THE WISHING CURL
With February the cold that the Butterfly Man had wished for came with
a vengeance. The sky lost its bright blue friendliness and changed
into a menacing gray, the gray of stormy water. Overnight the flowers
vanished, leaving our gardens stripped and bare, and our birds that
had been so gay were now but sorry shivering balls of ruffled
feathers, with no song left in them. When rain came the water froze in
the wagon-ruts, and ice-covered puddles made street-corners dangerous.
This intense cold, damp, heavy, penetrating, coming upon the heels of
the unseasonably warm weather, seemed to bring to a head all the
latent sickness smoldering in the mill-parish, for it suddenly burst
forth like a conflagration. If the Civic League had not already done
so much to better conditions in the poorer district, we must have had
a very serious epidemic, as Dr. Westmoreland bluntly told the Town
Council.
As it was, things were pretty bad for awhile, and the inevitable white
hearse moved up and down, stopping now at this door, now at that. In
one narrow street, I remember, it moved in the exact shape of a figure
eight within the week. I do not like to recall those days. I buried
the children with the seal of Holy Mother Church upon their innocence;
I repeated over them "The Lord hath given, the Lord hath taken
away"--and knew in my heart that it was man-made want, the greed of
money-madness, that had taken them untimely out of their mothers'
laps. And the earth was like iron; it opened unwillingly to receive
the babes of the poor.
In and out of stricken mill-houses and shabby shacks, as regularly as
Westmoreland and I, whose business and duty lay there, came John
Flint. He made no effort to comfort parents, although these seemed to
derive a curious consolation from his presence. He did not even come
because he wanted to; he came because the children begged to see the
Butterfly Man and one may not refuse a sick child. He had made friends
with them, made toys for them; and now he saw dull eyes brighten at
his approach and pale faces try to smile; languid and fever-hot hands
were held out to him. All the force of the affection of young
children, their dazzling faith, the almost unthinkable power upon
their plastic minds of those whom they trust, came home to him. He
could not, in such an hour, accept lightly, with a careless smile, the
fact that children loved him. And once or twice a small hand that
clung to him grew cold in his clasp, and under his eyes a child's
closed to this world.
Now, something that saw straight, thought like a naked sword-blade,
ate like a testing acid into shams and hated evasions and half-truths
and subterfuges, had of late been showing more and more behind John
Flint's reserve; and I think it might have hardened into a mentality
cold and bright and barren, hard and cutting as a diamond, had it not
been for the children whom he had to see suffer and die.
There was one child of whom he was particularly fond--a child with
the fairest of fair hair, deep and sweet blue eyes, and the quickest,
shyest, most fleeting of smiles to lighten flashingly her small pale
serious face. She had been one of the first of the mill folks'
children to make friends with the Butterfly Man. She used to watch for
him, and then, holding on to one of his fingers, she liked to trot
sedately down the street beside him.
This child's going was sudden and rather painful. Westmoreland did
what he could, but there was no stamina in that frail body, so her's
had been one of the small hands to fall limp and still out of John
Flint's. The doll he had made for her lay in the crook of her arm; it
had on a red calico dress, very garish in the gray room, and against
the child's whiteness.
Westmoreland stood, big and compassionate, at the foot of the bed. His
ruddy face showed wan and behind his glasses his gray tired eyes
winked and blinked.
"There must be," said the Doctor, as if to himself, "some eternal vast
reservoir somewhere, that stores up all this terrible total of
unnecessary suffering--the cruel and needless suffering inflicted upon
children and animals, in particular. Perhaps it's a spiritual serum
used for the saving of the race. Perhaps races higher up than we use
it--as _we_ use rabbits and guinea-pigs. No, no, nothing's wasted;
there's a forward end to pain, somewhere." He looked down at the child
and shook his head doubtfully:
"But when all is said and done," he muttered, "what do such as these
get out of it? Nothing--so far as we can see. They're victims, they
and the innocent beasts, thrust into a world which tortures and
devours them. Why? Why? Why?"
"There is nothing to do but leave that everlasting Why to God," said
I, painfully.
The Butterfly Man looked up and one saw that cold sword-straight,
diamond-hard something in his eyes:
"Parson," said he, grimly, "you're a million miles off the right
track--and you know it. Leaving things to God--things like poor kids
dying because they're gouged out of their right to live--is just about
as rotten stupid and wrong as it can well be. God's all right; he does
his part of the job. You do yours, and what happens? Why, my
butterflies answer that! I'm punk on your catechism, and if _this_ is
all it can teach I hope I die punk on it; but as near as I can make
out, original sin is leaving things like this"--and he looked at his
small friend with her doll on her arm--"to God, instead of tackling
the job yourself and straightening it out."
The child's mother, a gaunt creature without a trace of youth left in
her, although she could not have been much more than thirty, shambled
over to a chair on the other side of the bed. She wore a faded red
calico wrapper--a scrap of it had made the doll's frock--and a
blue-checked apron with holes in it. Her hair was drawn painfully back
from her forehead, and there was a wispy fringe of it on the back of
her scraggy neck. In her dull eyes glimmered nothing but the innate
uneasiness of those who are always in need, and her mouth had drawn
itself into the shape of a horseshoe. There is no luck in a horseshoe
hung thus on a woman's face. One might fancy she felt no emotion, her
whole demeanor was so apathetic; but of a sudden she leaned over and
took up one of the thick shining curls; half smiling, she began to
wrap it about her finger.
"I useter be right smart proud o' Louisa's hair," she remarked in a
drawling, listless voice. "She come by it from them uppidy folks o'
her pa's. I've saw her when she wasn't much more 'n hair an' eyes,
times her pa was laid up with the misery in his chest, an' me with
nothin' but piecework weeks on end.
"... She was a cu'rus kind o' child, Louisa was. She sort o'
'spicioned things wasn't right, but you think that child ever let a
squeal out o' her? Not her! Lemme tell you-all somethin', jest to show
what kind o' a heart that child had, suhs."
With a loving and mothering motion she moved the bright curl about and
about her hard finger. She spoke half intimately, half garrulously;
and from the curl she would lift her faded eyes to the Butterfly
Man's.
"'T was a Sarrerday night, an' I was a-walkin' up an' down, account o'
me bein' awful low in the mind.
"'Ma,' says Louisa, 'I'm reel hungry to-night. You reckon I could have
a piece o' bread with butter on it? I wisht I could taste some bread
with butter on it,' says she.
"'Darlin',' says I, turrible sad, 'Po' ma c'n give yo' the naked bread
an' thanks to God I got even that to give,' I says. 'But they ain't a
scrap o' butter in this house, an' no knowin' how to git any. Oh,
darlin', ma's so sorry!'
"She looks up with that quick smile o' her'n. Yes, suh, Mr. Flint, she
ups and smiles. 'You don't belong to be sorry any, ma,' says she,
comfortin'. 'Don't you mind none at all. Why, ma, darlin', _I just
love naked bread without no butter on it_!' says she. My God, Mr.
Flint, I bust out a-cryin' in her face. Seemed like I natchelly
couldn't stand no mo'!" And smiling vaguely with her poor old
down-curved mouth, she went on fingering the curl.
"Will you-all look a' that!" she murmured, with pride. "Even her
hair's lovin', an' sort o' holds on like it wants you should touch it.
My Lord o' glory, I'm glad her pa ain't livin' to see this day! He had
his share o' misery, po' man, him dyin' o' lung-fever an' all....
"Six head o' young ones we'd had, me an' him. An' they'd all dropped
off. Come spring, an' one'd be gone. I kep' a-comfortin' that man best
I could they was better off, angels not bein' pindlin' an' hungry an'
barefoot, an' thanks be, they ain't no mills in heaven. But their pa
he couldn't see it thataway nohow. He was turrible sot on them
children, like us pore folks gen'rally is. They was reel fine-lookin'
at first.
"When all the rest of 'em had went, her pa he sort o' sot his heart on
Louisa here. 'For we ain't got nothin' else, ma,' says he. 'An' please
the good Lord, we're a-goin' to give this one book-learnin' an' sich,
an' so be she'll miss them mills,' he says. 'Ma, less us aim to make a
lady o' our Louisa. Not that the Lord ain't done it a'ready,' says her
pa, 'but we got to he'p Him keep on an' finish the job thorough.' An'
here's him an' her both gone, an' me without a God's soul belongin' to
me this day! My God, Mr. Flint, ain't it something turrible the things
happens to us pore folks?"
The Butterfly Man looked from her to Westmoreland and me: doctor of
bodies, doctor of souls, naturalist, what had we to say to this woman
stripped of all? But she, with the greater wisdom of the poor, spoke
for herself and for us. A sort of veiled light crept into her sodden
face.
"It ain't I ain't grateful to you-all," said she. "God knows I be. You
was good to Louisa. Doctor, you remember that day you give her a ride
in your ottermobile an' forgot to bring her home for more 'n a hour?
My, but that child was happy!"
"'Ma,' says she when I come home that night, 'you know what heaven
is?'
"'Child,' says I, 'folks like me mostly knows what it ain't.'
"'I beat you, ma!' says she, clappin' her hands. 'Heaven ain't nothin'
much but country an' roads an' trees an' butterflies, an' things like
that,' says she. 'An' God's got ottermobiles, plenty an' plenty
ottermobiles, an' you ride free in 'em long's you feel like it, 'cause
that's what they's _for_. An', ma,' says she, 'God's, showfers is all
of 'em Dr. Westmorelands and Mr. Flints.' Yea, suh, you-all been
mighty kind to Louisa. But I reckon," she drawled, "it was Mr. Flint
Louisa loved best, him bein' a childern's kind o' man, an' on account
o' Loujaney." She laid a hand upon the rag doll lying on the little
girl's arm.
"From the first day you give her that doll, Mr. Flint--which she named
Loujaney, for her an' me both--that child ain't been parted from it."
She smiled down at the two. I could almost have prayed she would weep
instead. It would have been easier to bear.
"The King's Daughters, they give her a mighty nice doll off their
Christmas tree last year, but Louisa, she didn't take to it like she
done to Loujaney.
"'_That_ doll's jest a visitin' lady,' says she, 'but Loujaney, she's
_my child_. Mr. Flint made her a-purpose for me, same's God made me
for you, ma, an' she's mine by bornation. I can live with Loujaney. I
ain't a mite ashamed afore her when we ain't got nothin', but I turn
'tother's face to the wall so she won't know. Loujaney's pore folks
same's you an' me, an' she knows prezac'ly how 't is. That's why I
love her so much.
"An' day an' night," resumed the drawling voice, "them two's been
together. She jest lived an' et an' slept with that doll. If ever a
doll gits to grow feelin's, Loujaney's got 'em. I s'pose I'd best give
that visitin' doll to some child that wants it bad, but I ain't got
the heart to take Loujaney away from her ma. I'm a-goin' to let them
two go right on sleepin' together.
"Mr. Flint, suh, seein' Louisa liked you so much, an' it's you she'd
want to have it--" she leaned over, pushed the thick fair hair aside,
and laid her finger upon a very whimsy of a curl, shorter, paler,
fairer than the others, just above the little right ear.
"Her pa useter call that the wishin' curl," said she, half
apologetically. "You see, suh, he was a comical sort of man, an' a great
hand for pertendin' things. I never could pertend. Things is what they
is an' pertendin' don't change 'em none. But him an' her was different.
That's how come him to pertend the Lord'd put the rainbow's pot o' gold
in Louisa's hair with a wish in it, an' that ridic'lous curl one side
her head, like a mark, was the wishin' curl. He'd pertend he could pull
it twict an' say whisperin', '_Bickery-ickery-ee--my wish is comin' to
me_,' an' he'd git it. An' she liked to pertend 'twas so an' she could
wish things on it for me an' git 'em.... Clo'es an' shoes an' fire an'
cake an' beefsteak an' butter an' stayin' home.... Just pertendin', you
see.
"Mr. Flint, suh, _I_ ain't got a God's thing any more to wish for, but
you bein' the sort o' man you are, I'd rather 'twas you had Louisa's
wishin' curl, to remember her by." Snip! went the scissors; and there
it lay, pale as the new gold of spring sunlight, curling as young
grape-tendrils, in the Butterfly Man's open palm.
"_Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee_," said
the great Apostle to the lame man who lay beside the gate of the
temple that is called, Beautiful.
"I ain't got nothin' else," said the common mill-woman; and laid in
John Flint's hand Louisa's wishing-curl.
He stared at it, and turned as pale as the child on her pillow. The
human pity of the thing, its sheer stark piercing simplicity, squeezed
his heart as with a great hand.
"My God!" he choked. "My--God!" and a rending sob tore loose from his
throat. For the first time in his life he had to weep; uncontrolled,
unashamed, childlike, fatherly, brotherly. For he had experienced,
unselfishly, on account of one of the humblest of God's creatures, one
of the great divine emotions. And when that happens to a man it is as
if his soul were winnowed by the wind of an archangel's wings.
Westmoreland and I slipped out and left him with the woman. She would
know what further thing to say to him.
Outside in the bleak bitter street, the Doctor laid his hand on my
shoulder. He winked his eyes rapidly. "Father," said he, earnestly,
"when I witness such a thing as we've seen this morning, I do not lose
faith. I gain it." And he gripped me heartily with his big gloved
hand. "Tell John Flint," he added, "that sometimes a rag doll is a
mighty big thing for a man to have to his credit." Then he was gone,
with a tear freezing on his cheek.
"Angels," John Flint had said more than once, "are not middle-aged
doctors with shoulders on them like a barn-door, and ribs like a dray;
angels don't have bald heads and wear a red tie and tan shoes. But I'd
pass them all up, from Gabriel down, wings and tailfeathers, for one
Walter Westmoreland."
I would, too. And I walked along, thinking of what I had just
witnessed; sensing its time value. To those slight and fragile things
which had, for John Flint, outweighed the scales of evil--a gray moth,
a butterfly's wing, a bird's nest--I added a child's fair hair, and a
rag doll that was going to sleep with its ma.
There were but few people on the freezing streets, for folks preferred
to stay indoors and hug the fire. Fronting the wind, I walked with a
lowered head, and thus collided with a lady who turned a corner at the
same time I did.
"Don't apologize, Padre," said Mary Virginia, for it was she. "It was
my fault--I wasn't looking where I was going."
"Are you by any chance bound for the Parish House? Because my mother
will be on her way to a poor thing that's just lost her only child.
Where have you been these past weeks? I haven't seen you for ages."
"Oh, I've been rather busy, too, Padre. And I haven't been quite
well--" she hesitated. I thought I understood. For, possibly from some
servant who had overheard Mrs. Eustis expostulating with her daughter,
the news of Mary Virginia's unannounced engagement had sifted pretty
thoroughly throughout the length and breadth of Appleboro; a town
where an unfledged and callow rumor will start out of a morning and
come home to roost at night with talons and tailfeathers.
That Mary Virginia had all James Eustis's own quiet will-power,
everybody knew. She would not, perhaps, marry Laurence in the face of
her mother's open opposition. Neither would she marry anybody else to
please her mother in defiance of her own heart. There was a pretty
struggle ahead, and Appleboro took sides for and against, and settled
itself with eager expectancy to watch the outcome.
So I concluded that Mary Virginia had not been having a pleasant time.
Indeed, it struck me that she was really unwell. One might even
suspect she had known sleepless nights, from the shadowed eyes and the
languor of her manner.
Just then, swinging down the street head erect, shoulders square, the
freezing weather only intensifying his glowing fairness, came Howard
Hunter. The man was clear red and white. His gold hair and beard
glittered, his bright blue eyes snapped and sparkled. He seemed to
rejoice in the cold, as if some Viking strain in him delighted in its
native air.
As he paused to greet us a coldness not of the weather crept into Mary
Virginia's eyes. She did not speak, but bowed formally. Mr. Hunter,
holding her gaze for a moment, lifted his brows whimsically and
smiled; then, bowing, he passed on. She stood looking after him, her
lips closed firmly upon each other.
Tucking her hand in my arm, she walked with me to the Parish House
gate. No, she said, she couldn't come in. But I was to give her
regards to the Butterfly Man, and her love to Madame.
"Parson," the Butterfly Man asked me that night, "have you seen Mary
Virginia recently?"
"I saw her to-day."
"I saw her to-day, too. She looked worried. She hasn't been here
lately, has she?"
"No. She hasn't been feeling well. I hear Mrs. Eustis has been very
outspoken about the engagement, and I suppose that's what worries Mary
Virginia."
"I don't think so. She knew she had to go up against that, from the
first. She's more than a match for her mother. There's something else.
Didn't I tell you I had a hunch there was going to be trouble? Well,
I've got a hunch it's here."
"Nonsense!" said I, shortly.
"I know," said he, stubbornly. And he added, irrelevantly: "It's
generally known, parson, that Eustis will be nominated. Inglesby's
managed to gain considerable ground, thanks to Hunter, and folks say
if it wasn't for Eustis he'd win. As it is, he'll be swamped. I hear
he was thunderstruck when he got wind of what Mayne was going to play
against him--for he knows Laurence brought Eustis out. Inglesby's
mighty sore. He's the sort that hates to have to admit he can't get
what he wants."
"Then he'd better save himself the trouble of having to put it to the
test," said I.
"I'm wondering," said John Flint. "I wish I hadn't got that hunch!"
I did not see Mary Virginia again for some time. Just then I moved
breathlessly in a horrid round of sickbeds, for the wave had reached
its height; already it had swept seventeen of my flock out of time
into eternity.
I came home on one of the last of those heavy evenings, to find
Laurence waiting for me in my study. He was standing in the middle of
the room, his hands clasped behind his back.
"Padre," said he by way of greeting, "have you seen Mary Virginia
lately? Has Madame?"
"No, except for a chance meeting one morning on the street. But she
has been sending me help right along, bless her."
"Has Madame heard anything from her, Padre?"
"No, I don't think so. But we've been frightfully busy of late, you
understand."
"No, neither of you know," said Laurence, in a low voice. "You
wouldn't know. Padre, I--don't look at me like that, please; I'm not
ill. But, without reason--swear to you before God, without any reason
whatever, that I can conjure up--she has thrown me over, jilted
me--Mary Virginia, Padre! And I'm to forget her. _I'm to forget her,
you understand?_ Because she can't marry me." He spoke in a level,
quiet, matter of fact voice. Then laughter shook him like a nausea.
I laid my hand upon him. "Now tell me," said I, "what you have to tell
me."
"I've really told you all I know," said Laurence. "Day before
yesterday she sent for me. You can't think how happy it made me to
have her send for me, how happy I've been since I knew she cared! I
felt as if there wasn't anything I couldn't do. There was nothing too
great to be accomplished--
"Well, I went. She was standing in the middle of the long
drawing-room. There was a fire behind her. She was so like ice I
wonder now she didn't thaw. All in white, and cold, and frozen. And
she said she couldn't marry me. That's why she had sent for me--to
tell me that she meant to break our engagement: _Mary Virginia_!
"I wanted to know why. I was within my rights in asking that, was I
not? And she wouldn't let me get close to her, Padre. She waved me
away. I got out of her that there were reasons: no, she wouldn't say
what those reasons were; but there were reasons. Her reasons, of
course. When I began to talk, to plead with her, she begged me not to
make things harder for her, but to be generous and go away. She just
couldn't marry me, didn't I understand? So I must release her."
He hung his head. The youth of him had been dimmed and darkened.
"And you said--?"
"I said," said Laurence simply, "that she was mine as much as I was
hers, and that I'd go just then because she asked me to, but I was
coming back. I tried to see her again yesterday. She wouldn't see me.
She sent down word she wasn't at home. But I knew all along she was.
Mary Virginia, Padre!
"I tried again. I haven't got any pride where she's concerned. Why
should I? She's--she's my soul, I think. I can't put it into words,
because you can't put feelings into words, but she's the pith of life.
Then I wrote her. Half a dozen times I wrote her. I got down to the
level of bribing the colored maid to take the notes to her, one every
hour, like a medicine, and slip them under her door. I know she
received them. I repeated it again to-day. It's Mary Virginia at
stake, and I can't take chances, can I? And this afternoon she sent
this.
"Oh, Laurence, be generous and spare me the torment of
questions. So far you have not reproached me; spare me that,
too! Don't you understand? I cannot marry you. Accept the
inevitable as I do. Forgive me and forget me. M.V.E."
The writing showed extreme nervousness, haste, agitation.
"Well?" said Laurence. But I stood staring at the crumpled bit of
paper. I knew what I knew. I knew what my mother had thought fit to
reveal to me of the girl's feelings: Mary Virginia had been very sure.
I remembered what my eyes had seen, my ears heard. I was sure she was
faithful, for I knew my girl. And yet--
There came back to me a morning in spring and I riding gaily off in
the glad sunshine, full of faith and of hope. To find what I had
found. I handed the note back, in silence.
"Oh, why, why, why?" burst out the boy, in a gust of acute torment.
"For God's sake, why? Think of her eyes and her mouth, Padre--and her
forehead like a saint's--No, she's not false. God never made such eyes
as hers untruthful. I believe in her. I've got to believe in her. I
tell you, I belong to her, body and soul." He began to walk up and
down the room, and his shoulders twitched, as if a lash were laid over
them. "I could forgive her for not loving me, if she doesn't love me
and found it out, and said so. Women change, do they not? But--to
take a man that loves her--and tear his living soul to shreds and
tatters--
"If _she's_ a liar and a jilt, who and what am I to believe? Why
should she do it, Padre--to me that love her? Oh, my God, think of it:
to be betrayed by the best beloved! No, I can't think it. This isn't
just any light girl: this is Mary Virginia!"
I put my hand on his shoulder. He is a head over me, and once again as
broad, perhaps. We two fell into step. I did not attempt to counsel or
console.
"Here I come like a whining kid, Padre," said he, remorsefully,
"piling my troubles upon your shoulders that carry such burdens
already. Forgive me!"
"I shouldn't be able to forgive you if you didn't come," said I. Up
and down the little room, up and down, the two of us.
Came a light tap at the door. The Butterfly Man's head followed it.
"Didn't I hear Laurence talking?" asked he, smiling. The smile froze
at sight of the boy's face. He closed the door, and leaned against it.
"What's wrong with her?" he asked, quickly. It did not occur to us to
question his right to ask, or to wonder how he knew.
In a dull voice Laurence told him. He held out his hand for the note,
read it in silence, and handed it back.
"What do you make of it?" I asked.
"Trouble," said he, curtly; and he asked, reproachfully, "Don't you
know her, both of you, by this time?"
"I know," said Laurence, "that she has sent me away from her."
"Because she wants to, or because she thinks she has to?" asked John
Flint.
"Why should she do so unless it pleased her?" I asked sorrowfully.
His eyes flashed. "Why, she's _herself!_ A girl like her couldn't play
anybody false because there's no falseness in her to do it with. What
are you going to do about it?"
"There is nothing to do," said Laurence, "but to release her; a
gentleman can do no less."
John Flint's lips curled. "Release her? I'd hang on till hell froze
over and caught me in the ice! I'd wait. I'd write and tell her she
didn't need to make herself unhappy about me, I was unhappy enough
about her for the two of us, because she didn't trust me enough to
tell me what her trouble was, so I could help her. That first and
always I was her friend, right here, whenever she needed me and
whatever she needed me for. And I'd stand by. What else is a man good
for?"
"I believe," said I, "that John Flint has given you the right word,
Laurence. Just hold fast and be faithful."
Laurence lifted his haggard face. "There isn't any question of my
being faithful to her, Padre. And I couldn't make myself believe that
she's less so than I. What Flint says tallies with my own intuition.
I'll write her to-night." He laid his hand on John Flint's arm.
"You're all right, Bughunter," said he, earnestly. "'Night, Padre."
Then he was gone.
"Do you think," said John Flint, when he had rejected every conjecture
his mind presented as the possible cause of Mary Virginia's action,
"that Inglesby could be at the bottom of this?"
"I think," said I, "that you have an obsession where that man is
concerned. He is a disease with you. Good heaven, what could Inglesby
possibly have to do with Mary Virginia's affairs?"
"That's what I'm wondering. Well, then, who is it?"
"Perhaps," said I, unwillingly, "it is Mary Virginia herself."
"Forget it! She's not that sort."
"She is a woman."
"Ain't it the truth, though?" he jeered. "What a peach of a reason for
not acting like herself, looking like herself, being like herself!
She's a woman! So are all the rest of the folks that weren't born men,
if you'll notice. They're women; we're men: and both of us are people.
Get it?"
"I get it," said I, annoyed. "Your attitude, John Flint, is a vulgar
platitude. And permit me to--"
"I'll permit you to do anything except get cross," said he, quickly.
The ghost of a smile touched his face. "Being bad-tempered, parson,
suits you just about as well as plaid pants and a Hello Bill button."
"I am a human being," I began, frigidly.
"And I'm another. And so is Mary Virginia. And there we are, parson.
I'm troubled. I don't like the looks of things. It's no use telling
myself this is none of my business; it is very much my business. You
remember ... when I came here ..." he hesitated, for this is a subject
we do not like to discuss, "what you were up against ... parson, I've
thought you must have been caught and crucified yourself, and learned
things on the cross, and that's why you held on to me. But with the
kids, it was different--particularly the little girl. The first thing
I ever got from her was a lovely look, the first time ever I set eyes
on her she came with an underwing moth. I'd be a poor sort that
wouldn't be willing to be spilt like water and scattered like dust, if
she needed me now, wouldn't I?"
"But," said I, perplexed, "what can you do? A young lady has seen fit
to break her engagement; young ladies often see fit to do that, my
dear fellow. This isn't an uncommon case. Also, one doesn't interfere
in a lady's private affairs, not even when one is an old priest who
has loved her since her childhood, nor yet a Butterfly Man who is her
devoted friend. Don't you see?"
"I see there's something wrong," said he, doggedly.
"Perhaps. But that doesn't give one the right to pry into something
she evidently doesn't wish to reveal," I told him.
"I suppose," said he, heavily, "you are right. But if you hear
anything, let me know, won't you?"
I promised; but I found out nothing, save that it had not been Mrs.
Eustis who influenced her daughter's action. This came out in a call
Mrs. Eustis made at the Parish House.
"My dear," she told my mother, "when she told me she had broken that
engagement, I was astounded! But I can't say I wasn't pleased.
Laurence is a dear boy; and his family's as good as ours--no one can
take that away from the Maynes. But Mary Virginia should have done
better.
"I quarreled with her, argued with her, pleaded with her. I cried and
cried. But she's James Eustis to the life--you might as well try to
move the Rock of Gibraltar. Then one morning she came to my room and
told me she found she couldn't marry Laurence! And she had already
told him so, and broken her engagement, and I wasn't to ask her any
questions. I didn't. I was too glad."
"And--Laurence--?" asked my mother, ironically.
"Laurence? Laurence is a _man_. Men get over that sort of thing. I've
known a man to be perfectly mad over his wife--and marry, six months
after her death. They're like that. They always get over it. It's
their nature."
"Let us hope, then, for Laurence's peace of mind," said my mother,
"that he'll get over it--like all the rest of his sex. Though I
shouldn't call Laurence fickle, or faithless, if you ask me."
"He is a very fine boy. I always liked him myself and James adores
him. If I had two or three daughters, I'd be willing to let one of
them marry Laurence--after awhile. But having only one I must say I
want her to do better."
"I see," said my mother. To me she said later:
"And yet, Armand, although I condemn it, I can quite appreciate Mrs.
Eustis's point of view. I was somewhat like that myself, once upon a
time."
"You? Never!"
My mother smiled tolerantly.
"Ah, but you never offered me a daughter-in-law I did not relish. It
was much easier for me to bear the Church!"
That night I went over to John Flint's, for I thought that the fact
of Mary Virginia's deliberately choosing to act as she had done would
in a measure settle the matter and relieve his anxiety.
There was a cedar wood fire before which Kerry lay stretched; little
white Pitache, grown a bit stiff of late, occupied a chair he had
taken over for his own use and from which he refused to be dislodged.
Major Cartwright had just left, and the room still smelt of his cigar,
mingling pleasantly with the clean smell of the burning cedar.
On the table, within reach of his hand, was ranged the Butterfly Man's
entire secular library: Andrew Lang's translation of Homer; Omar;
Richard Burton's Kasidah; Saadi's Gulistan, over which he chuckled;
Robert Burns; Don Quixote; Joan of Arc, and Huckleberry Finn; Treasure
Island; the Bible Miss Sally Ruth had given him--I never could induce
him to change it for my own Douai version--; one or two volumes of
Shakespeare; the black Obituary Book, grown loathsomely fat; and the
"Purely Original Verse of James Gordon Coogler," which a light-minded
professor of mathematics at the University of South Carolina had given
him, and in which he evilly delighted. Other books came and went, but
these remained. To-night it was the Bible which lay open, at the Book
of Psalms.
"Look at this." He laid his finger on a verse of the nineteenth: "The
testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple."
"The times I've turned that over in my mind, out in the woods by night
and the fields by day!" said the Butterfly Man, musingly. "The simple
is _me_, parson, and the testimony is green things growing, and
butterflies and moths, and Kerry, and people, and trouble, and
Louisa's hair, and--well, about everything, I reckon.
"Yes, everything's testimony, and it can make wise the simple--if he's
not too simple. I reckon, parson, the simple is lumped in three
lots--the fool for a little while, the fool for half the day, and the
life-everlasting twenty-four-hours-a-day, dyed-in-the-wool damn-fool.
"Some of us are the life-everlasting kind, the kind that used to make
old man Solomon wall his eyes and throw fits and then get busy and
hatch out proverbs with stings in their tails. A lot of us are
half-the-day fools; and all the rest are fools for a little while.
There's nobody born that hasn't got his times and seasons for being a
fool for a while. But that's the sort of simple the testimony slams
some sense into. Like _me_," he added earnestly, and closed the great
Book.
I told him presently what I had heard; that, as he surmised, Mrs.
Eustis was not responsible for Mary Virginia's change of mind--or
perhaps of heart. He nodded. But he offered no comment. Now, since I
had come in, he had been from time to time casting at me rather
speculative and doubtful glances. He drummed on the table, smiled
sheepishly, and presently reached for a package, unwrapped it, and
laid before me a book.
'"The Relation of Insect Life to Human Society,'" I read, "By John
Flint and Rev. Armand Jean De Rancé. With notes and drawings by Father
De Rancé." It bore the imprint of a great publishing house.
"You suggested it more than once," said John Flint. "Off and on, these
two years, I've been working on it. All the notes I particularly asked
you for were for this. Mighty fine and acute notes they are,
too--you'd never have been willing to do it if you'd known they were
for publication--I know you. And I saved the drawings. I'm vain of
those illustrations. Abbot's weren't in it, next to yours."
As a matter of fact I have a pretty talent for copying plant and
insect. I have but little originality, but this very limitation made
the drawings more valuable. They were almost painfully exact, the
measurements and coloration being as approximately perfect as I could
get them.
Now that the book has been included in all standard lists I needn't
speak of it at length--the reviewers have given it what measure of
bricks and bouquets it deserved. But it is a clever, able,
comprehensive book, and that is why it has made its wide appeal.
Every least credit that could possibly be given to me, he had
scrupulously rendered. He had made full use of note and drawing. He
made light enough of his own great labor of compilation, but his
preface was quick to state his "great indebtedness to his patient and
wise teacher."
One sees that the situation was not without irony. But I could not
cloud his pleasure in my co-authorship nor dim his happiness by
disclaiming one jot or tittle of what he had chosen to accredit me
with. It is more blessed to give than to receive, but much more
difficult to receive than to give.
"Do you like it?" he asked, hopefully.
"I am most horribly proud of it," said I, honestly.
"Sure, parson? Hand on your heart?"
"Sure. Hand on my heart."
"All right, then," said he, sighing with relief.
"Here's your share of the loot," and he pushed a check across the
table.
"But--" I hesitated, blinking, for it was a check of sorts.
"But nothing. Blow it in. Say, I'm curious. What are you going to do
with yours?"
"What are you going to do with yours?" I asked in return.
He reddened, hesitated; then his head went up.
"I figure it, parson, that by way of that rag-doll I'm kin to Louisa's
ma. As near as I can get to it, Louisa's ma's my widow. It's a devil
of a responsibility for a live man to have a widow. It worries him.
Just to get her off my mind I'm going to invest my share of this book
for her. She'll at least be sure of a roof and fire and shoes and
clothes and bread with butter on it and staying home sometimes. She'll
have to work, of course; anyway you looked at it, it wouldn't be right
to take work away from her. She'll work, then; but she won't be
worked. Louisa's managed to pull something out of her wishin' curl for
her ma, after all. I'm sure I hope they'll let the child know."
I could not speak for a moment; but as I looked at him, the red in his
tanned cheek deepened.
"As a matter of fact, parson," he explained, "somebody ought to do
something for a woman that looks like that, and it might just as well
be me. I'm willing to pay good money to have my widow turn her mouth
the other way up, and I hope she'll buy a back-comb for those bangs on
her neck."
"And all this," said I, "came out of one little wishin' curl,
Butterfly Man?"
"But what else could I do?" he wondered, "when I'm kin to Loujaney by
bornation?" and to hide his feeling, he asked again:
"Now what are you going to do with yours?"
I reflected. I watched his clever, quizzical eyes, out of which the
diamond-bright hardness had vanished, and into which I am sure that
dear child's curl had wished this milder, clearer light.
"You want to know what I am going to do with mine?" said I, airily.
"Well; as for me, the very first thing I am going to do is to
purchase, in perpetuity, a fine new lamp for St. Stanislaus!"