BOBBY ENDEAVORS TO SHOW THE ASTONISHED COMPTON HOW TO BEHAVE
“Well,” observed John Compton as, holding Bobby’s hand, he sauntered
along that Bagdad of a street, Hollywood Boulevard, “you’ve scored the
first time at the bat, Bobby. You’re under a contract at thirty-five
dollars a week, and a bonus of two hundred dollars if you make good.”
“I like to make money,” cried Bobby.
“Oh, you do? Have you made much?”
“No. I never made a cent in my life; but I like to, just the same.”
“Are you fond of money?”
Bobby did not make an immediate reply. He was trying, not
unsuccessfully, to “take off” the mincing gait of a young lady in front
of him, who, considering the tightness of her skirt and the height of
her truncated cone heels, was doing very well.
“No. I don’t care for money; but mother needs it. Say, this is a nice
place. I like flowers, lots of them, and nice white houses and palm
trees and bright sunshine.”
“All these things,” observed John Compton “are our long suit in
Hollywood. If there ever was a paradise on earth, it must have been
here.”
“Is that all you know?” inquired the lad, his lip curling in scorn.
“Why, of course there was a paradise! Didn’t you ever study catechism?”
“Well—er, no.”
“That’s all right,” said Bobby, relaxing from scorn to benevolence,
“I’ll teach you myself.”
“Upon my word!” ejaculated Compton, and fell into meditation, from which
he was presently aroused by the strange behavior of the people on the
street. Were they staring and laughing at him? Turning, he discovered
Bobby, a little to the rear of him, doing the Bowery walk and wearing a
face becoming a hardened pickpocket.
“See here, you young imp! You’re giving our show away.”
“Oh, I never thought of that!” cried Bobby, putting on the air of a
Sunday-school superintendent. “I just can’t help it,” he went on. “I
just love to act.”
“Why, have you ever acted before?”
“No; but I just love to.”
“Did you ever see a church more charmingly situated?” asked the
comedian.
They were passing the Church of the Blessed Sacrament, a church hardly
to be seen from the sidewalk. It stood well back from the street, hidden
by large palms, pepper trees, and a profusion of flowers and foliage.
“Is that a Catholic church?” the boy inquired.
“It certainly is.”
“Let’s go in and pay a visit,” suggested the lad.
“I don’t go to church,” returned Compton.
Once more Bobby’s lip curled.
“You must be crazy,” he said. “Now, you come on in.”
Bobby, it was clear, was in no mood for argument. Catching Compton by
the hand, he led that astonished young man along the lovely path towards
the church.
“What’s that sign about up there?” asked Bobby.
“It says,” answered Compton, “that it was here or in the immediate
vicinity that Father Junipero Serra said the Mass of the Holy Cross.”
“I’ve heard of him and read a book about him,” said Bobby. “He must have
been a great man.”
“Yes?” interrogated the skeptic. “I’ve heard it said that the Mass of
the Holy Cross is the same as the Mass of the Holy Wood; and that’s the
reason we call this section Hollywood.”
“I like that name now more than ever, uncle.”
On entering the vestibule Bobby hunted for and quickly found the
holy-water font. Dipping his finger in, he devoutly made the sign of the
cross, while Mr. Compton gazed at him as though he were seeing for the
first time an unusually occult rite.
Bobby motioned him; then pointed to the font. Compton came forward
obediently enough, but he would not or could not understand what the
child further expected.
“Here!” whispered Bobby, with unsmiling face. And catching Mr. Compton’s
reluctant right hand, he dipped its index finger in the font.
“Now say what I say,” he adjured.
Standing on tiptoe, Bobby placed the captive finger on Compton’s
forehead, brought it down to the breast, then to the left and the right
shoulder, while Compton, his face red as a Los Angeles geranium,
repeated after his young mentor, “In the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
“You’ll do it better next time,” remarked Bobby consolingly.
“Now come on!” And Bobby, pushing the comedian in front of him,
proceeded fully half way up the center aisle.
“Now you genuflect,” he whispered.
“Eh?” said Compton, looking like the “nut” he played.
“Sh-h-h!” warned Bobby. “Look.”
And Bobby bent his right knee, holding himself quite erect, till it
touched the floor. “Now do that.”
Compton made the effort; and Compton, who could turn handsprings and
bend the crab and stop a grounder and catch a fly with a grace that had
won the hearts of the fair sex in many a city, bent his knee with the
effect of one suffering from locomotor ataxia.
Once more Bobby’s lip curled. He was minded to make Mr. Compton do it
again, but on second thought changed his mind.
“Get in that pew,” he whispered, in manifest disgust.
There was nothing for Compton to do but obey. Bobby followed after him
and, a second time signing himself with the sign of the cross, knelt
down. Compton, looking, as he felt, inexpressibly stupid, seated
himself.
Bobby stared at him severely, arose, and catching his friend by the arm
coaxed him to his knees.
Once more Bobby made an elaborate sign of the cross, during the
performance of which the comedian, leaning back, braced himself
comfortably against the end of the seat. It came home to Bobby by this
time that he was “instructing the ignorant.” He must do it in all
kindness. After all, it might not be Compton’s fault. So, smiling
sweetly but with the severe restraint proper to a church where the Lord
of all was present in the tabernacle, he reached forward a tiny hand,
applied it to the small of Compton’s back, and pressed forward till
Compton was kneeling erect.
“That’s the proper way to kneel,” he whispered kindly. “Now just keep
that way, and say your prayers.”
There was a sound so like a giggle that it really could not have been
anything else proceeding from the back of the church, and three young
ladies, their handkerchiefs at their mouths, incontinently left the
church. Several other worshipers left, clearly for the same reason. Only
one worshiper remained, a man whose romances had thrilled hundreds of
thousands of readers. Restraining his features, he tiptoed up the aisle,
and knelt at an angle where he could see Bobby’s face.
In no wise realizing that he had emptied the church, Bobby for the third
time crossed himself and, undisturbed by Compton, began to pray. It had
been for Compton a day of many surprises. But now it was a moment of
astonishment. Glancing sidewise, he took in Bobby’s face. Just a few
minutes before, he had reprehended Bobby for wearing the air of a
criminal; and now—-he was looking upon the face of an angel! And there
was a difference, too, of another kind, as Compton at once realized.
Looking like a criminal, Bobby was acting; looking like an angel Bobby
was himself, his natural self touched by faith into something strange
and rare. The boy’s eyes, large, earnest, beseeching, were fastened upon
the tabernacle; his lips were moving in a silent eloquence. His head,
erect, was motionless. So, for that matter, was his whole person—all
save those eloquent lips. At that moment, as Compton felt, there existed
for Bobby only two persons, God and himself. For the first time in his
life Compton was seized with a sense of the supernatural. He bowed his
head upon his hands and looked no more. It was the most sacred moment of
his life. If Compton did not pray orally, he did something better. He
meditated.
The eminent author saw the vision, too. He had stayed for curiosity’s
sake; he remained to pray. Like Compton, the vision of lovely faith—and
what is there out of heaven so lovely as the faith of a child?—quite
overcame him. He gazed no more, but, lowering his eyes, prayed with a
new devotion.
“I saw a little boy praying in church,” he said to his wife an hour
later, “and I understood as I never understood before that saying of our
Lord’s, ‘Unless you become as little children you shall not enter the
kingdom of heaven.’”
Several minutes passed. A light touch brought Compton out of a virgin
land of thought. Bobby, tranquil and with a subdued cheerfulness, was
motioning him out.
“Watch!” whispered Bobby, and genuflected. “Now try it again. Fine!”
At the vestibule five minutes were spent, by which time Compton really
knew how to make the sign of the cross.
“Bobby,” he said, as they got outside, “that’s my first visit to a
Catholic church, and I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”