Chapter 14

THE WISHING CURL

With February the cold that the Butterfly Man had wished for came with a vengeance. The sky lost its bright blue friendliness and changed into a menacing gray, the gray of stormy water. Overnight the flowers vanished, leaving our gardens stripped and bare, and our birds that had been so gay were now but sorry shivering balls of ruffled feathers, with no song left in them. When rain came the water froze in the wagon-ruts, and ice-covered puddles made street-corners dangerous.

This intense cold, damp, heavy, penetrating, coming upon the heels of the unseasonably warm weather, seemed to bring to a head all the latent sickness smoldering in the mill-parish, for it suddenly burst forth like a conflagration. If the Civic League had not already done so much to better conditions in the poorer district, we must have had a very serious epidemic, as Dr. Westmoreland bluntly told the Town Council.

As it was, things were pretty bad for awhile, and the inevitable white hearse moved up and down, stopping now at this door, now at that. In one narrow street, I remember, it moved in the exact shape of a figure eight within the week. I do not like to recall those days. I buried the children with the seal of Holy Mother Church upon their innocence; I repeated over them "The Lord hath given, the Lord hath taken away"--and knew in my heart that it was man-made want, the greed of money-madness, that had taken them untimely out of their mothers' laps. And the earth was like iron; it opened unwillingly to receive the babes of the poor.

In and out of stricken mill-houses and shabby shacks, as regularly as Westmoreland and I, whose business and duty lay there, came John Flint. He made no effort to comfort parents, although these seemed to derive a curious consolation from his presence. He did not even come because he wanted to; he came because the children begged to see the Butterfly Man and one may not refuse a sick child. He had made friends with them, made toys for them; and now he saw dull eyes brighten at his approach and pale faces try to smile; languid and fever-hot hands were held out to him. All the force of the affection of young children, their dazzling faith, the almost unthinkable power upon their plastic minds of those whom they trust, came home to him. He could not, in such an hour, accept lightly, with a careless smile, the fact that children loved him. And once or twice a small hand that clung to him grew cold in his clasp, and under his eyes a child's closed to this world.

Now, something that saw straight, thought like a naked sword-blade, ate like a testing acid into shams and hated evasions and half-truths and subterfuges, had of late been showing more and more behind John Flint's reserve; and I think it might have hardened into a mentality cold and bright and barren, hard and cutting as a diamond, had it not been for the children whom he had to see suffer and die.

There was one child of whom he was particularly fond--a child with the fairest of fair hair, deep and sweet blue eyes, and the quickest, shyest, most fleeting of smiles to lighten flashingly her small pale serious face. She had been one of the first of the mill folks' children to make friends with the Butterfly Man. She used to watch for him, and then, holding on to one of his fingers, she liked to trot sedately down the street beside him.

This child's going was sudden and rather painful. Westmoreland did what he could, but there was no stamina in that frail body, so her's had been one of the small hands to fall limp and still out of John Flint's. The doll he had made for her lay in the crook of her arm; it had on a red calico dress, very garish in the gray room, and against the child's whiteness.

Westmoreland stood, big and compassionate, at the foot of the bed. His ruddy face showed wan and behind his glasses his gray tired eyes winked and blinked.

"There must be," said the Doctor, as if to himself, "some eternal vast reservoir somewhere, that stores up all this terrible total of unnecessary suffering--the cruel and needless suffering inflicted upon children and animals, in particular. Perhaps it's a spiritual serum used for the saving of the race. Perhaps races higher up than we use it--as _we_ use rabbits and guinea-pigs. No, no, nothing's wasted; there's a forward end to pain, somewhere." He looked down at the child and shook his head doubtfully:

"But when all is said and done," he muttered, "what do such as these get out of it? Nothing--so far as we can see. They're victims, they and the innocent beasts, thrust into a world which tortures and devours them. Why? Why? Why?"

"There is nothing to do but leave that everlasting Why to God," said I, painfully.

The Butterfly Man looked up and one saw that cold sword-straight, diamond-hard something in his eyes:

"Parson," said he, grimly, "you're a million miles off the right track--and you know it. Leaving things to God--things like poor kids dying because they're gouged out of their right to live--is just about as rotten stupid and wrong as it can well be. God's all right; he does his part of the job. You do yours, and what happens? Why, my butterflies answer that! I'm punk on your catechism, and if _this_ is all it can teach I hope I die punk on it; but as near as I can make out, original sin is leaving things like this"--and he looked at his small friend with her doll on her arm--"to God, instead of tackling the job yourself and straightening it out."

The child's mother, a gaunt creature without a trace of youth left in her, although she could not have been much more than thirty, shambled over to a chair on the other side of the bed. She wore a faded red calico wrapper--a scrap of it had made the doll's frock--and a blue-checked apron with holes in it. Her hair was drawn painfully back from her forehead, and there was a wispy fringe of it on the back of her scraggy neck. In her dull eyes glimmered nothing but the innate uneasiness of those who are always in need, and her mouth had drawn itself into the shape of a horseshoe. There is no luck in a horseshoe hung thus on a woman's face. One might fancy she felt no emotion, her whole demeanor was so apathetic; but of a sudden she leaned over and took up one of the thick shining curls; half smiling, she began to wrap it about her finger.

"I useter be right smart proud o' Louisa's hair," she remarked in a drawling, listless voice. "She come by it from them uppidy folks o' her pa's. I've saw her when she wasn't much more 'n hair an' eyes, times her pa was laid up with the misery in his chest, an' me with nothin' but piecework weeks on end.

"... She was a cu'rus kind o' child, Louisa was. She sort o' 'spicioned things wasn't right, but you think that child ever let a squeal out o' her? Not her! Lemme tell you-all somethin', jest to show what kind o' a heart that child had, suhs."

With a loving and mothering motion she moved the bright curl about and about her hard finger. She spoke half intimately, half garrulously; and from the curl she would lift her faded eyes to the Butterfly Man's.

"'T was a Sarrerday night, an' I was a-walkin' up an' down, account o' me bein' awful low in the mind.

"'Ma,' says Louisa, 'I'm reel hungry to-night. You reckon I could have a piece o' bread with butter on it? I wisht I could taste some bread with butter on it,' says she.

"'Darlin',' says I, turrible sad, 'Po' ma c'n give yo' the naked bread an' thanks to God I got even that to give,' I says. 'But they ain't a scrap o' butter in this house, an' no knowin' how to git any. Oh, darlin', ma's so sorry!'

"She looks up with that quick smile o' her'n. Yes, suh, Mr. Flint, she ups and smiles. 'You don't belong to be sorry any, ma,' says she, comfortin'. 'Don't you mind none at all. Why, ma, darlin', _I just love naked bread without no butter on it_!' says she. My God, Mr. Flint, I bust out a-cryin' in her face. Seemed like I natchelly couldn't stand no mo'!" And smiling vaguely with her poor old down-curved mouth, she went on fingering the curl.

"Will you-all look a' that!" she murmured, with pride. "Even her hair's lovin', an' sort o' holds on like it wants you should touch it. My Lord o' glory, I'm glad her pa ain't livin' to see this day! He had his share o' misery, po' man, him dyin' o' lung-fever an' all....

"Six head o' young ones we'd had, me an' him. An' they'd all dropped off. Come spring, an' one'd be gone. I kep' a-comfortin' that man best I could they was better off, angels not bein' pindlin' an' hungry an' barefoot, an' thanks be, they ain't no mills in heaven. But their pa he couldn't see it thataway nohow. He was turrible sot on them children, like us pore folks gen'rally is. They was reel fine-lookin' at first.

"When all the rest of 'em had went, her pa he sort o' sot his heart on Louisa here. 'For we ain't got nothin' else, ma,' says he. 'An' please the good Lord, we're a-goin' to give this one book-learnin' an' sich, an' so be she'll miss them mills,' he says. 'Ma, less us aim to make a lady o' our Louisa. Not that the Lord ain't done it a'ready,' says her pa, 'but we got to he'p Him keep on an' finish the job thorough.' An' here's him an' her both gone, an' me without a God's soul belongin' to me this day! My God, Mr. Flint, ain't it something turrible the things happens to us pore folks?"

The Butterfly Man looked from her to Westmoreland and me: doctor of bodies, doctor of souls, naturalist, what had we to say to this woman stripped of all? But she, with the greater wisdom of the poor, spoke for herself and for us. A sort of veiled light crept into her sodden face.

"It ain't I ain't grateful to you-all," said she. "God knows I be. You was good to Louisa. Doctor, you remember that day you give her a ride in your ottermobile an' forgot to bring her home for more 'n a hour? My, but that child was happy!"

"'Ma,' says she when I come home that night, 'you know what heaven is?'

"'Child,' says I, 'folks like me mostly knows what it ain't.'

"'I beat you, ma!' says she, clappin' her hands. 'Heaven ain't nothin' much but country an' roads an' trees an' butterflies, an' things like that,' says she. 'An' God's got ottermobiles, plenty an' plenty ottermobiles, an' you ride free in 'em long's you feel like it, 'cause that's what they's _for_. An', ma,' says she, 'God's, showfers is all of 'em Dr. Westmorelands and Mr. Flints.' Yea, suh, you-all been mighty kind to Louisa. But I reckon," she drawled, "it was Mr. Flint Louisa loved best, him bein' a childern's kind o' man, an' on account o' Loujaney." She laid a hand upon the rag doll lying on the little girl's arm.

"From the first day you give her that doll, Mr. Flint--which she named Loujaney, for her an' me both--that child ain't been parted from it." She smiled down at the two. I could almost have prayed she would weep instead. It would have been easier to bear.

"The King's Daughters, they give her a mighty nice doll off their Christmas tree last year, but Louisa, she didn't take to it like she done to Loujaney.

"'_That_ doll's jest a visitin' lady,' says she, 'but Loujaney, she's _my child_. Mr. Flint made her a-purpose for me, same's God made me for you, ma, an' she's mine by bornation. I can live with Loujaney. I ain't a mite ashamed afore her when we ain't got nothin', but I turn 'tother's face to the wall so she won't know. Loujaney's pore folks same's you an' me, an' she knows prezac'ly how 't is. That's why I love her so much.

"An' day an' night," resumed the drawling voice, "them two's been together. She jest lived an' et an' slept with that doll. If ever a doll gits to grow feelin's, Loujaney's got 'em. I s'pose I'd best give that visitin' doll to some child that wants it bad, but I ain't got the heart to take Loujaney away from her ma. I'm a-goin' to let them two go right on sleepin' together.

"Mr. Flint, suh, seein' Louisa liked you so much, an' it's you she'd want to have it--" she leaned over, pushed the thick fair hair aside, and laid her finger upon a very whimsy of a curl, shorter, paler, fairer than the others, just above the little right ear.

"Her pa useter call that the wishin' curl," said she, half apologetically. "You see, suh, he was a comical sort of man, an' a great hand for pertendin' things. I never could pertend. Things is what they is an' pertendin' don't change 'em none. But him an' her was different. That's how come him to pertend the Lord'd put the rainbow's pot o' gold in Louisa's hair with a wish in it, an' that ridic'lous curl one side her head, like a mark, was the wishin' curl. He'd pertend he could pull it twict an' say whisperin', '_Bickery-ickery-ee--my wish is comin' to me_,' an' he'd git it. An' she liked to pertend 'twas so an' she could wish things on it for me an' git 'em.... Clo'es an' shoes an' fire an' cake an' beefsteak an' butter an' stayin' home.... Just pertendin', you see.

"Mr. Flint, suh, _I_ ain't got a God's thing any more to wish for, but you bein' the sort o' man you are, I'd rather 'twas you had Louisa's wishin' curl, to remember her by." Snip! went the scissors; and there it lay, pale as the new gold of spring sunlight, curling as young grape-tendrils, in the Butterfly Man's open palm.

"_Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee_," said the great Apostle to the lame man who lay beside the gate of the temple that is called, Beautiful.

"I ain't got nothin' else," said the common mill-woman; and laid in John Flint's hand Louisa's wishing-curl.

He stared at it, and turned as pale as the child on her pillow. The human pity of the thing, its sheer stark piercing simplicity, squeezed his heart as with a great hand.

"My God!" he choked. "My--God!" and a rending sob tore loose from his throat. For the first time in his life he had to weep; uncontrolled, unashamed, childlike, fatherly, brotherly. For he had experienced, unselfishly, on account of one of the humblest of God's creatures, one of the great divine emotions. And when that happens to a man it is as if his soul were winnowed by the wind of an archangel's wings.

Westmoreland and I slipped out and left him with the woman. She would know what further thing to say to him.

Outside in the bleak bitter street, the Doctor laid his hand on my shoulder. He winked his eyes rapidly. "Father," said he, earnestly, "when I witness such a thing as we've seen this morning, I do not lose faith. I gain it." And he gripped me heartily with his big gloved hand. "Tell John Flint," he added, "that sometimes a rag doll is a mighty big thing for a man to have to his credit." Then he was gone, with a tear freezing on his cheek.

"Angels," John Flint had said more than once, "are not middle-aged doctors with shoulders on them like a barn-door, and ribs like a dray; angels don't have bald heads and wear a red tie and tan shoes. But I'd pass them all up, from Gabriel down, wings and tailfeathers, for one Walter Westmoreland."

I would, too. And I walked along, thinking of what I had just witnessed; sensing its time value. To those slight and fragile things which had, for John Flint, outweighed the scales of evil--a gray moth, a butterfly's wing, a bird's nest--I added a child's fair hair, and a rag doll that was going to sleep with its ma.

There were but few people on the freezing streets, for folks preferred to stay indoors and hug the fire. Fronting the wind, I walked with a lowered head, and thus collided with a lady who turned a corner at the same time I did.

"Don't apologize, Padre," said Mary Virginia, for it was she. "It was my fault--I wasn't looking where I was going."

"Are you by any chance bound for the Parish House? Because my mother will be on her way to a poor thing that's just lost her only child. Where have you been these past weeks? I haven't seen you for ages."

"Oh, I've been rather busy, too, Padre. And I haven't been quite well--" she hesitated. I thought I understood. For, possibly from some servant who had overheard Mrs. Eustis expostulating with her daughter, the news of Mary Virginia's unannounced engagement had sifted pretty thoroughly throughout the length and breadth of Appleboro; a town where an unfledged and callow rumor will start out of a morning and come home to roost at night with talons and tailfeathers.

That Mary Virginia had all James Eustis's own quiet will-power, everybody knew. She would not, perhaps, marry Laurence in the face of her mother's open opposition. Neither would she marry anybody else to please her mother in defiance of her own heart. There was a pretty struggle ahead, and Appleboro took sides for and against, and settled itself with eager expectancy to watch the outcome.

So I concluded that Mary Virginia had not been having a pleasant time. Indeed, it struck me that she was really unwell. One might even suspect she had known sleepless nights, from the shadowed eyes and the languor of her manner.

Just then, swinging down the street head erect, shoulders square, the freezing weather only intensifying his glowing fairness, came Howard Hunter. The man was clear red and white. His gold hair and beard glittered, his bright blue eyes snapped and sparkled. He seemed to rejoice in the cold, as if some Viking strain in him delighted in its native air.

As he paused to greet us a coldness not of the weather crept into Mary Virginia's eyes. She did not speak, but bowed formally. Mr. Hunter, holding her gaze for a moment, lifted his brows whimsically and smiled; then, bowing, he passed on. She stood looking after him, her lips closed firmly upon each other.

Tucking her hand in my arm, she walked with me to the Parish House gate. No, she said, she couldn't come in. But I was to give her regards to the Butterfly Man, and her love to Madame.

"Parson," the Butterfly Man asked me that night, "have you seen Mary Virginia recently?"

"I saw her to-day."

"I saw her to-day, too. She looked worried. She hasn't been here lately, has she?"

"No. She hasn't been feeling well. I hear Mrs. Eustis has been very outspoken about the engagement, and I suppose that's what worries Mary Virginia."

"I don't think so. She knew she had to go up against that, from the first. She's more than a match for her mother. There's something else. Didn't I tell you I had a hunch there was going to be trouble? Well, I've got a hunch it's here."

"Nonsense!" said I, shortly.

"I know," said he, stubbornly. And he added, irrelevantly: "It's generally known, parson, that Eustis will be nominated. Inglesby's managed to gain considerable ground, thanks to Hunter, and folks say if it wasn't for Eustis he'd win. As it is, he'll be swamped. I hear he was thunderstruck when he got wind of what Mayne was going to play against him--for he knows Laurence brought Eustis out. Inglesby's mighty sore. He's the sort that hates to have to admit he can't get what he wants."

"Then he'd better save himself the trouble of having to put it to the test," said I.

"I'm wondering," said John Flint. "I wish I hadn't got that hunch!"

I did not see Mary Virginia again for some time. Just then I moved breathlessly in a horrid round of sickbeds, for the wave had reached its height; already it had swept seventeen of my flock out of time into eternity.

I came home on one of the last of those heavy evenings, to find Laurence waiting for me in my study. He was standing in the middle of the room, his hands clasped behind his back.

"Padre," said he by way of greeting, "have you seen Mary Virginia lately? Has Madame?"

"No, except for a chance meeting one morning on the street. But she has been sending me help right along, bless her."

"Has Madame heard anything from her, Padre?"

"No, I don't think so. But we've been frightfully busy of late, you understand."

"No, neither of you know," said Laurence, in a low voice. "You wouldn't know. Padre, I--don't look at me like that, please; I'm not