Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man Part 21

CHAPTER XII

JOHN FLINT, GENTLEMAN

Almost up to Christmas the weather had been so mild and warm that folks lived out of doors. Girls clothed like the angels in white raiment fluttered about and blessed the old streets with their fresh and rosy faces. In the bright suns.h.i.+ne the flowers seemed to have lost all thought of winter; they forgot to fade; and roses rioted in every garden as if it were still summer. n.o.body but the b.u.t.terfly Man grumbled at this springlike balminess, and he only because he was impatient to resume experiments carried over from year to year--the effect of varying degrees of natural cold upon the colors of b.u.t.terflies whose chrysalids were exposed to it. He generally used the chrysalids of the Papilio Turnus, whose females are dimorphic, that is, having two distinct forms. He did not care to resort to artificial freezing, preferring to allow Nature herself to work for him. And the jade repaid him, as usual, by showing him what she could do but refusing to divulge the moving why she did it. She gave him for his pains sometimes a light, and sometimes a dark b.u.t.terfly, with different degrees of blurred or enlarged and vivid markings, from chrysalids subjected to exactly the same amount of exposure.

The b.u.t.terfly Man was burning to complete his notes, already a.s.suming the proportions of that very exact and valuable book they were afterward to become. He chafed at the enforced delay, and wished himself at the North Pole.

In the meantime, having nothing else on hand just then, it occurred to him to put some of these notes, covering the most interesting and curious of the experiments, into papers which the general run of folks might like to read. Dabney had been after him for some time to do some such work as this for the _Clarion_.

I think Flint himself was genuinely surprised when he read over those enchanting papers, though he did not then and never has learned to appreciate their unique charm and value. Instead, however, of sending them to Dabney, he thought they might possibly interest a somewhat wider public, and with great diffidence, and some misgivings, he sent one or two of them to certain of the better known magazines. They did not come back. He received checks instead, and a request for more.

Now the book and the several monographs he had already gotten out had been, although very interesting, strictly scientific; they could appeal only to students and scholars. But these papers were entirely different. Scientific enough, very clear and lucid and most quaintly flavored with what Laurence called Flintishness, they were so well received, and the response of the reading public to this fresh and new presentment of an ever-fascinating subject was so immediate and so hearty, that the b.u.t.terfly Man found himself unexpectedly confronting a demand he was hard put to it to supply.

He was very much more modest about this achievement than we were. My mother's pride was delicious to witness. You see, it also invested _me_ with a very farsighted wisdom! Here was it proven to all that Father De Rance had been right in holding fast to the man who had come to him in such sorry plight.

I suppose it was this which moved Madame to take the step she had long been contemplating. Knowing her b.u.t.terfly Man, she began with infinite wile.

"Armand," said she, one bright morning in early November, "_I_ am going to entertain, too--everybody else has done so, and now it's my turn. The weather is so ideal, and my garden so gorgeous with all those chrysanthemums and salvias and geraniums and roses, that it would be sinful not to take advantage of such conditions.

"I have saved enough out of my house-money to meet the expenses--and I am _not_ going to be charitable and do my Christian duty with that money! I'm going to entertain. I really owe that much attention to Mary Virginia." She laid her hand on my arm. "I must see John Flint; go over to his rooms, and bring him back with you."

I thought she merely needed his help and counsel, for she is always consulting him; she considers that whatever barque is steered by John Flint must needs come home to harbor. He obeyed her summons with alacrity, for it delights him to a.s.sist Madame. He did not know what fate overshadowed him!

My mother sat in her low rocker, a lace ap.r.o.n lending piquancy to her appearance. She looked unusually pretty--there wasn't a girl in Appleboro who didn't envy Madame De Rance's complexion.

"Well," said the b.u.t.terfly Man cheerfully, unconsciously falling under the spell of this feminine charm, "the Padre tells me there's a party in the wind. Good! Now what am I to do? How am I to help you out?"

My mother leaned forward and compelled him to meet direct her eyes that were friendly and clear and candid as a child's.

"Mr. Flint," said she artlessly, ignoring his questions, "Mr. Flint, you've been with Armand and me quite a long time now, have you not?"

"A couple of lifetimes," said he, wonderingly.

"A couple of lifetimes," she mused, still holding his eyes, "is a fairly long time. Long enough, at least, to know and to be known, shouldn't you think?"

He awaited enlightenment. He never asks unnecessary questions.

"I am going," said my mother, with apparent irrelevance, "to entertain in honor of Mary Virginia Eustis. I shall probably have all Appleboro here. I sent for you to explain that you and Armand are to be present, too."

The b.u.t.terfly Man almost fell out of his chair.

"Me?" he gasped.

"You," with deadly softness. "You."

Horror and anguish encompa.s.sed him. Perspiration appeared on his forehead, and he gripped the arms of his chair as one bracing himself for torture. He looked at the little lady with the terror of one to whom the dentist has just said: "That jaw tooth must come out at once.

Open your mouth wider, please, so I can get a grip!"

My mother regarded this painful emotion heartlessly enough. She said coolly:

"You don't need to look as if I were sentencing you to be hanged before sundown. I am merely inviting you to be present at a very pleasant affair." But the b.u.t.terfly Man, with his mouth open, wagged his head feebly.

"And this," said my mother, turning the screw again, "is but the beginning. After this, I shall manage it so that all invitations to the Parish House include Mr. John Flint. There is no reason under heaven why you should occupy what one might call an ambiguous position. I am determined, too, that you shall no longer rush away to the woods like a scared savage, the minute more than one or two ladies appear. No, nor have Armand hurrying away as quickly as he can, either, to bury or to marry somebody. All feminine Appleboro shall be here at once, and you two shall be here at the same time!

"John Flint, regard me: if the finest b.u.t.terfly that ever crawled a caterpillar on this earth has the impertinence to fly by my garden the afternoon I'm entertaining for Mary Virginia, it can fly, but you shan't.

"Armand: n.o.body respects Holy Orders more than I do: but there isn't anybody alive going to get born or baptized or married or buried, or anything else, in this parish, on that one afternoon. If they are selfish enough to do it anyhow, why, they can do it without your a.s.sistance. You are going to stay home with me: both of you."

"My _dear_ mother--"

"Good Lord! Madame--"

"I am not to be dearmothered nor goodlorded! Heaven knows I ask little enough of either of you. _I_ am at _your_ beck and call, every day in the year. It does seem to me that when I wish to be civilized, and return for once some of the attentions I have received from my friends, I might at least depend upon you two for one little afternoon!" Could anything be more artfully unanswerable?

"Oh, but Madame--" began Flint, horrified by such an insinuation as his unwillingness to do anything at any time for this adored lady.

"Particularly," continued my mother, inexorably, "when I have your best interest at heart, too, John Flint! Monsieur the b.u.t.terfly Man, you will please to remember that you are a member of my household. You are almost like a son to me. You are the apple of that foolish Armand's eye--do not look so astounded, it is true! Also, you will have a great name some of these days. So far, so good. But--you are making the grievous error of shunning society, particularly the society of women. This is wrong; it makes for queerness, it evolves the 'crank,' it spoils many an otherwise very nice man."

Flint sagged in his chair, and clasped and unclasped his hands, which trembled visibly. Madame regarded him without pity, with even a touch of scorn.

"Yes, it is indeed high time to reclaim you!" she decided, with the fearsome zeal of the female reformer of a man. "You silly man, you!

Have you no proper pride? Have you absolutely no idea of your own worth? Well, then, if you haven't, _I_ have. You _shall_ take your place and play your part!"

"But," said Flint, and a gleam of hope irradiated his stricken face, "but I don't think I've got the clothes to wear to parties. And I really can't afford to spend any more money right now, either. I spent a lot on that old 1797 Abbot & Smith's 'Natural History of the Rarer Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia.' It cost like the d.i.c.kens, although I really got it for about half what it's worth. I had to take it when I got the chance, and I'd be willing to wear gunny-sacking for a year to pay for those plates! I need them: I want them. But I don't need a party. I don't want a party! Madame, don't, don't make me go to any party!"

"Nonsense!" said my mother. "Clothes, indeed! I shouldn't worry about clothes, if I were you, John Flint. You came into this world knowing exactly what to wear and how to wear it. Why, you have an air! That is a very great mercy, let me tell you, and one not always vouchsafed to the deserving, either."

"I have a cage full of grubs--most awfully particular grubs, and they've got to be watched like a sick kid with the--with the whatever it is sick kids have, anyhow. Why, if I were to leave those grubs one whole afternoon--"

"You just let me see a single solitary grub have the temerity to hatch himself out that one afternoon, that's all! They have all the rest of their nasty little lives to hatch out!"

"Besides, there's a boy lives about five miles from here, and he's likely to bring me word any minute about something I simply have to have--"

"I want to see that boy!" She pointed her small forefinger at him, with the effect of a pistol leveled at his head.

"You are coming to my affair!" said she, sternly. "If you have no regard whatsoever for Mary Virginia and me, you shall have some for yourself; if you have none for yourself, then you shall have some for _us!_"

This took the last puff of wind from the b.u.t.terfly Man's sails.

"All right!" he gulped, and committed himself irremediably. "I--I'll be right here. You say so, and of course I've got to!"

"Of course you will," said my mother, smiling at him charmingly. "I knew I had only to present the matter in its proper light, and you'd see it at once. You are so sensible, John Flint. It's such a comfort, when the gentlemen of one's household are so amenable to reason, and so ready to stand by one!"

Having said her say, and gotten her way--as she was perfectly sure she would--Madame left the gentlemen of her household to their own reflections and devices.

"Parson!" The b.u.t.terfly Man seemed to come out of a trance. "Remember the day you made me let a caterpillar crawl up my hand?"

"Yes, my son."