THE BLUEJAY
When Mary Virginia was graduated, my mother sent her, to commemorate
that very important and pleasant occasion, one of her few remaining
treasures--a carved ivory fan which Le Brun had painted out of his
heart of hearts for one of King Louis' loveliest ladies. It still
exhaled, like a whiff of lost roses, something of her vanished grace.
"I have a fancy," wrote my mother to Mary Virginia, "that having
been pressed against women's bosoms and held in women's hands,
having been, as it were, symbols which expressed the hidden
emotions of the heart, these exquisite toys have thus been
enabled to gain a soul, a soul composed of sentience and of
memory. I think that as they lie all the long, long years in
those carved and scented boxes which are like little tombs, they
remember the lights and the flowers and the perfumes, the glimmer
and gleam of jewels and silks, the frothy fall of laces, the
laughter and whispers and glances, the murmured word, the stifled
sigh: and above all, the touch of soft lips that used to brush
them lightly; and the poor things wonder a bit wistfully what has
become of all that gay and lovely life, all that perished bravery
and beauty that once they knew. So I am quite sure this
apparently soulless bit of carved ivory sighs inaudibly to feel
again the touch of a warm and young hand, to be held before gay
and smiling eyes, to have a flower-fresh face bent over it once
more.
"Accept it, then, my child, with your old friend's love. Use it in
your happy hours, dream over it a little, sigh lightly; and then
smile to remember that this is your Hour, that you are young, and
life and love are yours. It is in such youthful and happy smiles
that we whose day declines may relive for a brief and bright space
our golden noon. Shall I tell you a secret, before your time to
know it? _Youth alone is eternal and immortal!_ How do I know?
_'Et Ego in Arcadia vixi!'_"
Mary Virginia showed me that letter, long afterward, and I have
inserted it here, although I suppose it really isn't at all relevant.
But I shall let it stand, because it is so like my mother!
John Flint made for the schoolgirl a most wonderful tray with handles
and border of hammered and twisted copper. The tray itself was covered
with a layer of silvery thistle-down; and on this, hovering above
flowers, some of his loveliest butterflies spread their wings. So
beautifully did their frail bodies fit into this airy bed, so
carefully was the work done, that you might fancy only the glass which
covered them kept them from escaping.
"You will remember telling me, when you were going away to grow
up," wrote John Flint, "to watch out for any big fine fellows
that came by of a morning, because they'd be messengers from you
to the Parish House people. Big and little they've come, and
I've played like they were all of them your carriers. So you see
we had word of you every single day of all these years you've
been gone! Now I'm sending one or two of them back to you. Please
play like my tray's a million times bigger and finer and that
it's all loaded down with good messages and hopes; and believe
that still it wouldn't be half big enough to hold all the good
wishes the Parish House folks (you were right: I belong, and so
does Kerry) send you to-day by the hand of your old friend,
THE BUTTERFLY MAN.
Mary Virginia showed me that letter, too, because she was so delighted
with it, and so proud of it. I like its English very well, but I like
its Irishness even better.
But, although she had at last finished and done with school, Mary
Virginia didn't come home to us as we had hoped she would. Her mother
had other plans, which failed to include little Appleboro. Why should
a girl with such connections and opportunities be buried in a little
town when great cities waited for just such with open and welcoming
arms? The best we got then was a photograph of our girl in her
graduation frock--slim wistful Mary Virginia, with much of her dear
angular youthfulness still clinging to her.
It was Mrs. Eustis herself who kept us posted, after awhile, of the
girl's later triumphant progress; the sensation she created, the bored
world bowing to her feet because she brought it, along with name and
wealth, so fresh a spirit, so pure a beauty. There was a certain
autocratic old Aunt of her mother's, a sort of awful high priestess in
the inmost shrine of the sacred elect; this Begum, delighted with her
young kinswoman, ordered the rest of her world to be likewise
delighted, and the world agreeing with her verdict, Mary Virginia
fared very well. She was fêted, photographed, and paragraphed. Her
portrait, painted by a rather obscure young man, made the painter
famous. In the hands of the Begum the pretty girl blossomed into a
great beauty. The photograph that presently came to us quite took our
breath away, she was so regal.
"She will never, never again be at home in little Appleboro," said my
mother, regretfully. "That dear, simple, passionate, eager child we
used to know has gone forever--life has taken her. This beautiful
creature's place is not here--_she_ belongs to a world where the women
wear titles and tiaras, and the men wear kings' orders. No, we could
never hope to hold her any more."
"But we could love her, could we not? Perhaps even more than those
fine ladies with tiaras and titles and those fine gentlemen with
orders, whom your fancy conjures up for her," said I crisply, for her
words stung. They found an echo in my own heart.
"Love her? Oh, but of course! But--love counts for very, very little
in the world which claims Mary Virginia now, Armand. Ambition stifles
him." I was silent. I knew.
As for John Flint, he looked at that photograph and turned red.
"Good Lord! To think I had nerve to send _her_ a few butterflies last
year ... told _her_ to play like they meant more! I somehow couldn't
get the notion in my head that she'd grown up.... I never could think
of her except as a sort of kid-angel, because I couldn't seem to bear
the idea of her ever being anything else but what she was. Well ...
she's not, any more. And I've had the nerve to give a few insects to
the Queen of Sheba!"
"Bosh!" said Laurence, sturdily. "She ought to be glad and proud to
get that tray, and I'll bet you Mary Virginia's delighted with it.
She's her father's daughter as well as her mother's, please. As for
Appleboro not being good enough for her, that's piffle, too, p'tite
Madame, and I'm surprised at you! Her own town is good enough for any
girl. If it isn't, let her just pitch in and help make it good enough,
if she's worth her salt. Not that Mary Virginia isn't scrumptious,
though. Lordy, who'd think this was the same kid that used to bump my
head?"
"She turns heads now, instead of bumping them," said my mother.
"Oh, she's not the only head-turner Appleboro can boast of!" said the
young man grandly. "We've always been long on good-lookers in
Carolina, whatever else we may lack. They're like berries in their
season."
"But the berry season is short and soon over, my son: and there are
seasons when there are no berries at all--except preserved ones,"
suggested my mother, with that swift, curious cattiness which so often
astounds me in even the dearest of women.
"Dare you to tell that to the Civic League!" chortled Laurence. "I'll
grant you that Mary Virginia's the biggest berry in the patch, at the
height of a full season. But look at her getup! Don't doodads and
fallals, and hen-feathers in the hair, and things twisted and tied,
and a slithering train, and a clothesline length of pearls and such,
count for something? How about Claire Dexter, for instance? She mayn't
have a Figure like her Aunt Sally Ruth, but suppose you dolled Claire
up like this? A flirt she was born and a flirt she will die, but isn't
she a perfect peach? That reminds me--that ungrateful minx gave two
dances rightfully mine to Mr. Howard Hunter last night. I didn't raise
any ructions, because, to tell you the truth, I didn't much blame her.
That fellow really knows how to dance, and the way he can convey to a
girl the impression that he's only alive on her account makes me gnash
my teeth with green-and-blue envy. No wonder they all dote on him! No
home complete without this handsome ornament!" he added.
My mother's lips came firmly together.
"It is a great mistake to figure Mephistopheles as a rather blasé
brunette," she remarked crisply. "I am absolutely certain that if you
could catch the devil without his mask you'd find him a perfect
blonde."
"Nietzsche's blonde beast, then?" suggested Laurence, amused at her
manner.
"That same blonde beast is perhaps the most magnificent of animals," I
put in. For alone of my household I admired immensely Mr. Inglesby's
secretary. He was the only man I have ever known to whom the term
'beautiful' might be justly applied, and at the word's proper worth.
Such a man as this, a two-handed sword gripped in his steel fists, a
wolfskin across his broad shoulders and eagle-wings at either side the
helmet that crowns his yellow hair, looks at one out of many a red,
red page of the past with just such blue, dangerous, and cloudless
eyes. Rolling and reeking decks have known him, and falling walls,
and shrieks, and flames mounting skyward, and viking sagas, and
drinking-songs roared from brass throats, and terrible hymns to Odin
Allfather in the midwatches of Northern nights.
He had called upon me shortly after his arrival, his ostensible reason
being my work among his mill-people. I think he liked me, later. At
any rate, I had seen much of him, and I was indebted to him for more
than one shrewd and practical suggestion. If at times I was chilled by
what seemed to me a ruthless and cold-blooded manner of viewing the
whole great social question I was nevertheless forced to admire the
almost mathematical perfection to which he had reduced his system.
"But you wish to deal with human beings as with figures in a sum," I
objected once.
"Figures," he smiled equably, "are only stubborn--on paper. When
they're alive they're fluid and any clever social chemist can reduce
them to first principles. It's really very simple, as all great things
are: _When in doubt, reach the stomach!_ There you are! That's the
universal eye-opener."
"My dear friend," he added, laughing, "don't look so horrified. _I_
didn't make things as they are. Personally, I might even prefer to
say, like Mr. Fox in the old story, _'It was not so. It is not so. And
God forbid it should be so!'_ But I can't, truthfully, and
therefore--I don't. I accept what I can't help. Self-preservation, we
all admit, is the first law of nature. Now I consider myself, and the
class I represent, as beings much more valuable to the world than,
let's say, your factory-hands, your mill-workers, your hewers of wood
and drawers of water. Thus, should the occasion arise, I should most
unhesitatingly use whatever weapons law, religion, civilization
itself, put into my hands, without compunction and possibly what some
cavilers might call without mercy; having at stake a very vital
issue--the preservation of my kind, the protection of my class against
Demos."
He spoke without heat, calmly, looking at me smilingly with his fine
intelligent eyes: there was even much of truth in his frank statement
of his case. Always has Dives spoken thus, law-protected, dining
within; while without the doors of the sick civilization he has
brought about, Lazarus lies, licked by the dogs of chance. No, this
man was advocating no new theory; once, perhaps, I might have argued
even thus myself, and done so with a clean conscience. This man was
merely an opportunist. I knew he would never "reach their stomachs"
unless he thought he had to. Indeed, since his coming, things had
changed greatly at the mills, and for the better.
"The day of the great god Gouge," he had said to Inglesby, "is
passing. It's bad business to overwork and underpay your hands into a
state of chronic insurrection. That means losing time and scamping
work. The square deal is not socialism nor charity nor a matter of any
one man's private pleasure or conscience--it's cold hard common sense
and sound scientific business. You get better results, and that's what
you're after."
Perhaps it was because Appleboro offered, at that time, very little to
amuse and interest that keen mind of his, that the Butterfly Man
amused and interested Hunter so much. Or perhaps, proud as he was,
even he could not wholly escape that curious likableness which drew
men to John Flint.
He was delighted with our collection. He could appreciate its scope
and value, something to which all Appleboro else paid but passing
heed. John Flint declared that most folks came to see our butterflies
just as they would have run to see the dog-faced boy or the bearded
lady--merely for something to see. But this man's appreciation and
praise were both sincere and encouraging. And as he never allowed
anything or anybody unusual or interesting to pass him by without at
least sampling its savor, he formed the habit of strolling over to the
Parish House to talk with the limping man who had come there a dying
tramp, was now a scientist, with the manner and appearance of a
gentleman, and who spoke at will the language of two worlds. That this
once black sheep had strayed of his own will and pleasure from some
notable fold Hunter didn't for a moment doubt. Like all Appleboro, he
wouldn't have been at all surprised to see this prodigal son welcomed
into the bosom of some Fifth Avenue father, and have the fatted calf
dressed for him by a chef whose salary might have hired three college
professors. Hunter had known one or two such black sheep in his time;
he fancied himself none too shrewd in thus penetrating Flint's rather
obvious secret.
My mother watched the secretary's comings and goings at the Parish
House speculatively. Not even the fact that he quoted her adored La
Rochefoucauld, in flawless French, softened _her_ estimate.
"If he even had the semblance of a heart!" said she, regretfully. "But
he is all head, that one."
Now, I am a simple man, and this cultivated and handsome man of the
world delighted me. To me immured in a mill town he brought the modern
world's best. He was a window, for me, which let in light.
"That great blonde!" said Madame, wonderingly. "He is so designedly
fascinating I wonder you fail to see the wheels go 'round. However,
let me admit that I thank God devoutly I am no longer young and
susceptible. Consider the terrible power such a man might exert over
an ardent and unsophisticated heart!"
It was Hunter who had brought me a slim book, making known to me a
poet I had otherwise missed.
"You are sure to like Bridges," he told me, "for the sake of one
verse. Have you ever thought _why_ I like you, Father De Rancé?
Because you amuse me. I see in you one of life's subtlest ironies: A
Greek beauty-worshiper posing as a Catholic priest--in Appleboro!" He
laughed. And then, with real feeling, he read in his resonant voice:
"I love all beautiful things:
I seek and adore them.
God has no better praise,
And man in his hasty days,
Is honored for them."
When at times the secretary brought his guests to see what he
pleasingly enough termed Appleboro's one claim to distinction, the
Butterfly Man did the honors to the manner born. Drawer after drawer
and box after box would he open, patiently answering and explaining.
And indeed, I think the contents were worth coming far to see. Some of
them had come to us from the ends of the earth; from China and Japan
and India and Africa and Australia, from the Antilles and Mexico and
South America and the isles of the Pacific; from many and many a
lonely missionary station had they been sent us. Even as our
collection grew, the library covering it grew with it. But this was
merely the most showy and pleasing part of the work. That which had
the greatest scientific worth and interest, that upon which John
Flint's value and reputation were steadily mounting, was in less
lovely and more destructive forms of insect life. Beside this last, a
labor calling for the most unremitting, painstaking, persevering
research, observation, and intelligence, the painted beauties of his
butterflies were but as precious play. For in this last he was
wringing from Nature's reluctant fingers some of her dearest and most
deeply hidden secrets. He was like Jacob, wrestling all night long
with an unknown angel, saying sturdily:
"I will not let thee go except thou tell me thy name!" Like Jacob, he
paid the price of going halt for his knowledge.
I like to think that Hunter understood the enormous value of the
naturalist's work. But I fancy the silent and absorbed student himself
was to his mind the most interesting specimen, the most valuable
study. It amused him to try to draw his reticent host into familiar
and intimate conversation. Flint was even as his name.
Oddly enough, Hunter shared the Butterfly Man's liking for that
unspeakable Book of Obituaries, and I have seen him take a batch of
them from his pocket as a free-will offering. I have seen him, who had
all French, Russian and English literature at his fingers' ends, sit
chuckling and absorbed for an hour over that fearful collection of
lugubrious verse and worse grammar; pausing every now and then to cast
a speculative and curious glance at his impassive host, who, paying
absolutely no attention to him, bent his whole mind, instead, upon
some tiny form in a balsam slide mount under his microscope.
"Why don't you admire Mr. Hunter?" I was curious to know.
"But I do admire him." Flint was sincere.
"Then if you admire him, why don't you like him?"
He reflected.
"I don't like the expression of his teeth," he admitted. "They're too
pointed. He looks like he'd bite. I don't think he'd care much who he
bit, either; it would all depend on who got in his way."
Seeing me look at him wonderingly, he paused in his work, stretched
his legs under the table, and grinned up at me.
"I'm not saying he oughtn't to put his best foot foremost," he agreed.
"We'd all do that, if we only knew how. And I'm not saying he ought to
tell on himself, or that anybody's got any business getting under his
guard. I don't hanker to know anybody's faults, or to find out what
they've got up their sleeves besides their elbows, unless I have to.
Why, I'd as soon ask a fellow to take off his patent leathers to prove
he hadn't got bunions, or to unbutton his collar, so I'd be sure it
wasn't fastened onto a wart on the back of his neck. Personally I
don't want to air anybody's bumps and bunions. It's none of my
business. I believe in collars and shoes, myself. _But_ if I see
signs, I can believe all by my lonesome they've got 'em, can't I?"
"Exactly. Your deductions, my dear Sherlock, are really marvelous. A
gentleman wears good shoes and clean collars--wherefore, you don't
like the expression of his teeth!" said I, ironically.
"Slap me on the wrist some more, if it makes you feel good," he
offered brazenly. "For he may--and I sure don't." His grin faded, the
old pucker came to his forehead.
"Parson, maybe the truth is I'm not crazy over him because people like
him get people like me to seeing too plainly that things aren't fairly
dealt out. Why, think a minute. That man's got about all a man can
have, hasn't he? In himself, I mean. And if there's anything more he
fancies, he can reach out and get it, can't he? Well, then, some folks
might get to thinking that folks like him--get more than they deserve.
And some ... don't get any more than they deserve," he finished, with
grim ambiguity.
"Do you like him yourself?" he demanded, as I made no reply.
"I admire him immensely."
"Does Madame like him?" he came back.
"Madame is a woman," I said, cautiously. "Also, you are to remember
that if Madame doesn't, she is only one against many. All the rest of
them seem to adore him."
"Oh, the rest of them!" grunted John Flint, and scowled. "Huh! If it
wasn't for Madame and a few more like her, I'd say women and hens are
the two plum-foolest things God has found time to make yet. If you
don't believe it, watch them stand around and cackle over the first
big dunghill rooster that walks on his wings before them! There are
times when I could wring their necks. Dern a fool, anyhow!" He
wriggled in his chair with impatience.
"Liver," said I, outraged. "You'd better see Dr. Westmoreland about
it. When a man talks like you're talking now, it's just one of two
things--a liver out of whack, or plain ugly jealousy."
"I do sound like I've got a grouch, don't I?" he admitted, without
shame. "Well ... maybe it's jealousy, and maybe it's not. The truth
is, he rubs me rather raw at times, I don't know just how or why.
Maybe it's because he's so sure of himself. He can afford to be sure.
There isn't any reason why he shouldn't be. And it hurts my feelings."
He looked up at me, shrewdly. "He looks all right, and he sounds all
right, and maybe he might be all right--but, parson, I've got the
notion that somehow he's not!"
"Good heavens! Why, look at what the man has done for the mill folks!
Whatever his motives are, the result is right there, isn't it? His
works praise him in the gates!"
"Oh, sure! But he hasn't played his full hand out yet, friend. You just
give him time. His sort don't play to lose; they can't afford to lose;
losing is the other fellow's job. Parson, see here: there are two sides
to all things; one of 'em's right and the other's wrong, and a man's got
to choose between 'em. He can't help it. He's got to be on one side or
the other, if he's a _man_. A neutral is a squashy It that both sides do
right to kick out of the way. Now you can't do the right side any good
if you're standing flatfooted on the wrong side, can you? No; you take
sides according to what's in you. You know good and well one side is
full of near-poors, and half-ways, and real-poors--the downandouters,
the guys that never had a show, ditchers and sewercleaners and
sweatshoppers and mill hands and shuckers, and overdriven mutts and
starved women and kids. It's sure one hell of a road, but there's got to
be a light somewhere about it or the best of the whole world wouldn't
take to it for choice, would they? Yet they do! Like Jesus Christ, say.
They turn down the other side cold, though it's nicer traveling. Why,
you can hog that other road in an auto, you can run down the beggars and
the kids, you can even shoot up the cops that want to make you keep the
speed laws. You haven't _got_ any speed laws there. It's your road. You
own it, see? It's what it is because you've made it so, just to please
yourself, and to hell with the hicks that have to leg it! But--you lose
out on that side even when you think you've won. You get exactly what
you go after, but you don't get any more, and so you lose out. Why?
Because you're an egg-sucker and a nest-robber and a shrike, and a
four-flusher and a piker, that's why!
"The first road don't give you anything you can put your hands on;
except that you think and hope maybe there's that light at the end of
it. But, parson, I guess if _you're_ man enough to foot it without a
pay-envelope coming in on Saturdays, why, it's plenty good enough for
_me_--and Kerry. But while I'm legging it I'll keep a weather eye
peeled for crooks. That big blonde he-god is one of 'em. You soak that
in your thinking-tank: he's one of 'em!"
"But look at what he's doing!" said I, aghast. "What he's doing is
_good_. Even Laurence couldn't ask for more than good results, could
he?"
The Butterfly Man smiled.
"Don't get stung, parson. Why, you take me, myself. Suppose, parson,
you'd been on the other side, like Hunter is, when I came along? Suppose
you'd never stopped a minute, since you were born, to think of anything
or anybody but yourself and your own interests--where would I be to-day,
parson? Suppose you had the utility-and-nothing-but-business bug biting
you, like that skate's got? Why, what do you suppose you'd have done
with little old Slippy? I was considerable good business to look at
then, wasn't I? No. You've got to have something in you that will let
you take gambler's chances; you've got to be willing to bet the limit
and risk your whole kitty on the one little chance that a roan will come
out right, if you give him a fair show, just because he _is_ a man; or
you can't ever hope to help just when that help's needed. Right there is
the difference between the Laurence-and-you sort and the Hunter-men,"
said John Flint, obstinately.
As for Laurence, he and Hunter met continually, both being in constant
social demand. If Laurence did not naturally gravitate toward that
bright particular set of rather rapid young people which presently
formed itself about the brilliant figure of Hunter, the two did not
dislike each other, though Hunter, from an older man's sureness of
himself, was the more cordial of the two. I fancy each watched the
other more guardedly than either would like to admit. They represented
opposite interests; one might at any moment become inimical to the
other. Of this, however, no faintest trace was allowed to appear upon
the calm unruffled surface of things.
If Inglesby had chosen this man by design, it had been a wise choice.
For he was undoubtedly very popular, and quite deservedly so. He had
unassailable connections, as we all knew. He brought a broader
culture, which was not without its effect. And in spite of the fact
that he represented Inglesby, there was not a door in Appleboro that
was not open to him. Inglesby himself seemed a less sinister figure in
the light of this younger and dazzling personality. Thus the secretary
gradually removed the thorns and briars of doubts and prejudices,
sowing in their stead the seeds of Inglesby's ambition and
rehabilitation, in the open light of day. He knew his work was well
done; he was sure of ultimate success; he had always been successful,
and there had been, heretofore, no one strong enough to actively
oppose him. He could therefore afford to make haste slowly. Even had
he been aware of the Butterfly Man's acrid estimate of him, it must
have amused him. When all was said and done, what did a Butterfly
Man--even such a one as ours--amount to, in the world of Big Business
_He_ hadn't stocks nor bonds nor power nor pull. He hadn't anything
but a personality that arrested you, a setter dog, a slowly-growing
name, a room full of insects in an old priest's garden. Of course
Hunter would have smiled! And there wasn't a soul to tell him anything
of Slippy McGee!