CHAPTER IIIMRS. BARON DECIDES
AsBaron felt for his key he stood an instant and surveyed the other side of the street, up and down the block. A frown gathered on his forehead.
Bonnie May, keyed to a very high pitch, noted that frowning survey of the line of buildings across the way. “Something wrong?” she asked.
“No, certainly not,” responded Baron; but to himself he was admitting that there was something very wrong indeed. It was the neighborhood. This was his conclusion, just as it had been Flora’s.
He had become conscious of the frowning, grimy fronts; the windows which were like eyes turning baleful glances upon the thoroughfare. The grass-plots, the flower-beds, the suitable carpets spread for the feet of spring—what had become of them?
A dissolute-appearing old woman was scrubbing the ancient stone steps in one place across the way. She suggested better days just as obviously as did the stones, worn away by generations of feet. And a little farther along there were glaring plate-glass fronts bearing gilt legends which fairly shrieked those commercial words—which ought tohave been whispered from side doors, Baron thought—Shoes, and Cloaks, and Hats.
What sort of a vicinity was this in which to have a home?
Baron wondered why the question had not occurred to him before. He did not realize that he was viewing the street now for the first time through the eyes of a child who owed the neighborhood no sort of sentimental loyalty.
“Here we are!” he exclaimed as he produced his key; but his tone was by no means as cheerful as he tried to make it.
Bonnie May hung back an instant, as a butterfly might pause at the entrance of a dark wood. She glanced into the dark vestibule before her inquiringly. Her eyebrows were critically elevated.
“Is it a—a rooming-house?” she faltered.
“Nonsense! It’s always been called a mansion. It’s a charming old place, too—I assure you! Come, we ought not to stand here.”
He was irritated. More so than he had been before when his companion’s look or word had served as a reminder that he was doing an extraordinary, if not a foolish, thing. He would not have admitted it, but he was nervous, too. His mother hadn’t been at all amiable of late. There wasn’t any telling what she would do when he said to her, in effect: “Here’s a lost child. I don’t know anything at all about her, but I expect you to help her.”
Suppose she should decide to express her frank opinion of waifs, and of people who brought them home?
He fumbled a little as he unlocked the door. His heart was fairly pounding.
“There you are!” he exclaimed. His voice was as gayly hospitable as he could make it, but his secret thought was: “If she weren’t so—so—Oh, darn it, if she were like any other child I’d shut her out this minute and let that be the end of it.”
The hall was shadowy; yet even in the dim light Baron perceived that the marble balustrade of the stairway was strangely cold and unattractive—and he had always considered this one of the fine things about the house. So, too, was the drawing-room gloomy almost to darkness. The blinds were down as always, save on special occasions. And Baron realized that the family had long ago ceased to care about looking out upon the street, or to permit the street to get a glimpse of the life within. Indeed, he realized with a bit of a shock that the home life had been almost entirely removed to the upper floor—as if the premises were being submerged by a flood.
He lifted one of the blinds. “Sit down,” he said. “I’ll find mother.”
“What do you use this room for?” inquired Bonnie May. She was slightly pale. She seemed to be fortifying herself for weird developments.
“I hardly know,” Baron confessed. “I think we don’t use it very much at all.”
“You might think from the properties that it was a rooming-house.” She had wriggled into a chair that was too high for her. Her curiosity was unconcealed. Baron could see by the look in her eyes that she had not meant her comment to be derisive, but only a statement of fact.
“Possibly you haven’t seen many quite old, thoroughly established homes,” he suggested. The remark wasn’t meant at all as a rebuke. It represented the attitude of mind with which Baron had always been familiar.
“Anyway,” she persisted, “it wouldn’t do for an up-to-date interior. It might do for an Ibsen play.”
Baron, about to leave the room to find his mother, turned sharply. “What in the world do you know about Ibsen plays?” he asked sharply. “Besides, you’re not in a theatre! If you’ll excuse me a minute——”
There were footsteps on the stairway, and Baron’s countenance underwent a swift change. He withdrew a little way into the room, so that he stood close to Bonnie May. He was trying to look conciliatory when his mother appeared in the doorway; but guilt was really the expression that was stamped on his face.
It was a very austere-looking old lady who looked into the room. “Good evening,” she said,as if she were addressing strangers. Still, Baron detected a wryly humorous smile on her lips. She stood quite still, critically inspecting her son as well as his companion.
Baron was glad that Bonnie May sprang to her feet instantly with comprehension and respect. “This is my mother, Mrs. Baron,” he said to the child; and to the quizzical old lady, who regarded him with a steady question, he added foolishly, “this is a little girl I have brought home.”
“So I should have surmised.” Her tone was hardening. Her attitude was fearfully unyielding. It seemed to Baron that her gray hair, which rose high and free from her forehead, had never imparted so much severity to her features before, and that her black eyes had never seemed so imperious.
But Bonnie May was advancing very prettily. “How do you do, Mrs. Baron?” she inquired. She was smiling almost radiantly. “I do hope I don’t intrude,” she added.
Mrs. Baron looked down at her with frank amazement. For the moment she forgot the presence of her son. She took the child’s outstretched hand.
Perhaps the touch of a child’s fingers to a woman who has had children but who has them no longer is magical. Perhaps Bonnie May was quite as extraordinary as Victor Baron had thought her. At any rate, Mrs. Baron’s face suddenly softened. She drew the child into the protection of her arm and held her close, looking at her son.
“Good evening,” she said, as if she were addressing strangers“Good evening,” she said, as if she were addressing strangers.
“Good evening,” she said, as if she were addressing strangers.
“Good evening,” she said, as if she were addressing strangers.
“Who in the world is she?” she asked, and Baron saw that her eyes were touched with a light which was quite unfamiliar to him.
“I was going to tell you,” he faltered, and then he remembered that there was practically nothing he could tell. He saved time by suggesting: “Perhaps she could go up-stairs a minute, while I talk to you alone?”
“Would it be wrong for me to hear?” This was from the child. “You know I might throw a little light on the subject myself.”
Mrs. Baron blushed rosily and placed her hand over her mouth, wrenching a swift smile therefrom. She had heard of precocious children. She disapproved of them. Neither of her own children had been in the least precocious. “Who ever heard anything like that?” she demanded of her son in frank amazement.
“There are some things I ought to say to my mother alone,” declared Baron. He placed a persuasive hand on the child’s shoulder. “Afterward you can talk the matter over together.”
Mrs. Baron’s doubts were returning. “I don’t see why we should make any mysteries,” she said. She looked at the child again, and again all her defenses were laid low. “I suppose she might go up-stairs to my sitting-room, if there’s anything to say. Tell me, child,” and she bent quite graciously over the small guest, “what is your name?”
“I am Bonnie May,” was the response. Thechild was inordinately proud of her name, but she did not wish to be vainglorious now. She lowered her eyes with an obviously theatrical effect, assuming a nice modesty.
Mrs. Baron observed sharply, and nodded her head.
“That’s a queer name for a human being,” was her comment. She looked at her son as if she suddenly had a bad taste in her mouth. “It sounds like a doll-baby’s name.”
The child was shocked by the unfriendliness—the rudeness—of this. Mrs. Baron followed up her words with more disparagement in the way of a steady, disapproving look. Precocious children ought to be snubbed, she thought.
The good lady would not have offended one of her own age without a better reason; but so many good people do not greatly mind offending a child.
“You know,” said Bonnie May, “I really didn’t have anything to do with picking out my own name. Somebody else did it for me. And maybe they decided on it because they thought it would look good on the four-sheets.”
“On the——”
But Baron swiftly interposed.
“We can go into matters of that sort some other time,” he said. “I think it would be better for you to leave mother and me alone for a minute just now.”
Bonnie May went out of the room in responseto Baron’s gesture. “I’ll show you the way,” he said, and as he began to guide her up the stairs she turned toward him, glancing cautiously over his shoulder to the room they had just quitted.
“Believe me,” she whispered, “that’s the first time I’ve had stage fright in years.” She mounted three or four steps and then paused again. “You know,” she confided, turning again, “she makes you think of a kind of honest sister to Lady Macbeth.”
Baron stopped short, his hand on the balustrade. “Bonnie May,” he demanded, “will you tell me how old you are?”
He had a sudden fear that she was one of those pitiable creatures whose minds grow old but whose bodies remain the same from year to year.
“I don’t know,” she replied, instantly troubled. “Miss Barry never would tell me.”
“Well, how far back can you remember?”
“Oh, quite a long time. I know I had a real speaking part as long as four seasons ago. I’ve been doing little Eva off and on over two years.”
He was greatly relieved. “It seems to me,” he said severely, “that you know about plays which a little girl ought not to know anything about.”
“Oh! Well, I was with Miss Barry in lots of plays that I didn’t have any part in, unless it might be to help out with the populace, or something like that. And we did stock work for a while, with a new play every week.”
Somehow this speech had the effect of restoring her to favor with Baron. Her offenses were clearly unconscious, unintended, while her alertness, her discernment, were very genuine and native. What a real human being she was, after all, despite her training in the unrealities of life! And how quick she was to see when she had offended, and how ready with contrition and apology! Surely that was the sort of thing that made for good breeding—even from the standpoint of a Baron or a Boone!
They traversed the upper hall until they reached an immense front room which was filled with the mellow sunlight of the late afternoon, and which was invitingly informal and untidy in all its aspects. It was one of those rooms which seem alive, because of many things which speak eloquently of recent occupation and of the certainty of their being occupied immediately again.
A square piano, pearl inlaid and venerable, caught Bonnie May’s eyes.
“Oh, how lovely!” she exclaimed. She stood a moment, pressing her hands to her cheeks. “Yes,” she added musingly, “I can actually see them.”
“See whom?” Baron demanded, slightly impatient.
“The nice, sweet girls, wearing crinoline, and dancing with their arms around one another’s waists, and one of them sitting at the piano playing, and looking over her shoulder at the others. There are tender smiles on their lips, and theireyes are shining like anything. They are so dear and happy!”
Baron frowned. Why should the child associate the house, his home, only with things so remote with respect to time and place? It was a jealously guarded family secret that life was relentlessly passing on, leaving them stranded in old ways. But was a child—a waif picked up in pity, or in a spirit of adventure—to wrest the secret from among hidden things and flaunt it in his face?
She had gone into the big bay window and was standing with one hand on the long willow seat, covered with pale-hued cushions. For the moment she was looking down upon the bit of grass-plot below.
“Make yourself at home,” invited Baron. “I won’t be long.”
He went back to his mother. He wished she might have heard what the child had said about the girls who were dancing, far away in the past.
“Well, who is she?” was Mrs. Baron’s abrupt, matter-of-fact question.
“I don’t know. That’s the plain truth. I’m thinking more aboutwhatshe is—or what she seems to be.”
He described the incident in the theatre, and explained how he had been in fear of a panic. “I felt obliged to carry her out,” he concluded rather lamely.
“I quite see that. But that didn’t make youresponsible for her in any way,” Mrs. Baron reminded him.
“Well now, governess, do be friendly. I’m not responsible for her—I know that. But you see, she appears to be alone in the world, except for a Miss Barry, an actress. I couldn’t find her. Of course she’ll be located to-morrow. That’s all there is to it. And let’s not be so awfully particular. There can’t be any harm in having the little thing in the house overnight. Honestly, don’t you think she is wonderful?”
Mrs. Baron was diligently nursing her wrath. “That isn’t the question,” she argued. “I dare say a good many unidentified children are wonderful. But that would scarcely justify us in turning our house into an orphan asylum.”
“Oh! An orphan asylum!” echoed Baron almost despairingly. “Look here, mother, it was just by chance that I ran across the little thing, and under the circumstances what was I going to do with her?”
“There were the police, at least.”
“Yes, I thought of that.”
He went to the window and stood with his back to her. For a full minute there was silence in the room, and then Baron spoke. He did not turn around.
“Yes, there were the police,” he repeated, “but I couldn’t help remembering that there was also I—and we. I had an idea we could do a good dealbetter than the police, in a case like this. I don’t understand how women feel, mother, but I can’t help remembering that every little girl is going to be a woman some day. And I’ve no doubt that the kind of woman she is going to be will be governed a good deal by seemingly trivial events. I don’t see why it isn’t likely that Bonnie May’s whole future may depend upon the way things fall out for her now, when she’s really helpless and alone for the first time in her life. I think it’s likely she’ll remember to the end of her days that people were kind to her—or that they weren’t. We’ve nothing to be afraid of at the hands of a little bit of a girl. At the most, we’ll have to give her a bed for the night and a bite to eat and just a little friendliness. It’s she who must be afraid of us!—afraid that we’ll be thoughtless, or snobbish, and refuse to give her the comfort she needs, now that she’s in trouble.”
He paused.
“A speech!” exclaimed Mrs. Baron, and Baron could not fail to note the irony in her voice. She added, in the same tone: “The haughty mother yields to the impassioned plea of her noble son!”
Baron turned and observed that she was smiling rather maliciously.
“You’d better go up and look after her,” she added. “Flora will be home before long.”