Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man Part 9

"Y-e-s, seeing you seem to think it was wrong."

"Well, you'll know better from now on," said Mary Virginia, comfortingly. She looked at him searchingly for a minute, and he met her look without flinching. That had been the one hopeful sign, from the first--that he never refused to meet your glance, but gave you back one just as steady, if more suspicious.

"Mr. Flint," said Mary Virginia, "you've about made up your mind to stay on here with the Padre, haven't you? For a good long while, at any rate? You wouldn't like to leave the Padre, would you?"

He stiffened. One could see the struggle within him.

"Well, miss, I can't see but that I've just got to stay on--for awhile. Until he's tired of me and my ways, anyhow," he said gloomily.

Mary Virginia dismissed my tiredness with an airy wave of her hand.

She smiled.

"Do you know," said she earnestly, "I've had the funniest idea about you, from the very first time I saw you? Well, I have. I've somehow got the notion that you and the Padre _belong_. I think that's why you came. I think you belong right here, in that darling little house, studying b.u.t.terflies and mounting them so beautifully they look alive.

I think you're never going to go away anywhere any more, but that you're going to stay right here as long as you live!"

His face turned an ugly white, and his mouth fell open. He looked at Mary Virginia almost with horror--Saul might have looked thus at the Witch of Endor when she summoned the shade of Samuel to tell him that the kingdom had been rent from his hand and his fate was upon him.

Mary Virginia nodded, thoughtfully.

"I feel so sure of it," said she, confidently, "that I'm going to ask you to do me a favor. I want you to take care of Kerry for me. You know I'm going away to school next week, and--he can't stay at home when I'm not there. My father's away frequently, and he couldn't take Kerry about with him, of course. And he couldn't be left with the servants--somehow he doesn't like the colored people. He always growls at them, and they're afraid of him. And my mother dislikes dogs intensely--she's afraid of them, except those horrible little toy-things that aren't _dogs_ any more." The scorn of the real dog-lover was in her voice. "Kerry's used to the Parish House. He loves the Padre, he'll soon love you, and he likes to play with Pitache, so Madame wouldn't mind his being here. And--I'd be more satisfied in my mind if he were with somebody that--that needed him--and would like him a whole lot--somebody like you," she finished.

Now, Mary Virginia regarded Kerry even as the apple of her eye. The dog was a n.o.ble and beautiful specimen of his race, thoroughbred to the bone, a fine field dog, and the pride of the child's heart. He was what only that most delightful of dogs, a thoroughbred Irish setter, can be. John Flint gasped. Something perplexed, incredulous, painful, dazzled, crept into his face and looked out of his eyes.

"_Me_?" he gasped. "You mean you're willing to let me keep your dog for you? Yours?"

"I want to _give_ him to you," said Mary Virginia bravely enough, though her voice trembled. "I am perfectly sure you'll love him--better than any one else in the world would, except me myself. I don't know why I know that, but I do know it. If you wanted to go away, later on, why, you could turn him over to the Padre, because of course you wouldn't want to have a dog following you about everywhere.

They're a lot of bother. But--somehow, I think you'll keep him. I think you'll love him. He--he's a darling dog." She was too proud to turn her head aside, but two large tears rolled down her cheeks, like dew upon a rose.

John Flint stood stock-still, looking from her to the dog, and back again. Kerry, sensing that something was wrong with his little mistress, pawed her skirts and whined.

"Now I come to think of it," said John Flint slowly, "I never had anything--anything alive, I mean--belong to me before."

Mary Virginia glanced up at him shrewdly, and smiled through her tears. Her smile makes a funny delicious red V of her lower lip, and is altogether adorable and seductive.

"That's just exactly why you thought n.o.body was worth anything," she said. Then she bent over her dog and kissed him between his beautiful hazel eyes.

"Kerry, dear," said she, "Kerry, dear Kerry, you don't belong to me any more. I--I've got to go away to school--and you know you wouldn't be happy at home without me. You belong to Mr. Flint now, and I'm sure he needs you, and I know he'll love you almost as much as I do, and he'll be very, very good to you. So you're to stay with him, and--stand by him and be his dog, like you were mine. You'll remember, Kerry? Good-by, my dear, dear, darling dog!" She kissed him again, patted him, and thrust his collar into his new owner's hand.

"Go--good-by, everybody!" said she, in a m.u.f.fled voice, and ran. I think she would have cried childishly in another moment; and she was trying hard to remember that she was growing up!

John Flint stood staring after her, his hand on the dog's collar, holding him in. His face was still without a vestige of color, and his eyes glittered. Then his other hand crept out to touch the dog's head.

"It's wet--where she dropped tears on it! Parson ... she's given me her dog ... that she loves enough to cry over!"

"He's a very fine dog, and she has had him and loved him from his puppyhood," I reminded him. And I added, with a wily tongue: "You can always turn him over to me, you know--if you decide to take to the road and wish to get rid of a troublesome companion. A dog is bad company for a man who wishes to dodge the police."

But he only shook his head. His eyes were troubled, and his forehead wrinkled.

"Parson," said he, hesitatingly, "did you ever feel like you'd been caught by--by Something reaching down out of the dark? Something big that you couldn't see and couldn't ever hope to get away from, because it's always on the job? Ain't it a h.e.l.l of a feeling?"

"Yes," I agreed. "I've felt--caught by that Something, too. And it is at first a terrifying sensation. Until--you learn to be glad."

"You're caught--and you know under your hat you're never going to be able to get away any more. It'll hold you till you die!" said he, a little wildly. "My G.o.d! I'm caught! First It bit off a leg on me, so I couldn't run. Then It wished you and your bugs on me. And now--Yes, sir; I'm done for. That kid got my goat this morning. My G.o.d, who'd believe it? But it's true: I'm done for. She gave me her dog and she got my goat!"

CHAPTER VI

"THY SERVANT WILL GO AND FIGHT WITH THIS PHILISTINE"

1 Sam. 17: 32.

Mary Virginia had gone, weeping and bewept, and the spirit of youth seemed to have gone with her, leaving the Parish House darkened because of its absence. A sorrowful quiet brooded over the garden that no longer echoed a caroling voice. Kerry, seeking vainly for the little mistress, would come whining back to John Flint, and look up mutely into his face; and finding no promise there, lie down, whimpering, at his feet. The man seemed as desolate as the dog, because of the child's departure.

"When I come back," Mary Virginia said to him at parting, "I expect you'll know more about moths and b.u.t.terflies than anybody else in the world does. You're that sort. I'd love to be here, watching you grow up into it, but I've got to go away and grow up into something myself.

I'm very glad you came here, Mr. Flint. You've helped me, lots."

"Me?" with husky astonishment.

"You, of course," said the child, serenely. "Because you are such a good man, Mr. Flint, and so patient, and you stick at what you try to do until you do it better than anybody else does. Often and often when I've been trying to do sums--I'm frightfully stupid about arithmetic--and I wanted to give up, I'd think of you over here just trying and trying and keeping right on trying, until you'd gotten what you wanted to know; and then _I'd_ keep on trying, too. The funny part is, that I like you for making me do it. You see, I'm a very, very bad person in some things, Mr. Flint," she said frankly. "Why, when my mother has to tell me to look at so and so, and see how well they behave, or how nicely they can do certain things, and how good they are, and why don't I profit by such a good example, a perfectly horrid raging sort of feeling comes all over me, and I want to be as naughty as naughty! I feel like doing and saying things I'd never want to do or say, if it wasn't for that good example. I just can't seem to _bear_ being good-exampled. But you're different, thank goodness. Most really good people are different, I guess."

He looked at her, dumbly--he had no words at his command. She missed the irony and the tragedy, but she sensed the depths of feeling under that mute exterior.

"I'm glad you're sorry I'm going away," said she, with the directness that was so engaging. "I perfectly love people to feel sorry to part with me. I hope and _hope_ they'll keep on being sorry--because they'll be that much gladder when I come back. I don't believe there's anything quite so wonderful and beautiful as having other folks like you, except it's liking other folks yourself!"

"I never had to be bothered about it, either way," said he dryly. His face twitched.

"Maybe that's because you never stayed still long enough in any one place to catch hold," said she, and laughed at him.

"Good-by, Mr. Flint! I'll never see a b.u.t.terfly or a moth, the whole time I'm gone, without making believe he's a messenger from Madame, and the Padre, and you, and Kerry. I'll play he's a carrier-b.u.t.terfly, with a message tucked away under his wings: 'Howdy, Mary Virginia!

I've just come from flying over the flowers in the Parish House garden; and the folks are all well, and busy, and happy. But they haven't forgotten you for a single solitary minute, and they miss you and wish you'd come back; and they send you their dear, dear love--and I'll carry your dear, dear love back to them!' So if you see a big, big, beautiful, strange fellow come sailing by your window some morning, why, that's mine, Mr. Flint! Remember!"

And then she was gone, and he had his first taste of unselfish human sorrow. Heretofore his worries had been purely personal and self-centered: this was different, and innocent. It shocked and terrified him to find out how intensely he could miss another being, and that being a mere child. He wasn't used to that sort of pain, and it bewildered him.

Eustis himself had wanted the little girl sent to a preparatory school which would fit her for one of the women's colleges. He had visions of the forward sweep of women--visions which his wife didn't share. Her daughter should go to the Church School at which she herself had been educated, an exclusive and expensive inst.i.tution where the daughters of the wealthy were given a finishing hand-polish with ecclesiastical emery, as a sort of social hall-mark. Mrs. Eustis had a horror of what she called, in quotation-marks, the modern non-religious method of educating young ladies.

The Eustis house was closed, and left in charge of the negro caretakers, for Mrs. Eustis couldn't stand the loneliness of the place after the child's departure, and Eustis himself found his presence more and more necessary at the great plantation he was building up.

Mrs. Eustis left Appleboro, and my mother missed her. There was a vein of pure gold underlying the placid little woman's character, which the stronger woman divined and built upon.

Laurence, too, entered college that Fall. I had coached him, in such hours as I could spare. He was conscientious enough, though his Greek was not the Greek of Homer and he vexed the soul of my mother with a French she said was spoke

full fair and fetisly After ye schole of Strattford atte Bowe.

But if he hadn't Mary Virginia's sensitiveness to all beauty, nor her playful fancy and vivid imagination, he was clear-brained and clean-thinking, with that large perspective and that practical optimism which seem to me so essentially American. He saw without confusion both the thing as it was and as it could become. With only enough humor to save him, he had a sternness more of the puritan than of the cavalier blood from which he had sprung. Above all was he informed with that new spirit brooding upon the face of all the waters, a spirit that for want of a better name one might call the Race Conscience.

It was this last aspect of the boy's character that amazed and interested John Flint, who was himself too shrewd not to divine the sincerity, even the commonsense, of what Laurence called "applied Christianity." Altruism--and Slippy McGee! He listened with a puzzled wonder.

"I wish," he grumbled to Laurence, "that you'd come off the roof. It gives a fellow stiff neck rubbering up at you!"