The little dog did finally learn to accept the major's presence without outward protest; though the major declared that Pitache always hung down his tail when he came and hung it up when he left!
The Butterfly Man accepted whatever friendliness was proffered without diffidence, but with no change in his natural reserve. You could tell him anything: he listened, made few comments and gave no advice, was absolutely non-shockable, and never repeated what he heard. The unaffected simplicity of his manner delighted my mother. She said you couldn't tell her—there was good blood in that man, and he had been more than any mere tramp before he fell into our hands! Why, just observe his manner, if you please! It was the same to everybody; he had, one might think, no sense whatever of caste, creed, age, sex, or color; and yet he neither gave offense nor received it.
Those outbursts which had so terrified me at first came at rare and rarer intervals. If I were to live for a thousands years I should never be able to forget the last and worst; which fell upon him suddenly and without warning, on a fine morning while he sat on the steps of his verandah, and I beside him with my Book of Hours in my hand. In between the Latin prayers I sensed pleasantly the light wind that rustled the vines, and how the Mayne bees went grumbling from flower to flower, and how one single bird was singing to himself over and over the self-same song, as if he loved it; and how the sunlight fell in a great square, like a golden carpet, in front of the steps. It was all very still and peaceful. I was just turning a page, when John Flint jerked his pipe out of his mouth, swung his arm back, and hurled the pipe as far as he could. I watched it, involuntarily, and saw where it fell among our blue hydrangeas; from which a thin spiral of smoke arose lazily in the calm air. But Flint shoved his hat back on his head, sat up stiffly, and swore.
He had been with me then nearly four years, and I had learned to know the symptoms:—restlessness, followed by hours of depressed and sullen brooding. So I had heretofore in a sense been forewarned, though I never witnessed one of these outbursts without being shaken to the depths. This one was different—as if the evil force had invaded him suddenly, giving him no time to resist. A glance at his face made me lay aside the book hurriedly; for this was no ordinary struggle. The words that had come to me at first came back now with redoubled meaning, and rang through my head like passing-bells:
"For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood but against ... the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness."
He tilted his head, looked upward, and swore steadily. As for me, my throat felt as if it had been choked with ashes. I could only stare at him, dumbly. If ever a man was possessed, he was. His voice rose, querulously:
"I get up in the morning, and I catch bugs, and I study them, and I dry them—and I go to bed. I get up in the morning, and I catch bugs, and I study them, and I dry them—and I go to bed. I get up every morning, and I do the same damn thing, over and over and over and over, day in, day out, day in, day out. Nothing else. ... No drinks, no lights, no girls, no sprees, no cards, no gang, no risks, no jobs, no bulls, no anything! God! I could say my prayers to Broadway, anywhere from the Battery up to Columbus Circle! I want it all so hard I could point my nose like a lost dog and howl for it!
"... There is a Dutchman got a restaurant down on Eighth Avenue, and I dream at nights about the hotdog-and-kraut, and the ham-and that they give you there, and the jane that slings it. Hips on her like a horse, she has, and an arm that shoves your eats under your nose in a way you've got to respect. I smell those eats in my sleep. I want some more Childs' bucks. I want to see the electrics winking on the roofs. I want to smell wet asphalt and see the taxis whizzing by in the rain. I want to see a seven-foot Mick cop with a back like a piano-box and a paw like a ham and a foot like a submarine with stove-polish on it. I want to see the subway in the rush hour and the dips and mollbuzzers going through the crowd like kids in a berry patch. I want to see a ninety-story building going up, and the wops crawling on it like ants. I want to see the breadline, and the panhandlers, and the bums in Union Square. I want a bellyful of the happy dust the old town hands out—the whole dope and all there is of it! My God! I want everything I haven't got!"
He looked at me, wildly. He was trembling violently, and sweat poured down his face.
"Parson," he rasped, "I've bucked this thing for fair, but I've got to go back and see it and smell it and taste it and feel it and know it all again, or I'll go crazy. You're all of you so good down here you're too much for me. I'm home-sick for hell. It—it comes over me like fire over the damned. You don't fool yourself that folks who know what it is to be damned can stay on in heaven without freezing, do you? Well, they can't. I can't help it! I can't! I've got to go—this time I've got to go!"