Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man Part 44

"That we--" choked Mary Virginia.

"Sure we know," said the b.u.t.terfly 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 G.o.d 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 embarra.s.s 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 b.u.t.terfly'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 b.u.t.terfly 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 G.o.d, I was like a soul in h.e.l.l! After awhile I crawled out of h.e.l.l--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 h.e.l.l 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 n.o.ble 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 G.o.d, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 b.u.t.terfly. 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 b.u.t.terfly'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 b.u.t.terfly, 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._"