Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man Part 13

"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 d.a.m.n 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! G.o.d! 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 b.u.ms 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 G.o.d! 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 h.e.l.l_. It--it comes over me like fire over the d.a.m.ned. You don't fool yourself that folks who know what it is to be d.a.m.ned 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 b.u.t.tERFLY 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 a.s.sorting and packing. Even at this moment of obsession his ingrained orderliness a.s.serted 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 b.u.t.terfly Man gravely a.s.sure 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 h.e.l.l. 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 h.e.l.l." He would go, and he would most inevitably be caught in the whirlpools; the naturalist, the scientist, the b.u.t.terfly 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 G.o.dspeed 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 gla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed them. Disconsolate Kerry barked at my pa.s.sing 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, c.o.c.ked 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 gra.s.s 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--b.u.t.terflies--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 n.i.g.g.e.r'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 gra.s.s 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!"