Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man Part 15

"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 b.u.t.terfly Man. "You're a d.a.m.n 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, c.o.c.ked his bright black eye knowingly, and pa.s.sed 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 b.u.t.terfly Man watched him for a moment in silence; a furrow came to his forehead.

"d.a.m.n 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. G.o.d! 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 b.u.t.terfly'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 G.o.d.

"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 ingrat.i.tude 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 s.p.a.ces, 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 b.u.t.ton on her black basque; but a limping man in gray tweeds with a soft felt hat pulled down over his eyes and a b.u.t.terfly net in his hand. That net was symbolic. With trained eye and sure hand the naturalist caught and cla.s.sified 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 rest.i.tution. 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, n.o.body 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 sn.i.g.g.e.r 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 sc.r.a.pbook. 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 sh.o.r.e."

Heaven.

My mother was horrified. She said, severely, that she couldn't to save her life see why any mortal man should sn.i.g.g.e.r because a Christian wife and children seven mourned for John Peters who had gone to heaven. The b.u.t.terfly 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 n.o.body 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 b.u.t.terfly 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.