IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
Timid tentative rifts and wedges of blue had ventured back into the
cold gray sky, and a stout-hearted robin or two heralded spring. One
morning coming from mass I saw in the thin watery sunshine the painted
wings of the Red Admiral flash by, and I welcomed him as one welcomes
the long-missed face of a friend. I cannot choose but love the Red
Admiral. He has always stirred my imagination, for frail as his gay
wings are they have nevertheless borne this dauntless small Columbus
of butterflies across unknown seas and around uncharted lands, until
like his twin-sister the Painted Lady he has all but circled the
globe. A few days later a handful of those gold butterflies that
resemble nothing so much as new bright dandelions in the young grass,
dared the unfriendly days before their time as if to coax the lagging
spring to follow.
The sad white streamers disappeared from doors and for a space the
little white hearse ceased to go glimmering by. Then at many windows
appeared small faces bearing upon them the mark of the valley of the
shadow through which they had just passed. Although they were on side
streets in the dingy mill district, far removed from our pleasant
windows that looked out upon trees and flowers, all Appleboro was
watching these wan visages with wiser and kinder eyes.
Perhaps the most potent single factor in the arousing of our civic
conscience was a small person who might have justly thought we hadn't
any: I mean Loujaney's little ma, whose story had crept out and gone
from lip to lip and from home to home, making an appeal to which there
could be no refusal.
When Major Cartwright heard it, the high-hearted old rebel hurried
over to the Parish House and thrust into my hand a lean roll of bills.
And the major is by no means a rich man.
"It's not tainted money," said the major, "though some mighty good
Bourbon is goin' to turn into pap on account of it. However, it's an
ill wind that doesn't blow somebody good--Marse Robert can come on
back upstairs now an' thaw himself out while watchin' me read the
Lamentations of Jeremiah--who was evidently sufferin' from a dry spell
himself."
On the following Sunday the Baptist minister chose for his text that
verse of Matthew which bids us take heed that we despise not one of
these little ones because in heaven their angels do always behold the
face of our Father. And then he told his people of that little one who
had pretended to love dry bread when she couldn't get any butter--in
Appleboro. And who had gone to her rest holding to her thin breast a
rag-doll that was kin to her by bornation, Loujaney being poor folks
herself and knowing prezactly how't was.
Over the heads of loved and sheltered children the Baptist brethren
looked at each other. Of course, it wasn't their fault any more than
anybody else's.--In a very husky voice their pastor went on to tell
them of the curl which the woman who hadn't a God's thing left to
wish for had given as a remembrance to "that good and kind man, our
brother John Flint, sometimes known as the Butterfly Man."
Dabney put the plain little discourse into print and heightened its
effect by an editorial couched in the plainest terms. We were none of
us in the humor to hear a spade called an agricultural implement just
then, and Dabney knew it; particularly when the mill dividends and the
cemetery both showed a marked increase.
Something had to be done, and quickly, but we didn't exactly know how
nor where to begin doing it. Laurence, insisting that this was really
everybody's business, called a mass-meeting at the schoolhouse, and
the _Clarion_ requested every man who didn't intend to bring his
women-folks to that meeting to please stay home himself. Wherefore
Appleboro town and county came with the wife of its bosom--or maybe
the wife came and fetched it along.
Laurence called the meeting to order, and his manner of addressing the
feminine portion of his audience would have made his gallant
grandfather challenge him. He hadn't a solitary pretty phrase to
tickle the ears of the ladies--he spoke of and to them as women.
"And did you see how they fell for him?" rejoiced the Butterfly Man,
afterward. "From the kid in a middy up to the great old girl with
three chins and a prow like an ocean liner, they were with him. When
you're in dead earnest, can the ladies; just go after women as women
and they're with you every time. They know."
A Civic Leaguer followed Laurence, then Madame, and after her a girl
from the mills, whose two small brothers went in one night. There
were no set speeches. Everybody who spoke had something to say; and
everybody who had something to say spoke. Then Westmoreland, who like
Saul the king was taller by the head and shoulders than all Israel,
bulked up big and good and begged us to remember that we couldn't do
anything of permanent value until we first learned how to reach those
folks we had been ignoring and neglecting. He said gruffly that
Appleboro had dumped its whole duty in this respect upon the frail
shoulders of one old priest, and that the Guest Rooms were overworked.
Didn't the town want to do its share now? The town voted, unanimously,
that it did.
There was a pause. Laurence asked if anybody else had anything to say?
Apparently, anybody else hadn't.
"Well, then," said Laurence, smiling, "before we adjourn, is there
anybody in particular that Appleboro County here assembled wants to
hear?"
And at that came a sort of stir, a murmur, as of an immense multitude
of bees:
"_The Butterfly Man!_" And louder: "The Butterfly Man!"
Followed a great hand-clapping, shrill whistles, the stamping of feet.
And there he was, with Westmoreland and Laurence behind him as if to
keep him from bolting. His face expressed a horrified astonishment.
Twice, thrice, he opened his lips, and no words came. Then:
"_I?_" in a high and agonized falsetto.
"You!" Appleboro County settled back with rustles of satisfaction.
"Speech! Speech!" From a corn-club man, joyfully.
"Oh, marmar, look! It's the Butterfly Man, marmar!" squealed a child.
"A-a-h! Talk weeth us, Meester Fleent!" For the first time a "hand"
felt that he might speak out openly in Appleboro.
John Flint stood there staring owlishly at all these people who ought
to know very well that he hadn't anything to say: what should he have
to say? He was embarrassed; he was also most horribly frightened. But
then, after all, they weren't anything but people, just folks like
himself! When he remembered that his panic subsided. For a moment he
reflected; as if satisfied, he nodded slightly and thrust his hand
into his breast pocket.
"Instead of having to listen to me you'd better just look at this,"
said the Butterfly Man. "Because this can talk louder and say more in
a minute than I could between now and Judgment." And he held out
Louisa's dear fair whimsy of a curl; the sort of curl mothers tuck
behind a rosy ear of nights, and fathers lean to and kiss. "_I_
haven't got anything to say," said the Butterfly Man. "The best I can
do is just to wish for the children all that Louisa pretended to pull
out of her wishin' curl--and never got. I wish on it that all the kids
get a square deal--their chance to grow and play and be healthy and
happy and make good. And I wish again," said the Butterfly Man,
looking at his hearers with his steady eyes, "I wish that you folks,
every God-blessed one of you, will help to make that wish come true,
so far as lies in your power, from now until you die!" His funny,
twisty smile flashed out. He put the fairy tress back into his breast
pocket, made a casual gesture to imply that he had concluded his
wishes for the present; and walked off in the midst of the deepest
silence that had ever fallen upon an Appleboro audience.
But however willing we might be, we discovered that we could not do
things as quickly or as well as might be wished. People who wanted to
help blundered tactlessly. People who wanted to be helped had to be
investigated. People who ought to be helped were suspicious and
resentful, couldn't always understand or appreciate this sudden
interest in their affairs, were inclined to slam doors, or, when
cornered, to lie stolidly, with wooden faces and expressionless eyes.
Ensued an awkward pause, until the Butterfly Man came unobtrusively
forward, discovering in himself that amazing diplomacy inherent in the
Irish when they attend to anybody's business but their own. It was
amusing to watch the only democrat in a solidly Democratic county
infusing something of his own unabashed humanness into proceedings
which but for him might have sloughed into
Organized charity, carefully iced,
In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ.
Having done what was to be done, he went about his own affairs. Nobody
gushed over him, and he escaped that perilous popularity which is as a
millstone around a man's neck. Nevertheless the Butterfly Man had
stumbled upon the something divine in his fellows, and they
entertained for him a feeling that wasn't any more tangible, say, than
pure air, and no more emotional than pure water, but was just about as
vital and life-giving.
I was enchanted to have a whole county endorse my private judgment. I
rose so in my own estimation that I fancy I was a bit condescending to
St. Stanislaus! I was vain of the Butterfly Man's standing--folks
couldn't like him too much, to please me. And I was greatly interested
in the many invitations that poured in upon him, invitations that
ranged all the way from a birthday party at Michael Karski's to a
state dinner at the Eustis's.
From Michael's he came home gaily, a most outrageous posy pinned upon
him by way of honor, and whistling a Slavic love song so dismal that
one inferred love must be something like toothache for painfulness. He
had had such a bully time, he told me. Big Jan had been there with his
wife, an old friend of Michael's Katya. Although pale, and still
somewhat shaky as to legs, Jan had willingly enough shaken hands with
his conqueror.
It seemed quite right and natural that he and Jan should presently
enter into a sort of Dual Alliance. Meester Fleent was to be
Arbitrator Extraordinary. When he stipulated that thereafter Big Jan
was only to tackle a man his own size, everybody cheered madly, and
Mrs. Jan herself beamed red-eyed approval. She said her prayers to the
man who had trounced Jan into righteousness.
But from the Eustis dinner, to which he went with my mother, he came
home somber and heavy-hearted. Laurence was conspicuously absent; it
is true he was away, defending his first big case in another part of
the State. But Mr. George Inglesby was just as conspicuously present,
apparently on the best of all possible terms with himself, the world
in general, and Mrs. James Eustis in particular. His presence in that
house, in the face of persistent rumors, made at least two guests
uneasy. Mrs. Eustis showed him a most flattering attention. She was
deeply impressed by him. He had just aided her pet mission in
China--what he had given the heathen would have buttered my children's
bread for many a day. Also, he was all but lyrical in his voicing of
the shibboleth that Woman's Sphere is the Home, wherein she should be
adored, enshrined, and protected. Woman and the Home! All the innate
chivalry of Southern manhood--
I don't know that Louisa's Ma was ever enshrined or protected by the
chivalry of any kind of manhood, no, nor any of the mill women. Their
kind don't know the word. But Mrs. Eustis was, and she agreed with Mr.
Inglesby's noble sentiments.
"Parson, you should have heard him!" raved the Butterfly Man. "There's
a sort of man down here that's got chivalry like another sort's got
hookworm, and he makes the man that hasn't got either want to set up
an image to the great god Dam!
"You'd think being chivalrous would be enough for him, wouldn't you?"
continued the Butterfly Man, bitterly. "Nix! What's he been working
the heavy charity lay for, except that it's his turn to be a
misunderstood Christian? Doesn't charity cover a multitude of skins,
though? And doesn't it beat a jimmy when it comes to breaking into
society!"
Mary Virginia, he added in an altered voice, had been exquisite in a
frock all silver lace and shimmery stuffs like moonbeams, and with a
rope of pearls about her throat, and in her black hair. Appleboro
folks do not affect orchids, but Mary Virginia wore a huge cluster of
those exotics. She had been very gracious to the Butterfly Man and
Madame. But only for a brief bright minute had she been the Mary
Virginia they knew. All the rest of the evening she seemed to grow
statelier, colder, more dazzlingly and imperially regal. And her eyes
were like frozen sapphires under her level brows, and her mouth was
the red splendid bow of Pride.
Watching her, my mother was pained and puzzled; as for the Butterfly
Man, his heart went below zero. Those who loved Mary Virginia had
cause for painful reflections.
Blinded by her beauty, were we judging her by the light of affection,
instead of the colder light of reason? We couldn't approve of her
behavior to Laurence, nor was it easy to refrain from disapproval of
what appeared to be a tacit endurance of Inglesby's attention. She
couldn't plead ignorance of what was open enough to be town talk--the
man's shameless passion for herself, a passion he seemed to take
delight in flaunting. And she made no effort to explain; she seemed
deliberately to exclude her old friends from the confidence once so
freely given. She hadn't visited the Parish House since she had broken
her engagement.
And all the while the spring that hadn't time for the little concerns
of mortals went secretly about her immortal business of rejuvenation.
The blue that had been so timid and so tentative overspread the sky;
more robins came, and after them bluebirds and redbirds and
Peterbirds, and the impudent screaming robber jay that is so beautiful
and so bold, and flute-voiced vireos, and nuthatches, and the darling
busybody wren fussing about her house-building in the corners of our
piazzas. The first red flowers of the Japanese quince opened
flame-like on the bare brown bushes. When the bridal-wreath by the
gate saw that, she set industriously to work upon her own
wedding-gown. The yellow jessamine was full of waxy gold buds; and
long since those bold frontiersmen of the year, the Judas-trees, had
flaunted it in bravest scarlet, and the slim-legged scouts of the
pines showed shoulder-straps and cockades of new gay green above
gallant brown leggings.
One brand new morning the Butterfly Man called me aside and placed in
my hands a letter. The American Society of Natural History invited Mr.
John Flint, already a member of the Entomological Society of France, a
Fellow of the Entomological Society of London, and a member of the
greatest of Dutch and German Associations, to speak before it and its
guests, at a most notable meeting to be held in the Society's splendid
Museum in New York City. Not to mention two mere ex-Presidents, some
of the greatest scientific names of the Americas were included in that
list. And it was before such as these that my Butterfly Man was to
speak. Behold me rocking on my toes!
The first effect of this invitation was to please me immensely, I
being a puffed-up old man and carnal-minded at times; nor do I seem to
improve with age. The plaudits of the world, for anybody I admire and
love, ring most sweetly in my foolish ears. Now the honors he had
gotten from abroad were fine and good in their way, but this meant
that the value of his work was recognized and his position
established in his own country, in his own time. It meant a widening
of his horizon, association with clever men and women, ennobling
friendships to broaden his life. A just measure of appreciation from
the worthwhile sweetens toil and encourages genius. And yet--our eyes
met, and mine had to ask an old question.
"Would you better accept it?" I wondered.
"I can't afford not to," said he resolutely. "The time's come for me
to get out in the open, and I might just as well face the music, and
Do it Now. Risks? I hardly think so. I never hunted in couples,
remember--I always went by my lonesome and got away with it. Besides,
who's remembering Slippy? Nobody. He's drowned and dead and done with.
But, however, and nevertheless, and because, I shall go."
Again we looked at each other; and his look was untroubled.
"The pipe-dreams I've had about slipping back into little old New
York! But if anybody had told me I'd go back like I'm going, with the
sort of folks waiting for me that will be waiting now, I'd have passed
it up. Well, you never can tell, can you? And in a way it's funny--now
isn't it?"
"No, you never can tell," said I, soberly. "But I do not think it at
all funny. Quite the contrary." Suppose, oh, suppose, that after all
these years, when a well-earned success was in his grasp, it should
happen--I turned pale. He read my fear in my face and his smile might
have been borrowed from my mother's mouth.
"Don't you get cold feet, parson," he counseled kindly. "Be a sport!
Besides, it's all in the Game, you know."
"Is it?"
"Sure!"
"And worth while, John?"
He laughed. "Believe me! It's the worthwhilest thing under the sun to
sit in the Game, with a sport's interest in the hands dealt out,
taking yours as it comes to you, bluffing all you can when you've got
to, playing your cards for all they're worth when it's your turn. No
reneging. No squealing when you lose. No boasting how you did it when
you win. There's nothing in the whole universe so intensely and
immensely worth while as being _you_ and alive, with yourself the
whole kitty and the sky your limit! It's one great old Game, and I'm
for thanking the Big Dealer that I'da whack at playing it." And his
eyes snapped and his lean brown face flushed.
"And you are really willing to--to stake yourself now, my son?"
"Lord, parson, you ought to know! And you a dead ringer for the real
thing in a classy sport yourself!"
"My _dear_ son--!"
My dear son waved his fine hand, and chuckled in his red beard.
"Would _you_ back down if this was your call? Why, you're the sort
that would tackle the biggest noise in the ring, even if you knew
you'd be dragged out on your pantry in the first half of the first
round, if you thought you'd got holy orders to do it! If you saw me
getting jellyfish of the spine now, you'd curl up and die--wouldn't
you, honest Injun?" His eyes crinkled and he grinned so infectiously
that my fears subsided. I had an almost superstitious certainty that
nothing really evil could happen to a man who could grin like that.
Fate and fortune are perfectly powerless before the human being who
can meet them with the sword of a smile.
"Well," I admitted cautiously, "jellyfish of the spine must be an
unlovely ailment; not that I ever heard of it before."
"You're willing for me to go, then?"
"You'd go anyhow, would you not?"
"Forget it!" said he roughly. "If you think I'd do anything I knew
would cause you uneasiness, you've got another thing coming to you."
"Oh, go, for heaven's sake!" said I, sharply.
"All right. I'll go for heaven's sake," he agreed cheerfully. "And now
it's formally decided I'm to go, and talk, the question arises--what
they really want me to talk about? _I_ don't know how to deal in
glittering generalities. A chap on the trail of truth has got to let
generalities go by the board. The minute he tackles the living Little
People he chucks theories and bucks conditions.
"Suppose I tell the truth as I see it: that most so-called authorities
are like cats chasing their tails--because they accept theories that
have never been really proven, run after them, and so never get
anywhere? And that facts dug up in the open under the sunlight don't
always fit in with notions hatched out in libraries under the electric
light?
"Suppose I say that after they've run everything down to that plasma
they're so fond of beginning and ending with, there is still something
behind it all their theories can't explain away? Protoplasm doesn't
explain Life any more than the battery explains electricity. Instinct?
Evolution? The survival of the fittest? Well, nothing is tagged for
fair, and I'm more than willing to be shown. For the more I find out
from the living things themselves,--you can't get truth from death,
you've got to get it from life--the more self-evident it seems to me
that to exist at all insects must have arrived on the scene complete,
handfinished, with the union label of the Great Workshop on them by
way of a trade-mark."
"As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, one God, world
without end, Amen!" said I, smiling. I have never thought it necessary
to explain or excuse the Creator. God is; things are.
But he shook his head, wrinkling his forehead painfully. "I wish I
_knew_," said he, wistfully. "You're satisfied to believe, but I have
got to know. Oh, great Power behind Things, I want to know! I want to
_know_!"
Ah, but I also do most passionately wish to know! If, however, the
Insect has taught me anything in my lifelong study of it, it is to
recognize the Unknowable, to know there is that which I cannot hope to
know. But if under the law of its world, so different from ours and
yet so alike because so inevitable, the Insect must move in a fixed
circle within which it is safe, a circle whose very limitation
preserves it from error and thus from destruction, may not a like
fixed circle beyond which _we_ may not penetrate preserve us, too? Are
these mountain peaks of the Unknowable, the Impassable, which
encompass the skyline of our humanity, these heights so mysterious and
so unscalable, not rather bulwarks between man's pride and the abyss?
Something of this I said to the Butterfly Man, and he nodded, but did
not answer. He fell into a brown study; then plunged from the room
without further look or word and made for his own desk. I was not
afraid of what the Butterfly Man, fresh from little Appleboro's woods
and fields, would have to say to the scholars and scientists gathered
to hear him!
Apparently he was not either, for after he had gotten a few notes
together he wisely turned the whole affair over to that mysterious
Self that does our work and solves our problems for us. On the surface
he busied himself with a paper setting forth the many reasons why the
County of Appleboro should appropriate adequate funds for a common
dipping vat, and hurried this to Dabney, who was holding open a space
in the _Clarion_ for it. Then there were new breeding cages to be
made, for the supply of eggs and cocoons on hand would require
additional quarters, once they began to emerge.
By the Saturday he had finished all this; and as I had that afternoon
free we spent some beautiful hours with the microscope and slide
mounts. I completed, too, the long delayed drawings of some diurnal
wasp-moths and their larvæ. We worked until my mother interrupted us
with a summons to an early dinner, for Saturday evening belongs to the
confessional and I was shortly due at the church.
I left Flint with Madame and Miss Sally Ruth, who had run over after
the neighborly Appleboro wont with a plate of fresh sponge-cake and a
bowl of fragrant custard. Miss Sally Ruth is nothing if not generous,
but there are times when one could wish upon her the affliction of
dumbness. As I slipped into my cassock in the study, I could hear her
uplifted voice, a voice so insistent and so penetrating that it can
pierce closed doors and come through a ceiling:
"I declare to goodness, I don't know what to believe any more! She's
got money enough in her own right, hasn't she? For heaven's sake,
then, why should she marry for more money? But you never really know
people, do you? Why, folks say--"
I hurried out of the house and ran the short distance to the church. I
wished I hadn't heard; I wished Miss Sally Ruth, good as she is, would
sometimes hold her tongue. She will set folks by the ears in heaven
some of these days if she doesn't mend her ways before she gets there.
It must have been all of ten o'clock when I got back to the Parish
House. Madame had retired; John Flint's rooms were dark. The night
itself was dark, though in between the clouds that a brisk wind
pulleyhauled about the skies, one saw many stars.
Too tired to sleep, I sat beside my window and breathed the repose
that lay like a benediction upon the little city. I found myself
praying; for Mary Virginia, whom I loved and over whom I was sorely
troubled; for Laurence, even now walking such a road as I also once
had to travel with feet as young but no more steadfast; and then with
a thankfulness too deep for words, I thought a prayer for the
Butterfly Man. So thinking and so praying, with a glow in my heart
because of him, I closed my window, and crept into bed and into
sleep.
I awoke with a start. Somebody was in the room. There was an urgent
voice whispering my name, an urgent hand upon me. A pocket light
flashed, and in its pale circle appeared the face of John Flint.
"Get up!" said he in an intense whisper. "And come. Come!"
"Why, what in the name of heaven--"
"Don't make a row!" he snarled, and brought his face close. "Here--let
me help you. Heaven, man, how slow you are!" With furious haste he
forced my clothes upon me and even as I mechanically struggled to
adjust them he was hustling me toward the door, through the dark hall,
and down the stairs.
"Easy there--careful of that step!" he breathed in my ear, guiding me.
"But what is the matter?" I whispered back impatiently. I do not
relish mystery and I detest being led willynilly.
"In my rooms," said he briefly, and hustled me across the garden on
the double run, I with my teeth chattering, for I had been dragged out
of my sleep, and the night air was cold.
He fairly lifted me up his porch-steps, unlocked his door, and pushed
me inside. With the drawn shades and the flickering firelight, the
room was peaceful and pleasant enough. Then Kerry caught my astonished
gaze, for the dog stood statue-like beside the Morris chair, and when
I saw what Kerry guarded I crossed myself. Sunk into the chair, the
Butterfly Man's old gray overcoat partly around her, was Mary
Virginia.
At my involuntary exclamation she raised her head and regarded me. A
great sigh welled from her bosom and I could see her eyes dilate and
her lips quiver.
"Padre, Padre!" Down went her head, and she began to cry childishly,
with sobs.
I watched her helplessly, too bewildered to speak. But the other man's
face was the face of one crucified. I saw his eyes, and something I
had been all too blind to rushed upon me overwhelmingly. This, then,
was what had driven him forth for a time, this was what had left its
indelible imprint upon him! He had hung upon his cross and I had not
known. Oh, Butterfly Man, I had not known!
"She'll be able to talk to you in a few minutes now, parson." He was
so perfectly unconscious of himself that he had no idea he had just
made mute confession. He added, doubtfully: "She said she had to come
to you, about something--I don't know what. It's up to you to find
out--she's got to talk to you, parson."
"But--I wanted to talk to you, Padre. That's why I--ran away from home
in the middle of the night." She sat suddenly erect. "I just couldn't
stand things, any more--by myself--"
Gone was the fine lady, the great beauty, the proud jilt who had
broken Laurence's heart and maddened and enslaved Inglesby. Here was
only a piteous child with eyes heavy from weeping, with a pale and sad
face and drooping childish lips. And yet she was so dear and so
lovely, for all her reddened eyelids and her reddened little nose,
that one could have wept with her. The Butterfly Man, with an intake
of breath, stood up.
"I shall leave you with the Padre now," he said evenly, "to tell him
what you wanted to tell him. Father, understand: there's something
rotten wrong, as I've been telling you all along. Now she's got to
tell you what it is and all about it. Everything. Whether she likes to
or not, and no matter what it is, she's got to tell you. You
understand that, Mary Virginia?"
She fixed him with a glance that had in it something hostile and
oblique. Even with those dearest of women whom I adore, there are
moments when I have the impression that they have, so to speak, their
ears laid back flat, and I experience what I may justly term cat-fear.
I felt it then.
"Oh, don't have too much consideration for my feelings, Mr. Flint!"
said she, with that oblique and baffling glance, and the smile Old
Fitz once likened to the Curve in the Cat's Tail. "Indeed, why should
you go? Why don't you stay and find out _why_ I wanted to run to the
Padre--to beg him to find some way to help me, since I can't fall like
a plum into Mr. Inglesby's hand when Mr. Hunter shakes the Eustis
family tree!"
His breath came whistlingly between his teeth.
"Parson! You hear?" he slapped his leg with his open palm. "Oh, I knew
it, I knew it!" And he turned upon her a kindling glance:
"I knew all along it was never in you to be anything but true!" said
the Butterfly Man.