ST. STANISLAUS CROOKS HIS ELBOW
Mary Virginia's voice trailed into silence and she sank back into her
chair, staring somberly at the fire. Her face marked with tears, the
long braids of her hair over her shoulders, she looked so like a sad
and chidden child that the piteousness of her would have moved and
melted harder hearts than ours.
The Butterfly Man had listened without an interruption. He sat leaning
slightly forward, knees crossed, the left arm folded to support the
elbow of the right, and his chin in his cupped right hand. His eyes
had the piercing clear directness of an eagle's; they burned with an
unwavering pale flame. Shrewder far than I, he saw the great advantage
of knowing the worst, of at last thoroughly understanding Hunter and
Inglesby and the motives which moved them. He had, too, a certain
tolerance. These two had merely acted according to their lights; he
had not expected any more or less, therefore he was not surprised now
into an undue condemnation.
But the fighting instinct rose rampant in me. My hands are De Rancé
hands, the hands of soldiers as well as of priests, and they itched
for a weapon, preferably a sword. Horrified and astonished,
suffocating with anger, I had no word at command to comfort this
victim of abominable cunning. Indeed, what could I say; what could I
do? I looked helplessly at the Butterfly Man, and the stronger man
looked back at me, gravely and impassively.
"But what is to be done?" I groaned.
He seemed to know, for he said at once:
"Call Madame. Tell her to bring some extra wraps. I am going to take
Mary Virginia home, and Madame will go with us."
"But why shouldn't she stay here?"
"Because she'd better be at home to-morrow morning, parson. We're not
supposed to know anything of her affairs, and I'd rather she didn't
appear at the Parish House. Also, she needs sleep right now more than
she needs anything else, and one sleeps better in one's own bed.
Madame will see that she goes to hers and stays there."
I was perfectly willing to commit the affair into John Flint's hands.
But Mary Virginia demurred.
"No. I want to stay here! I don't want to go home, Padre."
Flint shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said mildly, "but I'm going to
take you home." He looked so inexorable that Mary Virginia shrugged
her shoulders.
"Oh, all right, Mr. Flint, I'll go," said she. "What difference does
it make? I'll even go to bed--as I'm told." And she added in a tone of
indescribable bitterness: "I have read that men lie down and sleep
peacefully the night before they are hanged. Well, I suppose they
could: they hadn't anything but death to face on the morrow, but I--"
and she caught her breath.
"Why not take it for granted to-night that you'll be looked after
to-morrow?" suggested Flint. "Mary Virginia, nothing's ever so bad as
it's going to be."
"Oh, yes, I'll be looked after to-morrow!" said she, bitingly. "Mr.
Inglesby will see to that!" She covered her face with her hands.
"Oh, I don't know!" The Butterfly Man shut his mouth on the words like
a knife. "Inglesby may think he's going to, but somehow _I_ think he
won't."
"Ah!" said she scornfully. "Perhaps _you'll_ be able to stop him?"
"Perhaps," he agreed. "If I don't, somebody or something else will.
It's very unlucky to be too lucky too long. You see, everybody's got
to get what's coming to them, and it generally comes hardest when
they've tied themselves up to the notion they're It. Somehow I fancy
Mr. Inglesby's due to come considerable of a cropper around about
now."
"Between now and to-morrow night?" she wondered, with sad contempt.
"Why not? Anything can happen between a night and a night." He looked
at her with shrewd appreciation: "You have taken yourself so
seriously," said he, "that you've pretty nearly muddled yourself into
being tragic. Those fellows knew who they were dealing with when they
tackled _you_. They could bet the limit you'd never tell. So long as
you didn't tell, so long as they had nobody but you to deal with, they
had you where they wanted you. But now maybe things might happen that
haven't been printed in the program."
"What things?" she mocked somberly.
"I don't know, yet," he admitted, "But I do know there is always a
way out of everything except the grave. The thing is to find the right
way. That's up to the Padre and me. Parson, would you mind going after
Madame now, please? The sooner we go the better."
Have I not said my mother is the most wonderful of women? I waked her
in the small hours with the startling information that Mary Virginia
was downstairs in John Flint's workroom, and that she herself must
dress and accompany her home. And my mother, though she looked her
stark bewilderment, plagued me with no questions.
"She is in great trouble, and she needs you. Hurry."
Madame slid out of her bed and reached for her neatly folded garments.
"Wait in the hall, Armand; I will be with you in ten minutes." And she
was, wrapped and hatted.
Once in the workroom, she cast a deep and searching woman-glance at
the pale girl in the chair. Her face was so sweet with motherliness
and love and pity, and that profound comprehension the best women show
to each other, that I felt my throat contract. Gathered into Madame's
embrace, Mary Virginia clung to her old friend dumbly. Madame had but
one question:
"My child, have you told John Flint and my son what this trouble of
yours is?"
"Yes; I had to, I had to!"
"Thank the good God for that!" said my mother piously. "Now we will go
home, dearest, and you can sleep in peace--you have nothing more to
worry about!"
The clasp of the comforting arms, the sweet serenity of the mild eyes,
and above all the little lady's perfect confidence, aroused Mary
Virginia out of her torpor. She felt that she no longer stood alone
at the mercy of the merciless. Bundled in the wraps my mother had
provided, she paused at the door.
"I think you will forgive me any trouble I may cause you, because I am
sure all of you love me. And whatever comes, I will be brave enough to
face and to bear it. Padre, dear Padre, you understand, don't you?"
"My child, my darling child, I understand."
"I'll be back in half an hour, parson," the Butterfly Man remarked
meaningly. Then the three melted into the night.
Left alone, I was far from sharing Madame's simple faith in our
ability to untangle this miserable snarl. I knew now the temper of the
men we had to deal with. I also understood that in cases like this the
Southern trigger-finger is none too steady. Seen from a certain point
of view, if ever men deserved an unconditional and thorough killing,
these two did. Yet this homicidal specter turned me cold, for Mary
Virginia's sake.
For Eustis himself I could see nothing but ruin ahead, but I wished
passionately to help the dear girl who had come to me in her stress.
But what was one to do? How should one act?
I sat there dismally enough, my chin sunk upon my breast; for as a
plotter, a planner, a conspirator, I am a particularly hopeless
failure. I have no sense of intrigue, and the bare idea of plotting
reduces me to stupefaction.
Perhaps because I am a priest by instinct, I always discover in myself
the instant need of prayer when confronted by the unusual and the
difficult. I have prayed over seemingly hopeless problems in my time
and I think I have been led to a clear solution of many of them.
Major Cartwright insists that this is merely because I bring desire
and will to bear upon a given point and so release an irresistible
natural force. He says prayer is as much a science as, say,
mathematics--such and such its units, and such and such its fixed
results. Well, maybe so. All I know is that when I beseech aid I think
I receive it.
So I ran over to the church and let myself in. I felt that at least
for a few minutes I must kneel before the altar and implore help for
her who was like my own child to me.
The empty church was quite black save for the sanctuary lamp and the
little red votive lights burning before the statues of the saints and
of our Lady. All these many little lights only cast the veriest ghosts
of brightness upon the darkness, but the white altar was revealed by
the larger glow of the sanctuary lamp. There it shone with a mild and
pure luster, unfailing, calm, steady, burning through the night, the
sign and symbol of that light of Love which cannot fail, but burns and
burns and burns forever and forever before an altar that is the
infinite universe itself.
My little-faith, my ready-to-halt faith, raised its head above the
encompassing waters; the wild turmoil and torment died away: ... after
the earthquake and the fire and the whirlwind, the still small
voice....
Then I, to whom life at best can only be working and waiting, was for
a space able to pray for her to whom life should be "_as the light of
the morning, when the sun riseth, even a clear morning without clouds;
and as the tender grass by clear shining after rain_." I remembered
her as she had first come to me, a little loving child to fill my
empty heart, the poor clay heart that cannot even hold fast to the
love of God but by these frail all-powerful ties of simple human
affection. And when I thought of her now, so young and so sore-beset,
a bird caught in the snare of the fowler, I beat my breast for pity
and for grief. Oh, how should I help her, how!
I turned my head, and there stood St. Stanislaus upon his pedestal,
the memorial lights flickering upon his long robe, his smooth boy's
face, his sheaf of lilies. I regarded him rather absently. Something
stirred in my consciousness; something I always had to remember in
connection with St. Stanislaus....
Across my mind as across a screen flashed a series of pictures--a
mangled tramp carried into the Parish House, my mother watching with a
concerned and shocked face, and the hall mud-stained by the trampling
feet of the clumsy bearers; the shaggy Poles, caps off, turning over
to me as to high authority the heavy oilskin package they had found; I
opening that package later and standing amazed and startled before its
contents; and that same package, hidden under my cassock, carried over
to the church and placed for security and secrecy in the keeping of
the little saint. Well, that had been quite right; there had been
nothing else to do; one had to be secret and careful when one had in
one's keeping the tools of that notorious burglar, Slippy McGee.
Small wonder that I did not connect those pictures with the fate of
Mary Virginia Eustis! No, I did not immediately grasp their tremendous
bearing upon the petitions I was repeating. And all the while, with a
dull insistence, an enraging persistence, they flickered before the
eyes of my memory--the Poles, the screaming cursing tramp;
Westmoreland pondering aloud as to why he had been permitted to save
so apparently worthless a life; and the little saint hiding from the
eyes of men all traces of lost Slippy McGee. Nor, more curiously yet,
did I connect them with the Butterfly Man. The Butterfly Man was
somebody else altogether, another and a different person, a man of
whom even one's secretest thoughts were admiring and respectful. He
was so far removed from the very shadow of such things as these, that
it did one's conscience a sort of violence to think of him in
connection with them. I tried to dismiss the memories from my mind. I
wished to concentrate wholly upon the problem of Mary Virginia.
And then that mysterious, hidden self-under-self that lives in us far,
far beneath thought and instinct and conscience and heredity and even
consciousness itself, rose to the surface with a message:
_Slippy McGee had been the greatest cracksman in all America...._
"Honest to God, skypilot, I can open any box made, easy as easy!" ...
_And even as his tools were hidden in St. Stanislaus, Slippy McGee
himself was hidden in John Flint_.
Recoiling, I clung to the altar railing. What dreadful thing was I
contemplating, what fearful temptation was assailing me, here under
the light of the sanctuary lamp? I looked reproachfully at St.
Stanislaus, as if that seraphic youth had betrayed my confidence. I
suspected him of being too anxious to rid himself of the ambiguous
trust imposed upon him without so much as a by-your-leave. Perhaps he
was secretly irked at the use to which his painted semblance had been
put, and seized this first opportunity to extricate himself from a
position in which the boldest saint of them all might well hesitate to
find himself.
I began to consider John Flint as he was, the work he had
accomplished, the splendid structure of that life slowly and
laboriously made over and lived so cleanly in the light of day. Not
only had that old evil personality been sloughed off like a larval
skin; he had come forth from it another creature, a being lovable,
wise, tender, full of charm. Even the hint of melancholy that was
becoming more and more a part of him endeared him to others, for the
broader and brighter the light into which he was steadily mounting,
the more marked and touching was this softening shadow.
And I who had been the _accoucheur_ of his genius, I who had watched
and prayed and ministered beside the cradle of his growth, was I of
all men to threaten his overthrow? Alas, what madness was upon me that
I was evoking before the very altar the grim ghost of Slippy McGee?
There passed before me in procession the face of Laurence with all its
boyish bloom stripped from it and the glory of its youth vanished; and
the bowed and humbled head of James Eustis, one of the large and noble
souls of this world; and the innocent beauty of Mary Virginia,
wistfully appealing; followed them the beautiful ruthless face of
Hunter, dazzlingly blonde, gold-haired as Baldur; and the piglike eyes
and heavy jowl of Inglesby, brutally dominant; and then the dear
whimsical visage of the Butterfly Man himself. They passed; and I fell
to praying, with a sort of still desperation, for all of us.
And all the while the steady and rosy light of the sanctuary lamp fell
upon me, and the little lights flickered before the silent saints. I
took myself in hand, forced myself into self-control. I did not
minimize one risk nor slur one danger. I knew exactly what was at
stake. And having done this, I decided upon my course:
"If he has thought of this himself, then I will help. But if he has
not, I will not suggest it, no, no matter what happens."
I told myself I would say ten more Hailmarys, and I said them, with an
Ourfather at the end. And without further praying I got to my feet.
The church seemed to be full of breathless whisperings, as if it
watched and listened while I moved over to Stanislaus and tipped him
backward. He is a rather heavy and sizable boy for all his saintly
slimness. Up in the hollow inside, in the crook of his arm, lay the
oilskin package he had kept these long years through, waiting for
to-night.
"If ever you prayed for mortals in peril, pray, for the love of God,
for all of us this night!" I told him. And with the package in a fold
of my cassock I went back across the dark garden and let myself into
the Butterfly Man's rooms, and was hardly inside the door when he
himself returned.
"Didn't meet a soul. And they got in without waking anybody in the
house," said he complacently, rubbing his hands before the fire. "I
waited until they showed a light upstairs. She's all right, now
Madame's with her."
"Have you--have you thought of anything--any way, John?" I quavered,
and wondered if he heard my heart dunting against my ribs.
"Why, I've thought that she's got until to-morrow night to come to
terms," said he, and turned to face me. "And she can't accept them.
Nobody could--that is, not a girl like her. As for Inglesby, he might
push Eustis under, but he wouldn't have been so cocksure of _her_ if
it wasn't for those letters. She's been afraid of what might happen if
Eustis or Laurence found out about them--somebody ran the risk of
being put to bed with a shovel. There's where they had her. A bit
unbearable to think of, isn't it?" He spoke so mildly that I looked up
with astonishment and some disappointment.
"Why," said I, ruefully, "if that's as far as you've gone, we are
still at the starting point."
"No need to go farther and fare worse, parson," said he, equably. "I
saw that the first minute I could see anything but red. Yet do you
know, when she was telling us about it, I thought like a fool of
everything but the right thing, from sandbagging and shanghaing
Inglesby, down to holding up Hunter with an automatic?
"When I got my reason on straight, I went back to the starting
point--the letters, parson, the letter in the safe in Hunter's office.
Given the letters she'd be free--the one thing Inglesby doesn't want
to happen. We've got to have those letters."
My mouth was parched as with fever and I saw him through a blur.
"I don't know," he went on, "if you agree with me, parson, but to my
mind the best way to fight the devil is with fire. What did you do
with those tools?"
"_Tools?_" in a dry whisper. "_Tools_, John?"
"Tools. Kit. Layout. You had them. Could you put your hand on them in
a hurry to-night? Don't stare so, man! And for the Lord's love don't
you tell me you destroyed them! What did you do with my tools?"
The four winds roared in my ears, and one lifted the hair on my scalp,
as if the Rider on the Pale Horse had passed by. By way of reply I
placed a heavy package on the table before him, slumped into my chair,
and covered my face with my hands. Oh, Stanislaus, little saint, what
had we done between us to-night to the Butterfly Man?
When I looked up again he had risen. With his hands gripping the edge
of the table until the knuckles showed white, and his neck stretched
out, he was staring with all his eyes. A low whistle escaped him.
Wonder, incredulity, a sort of ironic amusement, and a growing,
iron-jawed determination, expressed themselves in his changing
countenance. Once or twice he wet his lips and swallowed. Then he sat
down again, deliberately, and fixed upon me a long and somewhat
disconcerting stare, as if he were rearranging and tabulating his
estimate of Father Armand Jean De Rancé. He took his head in his
hands, and with slitted eyes considered the immediate course of action
to which the possession of that package committed him. One surmised
that he was weighing and providing for every possible contingency.
Tentatively he spread out his fine hands, palms uppermost, and flexed
them; then, turning them, he laid them flat upon the table and again
spread out his fingers. They were notable hands--shapely, supple,
strong as steel, the thin-skinned fingertips as delicate and sensitive
of touch as the antennæ he was used to handling. They were even more
capable than of old, because of the exquisite work they had been
trained to accomplish, work to which only the most skilled lapidary's
is comparable. Apparently satisfied, he drew the bundle toward him.
Before he opened it he lifted those cool, blue, and ironic eyes to
mine; and I am sure I was by far the paler and more shaken of the two.
"They were in the crook of St. Stanislaus' arm." I tried to keep my
voice steady. "I was praying--when you were gone." Somehow, I did not
find it easy to explain to him. "And ... I remembered.... And I
brought them with me ... so in case you also ... remembered--" I could
go no further. I broke into a sort of groaning cry: "Oh, John, John!
My son, my son!"
"Steady!" said he. "Of course you remembered, parson. It's the only
way. Didn't I tell her there's always a way out? Well, here it is!"
His funny, twisted smile came to his lips; it twisted the heart in my
breast. No thought of himself, of what this thing might mean to him,
seemed to cross his mind.
"I prayed," said I, almost sobbing, "I prayed. And, John, there stood
St. Stanislaus--" I stopped again, choking.
He nodded, understandingly. He was methodically spreading out the not
unbeautiful instruments. And as he picked them up one by one, handling
them with his strong and expert fingers and testing each with a
hawk-eyed scrutiny, a most curious and subtle change stole over the
Butterfly Man.
I felt as if I were witnessing the evocation of something superhuman.
Horrified and fascinated, I saw what might be called the apotheosis
of Slippy McGee, so far above him was it, come back and subtly and
awfully blend with my scientist. It was as if two strong and powerful
individualities had deliberately joined forces to forge a more vital
being than either, since the training, knowledge, skill and intellect
of both would be his to command. If such a man as _this_ ever stepped
over the deadline he would not be merely "the slickest cracksman in
America"; he would be one of the master criminals of the earth. I
fancy he must have felt this intoxicating new access of power, for
there emanated from him something of a fierce and exalted delight. A
potentiality, as yet neither good nor evil, he suggested a spiritual
and physical dynamo.
He gave a tigerish purr of pleasure over the tools, handling them with
the fingers of the artist and admiring them with the eyes of the
connoisseur. "The best I could get. All made to order. Tested blue
steel. I never kicked at the price, and you wouldn't believe me if I
told you what this layout cost in cold cash. But they paid. Good stuff
always pays in the long run. It was lucky I winded the cops on that
last job, or I'd have had to leave them. As it was, I just had time to
grab them up before I hit the trail for the skyline. They don't need
anything but a little rubbing--a saint's elbow must be a snug berth. I
wish I had some juice, though."
"Juice?"
"Nitroglycerine," very gently, as to a child. "It does not make very
much noise and it saves time when you're in a hurry--as you generally
are, in this business," he smiled at me quizzically. "Not that one
can't get along without it." The swift fingers paused for a fraction
of a second to give a steel drill an affectionate pat. "I used to know
one of the best ever, who never used anything but a particular drill,
a pet bit, and his ear. Somebody snitched though, so the last I heard
of him he was doing a twenty-year stretch. Pity, too. He was an artist
in his line, that fellow. And his taste in neckties I have never seen
equaled." The Butterfly Man's voice, evenly pitched and pleasantly
modulated, a cultivated voice, was quite casual.
He gathered his tools together and replaced them in the old worn case.
"Wonder if that safe is a side-bolt?" he mused. "Most likely. I dare
say it's only the average combination. A one-armed yegg could open
most of the boxes in this town with a tin button-hook. Anyhow, it
would have to be a new-laid lock _I_ couldn't open. If he's left the
letters in the safe we're all right--so here's hoping he has. I
certainly don't want to go to his room unless I have to. Hunter's not
the sort to sit on his hands, and I'm not feeling what you'd call real
amiable."
A glance at his face, with little glinting devil-lights shining far
back in his eyes, set me to babbling:
"Oh, no, no, no, no, that would never do! God forbid that you should
go to his rooms! He must have left them in the safe! He had to leave
them in the safe!"
"Sure he's left them in the safe: why shouldn't he?" he made light of
my palpable fears. Slipping into his gray overcoat, he pulled on his
felt hat, thrust his hands into his wellworn dogskin gloves, and
picked up the package. Nobody in the world ever looked less like a
criminal than this brown-faced, keen-eyed man with his pleasant
bearing. Why, this was John Flint, the kindly bug-hunter all Appleboro
loved, "that good and kind and Christian man, our brother John Flint,
sometimes known as the Butterfly Man."
"Now, don't you worry any at all, parson," he was saying. "There's
nothing to be afraid of. I'll take care of myself, and I'll get those
letters if they're in existence. I've got to get them. What else was I
born for, I'd like to know?"
The question caught me like a lash across the face.
"You were born," I said violently, "to win an honored name, to do a
work of inestimable value. And you are deliberately and quixotically
risking it, and I allow you to risk it, because a girl's happiness
hangs in the balance! If you are detected it means your own ruin, for
you could never explain away those tools. Yes! You are facing possible
ruin and disgrace. You might have to give up your work for years--have
you considered that? Oh, John Flint, stop a moment, and reflect! There
is nothing in this for you, John, nothing but danger. No, there's
nothing in it for you, except--"
He held up his hand, with a gesture of dignity and reproach.
"--except that I get my big chance to step in and save the girl I
happen to love, from persecution and wretchedness, if not worse," said
he simply. "If I can do that, what the devil does it matter what
happens to _me_? You talk about name and career! Man, man, what could
anything be worth to me if I had to know she was unhappy?"
The tides of emotion rushed over him and flooded his face into a
shining-eyed passion nakedly unashamed and beautiful. And I had
thought him casual, carelessly accepting a risk!
"Parson," he wondered, "didn't you _know_? No, I suppose it wouldn't
occur to anybody that a man of my sort should love a girl of hers. But
I do. I think I did the first time I ever laid eyes on her, and she a
girl-kid in a red jacket, with curls about her shoulders and a face
like a little new rose in the morning. Remember her eyes, parson, how
blue they were? And how she looked at me, so friendly--_me_, mind you,
as I was! And she handed me a Catocala moth, and she gave me Kerry.
'You're such a good man, Mr. Flint!' says she, and by God, she meant
it! Little Mary Virginia! And she got fast hold of something in me
that was never anybody's but hers, that couldn't ever belong to
anybody but her, no, not if I lived for a thousand years and had the
pick of the earth.
"It wasn't until she came back, though, that I knew I belonged to her
who could never belong to me. If I was dead at one end of the world
and she dead at the other, we couldn't be any farther apart than life
has put us two who can see and speak to each other every day!"
"And yet--" he looked at me now and laughed boyishly, "and yet it
isn't for Mayne, that she loves, it isn't for you, nor Eustis, nor any
man but me alone to help her, by being just what I am and what I have
been! Risks? Fail her? _I?_ I couldn't fail her. I'll get those
letters for her to-night, if Hunter has hidden them in the beam of his
eye!" He turned to me with a sudden white glare of ferocity that
appalled me. "I could kill him with my hands," said he, with a quiet
cold deadliness to chill one's marrow, "and Inglesby after him, for
what they've made her endure! When I think of to-night--that brute
daring to touch _her_ with his swine's mouth--I--I--"
His face was convulsed; but after a moment's fierce struggle the
disciplined spirit conquered.
"No, there's been enough trouble for her without that, so they're safe
from me, the both of them. I wouldn't do anything to imperil her
happiness to save my own life. She was born to be happy--and she's
going to have her chance. _I'll_ see to that, Mary Virginia!"
The man seemed to grow, to expand, to tower giant-like before me. Next
to the white heat of this lava-flow of pure feeling, all other loves
lavished upon Mary Virginia during her fortunate life seemed dwarfed
and petty. Beside it Inglesby's furious desire shrunk into a loathsome
thing, small and crawling; and my own affection was only an old
priest's; and even the strong and faithful love of Laurence appeared
pale and boyish in the light of this majestic passion which gave all
and in return asked only the right to serve and to save.
"_Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm; for
love is strong as death_ ...
"_Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if
a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would
utterly be contemned_."
Trying desperately to cling to such rags and tatters of common sense
as I could lay hold upon:
"There is your duty to yourself," I managed to say. "Yes, yes, one
owes a great duty to oneself and one's work, John. You are risking too
much--name, friends, honor, work, freedom. For God's sake, John, do
not underestimate the danger. You have not had time to consider it."
"Ho! Listen to the parson preaching self-interest!" he mocked. "He's a
fine one to do that--at this hour of his life!"
"I tell you you endanger everything," I insisted. I might bring that
package, but at least he shouldn't rush upon the knife unwarned.
"I know that--I'm no fool. And _I_ tell _you_ it's worth while.
To-night makes me and my whole life worth while, the good and the bad
of it together. Risks? I'll take all that's coming. You stay here and
say some prayers for me, parson, if it makes you feel any better. As
for me, I'm off."
At that I lost my every last shred of commonplace everyday sanity, and
let myself swing without further reserve into the wild current of the
night.
"Oh, very well!" said I shrilly. "You will take chances, you will run
risks, _hein?_ My friend, you do not stir out of this house this night
without _me_!" He stared, as well he might, but I folded my arms and
stared back. Let him leave me, bent on such an errand? I to sit at
home idly, awaiting the issue, whatever it might be?
"I mean it, John Flint. I am going with you. Was it not I, then, who
saved those tools and had them ready to your hand? Whatever happens to
you now happens to me as well. It is quite useless for you to argue,
to scowl, to grind the teeth, to swear like that. And it will be
dangerous to try to trick me: I am going!"
For he was protesting, violently and profanely. His profanity was so
sincere, so earnest, so heartfelt, that it mounted into heights of
real eloquence. Also, he did everything but knock me down and lock me
indoors.
"Whatever happens to you happens to me," I repeated doggedly, and I
was not to be moved. I had a hazy notion that somehow my being with
him might protect him in case of any untoward happening, and minimize
his risks.
I ran into his bedroom and clapped his best hat on my head, leaving my
biretta on his bed; and I put on his new dark overcoat over my
cassock. Both the borrowed garments were too big for me, the hat
coming down over my ears, the coat-sleeves over my hands. I being as
thin as a peeled willow-wand, and the clothes hanging upon me as on a
clothes-rack, I dare say I cut a sad and ludicrous figure enough.
Flint, standing watching me with his burglarious bundle under his arm,
gave an irrepressible chuckle and his eyes crinkled.
"Parson," said he solemnly, "I've seen all sorts and sizes and colors
and conditions of crooks, up and down the line, in my time and
generation, but take it from me you're a libel and an outrage on the
whole profession. Why, you crazy he-angel, you'd break their hearts
just to look at you!" And he grinned. At a moment like that, he
grinned, with a sort of gay and light-hearted _diablerie_. They are a
baffling and inexplicable folk, the Irish. I suppose God loves the
Irish because He doesn't really know how else to take them.
"It will break my own heart, and possibly my mother's and Mary
Virginia's will break to keep it company, if anything evil happens to
you this night," said I, severely. I was in no grinning humor, me.
He reached over and carefully buttoned, with one hand, the too-big
collar about my throat. For a moment, with that odd, little-boy
gesture of his, he held on to my sleeve. He looked down at me; and his
eyes grew wide, his face melted into a whimsical tenderness.
"When you get to heaven, parson, you'll keep them all busy a hundred
years and a day trying to cut and make a suit of sky clothes big
enough to fit your real measure," said he, irrelevantly. "You real
thing in holy sports, come on, since you've got to!" With that he blew
out the light, and we stepped into the cold and windy night. It was
ten minutes after three.
Armed with bottle-belt, knapsack, and net, many a happy night had I
gone forth with the Butterfly Man a-hunting for such as we might find
of our chosen prey. Armed now with nothing more nor less formidable
than the black rosary upon which my hand shut tightly, I, Armand De
Rancé, priest and gentleman, walked forth with Slippy McGee in those
hours when deep sleep falls upon the spirit of man, for to aid and
encourage and abet and assist and connive at, nothing more nor less
than burglary.