Part 32 (1/2)

I reflected. I watched his clever, quizzical eyes, out of which the diamond-bright hardness had vanished, and into which I am sure that dear child's curl had wished this milder, clearer light.

”You want to know what I am going to do with mine?” said I, airily.

”Well; as for me, the very first thing I am going to do is to purchase, in perpetuity, a fine new lamp for St. Stanislaus!”

CHAPTER XV

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 ma.s.s I saw in the thin watery suns.h.i.+ne 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 b.u.t.terflies 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 b.u.t.terflies that resemble nothing so much as new bright dandelions in the young gra.s.s, 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 s.p.a.ce the little white hea.r.s.e 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 pa.s.sed. 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--Ma.r.s.e 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 b.u.t.ter--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 G.o.d'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 b.u.t.terfly 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 ma.s.s-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 b.u.t.terfly 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 a.s.sembled wants to hear?”

And at that came a sort of stir, a murmur, as of an immense mult.i.tude of bees:

”_The b.u.t.terfly Man!_” And louder: ”The b.u.t.terfly 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: