Bonnie May

She assumed a slightly careless air and looked airily at imaginary objects.
(Page [144].)

Bonnie May

By
Louis Dodge

Illustrations by
Reginald Birch

A strolling player comes

New York
Charles Scribner’s Sons
1916

Copyright, 1916, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Published August, 1916

TO
THE LITTLE NEW ENGLAND GIRL
WHO (IN COMPANY WITH HER MOTHER)
MADE FRIENDS WITH AN AMERICAN SOLDIER
ON A JUNE DAY IN 1898
IN THE MARKET-PLACE IN HONOLULU
AND PROMISED
“I SHALL NEVER FORGET YOU”

Contents

Illustrations

Bonnie May

Only women understand children thoroughly, but if a mere man keeps very quiet and humbles himself properly, and refrains from talking down to his superiors, children will sometimes be good to him and let him see what they think about the world.

Rudyard Kipling.

Bonnie May

CHAPTER I
THE INTRUSION OF AN ACTRESS

Somewhere up in the gallery an usher opened a window. Instantly a shaft of sunlight pierced the dark interior of the theatre. It created a mote-filled aerial avenue across a vast space and came to an end in a balcony box.

As if it were part of a general theatrical scheme it served as a search-light and brought into brilliant relief the upper part of a child’s body. There were blue eyes made lustrous by dark lashes; hair the color of goldenrod, which fell forward over one shoulder and formed a kind of radiant vehicle above for the support of a butterfly of blue ribbon. There were delicate red lips, slightly parted.

The child leaned forward in her place and rested her elbows on the box railing. Her chin nestled in a little crotch, formed by her two hands. She would have resembled one of Rubens’s cherubs, if Rubens hadn’t conceived his cherubs on quite such a vulgar plane.

It was so that Baron saw her during a brief interval. Then the window up in the gallery was closed, and darkness reigned in the theatre again. The child disappeared as Marguerite always disappears before Faust has obtained more than a seductive glimpse of her.

Baron wondered who she was. She was so close to him that he could have touched her. He wondered how she could have slipped into the box without his seeing or hearing her. The lights had been on when he took his seat, and at that time he had occupied the box alone. She must have crept in with the cautiousness of a kitten; or perhaps she had come under cover of the noise of applause.

Then he forgot her. All sorts of people were likely to come into a playhouse during a matinée performance, he reflected.

Dawn was merging into day—in the play. The purple of a make-believe sky turned to lavender, and to pink. The long, horizontal streaks of color faded, and in the stronger light now turned on the stage a gypsy woman who seemed to have been sleeping under a hedge came into view—a young creature, who patted back a yawn which distorted her pretty mouth. Other persons of the drama appeared.

Baron succumbed to the hypnotic power of the theatre: to the beguiling illusions of the stage, with its beautiful voices; the relaxed musicians, unobtrusively disinterested; the dark, indistinct rows of alert forms down in the parquet. Despite what he was pleased to believe was a distinguished indifference in his manner, he was passionately fond of plays, amazingly susceptible to their appeal.

The act ended; light flooded the theatre. Baron’s glance again fell upon the intruder who had come to share his box with him. The child really might have been mistaken for an exquisite bit of architectural ornamentation, if she had been placed in a niche in the big proscenium arch. Color and pose and outline all suggested the idea. But now her bearing changed. As she had been absorbed in the meaning of the play, now she became equally interested in the audience, rising in long rows from parquet to gallery. She looked almost aggressively from point to point, with a lack of self-consciousness that was quite remarkable.

People in the audience were noticing her, too; and Baron felt suddenly resentful at being so conspicuously perched before hundreds of eyes, in company with a child he knew nothing about.

She appeared to have scrutinized “the house” to her satisfaction. Then she turned as if she were slightly bored, and gazed with perfect frankness into Baron’s eyes.

“Sold out,” she said, as if she were gratified.

Baron did not clearly grasp the fact that she was referring to “the house.” A question as to her age occurred to him, but this he could not answer. She must be absurdly young—a baby; yet he noted that she had gained command of a glance that was almost maturely searching and complacent. She was not the least bit agitated.

When, presently, she stood up on her chair to obtain a general view of the audience, Baron frowned. She was really a brazen little thing, he reflected, despite her angelic prettiness. And he had a swift fear that she might fall. Looking at her uneasily, he realized now that she was quite tawdrily dressed.

His first impression of her had been one of beauty unmarred. (He had not seen immediately that the blue butterfly which rode jauntily on her crown was soiled.) Now a closer inspection discovered a fantastic little dress which might have been designed for a fancy ball—and it was quite old, and almost shabby. Yet its gay colors, not wholly faded, harmonized with some indefinable quality in the little creature, and the whole garment derived a grace from its wearer which really amounted to a kind of elfish distinction.

She spoke again presently, and now Baron was struck by the quality of her voice. It was rather full for a little girl’s voice—not the affected pipe of the average vain and pretty child. There was an oddly frank, comrade-like quality in it.

“Do you know what I’ve got a notion to do?” she inquired.

Baron withdrew farther within himself. “I couldn’t possibly guess,” he responded. He shook his head faintly, to indicate indifference. She leaned so far over the edge of the box that he feared again for her safety.

“I think you might possibly fall,” he said. “Would you mind sitting down?”

She did as he suggested with a prompt and sweet spirit of obedience. “I’m afraid I was careless,” she said. Then, looking over more guardedly, she added: “I’ve got a notion to drop my programme down on that old duck’s bald head.”

Baron looked down into the parquet. An elderly gentleman, conspicuously bald-headed, sat just beneath them. Something about the shining dome was almost comical. Yet he turned to the child coldly. He marvelled that he had not detected a pert or self-conscious expression of countenance to accompany the words she had spoken. But she was looking into his eyes quite earnestly.

He turned his face away from her for an instant, and then, with an air of having worked out a problem——

“I don’t believe I would,” he said.

“It might frighten him?” she suggested.

“Not that. He might not think it very polite.”

She looked at him studiously a little, her earnest eyes seeming to search his soul. Then she ventured upon a story:

“I got on a street-car with Miss Barry to-day, and we sat down on a seat with a fat woman; and, believe me, the big thing nearly squeezed the gizzard out of me.”

Her eyes grew wide with excitement as she achieved the climax. She waited for his comment.

His eyelids quivered slightly. He decided to pay no more attention to her, despite her prettiness. What language! He stared resolutely at his programme a full minute. But he could not shake off the influence of her steady gaze. “I think you must be exaggerating,” he said finally, with mild irritation.

“Not at all, really.”

“Well, then,” he added impatiently, “I think your language is—is indelicate.”

“Do you, indeed?” She considered this. “Of course that’s a matter of opinion.” She abandoned the subject and seemed to be searching his face for a topic which might be more acceptable. “A good many things have happened to me,” she ventured presently. “I came within an inch of getting caught by the curtain once.”

He had no idea what she meant.

She continued: “It was in a regular tank town somewhere. I never pay any attention to the names of the little towns.” Her tone clearly conveyed the fact that she wished to get away from controversial topics. She waited, plainly puzzled, rather than discouraged, because she received no response. “You know,” she elaborated, “the audiences in the little towns don’t care much whether it’s something legitimate, or a tambourine show with a lot of musty jokes.”

Still Baron’s inclination was to make no response; but really there was such an amazing contrast between her innocent beauty and her gamin-like speech that he could not easily ignore her.

“I’m not sure I know the difference myself,” he confessed.

“Well, you’d rather see ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ than a lot of Honey Boys, wouldn’t you?”

“I’m afraid I’d be in favor of the Honey Boys, whoever they are, unless they are pretty bad.”

She looked incredulous, and then disappointed. For an instant she turned her back on him with resolution. He observed that she squirmed herself into a position of dignified uprightness in her chair.

After a brief interval she turned to him with renewed hope. “Maybe you’re prejudiced against ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’?” she ventured.

“Frankly, I am.”

“You’re not down on the legitimate, though?”

“I like plays—if that’s what you mean.”

Her forehead wrinkled. “Certainly that’s what I mean. What did you think I meant?”

“Why, you see, I wasn’t quite sure.”

She searched his eyes suspiciously; then suddenly she dimpled. “Tell me—are you an actor? Or aren’t you?”

“No—assuredly not!”

She was genuinely embarrassed. She allowed her face to drop into her hands, and Baron felt from her gesture that she must be blushing though he could see that she was not.

After a little she laughed weakly. “How childish of me!” she exclaimed. “I really had no right to make such a mistake. But please tell me how you happen to be up in this box?”

“The manager was good enough to direct an usher to bring me here.”

“Well, you know, I thought this box was always given to us—to the profession, I mean. I do hope you’ll forgive me.” She seemed prepared to withdraw her interest from him then, as if he no longer concerned her in any way.

But Baron was looking at her searchingly, almost rudely. “Are you an—an actress?” he managed to ask.

Her manner changed. For the first time Baron detected an affectation. She looked beyond him, out toward the chattering audience, with an absurd assumption of weariness.

“I thought everybody knew me,” she said. “I’m Bonnie May. You’ve heard of me, of course?” and she brought her eyes back to his anxiously.

“Why, yes, of course,” he assented. He was uncomfortable over the untruth—or over the fact that he had not told it adroitly.

“I wouldn’t have talked to you so freely if I hadn’t thought you were an actor,” she explained. “You know we always treat one another that way.”

His manner softened. “I’m sure I understand,” he assured her.

“I thought everybody knew me,” she said. “I’m Bonnie May.”

He perceived that, despite the lightness of her manner, she was truly ashamed of her mistake. It seemed to him that she was regretfully slipping back into her own world, her own realm of thought. And she was speedily becoming, to him, not a pert minx, but just a lonely, friendly little child.

“I don’t believe I know just where you are appearing now,” he said. For the moment he could not do less than appear to be interested in her.

She moved uncomfortably in her chair. “I’m not doing anything just now,” she said. Then her eyes brightened. “The manager skipped just when business was picking up. We had to close our season. Such a jay town we closed in. The people wanted to hold our trunks!”

“But they didn’t?”

“No, we gave one more performance, so we could square up.”

“Why shouldn’t you have kept on giving performances?”

“Of course, you wouldn’t understand. You see, the manager was our Simon Legree, and we couldn’t do without him.”

“But that last performance——”

“The constable who came to hold our things said he’d take the part of Simon Legree just once, so we could pay our bills and get out of town. He said there was sure to be a crowd if it was known that he would be one of the actors. He said he’d always wanted to be an actor, but that his parents thought it would be sinful for him to act.”

“But did he know the part?”

“He didn’t have to. Even in the profession there are a lot of us who don’t know our parts half the time. You may have noticed. The constable said he could ‘pop a whip’ and we told him that would do, if he would remember to say ‘You black rascal!’ every little while. That would be to Uncle Tom, you know. Our Uncle Tom did both parts. That happens lots of times. With any play, I mean. He’d say: ‘Yo’ say Ah b’longs to you, Massa Legree? Oh, no, Massa Legree, Ah don’ b’long to you. Yo’ may own mah body, but yo’ don’ own mah soul.’ Saying both parts, you know.”

When Baron laughed at this she joined in the merriment and even promoted it. “The constable enjoyed it,” she said. “He said he’d like to leave town with us and play the part all the time.”

“He’d got over thinking it was sinful for him to act?”

“Yes, but the rest of us thought his first hunch was right. Besides, there were other difficulties. You see, our Topsy was the manager’s wife, and she wouldn’t play any more until she found her husband. She wasn’t much of an artist. Anyway, we had to quit.”

Baron sent a wandering glance over the theatre; but he was thinking of neither audience nor play. He wondered whose child this could be, and by what chance a little creature so alert and so friendly in her outlook upon life should be deeply submerged in the make-believe of men, when she should have been reading only the primer of real things.

Then by chance his eyes fell upon Thornburg, the manager, who stood just inside the foyer, engaged in what was seemingly an intense conversation with a tall, decidedly striking-looking woman. And even as his eyes rested upon these two they looked up at him as if he were the subject of their conversation. Or were they not, more probably, discussing the child who sat near him?

He had no time to pursue his reflections. The orchestra brought to its climax the long overture which it had been playing with almost grotesque inadequacy, and the curtain went up on the next act.

There was the sudden diminuendo of voices throughout the house, and the stealthy disturbance of an individual here and there feeling his way to his seat. Then again Baron was lost in the progress of the play.

The child shrank into herself again and became once more an absorbed, unobtruding little creature.

Baron sat in rapt silence for half an hour; and then the master dramatist, Fate, intervened, and proceeded to make him a figure in one of those real dramas before which all make-believe fades into insignificance.

At the left of the stage a flame went leaping up along the inner edge of one of the wings, and took swift hold of a cloud of filmy fabric overhead. The theatre was afire!

Baron saw and was incredulous. The child near him remained undisturbed. The persons on the stage continued their work with an evenness which, to Baron, became suddenly a deadly monotony. But back in those realms in the theatre which were all but hidden from him he saw the swift movements of men who were confronted with an unwonted, a fearful task.

He turned to the child with sudden purpose, with a manner that was harsh and peremptory. “Come!” he said. His voice was subdued yet vibrant.

The child noted the vibration and quickly caught the expression of command in his eyes. She put out a hand toward him obediently, but he excitedly ignored that. He gathered her into his arms and disappeared from the box. In an instant he was carrying her cautiously yet swiftly down a narrow stairway.

He skirted the wall of the theatre and passed the manager in the foyer. He paused long enough to whisper a few startling words, and then hurried toward the entrance. His ears were fortified for the screams of women; but he heard only the dull sound of the asbestos curtain being lowered as he passed out to the street. He did not hesitate until he had turned a corner and was well out of the way of a possible panic-stricken crowd.

He put the child down on the sidewalk; she was really a good deal above the weight of those children who are usually carried. A few steps and they had reached a confectioner’s shop, in which women and children were sitting at little tables, oblivious to all menaces, far or near.

“Let’s go in here,” he said, trying to assume a matter-of-fact tone. The child looked searchingly into his eyes. “What was it?” she asked.

“What was what?”

“Don’t!” she exclaimed with impatience. And then she looked up and down the street, where the constant stream of strangers passed. She felt forlorn, alone. She turned again to Baron as to a final refuge. “I behaved myself,” she said. “I didn’t wait to ask what was the matter—I didn’t say a word. But I knew something had happened. I could hear your heart beating. I knew it was something terrible. But you could tell me now!”

Baron guided her to a chair and released her with a feeling of relief. His impulse was to take his departure and let the incident end as it might. But that wouldn’t do, certainly! What would the confectioner do with the child? Besides, there was something about her——

Through the fitful symphony of the city’s noises the clang of an alarm-bell sounded.

The child lifted her head; her eyes became wide with excitement. “There’s a fire!” she exclaimed.

“Yes,” admitted Baron. “It’s in the theatre. I thought we ought to come out, though of course it may not amount to anything. We’ll wait here until the excitement is over, and then we’ll go out and find your——”

He did not finish the sentence. He realized that he did not know how. Instead he turned to a clerk and ordered something—he scarcely knew what. He was listening to those noises out in the street; he was noting, soon with great relief, that they were abating rapidly. Clearly there had been no real danger, after all.

He led his charge from the place presently. He noticed that she had not touched a little dish of something the clerk had set before her.

On the street again he was surprised to perceive that the normal activities of the neighborhood had been resumed. The audience in the theatre had been dismissed upon some pretext of a nature not at all terrifying. The fire had been extinguished. The lobby was deserted. No one was searching or waiting for a little girl, or seemed to be remotely interested in one.

“Strange!” reflected Baron. He was wholly outside the realm of make-believe now. He was amid painfully prosaic surroundings.

He turned to his companion. “Er—your name has escaped me for the minute——”

“Bonnie May.”

“Of course. Well, Bonnie May, I think I’ll have to take you home.”

“Whose home—yours?” she asked.

“Good gracious, no! To your own!”

She peered into the lobby searchingly, the light slowly fading from her eyes.

“But I haven’t any home,” she said.

CHAPTER II
A MOMENTOUS DECISION

It was all very well for a young man of an almost painfully circumspect type to rescue a youthful female from danger. It was a different matter, however, when he found himself walking along a crowded thoroughfare, leading a waif in a fantastic and almost shabby dress, and bringing upon himself the curious, if not the suspicious, glances of passers-by.

This fact struck Baron forcibly and unpleasantly.

“Come, let’s get inside somewhere,” he said to his companion. He spoke almost abjectly, as if he had been a soldier seeking a hiding-place behind a wall. “This place will do!” He had espied a haven in the form of a restaurant, deserted by all save two or three young women wearing waitresses’ aprons and caps.

Bonnie May looked at him inquiringly, almost piteously. This movement was a mere strategy, she realized. It was not a time for eating. But the ready speech of half an hour ago had deserted her, and she entered the restaurant, when Baron opened the door for her, without saying a word. Indeed she stood so forlornly and dependently that her companion realized anew that he had somehow committed an enormous blunder.

“Sit down somewhere,” he said almost impatiently; and when he noted the childish effort with which she wriggled into her chair, and tried heroically to assume a debonair manner, a feeling deeper than mere irritation seized him.

“Darn the luck!” he ruminated; “she’s so little, and so lovely—what’s a fellow to do in such a case, anyway?”

“It doesn’t seem quite a suitable time to be eating, does it?” she observed politely. The words were accompanied by a gently deprecatory smile which amazed Baron by a quality of odd sophistication and practised self-restraint.

“We needn’t eat anything,” he said, more cordially. “I think we ought to order something to drink. You see, I have to decide what to do.”

She adjusted certain articles on the table with feminine nicety. “That’s very good of you, I’m sure,” she said.

“What is?”

“I mean your taking an interest in me.”

“An interest in you! What else can I do?”

She propped her face up in the palms of her hands and looked across the table at him meditatively.

“Don’t!” he exclaimed. “I’m not used to having a cherub on my hands. It’s my own predicament I’m thinking about, not yours. Do you drink milk?”

A waitress had approached and was standing behind them.

She resented his brusque manner, now that the waitress was there to hear. “I have done such a thing,” she said. “As a rule I’m permitted to choose for myself.”

“Well, by all means do, then.”

She turned to the waitress and lowered her voice by a full tone. “A cup of chocolate, please; not too thick; and some wafers.” She faced Baron again with a ready change of countenance and voice, and touched upon some trivial subject which he recognized as a formal means of dispelling any impression that there was something unusual in their relationship or appearance.

“Now, Bonnie May,” he began, when they were alone, “I want you to help me as far as you can. Who took you to the theatre this afternoon?”

“I went with Miss Barry.”

“Good. Who is Miss Barry?”

“Miss Florence Barry. You don’t mean to say you don’t know who she is?”

“I never heard of her.”

“She’s an actress. She’s very well known, too.”

“Very well. How did she happen to take you? How did you happen to be with her?”

“I’ve always been with her. She’s all I’ve got.”

“We’re getting along nicely. You’re related to her, I suppose?”

“I couldn’t say. It’s possible.”

Baron frowned. “Your mother is dead?” he asked.

She gazed at him with a gathering cloud in her eyes—a look that was eloquent of secret sorrow and beseechment. But she made no response in words.

Baron felt the pangs of swift remorse. “I suppose Miss Barry will have to do,” he said, with an attempt at kindly brusqueness. Then—“Can you tell me her address?”

“I don’t suppose she has any. We’ve been doing one-night stands quite a long time.”

“But she must belong some place—and you, too. Where have you been stopping?”

“We only got here yesterday. I see you don’t quite understand. We’ve just been moving from place to place all the time.”

Baron pondered. “Have you always lived in hotels, in one town or another?” he finally asked.

“Hotels—and theatres and rooming-houses, and trains and even wagons and carriages. Every kind of place.”

“I see. Well, where did you stop last night?”

“We had a room somewhere. I really couldn’t tell you where. It was the meanest kind of a place—empty and cold—quite a distance from the theatre. It was in a long row of houses, built one up against another, miles and miles long, with cheap, little old stores or shops down-stairs, and sometimes rooms above that you could rent. We were just getting ready to look for an engagement, you know, and we were broke. We couldn’t afford to go to a nice place.”

The fine show of bravery was beginning to pass. She felt that she was being questioned unsympathetically.

Baron, too, realized that his questions must seem to lack friendliness.

The waiter brought chocolate and coffee, and Baron dropped sugar into his cup, thoughtfully watching the little bubbles that arose. Then, much to Bonnie May’s surprise, and not a little to her relief, he laughed softly.

“What is it?” she asked eagerly.

“Oh, nothing.”

“I beg your pardon, I’m sure,” was Bonnie May’s chilling rejoinder. She began to sip her chocolate with impressive elegance.

“Why not?” reflected Baron. He was drawing a picture of Bonnie May in his mother’s presence—his mother, who was the most punctilious of all elderly ladies, and whose genuine goodness of heart was usually quite concealed by the studied way in which she adhered to the unbending social codes that must govern a Baron—or, rather, a Boone. She was a Boone—of the Virginia Boones—when she married Baron’s father; a beauty who had been wealthy, despite the disintegration of the Boone fortunes when the Civil War freed the slaves.

He pictured Bonnie May in the dim old mansion that was his home—in that aged house that never knew the voices of children; in which even adults seemed always to be speaking in low, measured tones.

“The governess isn’t as bad as she would like to appear,” was his irreverent meditation, which still related to his mother. “And Flora would take my part. As for the governor——”

He turned to the child with decision. He realized, finally, that the question of treating her just as if she were any other lost child was not to be considered.

“Bonnie May,” he said, “I think you’d better go home with me for the time being. We can put something in the paper, you know, and I’ll find out if Miss Barry has left any word with the police. But that can’t be done in a minute, and of course we can’t sit here all afternoon. Come, let’s go home.”

The waitress came forward to assist when she saw Bonnie May trying to climb down from her chair without loss of dignity.

“It was very nice,” said the child, addressing the waitress. She was smiling angelically. “I think we’re ready,” she added, turning toward Baron.

She tried to catch step with him as they moved toward the door.

And Baron could not possibly have known that at that very moment his mother and his sister Flora were sitting in an upper room of the mansion, brooding upon the evil days that had fallen upon the family fortunes.

Theirs was a very stately and admirable home—viewed from within. But it was practically all that the family possessed, and the neighborhood—well, the neighborhood had wholly lost eligibility as a place for residences long ago.

All their friends, who had formerly been their neighbors, had moved away, one after another, when commerce had descended upon the street, with its grime and smoke, and only the Barons remained. Certainly cities grow without any regard at all for the dignity of old mansions or old families.

And while the ground on which the mansion stood had increased in value until it was worth a considerable fortune, it was a carefully guarded family secret that the actual supply of funds in the family treasury had dwindled down to next to nothing.

One permanent investment brought Mrs. Baron a few hundreds annually, and Mr. Baron drew a modest salary from a position with the city, which he had held many years without complaint or lapses. But the fortune that used to be theirs had vanished mysteriously in trips to Europe and in the keeping up of those social obligations which they could not disregard. The formal social activities of the mansion had become wholly things of the past, and within the past year or two the visits of old friends, now living out in commodious new residential districts, had become few and far between. Really it seemed that the Barons had been forgotten.

Flora, looking suddenly into her mother’s brooding, fine old eyes, and quite accurately reading the thought that was beyond them, sighed and arose.

“It’s the neighborhood,” she said—quite ambiguously, it would have seemed, since not a word had passed between them for nearly half an hour.

But Mrs. Baron responded: “Do you think so?” And her face stiffened with new resolve not to repine, even if the currents of life had drawn away from them and left them desolate.

Then an automobile drew up in front of the mansion and Flora’s face brightened. “They’ve come!” she said. “I won’t be gone long, mother,” and she hurried away to her room.

A moment later Mrs. Baron heard her going down the stairs and closing the front door.

She stood at the window and watched Flora get into the shining electric coupé of the McKelvey girls. She caught a glimpse of the McKelvey girls’ animated faces, and then the elegant little vehicle moved away.

Still she stood at the window. Her face was rather proud and defiant. And then after a time it became, suddenly, quite blank.

There was Victor coming up the stone steps into the yard, and he was leading a waif by the hand. Only the word “waif” did not occur to Mrs. Baron.

“Well!” she exclaimed, her body rigid, her eyes staring out from beneath pugnacious brows. “Victor and an impossible little female!”

CHAPTER III
MRS. BARON DECIDES

As Baron 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 to have 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.

“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. The child 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 response to 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 their eyes 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 about what she 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 you responsible 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 deal better 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.”

CHAPTER IV
A CRISIS

At five o’clock, during a brief lull in the usual noises on the avenue, there was a faint and aristocratic murmur of machinery in front of the mansion. The McKelvey girls’ motor-car drew up at the curb, and Miss Flora Baron alighted.

The Misses McKelvey had come for her early in the afternoon and had driven her out to their suburban home, where she was always treated almost like one of the family.

She was the sort of girl that people love unquestioningly: gentle, low-voiced, seemingly happy, grateful, gracious. Besides, there was a social kinship between the two families. Mrs. McKelvey had been a Miss Van Sant before her marriage, and the Van Sants and the Boones had been neighbors for a century or more.

“Good-by, Flora,” called the McKelvey girls almost in one voice, as their guest hurried toward her gate. Their cheerful faces were framed by the open door of their shining coupé. And Flora looked back over her shoulder and responded gayly, and then hurried up into the vestibule of the mansion.

She carried an armful of roses which the McKelveys had insisted upon her bringing home: roses with long stems, from which many of the green, wax-like leaves had not been removed.

When she entered the hall she paused and sighed. Now that her friends could not see her any longer, she abandoned a certain gladsome bearing. It was so lovely out at the McKelveys’, and it was so—so different, here at home. She had the feeling one might have upon entering a dungeon.

The fingers of her right hand closed upon the dull-green-and-silver tailored skirt she was wearing, and one foot was already planted on the first step of the stairway. She meant to offer the roses to her mother, who would be in the sitting-room up-stairs.

But before she had mounted to the second step she heard her brother Victor’s voice in the dining-room, and she knew by his manner of speaking that he was at the telephone.

This circumstance in itself was not remarkable, but he was asking for police headquarters!

Visions of a burglary passed before her mind, and she wondered whimsically what anybody could find in the house worth stealing. Her brother’s next words reached her clearly:

“Oh, I couldn’t say just how old she is. Say about ten. Somebody must have reported that she is lost.... Well, that certainly seems strange....”

Flora changed her mind about going up-stairs immediately. Instead, she turned toward the dining-room. Victor was continuing his message: “Are you sure such a report hasn’t been made at one of the substations?” And after a brief interval there was the sound of the receiver being hung up.

However, when Flora entered the dining-room her brother was speaking at the telephone again. More about a little girl. “Mr. Thornburg’s office? Mr. Thornburg? This is Baron speaking. Say—has anybody spoken to you about losing a little girl this afternoon?”

Flora perceived that he was deeply concerned; his attitude was even strikingly purposeful—and Victor usually appeared to have no definite purposes at all.

“Yes,” he continued, clearly in answer to words from the other end of the wire, “I brought her home with me. I didn’t know what else to do. I thought somebody might have inquired at the theatre about her. If they do, you’ll let me know right away, won’t you? She’ll probably be with us here until she’s claimed.”

He hung up the receiver. His eyes were unusually bright.

“Here? Who?” demanded Flora.

Baron beamed upon her. “Flora!” he cried. “I’m glad you’ve come. Something has happened!”

“Who’s here?”

“The renowned actress, Bonnie May.”

“Please tell me!” she begged, as if he had made no response at all.

“A little lost girl.” Then Baron briefly explained.

Miss Baron’s eyes fairly danced. “What an adventure!” She added presently: “Is she—nice?”

“Nice? That’s a woman’s first question every time, isn’t it?” Baron reflected. “I suppose so. I know she’s pretty—the very prettiest thing!”