A QUESTION OF RECONSTRUCTION
In keeping with the Baron manner, no mention of Mr. Addis’s name was
made openly in the mansion the next morning. The normal atmosphere
was changed only by a more pronounced reticence, which doubtless hid
varying degrees of sullenness or resentment. But there was no lack of
politeness. On the contrary, there was an excess of it.
Of course it was realized that Mr. Addis had not been finally disposed
of. Mrs. Baron’s idea was to await developments--and so was Flora’s.
Only Bonnie May violated the well-established tradition of the
household.
Early in the morning she encountered Flora, and made occasion to
engage her in a brief conversation. Flora was planning to go out with
the McKelvey girls after breakfast, and she held in her hands the
green-and-silver tailored skirt when Bonnie May came upon her. She was
regarding it with the care and heartache of a young woman in love with
pretty things who has very few of them, and she did not seem quite
responsive when the child began a somewhat extraordinary commentary.
She scarcely heeded Bonnie May’s introductory words, but she _did_
begin to pay attention when she heard this:
“Of course I know I’ve got nothing to do with the giving out of parts,
but if I had, he’d strike me just right for the rôle of the husband.”
Miss Baron flushed. She knew just whom the child meant, but she felt
that she must pretend to some measure of doubt.
“What in the world are you talking about?” she asked. Her faint smile
robbed her words of sharpness.
“I think he’s just the kind that would look well to the people in the
gallery, and to the people down in the parquet, too. Mr. Addis.”
Flora sat down in an aimless fashion, holding the green-and-silver
skirt across her knees.
“Do you think,” she asked meditatively, “that he would look
well--anywhere?”
“Do you mean, do I think he would look--ridic’lous, anywhere?”
Miss Baron leaned back and looked with a sort of mournful joyousness at
the ceiling. “You do say such amazing things!” she declared. “To use
your word, You don’t think he would look ridiculous anywhere?”
“Never in the world!” was the emphatic response.
“But you know he isn’t at all like--well, like the leading men in
plays, for example.”
“You mean what they call matinée idols?”
“Well, he’s entirely different from them, isn’t he?”
“But you wouldn’t want him to be like them, would you?”
Miss Baron shook her head slowly. “No, _I_ wouldn’t....”
“I’ll tell you how he strikes me,” said Bonnie May. “If he came on
the stage, the audience would think it was the business manager, come
to make an announcement. You know the business manager is the man who
has the money--sometimes; who pays the hotel bills and finds out about
train-time, and sees that your baggage is there ahead of you when you
get to the end of a trip. He’s the real man with the show. These fellas
that look like fashion-plates are all right as far as they go. But you
know once in a while the walking gets bad, and then the wise guys are
the ones that stand in with the business manager.”
She went away, nodding with emphasis, and left Miss Baron to complete
her toilet.
Beyond this brief interchange of words not a word about Mr. Addis had
been spoken when Baron, immediately after breakfast, went away in
response to a telephone call from a newspaper office. The Sunday editor
had an idea for a special article and, as it turned out, Baron was
employed down-town all day.
There was a “story” about an exhibit in one of the art-galleries to
write, and this he had done with one of those intervals of ardor which
characterized him.
He had also called on Thornburg. He wanted to know how the mysterious
quest of Bonnie May was progressing, and if the manager had learned
anything as a result of his response to the advertisement in the
_Times._
But Thornburg had no information for him. He had replied to the
advertisement according to his promise, he said, but he had received no
response. He admitted quite frankly that he had permitted two days to
pass before doing this. He had been unusually busy. But he had attended
to the matter as soon as he had been able to find time--and nothing had
come of it.
However, as Baron was leaving the manager’s office, Thornburg called
him back. “By the way,” he said, “it is possible Mrs. Thornburg may
have something interesting to tell you. I just happened to remember
that she asked me to invite you up to the house when I saw you. I
believe she mentioned Bonnie May. Suppose you drop around as soon as
it’s convenient.”
On his way home that afternoon, Baron thought of the manager’s message
and his manner, and again he became suspicious. He couldn’t help
believing that Thornburg knew more than he admitted. But then, he
concluded, perhaps he was only innocently plotting to get possession of
the child for whom there now appeared to be no lawful claimant.
When he reached home his mother was the first person he encountered,
and he surmised by her manner that this circumstance was a result of
her own design and management.
“Anything wrong, mother?” he asked. He had visions of kidnappers
watching the house from hidden points of vantage.
Mrs. Baron led the way into the dining-room and took a seat in the bay
window overlooking the anæmic grass-plot.
“Yes--entirely wrong,” she responded. “Do you know what this country
had after the Civil War?”
“Of course. It had peace.”
“It had reconstruction.”
“Oh!--reconstruction. Certainly.”
“_That’s_ what I’m going to have in this household.”
“All in favor of reconstruction will signify--” began Baron lightly.
But his mother interrupted him quite sharply.
“I don’t intend to be annoyed any more by that man Addis,” she
declared, a flush mounting to her cheeks.
“Oh,” said Baron, for the first time comprehending. “And my part in
the--the new order of things is to begin snubbing him?”
“I don’t care if you look at it in that way. I don’t intend he shall
come here.”
Baron looked at her thoughtfully. “My difficulty is,” he said, “that
I understand your position, and his, too. And Flora’s. Addis is an
awfully decent chap. I think you don’t look at him quite right. He’s
got lots of friends of the right sort. Men friends. He doesn’t go in
for the--oh, the ladylike things. But he belongs to the hunting clubs,
and some of the best commercial clubs, and--well, I’m sure he’s every
inch a man.”
“So far as we’re concerned, he’s every inch a grocer.”
Baron winced. “Oh, mother!” he protested, and after an interval of
silence, “mother!” he exclaimed, “what are we? What am I? A loafer,
living off a woman’s money; depending on my parents; having no
prospects of my own making. There are times when I wish I had learned
how to be a grocer, or a blacksmith, or a carpenter, or anything that
would give me a place I could put a label on. Honestly, I don’t see
that _I’ve_ got anything to make me look down on--on anybody.”
Mrs. Baron was not at all impressed by this. “I won’t answer that sort
of nonsense,” she said. “And as for Mr. Addis----”
The door into the kitchen opened and Mrs. Shepard stood revealed. Her
brow was furrowed. She looked beseechingly at Mrs. Baron.
“Yes, right away,” said Mrs. Baron, rising. But she paused and looked
at her son again. “And that--that unruly child who’s been letting him
in. She’s to be taken in hand, too.”
“Yes, mother?”
“As long as she’s here you and Flora have got to quit treating her as
if she were a--a fairy queen. It’s absurd. She’s got to be restrained
and--and enlightened.”
“I’m quite willing to do my part. The trouble is I’ve been too busy
being enlightened by her to do very much enlightening on my part.”
“Well, she hasn’t enlightened me at all. And I’ll be able to attend
to her without a great deal of aid. She’s got to get down out of the
clouds, to real things.”
“She doesn’t seem to fit in with our kind of realities, does she?” he
conceded. And then he smiled. “If it were only right to regard even
children simply as human beings! They have to be themselves sooner or
later. If it were only possible to let them develop along that line
from the start!”
But the kitchen door had been opened by Mrs. Shepard again--this time
timorously and incompletely--and Mrs. Baron was gone.
Baron climbed two flights of stairs before he came upon the object of
his next search. Bonnie May was in the attic.
She was all eagerness when she saw him. “Do you know what happened
to-day?” she began.
Baron stopped abruptly. “Happened!” he echoed, unworded speculations
again flooding his mind.
“Oh, nothing wrong. It’s just--Mrs. Baron gave me my first music
lesson.”
“Music lesson!” he echoed, and then: “Was _that_ all?”
“Isn’t it enough?” She came close to him and whispered: “I’m to be
‘cultivated.’”
He frowned. “I don’t like the word. Who said so?”
“I wouldn’t mind about a word. Honestly, it wasn’t so bad. I’ve often
thought I’d like to be able to hit a few high spots on the piano.
Sometimes a little thing like that means ever so much to you. Imagine
yourself having the lead in a play with a lot of love-making in it.
You have a line like this--to the leading man: ‘You’ll be like all the
rest. You’ll forget me among all those gay scenes.’ Don’t you see how
much it helps if you can say it sitting on a piano-stool, and winding
up by turning to the keyboard and trifling with it softly? You don’t
need to play well. It wouldn’t do to play really well. Just a little,
you know. Absent-mindedly, with your head down. That’s what I want to
be able to do.”
Baron had pulled a chair close to the window. “And so you took a music
lesson?” he asked. He was recalling the serenely inefficient manner in
which his mother played certain familiar hymns. It did not occur to him
that she would attempt to teach Bonnie May anything but this class of
music. Indeed, he felt sure she would not have been able to recall any
other kind. “I’m glad you don’t object to it,” he said. Presently he
added, without very much interest in the subject: “After all, some of
the old hymns are very pretty.”
“Yes; but you know I’m not going to play hymns.”
“Oh, you’re not! What does mother expect to teach you, then?”
“At first she thought hymns would do; but when I explained to her that
I wouldn’t care to play them she said we could take up something else.”
Baron regarded her steadily. She was obviously withholding something.
“Bonnie May!” he remonstrated. “You didn’t have another disagreement,
did you?”
“It was more like an argument--and I must say she behaved beautifully.”
“And did you behave ‘beautifully,’ too?”
She had drawn her chair close to the window and was looking out, so
that he saw, chiefly, a small shoulder and a profile which was quite
eloquent of independence and courage. “Yes, I think I did. Of course,
it was harder for me than for her. You see, I had to be It, as the
saying is. Yes, that’s how to express it. She had framed the game up,
and I had to be It.”
“What--what really happened?”
“She began in that innocent way of hers. She thought a little knowledge
of music would be good for me. I said yes to that. Yes, she went on,
it would be quite proper for me to learn to play some of the simpler
hymns. When she said ‘hymns’----”
She sat quite askew and laughed, and when Baron made no response at
all she became uneasy. “You know you’ve got to protect yourself,” she
insisted defiantly.
“Very well; and then what?”
“I told her it was so good of her to be willing to teach me, but
that--well, I told her hymns wouldn’t do.”
“Why wouldn’t they do? They’re music.”
“It’s like I told her. Hymns are all well enough for persons who don’t
understand very well--like raised letters for the blind. But when Mrs.
Shepard lets me set the table, how would it sound if I kept saying:
‘I’m helping Mrs. Shepard! I’m helping Mrs. Shepard!’ She might be too
polite to say anything, but she’d be thinking: ‘The gabby little thing,
why don’t she just do it and let it go at that?’ On the other hand, if
I just did the best I could without making out that I was the whole
show, she’d be apt to say: ‘Bless her heart, she’s really helping.’
I think singing hymns is about the same thing. It’s as if you kept
saying: ‘I’m praising God! I’m praising God!’ It would be--oh, bad
taste. But if you sang ‘Annie Laurie,’ or something like that, you can
imagine they’d bend their ears up in the skies--if they can hear that
far--and say: ‘Isn’t that nice?’ That’s what I said to Mrs. Baron. Some
spiel, wasn’t it?”
Baron was glad that she turned to him for only the briefest scrutiny.
“And--what did mother say?” he wanted to know.
“I thought she was going to have the curtain let down for a minute.
She looked so funny. But you see, she knew I was right. Anybody could
see that. She stared at me. And I stared at her, too--only mine was
different. Mine was what you call a baby stare. Innocent, you know.”
She turned to him again, and something in his eyes checked her. “Oh, I
know how that sounded to you,” she said with quick remonstrance. “You
never put things like that into words. But you know very well everybody
_does_ have special ways of looking when they want to. As if they
didn’t understand, or as if they were surprised--or weren’t. You have
to do things like that. That’s all I meant.”
“I--think I understand,” said Baron.
They remained silent for a time, and through Baron’s mind a single
phrase kept running: “Like raised letters for the blind.” Wasn’t
cynicism, wherever it existed, merely a protest by people of refined
taste against the inartistic forms which goodness often assumed? And
hadn’t he and his family always paid far too little heed to the golden
legends of life, and too much to the desire to have them in “raised
letters”?
He was aroused by the voice of his companion; by her voice and by
the eagerness with which she gazed at a little drama which was being
enacted down in the street. An enormous, red-faced beer-driver had
stopped his dray at the curb to chat with a ruddy-cheeked, buxom girl
with glossy black hair, who was laughing up into his face. The two
powerful brewery horses stood patiently at rest, their eyes harboring
the placid expression of the weary draft-horse that comes immediately
when a stop is made.
“Aren’t they happy?” commented Bonnie May, speaking as if from the
indulgent summit of great age.
“I don’t know,” Baron argued. “I shouldn’t think it very probable.”
“But can’t you see that they are?”
“Because they are laughing?”
“That--and their eyes. The way they are looking at each other is just
as if they were patting each other on the cheeks--now, isn’t it? I
think they are both just beautiful. They look as if they were quite
happy, and didn’t care to be anything else.”
“Nonsense! Who ever heard of a beer-driver being beautiful? And such
an enormous creature, and the kind of work he does, and--and such
clothes!”
[Illustration: “They look as if they were quite happy--and didn’t care
to be anything else.”]
Her brows contracted. “Aren’t you prejudiced against him just
because--well, maybe, because of the kind of work he does?”
“I think maybe I am. I should think anybody might be.”
“I see. You was thinking something ugly about him--so, of course, he
wouldn’t look nice to you. You see, I wasn’t. I think maybe he does
that kind of work because he was never taught to do anything else. If
your work isn’t lovely, I think you deserve all the more credit, if you
can be glad while you’re doing it.”
“But don’t you see--people choose their work--they choose to be what
they are.”
“Not at all. I didn’t. Did you?”
“And just see how--how _loud_ he is! And notice the color of his face
and hands!”
“Yes,” she said. She continued to look critically, and her eyes were
filled with joy when the driver suddenly leaned back and laughed until
the sound reached them above the scores of other noises. “That’s
because he laughs so much, and is out in the sun and the weather most
of the time. I think he’s lovely--yes, I do. For my part, I’d like to
get up on the seat and ride with him. I’ll bet he would take good care
of you. And you can see that nice girl would, too.”
“With a beer-driver!” exclaimed Baron, really amazed.
She regarded him serenely. “Oh, a beer-driver,” she said. “I wouldn’t
think about that part of it at all. I would have to know something
about him that really counted, if it came down to an argument. You’re
only thinking of his make-up. And, my goodness! I’ve seen many a Simon
Legree go into his dressing-room and change his clothes--and come out
the nicest sort of a fellow. I’ve got a hunch that if there is--” She
paused, shamefaced, and then continued: “If there is somebody up in the
skies keeping tab--somebody managing the big stage--the whole world, I
mean--he knows just what we are, or ought to be, if the make-up wasn’t
there to make us seem ugly and mean and hateful.”
“But, look here! That isn’t a make-up that fellow down there has on;
it’s himself!”
“Not at all! What’s the difference whether it is the wardrobe mistress
that hands you what you have to wear, or--or just accident? I mean the
way you happen to get started, and whatever it is you have to do. You
know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean, well enough. But what _I_ mean is, why should
you suppose that chap down there didn’t get just what he studied
for--what he fitted himself for?”
“Because they give you a part and say: ‘This is your part,’ and that’s
all there is to it.”
“Oh, on the stage--possibly. But what can you see in that fellow that
makes you think there’s anything to him--that he’d be trustworthy, for
example?”
She leaned forward, wholly alert. “It’s easy,” she declared. “See how
he sits, with his feet square on the dashboard, and with his head held
up high that way. That means he knows what he’s about.”
Baron felt himself getting red in the face. He remembered his habit
of sitting with his legs tangled up when he was at his ease. Quite
cautiously he got himself into a more purposeful attitude. “Anything
else?” he asked.
The beer-driver was now driving away.
“Yes. Look at the way he is holding those reins--nice and straight
and firm. The horses know he’s there, all right. They trust him. They
_know_ him. Look at him now! It’s just as if he were saying to them:
‘Take it easy, old fellows, we’re all here together.’”
Baron leaned forward and watched the disappearing dray. Yes, there was
a certain method in the man’s way of holding the reins, and in his
whole bearing, which suggested just what the child had put into words.
He leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head and smiled.
“What is it?” asked Bonnie May anxiously.
“I’m afraid I couldn’t explain to you. I was just thinking about--about
certain forms of reconstruction.”