Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man Part 23

"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 b.u.t.terfly 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 d.a.m.ning 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 n.o.bler 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 a.s.sure 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 b.u.t.terfly Man!" Out came the jovial smile in its full deadliness. The b.u.t.terfly Man's lips drew back from his teeth and his eyes narrowed to gimlet points behind his gla.s.ses. "I have heard of you from Mr. Hunter. And so you collect b.u.t.terflies! 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 b.u.t.terflies _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 b.u.t.terfly 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 n.o.ble 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 coc.o.o.n 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 h.e.l.l!" 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, s.n.a.t.c.h 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 pa.s.sed 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 pa.s.sion 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.