To reach the interesting age of five
When—"
"That's just about as much as I can stand of that, my son!" said I, hastily.
"The parson's got an awful tender heart," the Butterfly Man explained and Laurence was graceless enough to grin.
"Well, as I was about to say: I happened to think Inglesby would be brute enough to choke out my pet column, or make folks pay for it, and things like that haven't got any business to have price tags on 'em. So I got to thinking of you. You're young and tender; also a college man; and you're itching to wash and iron Appleboro—" he took off his glasses and wiped them delicately and deliberately.
"Did you also get to thinking," said Laurence, crisply, "that I'm just about making my salt at present, and still you're suggesting that I tie a dead old newspaper about my neck and jump overboard? One might fancy you hankered to add my obituary to your collection!" he finished with a touch of tartness.
The Butterfly Man smiled ever so gently.
"The Clarion is the county paper," he explained patiently. "It was here first. It's been here a long time, and people are used to it. It knows by heart how they think and feel and how they want to be told they think and feel. And you ought to know Carolina people when it comes right down to prying them loose from something they're used to!" He paused, to let that sink in.
"There's no reason why the Clarion should keep on being a dead one, is there? There's plenty room for a live daily right here and now, if it was run right. Why, this town's blue-molded for a live paper! Look here: You go buy the Clarion. It won't cost you much. Believe me, you'll find it mighty handy—power of the press, all the usual guff, you know! I sha'n't have to worry about obituaries, but I bet you dollars to doughnuts some people will wake up some morning worrying a whole lot about editorials. Mayne—people like to think they think what they think themselves. They don't. They think what their home newspapers tell them to think. And this is your great big chance to get the town ear and shout into it good and loud."
A week or so later Mayne & Son surprised Appleboro by purchasing the moribund Clarion. They didn't have to go into debt for it, either. They got it for an absurdly low sum, although folks said, with sniffs, that anything paid for that rag was too much.
"Nevertheless," said the Butterfly Man to me, complacently, "that's the little jimmy that's going to grow up and crack some fat cribs. Watch it grow!"
I watched; but, like most others, I was rather doubtful. It was true that the Clarion immediately showed signs of reviving life. And that Jim Dabney, a college friend from upstate, whom Laurence had induced to accept the rather precarious position of editor and manager, wrote pleasantly as well as pungently, and so set us all to talking.
I suppose it was because it really had something to say, and that something very pertinent to our local interests and affairs, that we learned and liked to quote the Clarion. It made a neat appearance in new black type, and this pleased us. It had, too, a newer, clearer, louder note, which made itself heard over the whole county. The county merchants and farmers began once more to advertise in its pages, as John Flint, who watched it jealously—feeling responsible for Laurence's purchase of it—was happy to point out.
One thing, too, became more and more evident. The women were behind the Clarion in a solid phalanx. They knew it meant for them a voice which spoke articulately and publicly, an insistent voice which must be answered. It noticed every Mothers' Meeting, Dorcas activity, Ladies' Aid, Altar Guild, temperance gathering; spoke respectfully of the suffragists and hopefully of the "public-spirited women" of the new Civic League. And never, never, never omitted nor misplaced nor misspelled a name! The boy from up-state saw to that. He was wily as the serpent and simple as the dove. Over the local page appeared daily:
After awhile we took him at his word and tried to ... and things began to happen in Appleboro.
"Here," said the Butterfly Man to me, "is where the bluejay begins to get his."
For in most Appleboro houses insistent women were asking harassed and embarrassed men certain questions concerning certain things which ladies hadn't been supposed to know anything about, much less worry their heads over, since the state was a state. So determined were the women to have these questions fairly answered that they presently asked them in cold print, on the front page of the town paper. And Laurence told them. He had appalling lists and figures and names and dates. The "chiel among us takin' notes" printed them. Dabney's editorial comments were barbed.
Now there are mills in the South which do obey the state laws and regulations as to hours, working conditions, wages, sanitation, safety appliances, child labor. But there are others which do not. Ours notoriously didn't.
John Flint and my mother had had many a conference about deplorable cases which both knew, but were powerless to change. The best they had been able to do was to tabulate such cases, with names and facts and dates, but precious little had been accomplished for the welfare of the mill people, for those who might have helped had been too busy, or perhaps unwilling, to listen or to act.
But, as Flint insisted, the new Civic League was ready and ripe to hear now what Madame had to tell. At one meeting, therefore, she took the floor and told them. When she had finished they named a committee to investigate mill conditions in Appleboro.
That work was done with a painstaking thoroughness, and the committee's final report was very unpleasant reading. But the names signed to it were so unassailable, the facts so incontrovertible, that Dabney thought best to print it in full, and later to issue it in pamphlet form. It has become a classic for this sort of thing now, and it is always quoted when similar investigations are necessary elsewhere.
It was the Butterfly Man who had taken that report and had rewritten and revised it, and clothed it with a terrible earnestness and force. Its plain words were alive. It seemed to me, when I read them that I heard ... a bluejay's ribald screech ... and the heart-rending and piercing cries of a little brown motherbird whose nest had been ravaged and destroyed.
Appleboro gasped, and sat up, and rubbed its eyes. That such things could be occurring here, in this pleasant little place, in the shadow of their churches, within reach of their homes! No one dared to even question the truth of that report, however, and it went before the Grand Jury intact. The Grand Jury very promptly called Mr. Inglesby before it. They were polite to him, of course, but they did manage to ask him some very unpleasant and rather personal questions, and they did manage to impress upon him that certain things mentioned in the Civic League's report must not be allowed to reoccur. One juror—he was a planter—had even had the temerity to say out loud the ugly word "penetentiary."
Inglesby was shocked. He hadn't known. He was a man of large interests and he had to leave a great deal to the discretion of superintendents and foremen. It might be, yes, he could understand how it might very well be—that his confidence had been abused. He would look into these things personally hereafter. Why, he was even now busily engaged compiling a "Book of Rules for Employees." He deplored the almost universal unrest among employees. It was a very bad sign. Very. Due almost entirely to agitators, too.
He didn't come out of that investigation without some of its slime sticking to him, and this annoyed and irritated and enraged him more than we guessed, for we hadn't as yet learned the man's ambition. Also, the women kept following him up. They meant to make him comply with the strict letter of the law, if that were humanly possible.
He was far too shrewd not to recognize this; for he presently called on my mother and offered her whatever aid he could reasonably give. Her work was invaluable; his foremen and superintendents had instructions to give her any information she asked for, to show her anything in the mills she wished to see, and to report to headquarters any suggestions as to the—er—younger employees, she might be kind enough to make. If that were not enough she might, he suggested, call on him personally. Really, one couldn't but admire the savoir faire of this large unctious being, so fluent, so plausible, until one happened to catch of a sudden that hard and ruthless gleam which, in spite of all his caution, would leap at times into his cold eyes.
"Is he, or isn't he, a hypocrite pure and simple, or are such men self-deceived?" mused my mother, puckering her brows. "He will do nothing, I know, that he can well avoid. But—he gave me of his own accord his personal check for fifty dollars, for that poor consumptive Shivers woman."
"She contracted her disease working in his mill and living in one of his houses on the wages he paid her," said I, "I might remind you to beware of the Greeks when they come bearing gifts."
"Proverb for proverb," said she. "The hair of the dog is good for its bite."
"Fifty dollars isn't much for a woman's life."
"Fifty dollars buys considerable comfort in the shape of milk and ice and eggs. When it's gone—if poor Shivers isn't—I shall take the Baptist minister's wife and Miss Sally Ruth Dexter with me, and go and ask him for another check. He'll give it."
"You'll make him bitterly repent ever having succumbed to the temptation of appearing charitable," said I.
We were not left long in doubt that Inglesby had other methods of attack less pleasant than offering checks for charity. Its two largest advertisers simultaneously withdrew their advertisements from the Clarion.
"Let's think this thing out," said John Flint to Laurence. "Cutting out ads is a bad habit. It costs good money. It should be nipped in the bud. You've got to go after advertisers like that and make 'em see the thing in the right light. Say, parson, what's that thing you were saying the other day—the thing I asked you to read over, remember?"
"When the scorner is punished, the simple is made wise; and when the wise is instructed, he receiveth knowledge," I quoted Solomon.
"That's it, exactly. You see," he explained, "there's always the right way out, if you've got sense enough to find it. Only you mustn't get rattled and try to make your getaway out the wrong door or the front window—that spoils things. The parson's given you the right tip. That old chap Solomon had a great bean on him, didn't he?"
A few days later there appeared, in the space which for years had been occupied by the bigger of the two advertisements, the following pleasant notice:
People Who Disapprove of
Civic Cleanliness,
A Better Town,
Better Kiddies,
and
A Square Deal for Everybody,
Also
Disapprove of
Advertising in the Clarion.
And the space once occupied by the other advertiser was headed:
OBITUARIES
That ghastly poetry in which the soul of the Butterfly Man reveled appeared in that column thereafter. It was a conspicuous space, and the horn of rural mourning in printer's ink was exalted among us. It was not very hard to guess whose hand had directed those counter-blows.
When we met those two advertisers on the street afterward we greeted them with ironical smiles intended to enrage. They had at Inglesby's instigation been guilty of a tactical blunder of which the men behind the Clarion had taken fiendish and unexpected advantage. It had simply never occurred to either that a small town editor might dare to "come back." The impossible had actually happened.
I think it was this slackening of his power which alarmed Inglesby into action.
"Mr. Inglesby," said the Butterfly Man to me one night, casually, "has got him a new private secretary. He came this afternoon. His name's Hunter—J. Howard Hunter. He dresses as if he wrote checks for a living and he looks exactly like he dresses. Honest, he's the original he-god they use to advertise suspenders and collars and neverrips and that sort of thing in the classy magazines. I bet you Inglesby's got to fork over a man-sized bucket of dough per, to keep him. There'll be a flutter of calico in this burg from now on, for that fellow certainly knows how to wear his face. He's gilt-edged from start to finish!"
Laurence, lounging on the steps, looked up with a smile.
"His arrival," said he, "has been duly chronicled in to-day's press. Cease speaking in parables, Bughunter, and tell us what's on your mind."
The Butterfly Man hesitated for a moment. Then:
"Why, it's this way," said he, slowly. "I—hear things. A bit here and there, you see, as folks tell me. I put what I've heard together, and think it over. Of course I didn't need anybody to tell me Inglesby was sore because the Clarion got away from him. He expected it to die. It didn't. He thought it wouldn't pay expenses—well, the sheriff isn't in charge yet. And he knows the paper is growing. He's too wise a guy to let on he's been stung for fair, once in his life, but he don't propose to let himself in for any more body blows than he can help. So he looks about a bit and he gets him an agent—older than you, Mayne, but young enough, too—and even better looking. That agent will be everywhere pretty soon. The town will fall for him. Say, how many of you folks know what Inglesby really wants, anyhow?"
"Everything in sight," said Laurence promptly.
"And something around the corner, too. He wants to come out in the open and be IT. He intends to be a big noise in Washington. Gentlemen, Senator Inglesby! Well, why not?"
"He hasn't said so, has he?" Laurence was skeptical.
"He doesn't have to say so. He means to be it, and that's very much more to the point. However, it happens that he did peep, once or twice, and it buzzed about a bit—and that's how I happened to catch it in my net. This Johnny he's just got to help him is the first move. Private Secretary now. Campaign manager and press agent, later. Inglesby's getting ready to march on to Washington. You watch him do it!"
"Never!" said Laurence, and set his mouth.
"No?" The Butterfly Man lifted his eyebrows. "Well, what are you going to do about it? Fight him with your pretty little Clarion? It's not big enough, though you could make it a handy sort of brick to paste him in the eye with, if you aim straight and pitch hard enough. Go up against him yourself? You're not strong enough, either, young man, whatever you may be later on. You can prod him into firing some poor kids from his mills—but you can't make him feed 'em after he's fired 'em, can you? And you can't keep him from becoming Senator Inglesby either, unless," he paused impressively, "you can match him even with a man his money and pull can't beat. Now think."
The young man bit his lip and frowned. The Butterfly Man watched him quizzically through his glasses.
"Don't take it so hard," he grinned. "And don't let the whole salvation of South Carolina hang too heavy on your shoulders. Leave something to God Almighty—He managed to pull the cocky little brute through worse and tougher situations than Inglesby! Also, He ran the rest of the world for a few years before you and I got here to help Him with it."
"You're a cocky brute yourself," said Laurence, critically.
"I can afford to be, because I can open my hand this minute and show you the button. Why, the very man you need is right in your reach! If you could get him to put up his name against Inglesby's, the Big Un wouldn't be in it."
Laurence stared. The Butterfly Man stared back at him.
"Look here," said he slowly. "You remember my nest, and what that bluejay did for it? And what you said? Well, I've looked about a bit, and I've seen the bluejay at work. ... Oh, hell, I can't talk about this thing, but I've watched the putty-faced, hollow-chested, empty-bellied kids—that don't even have guts enough left to laugh. ... Somebody ought to sock it to that brute, on account of those kids. He ought to be headed off ... make him feel he's to be shoo'd outside! And I think I know the one man that can shoo him." He paused again, with his head sunk forward. This was so new a John Flint to me that I had no words. I was too lost in sheer wonder.
"The man I mean hates politics. I've been told he has said openly it's not a gentleman's game any more. You've got to make him see it can be made one. You've got to make him see it as a duty. Well, once make him see that, and he'll smash Inglesby."
"You can't mean—for heaven's sake—"
"I do mean. James Eustis."
Laurence got up, and walked about, whistling.
"Good Lord!" said he, "and I never even thought of him in that light. Why ... he'd sweep everything clean before him!"
I am a priest. I am not even an Irish priest. Therefore politics do not interest me so keenly as they might another. But even to my slow mind the suitability of Eustis was apparent. Of an honored name, just, sure, kind, sagacious, a builder, a teacher, a pioneer, the plainer people all over the state leaned upon his judgment. A sane shrewd man of large affairs, other able men of affairs respected and admired him. The state, knowing what he stood for, what he had accomplished for her farmers, what he meant to her agricultural interests, admired and trusted him. If Eustis wanted any gift within the power of the people to give, he had but to signify that desire. And yet, it had taken my Butterfly Man to show us this!
"Bughunter," said Laurence, respectfully. "If you ever take the notion to make me president, will you stand behind and show me how to run the United States on greased wheels?"
"I?" John Flint was genuinely astounded. "The boy's talking in his sleep: turn over—you 're lying on your back!"
"You won't?"
"I will not!" said the Butterfly Man severely. "I have got something much more important on my hands than running states, I'll have you know. Lord, man, I'm getting ready some sheets that will tell pretty nearly all there is to tell about Catocala Moths!"
I remembered that sunset hour, and the pretty child of James Eustis putting in this man's hand a gray moth. I think he was remembering, too, for his eyes of a sudden melted, as if he saw again her face that was so lovely and so young. Glancing at me, he smiled fleetingly.
CHAPTER XToC
THE BLUEJAY
When Mary Virginia was graduated, my mother sent her, to commemorate that very important and pleasant occasion, one of her few remaining treasures—a carved ivory fan which Le Brun had painted out of his heart of hearts for one of King Louis' loveliest ladies. It still exhaled, like a whiff of lost roses, something of her vanished grace.
"I have a fancy," wrote my mother to Mary Virginia, "that having been pressed against women's bosoms and held in women's hands, having been, as it were, symbols which expressed the hidden emotions of the heart, these exquisite toys have thus been enabled to gain a soul, a soul composed of sentience and of memory. I think that as they lie all the long, long years in those carved and scented boxes which are like little tombs, they remember the lights and the flowers and the perfumes, the glimmer and gleam of jewels and silks, the frothy fall of laces, the laughter and whispers and glances, the murmured word, the stifled sigh: and above all, the touch of soft lips that used to brush them lightly; and the poor things wonder a bit wistfully what has become of all that gay and lovely life, all that perished bravery and beauty that once they knew. So I am quite sure this apparently soulless bit of carved ivory sighs inaudibly to feel again the touch of a warm and young hand, to be held before gay and smiling eyes, to have a flower-fresh face bent over it once more.
"Accept it, then, my child, with your old friend's love. Use it in your happy hours, dream over it a little, sigh lightly; and then smile to remember that this is your Hour, that you are young, and life and love are yours. It is in such youthful and happy smiles that we whose day declines may relive for a brief and bright space our golden noon. Shall I tell you a secret, before your time to know it? Youth alone is eternal and immortal! How do I know? 'Et Ego in Arcadia vixi!'"
Mary Virginia showed me that letter, long afterward, and I have inserted it here, although I suppose it really isn't at all relevant. But I shall let it stand, because it is so like my mother!
John Flint made for the schoolgirl a most wonderful tray with handles and border of hammered and twisted copper. The tray itself was covered with a layer of silvery thistle-down; and on this, hovering above flowers, some of his loveliest butterflies spread their wings. So beautifully did their frail bodies fit into this airy bed, so carefully was the work done, that you might fancy only the glass which covered them kept them from escaping.
"You will remember telling me, when you were going away to grow up," wrote John Flint, "to watch out for any big fine fellows that came by of a morning, because they'd be messengers from you to the Parish House people. Big and little they've come, and I've played like they were all of them your carriers. So you see we had word of you every single day of all these years you've been gone! Now I'm sending one or two of them back to you. Please play like my tray's a million times bigger and finer and that it's all loaded down with good messages and hopes; and believe that still it wouldn't be half big enough to hold all the good wishes the Parish House folks (you were right: I belong, and so does Kerry) send you to-day by the hand of your old friend,
The Butterfly Man.
Mary Virginia showed me that letter, too, because she was so delighted with it, and so proud of it. I like its English very well, but I like its Irishness even better.
But, although she had at last finished and done with school, Mary Virginia didn't come home to us as we had hoped she would. Her mother had other plans, which failed to include little Appleboro. Why should a girl with such connections and opportunities be buried in a little town when great cities waited for just such with open and welcoming arms? The best we got then was a photograph of our girl in her graduation frock—slim wistful Mary Virginia, with much of her dear angular youthfulness still clinging to her.
It was Mrs. Eustis herself who kept us posted, after awhile, of the girl's later triumphant progress; the sensation she created, the bored world bowing to her feet because she brought it, along with name and wealth, so fresh a spirit, so pure a beauty. There was a certain autocratic old Aunt of her mother's, a sort of awful high priestess in the inmost shrine of the sacred elect; this Begum, delighted with her young kinswoman, ordered the rest of her world to be likewise delighted, and the world agreeing with her verdict, Mary Virginia fared very well. She was fêted, photographed, and paragraphed. Her portrait, painted by a rather obscure young man, made the painter famous. In the hands of the Begum the pretty girl blossomed into a great beauty. The photograph that presently came to us quite took our breath away, she was so regal.
"She will never, never again be at home in little Appleboro," said my mother, regretfully. "That dear, simple, passionate, eager child we used to know has gone forever—life has taken her. This beautiful creature's place is not here—she belongs to a world where the women wear titles and tiaras, and the men wear kings' orders. No, we could never hope to hold her any more."
"But we could love her, could we not? Perhaps even more than those fine ladies with tiaras and titles and those fine gentlemen with orders, whom your fancy conjures up for her," said I crisply, for her words stung. They found an echo in my own heart.
"Love her? Oh, but of course! But—love counts for very, very little in the world which claims Mary Virginia now, Armand. Ambition stifles him." I was silent. I knew.
As for John Flint, he looked at that photograph and turned red.
"Good Lord! To think I had nerve to send her a few butterflies last year ... told her to play like they meant more! I somehow couldn't get the notion in my head that she'd grown up. ... I never could think of her except as a sort of kid-angel, because I couldn't seem to bear the idea of her ever being anything else but what she was. Well ... she's not, any more. And I've had the nerve to give a few insects to the Queen of Sheba!"
"Bosh!" said Laurence, sturdily. "She ought to be glad and proud to get that tray, and I'll bet you Mary Virginia's delighted with it. She's her father's daughter as well as her mother's, please. As for Appleboro not being good enough for her, that's piffle, too, p'tite Madame, and I'm surprised at you! Her own town is good enough for any girl. If it isn't, let her just pitch in and help make it good enough, if she's worth her salt. Not that Mary Virginia isn't scrumptious, though. Lordy, who'd think this was the same kid that used to bump my head?"
"She turns heads now, instead of bumping them," said my mother.
"Oh, she's not the only head-turner Appleboro can boast of!" said the young man grandly. "We've always been long on good-lookers in Carolina, whatever else we may lack. They're like berries in their season."
"But the berry season is short and soon over, my son: and there are seasons when there are no berries at all—except preserved ones," suggested my mother, with that swift, curious cattiness which so often astounds me in even the dearest of women.
"Dare you to tell that to the Civic League!" chortled Laurence. "I'll grant you that Mary Virginia's the biggest berry in the patch, at the height of a full season. But look at her getup! Don't doodads and fallals, and hen-feathers in the hair, and things twisted and tied, and a slithering train, and a clothesline length of pearls and such, count for something? How about Claire Dexter, for instance? She mayn't have a Figure like her Aunt Sally Ruth, but suppose you dolled Claire up like this? A flirt she was born and a flirt she will die, but isn't she a perfect peach? That reminds me—that ungrateful minx gave two dances rightfully mine to Mr. Howard Hunter last night. I didn't raise any ructions, because, to tell you the truth, I didn't much blame her. That fellow really knows how to dance, and the way he can convey to a girl the impression that he's only alive on her account makes me gnash my teeth with green-and-blue envy. No wonder they all dote on him! No home complete without this handsome ornament!" he added.
My mother's lips came firmly together.
"It is a great mistake to figure Mephistopheles as a rather blasé brunette," she remarked crisply. "I am absolutely certain that if you could catch the devil without his mask you'd find him a perfect blonde."
"Nietzsche's blonde beast, then?" suggested Laurence, amused at her manner.
"That same blonde beast is perhaps the most magnificent of animals," I put in. For alone of my household I admired immensely Mr. Inglesby's secretary. He was the only man I have ever known to whom the term 'beautiful' might be justly applied, and at the word's proper worth. Such a man as this, a two-handed sword gripped in his steel fists, a wolfskin across his broad shoulders and eagle-wings at either side the helmet that crowns his yellow hair, looks at one out of many a red, red page of the past with just such blue, dangerous, and cloudless eyes. Rolling and reeking decks have known him, and falling walls, and shrieks, and flames mounting skyward, and viking sagas, and drinking-songs roared from brass throats, and terrible hymns to Odin Allfather in the midwatches of Northern nights.
He had called upon me shortly after his arrival, his ostensible reason being my work among his mill-people. I think he liked me, later. At any rate, I had seen much of him, and I was indebted to him for more than one shrewd and practical suggestion. If at times I was chilled by what seemed to me a ruthless and cold-blooded manner of viewing the whole great social question I was nevertheless forced to admire the almost mathematical perfection to which he had reduced his system.
"But you wish to deal with human beings as with figures in a sum," I objected once.
"Figures," he smiled equably, "are only stubborn—on paper. When they're alive they're fluid and any clever social chemist can reduce them to first principles. It's really very simple, as all great things are: When in doubt, reach the stomach! There you are! That's the universal eye-opener."
"My dear friend," he added, laughing, "don't look so horrified. I didn't make things as they are. Personally, I might even prefer to say, like Mr. Fox in the old story, 'It was not so. It is not so. And God forbid it should be so!' But I can't, truthfully, and therefore—I don't. I accept what I can't help. Self-preservation, we all admit, is the first law of nature. Now I consider myself, and the class I represent, as beings much more valuable to the world than, let's say, your factory-hands, your mill-workers, your hewers of wood and drawers of water. Thus, should the occasion arise, I should most unhesitatingly use whatever weapons law, religion, civilization itself, put into my hands, without compunction and possibly what some cavilers might call without mercy; having at stake a very vital issue—the preservation of my kind, the protection of my class against Demos."
He spoke without heat, calmly, looking at me smilingly with his fine intelligent eyes: there was even much of truth in his frank statement of his case. Always has Dives spoken thus, law-protected, dining within; while without the doors of the sick civilization he has brought about, Lazarus lies, licked by the dogs of chance. No, this man was advocating no new theory; once, perhaps, I might have argued even thus myself, and done so with a clean conscience. This man was merely an opportunist. I knew he would never "reach their stomachs" unless he thought he had to. Indeed, since his coming, things had changed greatly at the mills, and for the better.
"The day of the great god Gouge," he had said to Inglesby, "is passing. It's bad business to overwork and underpay your hands into a state of chronic insurrection. That means losing time and scamping work. The square deal is not socialism nor charity nor a matter of any one man's private pleasure or conscience—it's cold hard common sense and sound scientific business. You get better results, and that's what you're after."
Perhaps it was because Appleboro offered, at that time, very little to amuse and interest that keen mind of his, that the Butterfly Man amused and interested Hunter so much. Or perhaps, proud as he was, even he could not wholly escape that curious likableness which drew men to John Flint.
He was delighted with our collection. He could appreciate its scope and value, something to which all Appleboro else paid but passing heed. John Flint declared that most folks came to see our butterflies just as they would have run to see the dog-faced boy or the bearded lady—merely for something to see. But this man's appreciation and praise were both sincere and encouraging. And as he never allowed anything or anybody unusual or interesting to pass him by without at least sampling its savor, he formed the habit of strolling over to the Parish House to talk with the limping man who had come there a dying tramp, was now a scientist, with the manner and appearance of a gentleman, and who spoke at will the language of two worlds. That this once black sheep had strayed of his own will and pleasure from some notable fold Hunter didn't for a moment doubt. Like all Appleboro, he wouldn't have been at all surprised to see this prodigal son welcomed into the bosom of some Fifth Avenue father, and have the fatted calf dressed for him by a chef whose salary might have hired three college professors. Hunter had known one or two such black sheep in his time; he fancied himself none too shrewd in thus penetrating Flint's rather obvious secret.
My mother watched the secretary's comings and goings at the Parish House speculatively. Not even the fact that he quoted her adored La Rochefoucauld, in flawless French, softened her estimate.
"If he even had the semblance of a heart!" said she, regretfully. "But he is all head, that one."
Now, I am a simple man, and this cultivated and handsome man of the world delighted me. To me immured in a mill town he brought the modern world's best. He was a window, for me, which let in light.
"That great blonde!" said Madame, wonderingly. "He is so designedly fascinating I wonder you fail to see the wheels go 'round. However, let me admit that I thank God devoutly I am no longer young and susceptible. Consider the terrible power such a man might exert over an ardent and unsophisticated heart!"
It was Hunter who had brought me a slim book, making known to me a poet I had otherwise missed.
"You are sure to like Bridges," he told me, "for the sake of one verse. Have you ever thought why I like you, Father De Rancé? Because you amuse me. I see in you one of life's subtlest ironies: A Greek beauty-worshiper posing as a Catholic priest—in Appleboro!" He laughed. And then, with real feeling, he read in his resonant voice:
I seek and adore them.
God has no better praise,
And man in his hasty days,
Is honored for them."
When at times the secretary brought his guests to see what he pleasingly enough termed Appleboro's one claim to distinction, the Butterfly Man did the honors to the manner born. Drawer after drawer and box after box would he open, patiently answering and explaining. And indeed, I think the contents were worth coming far to see. Some of them had come to us from the ends of the earth; from China and Japan and India and Africa and Australia, from the Antilles and Mexico and South America and the isles of the Pacific; from many and many a lonely missionary station had they been sent us. Even as our collection grew, the library covering it grew with it. But this was merely the most showy and pleasing part of the work. That which had the greatest scientific worth and interest, that upon which John Flint's value and reputation were steadily mounting, was in less lovely and more destructive forms of insect life. Beside this last, a labor calling for the most unremitting, painstaking, persevering research, observation, and intelligence, the painted beauties of his butterflies were but as precious play. For in this last he was wringing from Nature's reluctant fingers some of her dearest and most deeply hidden secrets. He was like Jacob, wrestling all night long with an unknown angel, saying sturdily:
"I will not let thee go except thou tell me thy name!" Like Jacob, he paid the price of going halt for his knowledge.
I like to think that Hunter understood the enormous value of the naturalist's work. But I fancy the silent and absorbed student himself was to his mind the most interesting specimen, the most valuable study. It amused him to try to draw his reticent host into familiar and intimate conversation. Flint was even as his name.
Oddly enough, Hunter shared the Butterfly Man's liking for that unspeakable Book of Obituaries, and I have seen him take a batch of them from his pocket as a free-will offering. I have seen him, who had all French, Russian and English literature at his fingers' ends, sit chuckling and absorbed for an hour over that fearful collection of lugubrious verse and worse grammar; pausing every now and then to cast a speculative and curious glance at his impassive host, who, paying absolutely no attention to him, bent his whole mind, instead, upon some tiny form in a balsam slide mount under his microscope.
"Why don't you admire Mr. Hunter?" I was curious to know.
"But I do admire him." Flint was sincere.
"Then if you admire him, why don't you like him?"
He reflected.
"I don't like the expression of his teeth," he admitted. "They're too pointed. He looks like he'd bite. I don't think he'd care much who he bit, either; it would all depend on who got in his way."
Seeing me look at him wonderingly, he paused in his work, stretched his legs under the table, and grinned up at me.
"I'm not saying he oughtn't to put his best foot foremost," he agreed. "We'd all do that, if we only knew how. And I'm not saying he ought to tell on himself, or that anybody's got any business getting under his guard. I don't hanker to know anybody's faults, or to find out what they've got up their sleeves besides their elbows, unless I have to. Why, I'd as soon ask a fellow to take off his patent leathers to prove he hadn't got bunions, or to unbutton his collar, so I'd be sure it wasn't fastened onto a wart on the back of his neck. Personally I don't want to air anybody's bumps and bunions. It's none of my business. I believe in collars and shoes, myself. But if I see signs, I can believe all by my lonesome they've got 'em, can't I?"
"Exactly. Your deductions, my dear Sherlock, are really marvelous. A gentleman wears good shoes and clean collars—wherefore, you don't like the expression of his teeth!" said I, ironically.
"Slap me on the wrist some more, if it makes you feel good," he offered brazenly. "For he may—and I sure don't." His grin faded, the old pucker came to his forehead.
"Parson, maybe the truth is I'm not crazy over him because people like him get people like me to seeing too plainly that things aren't fairly dealt out. Why, think a minute. That man's got about all a man can have, hasn't he? In himself, I mean. And if there's anything more he fancies, he can reach out and get it, can't he? Well, then, some folks might get to thinking that folks like him—get more than they deserve. And some ... don't get any more than they deserve," he finished, with grim ambiguity.
"Do you like him yourself?" he demanded, as I made no reply.
"I admire him immensely."
"Does Madame like him?" he came back.
"Madame is a woman," I said, cautiously. "Also, you are to remember that if Madame doesn't, she is only one against many. All the rest of them seem to adore him."
"Oh, the rest of them!" grunted John Flint, and scowled. "Huh! If it wasn't for Madame and a few more like her, I'd say women and hens are the two plum-foolest things God has found time to make yet. If you don't believe it, watch them stand around and cackle over the first big dunghill rooster that walks on his wings before them! There are times when I could wring their necks. Dern a fool, anyhow!" He wriggled in his chair with impatience.
"Liver," said I, outraged. "You'd better see Dr. Westmoreland about it. When a man talks like you're talking now, it's just one of two things—a liver out of whack, or plain ugly jealousy."
"I do sound like I've got a grouch, don't I?" he admitted, without shame. "Well ... maybe it's jealousy, and maybe it's not. The truth is, he rubs me rather raw at times, I don't know just how or why. Maybe it's because he's so sure of himself. He can afford to be sure. There isn't any reason why he shouldn't be. And it hurts my feelings." He looked up at me, shrewdly. "He looks all right, and he sounds all right, and maybe he might be all right—but, parson, I've got the notion that somehow he's not!"
"Good heavens! Why, look at what the man has done for the mill folks! Whatever his motives are, the result is right there, isn't it? His works praise him in the gates!"
"Oh, sure! But he hasn't played his full hand out yet, friend. You just give him time. His sort don't play to lose; they can't afford to lose; losing is the other fellow's job. Parson, see here: there are two sides to all things; one of 'em's right and the other's wrong, and a man's got to choose between 'em. He can't help it. He's got to be on one side or the other, if he's a man. A neutral is a squashy It that both sides do right to kick out of the way. Now you can't do the right side any good if you're standing flatfooted on the wrong side, can you? No; you take sides according to what's in you. You know good and well one side is full of near-poors, and half-ways, and real-poors—the downandouters, the guys that never had a show, ditchers and sewercleaners and sweatshoppers and mill hands and shuckers, and overdriven mutts and starved women and kids. It's sure one hell of a road, but there's got to be a light somewhere about it or the best of the whole world wouldn't take to it for choice, would they? Yet they do! Like Jesus Christ, say. They turn down the other side cold, though it's nicer traveling. Why, you can hog that other road in an auto, you can run down the beggars and the kids, you can even shoot up the cops that want to make you keep the speed laws. You haven't got any speed laws there. It's your road. You own it, see? It's what it is because you've made it so, just to please yourself, and to hell with the hicks that have to leg it! But—you lose out on that side even when you think you've won. You get exactly what you go after, but you don't get any more, and so you lose out. Why? Because you're an egg-sucker and a nest-robber and a shrike, and a four-flusher and a piker, that's why!
"The first road don't give you anything you can put your hands on; except that you think and hope maybe there's that light at the end of it. But, parson, I guess if you're man enough to foot it without a pay-envelope coming in on Saturdays, why, it's plenty good enough for me—and Kerry. But while I'm legging it I'll keep a weather eye peeled for crooks. That big blonde he-god is one of 'em. You soak that in your thinking-tank: he's one of 'em!"
"But look at what he's doing!" said I, aghast. "What he's doing is good. Even Laurence couldn't ask for more than good results, could he?"
The Butterfly Man smiled.
"Don't get stung, parson. Why, you take me, myself. Suppose, parson, you'd been on the other side, like Hunter is, when I came along? Suppose you'd never stopped a minute, since you were born, to think of anything or anybody but yourself and your own interests—where would I be to-day, parson? Suppose you had the utility-and-nothing-but-business bug biting you, like that skate's got? Why, what do you suppose you'd have done with little old Slippy? I was considerable good business to look at then, wasn't I? No. You've got to have something in you that will let you take gambler's chances; you've got to be willing to bet the limit and risk your whole kitty on the one little chance that a roan will come out right, if you give him a fair show, just because he is a man; or you can't ever hope to help just when that help's needed. Right there is the difference between the Laurence-and-you sort and the Hunter-men," said John Flint, obstinately.
As for Laurence, he and Hunter met continually, both being in constant social demand. If Laurence did not naturally gravitate toward that bright particular set of rather rapid young people which presently formed itself about the brilliant figure of Hunter, the two did not dislike each other, though Hunter, from an older man's sureness of himself, was the more cordial of the two. I fancy each watched the other more guardedly than either would like to admit. They represented opposite interests; one might at any moment become inimical to the other. Of this, however, no faintest trace was allowed to appear upon the calm unruffled surface of things.
If Inglesby had chosen this man by design, it had been a wise choice. For he was undoubtedly very popular, and quite deservedly so. He had unassailable connections, as we all knew. He brought a broader culture, which was not without its effect. And in spite of the fact that he represented Inglesby, there was not a door in Appleboro that was not open to him. Inglesby himself seemed a less sinister figure in the light of this younger and dazzling personality. Thus the secretary gradually removed the thorns and briars of doubts and prejudices, sowing in their stead the seeds of Inglesby's ambition and rehabilitation, in the open light of day. He knew his work was well done; he was sure of ultimate success; he had always been successful, and there had been, heretofore, no one strong enough to actively oppose him. He could therefore afford to make haste slowly. Even had he been aware of the Butterfly Man's acrid estimate of him, it must have amused him. When all was said and done, what did a Butterfly Man—even such a one as ours—amount to, in the world of Big Business He hadn't stocks nor bonds nor power nor pull. He hadn't anything but a personality that arrested you, a setter dog, a slowly-growing name, a room full of insects in an old priest's garden. Of course Hunter would have smiled! And there wasn't a soul to tell him anything of Slippy McGee!