THE BUTTERFLY MAN
It was just one-thirty by the placid little clock on his mantel. The
express was due at three.
"Very well," said I, forcing myself to face the inevitable without
noise, "you are free. If you must go, you must go."
"I've got to go! I've got to go!" He repeated it as one repeats an
incantation. "I've got to go!" And he went on methodically assorting
and packing. Even at this moment of obsession his ingrained
orderliness asserted itself; the things he rejected were laid back in
their proper place with, the nicest care.
I went over to tell my mother that John Flint had suddenly decided to
go north. She expressed no surprise, but immediately fell to counting
on her fingers his available shirts, socks, and underwear. She rather
hoped he would buy a new overcoat in New York, his old one being
hardly able to stand the strain of another winter. She was pleasantly
excited; she knew he had many northern correspondents, with whom he
must naturally be anxious to foregather. There was much to call him
thither.
"He really needs the change. A short trip will do him a world of
good," she concluded equably. "He is still quite a young man, and I'm
sure it must be dull for him here at times, in spite of his work.
Why, he hasn't been out of this county for over three years, and just
think of the unfettered life he must have led before he came here!
Yes, I'm sure New York will stimulate him. A dose of New York is a
very good tonic. It regulates one's mental liver. Don't look so
worried, Armand--you remind me of those hens who hatch ducklings. I
should think a duckling of John Flint's size could be trusted to swim
by himself, at his time of life!"
She had not my cause for fear. Besides, in her secret heart, Madame
was convinced that, rehabilitated, reclaimed, having more than proven
his intrinsic worth, John Flint went to be reconciled with and
received into the bosom of some preeminently proper parent, and to be
acclaimed and applauded by admiring and welcoming friends. For
although she had once heard the Butterfly Man gravely assure Miss
Sally Ruth Dexter that the only ancestor his immediate Flints were
sure of was Flint the pirate, my mother still clung firmly to the
illusion of Family. Blood will tell!
As for me, I was equally sure that blood was telling now; and telling
in the atrocious tongue of the depths. I felt that the end had come.
Vain, vain, all the labor, all the love, all the hope, the prayers,
the pride! The submerged voice of his old life was calling him; the
vampire extended her white and murderous arms in which many and many
had died shamefully; she lifted to his her insatiable lips stained
scarlet with the wine of hell. Against that siren smile, those
beckoning hands, I could do nothing. The very fact that I was what I
am, was no longer a help, but rather a hindrance; he recognized in the
priest a deterring and detaining influence against which he rebelled,
and which he wished to repudiate. He was, as he had said so terribly,
"home-sick for hell." He would go, and he would most inevitably be
caught in the whirlpools; the naturalist, the scientist, the Butterfly
Man, would be sucked into that boiling vortex and drowned beyond all
hope of resuscitation; but from it the soul of Slippy McGee would
emerge, with a larger knowledge and a clearer brain, a thousand-fold
more deadly dangerous than of old; because this time he knew better
and had deliberately chosen the evil and rejected the good. By the law
of the pendulum he must swing as far backward into wrong as he had
swung forward into right.
I could not bring myself to speak to him, I dared not bid him the
mockery of a Godspeed upon his journey, dreading as I did that
journey's end. So I stood at a window and watched him as with suitcase
in hand he walked down our shady street. At the corner he turned and
lifted his hat in a last farewell salute to my mother, standing
looking after him in the Parish House gate. Then he turned down the
side-street, and so disappeared.
From his closed rooms came a long wailing howl. For the first time
Kerry might not follow his master; more yet, the master had thrust the
astonished dog into his bedroom and shut the door upon him. He had
refused to recognize the scratch at the door, the snuffling whine
through the keyhole. The outer door had slammed. Kerry raced to the
window. And the master was going, and going without him! He had
neither net, knapsack, nor bottle-belt, but he carried a suitcase. He
did not look back, nor whistle: he _meant_ to leave him behind.
Sensing that an untoward thing was occurring, a thing that boded no
good to himself or his beloved, the red dog lifted his voice and
howled a piercing protest.
The sash was down, but the blinds had not yet been closed to. One saw
Kerry standing with his forepaws on the window-sill, his nose against
the glass, his ears lifted, his eyes anxious and distressed, his lip
caught in his teeth. At intervals he threw back his head, and then
came the howls.
The catastrophe--for to me it was no less a thing--had come upon me so
suddenly that I was fairly stunned. From sheer force of habit I went
over to the church and knelt before the altar; but I could not pray; I
could only kneel there dumbly. I heard the screech of the three
o'clock express coming in, and, a few minutes later, its longer
screech as it departed. He had gone, then! I was not dreaming it: it
was true. Down and down and down went my heart. And down and down and
down went my head, humbled and prostrate. Alas, the end of hope, the
fall of pride! Alas and alas for the fair house built upon the sand,
wrecked and scattered!
When I rose from my knees I staggered. I walked draggingly, as one
walks with fetters upon the feet. Oh, it was a cruel world, a world in
which nothing but inevitable loss awaited one, in which one was
foredoomed to disappointment; a world in which one was leaf by leaf
stripped bare.
I could not bear to look at his closed rooms, but turned my head aside
as I passed them. Disconsolate Kerry barked at my passing step, and
pawed frantically at the window, but I made no effort to release him.
What comfort had I for the faithful creature, deserted by what he most
loved?
His dismal outcries rasped my nerves raw; it was exactly as if the dog
howled for the dead. And that John Flint was dead I had no reasonable
cause to doubt. _He was dead because Slippy McGee was alive_. That
thought drove me as with a whip out into the garden, for as black an
hour as I have ever lived through--the sort of hour that leaves a scar
upon the soul. The garden was very still, steeped and drowsing in the
bright clear sunlight; only the bees were busy there, calling from
flower-door to flower-door, and sometimes a vireo's sweet whistle
fluted through the leaves. Pitache lay on John Flint's porch, and
dozed with his head between his paws; Judge Mayne's Panch sat on the
garden fence, and washed his black face, and watched the little dog
out of his emerald eyes. All along the fences the scarlet salvia shot
up its vivid spikes, and when the wind stirred, the red petals fell
from it like drops of blood.
It seemed to me incongruous and cruel that one should suffer on such a
day; grief is for gray days; but the sunlight mocks sorrow, the soft
wind makes light of it. I was out of tune with this harmony, as I
walked up and down with my rosary in my hand. I knew that every flying
minute took him farther and farther away from me and from hope and
happiness and honor, and brought him nearer and nearer to the
whirlpool and the pit. I beat my hands together and the crucifix cut
into my palms. I walked more rapidly, as if I could get away from the
misery within. My heart ached intolerably, a mist dimmed my sight, and
a hideous choking lump rose in my throat; and it seemed to me that,
old and futile and alone, I was set down, not in my garden, but in the
midst of the abomination of desolation.
Through this aching desolation Kerry's cries stabbed like
knife-thrusts.... And then little Pitache lifted his head, cocked a
listening ear and an alert eye, perked up his black nose, thumped an
expressive tail, and barked. It was a welcoming bark; Kerry, hearing
it, stiffened statue-like at the window and fell to whining in his
throat. The garden gate had clicked.
Dreading that any mortal eye should see me thus in my grief, knowing
it was beyond my power of endurance to meet calmly or to speak
coherently with any human being at that moment, I turned, with the
instinct of flight strong upon me. I knew I must be alone, to face
this thing in its inevitableness, to fight it out, to get my bearings.
The gate was turning upon its hinges; I could hear it creak.
Hesitating which way to turn, I looked up to see who it was that was
coming into the Parish House garden. And I fell to trembling, and
rubbed my eyes, and stared again, unbelievingly. There had been plenty
of time for him to have visited the bank and withdrawn his account;
there had been plenty of time for him then to have caught the
three-o'clock express. I had heard the train come and go this full
hour since. Surely my wish was father to the thought that I saw him
before me--my old eyes were playing me a trick--for I thought I saw
John Flint walking up the garden path toward me! Pitache barked again,
rose, stretched himself, and trotted to meet him, as he always did
when the Butterfly Man came home.
He walked with the limp most noticeable when he tried to hurry. He was
flushed and perspiring and rumpled and well-nigh breathless; his coat
was wrinkled, his tie awry, his collar wilted, and bits of grass and
twigs and a leaf or so clung to his dusty clothes. The afternoon sun
shone full on his thick, close-cropped hair, for he carried his hat in
his hands, gingerly, carefully, as one might carry a fragile treasure;
a clean pocket handkerchief was tied over it.
He was making straight for his workroom. I do not think he saw me
until I stepped into the path, directly in front of him. Then,
stopping perforce, he looked at me with dancing eyes, wiped his red
perspiring face with one hand, and nodded to the hat, triumphantly.
"Such an--aberrant!" he panted. He was still breathing so rapidly he
had to jerk his words out. "I've got the--biggest, handsomest--most
perfect and wonderful--specimen of--an aberrant swallow-tail--any man
ever laid--his eyes on! I thought at first--I wasn't seeing things
right. But I was. Parson, parson, I've seen many--butterflies--but
never--another one like--this!" He had to pause, to take breath. Then
he burst out again, unable to contain his delight.
"Oh, it was the luckiest chance! I was standing on the end platform of
the last car, and the train was pulling out, when I saw her go sailing
by. I stared with all my eyes, shut 'em, stared again, and there she
was! I knew there was never going to be such another, that if I lost
her I'd mourn for the rest of my days. I knew I had to have her. So I
measured my distance, risked my neck, and jumped for her. Game leg and
all I jumped, landed in the pit of a nigger's stomach, went down on
top of him, scrambled up again and was off in a jiffy, with the darky
bawling he'd been killed and the station buzzing like the judge's bees
on strike, and people hanging out of all the car windows to see who'd
been murdered.
"She led me the devil's own chase, for I'd nothing but my hat to net
her with. A dozen times I thought I had her, and missed. It was
heart-breaking. I felt I'd go stark crazy if she got away from me. I
had to get her. And the Lord was good and rewarded me for my patience,
for I caught her at the end of a mile run. I was so blown by then that
I had to lie down in the grass by the roadside and get my wind back.
Then I slid my handkerchief easy-easy under my hat, tilted it up, and
here she is! She hasn't hurt herself, for she's been quiet. She's
perfect. She hasn't rubbed off a scale. She's the size of a bat. Her
upper wings, and one lower wing, are black, curiously splotched with
yellow, and one lower wing is all yellow. She's got the usual orange
spots on the secondaries, only bigger, and blobs of gold, and the
purple spills over onto the ground-color. She's a wonder. Come on in
and let's gloat at our ease--I haven't half seen her yet! She's the
biggest and most wonderful Turnus ever made. Why, Gabriel could wear
her in his crown to make himself feel proud, because there'd be only
one like her in heaven!"
He took a step forward; but I could only stand still and blink,
owlishly. My heart pounded and the blood roared in my ears like the
wind in the pinetrees. My senses were in a most painful confusion,
with but one thought struggling clear above the turmoil: that _John
Flint had come back_.
"But you didn't go!" I stammered. "Oh, John Flint, John Flint, you
didn't go!"
He snorted. "Catch me running away like a fool when a six-inch
off-color swallow-tail flirts herself under my nose and dares me to
catch her! You'd better believe I didn't go!"
And then I knew with a great uprush of joy that Slippy McGee himself
had gone instead, and the three-o'clock express was bearing him away,
forever and forever, beyond recall or return. Slippy McGee had gone
into the past; he was dead and done with. But John Flint the
naturalist was vibrantly and vitally alive, built upon the living
rock, a house not to be washed away by any wave of passion.
This reaction from the black and bitter hour through which I had just
passed, this turbulent joy and relief, overcame me. My knees shook and
gave way; I tottered, and sank helplessly into the seat built around
our great magnolia. And shaken out of all self-control I wept as I had
not been permitted to weep over my own dead, my own overthrown hopes.
Head to foot I was shaken as with some rending sickness. The sobs were
torn out of my throat with gasps.
He stood stone still. He went white, and his nostrils grew pinched,
and in his set face only his eyes seemed alive and suffering. They
blinked at me, as if a light had shone too strongly upon them. A sort
of inarticulate whimper came from him. Then with extreme care he laid
the handkerchief-covered hat upon the ground, and down upon his knees
he went beside me, his arms about my knees. He, too, was trembling.
"Father! ... _Father!_"
"My son ... I was afraid ... you were lost ... gone ... into a far
country.... It would have broken my heart!"
He said never a word; but hung his head upon his breast, and clung to
my knees. When he raised his eyes to mine, their look was so piteous
that I had to put my hand upon him, as one reassures one's child. So
for a healing time we two remained thus, both silent. The garden was
exquisitely still and calm and peaceful. We were shut in and canopied
by walls and roof of waving green, lighted with great cream-colored
flowers with hearts of gold, and dappled with sun and shadow. Through
it came the vireo's fairy flute.
God knows what thoughts went through John Flint's mind; but for me, a
great peace stole upon me, mixed with a greater, reverent awe and
wonder. Oh, heart of little faith! I had been afraid; I had doubted
and despaired and been unutterably wretched; I had thought him lost
whom the Powers of Darkness swooped upon, conquered, and led astray.
And God had needed nothing stronger than a butterfly's fragile wing to
bear a living soul across the abyss!
We went together, after a while, to his rooms, and when he had
submitted to Kerry's welcome, we carefully examined the beautiful
insect he had captured. As he had said, she had not lost a scale; and
she was by far the most astonishing aberrant I have ever seen, before
or since. The Turnus is perhaps the most beautiful of our butterflies,
and this off-color was larger than the normal, and more irregularly
and oddly and brilliantly colored. Their natural coloring is gorgeous
enough; but hers was like a seraph's head-jewels.
I have her yet, with the date of her capture written under her. She is
the only one of all our butterflies I claim personally. The gold has
never been minted that could buy that Turnus.
"I had the station agent wire for my grip," said Flint casually. "And
I gave the darky I knocked down fifty cents to soothe his feelings. He
offered to let me do it again for a quarter." His eyes roved over the
pleasant workroom with its books and cabinets, its air of homely
comfort; through the open door one glimpsed the smaller bedroom, the
crucifix on the white wall. He dropped his hand on Kerry's head, close
against his knee, and drew a sharp breath.
"Father," said he, quietly, and looked at me with steady eyes, "you
don't need to be afraid for me any more as you had to be to-day.
To-day's the last of my--my dumfoolishness." After a moment he added:
"Remember what that little girl said when she gave me her dog? Well, I
reckon she was right. I reckon I'm here for keeps. I reckon, father,
that you and I do belong."
"Yes," said I; and looked over the cases of our butterflies, and the
books we had gathered, and the table where we worked and studied
together. "Yes; you and I belong." And I left him with Kerry's head on
his knees, and Kerry's eyes adoring him, and went over to the Parish
House to tell Madame that John Flint had changed his mind and wouldn't
go North just now, because an aberrant Turnus had beguiled him.
For a moment my mother looked profoundly disappointed.
"Are you sure," she asked, "that this doesn't mean a loss to him,
Armand?"
"Yes, I am sure."
She watched my eyes, and of a sudden she reached out, caught my hand,
and squeezed it. Her face softened with sympathetic and tolerant
understanding, but she asked no questions, made no comment. If Solomon
had been lucky enough to marry my mother, I am sure he would never
have plagued himself with the nine hundred and ninety-nine. But then,
neither would he have written Proverbs.
Neither the Butterfly Man nor I have ever referred to that morning's
incident; the witness of it we cherish; otherwise it pleases us to
ignore it as if it had never happened. It had, of course, its results,
for with a desperate intensity of purpose he plunged back into study
and research; and as the work was broadening, and called for all his
skill and patience, the pendulum swung him far forward again.
I had been so fascinated, watching that transformation, even mere
wonderful than any butterfly's, going on before my eyes; I was so
enmeshed in the web of endless duties spun for me by my big poor
parish that I did not have time to miss Mary Virginia as poignantly as
I must otherwise have done, although my heart longed for her.
My mother never ceased to mourn her absence; something went away from
us with Mary Virginia, which could only come back to us with her. But
it so happened that the ensuing summers failed to bring her back. The
little girl spent her vacations with girl friends of whose standing
her mother approved, or with relatives she thought it wise the child
should cultivate. For the time being, Mary Virginia had vanished out
of our lives.
Laurence, however, spent all his vacations at home; and of Laurence we
were immensely proud. Most of his holidays were spent, not with
younger companions, but oddly enough with John Flint. That old
friendship, renewed after every parting, seemed to have grown stronger
with the boy's growth; the passing years deepened it.
"My boy's forever boasting of your Butterfly Man," said the judge,
falling into step with me one morning on the street. "He tells me
Flint's been made a member of several learned societies; and that he's
gotten out a book of sorts, telling all there is to tell about some
crawling plague or other. And it seems this isn't all the wonderful
Mr. Flint is capable of: Laurence insists that biologists will have to
look Flintward pretty soon, on account of observations on what he
calls insect allies--whatever _they_ are."
"Well, you see, his work on insect allies is really unique and
thorough, and it opens a door to even more valuable research," said I,
as modestly as I could. "Flint is one of its great pioneers, and he's
blazing the way. Some day when the real naturalist comes into his own,
he will rank far, far above tricky senators and mutable governors!"
The judge smiled. "Spoken like a true bughunter," said he. "As a
matter of fact, this fellow is a remarkable man. Does he intend to
remain here for good?"
"Yes," said I, "I think he intends to remain here--for good." I could
not keep the pride out of my voice and eyes. Let me again admit my
grave fault: I am a vain and proud old man, God forgive me!
"Your goose turned out a butterfly," said the judge. "One may well be
pardoned a little natural vanity when one has engineered a feat like
that! Common tramp, too, wasn't he?"
"No, he wasn't. He was a most uncommon one."
"I could envy the man his spontaneity and originality," admitted the
judge, rubbing _his_ nose. "Well, father, I'm perfectly satisfied, so
far, to have my only son tramp with him."
"So is my mother," said I.
At that the judge lifted his hat with a fine old-fashioned courtesy
good to see in this age when a youth walks beside a maid and blows
cigarette smoke in her face upon the public streets.
"When such a lady approves of any man," said he, gallantly, "it
confers upon him letters patent of nobility."
"We shall have to consider John Flint knighted, then," said my mother
merrily, when I repeated the conversation. "Let's see," she continued
gaily. "We'll put on his shield three butterflies, or, rampant on a
field, azure; in the lower corner a net, argent. Motto, '_In Hoc Signo
Vinces_.' There'll be no sign of the cyanide jar. I'll have nothing
sinister shadowing; the Butterfly Man's escutcheon!"
She knew nothing about the trust St. Stanislaus kept; she had never
met Slippy McGee.