Chapter 15

whatever, that I can conjure up--she has thrown me over, jilted me--Mary Virginia, Padre! And I'm to forget her. _I'm to forget her, you understand?_ Because she can't marry me." He spoke in a level, quiet, matter of fact voice. Then laughter shook him like a nausea.

I laid my hand upon him. "Now tell me," said I, "what you have to tell me."

"I've really told you all I know," said Laurence. "Day before yesterday she sent for me. You can't think how happy it made me to have her send for me, how happy I've been since I knew she cared! I felt as if there wasn't anything I couldn't do. There was nothing too great to be accomplished--

"Well, I went. She was standing in the middle of the long drawing-room. There was a fire behind her. She was so like ice I wonder now she didn't thaw. All in white, and cold, and frozen. And she said she couldn't marry me. That's why she had sent for me--to tell me that she meant to break our engagement: _Mary Virginia_!

"I wanted to know why. I was within my rights in asking that, was I not? And she wouldn't let me get close to her, Padre. She waved me away. I got out of her that there were reasons: no, she wouldn't say what those reasons were; but there were reasons. Her reasons, of course. When I began to talk, to plead with her, she begged me not to make things harder for her, but to be generous and go away. She just couldn't marry me, didn't I understand? So I must release her."

He hung his head. The youth of him had been dimmed and darkened.

"And you said--?"

"I said," said Laurence simply, "that she was mine as much as I was hers, and that I'd go just then because she asked me to, but I was coming back. I tried to see her again yesterday. She wouldn't see me. She sent down word she wasn't at home. But I knew all along she was. Mary Virginia, Padre!

"I tried again. I haven't got any pride where she's concerned. Why should I? She's--she's my soul, I think. I can't put it into words, because you can't put feelings into words, but she's the pith of life. Then I wrote her. Half a dozen times I wrote her. I got down to the level of bribing the colored maid to take the notes to her, one every hour, like a medicine, and slip them under her door. I know she received them. I repeated it again to-day. It's Mary Virginia at stake, and I can't take chances, can I? And this afternoon she sent this.

"Oh, Laurence, be generous and spare me the torment of questions. So far you have not reproached me; spare me that, too! Don't you understand? I cannot marry you. Accept the inevitable as I do. Forgive me and forget me. M.V.E."

The writing showed extreme nervousness, haste, agitation.

"Well?" said Laurence. But I stood staring at the crumpled bit of paper. I knew what I knew. I knew what my mother had thought fit to reveal to me of the girl's feelings: Mary Virginia had been very sure. I remembered what my eyes had seen, my ears heard. I was sure she was faithful, for I knew my girl. And yet--

There came back to me a morning in spring and I riding gaily off in the glad sunshine, full of faith and of hope. To find what I had found. I handed the note back, in silence.

"Oh, why, why, why?" burst out the boy, in a gust of acute torment. "For God's sake, why? Think of her eyes and her mouth, Padre--and her forehead like a saint's--No, she's not false. God never made such eyes as hers untruthful. I believe in her. I've got to believe in her. I tell you, I belong to her, body and soul." He began to walk up and down the room, and his shoulders twitched, as if a lash were laid over them. "I could forgive her for not loving me, if she doesn't love me and found it out, and said so. Women change, do they not? But--to take a man that loves her--and tear his living soul to shreds and tatters--

"If _she's_ a liar and a jilt, who and what am I to believe? Why should she do it, Padre--to me that love her? Oh, my God, think of it: to be betrayed by the best beloved! No, I can't think it. This isn't just any light girl: this is Mary Virginia!"

I put my hand on his shoulder. He is a head over me, and once again as broad, perhaps. We two fell into step. I did not attempt to counsel or console.

"Here I come like a whining kid, Padre," said he, remorsefully, "piling my troubles upon your shoulders that carry such burdens already. Forgive me!"

"I shouldn't be able to forgive you if you didn't come," said I. Up and down the little room, up and down, the two of us.

Came a light tap at the door. The Butterfly Man's head followed it.

"Didn't I hear Laurence talking?" asked he, smiling. The smile froze at sight of the boy's face. He closed the door, and leaned against it.

"What's wrong with her?" he asked, quickly. It did not occur to us to question his right to ask, or to wonder how he knew.

In a dull voice Laurence told him. He held out his hand for the note, read it in silence, and handed it back.

"What do you make of it?" I asked.

"Trouble," said he, curtly; and he asked, reproachfully, "Don't you know her, both of you, by this time?"

"I know," said Laurence, "that she has sent me away from her."

"Because she wants to, or because she thinks she has to?" asked John Flint.

"Why should she do so unless it pleased her?" I asked sorrowfully.

His eyes flashed. "Why, she's _herself!_ A girl like her couldn't play anybody false because there's no falseness in her to do it with. What are you going to do about it?"

"There is nothing to do," said Laurence, "but to release her; a gentleman can do no less."

John Flint's lips curled. "Release her? I'd hang on till hell froze over and caught me in the ice! I'd wait. I'd write and tell her she didn't need to make herself unhappy about me, I was unhappy enough about her for the two of us, because she didn't trust me enough to tell me what her trouble was, so I could help her. That first and always I was her friend, right here, whenever she needed me and whatever she needed me for. And I'd stand by. What else is a man good for?"

"I believe," said I, "that John Flint has given you the right word, Laurence. Just hold fast and be faithful."

Laurence lifted his haggard face. "There isn't any question of my being faithful to her, Padre. And I couldn't make myself believe that she's less so than I. What Flint says tallies with my own intuition. I'll write her to-night." He laid his hand on John Flint's arm. "You're all right, Bughunter," said he, earnestly. "'Night, Padre." Then he was gone.

"Do you think," said John Flint, when he had rejected every conjecture his mind presented as the possible cause of Mary Virginia's action, "that Inglesby could be at the bottom of this?"

"I think," said I, "that you have an obsession where that man is concerned. He is a disease with you. Good heaven, what could Inglesby possibly have to do with Mary Virginia's affairs?"

"That's what I'm wondering. Well, then, who is it?"

"Perhaps," said I, unwillingly, "it is Mary Virginia herself."

"Forget it! She's not that sort."

"She is a woman."

"Ain't it the truth, though?" he jeered. "What a peach of a reason for not acting like herself, looking like herself, being like herself! She's a woman! So are all the rest of the folks that weren't born men, if you'll notice. They're women; we're men: and both of us are people. Get it?"

"I get it," said I, annoyed. "Your attitude, John Flint, is a vulgar platitude. And permit me to--"

"I'll permit you to do anything except get cross," said he, quickly. The ghost of a smile touched his face. "Being bad-tempered, parson, suits you just about as well as plaid pants and a Hello Bill button."

"I am a human being," I began, frigidly.

"And I'm another. And so is Mary Virginia. And there we are, parson. I'm troubled. I don't like the looks of things. It's no use telling myself this is none of my business; it is very much my business. You remember ... when I came here ..." he hesitated, for this is a subject we do not like to discuss, "what you were up against ... parson, I've thought you must have been caught and crucified yourself, and learned things on the cross, and that's why you held on to me. But with the kids, it was different--particularly the little girl. The first thing I ever got from her was a lovely look, the first time ever I set eyes on her she came with an underwing moth. I'd be a poor sort that wouldn't be willing to be spilt like water and scattered like dust, if she needed me now, wouldn't I?"

"But," said I, perplexed, "what can you do? A young lady has seen fit to break her engagement; young ladies often see fit to do that, my dear fellow. This isn't an uncommon case. Also, one doesn't interfere in a lady's private affairs, not even when one is an old priest who has loved her since her childhood, nor yet a Butterfly Man who is her devoted friend. Don't you see?"

"I see there's something wrong," said he, doggedly.

"Perhaps. But that doesn't give one the right to pry into something she evidently doesn't wish to reveal," I told him.

"I suppose," said he, heavily, "you are right. But if you hear anything, let me know, won't you?"

I promised; but I found out nothing, save that it had not been Mrs. Eustis who influenced her daughter's action. This came out in a call Mrs. Eustis made at the Parish House.

"My dear," she told my mother, "when she told me she had broken that engagement, I was astounded! But I can't say I wasn't pleased. Laurence is a dear boy; and his family's as good as ours--no one can take that away from the Maynes. But Mary Virginia should have done better.

"I quarreled with her, argued with her, pleaded with her. I cried and cried. But she's James Eustis to the life--you might as well try to move the Rock of Gibraltar. Then one morning she came to my room and told me she found she couldn't marry Laurence! And she had already told him so, and broken her engagement, and I wasn't to ask her any questions. I didn't. I was too glad."

"And--Laurence--?" asked my mother, ironically.

"Laurence? Laurence is a _man_. Men get over that sort of thing. I've known a man to be perfectly mad over his wife--and marry, six months after her death. They're like that. They always get over it. It's their nature."

"Let us hope, then, for Laurence's peace of mind," said my mother, "that he'll get over it--like all the rest of his sex. Though I shouldn't call Laurence fickle, or faithless, if you ask me."

"He is a very fine boy. I always liked him myself and James adores him. If I had two or three daughters, I'd be willing to let one of them marry Laurence--after awhile. But having only one I must say I want her to do better."

"I see," said my mother. To me she said later:

"And yet, Armand, although I condemn it, I can quite appreciate Mrs. Eustis's point of view. I was somewhat like that myself, once upon a time."

"You? Never!"

My mother smiled tolerantly.

"Ah, but you never offered me a daughter-in-law I did not relish. It was much easier for me to bear the Church!"

That night I went over to John Flint's, for I thought that the fact of Mary Virginia's deliberately choosing to act as she had done would in a measure settle the matter and relieve his anxiety.

There was a cedar wood fire before which Kerry lay stretched; little white Pitache, grown a bit stiff of late, occupied a chair he had taken over for his own use and from which he refused to be dislodged. Major Cartwright had just left, and the room still smelt of his cigar, mingling pleasantly with the clean smell of the burning cedar.

On the table, within reach of his hand, was ranged the Butterfly Man's entire secular library: Andrew Lang's translation of Homer; Omar; Richard Burton's Kasidah; Saadi's Gulistan, over which he chuckled; Robert Burns; Don Quixote; Joan of Arc, and Huckleberry Finn; Treasure Island; the Bible Miss Sally Ruth had given him--I never could induce him to change it for my own Douai version--; one or two volumes of Shakespeare; the black Obituary Book, grown loathsomely fat; and the "Purely Original Verse of James Gordon Coogler," which a light-minded professor of mathematics at the University of South Carolina had given him, and in which he evilly delighted. Other books came and went, but these remained. To-night it was the Bible which lay open, at the Book of Psalms.

"Look at this." He laid his finger on a verse of the nineteenth: "The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple."

"The times I've turned that over in my mind, out in the woods by night and the fields by day!" said the Butterfly Man, musingly. "The simple is _me_, parson, and the testimony is green things growing, and butterflies and moths, and Kerry, and people, and trouble, and Louisa's hair, and--well, about everything, I reckon.

"Yes, everything's testimony, and it can make wise the simple--if he's not too simple. I reckon, parson, the simple is lumped in three lots--the fool for a little while, the fool for half the day, and the life-everlasting twenty-four-hours-a-day, dyed-in-the-wool damn-fool.

"Some of us are the life-everlasting kind, the kind that used to make old man Solomon wall his eyes and throw fits and then get busy and hatch out proverbs with stings in their tails. A lot of us are half-the-day fools; and all the rest are fools for a little while. There's nobody born that hasn't got his times and seasons for being a fool for a while. But that's the sort of simple the testimony slams some sense into. Like _me_," he added earnestly, and closed the great Book.

I told him presently what I had heard; that, as he surmised, Mrs. Eustis was not responsible for Mary Virginia's change of mind--or perhaps of heart. He nodded. But he offered no comment. Now, since I had come in, he had been from time to time casting at me rather speculative and doubtful glances. He drummed on the table, smiled sheepishly, and presently reached for a package, unwrapped it, and laid before me a book.

'"The Relation of Insect Life to Human Society,'" I read, "By John Flint and Rev. Armand Jean De Rancé. With notes and drawings by Father De Rancé." It bore the imprint of a great publishing house.

"You suggested it more than once," said John Flint. "Off and on, these two years, I've been working on it. All the notes I particularly asked you for were for this. Mighty fine and acute notes they are, too--you'd never have been willing to do it if you'd known they were for publication--I know you. And I saved the drawings. I'm vain of those illustrations. Abbot's weren't in it, next to yours."

As a matter of fact I have a pretty talent for copying plant and insect. I have but little originality, but this very limitation made the drawings more valuable. They were almost painfully exact, the measurements and coloration being as approximately perfect as I could get them.

Now that the book has been included in all standard lists I needn't speak of it at length--the reviewers have given it what measure of bricks and bouquets it deserved. But it is a clever, able, comprehensive book, and that is why it has made its wide appeal.

Every least credit that could possibly be given to me, he had scrupulously rendered. He had made full use of note and drawing. He made light enough of his own great labor of compilation, but his preface was quick to state his "great indebtedness to his patient and wise teacher."

One sees that the situation was not without irony. But I could not cloud his pleasure in my co-authorship nor dim his happiness by disclaiming one jot or tittle of what he had chosen to accredit me with. It is more blessed to give than to receive, but much more difficult to receive than to give.

"Do you like it?" he asked, hopefully.

"I am most horribly proud of it," said I, honestly.

"Sure, parson? Hand on your heart?"

"Sure. Hand on my heart."

"All right, then," said he, sighing with relief.

"Here's your share of the loot," and he pushed a check across the table.

"But--" I hesitated, blinking, for it was a check of sorts.

"But nothing. Blow it in. Say, I'm curious. What are you going to do with yours?"

"What are you going to do with yours?" I asked in return.

He reddened, hesitated; then his head went up.

"I figure it, parson, that by way of that rag-doll I'm kin to Louisa's ma. As near as I can get to it, Louisa's ma's my widow. It's a devil of a responsibility for a live man to have a widow. It worries him. Just to get her off my mind I'm going to invest my share of this book for her. She'll at least be sure of a roof and fire and shoes and clothes and bread with butter on it and staying home sometimes. She'll have to work, of course; anyway you looked at it, it wouldn't be right to take work away from her. She'll work, then; but she won't be worked. Louisa's managed to pull something out of her wishin' curl for her ma, after all. I'm sure I hope they'll let the child know."

I could not speak for a moment; but as I looked at him, the red in his tanned cheek deepened.

"As a matter of fact, parson," he explained, "somebody ought to do something for a woman that looks like that, and it might just as well be me. I'm willing to pay good money to have my widow turn her mouth the other way up, and I hope she'll buy a back-comb for those bangs on her neck."

"And all this," said I, "came out of one little wishin' curl, Butterfly Man?"

"But what else could I do?" he wondered, "when I'm kin to Loujaney by bornation?" and to hide his feeling, he asked again:

"Now what are you going to do with yours?"

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!"