. You
+was good to Louisa. Doctor, you remember that day you give her a ride
+in your ottermobile an' forgot to bring her home for more 'n a hour?
+My, but that child was happy!"
+
+"'Ma,' says she when I come home that night, 'you know what heaven
+is?'
+
+"'Child,' says I, 'folks like me mostly knows what it ain't.'
+
+"'I beat you, ma!' says she, clappin' her hands. 'Heaven ain't nothin'
+much but country an' roads an' trees an' butterflies, an' things like
+that,' says she. 'An' God's got ottermobiles, plenty an' plenty
+ottermobiles, an' you ride free in 'em long's you feel like it, 'cause
+that's what they's _for_. An', ma,' says she, 'God's, showfers is all
+of 'em Dr. Westmorelands and Mr. Flints.' Yea, suh, you-all been
+mighty kind to Louisa. But I reckon," she drawled, "it was Mr. Flint
+Louisa loved best, him bein' a childern's kind o' man, an' on account
+o' Loujaney." She laid a hand upon the rag doll lying on the little
+girl's arm.
+
+"From the first day you give her that doll, Mr. Flint--which she named
+Loujaney, for her an' me both--that child ain't been parted from it."
+She smiled down at the two. I could almost have prayed she would weep
+instead. It would have been easier to bear.
+
+"The King's Daughters, they give her a mighty nice doll off their
+Christmas tree last year, but Louisa, she didn't take to it like she
+done to Loujaney.
+
+"'_That_ doll's jest a visitin' lady,' says she, 'but Loujaney, she's
+_my child_. Mr. Flint made her a-purpose for me, same's God made me
+for you, ma, an' she's mine by bornation. I can live with Loujaney. I
+ain't a mite ashamed afore her when we ain't got nothin', but I turn
+'tother's face to the wall so she won't know. Loujaney's pore folks
+same's you an' me, an' she knows prezac'ly how 't is. That's why I
+love her so much.
+
+"An' day an' night," resumed the drawling voice, "them two's been
+together. She jest lived an' et an' slept with that doll. If ever a
+doll gits to grow feelin's, Loujaney's got 'em. I s'pose I'd best give
+that visitin' doll to some child that wants it bad, but I ain't got
+the heart to take Loujaney away from her ma. I'm a-goin' to let them
+two go right on sleepin' together.
+
+"Mr. Flint, suh, seein' Louisa liked you so much, an' it's you she'd
+want to have it--" she leaned over, pushed the thick fair hair aside,
+and laid her finger upon a very whimsy of a curl, shorter, paler,
+fairer than the others, just above the little right ear.
+
+"Her pa useter call that the wishin' curl," said she, half
+apologetically. "You see, suh, he was a comical sort of man, an' a great
+hand for pertendin' things. I never could pertend. Things is what they
+is an' pertendin' don't change 'em none. But him an' her was different.
+That's how come him to pertend the Lord'd put the rainbow's pot o' gold
+in Louisa's hair with a wish in it, an' that ridic'lous curl one side
+her head, like a mark, was the wishin' curl. He'd pertend he could pull
+it twict an' say whisperin', '_Bickery-ickery-ee--my wish is comin' to
+me_,' an' he'd git it. An' she liked to pertend 'twas so an' she could
+wish things on it for me an' git 'em.... Clo'es an' shoes an' fire an'
+cake an' beefsteak an' butter an' stayin' home.... Just pertendin', you
+see.
+
+"Mr. Flint, suh, _I_ ain't got a God's thing any more to wish for, but
+you bein' the sort o' man you are, I'd rather 'twas you had Louisa's
+wishin' curl, to remember her by." Snip! went the scissors; and there
+it lay, pale as the new gold of spring sunlight, curling as young
+grape-tendrils, in the Butterfly Man's open palm.
+
+"_Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee_," said
+the great Apostle to the lame man who lay beside the gate of the
+temple that is called, Beautiful.
+
+"I ain't got nothin' else," said the common mill-woman; and laid in
+John Flint's hand Louisa's wishing-curl.
+
+He stared at it, and turned as pale as the child on her pillow. The
+human pity of the thing, its sheer stark piercing simplicity, squeezed
+his heart as with a great hand.
+
+"My God!" he choked. "My--God!" and a rending sob tore loose from his
+throat. For the first time in his life he had to weep; uncontrolled,
+unashamed, childlike, fatherly, brotherly. For he had experienced,
+unselfishly, on account of one of the humblest of God's creatures, one
+of the great divine emotions. And when that happens to a man it is as
+if his soul were winnowed by the wind of an archangel's wings.
+
+Westmoreland and I slipped out and left him with the woman. She would
+know what further thing to say to him.
+
+Outside in the bleak bitter street, the Doctor laid his hand on my
+shoulder. He winked his eyes rapidly. "Father," said he, earnestly,
+"when I witness such a thing as we've seen this morning, I do not lose
+faith. I gain it." And he gripped me heartily with his big gloved
+hand. "Tell John Flint," he added, "that sometimes a rag doll is a
+mighty big thing for a man to have to his credit." Then he was gone,
+with a tear freezing on his cheek.
+
+"Angels," John Flint had said more than once, "are not middle-aged
+doctors with shoulders on them like a barn-door, and ribs like a dray;
+angels don't have bald heads and wear a red tie and tan shoes. But I'd
+pass them all up, from Gabriel down, wings and tailfeathers, for one
+Walter Westmoreland."
+
+I would, too. And I walked along, thinking of what I had just
+witnessed; sensing its time value. To those slight and fragile things
+which had, for John Flint, outweighed the scales of evil--a gray moth,
+a butterfly's wing, a bird's nest--I added a child's fair hair, and a
+rag doll that was going to sleep with its ma.
+
+There were but few people on the freezing streets, for folks preferred
+to stay indoors and hug the fire. Fronting the wind, I walked with a
+lowered head, and thus collided with a lady who turned a corner at the
+same time I did.
+
+"Don't apologize, Padre," said Mary Virginia, for it was she. "It was
+my fault--I wasn't looking where I was going."
+
+"Are you by any chance bound for the Parish House? Because my mother
+will be on her way to a poor thing that's just lost her only child.
+Where have you been these past weeks? I haven't seen you for ages."
+
+"Oh, I've been rather busy, too, Padre. And I haven't been quite
+well--" she hesitated. I thought I understood. For, possibly from some
+servant who had overheard Mrs. Eustis expostulating with her daughter,
+the news of Mary Virginia's unannounced engagement had sifted pretty
+thoroughly throughout the length and breadth of Appleboro; a town
+where an unfledged and callow rumor will start out of a morning and
+come home to roost at night with talons and tailfeathers.
+
+That Mary Virginia had all James Eustis's own quiet will-power,
+everybody knew. She would not, perhaps, marry Laurence in the face of
+her mother's open opposition. Neither would she marry anybody else to
+please her mother in defiance of her own heart. There was a pretty
+struggle ahead, and Appleboro took sides for and against, and settled
+itself with eager expectancy to watch the outcome.
+
+So I concluded that Mary Virginia had not been having a pleasant time.
+Indeed, it struck me that she was really unwell. One might even
+suspect she had known sleepless nights, from the shadowed eyes and the
+languor of her manner.
+
+Just then, swinging down the street head erect, shoulders square, the
+freezing weather only intensifying his glowing fairness, came Howard
+Hunter. The man was clear red and white. His gold hair and beard
+glittered, his bright blue eyes snapped and sparkled. He seemed to
+rejoice in the cold, as if some Viking strain in him delighted in its
+native air.
+
+As he paused to greet us a coldness not of the weather crept into Mary
+Virginia's eyes. She did not speak, but bowed formally. Mr. Hunter,
+holding her gaze for a moment, lifted his brows whimsically and
+smiled; then, bowing, he passed on. She stood looking after him, her
+lips closed firmly upon each other.
+
+Tucking her hand in my arm, she walked with me to the Parish House
+gate. No, she said, she couldn't come in. But I was to give her
+regards to the Butterfly Man, and her love to Madame.
+
+"Parson," the Butterfly Man asked me that night, "have you seen Mary
+Virginia recently?"
+
+"I saw her to-day."
+
+"I saw her to-day, too. She looked worried. She hasn't been here
+lately, has she?"
+
+"No. She hasn't been feeling well. I hear Mrs. Eustis has been very
+outspoken about the engagement, and I suppose that's what worries Mary
+Virginia."
+
+"I don't think so. She knew she had to go up against that, from the
+first. She's more than a match for her mother. There's something else.
+Didn't I tell you I had a hunch there was going to be trouble? Well,
+I've got a hunch it's here."
+
+"Nonsense!" said I, shortly.
+
+"I know," said he, stubbornly. And he added, irrelevantly: "It's
+generally known, parson, that Eustis will be nominated. Inglesby's
+managed to gain considerable ground, thanks to Hunter, and folks say
+if it wasn't for Eustis he'd win. As it is, he'll be swamped. I hear
+he was thunderstruck when he got wind of what Mayne was going to play
+against him--for he knows Laurence brought Eustis out. Inglesby's
+mighty sore. He's the sort that hates to have to admit he can't get
+what he wants."
+
+"Then he'd better save himself the trouble of having to put it to the
+test," said I.
+
+"I'm wondering," said John Flint. "I wish I hadn't got that hunch!"
+
+I did not see Mary Virginia again for some time. Just then I moved
+breathlessly in a horrid round of sickbeds, for the wave had reached
+its height; already it had swept seventeen of my flock out of time
+into eternity.
+
+I came home on one of the last of those heavy evenings, to find
+Laurence waiting for me in my study. He was standing in the middle of
+the room, his hands clasped behind his back.
+
+"Padre," said he by way of greeting, "have you seen Mary Virginia
+lately? Has Madame?"
+
+"No, except for a chance meeting one morning on the street. But she
+has been sending me help right along, bless her."
+
+"Has Madame heard anything from her, Padre?"
+
+"No, I don't think so. But we've been frightfully busy of late, you
+understand."
+
+"No, neither of you know," said Laurence, in a low voice. "You
+wouldn't know. Padre, I--don't look at me like that, please; I'm not
+ill. But, without reason--swear to you before God, without any reason
+whatever, that I can conjure up--she has thrown me over, jilted
+me--Mary Virginia, Padre! And I'm to forget her. _I'm to forget her,
+you understand?_ Because she can't marry me." He spoke in a level,
+quiet, matter of fact voice. Then laughter shook him like a nausea.
+
+I laid my hand upon him. "Now tell me," said I, "what you have to tell
+me."
+
+"I've really told you all I know," said Laurence. "Day before
+yesterday she sent for me. You can't think how happy it made me to
+have her send for me, how happy I've been since I knew she cared! I
+felt as if there wasn't anything I couldn't do. There was nothing too
+great to be accomplished--
+
+"Well, I went. She was standing in the middle of the long
+drawing-room. There was a fire behind her. She was so like ice I
+wonder now she didn't thaw. All in white, and cold, and frozen. And
+she said she couldn't marry me. That's why she had sent for me--to
+tell me that she meant to break our engagement: _Mary Virginia_!
+
+"I wanted to know why. I was within my rights in asking that, was I
+not? And she wouldn't let me get close to her, Padre. She waved me
+away. I got out of her that there were reasons: no, she wouldn't say
+what those reasons were; but there were reasons. Her reasons, of
+course. When I began to talk, to plead with her, she begged me not to
+make things harder for her, but to be generous and go away. She just
+couldn't marry me, didn't I understand? So I must release her."
+
+He hung his head. The youth of him had been dimmed and darkened.
+
+"And you said--?"
+
+"I said," said Laurence simply, "that she was mine as much as I was
+hers, and that I'd go just then because she asked me to, but I was
+coming back. I tried to see her again yesterday. She wouldn't see me.
+She sent down word she wasn't at home. But I knew all along she was.
+Mary Virginia, Padre!
+
+"I tried again. I haven't got any pride where she's concerned. Why
+should I? She's--she's my soul, I think. I can't put it into words,
+because you can't put feelings into words, but she's the pith of life.
+Then I wrote her. Half a dozen times I wrote her. I got down to the
+level of bribing the colored maid to take the notes to her, one every
+hour, like a medicine, and slip them under her door. I know she
+received them. I repeated it again to-day. It's Mary Virginia at
+stake, and I can't take chances, can I? And this afternoon she sent
+this.
+
+     "Oh, Laurence, be generous and spare me the torment of
+     questions. So far you have not reproached me; spare me that,
+     too! Don't you understand? I cannot marry you. Accept the
+     inevitable as I do. Forgive me and forget me. M.V.E."
+
+The writing showed extreme nervousness, haste, agitation.
+
+"Well?" said Laurence. But I stood staring at the crumpled bit of
+paper. I knew what I knew. I knew what my mother had thought fit to
+reveal to me of the girl's feelings: Mary Virginia had been very sure.
+I remembered what my eyes had seen, my ears heard. I was sure she was
+faithful, for I knew my girl. And yet--
+
+There came back to me a morning in spring and I riding gaily off in
+the glad sunshine, full of faith and of hope. To find what I had
+found. I handed the note back, in silence.
+
+"Oh, why, why, why?" burst out the boy, in a gust of acute torment.
+"For God's sake, why? Think of her eyes and her mouth, Padre--and her
+forehead like a saint's--No, she's not false. God never made such eyes
+as hers untruthful. I believe in her. I've got to believe in her. I
+tell you, I belong to her, body and soul." He began to walk up and
+down the room, and his shoulders twitched, as if a lash were laid over
+them. "I could forgive her for not loving me, if she doesn't love me
+and found it out, and said so. Women change, do they not? But--to
+take a man that loves her--and tear his living soul to shreds and
+tatters--
+
+"If _she's_ a liar and a jilt, who and what am I to believe? Why
+should she do it, Padre--to me that love her? Oh, my God, think of it:
+to be betrayed by the best beloved! No, I can't think it. This isn't
+just any light girl: this is Mary Virginia!"
+
+I put my hand on his shoulder. He is a head over me, and once again as
+broad, perhaps. We two fell into step. I did not attempt to counsel or
+console.
+
+"Here I come like a whining kid, Padre," said he, remorsefully,
+"piling my troubles upon your shoulders that carry such burdens
+already. Forgive me!"
+
+"I shouldn't be able to forgive you if you didn't come," said I. Up
+and down the little room, up and down, the two of us.
+
+Came a light tap at the door. The Butterfly Man's head followed it.
+
+"Didn't I hear Laurence talking?" asked he, smiling. The smile froze
+at sight of the boy's face. He closed the door, and leaned against it.
+
+"What's wrong with her?" he asked, quickly. It did not occur to us to
+question his right to ask, or to wonder how he knew.
+
+In a dull voice Laurence told him. He held out his hand for the note,
+read it in silence, and handed it back.
+
+"What do you make of it?" I asked.
+
+"Trouble," said he, curtly; and he asked, reproachfully, "Don't you
+know her, both of you, by this time?"
+
+"I know," said Laurence, "that she has sent me away from her."
+
+"Because she wants to, or because she thinks she has to?" asked John
+Flint.
+
+"Why should she do so unless it pleased her?" I asked sorrowfully.
+
+His eyes flashed. "Why, she's _herself!_ A girl like her couldn't play
+anybody false because there's no falseness in her to do it with. What
+are you going to do about it?"
+
+"There is nothing to do," said Laurence, "but to release her; a
+gentleman can do no less."
+
+John Flint's lips curled. "Release her? I'd hang on till hell froze
+over and caught me in the ice! I'd wait. I'd write and tell her she
+didn't need to make herself unhappy about me, I was unhappy enough
+about her for the two of us, because she didn't trust me enough to
+tell me what her trouble was, so I could help her. That first and
+always I was her friend, right here, whenever she needed me and
+whatever she needed me for. And I'd stand by. What else is a man good
+for?"
+
+"I believe," said I, "that John Flint has given you the right word,
+Laurence. Just hold fast and be faithful."
+
+Laurence lifted his haggard face. "There isn't any question of my
+being faithful to her, Padre. And I couldn't make myself believe that
+she's less so than I. What Flint says tallies with my own intuition.
+I'll write her to-night." He laid his hand on John Flint's arm.
+"You're all right, Bughunter," said he, earnestly. "'Night, Padre."
+Then he was gone.
+
+"Do you think," said John Flint, when he had rejected every conjecture
+his mind presented as the possible cause of Mary Virginia's action,
+"that Inglesby could be at the bottom of this?"
+
+"I think," said I, "that you have an obsession where that man is
+concerned. He is a disease with you. Good heaven, what could Inglesby
+possibly have to do with Mary Virginia's affairs?"
+
+"That's what I'm wondering. Well, then, who is it?"
+
+"Perhaps," said I, unwillingly, "it is Mary Virginia herself."
+
+"Forget it! She's not that sort."
+
+"She is a woman."
+
+"Ain't it the truth, though?" he jeered. "What a peach of a reason for
+not acting like herself, looking like herself, being like herself!
+She's a woman! So are all the rest of the folks that weren't born men,
+if you'll notice. They're women; we're men: and both of us are people.
+Get it?"
+
+"I get it," said I, annoyed. "Your attitude, John Flint, is a vulgar
+platitude. And permit me to--"
+
+"I'll permit you to do anything except get cross," said he, quickly.
+The ghost of a smile touched his face. "Being bad-tempered, parson,
+suits you just about as well as plaid pants and a Hello Bill button."
+
+"I am a human being," I began, frigidly.
+
+"And I'm another. And so is Mary Virginia. And there we are, parson.
+I'm troubled. I don't like the looks of things. It's no use telling
+myself this is none of my business; it is very much my business. You
+remember ... when I came here ..." he hesitated, for this is a subject
+we do not like to discuss, "what you were up against ... parson, I've
+thought you must have been caught and crucified yourself, and learned
+things on the cross, and that's why you held on to me. But with the
+kids, it was different--particularly the little girl. The first thing
+I ever got from her was a lovely look, the first time ever I set eyes
+on her she came with an underwing moth. I'd be a poor sort that
+wouldn't be willing to be spilt like water and scattered like dust, if
+she needed me now, wouldn't I?"
+
+"But," said I, perplexed, "what can you do? A young lady has seen fit
+to break her engagement; young ladies often see fit to do that, my
+dear fellow. This isn't an uncommon case. Also, one doesn't interfere
+in a lady's private affairs, not even when one is an old priest who
+has loved her since her childhood, nor yet a Butterfly Man who is her
+devoted friend. Don't you see?"
+
+"I see there's something wrong," said he, doggedly.
+
+"Perhaps. But that doesn't give one the right to pry into something
+she evidently doesn't wish to reveal," I told him.
+
+"I suppose," said he, heavily, "you are right. But if you hear
+anything, let me know, won't you?"
+
+I promised; but I found out nothing, save that it had not been Mrs.
+Eustis who influenced her daughter's action. This came out in a call
+Mrs. Eustis made at the Parish House.
+
+"My dear," she told my mother, "when she told me she had broken that
+engagement, I was astounded! But I can't say I wasn't pleased.
+Laurence is a dear boy; and his family's as good as ours--no one can
+take that away from the Maynes. But Mary Virginia should have done
+better.
+
+"I quarreled with her, argued with her, pleaded with her. I cried and
+cried. But she's James Eustis to the life--you might as well try to
+move the Rock of Gibraltar. Then one morning she came to my room and
+told me she found she couldn't marry Laurence! And she had already
+told him so, and broken her engagement, and I wasn't to ask her any
+questions. I didn't. I was too glad."
+
+"And--Laurence--?" asked my mother, ironically.
+
+"Laurence? Laurence is a _man_. Men get over that sort of thing. I've
+known a man to be perfectly mad over his wife--and marry, six months
+after her death. They're like that. They always get over it. It's
+their nature."
+
+"Let us hope, then, for Laurence's peace of mind," said my mother,
+"that he'll get over it--like all the rest of his sex. Though I
+shouldn't call Laurence fickle, or faithless, if you ask me."
+
+"He is a very fine boy. I always liked him myself and James adores
+him. If I had two or three daughters, I'd be willing to let one of
+them marry Laurence--after awhile. But having only one I must say I
+want her to do better."
+
+"I see," said my mother. To me she said later:
+
+"And yet, Armand, although I condemn it, I can quite appreciate Mrs.
+Eustis's point of view. I was somewhat like that myself, once upon a
+time."
+
+"You? Never!"
+
+My mother smiled tolerantly.
+
+"Ah, but you never offered me a daughter-in-law I did not relish. It
+was much easier for me to bear the Church!"
+
+That night I went over to John Flint's, for I thought that the fact
+of Mary Virginia's deliberately choosing to act as she had done would
+in a measure settle the matter and relieve his anxiety.
+
+There was a cedar wood fire before which Kerry lay stretched; little
+white Pitache, grown a bit stiff of late, occupied a chair he had
+taken over for his own use and from which he refused to be dislodged.
+Major Cartwright had just left, and the room still smelt of his cigar,
+mingling pleasantly with the clean smell of the burning cedar.
+
+On the table, within reach of his hand, was ranged the Butterfly Man's
+entire secular library: Andrew Lang's translation of Homer; Omar;
+Richard Burton's Kasidah; Saadi's Gulistan, over which he chuckled;
+Robert Burns; Don Quixote; Joan of Arc, and Huckleberry Finn; Treasure
+Island; the Bible Miss Sally Ruth had given him--I never could induce
+him to change it for my own Douai version--; one or two volumes of
+Shakespeare; the black Obituary Book, grown loathsomely fat; and the
+"Purely Original Verse of James Gordon Coogler," which a light-minded
+professor of mathematics at the University of South Carolina had given
+him, and in which he evilly delighted. Other books came and went, but
+these remained. To-night it was the Bible which lay open, at the Book
+of Psalms.
+
+"Look at this." He laid his finger on a verse of the nineteenth: "The
+testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple."
+
+"The times I've turned that over in my mind, out in the woods by night
+and the fields by day!" said the Butterfly Man, musingly. "The simple
+is _me_, parson, and the testimony is green things growing, and
+butterflies and moths, and Kerry, and people, and trouble, and
+Louisa's hair, and--well, about everything, I reckon.
+
+"Yes, everything's testimony, and it can make wise the simple--if he's
+not too simple. I reckon, parson, the simple is lumped in three
+lots--the fool for a little while, the fool for half the day, and the
+life-everlasting twenty-four-hours-a-day, dyed-in-the-wool damn-fool.
+
+"Some of us are the life-everlasting kind, the kind that used to make
+old man Solomon wall his eyes and throw fits and then get busy and
+hatch out proverbs with stings in their tails. A lot of us are
+half-the-day fools; and all the rest are fools for a little while.
+There's nobody born that hasn't got his times and seasons for being a
+fool for a while. But that's the sort of simple the testimony slams
+some sense into. Like _me_," he added earnestly, and closed the great
+Book.
+
+I told him presently what I had heard; that, as he surmised, Mrs.
+Eustis was not responsible for Mary Virginia's change of mind--or
+perhaps of heart. He nodded. But he offered no comment. Now, since I
+had come in, he had been from time to time casting at me rather
+speculative and doubtful glances. He drummed on the table, smiled
+sheepishly, and presently reached for a package, unwrapped it, and
+laid before me a book.
+
+'"The Relation of Insect Life to Human Society,'" I read, "By John
+Flint and Rev. Armand Jean De Rance. With notes and drawings by Father
+De Rance." It bore the imprint of a great publishing house.
+
+"You suggested it more than once," said John Flint. "Off and on, these
+two years, I've been working on it. All the notes I particularly asked
+you for were for this. Mighty fine and acute notes they are,
+too--you'd never have been willing to do it if you'd known they were
+for publication--I know you. And I saved the drawings. I'm vain of
+those illustrations. Abbot's weren't in it, next to yours."
+
+As a matter of fact I have a pretty talent for copying plant and
+insect. I have but little originality, but this very limitation made
+the drawings more valuable. They were almost painfully exact, the
+measurements and coloration being as approximately perfect as I could
+get them.
+
+Now that the book has been included in all standard lists I needn't
+speak of it at length--the reviewers have given it what measure of
+bricks and bouquets it deserved. But it is a clever, able,
+comprehensive book, and that is why it has made its wide appeal.
+
+Every least credit that could possibly be given to me, he had
+scrupulously rendered. He had made full use of note and drawing. He
+made light enough of his own great labor of compilation, but his
+preface was quick to state his "great indebtedness to his patient and
+wise teacher."
+
+One sees that the situation was not without irony. But I could not
+cloud his pleasure in my co-authorship nor dim his happiness by
+disclaiming one jot or tittle of what he had chosen to accredit me
+with. It is more blessed to give than to receive, but much more
+difficult to receive than to give.
+
+"Do you like it?" he asked, hopefully.
+
+"I am most horribly proud of it," said I, honestly.
+
+"Sure, parson? Hand on your heart?"
+
+"Sure. Hand on my heart."
+
+"All right, then," said he, sighing with relief.
+
+"Here's your share of the loot," and he pushed a check across the
+table.
+
+"But--" I hesitated, blinking, for it was a check of sorts.
+
+"But nothing. Blow it in. Say, I'm curious. What are you going to do
+with yours?"
+
+"What are you going to do with yours?" I asked in return.
+
+He reddened, hesitated; then his head went up.
+
+"I figure it, parson, that by way of that rag-doll I'm kin to Louisa's
+ma. As near as I can get to it, Louisa's ma's my widow. It's a devil
+of a responsibility for a live man to have a widow. It worries him.
+Just to get her off my mind I'm going to invest my share of this book
+for her. She'll at least be sure of a roof and fire and shoes and
+clothes and bread with butter on it and staying home sometimes. She'll
+have to work, of course; anyway you looked at it, it wouldn't be right
+to take work away from her. She'll work, then; but she won't be
+worked. Louisa's managed to pull something out of her wishin' curl for
+her ma, after all. I'm sure I hope they'll let the child know."
+
+I could not speak for a moment; but as I looked at him, the red in his
+tanned cheek deepened.
+
+"As a matter of fact, parson," he explained, "somebody ought to do
+something for a woman that looks like that, and it might just as well
+be me. I'm willing to pay good money to have my widow turn her mouth
+the other way up, and I hope she'll buy a back-comb for those bangs on
+her neck."
+
+"And all this," said I, "came out of one little wishin' curl,
+Butterfly Man?"
+
+"But what else could I do?" he wondered, "when I'm kin to Loujaney by
+bornation?" and to hide his feeling, he asked again:
+
+"Now what are you going to do with yours?"
+
+I reflected. I watched his clever, quizzical eyes, out of which the
+diamond-bright hardness had vanished, and into which I am sure that
+dear child's curl had wished this milder, clearer light.
+
+"You want to know what I am going to do with mine?" said I, airily.
+"Well; as for me, the very first thing I am going to do is to
+purchase, in perpetuity, a fine new lamp for St. Stanislaus!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
+
+
+Timid tentative rifts and wedges of blue had ventured back into the
+cold gray sky, and a stout-hearted robin or two heralded spring. One
+morning coming from mass I saw in the thin watery sunshine the painted
+wings of the Red Admiral flash by, and I welcomed him as one welcomes
+the long-missed face of a friend. I cannot choose but love the Red
+Admiral. He has always stirred my imagination, for frail as his gay
+wings are they have nevertheless borne this dauntless small Columbus
+of butterflies across unknown seas and around uncharted lands, until
+like his twin-sister the Painted Lady he has all but circled the
+globe. A few days later a handful of those gold butterflies that
+resemble nothing so much as new bright dandelions in the young grass,
+dared the unfriendly days before their time as if to coax the lagging
+spring to follow.
+
+The sad white streamers disappeared from doors and for a space the
+little white hearse ceased to go glimmering by. Then at many windows
+appeared small faces bearing upon them the mark of the valley of the
+shadow through which they had just passed. Although they were on side
+streets in the dingy mill district, far removed from our pleasant
+windows that looked out upon trees and flowers, all Appleboro was
+watching these wan visages with wiser and kinder eyes.
+
+Perhaps the most potent single factor in the arousing of our civic
+conscience was a small person who might have justly thought we hadn't
+any: I mean Loujaney's little ma, whose story had crept out and gone
+from lip to lip and from home to home, making an appeal to which there
+could be no refusal.
+
+When Major Cartwright heard it, the high-hearted old rebel hurried
+over to the Parish House and thrust into my hand a lean roll of bills.
+And the major is by no means a rich man.
+
+"It's not tainted money," said the major, "though some mighty good
+Bourbon is goin' to turn into pap on account of it. However, it's an
+ill wind that doesn't blow somebody good--Marse Robert can come on
+back upstairs now an' thaw himself out while watchin' me read the
+Lamentations of Jeremiah--who was evidently sufferin' from a dry spell
+himself."
+
+On the following Sunday the Baptist minister chose for his text that
+verse of Matthew which bids us take heed that we despise not one of
+these little ones because in heaven their angels do always behold the
+face of our Father. And then he told his people of that little one who
+had pretended to love dry bread when she couldn't get any butter--in
+Appleboro. And who had gone to her rest holding to her thin breast a
+rag-doll that was kin to her by bornation, Loujaney being poor folks
+herself and knowing prezactly how't was.
+
+Over the heads of loved and sheltered children the Baptist brethren
+looked at each other. Of course, it wasn't their fault any more than
+anybody else's.--In a very husky voice their pastor went on to tell
+them of the curl which the woman who hadn't a God's thing left to
+wish for had given as a remembrance to "that good and kind man, our
+brother John Flint, sometimes known as the Butterfly Man."
+
+Dabney put the plain little discourse into print and heightened its
+effect by an editorial couched in the plainest terms. We were none of
+us in the humor to hear a spade called an agricultural implement just
+then, and Dabney knew it; particularly when the mill dividends and the
+cemetery both showed a marked increase.
+
+Something had to be done, and quickly, but we didn't exactly know how
+nor where to begin doing it. Laurence, insisting that this was really
+everybody's business, called a mass-meeting at the schoolhouse, and
+the _Clarion_ requested every man who didn't intend to bring his
+women-folks to that meeting to please stay home himself. Wherefore
+Appleboro town and county came with the wife of its bosom--or maybe
+the wife came and fetched it along.
+
+Laurence called the meeting to order, and his manner of addressing the
+feminine portion of his audience would have made his gallant
+grandfather challenge him. He hadn't a solitary pretty phrase to
+tickle the ears of the ladies--he spoke of and to them as women.
+
+"And did you see how they fell for him?" rejoiced the Butterfly Man,
+afterward. "From the kid in a middy up to the great old girl with
+three chins and a prow like an ocean liner, they were with him. When
+you're in dead earnest, can the ladies; just go after women as women
+and they're with you every time. They know."
+
+A Civic Leaguer followed Laurence, then Madame, and after her a girl
+from the mills, whose two small brothers went in one night. There
+were no set speeches. Everybody who spoke had something to say; and
+everybody who had something to say spoke. Then Westmoreland, who like
+Saul the king was taller by the head and shoulders than all Israel,
+bulked up big and good and begged us to remember that we couldn't do
+anything of permanent value until we first learned how to reach those
+folks we had been ignoring and neglecting. He said gruffly that
+Appleboro had dumped its whole duty in this respect upon the frail
+shoulders of one old priest, and that the Guest Rooms were overworked.
+Didn't the town want to do its share now? The town voted, unanimously,
+that it did.
+
+There was a pause. Laurence asked if anybody else had anything to say?
+Apparently, anybody else hadn't.
+
+"Well, then," said Laurence, smiling, "before we adjourn, is there
+anybody in particular that Appleboro County here assembled wants to
+hear?"
+
+And at that came a sort of stir, a murmur, as of an immense multitude
+of bees:
+
+"_The Butterfly Man!_" And louder: "The Butterfly Man!"
+
+Followed a great hand-clapping, shrill whistles, the stamping of feet.
+And there he was, with Westmoreland and Laurence behind him as if to
+keep him from bolting. His face expressed a horrified astonishment.
+Twice, thrice, he opened his lips, and no words came. Then:
+
+"_I?_" in a high and agonized falsetto.
+
+"You!" Appleboro County settled back with rustles of satisfaction.
+"Speech! Speech!" From a corn-club man, joyfully.
+
+"Oh, marmar, look! It's the Butterfly Man, marmar!" squealed a child.
+
+"A-a-h! Talk weeth us, Meester Fleent!" For the first time a "hand"
+felt that he might speak out openly in Appleboro.
+
+John Flint stood there staring owlishly at all these people who ought
+to know very well that he hadn't anything to say: what should he have
+to say? He was embarrassed; he was also most horribly frightened. But
+then, after all, they weren't anything but people, just folks like
+himself! When he remembered that his panic subsided. For a moment he
+reflected; as if satisfied, he nodded slightly and thrust his hand
+into his breast pocket.
+
+"Instead of having to listen to me you'd better just look at this,"
+said the Butterfly Man. "Because this can talk louder and say more in
+a minute than I could between now and Judgment." And he held out
+Louisa's dear fair whimsy of a curl; the sort of curl mothers tuck
+behind a rosy ear of nights, and fathers lean to and kiss. "_I_
+haven't got anything to say," said the Butterfly Man. "The best I can
+do is just to wish for the children all that Louisa pretended to pull
+out of her wishin' curl--and never got. I wish on it that all the kids
+get a square deal--their chance to grow and play and be healthy and
+happy and make good. And I wish again," said the Butterfly Man,
+looking at his hearers with his steady eyes, "I wish that you folks,
+every God-blessed one of you, will help to make that wish come true,
+so far as lies in your power, from now until you die!" His funny,
+twisty smile flashed out. He put the fairy tress back into his breast
+pocket, made a casual gesture to imply that he had concluded his
+wishes for the present; and walked off in the midst of the deepest
+silence that had ever fallen upon an Appleboro audience.
+
+But however willing we might be, we discovered that we could not do
+things as quickly or as well as might be wished. People who wanted to
+help blundered tactlessly. People who wanted to be helped had to be
+investigated. People who ought to be helped were suspicious and
+resentful, couldn't always understand or appreciate this sudden
+interest in their affairs, were inclined to slam doors, or, when
+cornered, to lie stolidly, with wooden faces and expressionless eyes.
+
+Ensued an awkward pause, until the Butterfly Man came unobtrusively
+forward, discovering in himself that amazing diplomacy inherent in the
+Irish when they attend to anybody's business but their own. It was
+amusing to watch the only democrat in a solidly Democratic county
+infusing something of his own unabashed humanness into proceedings
+which but for him might have sloughed into
+
+    Organized charity, carefully iced,
+    In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ.
+
+Having done what was to be done, he went about his own affairs. Nobody
+gushed over him, and he escaped that perilous popularity which is as a
+millstone around a man's neck. Nevertheless the Butterfly Man had
+stumbled upon the something divine in his fellows, and they
+entertained for him a feeling that wasn't any more tangible, say, than
+pure air, and no more emotional than pure water, but was just about as
+vital and life-giving.
+
+I was enchanted to have a whole county endorse my private judgment. I
+rose so in my own estimation that I fancy I was a bit condescending to
+St. Stanislaus! I was vain of the Butterfly Man's standing--folks
+couldn't like him too much, to please me. And I was greatly interested
+in the many invitations that poured in upon him, invitations that
+ranged all the way from a birthday party at Michael Karski's to a
+state dinner at the Eustis's.
+
+From Michael's he came home gaily, a most outrageous posy pinned upon
+him by way of honor, and whistling a Slavic love song so dismal that
+one inferred love must be something like toothache for painfulness. He
+had had such a bully time, he told me. Big Jan had been there with his
+wife, an old friend of Michael's Katya. Although pale, and still
+somewhat shaky as to legs, Jan had willingly enough shaken hands with
+his conqueror.
+
+It seemed quite right and natural that he and Jan should presently
+enter into a sort of Dual Alliance. Meester Fleent was to be
+Arbitrator Extraordinary. When he stipulated that thereafter Big Jan
+was only to tackle a man his own size, everybody cheered madly, and
+Mrs. Jan herself beamed red-eyed approval. She said her prayers to the
+man who had trounced Jan into righteousness.
+
+But from the Eustis dinner, to which he went with my mother, he came
+home somber and heavy-hearted. Laurence was conspicuously absent; it
+is true he was away, defending his first big case in another part of
+the State. But Mr. George Inglesby was just as conspicuously present,
+apparently on the best of all possible terms with himself, the world
+in general, and Mrs. James Eustis in particular. His presence in that
+house, in the face of persistent rumors, made at least two guests
+uneasy. Mrs. Eustis showed him a most flattering attention. She was
+deeply impressed by him. He had just aided her pet mission in
+China--what he had given the heathen would have buttered my children's
+bread for many a day. Also, he was all but lyrical in his voicing of
+the shibboleth that Woman's Sphere is the Home, wherein she should be
+adored, enshrined, and protected. Woman and the Home! All the innate
+chivalry of Southern manhood--
+
+I don't know that Louisa's Ma was ever enshrined or protected by the
+chivalry of any kind of manhood, no, nor any of the mill women. Their
+kind don't know the word. But Mrs. Eustis was, and she agreed with Mr.
+Inglesby's noble sentiments.
+
+"Parson, you should have heard him!" raved the Butterfly Man. "There's
+a sort of man down here that's got chivalry like another sort's got
+hookworm, and he makes the man that hasn't got either want to set up
+an image to the great god Dam!
+
+"You'd think being chivalrous would be enough for him, wouldn't you?"
+continued the Butterfly Man, bitterly. "Nix! What's he been working
+the heavy charity lay for, except that it's his turn to be a
+misunderstood Christian? Doesn't charity cover a multitude of skins,
+though? And doesn't it beat a jimmy when it comes to breaking into
+society!"
+
+Mary Virginia, he added in an altered voice, had been exquisite in a
+frock all silver lace and shimmery stuffs like moonbeams, and with a
+rope of pearls about her throat, and in her black hair. Appleboro
+folks do not affect orchids, but Mary Virginia wore a huge cluster of
+those exotics. She had been very gracious to the Butterfly Man and
+Madame. But only for a brief bright minute had she been the Mary
+Virginia they knew. All the rest of the evening she seemed to grow
+statelier, colder, more dazzlingly and imperially regal. And her eyes
+were like frozen sapphires under her level brows, and her mouth was
+the red splendid bow of Pride.
+
+Watching her, my mother was pained and puzzled; as for the Butterfly
+Man, his heart went below zero. Those who loved Mary Virginia had
+cause for painful reflections.
+
+Blinded by her beauty, were we judging her by the light of affection,
+instead of the colder light of reason? We couldn't approve of her
+behavior to Laurence, nor was it easy to refrain from disapproval of
+what appeared to be a tacit endurance of Inglesby's attention. She
+couldn't plead ignorance of what was open enough to be town talk--the
+man's shameless passion for herself, a passion he seemed to take
+delight in flaunting. And she made no effort to explain; she seemed
+deliberately to exclude her old friends from the confidence once so
+freely given. She hadn't visited the Parish House since she had broken
+her engagement.
+
+
+And all the while the spring that hadn't time for the little concerns
+of mortals went secretly about her immortal business of rejuvenation.
+The blue that had been so timid and so tentative overspread the sky;
+more robins came, and after them bluebirds and redbirds and
+Peterbirds, and the impudent screaming robber jay that is so beautiful
+and so bold, and flute-voiced vireos, and nuthatches, and the darling
+busybody wren fussing about her house-building in the corners of our
+piazzas. The first red flowers of the Japanese quince opened
+flame-like on the bare brown bushes. When the bridal-wreath by the
+gate saw that, she set industriously to work upon her own
+wedding-gown. The yellow jessamine was full of waxy gold buds; and
+long since those bold frontiersmen of the year, the Judas-trees, had
+flaunted it in bravest scarlet, and the slim-legged scouts of the
+pines showed shoulder-straps and cockades of new gay green above
+gallant brown leggings.
+
+One brand new morning the Butterfly Man called me aside and placed in
+my hands a letter. The American Society of Natural History invited Mr.
+John Flint, already a member of the Entomological Society of France, a
+Fellow of the Entomological Society of London, and a member of the
+greatest of Dutch and German Associations, to speak before it and its
+guests, at a most notable meeting to be held in the Society's splendid
+Museum in New York City. Not to mention two mere ex-Presidents, some
+of the greatest scientific names of the Americas were included in that
+list. And it was before such as these that my Butterfly Man was to
+speak. Behold me rocking on my toes!
+
+The first effect of this invitation was to please me immensely, I
+being a puffed-up old man and carnal-minded at times; nor do I seem to
+improve with age. The plaudits of the world, for anybody I admire and
+love, ring most sweetly in my foolish ears. Now the honors he had
+gotten from abroad were fine and good in their way, but this meant
+that the value of his work was recognized and his position
+established in his own country, in his own time. It meant a widening
+of his horizon, association with clever men and women, ennobling
+friendships to broaden his life. A just measure of appreciation from
+the worthwhile sweetens toil and encourages genius. And yet--our eyes
+met, and mine had to ask an old question.
+
+"Would you better accept it?" I wondered.
+
+"I can't afford not to," said he resolutely. "The time's come for me
+to get out in the open, and I might just as well face the music, and
+Do it Now. Risks? I hardly think so. I never hunted in couples,
+remember--I always went by my lonesome and got away with it. Besides,
+who's remembering Slippy? Nobody. He's drowned and dead and done with.
+But, however, and nevertheless, and because, I shall go."
+
+Again we looked at each other; and his look was untroubled.
+
+"The pipe-dreams I've had about slipping back into little old New
+York! But if anybody had told me I'd go back like I'm going, with the
+sort of folks waiting for me that will be waiting now, I'd have passed
+it up. Well, you never can tell, can you? And in a way it's funny--now
+isn't it?"
+
+"No, you never can tell," said I, soberly. "But I do not think it at
+all funny. Quite the contrary." Suppose, oh, suppose, that after all
+these years, when a well-earned success was in his grasp, it should
+happen--I turned pale. He read my fear in my face and his smile might
+have been borrowed from my mother's mouth.
+
+"Don't you get cold feet, parson," he counseled kindly. "Be a sport!
+Besides, it's all in the Game, you know."
+
+"Is it?"
+
+"Sure!"
+
+"And worth while, John?"
+
+He laughed. "Believe me! It's the worthwhilest thing under the sun to
+sit in the Game, with a sport's interest in the hands dealt out,
+taking yours as it comes to you, bluffing all you can when you've got
+to, playing your cards for all they're worth when it's your turn. No
+reneging. No squealing when you lose. No boasting how you did it when
+you win. There's nothing in the whole universe so intensely and
+immensely worth while as being _you_ and alive, with yourself the
+whole kitty and the sky your limit! It's one great old Game, and I'm
+for thanking the Big Dealer that I'da whack at playing it." And his
+eyes snapped and his lean brown face flushed.
+
+"And you are really willing to--to stake yourself now, my son?"
+
+"Lord, parson, you ought to know! And you a dead ringer for the real
+thing in a classy sport yourself!"
+
+"My _dear_ son--!"
+
+My dear son waved his fine hand, and chuckled in his red beard.
+
+"Would _you_ back down if this was your call? Why, you're the sort
+that would tackle the biggest noise in the ring, even if you knew
+you'd be dragged out on your pantry in the first half of the first
+round, if you thought you'd got holy orders to do it! If you saw me
+getting jellyfish of the spine now, you'd curl up and die--wouldn't
+you, honest Injun?" His eyes crinkled and he grinned so infectiously
+that my fears subsided. I had an almost superstitious certainty that
+nothing really evil could happen to a man who could grin like that.
+Fate and fortune are perfectly powerless before the human being who
+can meet them with the sword of a smile.
+
+"Well," I admitted cautiously, "jellyfish of the spine must be an
+unlovely ailment; not that I ever heard of it before."
+
+"You're willing for me to go, then?"
+
+"You'd go anyhow, would you not?"
+
+"Forget it!" said he roughly. "If you think I'd do anything I knew
+would cause you uneasiness, you've got another thing coming to you."
+
+"Oh, go, for heaven's sake!" said I, sharply.
+
+"All right. I'll go for heaven's sake," he agreed cheerfully. "And now
+it's formally decided I'm to go, and talk, the question arises--what
+they really want me to talk about? _I_ don't know how to deal in
+glittering generalities. A chap on the trail of truth has got to let
+generalities go by the board. The minute he tackles the living Little
+People he chucks theories and bucks conditions.
+
+"Suppose I tell the truth as I see it: that most so-called authorities
+are like cats chasing their tails--because they accept theories that
+have never been really proven, run after them, and so never get
+anywhere? And that facts dug up in the open under the sunlight don't
+always fit in with notions hatched out in libraries under the electric
+light?
+
+"Suppose I say that after they've run everything down to that plasma
+they're so fond of beginning and ending with, there is still something
+behind it all their theories can't explain away? Protoplasm doesn't
+explain Life any more than the battery explains electricity. Instinct?
+Evolution? The survival of the fittest? Well, nothing is tagged for
+fair, and I'm more than willing to be shown. For the more I find out
+from the living things themselves,--you can't get truth from death,
+you've got to get it from life--the more self-evident it seems to me
+that to exist at all insects must have arrived on the scene complete,
+handfinished, with the union label of the Great Workshop on them by
+way of a trade-mark."
+
+"As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, one God, world
+without end, Amen!" said I, smiling. I have never thought it necessary
+to explain or excuse the Creator. God is; things are.
+
+But he shook his head, wrinkling his forehead painfully. "I wish I
+_knew_," said he, wistfully. "You're satisfied to believe, but I have
+got to know. Oh, great Power behind Things, I want to know! I want to
+_know_!"
+
+Ah, but I also do most passionately wish to know! If, however, the
+Insect has taught me anything in my lifelong study of it, it is to
+recognize the Unknowable, to know there is that which I cannot hope to
+know. But if under the law of its world, so different from ours and
+yet so alike because so inevitable, the Insect must move in a fixed
+circle within which it is safe, a circle whose very limitation
+preserves it from error and thus from destruction, may not a like
+fixed circle beyond which _we_ may not penetrate preserve us, too? Are
+these mountain peaks of the Unknowable, the Impassable, which
+encompass the skyline of our humanity, these heights so mysterious and
+so unscalable, not rather bulwarks between man's pride and the abyss?
+
+Something of this I said to the Butterfly Man, and he nodded, but did
+not answer. He fell into a brown study; then plunged from the room
+without further look or word and made for his own desk. I was not
+afraid of what the Butterfly Man, fresh from little Appleboro's woods
+and fields, would have to say to the scholars and scientists gathered
+to hear him!
+
+Apparently he was not either, for after he had gotten a few notes
+together he wisely turned the whole affair over to that mysterious
+Self that does our work and solves our problems for us. On the surface
+he busied himself with a paper setting forth the many reasons why the
+County of Appleboro should appropriate adequate funds for a common
+dipping vat, and hurried this to Dabney, who was holding open a space
+in the _Clarion_ for it. Then there were new breeding cages to be
+made, for the supply of eggs and cocoons on hand would require
+additional quarters, once they began to emerge.
+
+By the Saturday he had finished all this; and as I had that afternoon
+free we spent some beautiful hours with the microscope and slide
+mounts. I completed, too, the long delayed drawings of some diurnal
+wasp-moths and their larvae. We worked until my mother interrupted us
+with a summons to an early dinner, for Saturday evening belongs to the
+confessional and I was shortly due at the church.
+
+I left Flint with Madame and Miss Sally Ruth, who had run over after
+the neighborly Appleboro wont with a plate of fresh sponge-cake and a
+bowl of fragrant custard. Miss Sally Ruth is nothing if not generous,
+but there are times when one could wish upon her the affliction of
+dumbness. As I slipped into my cassock in the study, I could hear her
+uplifted voice, a voice so insistent and so penetrating that it can
+pierce closed doors and come through a ceiling:
+
+"I declare to goodness, I don't know what to believe any more! She's
+got money enough in her own right, hasn't she? For heaven's sake,
+then, why should she marry for more money? But you never really know
+people, do you? Why, folks say--"
+
+I hurried out of the house and ran the short distance to the church. I
+wished I hadn't heard; I wished Miss Sally Ruth, good as she is, would
+sometimes hold her tongue. She will set folks by the ears in heaven
+some of these days if she doesn't mend her ways before she gets there.
+
+It must have been all of ten o'clock when I got back to the Parish
+House. Madame had retired; John Flint's rooms were dark. The night
+itself was dark, though in between the clouds that a brisk wind
+pulleyhauled about the skies, one saw many stars.
+
+Too tired to sleep, I sat beside my window and breathed the repose
+that lay like a benediction upon the little city. I found myself
+praying; for Mary Virginia, whom I loved and over whom I was sorely
+troubled; for Laurence, even now walking such a road as I also once
+had to travel with feet as young but no more steadfast; and then with
+a thankfulness too deep for words, I thought a prayer for the
+Butterfly Man. So thinking and so praying, with a glow in my heart
+because of him, I closed my window, and crept into bed and into
+sleep.
+
+I awoke with a start. Somebody was in the room. There was an urgent
+voice whispering my name, an urgent hand upon me. A pocket light
+flashed, and in its pale circle appeared the face of John Flint.
+
+"Get up!" said he in an intense whisper. "And come. Come!"
+
+"Why, what in the name of heaven--"
+
+"Don't make a row!" he snarled, and brought his face close. "Here--let
+me help you. Heaven, man, how slow you are!" With furious haste he
+forced my clothes upon me and even as I mechanically struggled to
+adjust them he was hustling me toward the door, through the dark hall,
+and down the stairs.
+
+"Easy there--careful of that step!" he breathed in my ear, guiding me.
+
+"But what is the matter?" I whispered back impatiently. I do not
+relish mystery and I detest being led willynilly.
+
+"In my rooms," said he briefly, and hustled me across the garden on
+the double run, I with my teeth chattering, for I had been dragged out
+of my sleep, and the night air was cold.
+
+He fairly lifted me up his porch-steps, unlocked his door, and pushed
+me inside. With the drawn shades and the flickering firelight, the
+room was peaceful and pleasant enough. Then Kerry caught my astonished
+gaze, for the dog stood statue-like beside the Morris chair, and when
+I saw what Kerry guarded I crossed myself. Sunk into the chair, the
+Butterfly Man's old gray overcoat partly around her, was Mary
+Virginia.
+
+At my involuntary exclamation she raised her head and regarded me. A
+great sigh welled from her bosom and I could see her eyes dilate and
+her lips quiver.
+
+"Padre, Padre!" Down went her head, and she began to cry childishly,
+with sobs.
+
+I watched her helplessly, too bewildered to speak. But the other man's
+face was the face of one crucified. I saw his eyes, and something I
+had been all too blind to rushed upon me overwhelmingly. This, then,
+was what had driven him forth for a time, this was what had left its
+indelible imprint upon him! He had hung upon his cross and I had not
+known. Oh, Butterfly Man, I had not known!
+
+"She'll be able to talk to you in a few minutes now, parson." He was
+so perfectly unconscious of himself that he had no idea he had just
+made mute confession. He added, doubtfully: "She said she had to come
+to you, about something--I don't know what. It's up to you to find
+out--she's got to talk to you, parson."
+
+"But--I wanted to talk to you, Padre. That's why I--ran away from home
+in the middle of the night." She sat suddenly erect. "I just couldn't
+stand things, any more--by myself--"
+
+Gone was the fine lady, the great beauty, the proud jilt who had
+broken Laurence's heart and maddened and enslaved Inglesby. Here was
+only a piteous child with eyes heavy from weeping, with a pale and sad
+face and drooping childish lips. And yet she was so dear and so
+lovely, for all her reddened eyelids and her reddened little nose,
+that one could have wept with her. The Butterfly Man, with an intake
+of breath, stood up.
+
+"I shall leave you with the Padre now," he said evenly, "to tell him
+what you wanted to tell him. Father, understand: there's something
+rotten wrong, as I've been telling you all along. Now she's got to
+tell you what it is and all about it. Everything. Whether she likes to
+or not, and no matter what it is, she's got to tell you. You
+understand that, Mary Virginia?"
+
+She fixed him with a glance that had in it something hostile and
+oblique. Even with those dearest of women whom I adore, there are
+moments when I have the impression that they have, so to speak, their
+ears laid back flat, and I experience what I may justly term cat-fear.
+I felt it then.
+
+"Oh, don't have too much consideration for my feelings, Mr. Flint!"
+said she, with that oblique and baffling glance, and the smile Old
+Fitz once likened to the Curve in the Cat's Tail. "Indeed, why should
+you go? Why don't you stay and find out _why_ I wanted to run to the
+Padre--to beg him to find some way to help me, since I can't fall like
+a plum into Mr. Inglesby's hand when Mr. Hunter shakes the Eustis
+family tree!"
+
+His breath came whistlingly between his teeth.
+
+"Parson! You hear?" he slapped his leg with his open palm. "Oh, I knew
+it, I knew it!" And he turned upon her a kindling glance:
+
+"I knew all along it was never in you to be anything but true!" said
+the Butterfly Man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+"WILL YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOR"
+
+
+It is impossible for me to put down in her own words what Mary
+Virginia told the Butterfly Man and me. Also, I have had to fill in
+gaps here and there, supplying what was lacking, from my intimate
+knowledge of the actors and from such chance words and hints and bits
+of detail as came to me afterward. But what I have added has been
+necessary, in order to do greater justice to everybody concerned.
+
+If it be true that the boy is father to the man, it is even more
+tritely true that the girl is mother to the woman, there being here
+less chance for change. So it was with Mary Virginia. That gracious
+little girlhood of hers, lived among the birds and bees and blossoms
+of an old Carolina garden, had sent her into the Church School with a
+settled and definite idealism as part of her nature. Her creed was
+simple enough: The world she knew was the best of all possible worlds,
+its men good, its women better; and to be happy and loved one had only
+to be good and loving.
+
+The school did not disabuse her of this pleasing optimism. It was a
+very expensive school and could afford to have optimisms of its own.
+For one thing, it had no pupils poor enough to apply the acid test.
+
+When Mary Virginia was seventeen, Mrs. Eustis perceived with dismay
+that her child who had promised beauty was instead become angular,
+awkward, and self-conscious; and promptly packed the unworldly one off
+to spend a saving summer with a strenuously fashionable cousin, a
+widow, of whom she herself was very fond. She liked the idea of
+placing the gauche girl under so vigorous and seasoned a wing as
+Estelle Baker's. As for Mrs. Baker herself, that gay and good-humored
+lady laughed at the leggy and serious youngster and promptly took her
+education in hand along lines not laid down in Church Schools.
+
+Mrs. Baker was delighted with her own position--the reasonably young,
+handsome, and wealthy widow of a man she had been satisfied to marry
+and later to bury. She had an unimpaired digestion and no illusions, a
+kind heart, and the power of laughter. Naturally, she found life
+interesting. A club-woman, an ultra-modernist, vitally alive, she was
+fully abreast of her day. Her small library skimmed the cream of the
+insurgents and revolutionaries of genius; and here the shy and
+reticent schoolgirl with the mark of the churchly checkrein fresh upon
+her, was free to browse, for her cousin had no slightest notion of
+playing censor. Mrs. Baker thought that the sooner one was allowed to
+slough off the gaucheries of the Young Person, the better. She did not
+gauge the real and tumultuous depths of feeling concealed under the
+young girl's simplicity.
+
+The revolutionaries and the insurgent and free poets didn't trouble
+Mary Virginia very much. Although she sensed that something was wrong
+with somebody somewhere--hence these lyrical lamentations--she could
+not, to save her, tell what all the pother was about, for as yet she
+saw the world _couleur de rose_. Some one or two of the French and
+Germans pleased her; she fell into long reveries over the Gael, who
+has the sound of the sea in his voice and whose eyes are full of a
+haunting light, as of sunsets upon graves. But it was the Russians who
+electrified and dazzled her. When she glimpsed with her eyes of a
+young girl those strange souls simple as children's and yet mosaiced
+with unimaginable and barbarous splendors, she stood blinking and half
+blinded, awed, fascinated, and avid to know more of that sky-scaling
+passion with which they burned.
+
+And in that crucial moment she chanced upon the "Diary of Marie
+Bashkirtseff," so frank and so astounding that it took her breath away
+and swept her off her feet. She was stirred into a vague and trembling
+expectancy; she had the sense of waiting for something to happen. Life
+instantly became more colorful and more wonderful than she had dreamed
+could be possible, and she wished passionately to experience all these
+emotions, so powerful and so poignant. The Russian's morbid and
+disease-bright genius acted upon her as with the force and intensity
+of a new and potent toxin. She could not lay the book aside, but
+carried it up to her room to be pored and pondered over. She failed to
+understand that, untried as she was, it was impossible for her to
+understand it. Had the book come later, it had been harmless enough;
+but it came at a most critical moment of that seething period when
+youth turns inward to question the universe, and demands that the
+answer shall be personal to itself. The first long ground-swell of
+awakening emotion swept over her, sitting in the pleasant chintz-hung
+room, with the Russian woman's wild and tameless heart beating through
+the book open upon her knees. And these waves of emotion that at
+recurrent intervals surge over the soul, come from the shores of a
+farther country than any earthly seas have touched, and recede to
+depths so profound that only the eyes of God may follow their ebb and
+flow.
+
+Mrs. Baker, however, saw nothing about which to give herself any
+concern. If she perceived the girl intense and preoccupied, she smiled
+indulgently--at Mary Virginia's age one is apt to be like that, and
+one recovers from that phase as one gets over mumps and measles. Mrs.
+Baker did think it advisable, though, to subtly detach the girl from
+books for awhile. She amused herself by allowing her wide-eyed
+glimpses of the larger life of grown-ups, by way of arousing and
+initiation. Thus it happened that one afternoon at the country-club,
+where Mary Virginia, at the green-fruit stage, found herself playing
+gooseberry instead of golf, Mrs. Baker sauntered up with a tall and
+very blonde man.
+
+"Here," said she gaily, indicating with a wave of her hand her
+sulky-eyed young cousin, "is a marvel and a wonder--a girl who accepts
+on faith everything and everybody! My dear Howard, in all probability
+she will presently even believe in _you_!" With that she left them,
+whisked off by a waiting golfer.
+
+The man and the girl appraised each other. The man saw young
+bread-and-butter with the raw sugar of beauty sprinkled upon it
+promisingly. What the girl saw was not so much a faultlessly groomed
+and handsome man as the most beautiful person in the world. And
+suddenly she was aware that that for which she had been waiting had
+come. Something divine and wonderful was happening, and there was fire
+before her eyes and the noise of unloosed winds and great waters in
+her ears, and her knees trembled and her heart fluttered. A vivid red
+flamed into her pale cheeks, a soft and trembling light suffused her
+blue eyes. That happens when the sweet and virginal freshness of youth
+is brought face to face with the bright shadow of love.
+
+He drew her out of her shyness and made her laugh, and after awhile,
+when there was dancing, he danced with her. He did not behave to her
+as other men of Estelle's acquaintance had more than once behaved--as
+though they bestowed the lordly honor of their society upon her out of
+the sheer goodness of their hearts and their desire to please Mrs.
+Baker. Mary Virginia was uncompromising and stiff-necked enough then,
+and she bored most of her cousin's friends unconsciously. Now this
+man, as much their superior as the sun is to farthing dips, was
+exerting himself to please her. That was the one thing Mary Virginia
+needed to arouse her.
+
+Mrs. Baker admired Mr. Hunter for a grace of manner almost Latin in
+its charm. If at times he puzzled her, he at least never bored her or
+anybody else, and for this she praised him in the gates. Her respect
+for him deepened when she perceived that he never allowed himself to
+be absorbed or monopolized.
+
+The pleasant widow did not take him too seriously. She only asked that
+he amuse and interest her. He did both, to a superlative degree. That
+is why and how he saw so much of the school-girl cousin whose naivete
+made him smile, it was so absurdly sincere.
+
+Mrs. Baker was glad enough to have Howard take her charge off her
+hands occasionally. She thought contact with this fine pagan an
+excellent thing for the girl who took herself so seriously. She was
+really fond of Mary Virginia, but she must have found her hand-grenade
+directness a bit disconcerting at times. She wanted the child's visit
+to be pleasant, and she considered it very amiable of Howard to help
+her make it so. She had no faintest notion of danger--to her Mary
+Virginia was nothing but a child, a little girl one indulged with
+pickles and pound-cake and the bliss of staying up later than the
+usual bedtime. As for Hunter, his was the French attitude toward the
+Young Person; she had heard him say he preferred his flowers in full
+bloom and his fruit ripe--one then knows what one is getting; one
+isn't deceived by canker in the closed bud and worm in the green
+fruit. No, Howard wasn't the sort that hankered for verjuice.
+
+None the less, although Mrs. Baker didn't know it, Mary Virginia was
+engaged to the godlike Howard when she returned to school. It was to
+be a state secret until after she was graduated, and in the meantime
+he was to "make himself worthier of her love." She hadn't any notion
+he could be improved upon, but it pleased her to hear him say that.
+Humility in the superman is the ultimate proof of perfection.
+
+The maid who attended her room at school arranged for the receipt of
+his letters and mailed Mary Virginia's. The maid was sentimental, and
+delighted to play a part smacking of those dime novels she spoiled her
+brains with.
+
+The little schoolgirl who was in love with love, and secretly
+betrothed to a man who had stepped alive out of old knightly romance,
+walked in the Land of April Rainbows and felt the whole joyous
+universe suffused with a delicious and quivering glow of light and
+sound and scent. Surcharged with an emotion that she was irresistibly
+urged to express, and unable to do so by word of mouth, she was driven
+to the necessity of putting it down on paper for him. And she put it
+down in the burning words, the fiery phrases, of those anarchists of
+art who had intoxicated and obsessed her.
+
+Just a little later,--even a year later--and Mary Virginia could never
+have written those letters. But now, very ignorant, very innocent,
+very impassioned, she accomplished a miracle. She was like one
+speaking an unknown tongue, perfectly sure that the spirit moved her,
+but quite unable to comprehend what it was that it moved her to say.
+
+When Mrs. Baker insisted that her young cousin should come back to her
+for the Christmas holidays, the girl was more than eager to go. Seeing
+him again only deepened her infatuation.
+
+That holiday visit was an unusually gay one, for Mrs. Baker was really
+fond of Mary Virginia--the young girl's tenderness and simplicity
+touched the woman of the world. She gave a farewell dance the night
+before Mary Virginia was to return to school. It was an informal
+affair, with enough college boys and girls to lend it a junior air,
+but there was a goodly sprinkling of grown-ups to deepen it, for the
+hostess said frankly that she simply couldn't stand the Very Young
+except in broken doses and in bright spots.
+
+Hunter, of course, was to be one of the grownups. He had sent Mary
+Virginia the flowers she was to wear. And she had a new dancing frock,
+quite the loveliest and fluffiest and laciest she had ever worn.
+
+He was somewhat late. And so engrossed with him were all her thoughts,
+so eager was she to see him, that she was a disappointing companion
+for anybody else. She couldn't talk to anybody else. She flitted in
+and out of laughing groups like a blue-and-silver butterfly, and
+finally managed to slip away to the stair nook behind what Mrs. Baker
+liked to call the conservatory. This was merely a portion of the big
+back hall glassed in and hung with a yellow silk curtain; it had a
+tiny round crystal fountain in the center and one or two carved seats,
+but one wouldn't think so small a space could hold so much bloom and
+fragrance. From the nook where Mary Virginia sat, one could hear every
+word spoken in the flower-room, though the hearer remained hidden by
+the paneled stairway.
+
+Hands in her lacy lap, eyes abstracted, she fell into the dreams that
+youth dreams; in which a girl--one's self, say,--walks hand in hand
+through an enchanted world with a being very, very little lower than
+the angels and twice as dear. They are such innocent dreams, such
+impossible dreams, so untouched of all reality; but I wonder, oh I
+wonder, if life can ever give us anything to repay their loss!
+
+Somebody spoke in the conservatory and she looked up, startled.
+Through a parting in the silk curtain she glimpsed the woman and
+recognized one of Estelle's friends, handsome and fashionable, but a
+woman she had never liked.
+
+"You provoke me. You try my patience too much!" she was saying, in a
+tone of suppressed anger. "People are beginning to say that you have a
+serious affair with that sugar-candy chit. I want to know if that is
+true?"
+
+The man laughed, a lazy, pleasant, disarming laugh. She knew that
+laugh among a million, and her heart began to beat, but not with doubt
+or distrust. She wondered how she had missed him, and if he had been
+looking for her; she thought of the exquisite secret that bound them
+together, and wondered how he was going to protect it without evasions
+or untruthfulness. And she thought the woman abominable.
+
+"You're so suspicious, Evie!" he said smilingly. "Why bother about
+what can give you no real concern? Why discuss it here, at all? It's
+not the thing, really."
+
+The woman stamped her foot. She had an able-bodied temper.
+
+"I will know, and I will know now. I have to know," said she, and her
+voice shook. Mary Virginia would have coughed then, would have made
+her presence known had she been able; but something held her silent.
+"Remember, you're not dealing with a love-sick school-girl now,
+Howard: you are dealing with _me_. Have you made that little fool
+think you're in love with her?"
+
+"Why, and what then?" he asked coolly. "I like the child. Of course
+she is without form and void as yet, but there's quite a lot to that
+girl."
+
+"Oh, yes! Quite a lot!" said she, with sarcasm. "That's what made me
+take notice. James Eustis's girl--and barrels of money. She'll be a
+catch. You are clever, Howard! But what of _me_?"
+
+Mary Virginia's heart fluttered. Indeed, what of this other woman?
+
+"Oh, well, there's nothing definite yet, Evie," said he soothingly. A
+hint of impatience was betrayed in his voice. Plainly, it irked him to
+be held up and questioned point-blank, at such a time and place. Just
+as plainly, he wished to conciliate his jealous questioner. "My dear
+girl, it would be all of two or three years before the affair could be
+considered. Let well enough alone, Evie. Let's talk about something
+else."
+
+"No. We will talk about this. You are offering me a two or three
+years' reprieve, are you not? Well, and then?"
+
+"Well, and then suppose I do marry the little thing,--if she hasn't
+changed her little mind?" said he, exasperated into punishing her. "It
+wouldn't be a bad thing for me, remember, and she's temptingly easy to
+deal with--that girl has more faith than the twelve apostles. Heavens,
+Evie, don't look like that! My dearest girl, _you_ don't have to
+worry, anyhow. If your--er--impediment hasn't stood in my way, why
+should mine in yours?"
+
+He spoke with a half-impatient, half-playful reproach. The woman
+uttered a little cry. To soothe and silence her, he kissed her. It was
+very risky, of course, but then the whole situation was risky, and he
+took his chance like the bold player he was. The girl crouching behind
+the paneled wall clenched her hands in her lap, felt her heart and
+brain on fire, and wondered why the sky did not fall upon the world
+and blot it out.
+
+When those two had left the conservatory and she could command her
+trembling limbs and whip her senses back into some semblance of order,
+she went upstairs and got his letters. When she came downstairs again
+he was standing in the hall, and he came forward eager, smiling,
+tender, as if his heart welcomed her; as perhaps it did, men having
+catholic hearts. She put her hand on his arm and whispered: "Come
+into the conservatory."
+
+The hall was quite empty. From drawing-room and library and
+dining-room came the laughter and chatter of many people. Then the
+music struck up a gay and popular air. The lilt and swing of it made
+her giddy. But the little flower-room was cool and sweet, and she drew
+a breath of relief.
+
+Hunter bent his fair head, but she pushed him away with her hands
+against his chest. A horror of his beauty, his deliberate fascination,
+the falseness of him, came over her. For the first time she had been
+brought face to face with sin and falsehood, and hers was the
+unpardoning white condemnation of an angel to whom sin is unknown and
+falsehood impossible. That such knowledge should have come through him
+of all men made the thing more unbearable. Surprised and irritated by
+the pale tragedy of her aspect, Hunter stared, waiting for her to
+speak.
+
+"I was on the stairs. I heard you--and that woman," said she with the
+directness that was sometimes so appalling. "And I _know_." Her face
+turned burning red before it paled again. She was ashamed for him with
+the noble shame of the pure in heart.
+
+His face, too, went red and white with rage and astonishment. It was a
+damnable trap for a man to be caught in, and he was furious with the
+two women who had pushed him into it--he could have beaten them both
+with rods. Innocent as this girl was, he could not hope to deceive her
+as to the real truth. She had heard too much. But he thought he could
+manage her; women were as wax in Hunter's hands. To begin with, they
+_wanted_ to believe him.
+
+"I hate to have to say it--but the lady is jealous," he said frankly
+enough, with a disarming smile; and shrugged his shoulders, quite as
+if that simple statement explained and excused everything.
+
+"Oh, she need not be afraid--of me!" said the girl, with white-hot
+scorn. "I'd rather die by inches of leprosy than belong to you now.
+You are clever, though. And I _was_ easy to deal with, wasn't I? And I
+cared so much! I dare say it was really your hair and beard, but I
+honestly thought you a sort of Archangel! Well, you're not. You're not
+anything I thought you--not good nor kind nor honorable nor
+truthful--not anything but just a rather paltry sort of liar. You're
+not even loyal to _her_. I think I could respect you more if you were.
+But I _am_ James Eustis's girl--and that's my salvation, Mr. Hunter.
+Please take your letters. You will send me back mine to-morrow."
+
+He stroked his short gold beard. The color had come back into his face
+and a new light flashed into his cold blue eyes. He laughed. "Why, you
+game little angel!" he said delightedly. "Gad, I never thought you had
+it in you--never. I begin to adore you, Mary Virginia, upon my soul I
+do! Now listen to reason, my too-good child, and don't be so
+puritanical. You've got to take folks as they are and not as you'd
+like them to be, you know. Men are not angels, no, nor women, either.
+You must learn to be charitable--a virtue very good people seldom
+practice and never properly appreciate." And he added, leaning lower:
+"Mary Virginia! Give me another chance ... you won't be sorry,
+Ladybird."
+
+But she stood unmoved, stonily silent, holding out the letters. And
+when he still ignored this silent insistence, she thrust them into his
+hands and left him.
+
+Mary Virginia was to go back to school the next night. All day she
+waited for her letters. Instead came a note and a huge bunch of
+violets. The note said he couldn't allow those precious letters which
+meant so much to him to pass even into her hands who had written them.
+When he could summon up the courage, he would presently destroy them
+himself. And she had treated him with great harshness, and wouldn't
+she be a good little girl and let him see her, if only for a few
+minutes, before she went away?
+
+Mary Virginia tore up the note and returned the violets by way of
+answer.
+
+When she returned to school, the superioress regretted that she had
+been allowed to visit Mrs. Baker again, because too much gaiety wasn't
+good for her, and she was falling off in her studies. The other girls
+said she had lost all her looks, for in truth she was wan and peaked
+and hollow-eyed. Seventeen suffers frightfully, when it suffers at
+all. Eighteen enjoys its blighted affection, revels in its broken
+heart, would like to crochet a black edging on its immortal soul, and
+wouldn't exchange its secret sorrow for a public joy. Nineteen is
+convalescent--pride would come to its rescue even if life itself did
+not beguile it into being happy.
+
+Mary Virginia got back her color and her appetite and forgot to
+remember that her heart was incurably broken and that she could never
+love again. She liked to think her painful experience had made her
+very wise. Then she went abroad, and her cure was complete. The result
+of it all was that poise and pride which had so greatly delighted the
+autocratic old kinswoman whose fiat had set the last seal of social
+success upon her.
+
+When one of life's little jokes flung Hunter into Appleboro and she
+had to observe him with impartial and less ingenuous eyes, she forgave
+the simple schoolgirl's natural mistake. He had not changed, and she
+perceived his effect upon others older and wiser than herself. And her
+pride chose neither to slight nor to ignore him now, but rather to
+meet him casually, with indifference, as a stranger in whom she was
+not at all interested.
+
+Mr. Inglesby she did not take seriously. She did not dream that a
+possible menace to herself lay in this stout man whom she considered
+fatuous and absurd, when she thought of him at all. That her mother
+should be completely taken in by his specious charity and his
+plausible presentment of himself, did not surprise her. She was
+inclined to smile scornfully and so dismiss him.
+
+She underestimated Inglesby.
+
+The very fact that there was such an obstacle in the way as a young
+fellow with whom she fancied herself in love only deepened Inglesby's
+passion for Mary Virginia. She was in her proper person all that he
+coveted and groveled to. To possess her in addition to his own
+wealth--what more could a man ask? Let Eustis become senator,
+governor, president, anything he chose. But let Inglesby have Mary
+Virginia by way of fair exchange.
+
+Mr. Inglesby was well aware that Miss Eustis would not for one moment
+consider him--unless she had to. He proposed to so arrange affairs
+that she had to. Naturally, he looked to his private secretary to help
+him bring about this desirable end. And at this opportune moment fate
+played into his hands in a manner that left Mr. Hunter's assent a
+matter of course.
+
+Mr. Hunter had very expensive tastes which his salary was not always
+sufficient to cover. Wherefore, like many another, he speculated. When
+he was lucky, it was easy money; but it was never enough. Of late he
+had not been fortunate, and he found himself confronted by the high
+cost of living as he chose to live. This annoyed him. So when there
+came his way what appeared to be an absolute certainty of not only
+recouping all his losses but of making some real money as well, Hunter
+plunged, with every dollar he could manage to get hold of. But Wall
+Street is a lane that has many crooked and devious turnings, and Mr.
+Hunter's investments took a very wrong turn. And this time it was not
+only all his own money that had been lost. The bottom might have
+dropped out of things then, except for Inglesby.
+
+When Hunter had to tell him the truth the financier listened with an
+unmoved face. Then he swung around in his chair, lifted an eyebrow,
+grunted, and remarked briefly: "Very unsafe thing to do, Hunter.
+Very." And shoved his personal check across the desk. Nobody knew
+anything about it, except the head bookkeeper of the bank.
+
+Inglesby had no illusions, however. He understood that to have in his
+power an immensely clever man who knew as much about his private
+affairs as Hunter did, was good business, to say the least. He simply
+invested in Mr. Hunter's brains and personality for his own immediate
+ends, and he expected his brilliant and expensive secretary to prove
+the worth of the investment.
+
+Inglesby had not risen to his present heights by beating about the
+bush in his dealings with others. He had seized Success by the
+windpipe and throttled it into obedience, and he ruthlessly bent
+everything and everybody to his own purposes. The task he set before
+Hunter now was to steer the Inglesby ship through a perilous passage
+into the matrimonial harbor he had in mind. Let Hunter do that--no
+matter how--and the pilot's future was assured. Inglesby would be no
+niggardly rewarder. But let the venture come to shipwreck and Hunter
+must go down with it. Hunter was not left in any doubt upon that
+score.
+
+Brought face to face with the situation as it affected his fortune and
+misfortune, Hunter must have had a very bad half an hour. I am sure he
+had not dreamed of such a contretemps, and he must have been startled
+and amazed by the cold calculation and the raw fury of passion he had
+to deal with. I do not think he relished his task. His was the sort of
+conscience that would dislike such a course, not because it was
+dishonorable or immoral in itself, but because its details offended
+his fastidiousness. I think he would have extricated himself honorably
+if he could. It just happened that he couldn't.
+
+Give a sufficient shock to a man's pocket-nerve and you electrify his
+brain-cells, which automatically receive orders to work overtime.
+Hunter's brain worked then because it had to, self-preservation being
+the first law of nature. And this service for Inglesby not only spelt
+safety; it meant the golden key to the heights, the power to gratify
+those fine tastes which only a rich and able man can afford. Inglesby
+had promised that, and he had just had a fair example of what
+Inglesby's support meant.
+
+One must try to consider the case from Mr. Hunter's point of view. To
+refuse Inglesby meant disaster. And who was Laurence, who was Mary
+Virginia, that he should quixotically wreck his prospects for them?
+Why should he lose Inglesby's goodwill or gain Inglesby's enmity for
+them or anybody else? Forced to choose, Hunter made the only choice
+possible to him.
+
+_Voe victis!_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+"--SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY--"
+
+
+Now I am only an old priest and no businessman, so of course I do not
+know just how Hunter was set like a hound upon the track of those
+circumstances that, properly manipulated, helped him toward a solution
+of his problem--the getting of a girl apparently as unreachable as
+Mary Virginia Eustis.
+
+To start with, he had two assets, the first being Eustis pride.
+Shrewdly working upon that, Hunter played with skill and finesse.
+
+When he was ready, it was easy enough to meet Miss Eustis on the
+street of an afternoon. Although her greeting was disconcertingly
+cold, he fell into step beside her. And presently, in a low and
+intimate voice, he began to quote certain phrases that rang in her
+astonished ears with a sort of hateful familiarity.
+
+A glance at her face made him smile. "I wonder," he questioned, "if
+you have changed, dear puritan? You are engaged to Mayne now, I hear.
+Very clever chap, Mayne. The moving power behind your father, I
+understand. And engaged to you! You're so intense and interesting when
+you're in love that one is tempted to envy Mayne. Do you write _him_
+letters, too?"
+
+Mary Virginia's level eyes regarded him with haughty surprise. The
+situation was rather unbelievable.
+
+"Miss Eustis--" he paused to bow and smile to some passing girls who
+plainly envied Mary Virginia, "Miss Eustis, you must come to my
+office, say to-morrow afternoon. We must have a heart-to-heart talk. I
+have something you will find it to your interest to discuss with me."
+
+She disdained to reply, to ask him to leave her; her attitude did not
+even suggest that he should explain himself. Seeming to be perfectly
+content with this attitude, he sauntered along beside her.
+
+"Do you know," he smiled, "that with you the art of writing genuine
+love-letters amounts to a gift? I am sure your father--and let's say
+Mayne--would be astonished and delighted to read the ones I have. They
+are unequaled. Human documents, heart-interest, delicate and piquant
+sex-tang--the very sort of thing the dear public devours. I told you
+once they meant a great deal to me, remember? They're going to mean
+more. Come about four, please." He lifted his hat, bowed, and was
+gone.
+
+Mary Virginia went to his office at four o'clock the next afternoon,
+as he had planned she should. She wanted to know exactly what he
+meant, and she fancied he meant to make her buy back the letters he
+claimed not to have destroyed. The bare idea of anybody on earth
+reading those insane vaporings sickened her.
+
+Hunter's manner subtly allowed her to understand that he had known she
+would come, and this angered her inexpressibly; it gave him an
+advantage.
+
+"Instead of wasting time in idle persiflage," he said when he had
+handed her a chair, "let's get right down to brass tacks. You
+naturally desire to know why I kept your letters? For one reason,
+because they are a bit of real literature. However, I propose to
+return them now--for a consideration."
+
+He leaned forward, idly drumming on the polished desk, and regarded
+her with a sort of impersonal speculation. A little smile crept to his
+lip.
+
+"The whirligig of time does bring in its revenges, doesn't it?" he
+mused aloud. Mary Virginia's lips curled.
+
+"I do not follow you," she said coldly. "I am not even sure you have
+the letters--that is why I am here. I must see them with my own eyes
+before I agree to pay for them. That is what you expect me to do, is
+it not?"
+
+"Oh, I have them all right--that is very easily proven," said he,
+unruffled. "Now listen carefully, please, while I explain the real
+reason for your presence here this afternoon. Mr. Inglesby, for
+reasons of his own, desires to don the senatorial toga; why not? Also,
+even more vehemently, Mr. Inglesby desires to lead to the altar Miss
+Mary Virginia Eustis: yourself, dear lady, your charming self: again,
+why not? Who can blame him for so natural and laudable an ambition?
+
+"As to his ever persuading you to become Mrs. Inglesby, without
+some--ah--moral suasion, why, you know what his chance would be better
+than I do. As to his persuading the state to send him to Washington,
+it would have been a certainty, a sure thing, if our zealous young
+friend Mayne hadn't egged your father into the game. How Mayne managed
+that, heaven knows, particularly with your father's affairs in the
+condition they are. Now, Eustis is a fine man. Far too fine to be lost
+in the shuffle at Washington, where he'd be a condemned
+nuisance--just as he sometimes is here at home. Do you begin to
+comprehend?"
+
+"Why, no," said she, blankly. "And I certainly fail to see where my
+silly letters--"
+
+"Let me make it plainer. You and your silly letters put the game into
+Mr. Inglesby's hands, swing the balance in his favor. _You_ pay _me_?
+Heavens, no! _We_ pay _you_--and a thumping price at that!"
+
+For a long moment they looked at each other.
+
+"My dear Miss Eustis," he put the tips of his fine fingers together,
+bent forward over them, and favored her with a white-toothed smile,
+"behold in me Mr. Inglesby's ambassador--the advocate of Cupid. Plainly,
+I am authorized to offer you Mr. Inglesby's heart, his hand, and--his
+check-book. Let us suppose you agree to accept--no, don't interrupt me
+yet, please. And keep your seat, Miss Eustis. You may smile, but I would
+advise you to consider very seriously what I am about to say to you, and
+to realize once for all that Mr. Inglesby is in dead earnest and
+prepared to go to considerable lengths. Well, then, as I was about to
+say: suppose you agree to accept his proposal! Being above all things a
+business man, Mr. Inglesby realizes that gilt-edged collateral should be
+put up for what you have to offer--youth, beauty, charm, health,
+culture, family name, desirable and influential connections, social
+position of the highest. In exchange he offers the Inglesby millions,
+his absolute devotion to yourself, and his hearty support to all your
+father's plans and interests. Observe the last, please; it is highly
+important. Besides this, Mayne and Eustis want reform, progress,
+Demos-with-a-full-dinner-pail, all the wearisome rest of that uplift
+stuff? Inglesby will see that they get an undiluted dose of it. More
+yet: if you have any scruples about Mayne, Inglesby will get behind that
+young man and boost him until he can crow on the weathervane--when you
+are Mrs. Inglesby. A chap like Mayne would be valuable, properly
+expurgated. Come, Miss Eustis, that's fair enough. If you refuse--well,
+it's up to you to make Eustis understand that he must eliminate himself
+from politics--and look out for himself," he finished ominously.
+
+Mary Virginia rose impetuously.
+
+"I am no longer seventeen, Mr. Hunter. What, do you honestly think you
+can frighten a grown woman into believing that a handful of silly
+letters could possibly be worth all that? Well, you can't. And--let me
+remind you that blackmailing women isn't smiled upon in Carolina. A
+hint of this and you'd be ostracized."
+
+"So would you. And why use such an extreme term as blackmailing for
+what really is a very fair offer?" said he, equably. "The letters are
+not the only arrows in my quiver, Miss Eustis. But as you are more
+interested in them than anything else just now, suppose we run over a
+few, just to remind you of their amazing nature?" He rose leisurely,
+opened the safe in a corner of the room, took from the steel
+money-vault a package, and Mary Virginia recognized her own writing.
+Always keeping them under his own hand, he yet allowed her to lean
+forward and verify what he chose to read.
+
+Her face burned and tears of mortification stung her eyes. Good
+heavens, had she been as silly and as sentimental as all that? But as
+she listened to his smooth remorseless voice, mortification merged
+into amazement and amazement into consternation. Older and wiser now,
+she saw what ignorance and infatuation had really accomplished, and
+she realized that a fool can unwittingly pull the universe about her
+ears.
+
+She was appalled. It was as if her waking self were confronted by an
+incredible something her dreaming self had done. She knew enough of
+the world now to realize how such letters would be received--with
+smiles intended to wound, with the raised eyebrow, the shrugged
+shoulder. She wondered, with a chill of panic, how she could ever hope
+to make anybody understand what she admitted she herself couldn't
+explain. For heaven's sake, _what_ had she been trying to tell this
+man? She didn't know any more, except that it hadn't been what these
+letters seemed to reveal.
+
+"Well?" said the lazy, pleasant voice, "don't you agree with me that
+it would have been barbarous to destroy them? Wonderful, aren't they?
+Who would credit a demure American schoolgirl with their supreme art?
+A French court lady might have written them, in a day when folks made
+a fine art of love and weren't afraid nor ashamed."
+
+"I must have been stark mad!" said she, twisting her fingers. "How
+could I ever have done it? Oh, how?"
+
+"Oh, we all have our moments of genius!" said he, airily.
+
+As he faced her, smiling and urbane, she noted woman-fashion the
+superfine quality of his linen, the perfection of every detail of his
+appearance, the grace with which he wore his clothes. His manner was
+gracious, even courtly. Yet there was about him something so
+relentless that for the first time she felt a quiver of fear.
+
+"If my father--or Mr. Mayne--knew this, you would undoubtedly be
+shot!" said she, and her eyes flashed.
+
+"Unwritten law, chivalry, all the rest of that rot? I am well aware
+that the Southern trigger-finger is none too steady, where lovely
+woman is concerned," he admitted, with a faint sneer. "But when one
+plays for high stakes, Miss Eustis, one runs the risks. Granted I do
+get shot? That wouldn't give you the letters: it would simply hand
+them over to prosecuting attorneys and the public press, and they'd be
+damning with blood upon them. No, I don't think there'll be any
+fireworks--just a sensible deal, in which everybody benefits and
+nobody loses."
+
+"The thing is impossible, perfectly impossible."
+
+"I don't see why. Everything has its price and I'm offering you a
+pretty stiff one."
+
+"I would rather be burned alive. Marry Mr. Inglesby? _I_? Why, he is
+impossible, perfectly impossible!"
+
+"He is nothing of the kind. And he is very much in love with you--you
+amount to a grand passion with Inglesby. Also, he has twenty
+millions." He added dryly: "You are hard to please."
+
+Mary Virginia waved aside grand passion and twenty millions with a
+gesture of ineffable disdain.
+
+"Even if I were weak and silly enough to take you seriously, do you
+imagine my father would ever consent? He would despise me. He would
+rather see me dead."
+
+"Oh, no, he wouldn't. Nobody can afford to despise a woman with twenty
+millions. It isn't in human nature. Particularly when you save Mr.
+James Eustis himself from coming a breakneck cropper, to say the very
+least."
+
+For the moment she missed the significance of that last remark.
+
+"I repeat that I would rather be burned alive. I despise the man!"
+said she, passionately.
+
+"Oh, no, you wouldn't." His manner was a bit contemptuous. "And you'd
+soon get used to him. Women and cats are like that. They may squall
+and scratch a bit at first, but the saucer of cream reconciles them,
+and presently they are quite at home and purring, the sensible
+creatures! You'll end by liking him very well."
+
+The girl ignored this Job's comforting.
+
+"What shall I say to my father?" she asked directly. "Tell him you
+kept the foolish letters written you by an ignorant child--and the
+price is either his or my selling out to Mr. Inglesby?"
+
+"That is your lookout. You can't expect us to let your side whip us,
+hands down, can you? Mr. Inglesby does not propose to submit tamely to
+_everything_." His face hardened, a glacial glint snapped into his
+eyes. "Inglesby's no worse than anybody else would be that had to hold
+down his job. He's got virtues, plenty of solid good-citizen,
+church-member, father-of-a-family virtues, little as you seem to
+realize it. Also, let me repeat--he has twenty millions. To buy up a
+handful of letters for twenty million dollars looks to me about the
+biggest price ever paid since the world began. Don't be a fool!"
+
+"I refuse. I refuse absolutely and unconditionally. I shall
+immediately send for my father--and for Mr. Mayne--"
+
+"I give you credit for better sense," said he, with a razor-edged
+smile. "Eustis is honorable and Mayne is in love with you, and when
+you spring this they'll swear they believe you: _but will they_? Do
+men ever believe women, without the leaven of a little doubt? Speaking
+as a man for men, I wouldn't put them to the test. No, dear lady, I
+hardly think you are going to be so silly. Now let us pass on to
+something of greater moment than the letters. Did you think I had
+nothing else to urge upon you?"
+
+"What, more?" said she, derisively. "I don't think I understand."
+
+"I am sure you don't. Permit me, then, to enlighten you." He paused a
+moment, as if to reflect. Then, impressively:
+
+"Hitherto, Miss Eustis, you have had the very button on Fortune's
+cap," he told her. "Suppose, however, that fickle goddess chose to
+whisk herself off bodily, and left you--_you_, mind you! to face the
+ugly realities of poverty, and poverty under a cloud?" And while she
+stared at him blankly, he asked: "What do you know of your father's
+affairs?"
+
+As a matter of fact she knew very little. But something in the deadly
+pleasantness of his voice, something in his eyes, startled her.
+
+"What do you mean, Mr. Hunter?"
+
+"Ah, now we get down to bedrock: your father's affairs," he said evenly.
+"Your father, Miss Eustis, is a very remarkable man, a man with one
+idea. In other words, a fanatic. Only a fanatic could accomplish what
+Eustis has accomplished. His one idea is the very sound old idea that
+people should remain on the land. He starts in to show his people how to
+do it successfully. Once started, the work grows like Jonah's gourd. He
+becomes a sort of rural white hope. So far, so good. But reclamation
+work, experimenting, blooded stock, up-to-the-minute machinery,
+labor-saving devices, chemicals, high-priced experts, labor itself, all
+that calls for money, plenty of money. Your father's work grew to its
+monumental proportions because he'd gotten other men interested in
+it--all sorts and conditions of men, but chiefly--and here's at once his
+strength and weakness--farmers, planters, small-town merchants and
+bankers. They backed him with everything they had--and they haven't
+lost--yet.
+
+"However, there are such things as bad seasons, labor troubles,
+boll-weevil, canker, floods, war. He lost ship-loads of cotton. He
+lost heavily on rice. Remember those last floods? In some of his
+places they wiped the work of years clean off the map. He had to begin
+all over, and he had to do it on borrowed money; which in lean and
+losing years is expensive. Floods may come and crops may go, but
+interest on borrowed money goes on forever. He mortgaged all he could
+mortgage, risked everything he could risk, took every chance--and now
+everything is at stake with him.
+
+"Do you realize what it would mean if Eustis went under? A smash to
+shake the state! Consider, too, the effect of failure upon the man
+himself! He can't fail, though--_if Mr. Inglesby chooses to lend a
+hand_. Now do you begin to comprehend?"
+
+In spite of her distrust, he impressed her profoundly. He did not
+over-estimate her father's passionate belief in himself and the value
+of his work. If anything, Hunter had slurred the immense influence
+Eustis exerted, and the calamitous effect his failure would have upon
+the plain people who looked up to him with such unlimited trust. They
+would not only lose their money; they would lose something no money
+could pay for--their faith.
+
+"Oh, but that just simply couldn't happen!" said Mary Virginia, and
+her chin went up.
+
+"It could very easily happen. It may happen shortly," he contradicted
+politely. "Heavens, girl, don't you know that the Eustis house is
+mortgaged to the roof, that Rosemount Plantation is mortgaged from the
+front fences to the back ditches? No, I suppose he wouldn't want his
+women-folks to know. He thinks he can tide it over. They always
+believe they can tide it over, those one-idea chaps. And he could,
+too, for he's a born winner, is Eustis. Give him time and a good
+season and he'd be up again, stronger than ever." While he spoke he
+was taking from a drawer a handful of papers, which he spread out on
+the desk. She could see upon all of them a bold clear "_James
+Eustis_."
+
+"One place mortgaged to prop up another, and that in turn mortgaged to
+save a third. Like links in a chain. Any chain is only as strong as
+its weakest link, remember. And we've got the links. Look at these,
+please." He laid before her two or three slips of paper. Mary
+Virginia's eyes asked for enlightenment.
+
+"These," explained Hunter, "are promissory notes. You will see that
+some of them are about due--and the amounts are considerable."
+
+"Oh! And _he_ had to do that?"
+
+"Of course. What else could he do? We kept a very close watch since we
+got the first inkling that things were not breaking right for him. Mr.
+Inglesby's own interests are pretty extensive--and we set them to
+work. It wasn't hard to manage, after things began to shape: a word
+here, a hint there, an order somewhere else; and once or twice, of
+course, a bit of pressure was brought to bear, in obdurate instances.
+But the man with money is always the man with the whip hand. Eustis
+got the help he had to have--and presently we got these. All perfectly
+legitimate, all in the course of the day's work.
+
+"Now, promissory notes are dangerous instruments should a holder
+desire to use them dangerously. Mr. Inglesby could give Eustis an
+extension of time, or he could demand full payment and immediately
+foreclose. You see, it's entirely optional with Mr. Inglesby." And he
+leaned back in his chair, perfectly self-possessed, entirely at his
+ease, and waited for her to speak.
+
+"You could do that--anybody could do that--to my father?" she was
+only half-convinced.
+
+"I assure you we can send him under--with a lot of other men's money
+tied around his neck to keep him down."
+
+"But even you would hesitate to do a thing like that!"
+
+"All is fair," said Hunter, "in love and war."
+
+"_Fair_?"
+
+"Legitimate, then."
+
+"But if he is in Mr. Inglesby's way and in his power at the same time,
+why not remove him in the ordinary course of business? Why drag in me
+and my letters?"
+
+"Why? Because it's the letters that enable us to reach _you_. My dear
+girl, Mr. Inglesby doesn't really give a hang whether Eustis sinks or
+swims. He'd as lief back him as not, for in the long run it's good
+business to back a winner. But it's _you_ he's playing for, and on
+that count all is fish that comes to his net. _Now_ do you begin to
+see?"
+
+Mary Virginia began to see. She looked at the unruffled man before her
+a bit wonderingly.
+
+"And what do _you_ get out of this?" she asked, unexpectedly. "Mr.
+Inglesby is to get me, I am to get his money and a package of letters,
+my father is to get time to save himself; well then, what do _you_
+get? The pleasure of doing something wrong? Revenge?"
+
+But Hunter looked at her with cold astonishment. "You surprise me," he
+said. "You talk as if you'd been going to see too many of those
+insufferable screen-plays that make the proletariat sniffle and the
+intelligent swear. I am merely a business man, Miss Eustis, and
+attending to this particular affair for my employer is all in the
+course of the day's work. I--er--am not in a position to refuse to
+obey orders or to be captious, particularly since Mr. Inglesby has
+agreed to double my present salary. That in itself is no light
+inducement--but I get more. I get Mr. Inglesby's personal backing,
+which means an assured future to me; as it will mean to you and your
+father, if you have got the sense you were born with. This is
+business. Kindly omit melodrama--crude, and not at all your style,
+really," he finished, critically.
+
+"This is nothing short of villainy. And not at all too crude for
+_your_ style," said Mary Virginia.
+
+He laughed good-humoredly. "Bad temper is vastly becoming to you," he
+told her. "It gives you a magnificent color."
+
+And at that Mary Virginia looked at him with eyes in which the shadow
+of fear was deepening. Hard as nails, cold as ice, to him she was
+merely a means to an end. He did not even hate her. The guillotine
+does not hate those whom it decapitates, either; none the less it
+takes off their heads once they get in the way of the descending
+knife.
+
+"I suggest," said Hunter, rising, "that you go home now and think the
+matter over carefully. Weigh what you and your father stand to gain
+against what you stand to lose. I do not press you for an immediate
+decision. You shall have a reasonable time for consideration." It was
+a threat and a command, thinly veiled.
+
+All that night, unable to sleep, she did think the matter over
+carefully; she turned and twisted it about and about and saw it now
+from this angle and now from that; and the more she studied it in all
+its bearings the worse it grew. There was no escape from it.
+
+Suppose, although she knew she could never, never hope to
+satisfactorily explain them, she nevertheless told her father about
+those letters and the part they were to be made play, now that his own
+affairs had reached a crisis? She could fancy herself telling him that
+he must shield himself behind her skirts if he would save himself from
+ruin. That ... to James Eustis!
+
+Suppose that the Carolina trigger-finger slipped, as Hunter had
+nonchalantly admitted might happen: what then? But it is the woman in
+the case who always suffers the most and the longest; it is the woman,
+always, who pays the greater price. Her fears magnified the imagined
+evil, her pride was crucified.
+
+What tortured her most was that they were actually making her party to
+a wreck that could easily be averted. Hunter had admitted that Eustis
+could weather the storm, if he were given time. Oh, to gain time for
+him, then! And she lay there, staring into the dark with wet eyes. How
+could she help him, she who was also snared?
+
+And in desperation she hit upon a forlorn hope. She dared not speak
+out openly to anybody, she dared not flatly refuse Inglesby's
+pretensions, for that would be to invite the avalanche. What she
+proposed to herself was to hold him off as long as she could. She
+would not be definite until the last possible minute. Always there was
+the chance that by some miracle of mercy Eustis might be able to meet
+those notes when they fell due. Let him do that, and she would then
+tell him everything. But not now. He was bearing too much, without
+that added burden.
+
+It cost her a supreme effort to face the situation as it affected
+herself and Laurence. Life without Laurence! The bare thought of it
+tested her heart and showed her how inalienably it belonged to him.
+But under all his lovingness and his boyishness, Laurence had a
+sternness, a ruggedness as adamantine as one of Cromwell's Iron-sides.
+With him to know would be to act. Well--he mustn't know. It terrified
+her to think of just what might happen, if Laurence knew.
+
+Under the circumstances there seemed but one course open to her--to
+give up Laurence, and that without explanations. For his own sake she
+had to keep silent--just as Hunter had known she would. What Laurence
+must think of her, even the loss of his affection and respect, would
+be part of the price paid for having been a fool.
+
+In the most unobtrusive manner they kept in touch with her. Hunter had
+so adroitly wirepulled, and so deftly softened and toned down
+Inglesby's crudities, that Mrs. Eustis had become the latter's open
+champion. Condescending and patronizing, she liked the importance of
+lending a very rich man her social countenance. She insisted that he
+was misunderstood. Men of great fortunes are always misunderstood.
+Nobody considers it a virtue to be charitable to the rich--they save
+all their charity for the poor, who as often as not are undeserving,
+and are generally insanitary as well. Mrs. Eustis thanked her heavenly
+Father she was a woman of larger vision, and never thought ill of a
+man just because he happened to be a millionaire. Millionaires have
+got souls, she hoped? And hearts? Mrs. Eustis said she knew Mr.
+Inglesby's noble heart, my dear, whether others did or not.
+
+Compelled to apparently jilt Laurence, Mary Virginia sank deeper and
+deeper into the slough of despond. A terror of Inglesby's power, as of
+something supernatural, was growing upon her, a terror almost childish
+in its intensity. He had begun to occupy the niche vacated by the
+Boogerman her Dah had threatened her with in her nursery. She could
+barely conceal this terror, save that an instinct warned her that to
+let him know she feared him would be fatal. And she felt for him a
+physical repulsion strong enough to be nauseating.
+
+The fact that she disdained and perhaps even disliked him and made no
+effort to conceal her feelings, did not in the least ruffle his bland
+complacency nor affront his pride. He knew that not even an Inglesby
+could hope to find a Mary Virginia more than once in a lifetime, and
+the haughtier she was the more she pleased him; it added to his
+innate sense of power, and this in itself endeared her to him
+inexpressibly.
+
+But as the girl still held out stubbornly, trying to evade the final
+word that would force a climax disastrous any way she viewed it,
+Inglesby's patience was exhausted. He was determined to make her come
+to terms by the word of her own mouth, and he had no doubt that her
+final word must be Yes; perhaps a Yes reluctant enough, but
+nevertheless one to which he meant to hold her.
+
+To make that final demand more impressive, Hunter was not entrusted
+with the interview. Hunter may have been doubtful as to the wisdom of
+this, but Inglesby could no longer forego the delight of dealing with
+Mary Virginia personally. On the Saturday night, then, Mrs. Eustis
+being absent, Mr. Inglesby, manicured, massaged, immaculate, shaven
+and shorn, called in person; and not daring to refuse, Mary Virginia
+received him, wondering if for her the end of the world had not come.
+
+He made a mistake, for Mary Virginia had her back against the wall,
+literally waiting for the Eustis roof to fall. But he could not forego
+the pleasure of witnessing her pride lower its crest to him. He did
+not relish a go-between, even such a successful one as his secretary.
+He had made up his mind that she should have until to-morrow night,
+Sunday, to come to a decision--just that long, and not another hour.
+He was not getting younger; he wanted to marry, to found a great
+establishment as whose mistress Mary Virginia should shine. And she
+was making him lose time.
+
+What Inglesby succeeded in doing was to bring her terror to a head,
+and to fill her with a sick loathing of him. Under the smooth
+protestations, the promises, the threats veiled with hateful and oily
+smiles, the man himself was revealed: crude, brutal, dominant,
+ruthless, a male animal bull-necked and arrogant, with small eyes,
+wide nostrils, cruel moist lips, sensual fat white hands she hated.
+And he was so sure of her! Mary Virginia found herself smarting under
+that horrible sureness.
+
+Perfectly at his ease, inclined to be familiar and jocose, he looked
+insolently about the lovely old room that had never before held such a
+suitor for a daughter of that house. Watching her with the complacent
+eyes of an accepted lover, assuming odious airs of proprietorship such
+as made one wish to throttle him, he was in no hurry to go. It seemed
+to her that black and withering years rolled over her head before he
+could bring himself to rise to take his departure. Death could hardly
+be colder to a mortal than she had been to this man all the evening,
+and yet it had not disconcerted him in the least!
+
+He stood for a moment regarding her with the eyes of possession. "And
+to think that to-morrow night I shall have the right to openly claim
+you as my promised wife!" he exulted. "You can't realize what it means
+to a man to be able to say to the world that the most beautiful woman
+in it is his!"
+
+Directly in front of her hung the portrait of the founder of the house
+in Carolina, the cavalier who had fled to the new world when Charles
+Stuart's head fell in the old one. It was a fine and proud face, the
+eyes frank and brave, the mouth firm and sweet. The girl looked from
+it to George Inglesby's, and found herself unable to speak. But as she
+stood before him, tall and proud and pale, the loveliness, the
+appealing charm of her, went like a strong wine to the man's head.
+With a quick and fierce movement he seized her hand and covered it
+with hot and hateful kisses.
+
+At the touch of his lips cold horror seized her. She dragged her hand
+free and waved him back with a splendid indignation. But Inglesby was
+out of hand; he had taken the bit between his teeth, and now he
+bolted.
+
+"Do you think I'm made of stone?" he bellowed, and the mask slipped
+altogether. There was no hypocrisy about Inglesby now; this was
+genuine. "Well, I'm not! I'm a man, a flesh-and-blood man, and I'm
+crazy for you--and you're _mine_! You're _mine_, and you might just as
+well face the music and get acquainted with me, first as last.
+Understand?
+
+"I'm not such a bad sort--what's the matter with me, anyhow? Why ain't
+I good enough for you or any other woman? Suppose I'm not a young
+whippersnapper with his head full of nonsense and his pockets full of
+nothing, can the best popinjay of them all do for you what _I_ can?
+Can any of 'em offer you what _I_ can offer? Let him try to: I'll
+raise his bid!
+
+"Here--don't you stand there staring at me as if I'd tried to slit
+your throat just because I've kissed your hand. Suppose I did? Why
+shouldn't I kiss your hand if I want to? It's my hand, when all's said
+and done, and I'll kiss it again if I feel like it. No, no, beauty, I
+won't, not if it's going to make you look at me like that! Why, queen,
+I wouldn't frighten you for worlds! I love you too much to want to do
+anything but please you. I'd do anything, everything, just to please
+you, to make you like me! You'll believe that, won't you?" And he
+held out his hands with a supplicating and impassioned gesture.
+
+"Why can't we be friends? Try to be friends with me, Mary Virginia!
+You would, if you only knew how much I love you. Why, I've loved you
+ever since that first day I saw you, after you'd come back home. I was
+going into the bank, and I turned, and there you were! You had on a
+gray dress, and you wore violets, a big bunch of them. I can smell
+them yet. God! It was all up with me! I was crazy about you from the
+start, and it's been getting worse and worse ... worse and worse!
+
+"You don't know all I mean to do for you, beauty! I'm going to give
+you this little old world to play with. Nothing's too good for _you_.
+Look at me! I'm not an old man yet--I've only just _begun_ to make
+money for you. Now be a little kind to me. You've got to marry me, you
+know. Look here: you kiss me good-night, just once, of your own free
+will, and I swear you shall have anything under the sky you ask me
+for. Do you want a string of pearls that will make yours look like a
+child's playpretty? I'll hang a million dollars around that white
+throat of yours!"
+
+But there came into the girl's eyes that which gave him pause. They
+stood staring at each other; and slowly the wine-dark flush faded from
+his face and left him livid. Little dents came about his nose, and his
+lips puckered as if the devil had pinched them together.
+
+"No?" said he thickly, and his jaw hardened, and his eyes narrowed
+under his square forehead. "No? You won't, eh? Too fine and proud? My
+lady, you'll learn to kiss me when I tell you to, and glad enough of
+the chance, before you and I finish with each other! Why, you--I--Oh,
+good God! Why do you rouse the devil in me, when I only want to be
+friends with you?"
+
+But she, with a ghastly face, turned swiftly and with her head held
+high walked out of the room, passed through the wide hall, and
+ascended the stairs, without even bidding him goodnight. Let him take
+his dismissal as he would--she could stand no more!
+
+Once in her own room, Mary Virginia dismissed Nancy for the night. She
+had to be alone, and the colored woman was an irrepressible magpie.
+Furiously she scrubbed her hands, as if to remove the taint of his
+touch. That he had dared! Her teeth chattered. She could barely save
+herself from screaming aloud. She bathed her face, dashed some toilet
+water over herself, and fell into a chair, limp and unnerved.
+
+_One day!_
+
+She was facing the end and she knew it. Because she had to say No. She
+had never for one minute admitted to herself the possibility of her
+own surrender. She could give up Laurence, since she had to; but she
+could not accept Inglesby. Anything rather than that! At the most, all
+she had hoped was to evade that final No until the last moment, in
+order to give Eustis what poor respite she could. Only her great love
+for him had enabled her to do that much. And it had not helped. When
+she thought of the wreck that must come, she beat her hands together,
+softly, in sheer misery. It was like standing by and watching some
+splendid ship being pounded to pieces on the rocks.
+
+Only her innate bravery and her real and deep religious instinct saved
+her from altogether sinking into inertia and despair. She _had_ to
+arouse herself. Other women had faced situations equally as impossible
+and unbearable as hers, and the best of them had not allowed
+themselves to be whipped into tame and abject submission. Even at the
+worst they had snatched the great chance to live their own lives in
+their own way. As for her, surely there must be some way out of this
+snarl, some immediate way that led to honorable freedom, even without
+hope. But how and where was she to find any way open to her, between
+now and to-morrow night?
+
+On her dressing table, with a handful of trinkets upon it, lay the
+tray that the Butterfly Man had sent her when she was graduated. Chin
+in hands, Mary Virginia stared absently enough at the brightly colored
+butterflies she had been told to remember were messengers bearing on
+their wings the love of the Parish House people. Why--why--of course!
+The Parish House people! They had blamed her, because they hadn't
+understood. But if she were to ask the Parish House people for any
+help within their power, she could be sure of receiving it without
+stint.
+
+If she could get to the Parish House without anybody knowing where she
+was, Inglesby and Hunter would be balked of that interview to-morrow
+night. The worst was going to happen anyhow, but if she couldn't save
+herself from anything else, at least she could save herself from
+facing them alone. To be able to do that, she would go now, in the
+middle of the night, and tell the Padre everything. Unnerved as she
+was, she couldn't face the hours between now and to-morrow morning
+here, by herself. She had to get to the Parish House.
+
+It was then after eleven. Nancy having been dismissed for the night,
+she had no fear of being interrupted. She made her few preparations,
+switched off the light, and sat down to wait until she could be sure
+that all the servants were abed, and the streets deserted. She felt as
+if she were a forlorn castaway upon a pinpoint of land, with
+immeasurable dark depths upon either side.
+
+The midnight express screeched and was gone. She switched on the light
+for a last look about her pretty, pleasant room. There was a snapshot
+of the Parish House people upon her mantel, and she nodded to it,
+gravely, before she once more plunged the room into darkness.
+
+Noiselessly she slipped downstairs and let herself out. The midnight
+air was bitingly cold, but she did not feel it. With one handsatchel
+holding all she thought she could honestly lay claim to, Mary Virginia
+turned her back upon the home that had sheltered her all her life, but
+that wouldn't be able to shelter its own people much longer, because
+Inglesby was going to take it away from them. It made her wince to
+think of him as master under that roof. The old house deserved a
+happier fate.
+
+At best the Parish House could be only a momentary stopping-place.
+What lay beyond she didn't know. What her fate held further of evil
+she couldn't guess. But at least, she thought, it would be in her own
+hands. It wasn't. Unexpectedly and mercifully was it put into the
+abler and stronger hands of the Butterfly Man.
+
+
+Now, that night Flint had found himself unable to work. He was
+unaccountably depressed. He couldn't read; even the Bible, opened at
+his favorite John, hadn't any comfort for him. He shoved the book
+aside, snatched hat and overcoat, and fled to his refuge the healing
+out-of-doors.
+
+He trudged the country roads for awhile, then turned toward town,
+intending to pass by the Eustis house. It wasn't the first time he had
+passed the Eustis house at night of late, and just to see it asleep in
+the midst of its gardens steadied him and made him smile at the vague
+fears he entertained.
+
+He was almost up to the gate when a girl emerged from it, and he
+stiffened in his tracks, for it was Mary Virginia. A second later, and
+they stood face to face.
+
+"Don't be alarmed, it is I, Flint," he said in his quiet voice. And
+then he asked directly: "Why are you out alone at this hour? Where are
+you going?"
+
+"To--to the Parish House," she stammered. She was greatly startled by
+his sudden appearance.
+
+"Exactly," said the Butterfly Man, with meaning, and relieved her of
+her satchel. He asked no questions, offered no comments; but as
+quickly as he could he got her to his own rooms, put Kerry on guard,
+and ran for help.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+ST. STANISLAUS CROOKS HIS ELBOW
+
+
+Mary Virginia's voice trailed into silence and she sank back into her
+chair, staring somberly at the fire. Her face marked with tears, the
+long braids of her hair over her shoulders, she looked so like a sad
+and chidden child that the piteousness of her would have moved and
+melted harder hearts than ours.
+
+The Butterfly Man had listened without an interruption. He sat leaning
+slightly forward, knees crossed, the left arm folded to support the
+elbow of the right, and his chin in his cupped right hand. His eyes
+had the piercing clear directness of an eagle's; they burned with an
+unwavering pale flame. Shrewder far than I, he saw the great advantage
+of knowing the worst, of at last thoroughly understanding Hunter and
+Inglesby and the motives which moved them. He had, too, a certain
+tolerance. These two had merely acted according to their lights; he
+had not expected any more or less, therefore he was not surprised now
+into an undue condemnation.
+
+But the fighting instinct rose rampant in me. My hands are De Rance
+hands, the hands of soldiers as well as of priests, and they itched
+for a weapon, preferably a sword. Horrified and astonished,
+suffocating with anger, I had no word at command to comfort this
+victim of abominable cunning. Indeed, what could I say; what could I
+do? I looked helplessly at the Butterfly Man, and the stronger man
+looked back at me, gravely and impassively.
+
+"But what is to be done?" I groaned.
+
+He seemed to know, for he said at once:
+
+"Call Madame. Tell her to bring some extra wraps. I am going to take
+Mary Virginia home, and Madame will go with us."
+
+"But why shouldn't she stay here?"
+
+"Because she'd better be at home to-morrow morning, parson. We're not
+supposed to know anything of her affairs, and I'd rather she didn't
+appear at the Parish House. Also, she needs sleep right now more than
+she needs anything else, and one sleeps better in one's own bed.
+Madame will see that she goes to hers and stays there."
+
+I was perfectly willing to commit the affair into John Flint's hands.
+But Mary Virginia demurred.
+
+"No. I want to stay here! I don't want to go home, Padre."
+
+Flint shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said mildly, "but I'm going to
+take you home." He looked so inexorable that Mary Virginia shrugged
+her shoulders.
+
+"Oh, all right, Mr. Flint, I'll go," said she. "What difference does
+it make? I'll even go to bed--as I'm told." And she added in a tone of
+indescribable bitterness: "I have read that men lie down and sleep
+peacefully the night before they are hanged. Well, I suppose they
+could: they hadn't anything but death to face on the morrow, but I--"
+and she caught her breath.
+
+"Why not take it for granted to-night that you'll be looked after
+to-morrow?" suggested Flint. "Mary Virginia, nothing's ever so bad as
+it's going to be."
+
+"Oh, yes, I'll be looked after to-morrow!" said she, bitingly. "Mr.
+Inglesby will see to that!" She covered her face with her hands.
+
+"Oh, I don't know!" The Butterfly Man shut his mouth on the words like
+a knife. "Inglesby may think he's going to, but somehow _I_ think he
+won't."
+
+"Ah!" said she scornfully. "Perhaps _you'll_ be able to stop him?"
+
+"Perhaps," he agreed. "If I don't, somebody or something else will.
+It's very unlucky to be too lucky too long. You see, everybody's got
+to get what's coming to them, and it generally comes hardest when
+they've tied themselves up to the notion they're It. Somehow I fancy
+Mr. Inglesby's due to come considerable of a cropper around about
+now."
+
+"Between now and to-morrow night?" she wondered, with sad contempt.
+
+"Why not? Anything can happen between a night and a night." He looked
+at her with shrewd appreciation: "You have taken yourself so
+seriously," said he, "that you've pretty nearly muddled yourself into
+being tragic. Those fellows knew who they were dealing with when they
+tackled _you_. They could bet the limit you'd never tell. So long as
+you didn't tell, so long as they had nobody but you to deal with, they
+had you where they wanted you. But now maybe things might happen that
+haven't been printed in the program."
+
+"What things?" she mocked somberly.
+
+"I don't know, yet," he admitted, "But I do know there is always a
+way out of everything except the grave. The thing is to find the right
+way. That's up to the Padre and me. Parson, would you mind going after
+Madame now, please? The sooner we go the better."
+
+Have I not said my mother is the most wonderful of women? I waked her
+in the small hours with the startling information that Mary Virginia
+was downstairs in John Flint's workroom, and that she herself must
+dress and accompany her home. And my mother, though she looked her
+stark bewilderment, plagued me with no questions.
+
+"She is in great trouble, and she needs you. Hurry."
+
+Madame slid out of her bed and reached for her neatly folded garments.
+
+"Wait in the hall, Armand; I will be with you in ten minutes." And she
+was, wrapped and hatted.
+
+Once in the workroom, she cast a deep and searching woman-glance at
+the pale girl in the chair. Her face was so sweet with motherliness
+and love and pity, and that profound comprehension the best women show
+to each other, that I felt my throat contract. Gathered into Madame's
+embrace, Mary Virginia clung to her old friend dumbly. Madame had but
+one question:
+
+"My child, have you told John Flint and my son what this trouble of
+yours is?"
+
+"Yes; I had to, I had to!"
+
+"Thank the good God for that!" said my mother piously. "Now we will go
+home, dearest, and you can sleep in peace--you have nothing more to
+worry about!"
+
+The clasp of the comforting arms, the sweet serenity of the mild eyes,
+and above all the little lady's perfect confidence, aroused Mary
+Virginia out of her torpor. She felt that she no longer stood alone
+at the mercy of the merciless. Bundled in the wraps my mother had
+provided, she paused at the door.
+
+"I think you will forgive me any trouble I may cause you, because I am
+sure all of you love me. And whatever comes, I will be brave enough to
+face and to bear it. Padre, dear Padre, you understand, don't you?"
+
+"My child, my darling child, I understand."
+
+"I'll be back in half an hour, parson," the Butterfly Man remarked
+meaningly. Then the three melted into the night.
+
+Left alone, I was far from sharing Madame's simple faith in our
+ability to untangle this miserable snarl. I knew now the temper of the
+men we had to deal with. I also understood that in cases like this the
+Southern trigger-finger is none too steady. Seen from a certain point
+of view, if ever men deserved an unconditional and thorough killing,
+these two did. Yet this homicidal specter turned me cold, for Mary
+Virginia's sake.
+
+For Eustis himself I could see nothing but ruin ahead, but I wished
+passionately to help the dear girl who had come to me in her stress.
+But what was one to do? How should one act?
+
+I sat there dismally enough, my chin sunk upon my breast; for as a
+plotter, a planner, a conspirator, I am a particularly hopeless
+failure. I have no sense of intrigue, and the bare idea of plotting
+reduces me to stupefaction.
+
+Perhaps because I am a priest by instinct, I always discover in myself
+the instant need of prayer when confronted by the unusual and the
+difficult. I have prayed over seemingly hopeless problems in my time
+and I think I have been led to a clear solution of many of them.
+Major Cartwright insists that this is merely because I bring desire
+and will to bear upon a given point and so release an irresistible
+natural force. He says prayer is as much a science as, say,
+mathematics--such and such its units, and such and such its fixed
+results. Well, maybe so. All I know is that when I beseech aid I think
+I receive it.
+
+So I ran over to the church and let myself in. I felt that at least
+for a few minutes I must kneel before the altar and implore help for
+her who was like my own child to me.
+
+The empty church was quite black save for the sanctuary lamp and the
+little red votive lights burning before the statues of the saints and
+of our Lady. All these many little lights only cast the veriest ghosts
+of brightness upon the darkness, but the white altar was revealed by
+the larger glow of the sanctuary lamp. There it shone with a mild and
+pure luster, unfailing, calm, steady, burning through the night, the
+sign and symbol of that light of Love which cannot fail, but burns and
+burns and burns forever and forever before an altar that is the
+infinite universe itself.
+
+My little-faith, my ready-to-halt faith, raised its head above the
+encompassing waters; the wild turmoil and torment died away: ... after
+the earthquake and the fire and the whirlwind, the still small
+voice....
+
+Then I, to whom life at best can only be working and waiting, was for
+a space able to pray for her to whom life should be "_as the light of
+the morning, when the sun riseth, even a clear morning without clouds;
+and as the tender grass by clear shining after rain_." I remembered
+her as she had first come to me, a little loving child to fill my
+empty heart, the poor clay heart that cannot even hold fast to the
+love of God but by these frail all-powerful ties of simple human
+affection. And when I thought of her now, so young and so sore-beset,
+a bird caught in the snare of the fowler, I beat my breast for pity
+and for grief. Oh, how should I help her, how!
+
+I turned my head, and there stood St. Stanislaus upon his pedestal,
+the memorial lights flickering upon his long robe, his smooth boy's
+face, his sheaf of lilies. I regarded him rather absently. Something
+stirred in my consciousness; something I always had to remember in
+connection with St. Stanislaus....
+
+Across my mind as across a screen flashed a series of pictures--a
+mangled tramp carried into the Parish House, my mother watching with a
+concerned and shocked face, and the hall mud-stained by the trampling
+feet of the clumsy bearers; the shaggy Poles, caps off, turning over
+to me as to high authority the heavy oilskin package they had found; I
+opening that package later and standing amazed and startled before its
+contents; and that same package, hidden under my cassock, carried over
+to the church and placed for security and secrecy in the keeping of
+the little saint. Well, that had been quite right; there had been
+nothing else to do; one had to be secret and careful when one had in
+one's keeping the tools of that notorious burglar, Slippy McGee.
+
+Small wonder that I did not connect those pictures with the fate of
+Mary Virginia Eustis! No, I did not immediately grasp their tremendous
+bearing upon the petitions I was repeating. And all the while, with a
+dull insistence, an enraging persistence, they flickered before the
+eyes of my memory--the Poles, the screaming cursing tramp;
+Westmoreland pondering aloud as to why he had been permitted to save
+so apparently worthless a life; and the little saint hiding from the
+eyes of men all traces of lost Slippy McGee. Nor, more curiously yet,
+did I connect them with the Butterfly Man. The Butterfly Man was
+somebody else altogether, another and a different person, a man of
+whom even one's secretest thoughts were admiring and respectful. He
+was so far removed from the very shadow of such things as these, that
+it did one's conscience a sort of violence to think of him in
+connection with them. I tried to dismiss the memories from my mind. I
+wished to concentrate wholly upon the problem of Mary Virginia.
+
+And then that mysterious, hidden self-under-self that lives in us far,
+far beneath thought and instinct and conscience and heredity and even
+consciousness itself, rose to the surface with a message:
+
+_Slippy McGee had been the greatest cracksman in all America...._
+"Honest to God, skypilot, I can open any box made, easy as easy!" ...
+_And even as his tools were hidden in St. Stanislaus, Slippy McGee
+himself was hidden in John Flint_.
+
+Recoiling, I clung to the altar railing. What dreadful thing was I
+contemplating, what fearful temptation was assailing me, here under
+the light of the sanctuary lamp? I looked reproachfully at St.
+Stanislaus, as if that seraphic youth had betrayed my confidence. I
+suspected him of being too anxious to rid himself of the ambiguous
+trust imposed upon him without so much as a by-your-leave. Perhaps he
+was secretly irked at the use to which his painted semblance had been
+put, and seized this first opportunity to extricate himself from a
+position in which the boldest saint of them all might well hesitate to
+find himself.
+
+I began to consider John Flint as he was, the work he had
+accomplished, the splendid structure of that life slowly and
+laboriously made over and lived so cleanly in the light of day. Not
+only had that old evil personality been sloughed off like a larval
+skin; he had come forth from it another creature, a being lovable,
+wise, tender, full of charm. Even the hint of melancholy that was
+becoming more and more a part of him endeared him to others, for the
+broader and brighter the light into which he was steadily mounting,
+the more marked and touching was this softening shadow.
+
+And I who had been the _accoucheur_ of his genius, I who had watched
+and prayed and ministered beside the cradle of his growth, was I of
+all men to threaten his overthrow? Alas, what madness was upon me that
+I was evoking before the very altar the grim ghost of Slippy McGee?
+
+There passed before me in procession the face of Laurence with all its
+boyish bloom stripped from it and the glory of its youth vanished; and
+the bowed and humbled head of James Eustis, one of the large and noble
+souls of this world; and the innocent beauty of Mary Virginia,
+wistfully appealing; followed them the beautiful ruthless face of
+Hunter, dazzlingly blonde, gold-haired as Baldur; and the piglike eyes
+and heavy jowl of Inglesby, brutally dominant; and then the dear
+whimsical visage of the Butterfly Man himself. They passed; and I fell
+to praying, with a sort of still desperation, for all of us.
+
+And all the while the steady and rosy light of the sanctuary lamp fell
+upon me, and the little lights flickered before the silent saints. I
+took myself in hand, forced myself into self-control. I did not
+minimize one risk nor slur one danger. I knew exactly what was at
+stake. And having done this, I decided upon my course:
+
+"If he has thought of this himself, then I will help. But if he has
+not, I will not suggest it, no, no matter what happens."
+
+I told myself I would say ten more Hailmarys, and I said them, with an
+Ourfather at the end. And without further praying I got to my feet.
+The church seemed to be full of breathless whisperings, as if it
+watched and listened while I moved over to Stanislaus and tipped him
+backward. He is a rather heavy and sizable boy for all his saintly
+slimness. Up in the hollow inside, in the crook of his arm, lay the
+oilskin package he had kept these long years through, waiting for
+to-night.
+
+"If ever you prayed for mortals in peril, pray, for the love of God,
+for all of us this night!" I told him. And with the package in a fold
+of my cassock I went back across the dark garden and let myself into
+the Butterfly Man's rooms, and was hardly inside the door when he
+himself returned.
+
+"Didn't meet a soul. And they got in without waking anybody in the
+house," said he complacently, rubbing his hands before the fire. "I
+waited until they showed a light upstairs. She's all right, now
+Madame's with her."
+
+"Have you--have you thought of anything--any way, John?" I quavered,
+and wondered if he heard my heart dunting against my ribs.
+
+"Why, I've thought that she's got until to-morrow night to come to
+terms," said he, and turned to face me. "And she can't accept them.
+Nobody could--that is, not a girl like her. As for Inglesby, he might
+push Eustis under, but he wouldn't have been so cocksure of _her_ if
+it wasn't for those letters. She's been afraid of what might happen if
+Eustis or Laurence found out about them--somebody ran the risk of
+being put to bed with a shovel. There's where they had her. A bit
+unbearable to think of, isn't it?" He spoke so mildly that I looked up
+with astonishment and some disappointment.
+
+"Why," said I, ruefully, "if that's as far as you've gone, we are
+still at the starting point."
+
+"No need to go farther and fare worse, parson," said he, equably. "I
+saw that the first minute I could see anything but red. Yet do you
+know, when she was telling us about it, I thought like a fool of
+everything but the right thing, from sandbagging and shanghaing
+Inglesby, down to holding up Hunter with an automatic?
+
+"When I got my reason on straight, I went back to the starting
+point--the letters, parson, the letter in the safe in Hunter's office.
+Given the letters she'd be free--the one thing Inglesby doesn't want
+to happen. We've got to have those letters."
+
+My mouth was parched as with fever and I saw him through a blur.
+
+"I don't know," he went on, "if you agree with me, parson, but to my
+mind the best way to fight the devil is with fire. What did you do
+with those tools?"
+
+"_Tools?_" in a dry whisper. "_Tools_, John?"
+
+"Tools. Kit. Layout. You had them. Could you put your hand on them in
+a hurry to-night? Don't stare so, man! And for the Lord's love don't
+you tell me you destroyed them! What did you do with my tools?"
+
+The four winds roared in my ears, and one lifted the hair on my scalp,
+as if the Rider on the Pale Horse had passed by. By way of reply I
+placed a heavy package on the table before him, slumped into my chair,
+and covered my face with my hands. Oh, Stanislaus, little saint, what
+had we done between us to-night to the Butterfly Man?
+
+When I looked up again he had risen. With his hands gripping the edge
+of the table until the knuckles showed white, and his neck stretched
+out, he was staring with all his eyes. A low whistle escaped him.
+Wonder, incredulity, a sort of ironic amusement, and a growing,
+iron-jawed determination, expressed themselves in his changing
+countenance. Once or twice he wet his lips and swallowed. Then he sat
+down again, deliberately, and fixed upon me a long and somewhat
+disconcerting stare, as if he were rearranging and tabulating his
+estimate of Father Armand Jean De Rance. He took his head in his
+hands, and with slitted eyes considered the immediate course of action
+to which the possession of that package committed him. One surmised
+that he was weighing and providing for every possible contingency.
+
+Tentatively he spread out his fine hands, palms uppermost, and flexed
+them; then, turning them, he laid them flat upon the table and again
+spread out his fingers. They were notable hands--shapely, supple,
+strong as steel, the thin-skinned fingertips as delicate and sensitive
+of touch as the antennae he was used to handling. They were even more
+capable than of old, because of the exquisite work they had been
+trained to accomplish, work to which only the most skilled lapidary's
+is comparable. Apparently satisfied, he drew the bundle toward him.
+Before he opened it he lifted those cool, blue, and ironic eyes to
+mine; and I am sure I was by far the paler and more shaken of the two.
+
+"They were in the crook of St. Stanislaus' arm." I tried to keep my
+voice steady. "I was praying--when you were gone." Somehow, I did not
+find it easy to explain to him. "And ... I remembered.... And I
+brought them with me ... so in case you also ... remembered--" I could
+go no further. I broke into a sort of groaning cry: "Oh, John, John!
+My son, my son!"
+
+"Steady!" said he. "Of course you remembered, parson. It's the only
+way. Didn't I tell her there's always a way out? Well, here it is!"
+His funny, twisted smile came to his lips; it twisted the heart in my
+breast. No thought of himself, of what this thing might mean to him,
+seemed to cross his mind.
+
+"I prayed," said I, almost sobbing, "I prayed. And, John, there stood
+St. Stanislaus--" I stopped again, choking.
+
+He nodded, understandingly. He was methodically spreading out the not
+unbeautiful instruments. And as he picked them up one by one, handling
+them with his strong and expert fingers and testing each with a
+hawk-eyed scrutiny, a most curious and subtle change stole over the
+Butterfly Man.
+
+I felt as if I were witnessing the evocation of something superhuman.
+Horrified and fascinated, I saw what might be called the apotheosis
+of Slippy McGee, so far above him was it, come back and subtly and
+awfully blend with my scientist. It was as if two strong and powerful
+individualities had deliberately joined forces to forge a more vital
+being than either, since the training, knowledge, skill and intellect
+of both would be his to command. If such a man as _this_ ever stepped
+over the deadline he would not be merely "the slickest cracksman in
+America"; he would be one of the master criminals of the earth. I
+fancy he must have felt this intoxicating new access of power, for
+there emanated from him something of a fierce and exalted delight. A
+potentiality, as yet neither good nor evil, he suggested a spiritual
+and physical dynamo.
+
+He gave a tigerish purr of pleasure over the tools, handling them with
+the fingers of the artist and admiring them with the eyes of the
+connoisseur. "The best I could get. All made to order. Tested blue
+steel. I never kicked at the price, and you wouldn't believe me if I
+told you what this layout cost in cold cash. But they paid. Good stuff
+always pays in the long run. It was lucky I winded the cops on that
+last job, or I'd have had to leave them. As it was, I just had time to
+grab them up before I hit the trail for the skyline. They don't need
+anything but a little rubbing--a saint's elbow must be a snug berth. I
+wish I had some juice, though."
+
+"Juice?"
+
+"Nitroglycerine," very gently, as to a child. "It does not make very
+much noise and it saves time when you're in a hurry--as you generally
+are, in this business," he smiled at me quizzically. "Not that one
+can't get along without it." The swift fingers paused for a fraction
+of a second to give a steel drill an affectionate pat. "I used to know
+one of the best ever, who never used anything but a particular drill,
+a pet bit, and his ear. Somebody snitched though, so the last I heard
+of him he was doing a twenty-year stretch. Pity, too. He was an artist
+in his line, that fellow. And his taste in neckties I have never seen
+equaled." The Butterfly Man's voice, evenly pitched and pleasantly
+modulated, a cultivated voice, was quite casual.
+
+He gathered his tools together and replaced them in the old worn case.
+"Wonder if that safe is a side-bolt?" he mused. "Most likely. I dare
+say it's only the average combination. A one-armed yegg could open
+most of the boxes in this town with a tin button-hook. Anyhow, it
+would have to be a new-laid lock _I_ couldn't open. If he's left the
+letters in the safe we're all right--so here's hoping he has. I
+certainly don't want to go to his room unless I have to. Hunter's not
+the sort to sit on his hands, and I'm not feeling what you'd call real
+amiable."
+
+A glance at his face, with little glinting devil-lights shining far
+back in his eyes, set me to babbling:
+
+"Oh, no, no, no, no, that would never do! God forbid that you should
+go to his rooms! He must have left them in the safe! He had to leave
+them in the safe!"
+
+"Sure he's left them in the safe: why shouldn't he?" he made light of
+my palpable fears. Slipping into his gray overcoat, he pulled on his
+felt hat, thrust his hands into his wellworn dogskin gloves, and
+picked up the package. Nobody in the world ever looked less like a
+criminal than this brown-faced, keen-eyed man with his pleasant
+bearing. Why, this was John Flint, the kindly bug-hunter all Appleboro
+loved, "that good and kind and Christian man, our brother John Flint,
+sometimes known as the Butterfly Man."
+
+"Now, don't you worry any at all, parson," he was saying. "There's
+nothing to be afraid of. I'll take care of myself, and I'll get those
+letters if they're in existence. I've got to get them. What else was I
+born for, I'd like to know?"
+
+The question caught me like a lash across the face.
+
+"You were born," I said violently, "to win an honored name, to do a
+work of inestimable value. And you are deliberately and quixotically
+risking it, and I allow you to risk it, because a girl's happiness
+hangs in the balance! If you are detected it means your own ruin, for
+you could never explain away those tools. Yes! You are facing possible
+ruin and disgrace. You might have to give up your work for years--have
+you considered that? Oh, John Flint, stop a moment, and reflect! There
+is nothing in this for you, John, nothing but danger. No, there's
+nothing in it for you, except--"
+
+He held up his hand, with a gesture of dignity and reproach.
+
+"--except that I get my big chance to step in and save the girl I
+happen to love, from persecution and wretchedness, if not worse," said
+he simply. "If I can do that, what the devil does it matter what
+happens to _me_? You talk about name and career! Man, man, what could
+anything be worth to me if I had to know she was unhappy?"
+
+The tides of emotion rushed over him and flooded his face into a
+shining-eyed passion nakedly unashamed and beautiful. And I had
+thought him casual, carelessly accepting a risk!
+
+"Parson," he wondered, "didn't you _know_? No, I suppose it wouldn't
+occur to anybody that a man of my sort should love a girl of hers. But
+I do. I think I did the first time I ever laid eyes on her, and she a
+girl-kid in a red jacket, with curls about her shoulders and a face
+like a little new rose in the morning. Remember her eyes, parson, how
+blue they were? And how she looked at me, so friendly--_me_, mind you,
+as I was! And she handed me a Catocala moth, and she gave me Kerry.
+'You're such a good man, Mr. Flint!' says she, and by God, she meant
+it! Little Mary Virginia! And she got fast hold of something in me
+that was never anybody's but hers, that couldn't ever belong to
+anybody but her, no, not if I lived for a thousand years and had the
+pick of the earth.
+
+"It wasn't until she came back, though, that I knew I belonged to her
+who could never belong to me. If I was dead at one end of the world
+and she dead at the other, we couldn't be any farther apart than life
+has put us two who can see and speak to each other every day!"
+
+"And yet--" he looked at me now and laughed boyishly, "and yet it
+isn't for Mayne, that she loves, it isn't for you, nor Eustis, nor any
+man but me alone to help her, by being just what I am and what I have
+been! Risks? Fail her? _I?_ I couldn't fail her. I'll get those
+letters for her to-night, if Hunter has hidden them in the beam of his
+eye!" He turned to me with a sudden white glare of ferocity that
+appalled me. "I could kill him with my hands," said he, with a quiet
+cold deadliness to chill one's marrow, "and Inglesby after him, for
+what they've made her endure! When I think of to-night--that brute
+daring to touch _her_ with his swine's mouth--I--I--"
+
+His face was convulsed; but after a moment's fierce struggle the
+disciplined spirit conquered.
+
+"No, there's been enough trouble for her without that, so they're safe
+from me, the both of them. I wouldn't do anything to imperil her
+happiness to save my own life. She was born to be happy--and she's
+going to have her chance. _I'll_ see to that, Mary Virginia!"
+
+The man seemed to grow, to expand, to tower giant-like before me. Next
+to the white heat of this lava-flow of pure feeling, all other loves
+lavished upon Mary Virginia during her fortunate life seemed dwarfed
+and petty. Beside it Inglesby's furious desire shrunk into a loathsome
+thing, small and crawling; and my own affection was only an old
+priest's; and even the strong and faithful love of Laurence appeared
+pale and boyish in the light of this majestic passion which gave all
+and in return asked only the right to serve and to save.
+
+"_Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm; for
+love is strong as death_ ...
+
+"_Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if
+a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would
+utterly be contemned_."
+
+Trying desperately to cling to such rags and tatters of common sense
+as I could lay hold upon:
+
+"There is your duty to yourself," I managed to say. "Yes, yes, one
+owes a great duty to oneself and one's work, John. You are risking too
+much--name, friends, honor, work, freedom. For God's sake, John, do
+not underestimate the danger. You have not had time to consider it."
+
+"Ho! Listen to the parson preaching self-interest!" he mocked. "He's a
+fine one to do that--at this hour of his life!"
+
+"I tell you you endanger everything," I insisted. I might bring that
+package, but at least he shouldn't rush upon the knife unwarned.
+
+"I know that--I'm no fool. And _I_ tell _you_ it's worth while.
+To-night makes me and my whole life worth while, the good and the bad
+of it together. Risks? I'll take all that's coming. You stay here and
+say some prayers for me, parson, if it makes you feel any better. As
+for me, I'm off."
+
+At that I lost my every last shred of commonplace everyday sanity, and
+let myself swing without further reserve into the wild current of the
+night.
+
+"Oh, very well!" said I shrilly. "You will take chances, you will run
+risks, _hein?_ My friend, you do not stir out of this house this night
+without _me_!" He stared, as well he might, but I folded my arms and
+stared back. Let him leave me, bent on such an errand? I to sit at
+home idly, awaiting the issue, whatever it might be?
+
+"I mean it, John Flint. I am going with you. Was it not I, then, who
+saved those tools and had them ready to your hand? Whatever happens to
+you now happens to me as well. It is quite useless for you to argue,
+to scowl, to grind the teeth, to swear like that. And it will be
+dangerous to try to trick me: I am going!"
+
+For he was protesting, violently and profanely. His profanity was so
+sincere, so earnest, so heartfelt, that it mounted into heights of
+real eloquence. Also, he did everything but knock me down and lock me
+indoors.
+
+"Whatever happens to you happens to me," I repeated doggedly, and I
+was not to be moved. I had a hazy notion that somehow my being with
+him might protect him in case of any untoward happening, and minimize
+his risks.
+
+I ran into his bedroom and clapped his best hat on my head, leaving my
+biretta on his bed; and I put on his new dark overcoat over my
+cassock. Both the borrowed garments were too big for me, the hat
+coming down over my ears, the coat-sleeves over my hands. I being as
+thin as a peeled willow-wand, and the clothes hanging upon me as on a
+clothes-rack, I dare say I cut a sad and ludicrous figure enough.
+Flint, standing watching me with his burglarious bundle under his arm,
+gave an irrepressible chuckle and his eyes crinkled.
+
+"Parson," said he solemnly, "I've seen all sorts and sizes and colors
+and conditions of crooks, up and down the line, in my time and
+generation, but take it from me you're a libel and an outrage on the
+whole profession. Why, you crazy he-angel, you'd break their hearts
+just to look at you!" And he grinned. At a moment like that, he
+grinned, with a sort of gay and light-hearted _diablerie_. They are a
+baffling and inexplicable folk, the Irish. I suppose God loves the
+Irish because He doesn't really know how else to take them.
+
+"It will break my own heart, and possibly my mother's and Mary
+Virginia's will break to keep it company, if anything evil happens to
+you this night," said I, severely. I was in no grinning humor, me.
+
+He reached over and carefully buttoned, with one hand, the too-big
+collar about my throat. For a moment, with that odd, little-boy
+gesture of his, he held on to my sleeve. He looked down at me; and his
+eyes grew wide, his face melted into a whimsical tenderness.
+
+"When you get to heaven, parson, you'll keep them all busy a hundred
+years and a day trying to cut and make a suit of sky clothes big
+enough to fit your real measure," said he, irrelevantly. "You real
+thing in holy sports, come on, since you've got to!" With that he blew
+out the light, and we stepped into the cold and windy night. It was
+ten minutes after three.
+
+Armed with bottle-belt, knapsack, and net, many a happy night had I
+gone forth with the Butterfly Man a-hunting for such as we might find
+of our chosen prey. Armed now with nothing more nor less formidable
+than the black rosary upon which my hand shut tightly, I, Armand De
+Rance, priest and gentleman, walked forth with Slippy McGee in those
+hours when deep sleep falls upon the spirit of man, for to aid and
+encourage and abet and assist and connive at, nothing more nor less
+than burglary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE I O U OF SLIPPY MCGEE
+
+
+The wind that precedes the dawn was blowing, a freakish and impish
+wind though not a vicious one. One might imagine it animated by those
+sportive and capricious nature-spirits an old Father of the church
+used to call the monkeys of God. Every now and then a great deluge of
+piled-up clouds broke into tossing billows and went rolling and
+tumbling across the face of the sky, and in and out of these swirling
+masses the high moon played hide-and-seek and the stars showed like
+pin-points. Such street lights as we have being extinguished at
+midnight, the tree-shaded sidewalks were in impenetrable shadow, the
+gardens that edged them were debatable ground, full of grotesque
+silhouettes, backgrounded by black bulks of silent houses all
+profoundly asleep. As for us, we also were shadows, whose feet were
+soundless on the sandy sidewalks. We moved in the dark like travelers
+in the City of Dreadful Night.
+
+And so we came at last to the red-brick bank, approaching it by the
+long stretch of the McCall garden which adjoins it. For years there
+have been battered "For Sale" signs tacked onto its trees and fences,
+but no one ever came nearer purchasing the McCall property than asking
+the price. Folks say the McCalls believe that Appleboro is going to
+rival New York some of these days, and are holding their garden for
+sky-scraper sites.
+
+I was very grateful to the McCall estimate of Appleboro's future, for
+the long stretch shadowed by their overgrown shrubbery brought us to
+the door leading to the upstair offices, without any possible danger
+of detection.
+
+The bank had been a stately old home before business seized upon it,
+tore out its whole lower floors, and converted it into a strong and
+commodious bank. It is the one building in all Appleboro that keeps a
+light burning all night, a proceeding some citizens regard as
+unnecessary and extravagant; for is not Old Man Jackson there employed
+as night watchman? Old Man Jackson lost a finger and a piece of an ear
+before Appomattox, and the surrender deprived him of all opportunity
+to repay in kind. It was his cherished hope that "some smartybus
+crooks 'd try to git in my bank some uh these hyuh nights--an' I
+cert'nly hope to God they'll be Yankees, that's all."
+
+Somehow, they hadn't tried. Perhaps they had heard of Old Man
+Jackson's watchful waiting and knew he wasn't at all too proud to
+fight. His quarters was a small room in the rear of the building,
+which he shared with a huge gray tomcat named Mosby. With those two on
+guard, Appleboro knew its bank was as impregnable as Gibraltar. But as
+nobody could possibly gain entrance to the vaults from above, the
+upper portion of the building, given over to offices, was of course
+quite unguarded.
+
+One reached these upper offices by a long walled passageway to the
+left, where the sidewall of the bank adjoins the McCall garden. The
+door leading to this stairway is not flush with the street, but is set
+back some feet; this forms a small alcove, which the light flickering
+through the bank's barred windows does not quite reach.
+
+John Flint stepped into this small cavern and I after him. As if by
+magic the locked door opened, and we moved noiselessly up the narrow
+stairs with tin signs tacked on them. At the head of the flight we
+paused while the flashlight gave us our bearings. Here a short passage
+opens into the wide central hall. Inglesby's offices are to the left,
+with the windows opening upon the tangled wilderness of the McCall
+place.
+
+Right in front of us half a dozen sets of false teeth, arranged in a
+horrid circle around a cigar-box full of extracted molars such as made
+one cringe, grinned bitingly out of a glass case before the dentist's
+office door. The effect was of a lipless and ghastly laugh.
+
+Before the next door a fatuously smiling pink-and-white bust simpered
+out of the Beauty Parlor's display-case, a bust elaborately coiffured
+with pounds of yellow hair in which glittered rhinestone buckles. Hair
+of every sort and shade and length was clustered about her, as if she
+were the presiding genius of some barbarian scalping-cult. Seen at
+that hour, in the pale luster of the flashlight, this sorry plunder of
+lost teeth and dead hair made upon one a melancholy impression,
+disparaging to humanity. I had scant time to moralize on hair and
+teeth, however, for Flint was stopping before a door the neat brass
+plate of which bore upon it:
+
+          _Mr. Inglesby_.
+
+Mr. Inglesby had a desk downstairs in the bank, in the little pompous
+room marked "President's Office," where at stated hours and times he
+presided grandly; just as he had a big bare office at the mills, where
+he was rather easy of access, willing to receive any one who might
+chance to catch him in. But these rooms we were entering without
+permission were the sanctum sanctorum, the center of that wide web
+whose filaments embraced and ensnared the state. It would be about as
+easy to stroll casually into the Vatican for an informal chat with the
+Holy Father, to walk unannounced into the presence of the Dalai Lama,
+or to drop in neighborly on the Tsar of all the Russias, as to
+penetrate unasked into these offices during the day.
+
+We stepped upon the velvet square of carpet covering the floor of what
+must have once been a very handsome guest chamber and was now a very
+handsome private office. One had to respect the simple and solid
+magnificence of the mahogany furnishings, the leather-covered chairs,
+the big purposeful desk. Above the old-fashioned marble mantel hung a
+life-sized portrait in oils of Inglesby himself. The artist had done
+his sitter stern justice--one might call the result retribution; and
+one wondered if Inglesby realized how immensely revealing it was.
+There he sat, solid, successful, informed with a sort of brutal
+egotism that never gives quarter. In despite of a malevolent
+determination to look pleasant, his smile was so much more of a threat
+than a promise that one could wish for his own sake he had scowled
+instead. He is a throaty man, is Inglesby; and this, with an
+uncompromising squareness of forehead, a stiffness of hair, and a
+hard hint of white in the eyes, lent him a lowering likeness to an
+unpedigreed bull.
+
+John Flint cast upon this charming likeness one brief and pregnant
+glance.
+
+"Regular old Durham shorthorn, isn't he?" he commented in a low voice.
+"Wants to charge right out of his frame and trample. Take a look at
+that nose, parson--like a double-barreled shotgun, for all the world!
+Beautiful brute, Inglesby. Makes you think of that minotaur sideshow
+they used to put over on the Greeks."
+
+In view of Laurence and of Mary Virginia, I saw the resemblance.
+
+Mr. Hunter's office was less formal than Mr. Inglesby's, and furnished
+with an exact and critical taste alien to Appleboro, where many a
+worthy citizen's office trappings consist of an alpaca coat, a chair
+and a pine table, three or four fly-specked calendars and shabby
+ledgers, and a box of sawdust. To these may sometimes be added a pot
+of paste with a dead cockroach in it, or a hound dog either scratching
+fleas or snapping at flies.
+
+Here the square of carpet was brown as fallen pine-needles in October,
+the walls were a soft tan, the ceiling and woodwork ivory-toned. One
+saw between the windows a bookcase filled with handsomely bound books,
+and on top of it a few pieces of such old china as would enrapture my
+mother. The white marble mantel held one or two signed photographs in
+silver frames, a pair of old candlesticks of quaint and pleasing
+design, and a dull red pottery vase full of Japanese quince. There
+were a few good pictures on the walls--a gay impudent Detaille Lancer
+whose hardy face of a fighting Frenchman warmed one's heart; some
+sketches signed with notable American names; and above the mantel a
+female form clothed only in the ambient air, her long hair swept back
+from her shoulders, and a pearl-colored dove alighting upon her
+outstretched finger.
+
+I suppose one might call the whole room beautiful, for even the desk
+was of that perfection of simplicity whose cost is as rubies. It was
+not, however, a womanish room; there was no slightest hint of
+femininity in its uncluttered, sane, forceful orderliness. It was
+rather like Hunter himself--polished, perfect, with a note of finality
+and of fitness upon it like a hall-mark. Nothing out of keeping,
+nothing overdone. Even the red petal fallen from the pottery vase on
+the white marble mantel was a last note of perfection.
+
+Flint glanced about him with the falcon-glance that nothing escapes.
+For a moment the light stayed upon the nude figure over the
+mantel--the one real nude in all Appleboro, which cherishes family
+portraits of rakehelly old colonials in wigs, chokers, and
+tight-fitting smalls, and lolloping ladies with very low necks and
+sixteen petticoats, but where scandalized church-goers have been known
+to truss up a little plaster copy of the inane Greek Slave in a
+pocket-handkerchief, by way of needful drapery.
+
+"What I want to know is, _why_ a lady should have to strip to the buff
+just to play with a pigeon?" breathed John Flint, and his tone was
+captious.
+
+It did not strike me as being to the last degree whimsical,
+improbable, altogether absurd, that such a man should pause at such a
+time to comment upon art as he thinks it isn't. On the contrary it was
+a consistent and coherent feature of that astounding nightmare in
+which we figured. The absurd and the impossible always happen in
+dreams. I am sure that if the dove on the woman's finger had opened
+its painted bill and spoken, say about the binomial theorem, or the
+Effect of Too Much Culture upon Women's Clubs, I should have listened
+with equal gravity and the same abysmal absence of surprise. I
+pattered platitudinously:
+
+"The greatest of the Greeks considered the body divine in itself, my
+son, and so their noblest art was nude. Some moderns have thought
+there is no real art that is not nude. Truth itself is naked."
+
+"Aha!" said my son, darkly. "I see! You take off your pants when you
+go out to feed your chickens, say, and you're not bughouse. You're
+art. Well, if Truth is naked, thank God the rest of us are liars!"
+
+What I have here set down was but the matter of a moment. Flint
+brushed it aside like a cobweb and set briskly about his real
+business. Over in the recess next to the fireplace was the safe, and
+before this he knelt.
+
+"Hold the light!" he ordered in a curt whisper. "There--like that.
+Steady now." My hand closed as well upon the rosary I carried, and I
+clung to the beads as the shipwrecked cling to a spar. The familiar
+feel of them comforted me.
+
+I do not know to this day the make of that safe, nor its actual
+strength, and I have always avoided questioning John Flint about it. I
+do know it seemed incredibly strong, big, heavy, ungetatable. There
+was a dark-colored linen cover on top of it, embroidered with yellow
+marguerites and their stiff green leaves. And there was a brass
+fern-jar with claw feet, and rings on the sides that somehow made me
+think of fetters upon men's wrists.
+
+"A little lower--to the left. So!" he ordered, and with steady fingers
+I obeyed. He stood out sharply in the clear oval--the "cleverest crook
+in all America" at work again, absorbed in his task, expert, a
+mind-force pitting itself against inanimate opposition. He was
+smiling.
+
+The tools lay beside him and quite by instinct his hand reached out
+for anything it needed. I think he could have done his work
+blindfolded. Once I saw him lay his ear against the door, and I
+thought I heard a faint click. A gnawing rat might have made something
+like the noise of the drill biting its way. With this exception an
+appalling silence hung over the room. I could hardly breathe in it. I
+gripped the rosary and told it, bead after bead.
+
+_"Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death--"_
+
+There are moments when time loses its power and ceases to be; before
+our hour we seem to have stepped out of it and into eternity, in which
+time does not exist, and wherein there can be no relation of time
+between events. They stand still, or they stretch to indefinite and
+incredible lengths--all, all outside of time, which has no power upon
+them. So it was now. Every fraction of every second of every minute
+lengthened into centuries, eternities passed between minutes. The
+hashish-eater knows something of this terror of time, and I seemed to
+have eaten hashish that night.
+
+I could still see him crouching before the safe; and all the while the
+eternities stretched and stretched on either side of us, infinities I
+could only partly bridge over with Hailmarys and Ourfathers.
+
+_"And lead us not into temptation ... but deliver us from evil ..."_
+
+Although I watched him attentively, being indeed unable to tear my
+eyes away from him, and although I held the light for him with such a
+steady hand, I really do not know what he did, nor how he forced that
+safe. I understand it took him a fraction over fourteen minutes.
+
+"Here she comes!" he breathed, and the heavy door was open, revealing
+the usual interior, with ledgers, and a fairsized steel money-vault,
+which also came open a moment later. Flint glanced over the contents,
+and singled out from other papers two packages of letters held
+together by stout elastic bands, and with pencil notations on the
+corner of each envelope, showing the dates. He ran over both, held up
+the smaller of the two, and I saw, with a grasp of inexpressible
+relief, the handwriting of Mary Virginia.
+
+He locked the vault, shut the heavy door of the rifled safe, and began
+to gather his tools together.
+
+"You have forgotten to put the other packages back," I reminded him. I
+was in a raging fever of impatience to be gone, to fly with the
+priceless packet in my hand.
+
+"No, I'm not forgetting. I saw a couple of the names on the envelopes
+and I rather think these letters will be a whole heap interesting to
+look over," said he, imperturbably. "It's a hunch, parson, and I've
+gotten in the habit of paying attention to hunches. I'll risk it on
+these, anyhow. They're in suspicious company and I'd like to know
+why." And he thrust the package into the crook of his arm, along with
+the tools.
+
+The light was carefully flashed over every inch of the space we had
+traversed, to make sure that no slightest trace of our presence was
+left. As we walked through Inglesby's office John Flint ironically
+saluted the life-like portrait:
+
+"You've had a ring twisted in your nose for once, old sport!" said he,
+and led me into the dark hall. We moved and the same exquisite caution
+we had exercised upon entering, for we couldn't afford to have Dan
+Jackson's keen old ears detect footfalls overhead at that hour of the
+morning. Now we were at the foot of the long stairs, and Flint had
+soundlessly opened and closed the last door between us and freedom.
+And now we were once more in the open air, under the blessed shadow of
+the McCall trees, and walking close to their old weather-beaten fence.
+The light was still shining in the bank, and I knew that that
+redoubtable old rebel of a watchman was peacefully sleeping with his
+gray guerilla of a marauding cat beside him. He could afford to sleep
+in peace. He had not failed in his trust, for the intruders had no
+designs upon the bank's gold. Questioned, he could stoutly swear that
+nobody had entered the building. In proof, were not all doors locked?
+Who should break into a man's office and rob his safe just to get a
+package of love-letters--if Inglesby made complaint?
+
+I remember we stood leaning against the McCall fence for a few
+minutes, for my strength had of a sudden failed, my head spun like a
+top, and my legs wavered under me.
+
+"Buck up!" said Flint's voice in my ear. "It's all over, and the
+baby's named for his Poppa!" His arm went about me, an arm like a
+steel bar. Half led, half carried, I went staggering on beside him
+like a drunken man, clutching a rosary and a packet of love-letters.
+
+The streets were still dark and deserted, the whole town slept. But
+over in the east, when one glimpsed the skies above the trees, a
+nebulous gray was stealing upon the darkness; and the morning star
+blazed magnificently, in a space that seemed to have been cleared for
+it. Somewhere, far off, an ambitious rooster crowed to make the sun
+rise.
+
+It took us a long time to reach home. It was all of a quarter past
+four when we turned into the Parish House gate, cut across the garden,
+and reached Flint's rooms. Faint, trembling in every limb, I fell into
+a chair, and through a mist saw him kneel and blow upon the coals of
+the expiring fire, upon which he dropped a lightwood knot. A ruddy
+glow went dancing up the chimney. Then he was beside me again. Very
+gently he removed hat and overcoat. And then I was sitting peacefully
+in the Morris chair, in my old cassock, and with my own old biretta on
+my head; and there was no longer that thin buzzing, shrill and
+torturing as a mosquito's, singing in my ears. At my knee stood Kerry,
+with his beautiful hazel eyes full of a grave concern; and beside him,
+calm and kind and matter-of-fact, the Butterfly Man himself stood
+watching me with an equal regard. I rubbed my forehead. The incredible
+had happened, and like all incredible things it had been almost
+ridiculously simple and easy of accomplishment. Here we were, we two,
+priest and naturalist, in our own workroom, with an old dog wagging
+his tail beside us. Could anything be more commonplace? The last trace
+of nightmare vanished, as smoke dispelled by the wind. If Mary
+Virginia's letters had not been within reach of my hand I would have
+sworn I was just awake out of a dream of that past hour.
+
+"She has escaped from them, they cannot touch her, she is free!" I
+exulted. "John, John, you have saved our girl! No matter what they do
+to Eustis they can't drag her into the quicksands _now_."
+
+But he went walking up and down, shoulders squared, face uplifted. One
+might think that after such a night he would have been humanly tired,
+but he had clean forgotten his body. His eyes shone as with a flame
+lit from inward, and I think there was on him what the Irish people
+call the _Aisling_, the waking vision. For presently he began to
+speak, as to Somebody very near him.
+
+"Oh, Lord God!" said the Butterfly Man, with a reverent and fierce
+joy, "she's going to have her happiness now, and it wasn't holy priest
+nor fine gentleman you picked out to help her toward it--it was me,
+Slippy McGee, born in the streets and bred in the gutter, with the
+devil knows who for his daddy and a name that's none of his own! For
+that I'm Yours for keeps: _You've got me_.
+
+"You've done all even God Almighty can do, given me more than I ever
+could have asked You for--and now it's up to me to make good--and I'll
+do it!"
+
+There came to listening me something of the emotion I experienced when
+I said my first Mass--as if I had been brought so close to our Father
+that I could have put out my hand and touched Him. Ah! I had had a
+very small part to play in this man's redemption. I knew it now, and
+felt humbled and abashed, and yet grateful that even so much had been
+allowed me. Not I, but Love, had transformed a sinner and an outlaw
+into a great scientist and a greater lover. And I remembered Mary
+Virginia's childish hand putting into his the gray-winged Catocala,
+and how the little moth, raising the sad-colored wings worn to suit
+his surroundings, revealed beneath that disfiguring and disguising
+cloak the exquisite and flower-like loveliness of the underwings.
+
+He paused in his swinging stride, and looked down at me a bit shyly.
+
+"Parson--you see how it is with me?"
+
+"I see. And I think she is the greater lady for it and you the finer
+gentleman," said I stoutly. "It would honor her, if she were ten times
+what she is--and she is Mary Virginia."
+
+"She is Mary Virginia," said the Butterfly Man, "and I am--what I am.
+Yet somehow I feel sure I can care for her, that I can go right on
+caring for her to the end of time, without hurt to her or sorrow to
+me." And after a pause, he added, deliberately:
+
+"I found something better than a package of letters to-night, parson.
+I found--_Me_."
+
+For awhile neither of us spoke. Then he said, speculatively:
+
+"Folks give all sorts of things to the church--dedicate them in
+gratitude for favors they fancy they've received, don't they? Lamps,
+and models of ships, and glass eyes and wax toes and leather hands,
+and crutches and braces, and that sort of plunder? Well, I'm moved to
+make a free-will offering myself. I'm going to give the church my
+kit, and you can take it from me the old Lady will never get her
+clamps on another set like that until Gabriel blows his trumpet in the
+morning. Parson, I want you to put those tools back where you had
+them, for I shall never touch them again. I couldn't. They--well,
+they're sort of holy from now on. They're my IOU. Will you do it for
+me?"
+
+"Yes!" said I.
+
+"I might have known you would!" said he, smiling. "Just one more
+favor, parson--may I put her letters in her hands, myself?"
+
+"My son, my son, who but you should do that?" I pushed the package
+across the table.
+
+"Great Scott, parson, here it is striking five o'clock, and you've
+been up all night!" he exclaimed, anxiously. "Here--no more gassing.
+You come lie down on my bed and snooze a bit. I'll call you in plenty
+of time for mass."
+
+I was far too spent and tired to move across the garden to the Parish
+House. I suffered myself to be put to bed like a child, and had my
+reward by falling almost immediately into a dreamless sleep, nor did I
+stir until he called me, a couple of hours later. He himself had not
+slept, but had employed the time in going through the letters open on
+his table. He pointed to them now, with a grim smile.
+
+"Parson!" said he, and his eyes glittered. "Do you know what we've
+stumbled upon? Dynamite! Man, anybody holding that bunch of mail could
+blow this state wide open! So much for a hunch, you see!"
+
+"You mean--"
+
+"I mean I've got the cream off Inglesby's most private deals, that's
+what I mean! I mean I could send him and plenty of his pals to the
+pen. Everybody's been saying for years that there hasn't been a rotten
+deal pulled off that he didn't boss and get away with it. But nobody
+could prove it. He's had the men higher-up eating out of his
+hand--sort of you pat my head and I'll pat yours arrangement--and
+here's the proof, in black and white. Don't you understand? Here's the
+proof: these get him with the goods!
+
+"These," he slapped a letter, "would make any Grand Jury throw fits,
+make every newspaper in the state break out into headlines like a kid
+with measles, and blow the lid off things in general--if they got out.
+
+"Inglesby's going to shove Eustis under, is he? Not by a jugfull. He's
+going to play he's a patent life-preserver. He's going to _be_ that
+good Samaritan he's been shamming. Talk about poetic justice--this
+will be like wearing shoes three sizes too small for him, with a
+bunion on every toe!" And when I looked at him doubtfully, he laughed.
+
+"You can't see how it's going to be managed? Didn't you ever hear of
+the grapevine telegraph? Well then, dear George receives a grapevine
+wireless bright and early to-morrow morning. A word to the wise is
+sufficient."
+
+"He will employ detectives," said I, uneasily.
+
+The Butterfly Man looked at me quizzically.
+
+"_With_ an eagle eye and a walrus mustache," said he, grinning. "Sure.
+But if the plainclothes nose around, are they going to sherlock the
+parish priest and the town bughunter? _We_ haven't got any interest in
+Mr. Inglesby's private correspondence, have we? Suppose Miss Eustis's
+letters are returned to her, what does that prove? Why, nothing at
+all,--except that it wasn't her correspondence the fellows that
+cracked that safe were after. We should worry!
+
+"Say, though, don't you wish you could see them when they stroll down
+to those beautiful offices and go for to open that nice burglar-proof
+safe with the little brass flower-pot on top of it? What a joke! Holy
+whiskered black cats, what a joke!"
+
+"I'm afraid Mr. Inglesby's sense of humor isn't his strong point,"
+said I. "Not that I have any sympathy for him. I think he is getting
+only what he deserves."
+
+"_Alexander the coppersmith wrought me much evil. May God requite him
+according to his works!_" murmured the Butterfly Man, piously, and
+chuckled. "Don't worry, parson--Alexander's due to fall sick with the
+pip to-day or to-morrow. What do you bet he don't get it so bad he'll
+have to pull up all his pretty plans by the roots, leave Mr. Hunter in
+charge, and go off somewhere to take mudbaths for his liver? Believe
+me, he'll need them! Why, the man won't be able to breathe easy any
+more--he'll be expecting one in the solar plexus any minute, not
+knowing any more than Adam's cat who's to hand it to him. He can't
+tell who to trust and who to suspect. If you want to know just how
+hard Alexander's going to be requited according to his works, take a
+look at these." He pointed to the letters.
+
+I did take a look, and I admit I was frightened. It seemed to me
+highly unsafe for plain folks like us to know such things about such
+people. I was amazed to the point of stupefaction at the corruption
+those communications betrayed, the shameless and sordid disregard of
+law and decency, the brutal and cynical indifference to public
+welfare. At sight of some of the signatures my head swam--I felt
+saddened, disillusioned, almost in despair for humanity. I suppose
+Inglesby had thought it wiser to preserve these letters--possibly for
+his own safety; but no wonder he had locked them up! I looked at the
+Butterfly Man openmouthed.
+
+"You wouldn't think folks wearing such names could be that rotten,
+would you? Some of them pillars of the church, too, and married to
+good women, and the fathers of nice kids! Why, I have known crooks
+that the police of a dozen states were after, that wouldn't have been
+caught dead on jobs like some of these. Inglesby won't know it, but he
+ought to thank his stars _we've_ got his letters instead of the State
+Attorney, for I shan't use them unless I have to.... Parson, you
+remember a bluejay breaking up a nest on me once, and what Laurence
+said when I wanted to wring the little crook's neck? That the thing
+isn't to reform the jay but to keep him from doing it again? That's
+the cue."
+
+He gathered up the scattered letters, made a neat package of them, and
+put it in a table drawer behind a stack of note-books. And then he
+reached over and touched the other package, the letters written in
+Mary Virginia's girlish hand.
+
+"Here's her happiness--long, long years of it ahead of her," he said
+soberly. "As for you, you take back those tools, and go say mass."
+
+Outside it was broad bright day, a new beautiful day, and the breath
+of the morning blew sweetly over the world. The Church was full of a
+clear and early light, the young pale gold of the new Spring sun.
+None of the congregation had as yet arrived. Before I went into the
+sacristy to put on my vestments, I gave back into St. Stanislaus'
+hands the IOU of Slippy McGee.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+BETWEEN A BUTTERFLY'S WINGS
+
+
+There was a glamour upon it. One knew it was going to grow into one of
+those wonderful and shining days in whose enchanted hours any
+exquisite miracle might happen. I am perfectly sure that the Lord God
+walked in the garden in the cool of an April day, and that it was a
+morning in spring when the angels visited Abraham, sitting watchful in
+the door of his tent.
+
+There was in the air itself something long-missed and come back, a
+heady and heart-moving delight, a promise, a thrill, a whisper of
+"_April! April!_" that the Green Things and the hosts of the Little
+People had heard overnight. In the dark the sleeping souls of the
+golden butterflies had dreamed it, known it was a true Word, and now
+they were out, "Little flames of God" dancing in the Sunday sunlight.
+The Red Gulf Fritillary had heard it, and here she was, all in her
+fine fulvous frock besmocked with black velvet, and her farthingale
+spangled with silver. And the gallant Red Admiral, the brave beautiful
+Red Admiral that had dared unfriendlier gales, trimmed his painted
+sails to a wind that was the breath of spring.
+
+Over by the gate the spirea had ventured into showering sprays
+exhaling a shy and fugitive fragrance, and what had been a blur of
+gray cables strung upon the oaks had begun to bud with emerald and
+blossom with amethyst--the wisteria was a-borning. And one knew there
+was Cherokee rose to follow, that the dogwood was in white, and the
+year's new mintage of gold dandelions was being coined in the fresh
+grass.
+
+There wasn't a bird that wasn't caroling _April!_ at the top of his
+voice from the full of his heart; for wasn't the world alive again,
+wasn't it love-time and nest-time, wasn't it Spring?
+
+Even to the tired faces of my work-folks that shining morning lent a
+light that was hope. Without knowing it, they felt themselves a vital
+part of the reborn world, sharers in its joy because they were the
+children of the common lot, the common people for whom the world is,
+and without whom no world could be. Classes, creeds, nations, gods,
+all these pass and are gone; God, and the common people, and the
+spring remain.
+
+When I was young I liked as well as another to dwell overmuch upon the
+sinfulness of sin, the sorrow of sorrow, the despair of death. Now
+that these three terrible teachers have taught me a truer wisdom and a
+larger faith, I like better to turn to the glory of hope, the wisdom
+of love, and the simple truth that death is just a passing phase of
+life. So I sent my workers home that morning rejoicing with the truth,
+and was all the happier and hopefuller myself because of it.
+
+Afterwards, when Clelie was giving me my coffee and rolls, the
+Butterfly Man came in to breakfast with me, a huge roll of those New
+York newspapers which contain what are mistakenly known as Comic
+Supplements tucked under his arm.
+
+He said he bought them because they "tasted like New York" which they
+do not. Just as Major Cartwright explains his purchase of them by the
+shameless assertion that it just tickles him to death "to see what
+Godforsaken idjits those Yankees can make of themselves when they
+half-way try. Why, suh, one glance at their Sunday newspapers ought to
+prove to any right thinkin' man that it's safer an' saner to die in
+South Carolina than to live in New York!"
+
+_I_ think the Butterfly Man and Major Cartwright buy those papers
+because they think they are _funny_! After they have read and
+sniggered, they donate them to Clelie and Daddy January. And presently
+Clelie distributes them to a waiting colored countryside, which
+wallpapers its houses with them. I have had to counsel the erring and
+bolster the faith of the backsliding under the goggle eyes of inhuman
+creations whose unholy capers have made futile many a prayer. And yet
+the Butterfly Man likes them! Is it not to wonder?
+
+He laid them tenderly upon the table now, and smiled slyly to see me
+eye them askance.
+
+"Did you know," said he, over his coffee, "that Laurence came in this
+morning on the six-o'clock? January had him out in the garden showing
+off the judge's new patent hives, and I stopped on my way to church
+and shook hands over the fence. It was all I could do to keep from
+shouting that all's right with the world, and all he had to do was to
+be glad. I didn't know how much I cared for that boy until this
+morning. Parson, it's a--a terrible thing to love people, when you
+come to think about it, isn't it? I told him you were honing to see
+him: and that we'd be looking for him along about eleven. And I
+intimated that if he didn't show up then I'd go after him with a gun.
+He said he'd be here on the stroke." After a moment, he added gently:
+"I figured they'd be here by then--Madame and Mary Virginia."
+
+"What! You have induced Laurence to come while she is here--without
+giving him any intimation that he is likely to meet her?" I said,
+aghast. "You are a bold man, John Flint!"
+
+The study windows were open and the sweet wind and the warm sun poured
+in unchecked. The stir of bees, the scent of honey-locust just
+opening, drifted in, and the slow solemn clangor of church bells, and
+lilts and flutings and calls and whistlings from the tree-tops. We
+could see passing groups of our neighbors, fathers and mothers
+shepherding little flocks of children in their Sunday best, trotting
+along with demure Sabbath faces on their way to church. The Butterfly
+Man looked out, waved gaily to the passing children, who waved back a
+joyous response, nodded to their smiling parents, followed the flight
+of a tanager's sober spouse, and sniffed the air luxuriously.
+
+"Oh, somebody's got to stage-manage, parson," he said at last, lightly
+enough, but with a hint of tiredness in his eyes. "And then vanish
+behind the scenes, leaving the hero and heroine in the middle of the
+spotlight, with the orchestra tuning up 'The Voice that Breathed o'er
+Eden,'" he finished, without a trace of bitterness. "So I sent Madame
+a note by a little nigger newsie." His eyes crinkled, and he quoted
+the favorite aphorism of the colored people, when they seem to
+exercise a meticulous care: "Brer Rabbit say, 'I trus' no mistake.'"
+
+"You are a bold man," said I again, with a respect that made him
+laugh. Then we went over to his rooms to wait, and while we waited I
+tried to read a chapter of a book I was anxious to finish, but
+couldn't, my eyes being tempted by the greener and fresher page
+opening before them. Flint smoked a virulent pipe and read his papers.
+
+Presently he laid his finger upon a paragraph and handed me the
+paper.... And I read where one "Spike" Frazer had been shot to death
+in a hand-to-hand fight with the police who were raiding a dive
+suspected of being the rendezvous of drug-fiends. Long wanted and at
+last cornered, Frazer had fought tigerishly and died in his tracks,
+preferring death to capture. A sly and secretive creature, he had had
+a checkered career in the depths. It was his one boast that more than
+anybody else he had known and been a sort of protege of the once
+notorious Slippy McGee, that King of Crooks whose body had been found
+in the East River some years since, and whose daring and mysterious
+exploits were not yet altogether forgotten by the police or the
+underworld.
+
+"_Sic transit gloria mundi!_" said the Butterfly Man in his gentle
+voice, and looked out over the peaceful garden and the Sunday calm
+with inscrutable eyes. I returned the paper with a hand that shook. It
+seemed to me that a deep and solemn hush fell for a moment upon the
+glory of the day, while the specter of what might have been gibbered
+at us for the last time.
+
+Out of the heart of that hush walked two women--one little and rosy
+and white-haired, one tall and pale and beautiful with the beauty upon
+which sorrow has placed its haunting imprint. Her black hair framed
+her face as in ebony, and her blue, blue eyes were shadowed. By an
+odd coincidence she was dressed this morning just as she had been when
+the Butterfly Man first saw her--in white, and over it a scarlet
+jacket. Kerry and little Pitache rose, met them at the gate, and
+escorted them with grave politeness. The Butterfly Man hastily emptied
+his pipe and laid aside his newspapers.
+
+"Your note said we were to come, that everything was all right," said
+my mother, looking up at him with bright and trustful eyes. "Such a
+relief! Because I know you never say anything you don't mean, John."
+
+He smiled, and with a wave of the hand beckoned us into the workroom.
+Madame followed him eagerly and expectantly--she knew her John Flint.
+Mary Virginia came listlessly, dragging her feet, her eyes somber in a
+smileless face. She could not so quickly make herself hope, she who
+had journeyed so far into the arid country of despair. But he, with
+something tender and proud and joyful in his looks, took her
+unresisting hand and drew her forward.
+
+"Mary Virginia!" I had not known how rich and deep the Butterfly Man's
+voice could be. "Mary Virginia, we promised you last night that if you
+would trust us, the Padre and me, we'd find the right way out, didn't
+we? Now this is what happened: the Padre took his troubles to the
+Lord, and the Lord presently sent him back to _me_--with the beginning
+of the answer in his hand! And here's the whole answer, Mary
+Virginia." And he placed in her hand the package of letters that meant
+so much to her.
+
+My mother gave a little scream. "Armand!" she said, fearfully. "She
+has told me all. _Mon Dieu_, how have you two managed this, between
+midnight and morning? My son, you are a De Rance: look me in the eyes
+and tell me there is nothing wrong, that there will be no ill
+consequences--"
+
+"There won't be any comebacks," said John Flint, with engaging
+confidence. "As for you, Mary Virginia, you don't have to worry for
+one minute about what those fellows can do--because they can't do
+anything. They're double-crossed. Now listen: when you see Hunter, you
+are to say to him, '_Thank you for returning my letters_.' Just that
+and no more. If there's any questioning, _stare_. Stare hard. If
+there's any threatening about your father, _smile_. You can afford to
+smile. They can't touch him. But _how_ those letters came into your
+hands you are never to tell, you understand? They did come and that's
+all that interests you." He began to laugh, softly. "All Hunter will
+want to know is that you've received them. He's too game not to lose
+without noise, and he'll make Inglesby swallow his dose without
+squealing, too. So--you're finished and done with Mr. Hunter and Mr.
+Inglesby!" His voice deepened again, as he added gently: "It was just
+a bad dream, dear girl. It's gone with the night. Now it's morning,
+and you're awake."
+
+But Mary Virginia, white as wax, stared at the letters in her hand,
+and then at me, and trembled.
+
+"Trust us, my child," said I, somewhat troubled. "And obey John Flint
+implicitly. Do just what he tells you to do, say just what he tells
+you to say."
+
+Mary Virginia looked from one to the other, thrust the package upon
+me, walked swiftly up to him, and, laying her hands upon his arms
+stared with passionate earnestness into his face: the kind, wise,
+lovable face that every child in Appleboro County adores, every woman
+trusts, every man respects. Her eyes clung to his, and he met that
+searching gaze without faltering, though it seemed to probe for the
+root of his soul. It was well for Mary Virginia that those brave eyes
+had caught something from the great faces that hung upon his walls and
+kept company and counsel with him day and night, they that conquered
+life and death and turned defeat into victory because they had first
+conquered themselves!
+
+"Yes!" said she, with a deep sigh of relief. "I trust you! Thank God
+for just how much I can believe and trust you!"
+
+I think that meeting face to face that luminous and unfaltering
+regard, Mary Virginia must have divined that which had heretofore been
+hidden from her by the man's invincible modesty and reserve; and being
+most generous and of a large and loving soul herself, I think she
+realized to the uttermost the magnitude of his gift. Her name, her
+secure position, her happiness, the hopes that the coming years were
+to transform into realities--oh, I like to think that Mary Virginia
+saw all this, in one of those lightning-flashes of spiritual insight
+that reveal more than all one's slower years; I like to think she saw
+it given her freely, nobly, with joy, a glorious love-gift from the
+limping man into whose empty hand she had one day put a little gray
+underwing!
+
+I glanced at my mother, and saw by her most expressive face that she
+knew and understood. She had known and understood, long before any of
+us.
+
+"If I might offer a suggestion," I said in as matter-of-fact a voice
+as I could command, "it would be, that the sooner those letters are
+destroyed, the better."
+
+Mary Virginia took them from me and dropped them on the coals
+remaining from last night's fire--the last fire of the season. They
+did not ignite quickly, though they began to turn brown, and thin
+spirals of smoke arose from them. The Butterfly Man knelt, thrust a
+handful of lightwood splinters under the pile, and touched a match
+here and there. When the resinous wood flared up, the letters blazed
+with it. They blazed and then they crumbled; they disappeared in bits
+of charred and black paper that vanished at a touch; they were gone
+while we watched, the girl kneeling upon the hearthrug with her hand
+on Flint's arm, and I with my old heart singing like a skylark in my
+breast, and my mother's mild eyes upon us all.
+
+Life and color and beauty flowed back into Mary Virginia's face and
+music's self sang again in her voice. She was like the day itself,
+reborn out of a dark last night. When the last bit of blackened paper
+went swirling up the chimney, and the two of them had risen, the most
+beautiful and expressive eyes under heaven looked up like blue and
+dewy flowers into the Butterfly Man's face. She was too wise and too
+tender to try to thank him in words, and never while they two lived
+would this be again referred to so much as once by either; but she
+took his hand, palm upward, gave him one deep long upward glance, and
+then bent her beautiful head and dropped into the center of his palm a
+kiss, and closed the fingers gently over it for everlasting keeping
+and remembrance. The eyes brimmed over then, and two large tears fell
+upon his hand and washed her kiss in, indelibly.
+
+None of us four had the power of speech left us. Heaven knows what we
+should have done, if Laurence hadn't opened the door at that moment
+and walked in upon us. I don't think he altogether sensed the
+tenseness of the situation which his coming relieved, but he went pale
+at sight of Mary Virginia, and he would have left incontinently if my
+mother, with a joyous shriek, hadn't pounced upon him.
+
+"Laurence! Why, Laurence! But we didn't expect you home until
+to-morrow night!" said she, kissing him motherly. "My dear, dear boy,
+how glad I am to see you! What happy wind blew you home to-day,
+Laurence?"
+
+"Oh, I finished my work ahead of schedule and got away just as soon as
+I could," Laurence briefly and modestly explained thus that he had won
+his case. He edged toward the door, avoiding Mary Virginia's eyes. He
+had bowed to her with formal politeness. He wondered at the usually
+tactful Madame's open effort to detain him. It was a little too much
+to expect of him!
+
+"I just ran in to see how you all were," he tried to be very casual.
+"See you later, Padre. 'By, p'tite Madame. 'By, Flint." He bowed again
+to Mary Virginia, whose color had altogether left her, and who stood
+there most palpably nervous and distressed.
+
+"Laurence!" The Butterfly Man spoke abruptly. "Laurence, if a chap was
+dying of thirst and the water of life was offered him, he'd be
+considerable of a fool to turn his head aside and refuse to see it,
+wouldn't he?"
+
+Laurence paused. Something in the Butterfly Man's face, something in
+mine and Madame's, but, above all, something in Mary Virginia's,
+arrested him. He stood wavering, and my mother released his arm.
+
+"I take it," said John Flint, boldly plunging to the very heart of the
+matter, "I take it, Laurence, that you still care a very great deal
+for this dear girl of ours?" And now he had taken her hand in his and
+held it comfortingly. "More, say, than you could ever care for anybody
+else, if you lived to rival Methusaleh? So much, Laurence, that not to
+be able to believe she cares the same way for you takes the core out
+of life?" His manner was simple and direct, and so kind that one could
+only answer him in a like spirit. Besides, Laurence loved the
+Butterfly Man even as Jonathan loved David.
+
+"Yes," said the boy honestly, "I still care for her--like that. I
+always did. I always will. She knows." But his voice was toneless.
+
+"Of course you do, kid brother," said Flint affectionately. "Don't you
+suppose I know? But it's just as well for you to say it out loud every
+now and then. Fresh air is good for everything, particularly feelings.
+Keeps 'em fresh and healthy. Now, Mary Virginia, you feel just the
+same way about Laurence, don't you?" And he added: "Don't be ashamed
+to tell the most beautiful truth in the world, my dear. Well?"
+
+She went red and white. She looked entreatingly into the Butterfly
+Man's face. She didn't exactly see why he should drive her thus, but
+she caught courage from his. One saw how wise Flint had been to have
+snared Laurence here just now. One moment she hesitated. Then:
+
+"Yes!" said she, and her head went up proudly. "Yes, oh, yes, I
+care--like that. Only much, much more! I shall always care like that,
+although he probably won't believe me now when I say so. And I can't
+blame him for doubting me."
+
+"But it just happens that I have never been able to make myself doubt
+you," said Laurence gravely. "Why, Mary Virginia, you are _you_."
+
+"Then, Laurence," said the Butterfly Man, quickly, "will you take your
+old friends' word for it--mine, Madame's, the Padre's--that you were
+most divinely right to go on believing in her and loving her, because
+she never for one moment ceased to be worthy of faith and affection?
+No, not for one moment! She couldn't, you know. She's Mary Virginia!
+And will you promise to listen with all your patience to what she may
+think best to tell you presently--and then forget it? You're big
+enough to do that! She's been in sore straits, and she needs all the
+love you have, to help make up to her. Can she be sure of it,
+Laurence?"
+
+Laurence flushed. He looked at his old friend with reproach in his
+fine brown eyes. "You have known me all my life, all of you," said he,
+stiffly. "Have I ever given any of you any reason to doubt me!"
+
+"No, and we don't. Not one of us. But it's good for your soul to say
+things out loud," said Flint comfortably. "And now you've said it,
+don't you think you two had better go on over to the Parish House
+parlor, which is a nice quiet place, and talk this whole business over
+and out--together?"
+
+Laurence looked at Mary Virginia and what he saw electrified him.
+Boyishness flooded him, youth danced in his eyes, beauty was upon him,
+like sunlight.
+
+"Mary Virginia!" said the boy lover to the girl sweetheart, "is it
+really so? I was really right to believe all along that you--care?"
+
+"Laurence, Laurence!" she was half-crying. "Oh, Laurence, are you sure
+_you_ care--yet? You are sure, Laurence? You are _sure_? Because--I--I
+don't think I could stand things now if--if I were mistaken--"
+
+I don't know whether the boy ran to the girl at that, or the girl to
+the boy. I rather think they ran to each other because, in another
+moment, perfectly regardless of us, they were clinging to each other,
+and my mother was walking around them and crying heartily and
+shamelessly, and enjoying herself immensely. Mary Virginia began to
+stammer:
+
+"Laurence, if you only knew--Laurence, if it wasn't for John
+Flint--and the Padre--" The two of them had the two of us, each by an
+arm; and the Butterfly Man was brick-red and furiously embarrassed, he
+having a holy horror of being held up and thanked.
+
+"Why, I did what I did," said he, uncomfortably. "But,"--he brightened
+visibly--"if you _will_ have the truth, have it. If it wasn't for this
+blessed brick of a parson I'd never have been in a position to do
+anything for anybody. Don't you forget that!"
+
+"What ridiculous nonsense the man talks!" said I, exasperated by this
+shameless casuistry. "John Flint raves. As for me--"
+
+"As for you," said he with deep reproach, "you ought to know better
+than to tell such a thumping lie at this time of your life. I'm
+ashamed of you, parson! Why, you know good and well--"
+
+"Why, John Flint, you--" I began, aghast.
+
+My mother began to laugh. "For heaven's sake, thank them both and
+have done with it!" said she, a bit hysterically. "God alone knows how
+they managed, but this thing lies between them, the two great geese.
+Did one ever hear the like?"
+
+"Madame is right, as always," said Laurence gravely. "Remember, I
+don't know anything yet, except that somehow you've brought Mary
+Virginia and me back to each other. That's enough for _me_. I haven't
+got any questions to ask." His voice faltered, and he gripped us by
+the hand in turn, with a force that made me, for one, wince and
+cringe. "And Padre--Bughunter, you both know that I--" he couldn't
+finish.
+
+"That we--" choked Mary Virginia.
+
+"Sure we know," said the Butterfly Man hastily. "Don't you know you're
+our kids and we've got to know?" He began to edge them towards the
+door. I think his courage was getting a little raw about the corners.
+"Yes, you two go on over to the Parish House parlor, where you'll have
+a chance to talk without being interrupted--Madame will see to
+that--and don't you show your noses outside of that room until
+everything's settled the one and only way everything ought to be
+settled." His eyes twinkled as he manoeuvered them outside, and then
+stood in the doorway to watch them walk away--beautiful, youthful,
+radiantly happy, and very close together, the girl's head just on the
+level of the boy's shoulder. He was still faintly smiling when he came
+back to us; if there was pain behind that smile, he concealed it. My
+mother ran to him, impulsively.
+
+"John Flint!" said she, profoundly moved and earnest. "John Flint, the
+good God never gave me but one child, though I prayed for more. Often
+and often have I envied her silly mother Mary Virginia. But now.
+John, I know that if I could have had another child that, after
+Armand, I'd love best and respect most and be proudest of in this
+world, it would be _you_. Yes, _you_. John Flint, you are the best
+man, and the bravest and truest and most unselfish, and the finest
+gentleman, outside of my husband and my son, that I have ever known.
+What makes it all the more wonderful is that you're a genius along
+with it. I am proud of you, and glad of you, and I admire and love you
+with all my heart. And I really wish you'd call me mother. You should
+have been born a De Rance!"
+
+This, from my mother! I was amazed. Why, she would think she was
+flattering one of the seraphim if she had said to him, "You might have
+been a De Rance!"
+
+"Madame!" stammered Flint, "why, Madame!"
+
+"Oh, well, never mind, then. Let it go at Madame, since it would
+embarrass you to change. But I look upon you as my son, none the less.
+I claim you from this hour," said she firmly, as one not to be
+gainsaid.
+
+"I'm beginning to believe in fairy-stories," said Flint. "The beggar
+comes home--and he isn't a beggar at all, he's a Prince. Because the
+Queen is his mother."
+
+My mother looked at him approvingly. The grace of his manner, and the
+unaffected feeling of his words, pleased her. But she said no more of
+what was in her heart for him. She fell back, as women do, upon the
+safe subject of housekeeping matters.
+
+"I suppose," she mused, "that those children will remain with us
+to-day? Yes, of course. Armand, we shall have the last of your
+great-grandfather's wine. And I am going to send over for the judge.
+Let me see: shall I have time for a cake with frosting? H'm! Yes, I
+think so. Or would you prefer wine jelly with whipped cream, John?"
+
+He considered gravely, one hand on his hip, the other stroking his
+beard.
+
+"Couldn't we have both!" he wondered hopefully. "Please! Just for this
+once?"
+
+"We could! We shall!" said my mother, grandly, recklessly,
+extravagantly. "Adieu, then, children of my heart! I go to confer with
+Clelie." She waved her hand and was gone.
+
+The place shimmered with sun. Old Kerry lay with his head between his
+paws and dozed and dreamed in it, every now and then opening his hazel
+eyes to make sure that all was well with his man. All outdoors was one
+glory of renewing life, of stir and growth, of loving and singing and
+nest-building, and the budding of new green leaves and the blossoming
+of April boughs. Just such April hopes were theirs who had found each
+other again this morning. All of life at its best and fairest
+stretched sunnily before those two, the fairer for the cloud that had
+for a time darkened it, the dearer and diviner for the loss that had
+been so imminent.
+
+... That was a redbird again. And now a vireo. And this the
+mockingbird, love-drunk, emptying his heart of a troubadour in a song
+of fire and dew. And on a vagrant air, a gipsy air, the scent of the
+honey-locust. The spring for all the world else. But for him I
+loved,--what?
+
+I suppose my wistful eyes betrayed me, for used to the changing
+expressions of my thin visage, he smiled; and stood up, stretching
+his arms above his head. He drew in great mouthfuls of the sweet air,
+and expanded his broad chest.
+
+"I feel full to the brim!" said he gloriously. "I've got almost too
+much to hold with both hands! Parson, parson, it isn't possible you're
+fretting over _me_? Sorry for _me_? Why, man, consider!"
+
+Ah, but had I not considered? I knew, I thought, what he had to hold
+fast to. Honor, yes. And the friendship of some and the admiration of
+many and the true love of the few, which is all any man may hope for
+and more than most attain. Outside of that, a gray moth, and a
+butterfly's wing, and a torn nest, and a child's curl, and a ragdoll
+in her grave; and now a girl's kiss on the palm and a tear to hallow
+it. But I who had greatly loved and even more greatly lost and
+suffered, was it not for me of all men to know and to understand?
+
+"But I have got the thing itself," said the Butterfly Man, "that makes
+everything else worth while. Why, I have been taught how to love! My
+work is big--but by itself it wasn't enough for me. I needed something
+more. So I was swept and empty and ready and waiting--when she came.
+Now hadn't there got to be something fine and decent in me, when it
+was she alone out of all the world I was waiting for and could love?"
+
+"Yes, yes. But oh, my son, my son!"
+
+"Oh, it was bad and bitter enough at first, parson. Because I wanted
+her so much! Great God, I was like a soul in hell! After awhile I
+crawled out of hell--on my hands and knees. But I'd begun to
+understand things. I'd been taught. It'd been burnt into me past
+forgetting. Maybe that's what hell is for, if folks only knew it.
+Could anything ever happen to anybody any more that I couldn't
+understand and be sorry for, I wonder?
+
+"No, don't you worry any about me. I wouldn't change places with
+anybody alive, I'm too glad for everything that's ever happened to me,
+good and bad. I'm not ashamed of the beginning, no, nor I'm not afraid
+of the end.
+
+"Will you believe me, though, when I tell you what worried me like the
+mischief for awhile? Family, parson! You can't live in South Carolina
+without having the seven-years' Family-itch wished on you, you know. I
+felt like a mushroom standing up on my one leg all by myself among a
+lot of proper garden plants--until I got fed up on the professional
+Descendant banking on his boneyard full of dead ones; then I quit
+worrying. I'm Me and alive--and I should worry about ancestors! Come
+to think about it, everybody's an ancestor while you wait. I made up
+my mind I'd be my own ancestor and my own descendant--and make a good
+job of both while I was at it."
+
+But I was too sad to smile. And after awhile he asked gently:
+
+"Are you grieving because you think I've lost love? Parson, did you
+ever know something you didn't know how you knew, but you know you
+know it because it's true? Well then--I know that girl's mine and I
+came here to find her, though on the face of it you'd think I'd lost
+her, wouldn't you? Somewhere and sometime I'll come again--and when I
+do, she'll know _me_."
+
+And to save my life I couldn't tell him I didn't believe it! His
+manner even more than his words impressed me. He didn't look
+improbable.
+
+"One little life and one little death," said the Butterfly Man,
+"couldn't possibly be big enough for something like this to get away
+from a man forever. I have got the thing too big for a dozen lives to
+hold. Isn't that a great deal for a man to have, parson?"
+
+"Yes." said I. "It is a great deal for a man to have." But I foresaw
+the empty, empty places, in the long, long years ahead. I added
+faintly: "Having that much, you have more than most."
+
+"You only have what you are big enough not to take," said he. "And I'm
+not fooling myself I shan't be lonesome and come some rough tumbles at
+times. The difference is, that if I go down now I won't stay down. If
+there was one thing I could grieve over, too, it would be--kids. I'd
+like kids. My own kids. And I shall never have any. It--well, it just
+wouldn't be fair to the kids. Louisa'll come nearest to being mine by
+bornation--though I'm thinking she's managed to wish me everybody
+else's, on her curl."
+
+"So! You are your own ancestor and your own descendant, and
+everybody's kids are yours! You are modest, _hein_? And what else have
+you got?"
+
+His eyes suddenly danced. "Nothing but the rest of the United States,"
+said the Butterfly Man, magnificently. And when I stared, he laughed
+at me.
+
+"It's quite true, parson: I have got the whole United States to work
+for. Uncle Sam. U.S. _Us!_ I've been drafted into the Brigade that
+hasn't any commander, nor any colors, nor honors, nor even a name;
+but that's never going to be mustered out of service, because we that
+enlist and belong can't and won't quit.
+
+"Parson, think of _me_ representing the Brigade down here on the
+Carolina coast, keeping up the work, fighting things that hurt and
+finding out things that help Lord, what a chance! A hundred millions
+to work for, a hundred millions of one's own people--and a trail to
+blaze for the unborn millions to come!" His glance kindled, his face
+was like a lighted lamp. The vision was upon him, standing there in
+the April sunlight, staring wide-eyed into the future.
+
+Its reflected light illumined me, too--a little. And I saw that in a
+very large and splendid sense, this was the true American. He stood
+almost symbolically for that for which America stands--the fighting
+chance to overcome and to grow, the square deal, the spirit that looks
+eagle-eyed and unafraid into the sunrise. And above all for unselfish
+service and unshakable faith, and a love larger than personal love,
+prouder than personal pride, higher than personal ambition. They do
+not know America who do not know and will not see this spirit in her,
+going its noble and noiseless way apart.
+
+"The whole world to work for, and a whole lifetime to do it in!" said
+the voice of America, exultant. "Lord God, that's a man-sized job, but
+You just give me hands and eyes and time, and I'll do the best I can.
+You've done Your part by me--stand by, and I'll do mine by You!"
+
+Are those curious coincidences, those circumstances which occur at
+such opportune moments that they leave one with a sense of a guiding
+finger behind the affairs of men--are they, after all, only fortuitous
+accidents, or have they a deeper and a diviner significance?
+
+There stood the long worktable, with orderly piles of work on it; the
+microscope in its place; the books he had opened and pushed aside last
+night; and some half-dozen small card-board boxes in a row, containing
+the chrysalids he had been experimenting with, trying the effect of
+cold upon color. The cover of one box had been partially pushed off,
+possibly when he had moved the books. And while we had been paying
+attention to other things, one of these chrysalids had been paying
+strict attention to its own business, the beautiful and important
+business of becoming a butterfly. Flint discovered it first, and gave
+a pleased exclamation.
+
+"Look! Look! A Turnus, father! The first Turnus of the year!"
+
+The insect had been out for an hour or two, but was not yet quite
+ready to fly. It had crawled out of the half-opened box, dragged its
+wormy length across the table, over intervening obstacles, seeking
+some place to climb up and cling to.
+
+Now the Butterfly Man had left the Bible open, merely shoving it aside
+without shutting it, when he had found no comfort for himself last
+night in what John had to say. Protected by piled-up books and propped
+almost upright by the large inkstand, it gave the holding-place the
+insect desired. The butterfly had walked up the page and now clung to
+the top.
+
+There she rested, her black-and-yellow body quivering like a tiny live
+dynamo from the strong force of circulation, that was sending vital
+fluids upward into the wings to give them power and expansion. We had
+seen the same thing a thousand and one times before, we should see it
+a thousand and one times again. But I do not think either of us could
+ever forego the delight of watching a butterfly's wings shaping
+themselves for flight, and growing into something of beauty and of
+wonder. The lovely miracle is ever new to us.
+
+She was a big butterfly, big even for the greatest of Carolina
+swallow-tails; not the dark dimorphic form, but the true Tiger Turnus
+itself, her barred yellow upper wings edged with black enamel indented
+with red gold, her tailed lower wings bordered with a wider band of
+black, and this not only set with lunettes of gold but with purple
+amethysts, and a ruby on the upper and lower edges. Her wings moved
+rhythmically; a constant quivering agitated her, and her antennae with
+their flattened clubs seemed to be sending and receiving wireless
+messages from the shining world outside.
+
+And as the wings had dried and grown firmer in the mild warm current
+of air and the bright sunlight, she moved them with a wider and bolder
+sweep. The heavy, unwieldy body, thinned by the expulsion of those
+currents driven upward to give flying-power to the wings, had taken on
+a slim and tapering grace. She had reached her fairy perfection. She
+was ready now for flight and light and love and freedom and the
+uncharted pathways of the air, ready to carry out the design of the
+Creator who had fashioned her so wondrously and so beautiful, and had
+sent ahead of her the flowers for that marvelous tongue of hers to
+sip.
+
+Waiting still, opening and closing her exquisite wings, trying them,
+spreading them flat, the splendid swallow-tail clung to the page of
+the book open at the Gospel of John. And I, idly enough, leaned
+forward, and saw between the opening and the closing wings, words. The
+which John Flint, bending forward beside me, likewise saw. "_Work_,"
+flashed out. And on a lower line, "_while it is day_."
+
+I grasped the edge of the table; his knuckles showed white beside
+mine.
+
+    "_I must work the works of him
+     that sent me, while it is day._"
+
+His eyes grew larger and deeper. A sort of inward light, a serene and
+joyous acceptance and assurance, flowed into them. I that had dared to
+be despondent felt a sense of awe. The Voice that had once spoken
+above the Mercy Seat and between the wings of the cherubim was
+speaking now in immortal words between, the wings of a butterfly.
+
+She was poising herself for her first flight, the bright and lovely
+Lady of the Sky. Now she spread her wings flat, as a fan is unfurled.
+And now she had lifted them clear and uncovered her message. The
+Butterfly Man watched her, hanging absorbed upon her every movement.
+And he read, softly:
+
+    "_I must work
+    ... while it is day_."
+
+Lightly as a flower, a living and glorious flower, she lifted and
+launched herself into the air, flew straight and sure for the outside
+light, hung poised one gracious moment, and was gone.
+
+He turned to me the sweetest, clearest eyes I have ever seen in a
+mortal countenance, the eyes of a little child. His face had caught a
+sort of secret beauty, that was never to leave it any more.
+
+"Parson!" said the Butterfly Man, in a whisper that shook with the
+beating of his heart behind it: "Parson! _Don't it beat hell?_"
+
+I rocked on my toes. Then I flung my arms around him, with a jubilant
+shout:
+
+"It does! It does! Oh, Butterfly Man, by the grace and the glory and
+the wonder of God, it beats hell!"
+
+THE END
+
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+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the
+Butterfly Man, by Marie Conway Oemler
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SLIPPY MCGEE ***
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