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!”