He paused in his swinging stride, and looked down at me a bit shyly.

"Parson--you see how it is with me?"

"I see. And I think she is the greater lady for it and you the finer gentleman," said I stoutly. "It would honor her, if she were ten times what she is--and she is Mary Virginia."

"She is Mary Virginia," said the b.u.t.terfly Man, "and I am--what I am.

Yet somehow I feel sure I can care for her, that I can go right on caring for her to the end of time, without hurt to her or sorrow to me." And after a pause, he added, deliberately:

"I found something better than a package of letters to-night, parson.

I found--_Me_."

For awhile neither of us spoke. Then he said, speculatively:

"Folks give all sorts of things to the church--dedicate them in grat.i.tude for favors they fancy they've received, don't they? Lamps, and models of ships, and gla.s.s eyes and wax toes and leather hands, and crutches and braces, and that sort of plunder? Well, I'm moved to make a free-will offering myself. I'm going to give the church my kit, and you can take it from me the old Lady will never get her clamps on another set like that until Gabriel blows his trumpet in the morning. Parson, I want you to put those tools back where you had them, for I shall never touch them again. I couldn't. They--well, they're sort of holy from now on. They're my IOU. Will you do it for me?"

"Yes!" said I.

"I might have known you would!" said he, smiling. "Just one more favor, parson--may I put her letters in her hands, myself?"

"My son, my son, who but you should do that?" I pushed the package across the table.

"Great Scott, parson, here it is striking five o'clock, and you've been up all night!" he exclaimed, anxiously. "Here--no more ga.s.sing.

You come lie down on my bed and snooze a bit. I'll call you in plenty of time for ma.s.s."

I was far too spent and tired to move across the garden to the Parish House. I suffered myself to be put to bed like a child, and had my reward by falling almost immediately into a dreamless sleep, nor did I stir until he called me, a couple of hours later. He himself had not slept, but had employed the time in going through the letters open on his table. He pointed to them now, with a grim smile.

"Parson!" said he, and his eyes glittered. "Do you know what we've stumbled upon? Dynamite! Man, anybody holding that bunch of mail could blow this state wide open! So much for a hunch, you see!"

"You mean--"

"I mean I've got the cream off Inglesby's most private deals, that's what I mean! I mean I could send him and plenty of his pals to the pen. Everybody's been saying for years that there hasn't been a rotten deal pulled off that he didn't boss and get away with it. But n.o.body could prove it. He's had the men higher-up eating out of his hand--sort of you pat my head and I'll pat yours arrangement--and here's the proof, in black and white. Don't you understand? Here's the proof: these get him with the goods!

"These," he slapped a letter, "would make any Grand Jury throw fits, make every newspaper in the state break out into headlines like a kid with measles, and blow the lid off things in general--if they got out.

"Inglesby's going to shove Eustis under, is he? Not by a jugfull. He's going to play he's a patent life-preserver. He's going to _be_ that good Samaritan he's been shamming. Talk about poetic justice--this will be like wearing shoes three sizes too small for him, with a bunion on every toe!" And when I looked at him doubtfully, he laughed.

"You can't see how it's going to be managed? Didn't you ever hear of the grapevine telegraph? Well then, dear George receives a grapevine wireless bright and early to-morrow morning. A word to the wise is sufficient."

"He will employ detectives," said I, uneasily.

The b.u.t.terfly Man looked at me quizzically.

"_With_ an eagle eye and a walrus mustache," said he, grinning. "Sure.

But if the plainclothes nose around, are they going to sherlock the parish priest and the town bughunter? _We_ haven't got any interest in Mr. Inglesby's private correspondence, have we? Suppose Miss Eustis's letters are returned to her, what does that prove? Why, nothing at all,--except that it wasn't her correspondence the fellows that cracked that safe were after. We should worry!

"Say, though, don't you wish you could see them when they stroll down to those beautiful offices and go for to open that nice burglar-proof safe with the little bra.s.s flower-pot on top of it? What a joke! Holy whiskered black cats, what a joke!"

"I'm afraid Mr. Inglesby's sense of humor isn't his strong point,"

said I. "Not that I have any sympathy for him. I think he is getting only what he deserves."

"_Alexander the coppersmith wrought me much evil. May G.o.d requite him according to his works!_" murmured the b.u.t.terfly Man, piously, and chuckled. "Don't worry, parson--Alexander's due to fall sick with the pip to-day or to-morrow. What do you bet he don't get it so bad he'll have to pull up all his pretty plans by the roots, leave Mr. Hunter in charge, and go off somewhere to take mudbaths for his liver? Believe me, he'll need them! Why, the man won't be able to breathe easy any more--he'll be expecting one in the solar plexus any minute, not knowing any more than Adam's cat who's to hand it to him. He can't tell who to trust and who to suspect. If you want to know just how hard Alexander's going to be requited according to his works, take a look at these." He pointed to the letters.

I did take a look, and I admit I was frightened. It seemed to me highly unsafe for plain folks like us to know such things about such people. I was amazed to the point of stupefaction at the corruption those communications betrayed, the shameless and sordid disregard of law and decency, the brutal and cynical indifference to public welfare. At sight of some of the signatures my head swam--I felt saddened, disillusioned, almost in despair for humanity. I suppose Inglesby had thought it wiser to preserve these letters--possibly for his own safety; but no wonder he had locked them up! I looked at the b.u.t.terfly Man openmouthed.

"You wouldn't think folks wearing such names could be that rotten, would you? Some of them pillars of the church, too, and married to good women, and the fathers of nice kids! Why, I have known crooks that the police of a dozen states were after, that wouldn't have been caught dead on jobs like some of these. Inglesby won't know it, but he ought to thank his stars _we've_ got his letters instead of the State Attorney, for I shan't use them unless I have to.... Parson, you remember a bluejay breaking up a nest on me once, and what Laurence said when I wanted to wring the little crook's neck? That the thing isn't to reform the jay but to keep him from doing it again? That's the cue."

He gathered up the scattered letters, made a neat package of them, and put it in a table drawer behind a stack of note-books. And then he reached over and touched the other package, the letters written in Mary Virginia's girlish hand.

"Here's her happiness--long, long years of it ahead of her," he said soberly. "As for you, you take back those tools, and go say ma.s.s."

Outside it was broad bright day, a new beautiful day, and the breath of the morning blew sweetly over the world. The Church was full of a clear and early light, the young pale gold of the new Spring sun.

None of the congregation had as yet arrived. Before I went into the sacristy to put on my vestments, I gave back into St. Stanislaus'

hands the IOU of Slippy McGee.

CHAPTER XX

BETWEEN A b.u.t.tERFLY'S WINGS

There was a glamour upon it. One knew it was going to grow into one of those wonderful and shining days in whose enchanted hours any exquisite miracle might happen. I am perfectly sure that the Lord G.o.d walked in the garden in the cool of an April day, and that it was a morning in spring when the angels visited Abraham, sitting watchful in the door of his tent.

There was in the air itself something long-missed and come back, a heady and heart-moving delight, a promise, a thrill, a whisper of "_April! April!_" that the Green Things and the hosts of the Little People had heard overnight. In the dark the sleeping souls of the golden b.u.t.terflies had dreamed it, known it was a true Word, and now they were out, "Little flames of G.o.d" dancing in the Sunday sunlight.

The Red Gulf Fritillary had heard it, and here she was, all in her fine fulvous frock besmocked with black velvet, and her farthingale spangled with silver. And the gallant Red Admiral, the brave beautiful Red Admiral that had dared unfriendlier gales, trimmed his painted sails to a wind that was the breath of spring.

Over by the gate the spirea had ventured into showering sprays exhaling a shy and fugitive fragrance, and what had been a blur of gray cables strung upon the oaks had begun to bud with emerald and blossom with amethyst--the wisteria was a-borning. And one knew there was Cherokee rose to follow, that the dogwood was in white, and the year's new mintage of gold dandelions was being coined in the fresh gra.s.s.

There wasn't a bird that wasn't caroling _April!_ at the top of his voice from the full of his heart; for wasn't the world alive again, wasn't it love-time and nest-time, wasn't it Spring?

Even to the tired faces of my work-folks that shining morning lent a light that was hope. Without knowing it, they felt themselves a vital part of the reborn world, sharers in its joy because they were the children of the common lot, the common people for whom the world is, and without whom no world could be. Cla.s.ses, creeds, nations, G.o.ds, all these pa.s.s and are gone; G.o.d, and the common people, and the spring remain.

When I was young I liked as well as another to dwell overmuch upon the sinfulness of sin, the sorrow of sorrow, the despair of death. Now that these three terrible teachers have taught me a truer wisdom and a larger faith, I like better to turn to the glory of hope, the wisdom of love, and the simple truth that death is just a pa.s.sing phase of life. So I sent my workers home that morning rejoicing with the truth, and was all the happier and hopefuller myself because of it.

Afterwards, when Clelie was giving me my coffee and rolls, the b.u.t.terfly Man came in to breakfast with me, a huge roll of those New York newspapers which contain what are mistakenly known as Comic Supplements tucked under his arm.

He said he bought them because they "tasted like New York" which they do not. Just as Major Cartwright explains his purchase of them by the shameless a.s.sertion that it just tickles him to death "to see what G.o.dforsaken idjits those Yankees can make of themselves when they half-way try. Why, suh, one glance at their Sunday newspapers ought to prove to any right thinkin' man that it's safer an' saner to die in South Carolina than to live in New York!"

_I_ think the b.u.t.terfly Man and Major Cartwright buy those papers because they think they are _funny_! After they have read and sn.i.g.g.e.red, they donate them to Clelie and Daddy January. And presently Clelie distributes them to a waiting colored countryside, which wallpapers its houses with them. I have had to counsel the erring and bolster the faith of the backsliding under the goggle eyes of inhuman creations whose unholy capers have made futile many a prayer. And yet the b.u.t.terfly Man likes them! Is it not to wonder?

He laid them tenderly upon the table now, and smiled slyly to see me eye them askance.

"Did you know," said he, over his coffee, "that Laurence came in this morning on the six-o'clock? January had him out in the garden showing off the judge's new patent hives, and I stopped on my way to church and shook hands over the fence. It was all I could do to keep from shouting that all's right with the world, and all he had to do was to be glad. I didn't know how much I cared for that boy until this morning. Parson, it's a--a terrible thing to love people, when you come to think about it, isn't it? I told him you were honing to see him: and that we'd be looking for him along about eleven. And I intimated that if he didn't show up then I'd go after him with a gun.

He said he'd be here on the stroke." After a moment, he added gently: "I figured they'd be here by then--Madame and Mary Virginia."

"What! You have induced Laurence to come while she is here--without giving him any intimation that he is likely to meet her?" I said, aghast. "You are a bold man, John Flint!"