"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 butterflies 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 butterfly 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-butterfly,
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 institution 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!"
"I'd rather stay up--the air's better, and you can see so much
farther," said Laurence. And he added hospitably: "There's plenty of
room--come on up, yourself!"
"With one leg?" sarcastically.
"And two eyes," said the boy. "Come on up--the sky's fine!" And he
laughed into the half-suspicious face.
The gimlet eyes bored into him, and the frank and truthful eyes met
them unabashed, unwavering, with a something in them which made the
other blink.
"When I got pitched into this burg," said the lame man thoughtfully,
"I landed all there--except a leg, but I never carried my brains in my
legs. I hadn't got any bats in my belfry. But I'm getting 'em. I'm
getting 'em so bad that when I hear some folks talk bughouse these
days it pretty near listens like good sense to me. Why, kid, I'm nut
enough now to dangle over the edge of believing you know what you're
talking about!"
"Fall over: I _know_ I know what I'm talking about," said Laurence
magnificently.
"I'm double-crossed," said John Flint, soberly and sadly, "Anyway I
look at it--" he swept the horizon with a wide-flung gesture, "it's
bugs for mine. I began by grannying bugs for _him_," he tossed his
head bull-like in my direction, "and I stand around swallowing hot
air from _you_--" He glared at Laurence, "and what's the result? Why,
that I've got bugs in the bean, that's what! Think of me licking an
all-day sucker a kid dopes out! _Me!_ Oh, he--venly saints!" he
gulped. "Ain't I the nut, though?"
"Well, supposing?" said Laurence, laughing. "Buck up! You _could_ be a
bad egg instead of a good nut, you know!"
John Flint's eyes slitted, then widened; his mouth followed suit
almost automatically. He looked at me.
"Can you beat it?" he wondered.
"Beating a bad egg would be a waste of time I wouldn't be guilty of,"
said I amusedly. "But I hope to live to see the good nut grow into a
fine tree."
"Do your damnedest--excuse me, parson!" said he contritely. "I mean,
don't stop for a little thing like _me_!"
Laurence leaned forward. "Man," said he, impressively, "he won't have
to! You'll be marking time and keeping step with him yourself before
you know it!"
"Huh!" said John Flint, non-committally.
Laurence came to spend his last evening at home with us.
"Padre," said he, when we walked up and down in the garden, after an
old custom, after dinner, "do you really know what I mean to do when
I've finished college and start out on my own hook?"
"Put 'Mayne & Son' on the judge's shingle and walk around the block
forty times a day to look at it!" said I, promptly.
"Of course," said he. "That first. But a legal shingle can be turned
into as handy a weapon as one could wish for, Padre, and _I'm_ going
to take that shingle and spank this sleepy-headed old town wide awake
with it!" He spoke with the conviction of youth, so sure of itself
that there is no room for doubt. There was in him, too, a hint of
latent power which was impressive. One did not laugh at Laurence.
"It's my town," with his chin out. "It could be a mighty good town.
It's going to become one. I expect to live all my life right here,
among my own people, and they've got to make it worth my while. I
don't propose to cut myself down to fit any little hole: I intend to
make that hole big enough to fit my possible measure."
"May an old friend wish more power to your shovel?"
"It'll be a steam shovel!" said he, gaily. Then his face clouded.
"Padre! I'm sick of the way things are run in Appleboro! I've talked
with other boys and they're sick of it, too. You know why they want to
get away? Because they think they haven't got even a fighting chance
here. Because towns like this are like billion-ton old wagons sunk so
deep in mudruts that nothing but dynamite can blow them out--and they
are not dealers in dynamite. If they want to do anything that even
_looks_ new they've got to fight the stand-patters to a finish, and
they're blockaded by a lot of reactionaries that don't know the
earth's moving. There are a lot of folks in the South, Padre, who've
been dead since the civil war, and haven't found it out themselves,
and won't take live people's word for it. Well, now, I mean to _do_
things. I mean to do them right here. And I certainly shan't allow
myself to be blockaded by anybody, living or dead. You've got to fight
the devil with fire;--I'm going to blockade those blockaders, and see
that the dead ones are decently buried."
"You have tackled a big job, my son."
"I like big jobs, Padre. They're worth while. Maybe I'll be able to
keep some of the boys home--the town needs them. Maybe I can keep some
of those poor kids out of the mills, too. Oh, yes, I expect a right
lively time!"
I was silent. I knew how supinely Appleboro lay in the hollow of a
hard hand. I had learned, too, how such a hand can close into a
strangling fist.
"Of course I can't clean up the whole state, and I can't reorganize
the world," said the boy sturdily. "I'm not such a fool as to try. But
I can do my level best to disinfect my own particular corner, and make
it fit for men and safe for women and kids to live and breathe in.
Padre, for years there hasn't been a rotten deal nor a brazen steal in
this state that the man who practically owns and runs this town hadn't
a finger in, knuckle-deep. _He's got to go_."
"Goliath doesn't always fall at the hand of the son of Jesse, my
little David," said I quietly. I also had dreamed dreams and seen
visions.
"That's about what my father says," said the boy. "He wants me to be a
successful man, a 'safe and sane citizen.' He thinks a gentleman
should practise his profession decently and in order. But to believe,
as I do, that you can wipe out corruption, that you can tackle poverty
the same as you would any other disease, and prevent it, as smallpox
and yellow fever are prevented, he looks upon as madness and a waste
of time."
"He has had sorrow and experience, and he is kind and charitable, as
well as wise," said I.
"That's exactly where the hardest part comes in for us younger
fellows. It isn't bucking the bad that makes the fight so hard: it's
bucking the wrong-idea'd good. Padre, one good man on the wrong side
is a stumbling-block for the stoutest-hearted reformer ever born. It's
men like my father, who regard the smooth scoundrel that runs this
town as a necessary evil, and tolerate him because they wouldn't soil
their hands dealing with him, that do the greatest injury to the
state. I tell you what, it wouldn't be so hard to get rid of the
devil, if it weren't for the angels!"
"And how," said I, ironically, "do you propose to set about smoothing
the rough and making straight the crooked, my son?"
"Flatten 'em out," said he, briefly. "Politics. First off I'm going to
practice general law; then I'll be solicitor-general for this county.
After that, I shall be attorney-general for the state. Later I may be
governor, unless I become senator instead."
"Well," said I, cautiously, "you'll be so toned down by that time that
you might make a very good governor indeed."
"I couldn't very well make a worse one than some we've already had,"
said the boy sternly. There was something of the accusing dignity of a
young archangel about him. I caught a glimpse of that newer America
growing up about us--an America gone back to the older, truer,
unbuyable ideals of our fathers.
"I guess you'd better tell me good-by now, Padre," said he, presently.
"And bless me, please--it's a pretty custom. I won't see you again,
for you'll be saying mass when I'm running for my train. I'll go tell
John Flint good-by, too."
He went over and rapped on the window, through which we could see
Flint sitting at his table, his head bent over a book.
"Good-by, John Flint" said Laurence. "Good luck to you and your leggy
friends! When I come back you'll probably have mandibles, and you'll
greet me with a nip, in pure Bugese."
"Good-by," said John Flint, lifting his head. Then, with unwonted
feeling: "I'm horrible sorry you've got to go--I'll miss you something
fierce. You've been very kind--thank you."
"Mind you take care of the Padre," said the boy, waiving the thanks
with a smile. "Don't let him work too hard."
"Who, me?" Flint's voice took the knife-edge of sarcasm. "Oh, sure! It
don't need but one leg to keep up with a gent trying to run a
thirty-six hour a day job with one-man power, does it? Son, take it
from me, when a man's got the real, simonpure, no-imitation,
soulsaving bug in his bean, a forty-legged cyclone couldn't keep up
with him, much less a guy with one pedal short." He glared at me
indignantly. From the first it has been one of his vainest notions
that I am perversely working myself to death.
"There's nothing to be done with the Padre, then, I'm afraid," said
Laurence, chuckling.
"I _might_ soak him in the cyanide jar for ten minutes a day without
killing him," mused Mr. Flint. "But," disgustedly, "what'd be the use?
When he came to and found he'd been that long idle he'd die of
heart-failure." He pushed aside the window screen, and the two shook
hands heartily. Then the boy, wringing my hand again, walked away
without another word. I felt a bit desolate--there are times when I
could envy women their solace of tears--as if he figured in his
handsome young person that newer, stronger, more conquering generation
which was marching ahead, leaving me, older and slower and sadder,
far, far behind it. Ah! To be once more that young, that strong, that
hopeful!
When I began to reflect upon what seemed visionary plans, I was
saddened, foreseeing inevitable disillusion, perhaps even stark
failure, ahead of him. That he would stubbornly try to carry out those
plans I did not doubt: I knew my Laurence. He might accomplish a
certain amount of good. But to overthrow Inglesby, the Boss of
Appleboro--for he meant no less than this--why, that was a horse of
another color!
For Inglesby was our one great financial figure. He owned our bank;
his was the controlling interest in the mills; he owned the factory
outright; he was president of half a dozen corporations and chairman
and director of many more.
Did we have a celebration? There he was, in the center of the stage,
with a jovial loud laugh and an ultra-benevolent smile to hide the
menace of his little cold piglike eyes, and the meaning of his heavy
jaw. Will the statement that he had a pew in every church in town
explain him? He had one in mine, too; paid for, which many of them are
not.
At the large bare office in the mill he was easy of access, and would
listen to what you had to say with flattering attention and sympathy.
But it was in his private office over the bank that this large spider
really spun the web of our politics. Mills, banks, churches, schools,
lights, railroads, stores, heating, water-power--all these juicy flies
apparently walked into his parlor of their own accord. He had made and
unmade governors; he had sent his men to Washington. How? We
suspected; but held our peace. If our Bible had bidden us Americans to
suffer rascals gladly--instead of mere fools--we couldn't be more
obedient to a mandate.
Men like James Eustis and Judge Mayne despised Inglesby--but gave him
a wide berth. They wouldn't be enmeshed. It was known that Major
Appleby Cartwright had blackballed him.
"I can stand a man, suh, that likes to get along in this world--within
proper bounds. But Inglesby hasn't got any proper bounds. He's a--a
cross between a Republican mule and a party-bolting boa-constrictor,
an' a hybrid like that hasn't got any place in nature. On top of that
he drinks ten cents a bottle grape juice and smokes five cent cigars.
And he's got the brazen and offensive effrontery to offer 'em to
self-respectin' men!"
And here was Laurence, our little Laurence, training himself to
overthrow this overgrown Goliath! Well, if the boy could not bring
this Philistine to the earth, he might yet manage to give him a few
manful clumps on the head; perhaps enough to insure a chronic
headache.
So thinking, I went in and watched John Flint finish a mounting-block
from a plan in the book open upon the table, adding, however, certain
improvements of his own.
He laid the block aside and then took a spray of fresh leaves and fed
it to a horned and hungry caterpillar prowling on a bit of bare stem
at the bottom of his cage.
"Get up there on those leaves, you horn-tailed horror! Move on,--you
lepidopterous son of a wigglejoint, or I'll pull your real name on you
in a minute and paralyze you stiff!" He drew a long breath. "You know
how I'm beginning to remember their real names? I swear 'em half an
hour a day. Next time you have trouble with those hickeys of yours,
try swearing caterpillar at 'em, and you'll find out."
I laughed, and he grinned with me.
"Say," said he, abruptly. "I've been listening with both my ears to
what that boy was talking to you about awhile ago. Thinks he can buck
the Boss, does he?"
"Perhaps he may," I admitted.
"Nifty old bird, the Big Un," said Mr. Flint, squinting his eyes.
"And," he went on, reflectively, "he's sure got your number in this
burg. Take you by and large, you lawabiders are a real funny sort,
ain't you? Now, there's Inglesby, handing out the little kids their
diplomas come school-closing, and telling 'em to be real good, and
maybe when they grow up he'll have a job in pickle for 'em--work like
a mule in a treadmill, twelve hours, no unions, _and_ the coroner to
sit on the remains, free and gratis, for to ease the widow's mind.
Inglesby's got seats in all your churches--first-aid to the parson's
pants-pockets.
"Inglesby's right there on the platform at all your spiel-fests,
smirking at the women and telling 'em not to bother their nice little
noddles about anything but holding down their natural jobs of being
perfect ladies--ain't he and other gents just like him always right
there holding down _their_ natural jobs of protecting 'em and being
influenced to do what's right? Sure he is! And nobody howls for the
hook! You let him be It--him with a fist in the state's jeans up to
the armpit!
"Look here, that Mayne kid's dead right. It's you good guys that are
to blame. We little bad ones see you kowtowing to the big worse ones,
and we get to thinking _we_ can come in under the wires easy winners,
too. However, let me tell you something while I'm in the humor to gas.
It's this: _sooner or later everybody gets theirs_. My sort and
Inglesby's sort, we all get ours. Duck and twist and turn and sidestep
all we want, at the end it's right there waiting for us, with a loaded
billy up its sleeve: _Ours!_ Some fine day when we're looking the
other way, thinking we've even got it on the annual turnout of the
cops up Broadway for class, why, Ours gets up easy on its hind legs,
spits on its mitt, and hands us exactly what's coming to us, biff! and
we wake up sitting on our necks in the middle of day-before-yesterday
and year-after-next. I got mine. If I was you I wouldn't be too
cock-sure that kid don't give Inglesby his, some of these days, good
and plenty."
"Maybe so," said I, cautiously.
"Gee, that'd be fly-time for all the good guys in this tank, wouldn't
it?" he grinned. "Sure! I can see 'em now, patting the bump on their
beams where they think the brain-patch sprouts, and handing out hunks
of con to the Lord about his being right on his old-time job of
swatting sinners in their dinners. Yet they'll all of them go right on
leading themselves up to be trimmed by the very next holdup that's got
the nerve to do them! Friend, believe a goat when he tells you that
you stillwater-and-greenpasture sheep are some bag of nuts!"
"Thank you," said I, with due meekness.
"Keep the change," said he, unabashed. "I wasn't meaning _you_,
anyhow. I've got more manners, I hope, than to do such. And, parson,
you don't need to have cold feet about young Mayne. If you ask me,
_I'd_ bet the limit on him. Why, I think so much of that boy that if
he was a rooster I'd put the gaffs and my last dollar on him, and back
him to whip everything in feathers clean up to baldheaded eagles.
Believe me, he'd do it!" he finished, with enthusiasm.
Bewildered by a mental picture of a Laurence with ruffled
neck-feathers and steel spurs, I hurriedly changed the subject to the
saner and safer one of our own immediate affairs.
"Yep, ten orders in to-day's mail and seven in yesterday's; and good
orders for the wasp-moths, single or together, and that house in New
York wants steady supplies from now on. And here's a fancy shop wants
a dozen trays, like that last one I finished. We're looking up," said
he, complacently.
The winter that followed was a trying one, and the Guest Rooms were
never empty. I like to record that John Flint put his shoulder to the
wheel and became Madame's right hand man and Westmoreland's faithful
ally. His wooden leg made astonishingly little noise, and his entrance
into a room never startled the most nervous patient. He went on
innumerable errands, and he performed countless small services that in
themselves do not seem to amount to much, but swell into a great
total.
"He may have only one leg," said Westmoreland, when Flint had helped
him all of one night with a desperately ill millworker, "but he
certainly has two hands; he knows how to use his ears and eyes, he's
dumb until he ought to speak, and then he speaks to the point. Father,
Something knew what It was about when you and I were allowed to drag
that tramp out of the teeth of death! Yes, yes, I'm certainly glad and
grateful we were allowed to save John Flint."
From that time forth the big man gave his ex-patient a liking which
grew with his years. Absent-minded as he was, he could thereafter
always remember to find such things as he thought might interest him.
Appleboro laughs yet about the day Dr. Westmoreland got some small
butterflies for his friend, and having nowhere else to put them,
clapped them under his hat, and then forgot all about them; until he
lifted his hat to some ladies and the swarm of insects flew out.
Without being asked, and as unostentatiously as he did everything
else, Flint had taken his place in church every Sunday.
"Because it'd sort of give you a black eye if I didn't," he explained.
"Skypiloting's your lay, father, and I'll see you through with it as
far as I can. I couldn't fall down on any man that's been as white to
me as you've been."
I must confess that his conception of religion was very, very hazy,
and his notions of church services and customs barbarous. For
instance, he disliked the statues of the saints exceedingly. They
worried him.
"I can't seem to stand a man dolled-up in skirts," he confessed. "Any
more than I'd be stuck on a dame with whiskers. It don't somehow look
right to me. Put the he-saints in pants instead of those brown kimonas
with gold crocheting and a rope sash, and I'd have more respect for
'em."
When I tried to give him some necessary instructions, and to penetrate
the heathen darkness in which he seemed immersed, he listened with the
utmost respect and attention--and wrinkled his brow painfully, and
blinked, and licked his lips.
"That's all right, father, that's all right. If you say it's so, I
guess it's so. I'll take your word for it. If it's good enough for you
and Madame, there's got to be something in it, and it's sure good
enough for me. Look here: the little girl and young Mayne have got a
different brand from yours, haven't they?"
"Neither of them is of the Old Faith."
"Huh! Well, I tell you what you do: you just switch me in somewhere
between you and Madame and him and her. That'll give me a line on all
of you--and maybe it'll give all of you a line on me. See?"
I saw, but as through a glass darkly. So the matter rested. And I must
in all humility set down that I have never yet been able to get at
what John Flint really believes he believes.