CHAPTER XIIRELATES TO THE PLAYING OF PARTS
Muchlight is thrown upon the character of Victor Baron when it is said that he was the kind of young man who likes to sit in an attic when the rain is falling.
Such a young man may possess many high virtues, certainly; but he can scarcely hope to escape occasional contact with what is called the world’s cold shoulder. He is clearly not the sort of person who knows what magic there is in the matter of percentages and other such progressive and acquisitive sciences.
We now encounter this peculiar young man in his attic room, on an afternoon when the rain was falling steadily.
Days had passed since Mrs. Baron had driven the manager, Thornburg, from her front door. Something like a fixed status in the case of Bonnie May had been brought about. Seemingly, she had become a permanent member of the Baron household.
Yet Baron was not happy. Having performed his duty in solving one problem, he had now passed on to another, an older problem.
There was the fact of his aimless existence staring him in the face; the fact that he had been home from the university over a year now, and that as yet he had chosen no plough to the handles of which he meant to set his hands.
He did a little newspaper writing when the spirit moved him: articles and reviews which were often quite cordially accepted—and sometimes even urgently solicited—but which were still subjected to a measuring process in the accounting room of the newspaper offices, and which were only meagrely profitable.
To be sure, his needs were quite simple. He made no contributions to the up-keep of the household. He kept his tailor’s bills paid with a reasonable degree of promptitude. Usually, too, he had funds enough for books and other means of recreation. Still, there were occasions when he had to go to his mother for assistance, and this practise he was compelled to contemplate with utter disfavor.
It is true that he never asked his mother for Money. The Barons pronounced the word money as if it were spelled with a capital letter, like certain other more or less unsavory names—Lucretia Borgia, New Caledonia, Christian Science, Prussianism, or Twilight Sleep. He used to ask her, when need arose, if she had any street-car-fare lying about. And she would put her index-finger to her forehead and meditate, and then remember suddenlythat there was some in her work-basket on the centre-table, or under something or other on the sideboard. A burglar would have had a discouraging experience in the mansion; not because there was never anything to steal, but because what money there was was always placed lightly in such unpromising places.
“I really ought to get down to business,” concluded Baron, sitting in his attic—though the phrase was inept, since business was another word which the Barons pronounced as if it were spelled with a capital letter.
The place was depressingly quiet. The houseman, Thomason, might be in his room, which adjoined Baron’s; but Thomason never made any noise. He was almost uncannily quiet at all times. The door between the two rooms was never opened. Both opened upon the hall, and when Thomason wished to attend to his duties he descended to the floor below, where a back stairway afforded egress to the lower regions where his more active interests lay.
Yes, the quietude was just now quite depressing. Sitting by an open window, Baron looked out upon the sombre vista of back street, which was uninviting at best, but which now presented a doubly depressing aspect in the monotonously falling rain.
An intercepted picture of a small park was visible several blocks away. The Lutheran church, whose bell was forever tinkling a message of another timeand place, was in sight, and so was the shoulder of a brewery.
Closer at hand men and women were hurrying in various directions, seeking escape from the rain. They had finished their day’s work and were now going home to enjoy their well-earned bread and meat and rest. Over there where the wind currents of two streets met two small boys stood beneath a dilapidated umbrella and permitted a torrent of muddy water in the gutter to run over their bare feet. A beer-driver, partly sheltered under the hood of his dray, drove rumblingly over the cobblestones toward the near-by brewery. On the ends of passing street-cars home-going crowds were trying to escape the falling rain.
All this constituted a back-street picture which none of the Barons observed as a rule. It was the habit of the family to confine their outlook to the front view. But just now Baron was experiencing a frame of mind which made the humble side of life significant and even fascinating.
Still, he was glad to have his solitude invaded when, some time later, he felt a light touch on his shoulder. Unheard and unobserved, Bonnie May had stolen into the room. She had “caught” him in a brown study.
“Don’t you think you’ve been studying your part long enough?” she asked. She was looking at him with cheerful comprehension.
“What part?” he asked.
“Well, of course I don’t know exactly, except that it would beyourpart—whatever that is. That’s what people always do when they’re alone, isn’t it? They think how certain words will sound, or how they will do this or that. That’s studying a part, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes—in a way.”
She pulled a chair to the window, close to him, and climbed into it. “There’s really something funny about it,” she added with a reminiscent manner.
“Funny?”
“I mean about people and their parts. You know, mostly people aren’t thinking at all about how to do their own parts better. They’re imagining themselves in some rôle way beyond them. When they think they are ambitious they’re mostly just sore because somebody is doing better than they are. It’s jealousy—not ambition. My goodness, the little parts are important enough!”
Baron regarded her in silence. Then—“but don’t you think everybody ought to want to advance?” he asked.
“Oh, well—yes; but think how a production would be if the little parts—even the populace—were done wrong! If I had only one line, I’d want to believe it was as important as anything in the play.”
Baron tried to apply that philosophy to his own “part,” but he had to admit that the result was not at all satisfactory.
“Anyway,” she added, “if you do things the way your audience wants you to do them, I’ll bet the big parts will come fast enough.”
“The audience!” echoed Baron. “I’d want a higher standard than that. I’d want to—to play my part the way I thought it should be done. I wouldn’t be satisfied just with pleasing the audience.”
“Oh, but that’s the wrong idea. I’ve seen people like that. They never were what you’d call artists. Believe me, the audience is the best judge.”
Baron, seeking for a symbol, believed there was no hope of finding it in this. His mind wandered, and when he brought it back to the child who sat before him she was talking of her own problem in a way which did not touch his at all.
“I think it’s the chance of my life,” she was saying, “my being here with you all.”
“A chance—for what?” he asked.
“Oh, to pick things up. You know I can’t always be a Little Eva. I’ll be too old for that after a while. And then it will be handy for me to have a little—a little class.”
“Class!” exclaimed Baron. “Class?”
He had been arguing that the one thing wrong with his way of thinking and living was that he and his family had attached a silly importance to the class idea, and that it had prevented him from learning to be active and useful in ways that counted in the world in which he had to live.
“It’s a good thing,” defended Bonnie May. “It’s needed in all the best plays. And you can’t get it just by going to the wardrobe mistress, either. It’s something that’s got to beinyou. In order to do it right, you’ve pretty near got to have the goods.”
She couldn’t understand why Baron had spoken with such emphasis—with such resentment.
“Class,” mused Baron to himself. He looked intently at this child who did not know where she had been born—who knew nothing even about her parentage.
But she had turned to a happier memory. “You know you can’t play the part of Little Eva very long, even when you begin quite early. And I was just a little bit of a thing when I played it first.” She laughed heartily. “I couldn’t even speak plain. I used to say ‘U’kle Tom’! How they laughed at me! ‘U’kle Tom!’ It’s really a hideous word, isn’t it? ‘Uncle,’ and ‘aunt,’ too. You can see that the man who framed up those words never thought very highly of uncles and aunts. Just compare those words with ‘father’ and ‘mother’! Aren’t they lovely? Father!” she spoke the word musingly. “Father!” Her body drooped forward slightly, and her face was pitched up so that she was gazing into space. “Beautiful words, and mother! ... mother!” Her voice had become a yearning whisper.
Baron touched her shoulders with gentle hands. “Don’t, child!” he implored her.
She aroused herself as from a dream. Her eyes brightened. She looked at him searchingly. “You thought ... I believe I was, too!”
She sprang to her feet. “I really do intend to pick up a lot of things while I am here,” she added briskly. She walked across the floor. “An imitation of a person of class,” she said. She moved with studied elegance. “You see,” she exclaimed, turning to him, “I can’t do it at all right! I ought to beat that.” She returned to her starting-point. “See if I do it any better,” she said.
Mrs. Baron appeared in the doorway, but neither Baron nor the child saw her. Again Bonnie May crossed the room. This time she assumed a slightly careless air, and looked airily at imaginary objects to right and left. Her movement was slightly undulating. She turned to Baron suddenly: “What you have to do is to be really proud, without thinking about it. I know how it ought to be done, but it’s hard to get the hang of it. If you don’t get it just right you’re likely to look like a saleslady.” She discovered Mrs. Baron, who stood rather scornfully in the doorway.
“Oh, Mrs. Baron!” she exclaimed. She was somewhat dismayed. She thought of adopting a conciliatory course. “You could show us just what I mean, if you would,” she said.
“I came to say that dinner is ready,” said Mrs. Baron. “Could show you what?”
“Won’t you please come here—quite over to thisend of the room? Now please go out. We’ll come right away.”
Mrs. Baron regarded her sternly. Bonnie May flushed and her glance became softly appealing. She took Mrs. Baron’s hand and patted it. “I’m not being rude, really,” she declared. “It’s as if we were asking you to settle a bet, you know.”
“I don’t understand at all.”
“Well, please don’t be angry. If you are, it will spoil everything.”
Mrs. Baron turned to her son. He was telegraphing to her an earnest appeal, in which she read an assurance that she was not to be made ridiculous, even from the extraordinary view-point of Bonnie May.
“Did you understand that dinner is ready?” she asked.
“Yes, mother. We’ll be right down.”
Mrs. Baron left the room.
“Look at it! Look at it!” whispered Bonnie May. Her hands were clasped in a worshipful ecstasy. Her eyes seemed to retain the picture after Mrs. Baron had disappeared. Then she turned with swift intensity to Baron.
“Oh, I do hope she’ll care for me a little!” she exclaimed. “She’s so—so legitimate!”