WHAT HAPPENED IN THE ATTIC
When Bonnie May got up into the attic she gave one swift thought to
the fact that Mr. Addis would be coming to the house before long, and
that she would not be free to receive him. Flora would be surprised to
see him; but then, she concluded, Flora ought to think all the more
highly of him if she decided that he had come without waiting for an
invitation.
Then her mind was diverted from Mr. Addis and his affairs. It was
diverted by an impulse which compelled her to put her arms swiftly
about Clifton’s neck, and Jack’s, and express again her joy at seeing
them.
“You dear boys!” she exclaimed, “it makes me feel so good--and so
bad--to see you again. Oh, those old days!”
They all found chairs, and for a little time Bonnie May leaned forward
in hers, her shoulders drooping, her eyes filled with yearning. Then
she aroused herself. “Do you remember the time we went to Cheyenne in
a sort of coach, and the soldiers made us have dinner--a Christmas
dinner--with them?” she asked.
Clifton remembered. He said: “And you put on a cap that came way down
over your eyes, and ran into the fat old captain who had come in
‘unbeknownst,’ as one of the soldiers said, to inspect the quarters!”
Said Bonnie May: “And the soldiers wanted us to change our play, ‘The
Captain’s Daughter,’ so that it would be a military play instead of a
sea story!”
There was a moment of silence, and then, for no apparent reason, the
child and her visitors joined in a chorus of laughter.
“That old play--I remember every word of the heroine’s part!” said
Bonnie May. “She wasn’t much, was she? I remember wishing I was big
enough to have the part instead of her.”
She shook her head gently in the ecstasy of recalling the old
atmosphere, the old ambitions, the old adventures. Then she clasped her
hands and exclaimed: “Let’s do an act of it, just for fun! Oh, let’s
do! If you could only think how hungry I’ve been----”
She did not wait for an answer. She hurried to Thomason’s door and
knocked. Her movements expressed a very frenzy of desire--of need. When
Thomason did not respond she opened his door, and looked into his room.
“He’s not here!” she exclaimed. “Come--his things will make the
grandest sailors out of you!” She had them in Thomason’s room in no
time.
“But we can’t both be sailors,” objected Jack. “We’ll need a captain.”
“We’ll imagine him. He’ll be out of sight somewhere.” She opened
Thomason’s trunk.
“It’s not--Romeo’s, is it?” asked Clifton dubiously.
Bonnie May only emitted a little scream of delight. She had caught
sight of two red bandanna handkerchiefs. She had them out swiftly. Also
a new canvas coat, and an old one.
Then she heard some one entering the room. Thomason came and stood
beside her, to see what she was doing. He looked into the trunk as if
he were curious to see what was in it.
Her manner betrayed no confusion at all. “So glad you’ve come!” she
said. “It’s going to be a play. Oh, the very thing! You can be one of
the sailors, Thomason, and then we can have the captain, too.” She
appealed to Clifton and Jack. “Won’t he make a perfectly splendid
sailor?” she demanded.
They agreed that he would be an ideal sailor.
Thomason hadn’t the slightest idea what it all meant. But when she
tied one of the red bandanna handkerchiefs in a special fashion around
the neck of one of the actors, he concluded that it was going to be
some kind of a game. Or possibly he feared he was going to lose his
handkerchiefs.
“Put one on me!” he suggested.
And Bonnie May put one on him.
Then she happened to look at one of the window-shades. “Earrings!” she
exclaimed. “They used to look so delightfully wicked!”
With Clifton’s aid she removed several brass rings from the
window-shades.
“I won’t need them,” said Clifton. “You know I was the captain.”
So the rings were hung in Jack’s ears and Thomason’s.
“Splendid!” cried Bonnie May. She inspected the result critically. “If
we only had-- Thomason, is there any blacking?”
Thomason found a box of blacking in Baron’s room.
She dipped her finger into it and drew a series of sinister lines
across Jack’s unlined face.
Clifton proffered a criticism. “You’re putting on too much. He’s to be
a sailor--not a pirate.”
“No, only a sailor. But he ought to look a little frightful.” She stood
back in admiration of her work.
Thomason had begun more clearly to understand. “Put some on me,” he
invited.
Clifton, in the meantime, had found a golf cap which had been handed
down from Baron to Thomason. It did not make a thoroughly realistic
captain of him, but it was the best he could do. He was trying to
recall some of the telling phrases in “The Captain’s Daughter.” He
could improvise, if necessary. He looked on seriously while Bonnie May
put the finishing touches on Thomason’s face.
It was then that Mrs. Harrod appeared.
“Oh! I’m sure I’m intruding!” she cried. She looked with profound
amazement at every face in the room.
“You’re not intruding at all!” declared Bonnie May. “It’s to be a play,
you know. You can be the audience, if you will.”
Mrs. Harrod began to laugh almost helplessly. Then she checked herself,
because she perceived that Bonnie May was deeply in earnest.
“Of course!” she responded. “I make a very good audience. I’ll be
delighted to help.”
She took a chair and became, immediately, a highly inspiring audience.
Still, she was amazed. She had never been told by any of the Barons
that Bonnie May had formerly been “of the profession.”
“We’ll do only the third act,” decided Bonnie May, addressing the two
actors, “where the ship sinks, and the raft is seen at sea.” She ended
by glancing at Mrs. Harrod, who nodded as if she really preferred to
witness only the third act.
“We’ll need a raft, of course,” she said. She glanced about the
room. The trunk was not large enough to hold two and contribute to a
realistic effect. “It will have to be the bed,” she decided. “Thomason,
you and Jack will sit on the bed. And you’ll have to remember that
you’re on a raft in a storm. The storm is so severe that you nearly
fall off the raft.”
“Is it?” asked Thomason. He seemed incredulous.
“It will be. Jack will let you know when. You look at him once in a
while and do just as he does.”
There was an explosion of shrill laughter in the adjoining room, and
then the McKelvey girls appeared.
They seemed quite startled and ready to run, even after they saw Mrs.
Harrod.
But Mrs. Harrod reassured them. “Come right in,” she called cordially.
“It’s to be a play, and as yet we have a miserably small audience.”
They drifted a little farther into the room, wide-eyed.
It was here that Clifton rebelled. “Oh, look here,” he protested, “it
will look so silly!”
“Just because we have an audience!” retorted Bonnie May blankly. Then,
with feeling: “If you’ve got used to playing to empty seats, it will do
you good to have somebody looking at you. Now, do be sensible.”
“I shall be awfully disappointed not to see the play--that is, the
third act,” protested Mrs. Harrod.
“Well, go ahead,” said Clifton. But he looked decidedly shamefaced.
Bonnie May took her position in the middle of the room. She meant to
explain what it was they were about to do. She did not know that Flora
had come in and was standing just inside the door; nor did she know
that Victor and Mr. Addis also arrived a moment later.
“This is the situation,” she began. “I am the daughter of the captain
of a sailing vessel. Two of the sailors love me, but they have to keep
still about it, because I am so far above them. We’re all on the ship,
on a voyage, you understand. I love _one_ of the sailors, but I’m
afraid to admit it for fear my father will be angry. Then one of the
sailors speaks to my father--about his love for me, you know. But my
father tells him he must never be guilty of such boldness again. Then
the two sailors lead a mutiny, in the hope of getting control of the
ship. But the mutiny fails, and the two leaders are put in irons.
“I feel so sorry for them that I plan their escape. I know I cannot
marry either of them, but I pity them just the same. So I take some
of the rest of the crew into my confidence, and they make a raft in
secret. Then one night when we are within sight of land I get the other
sailors to let them go--the two men who are in irons--and throw them
overboard, together with the raft. I mean it all for their own good,
though they make the mistake of thinking I wish to have them murdered.
Of course, my father isn’t allowed to know anything about all this.
It’s done while he is asleep.”
“A likely story!” interpolated Clifton.
“A very fine situation,” amended Bonnie May. “It is arranged that the
sailors who have helped me are to tell my father, when he wakes up,
that the two prisoners made their escape and were trying to murder him,
when they, the other sailors, threw them overboard in a desperate fight.
“Then comes the third act, which we are about to present. A storm
comes up and the ship strikes a rock. We are about to sink when the
raft drifts into sight. The two sailors who were prisoners are on it.
My father urges me to join the sailors on the raft, so that I may be
saved. But I know they believe I plotted their murder, and I am as
much afraid of them as I am of the sinking ship. The climax comes when
the ship sinks and I am thrown into the sea. Of course the two sailors
rescue me. Now we will imagine that the curtain has just gone up on the
third act.”
She turned for an inspection of the “company,” and caught sight of
Flora, Victor, and Mr. Addis just inside the doorway.
“Don’t mind us,” said Flora. “We hope we’re not interrupting.”
But Bonnie May was not to be embarrassed now. She scarcely took pains
to answer beyond a swift--“Not at all!” She was earnestly shaping her
mood for the work ahead of her.
Her intensity had created a really strange atmosphere. Nothing louder
than a whisper could be heard in the room, and even whispering soon
ceased.
“Now, captain--or father--take your place on the bridge, where you
belong.”
Clifton proceeded with the utmost seriousness to climb up on Thomason’s
table. He stood at one end, so that there would be room for Bonnie May
also.
“The sailors will now take their places on the raft,” was the next
order. “You know, you’re not supposed to be visible until you hear the
line, ‘the ship is sinking,’ and then you want to remember that you are
in a violent storm.”
Jack and Thomason climbed to the middle of the bed and sat down
awkwardly, both looking in the same direction, like rowers in a boat.
“And remember you have paddles in your hands,” reminded Bonnie May.
“I have a paddle,” responded Jack.
“I ain’t,” objected Thomason.
“Oh, yes, you have,” declared Jack, “one just like mine.” He took a
stroke with an imaginary paddle, held suitably.
“Well--I have a paddle,” conceded Thomason.
Bonnie May then was helped to the “bridge,” beside Clifton.
Clifton began. He was not quite sure about the lines, but he recalled
the situation clearly enough. “Best go below, my daughter,” were the
words which filled the room with a ringing effect. “I have not seen a
gull since the second watch ended, and they do not hide from ordinary
storms. I fear we may be caught in a tempest.”
[Illustration: “Look at them!” she screamed. “Look! Look!”]
Bonnie May clasped her hands in a frenzy of earnestness. Her words came
with intense eloquence: “Let me stay with you, father. I fear no storm
while I am by your side.”
Her voice filled the room with tones which were intense, even,
resonant, golden.
Mrs. Harrod, regarding her incredulously, put out a hand and touched
Flora on the arm. No one else stirred.
There came Clifton’s response: “But, child, I tell you Davy Jones’s
locker fairly gapes in gales like this. I bid you go below.”
The response came with even greater intensity: “But tell me first,
father: Would a raft live in such a sea as this?”
So the rather silly lines were repeated, back and forth. But they
scarcely seemed silly. The two players were putting a tremendous
earnestness into them, and the “audience” felt no inclination at all to
smile.
The two players came to the point in the story where the ship struck
a rock, and their intensity was more than doubled. The raft began its
part in the scene, but nobody looked at it for a time.
Clifton was trying to compel Bonnie May to consent to board the raft.
He had seized her arm roughly and was threatening her. She screamed her
refusal. Then it came time for her to behold the murderous looks on the
faces of the two men on the raft.
“Look at them!” she screamed. “Look! Look!” She pointed at the raft,
her eyes wide with terror. The “audience” could not refrain from
looking at the raft.
Jack and Thomason were wielding their paddles with great vigor.
Jack had also begun to lurch from right to left, as a man might do
in a storm-tossed raft. Thomason, catching the drift of things, was
imitating him.
And then, unfortunately, Thomason’s bed gave way. With an ear-splitting
crash it collapsed, just as Bonnie May screamed: “Look! Look!”
And of course it was at that precise instant that Mrs. Baron came
rushing into the room.