Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man Part 32

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 ma.s.s 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 b.u.t.terflies 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 b.u.t.terflies that resemble nothing so much as new bright dandelions in the young gra.s.s, 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 s.p.a.ce the little white hea.r.s.e 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 pa.s.sed. 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--Ma.r.s.e 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 b.u.t.ter--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 G.o.d'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 b.u.t.terfly 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 ma.s.s-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 b.u.t.terfly 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 a.s.sembled wants to hear?"

And at that came a sort of stir, a murmur, as of an immense mult.i.tude of bees:

"_The b.u.t.terfly Man!_" And louder: "The b.u.t.terfly 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 embarra.s.sed; 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 b.u.t.terfly Man, looking at his hearers with his steady eyes, "I wish that you folks, every G.o.d-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 b.u.t.terfly Man came un.o.btrusively 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. n.o.body gushed over him, and he escaped that perilous popularity which is as a millstone around a man's neck. Nevertheless the b.u.t.terfly 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 b.u.t.tered 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 n.o.ble sentiments.

"Parson, you should have heard him!" raved the b.u.t.terfly 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 G.o.d Dam!

"You'd think being chivalrous would be enough for him, wouldn't you?"

continued the b.u.t.terfly 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 mult.i.tude 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 cl.u.s.ter of those exotics. She had been very gracious to the b.u.t.terfly 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 pa.s.sion for herself, a pa.s.sion 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.