FATHER FINN’S FAMOUS STORIES

Each volume with a Frontispiece,

BOBBY

IN MOVIELAND

 

BY

FRANCIS J. FINN, S.J.

 

Author of “Percy Wynn,” “Tom Playfair,”

“Harry Dee,” etc.

 

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CHAPTER		PAGE
I	In Which the First Chapter Is Within a Little of Being the Last	9
II	Tending to Show That Misfortunes Never Come Singly	18
III	It Never Rains but It Pours	31
IV	Mrs. Vernon All but Abandons Hope	44
V	A New Way of Breaking into the Movies	58
VI	Bobby Endeavors to Show the Astonished Compton How to Behave	72
VII	The End of a Day of Surprises	81
VIII	Bobby Meets an Enemy on the Boulevard and a Friend in the Lantry Studio	92
IX	Showing That Imitation Is not Always the Sincerest Flattery, and Returning to the Misadventures of Bobby’s Mother	104
X	Bobby, Assisted by Peggy, Demonstrates a Method of Observing Silence, and Celebrates a Red-letter Day	114
XI	The End of One Scenario and the Outlining of Compton’s Great Idea	128
XII	Bobby Becomes Famous Overnight	138
XIII	Bernadette’s Temperament Delays the Scenario, and Mrs. Vernon Makes Two Children Happy	150
XIV	Mrs. Vernon Attends a Moving-Picture Show and Finds in It a Great Lesson Unthought of by the Author	160
XV	Compton’s Great Scenario Is Finished Not a Moment Too Soon	166
XVI	Containing Nothing but Happy Explanations and a Still Happier Love Scene	180
XVII	The Four Children Arouse Suspicion, until with the Most Momentous Event in This Narrative, All Is Made Clear	196

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Bobby in Movieland

“Say, ma; honest, I don’t want to go in. Just all I want is to take off my shoes and socks and walk where the water just comes up to my ankles.”

As the speaker, a boy of eight, was dressed in the fashion common to the youth of Los Angeles and its environment, it is but fair to state that with the taking off of shoes and socks the process of disrobing was really far advanced.

“My mother has let me take mine off,” put in a bare-legged little girl. “We won’t go into the water really at all, Mrs. Vernon. Oh, please let Bobby come along.”

The time was morning—a clear, golden, flower-scented morning in early July. The place was the sandy shore of Long Beach. There were few bathers about, as it was Monday, when the week-enders had returned to their several occupations, while the pleasure-seekers living or lodging there were resting from the strenuous gayety of Sunday.

Mrs. Vernon, a beautiful young woman, in half-mourning, was strolling with her only child and the girl, an acquaintance made on the train, along the sands. They were all transients, presently to take a train north.

Bobby Vernon was a highly interesting child to look at. Rather small for his age, he was lithe and shapely. His complexion was delicately fair, his chestnut hair rather long. All these things were enough to attract attention; but above and beyond these were the features. Blue eyes, cupid mouth, a sensitive upper lip, an eloquent, chubby little nose—all had this in common that they were expressive of his every passing thought and emotion. He had a face, in a word, at once speaking and engaging.

The girl, Peggy Sansone, a year or two older, was a brunette, a decided contrast. She was a chance acquaintance, made by Bobby on the Pullman, with the result that, once they had exchanged a few words, there was no more sleeping during the daylight hours for the other occupants of that car.

Mrs. Vernon felt in her heart it would be more prudent to refuse the request. She feared that she was making a mistake. But she was just then preoccupied and sad. Now, sadness is weakening.

“Well, Bobby, if I give you permission, you won’t go far? And you’ll be back at the station in half an hour, and won’t get lost?”

“I know the way back to the station,” volunteered the girl. “And I’ll promise you to see him back myself. You know, I’ve got my watch.” Here Peggy, with the sweet vanity of childhood, held up for view her dainty wrist watch.

“Whoopee!” cried Bobby, jumping into his mother’s arms, planting a kiss on her brow, dropping down to the sand and, apparently all in one motion, taking off shoes and socks.

Light-heartedly, hand in hand with the girl, he pattered down the sands to the water. The two little ones radiated joy and youth and life. To them the coming half-hour was to be, so they thought, “a little bit of heaven.” The girl had no premonition of the saddest day of her childhood; the boy no thought of the forces of earth and water that were about to change so strangely his and his mother’s life.

It has already been observed that it was a day of golden sunshine; but to one conversant with the waters of Long Beach there was something ominous about the face of the changing sea. It was not high tide; but the surf was showing its milk-white teeth in a beauty profuse and cruel, with the cruelty of the sea which takes and returns no more, while the rollers swept in with a violence and a height that were unusual. The life savers were watchful and uneasy. To the two children, however, the white-lipped ocean was as bland and as gay as the sunshine.

As their feet were covered by an incoming roller the girl screamed and Bobby danced—both for the same reason, for sheer joy. Hand in hand they pattered along, making their way further and further into the pathway of the breakers. In a few minutes they had advanced along the shore to a spot where they were apparently alone.

Then began a series of daring ventures.

“Say!” said Bobby. “This is the first time in all my life that I ever put my feet in the Pacific Ocean. But I know how to swim, all right, and I’m not a bit afraid.” As Bobby spoke he was moving slowly out into the water, which was now nearly up to his knees.

“Hold on! You’re going too far,” said the girl, releasing Bobby’s hand and slipping back. “I’ve been in often, but I’m afraid just the same.”

“Girls are cowards,” Bobby announced. “Come on, Peggy; I’ll take care of you.”

Peggy by way of return fastened her large, beautiful dark eyes in hero worship upon her companion. Nevertheless, instead of accepting his invitation, she drew back a few steps more.

“Now remember, Bobby, you told your mother you were only going ankle-deep. You’re up to your knees now.”

“That’s so,” said Bobby, pausing and turning his back upon the incoming waves. “I ought not to break my word. Say, Peggy”—here Bobby’s face threw itself, every feature of it, into a splendor of enthusiasm—“do you think it would be wrong if I were to fall over and float? Then I wouldn’t be more than ankle-deep anyhow.”

Peggy’s large eyes grew larger in glorious admiration.

Now Bobby being very human—even as you and I—was not insensible to the girl’s expression. It spurred him on to do something really daring. He was tempted at that moment to forget his mother’s words and to go boldly out and meet the breakers in their might. For a few minutes there was a clean-cut battle in the lad’s soul between love of praise and the still, small voice we call conscience; as a consequence of which Bobby’s features twisted and curled and darkened. The battle was a short one, and it is only fair to say that the still, small voice scored a victory.

However, the breakers were not interested in such a fight though it may have appealed with supreme interest to all the choirs of angels. The conflict over, Bobby’s eyes grew bright, and all the sprites of innocent gayety showed themselves at once in his every feature.

“Peggy,” he began, “you are right. A promise is a promise—always. And then I made it to my mother. I would like to show you a thing or two, but—Why, what’s the matter?”

Her expression startled him. If ever tragedy and horror were expressed by the eyes, Bobby saw these emotions in the beautiful orbs of Peggy. Her face had lost its rich southern hue, fear was in her pose and in every feature, but Bobby saw only the tragedy of the eyes. They were unforgettable.

“Bobby!” she gasped. “Run! run!” And the child followed her own advice.

Bobby, infected by her terror, turned. But it was too late. Close upon him curled and roared a huge roller, a white-crested wave. In the moment he looked upon it Bobby saw the rollers in a new light. A few moments before they were gay, frolicsome things, showing their teeth in laughter. Now they were strange, strong monsters foaming at the mouth.

“Oh!” cried Bobby in horror. He said no more; for as he spoke, the wave caught him, spun him around, pulled him down, raised him up, and carried him off in its strong, uncountable arms towards the deep sea. Bobby kicked and struggled; but he was swept on as though he were a toy.

Peggy, meanwhile having run back twenty or thirty paces, turned, and wringing her hands, scanned the troubled waters. She saw no sign of the boy.

Peggy was young and timid. Upon her came an unreasoning fear. Bobby was drowned and maybe it was her fault! Maybe she would be hanged for murder! And how could she face a bereaved and already widowed mother? For the first and only time in her life Peggy ardently wished she were dead. Then, looking neither to left nor right, she ran back along the shore.

Bobby was drowned! But she would tell no one. For the moment a wild thought of running away entered her soul. And she would have run away if she only knew whither to fly.

Still running, she wept and she prayed. She ceased her flight only when she came to the spot where her tiny shoes and socks lay beside those of Bobby’s. Then she sat down and gave loose to her grief. When the first fierce desolation and agony had passed, she put on her shoes and began to think.

Suddenly her drawn face relaxed. Her mother! Had she not always brought her griefs to that tender, loving soul? She would seek her at once and tell all. She glanced at her watch. Forty-five minutes had passed! She had exceeded her time by a quarter of an hour. It was nearly train time. There was not a second to be lost.

As she rose to her feet something unusual had occurred. The ground beneath her seemed to be swinging up and down.

Peggy was a native. In normal circumstances she would have been normally excited; but in her present condition she hardly noticed that she was in the throes of an earthquake.

So calmly ignoring the shouts of men and the hysteria of women who came running out in hundreds from house and hotel, Peggy went forward at a smart trot to bring the awful tidings to Mrs. Sansone, her mother.

To natives of Los Angeles, or to those who have spent some years in that beautiful city—so beautiful that one could easily vision Adam and Eve as its occupants before the Fall—an earthquake tremor is just something more than of passing interest. They remain “unusual calm” when the house shakes, the pictures flap upon the wall, and the crockery rattles in noisy unrest. They regard their earthquakes as tamed creatures—not more formidable, practically speaking, than “a thing of noise and fury, signifying nothing.” When visitors show agitation at the coming of an earth tremor, these old inhabitants—and five years’ residence in Los Angeles makes one something little short of a patriarch—are almost scandalized. Should these strangers go the way that leads to hysteria, the old inhabitants grow properly indignant, and point out that all the tremors in the history of Los Angeles County are as nothing, in point of damage, as compared to one solitary cyclone of the Middle West. No doubt they are right.

However, to a stranger these pranks of mother earth are fraught with terror. Many men and women are not only frightened, but actually become sick. Dizziness and nausea are not uncommon, although the cause be only a slight tremor of but three or four seconds’ duration.

Among those affected on this day, so momentous in her life and that of her only child, was Mrs. Barbara Vernon. When the shock came she was resting on the sands under the shade of one of those gigantic umbrellas rented out at the beaches as a protection from the ardent rays of the sun. Beside her sat Mrs. Sansone, Peggy’s mother.

“Oh, my God!” cried Mrs. Vernon, jumping to her feet and clasping her hands. She would have run straight into the ocean had not Mrs. Sansone laid upon her a restraining hand.

“My dear,” said the old inhabitant, “don’t be frightened. It’s really nothing at all. We who live here don’t mind it in the least.” She patted Mrs. Vernon’s beautiful cheek as she continued: “Why, my little Peggy sees nothing in them. The last time we had an earthquake shock Peggy said that the earth was trying to do the shimmy.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Vernon, “I’m feeling so ill! Let me lean on you, dear. I feel as though I should faint.”

The sympathetic right arm of Mrs. Sansone wound itself about the other’s waist.

“Many strangers are so affected,” she said. “But really there’s nothing to fear. God is here with us right now.”

Mrs. Barbara Vernon unobtrusively made the sign of the cross.

“Thank you,” she said. “My fear is gone; but I feel sick, sick.”

“Lean on my arm, Mrs. Vernon. I will bring you to our Pullman, where you can lie down and rest quietly.”

“But the children!” objected Barbara.

“Leave that to me. At the worst, Peggy knows the way, and she is really a very punctual little girl.”

They had walked but a few paces, when an automobile, moving along the sands, came abreast of them and stopped. The driver, its sole occupant, leaned out.

“Beg pardon,” he said removing his hat, “but I fear one of you ladies is rather indisposed. Anything I can do for you?”

“Indeed you can,” replied Mrs. Sansone very promptly. “This lady is suffering from nausea. The earthquake is something new to her. You would do us a great favor by bringing us to the railroad station.”

“Favor! It will be an immense pleasure to me.” As he spoke the young man jumped out, threw open the door of the tonneau, and, hat in hand, helped the two women in. He was rather a striking personality, thin almost to emaciation, and despite the smile now upon his features, with a face melancholy to the point of pathos.

“Los Angeles,” he remarked as he seated himself at the wheel, “would be the most perfect place in the world if the earth hereabouts would only keep sober. If I had my way,” he continued, in a voice only less pathetic than his countenance, “I’d give the earth the pledge for life. It’s a perfect country when it’s sober.”

Mrs. Sansone laughed.

“Even at that,” continued the melancholy man, allowing himself the indulgence of a slight smile, “what does it amount to, a little bit of an earthquake like that? It is merely a fly in the amber.”

“I agree with you absolutely,” said Mrs. Sansone.

“Which means you’re a native. That other lady—”

“Mrs. Barbara Vernon,” interpolated Mrs. Sansone.

“Thank you, glad to meet you, ma’am,” said the stranger, turning his head and smiling ungrudgingly. “You, I take it, don’t see it as we do. Instead of a fly in the amber, you regard it rather as a shark in a swimming pool.”

“It is very kind of you,” said Barbara, “to go out of your way for me. I can’t tell you how I appreciate your goodness. I shall pray for you.”

The driver’s face changed from melancholy to reverence.

“Please remember that,” he said. As he spoke he thought of the great Thackeray’s great words on the preciousness of living on in the heart of one good woman.

Had Barbara been his own mother he could not have been more attentive. He helped her from the car, placed her in her section, and furtively slipping a dollar into the porter’s responsive fist, got that functionary into a state of useful and eager activity which would have filled, had he seen it, the Pullman superintendent’s heart with wild delight.

“Can’t I get you a physician, Mrs. Vernon?” pleaded the stranger.

“I need none, thank you. You have done infinitely more than I had any right to expect.”

“Well, then, I am going to leave you in the hands of this lady—”

“Mrs. Estelle Sansone,” supplied the owner of that name.

“Thank you, Mrs. Sansone. I am glad to know your name. And,” he continued, turning upon Barbara the most melancholy eyes she had ever seen, while taking reverently her proffered hand, “I beg you, Mrs. Vernon, to remember me in—in—to remember me as you said.”

“Indeed and indeed I will. God bless you!”

“Amen,” answered the young man thickly. His face twitched, he paused as though about to speak, and then suddenly turned and left the car.

“Isn’t he strange!” ejaculated Barbara. “I never saw a more melancholy face.”

“He is very strange,” assented Mrs. Sansone.

There was a depth of meaning in her words, unsuspected by Barbara, for the kind Italian woman had recognized the good Samaritan. This melancholy man was, in her estimation, the greatest screen comedian in the world.

“And,” continued Barbara, when the porter had placed a second pillow under her head, “with all his melancholy, he is so kind and so good!”

“I don’t understand,” commented the Italian. Again the depth of this remark was lost upon Barbara. For Mrs. Sansone knew much of the gossip concerning the great comedian. She knew that he had figured in many episodes which, to say the least, were anything but savory. And now she had met the man in a few intimate moments and seen him kind, gentle, gracious, and with a reverence for a good woman and a good woman’s prayers that had filled her with a feeling akin to awe. As she ministered lovingly to Barbara she meditated upon these opposing truths, and so meditating took a new lesson in the school of experience, a lesson the fruits of which are wisdom.

“I am anxious about my boy,” said Barbara opening her eyes and endeavoring vainly to sit up.

Mrs. Sansone threw a quick glance about the car. Her gaze rested presently upon an elderly woman whose face was eminently kindly. She was every inch a matron. Mrs. Estelle Sansone stepped over to her.

“Pardon me,” she said, “but the lady over there is quite ill, and she is worrying about her little boy, who should have been back by this time. I don’t like to leave her alone while I go in search—”

“And,” broke in the other, “you want some one to take your place? I thank you for asking me. I’ve been a widow for nearly fourteen years, and since my husband’s death I have worked as nurse in the Northwestern Railroad’s emergency ward in Chicago.”

“Why, I couldn’t have made a better choice,” cried Mrs. Sansone.

“It’s my first real pleasure trip—mine and my daughter’s—since my widowhood,” continued the woman, “but the pleasures of travel are as nothing compared with waiting on any good woman in distress.”

The introductions were quickly made, and Mrs. Sansone left the car, feeling that Barbara was in hands better far than her own.

She looked about the station. The clock indicated that in about five minutes the train would start. Mrs. Sansone grew anxious. She hurried along the platform, looking eagerly on every side for some sign of the children. A glance towards the beach rewarded her searching. Peggy, her hair streaming in the wind, was running towards her. Mrs. Sansone’s heart sank. Where was the boy? A sense of calamity seized her. She too ran to meet the child.

“Oh, mother, mother!” cried Peggy, throwing her arms about Mrs. Sansone and bursting into a new agony of grief.

“Dearest,” crooned Mrs. Sansone, raising the child to her bosom, “tell me! What has become of Bobby?”

“Oh, mother! I am afraid!”

“Tell the truth, darling. No matter what—it is your mother who listens. She will understand; she will not scold.”

“Bobby is drowned!”

“Oh, blessed Mary!” cried Mrs. Sansone, restoring Peggy to the sands and clasping her hands in dismay. “I can’t believe it! Tell me, dear, how it happened.”

“Bobby was wading, and he was trying to be obedient. He got out too far, and I reminded him of his promise to his mother. And he said he was going to keep his promise. And just while he was talking to me a big roller came on him—you see, his back was turned—and that roller knocked him down and pulled him out, and when I looked—”

Here Peggy fell to weeping again.

“What, dear? Tell me quick.”

“He was gone.”

“And were there none around to go to his help?”

“We were alone.”

“And did you call for help?”

“No, mother. I just ran away.”

“And you said nothing, dearest?”

“No. I was afraid they would think I was a murderer.”

Mrs. Sansone had long walked the paths of wisdom. She knew how common it was for little children, witnesses to a drowning or a like calamity, to fly from the scene and in fear keep silent. She understood.

“You were frightened, dearest. If you were older, you would have called for help. But you are not to blame. God help us! Now, Peggy, come with me. Or stay—I must break the news to his poor mother.”

“And tell her,” said Peggy sobbingly, “that his last words were how he must always keep his promises, especially those he made to his mother.”

Then Mrs. Sansone wept. It was a bitter moment.

“All aboard!” cried one of the trainmen.

Peggy and her mother were just in time to mount the platform when the train started.

Then, with love and pity and all manner of gentleness, Mrs. Sansone told the pitiful story. When the full horror of it was grasped by Barbara, she asked for her crucifix, gazed upon it fixedly for several seconds, kissed it, and fell into a faint.

Then it was that all that was matronly shone forth in Mrs. Feehan. Then it was that she and Mrs. Sansone, never for a moment neglecting the sick woman, mingled their tears and their grief. The porter, the gayest, chattiest porter in that section of the Pullman service, was their willing slave. He too became a partner in their sorrow. In fact, every passenger on the car and every employee of the road on duty duly caught the spirit of sympathy, and before Barbara came to, dry-eyed and almost despairing, lines and telephones were busy in a vain endeavor to get any possible light on the drowning.

“But,” cried Barbara when she became fully conscious of the dark tragedy, “I must go back! I cannot go on without my boy!”

The conductor was summoned.

“I can let you off, lady,” he explained. “But I doubt whether you can get any means of returning at this point. Besides, when we arrive at the next station, we may expect an answer concerning the child. In that way you will get word quicker than if you were to return at once.”

“Mrs. Vernon,” urged the nurse, “it would be the worst thing you could do to return. You are physically unfit just now to walk or make any kind of exertion. You need several hours of complete rest. If you take my advice, you will go on and not attempt to leave the car until the shock has passed and your strength returns.”

“But I must go back—I must!” cried Barbara hysterically. As she spoke she suddenly rose and took a few quick steps. But the effort was too much. She staggered, and despite her efforts fell back into the arms of the kind matron.

But Bobby was not drowned. Peggy and he, as the wave caught him, were not alone. Seated on the ledge of a cliff, hidden almost completely from view, a bather, tall and plump, once a professional life-saver, had been watching the two children carefully. He had noted the roller even before Peggy. He was at a considerable distance from the children; but as Peggy turned to fly he was dashing, diagonally, across the beach. It was nothing for him, tall and strong of limb, to plunge into the water, to reach the very spot where Bobby had disappeared, and when Bobby’s head came to the surface, to take a few strong strokes, reach the unconscious boy, and bring him almost without effort to the shore.

Bobby, I say, was unconscious; and the rescuer, for a moment, doubted whether the little lad was alive. Paying no attention, therefore, to the fleeing Peggy, the man, experienced in such matters, endeavored to restore the lad to consciousness. Bobby had swallowed much salt water. It was the work of a few moments to remedy that trouble. Then the man put himself to the task of getting the boy to breathe. In the shade of the cliff he labored long and arduously. Almost a quarter of an hour passed before Bobby’s face showed the slightest sign of life. Eventually he began to breathe.

“Hey, boy! you’re doing fine,” cried the man. “Come on now, and wake up.”

Adjured in such like terms at least twenty times, Bobby at length opened his eyes upon a world which he had almost left for good.

“Howdy, Johnny? Are you awake?”

Bobby looked gravely at his companion and, the inspection completed, asked, as he closed his eyes again:

“Where am I?”

“Right here at Long Beach,” came the answer. “Here, let me put my coat about you. You look pretty cold. How do you feel?”

“I guess so,” answered Bobby, not even opening his eyes.

Then the rescuer took the child, wrapped as he was in the heavy coat, and folded him to his bosom. He held the boy tight. Bobby soon began to warm up.

“Where am I?” he inquired once more, opening his eyes as he spoke.

“I told you we were at Long Beach, didn’t I?”

“Maybe you did. Say, didn’t you pull me out of the water?”

“I did, and not a second too soon, either. Now look here, Johnny. The color is coming back to your face. But you must get that chill out of you. Here, you must stretch your legs. Take my hand.”

Bobby at first was barely able to walk. But gradually his strength returned, his strength and his smile. But neither lasted long.

“Say! I’m getting so tired!” he remarked after a few quick turns. “Would you mind if I lie down?”

The man laid Bobby down upon the sands, once more wrapping him, as he did so, tightly in the coat. Bobby promptly turned on his side and, resting his head upon his right arm, fell asleep.

“My!” apostrophized the man, after a long contemplation. “I never saw such an interesting face.”

“Did you say something, sir?” asked Bobby, opening his eyes.

“I said a mouthful,” came the answer. “But look you, boy; you are weaker than you ought to be. What you need is brandy.”

“I don’t drink,” objected Bobby.

“None of us drink just now, for that matter,” the man dryly observed. “Just the same, you need a bit of brandy. Now will you remain here till I come back? I may be gone ten or fifteen minutes.”

“Just now, sir, I don’t want to go anywhere. Oh, I’ll stay, all right.”

And Bobby meant it. Nevertheless he did not stay.

The man had hardly disappeared from view when Bobby sat up and stretched himself. Then he arose and went through the same process. Bobby was feeling once more that he was alive. Throwing off the coat, he quickly put on his proper garments, already perfectly dry. Then Bobby bethought him of his shoes. It would be easy to recover them and return within a few minutes. Accordingly, with his light step and easy grace quite restored, he trotted along the shore; and even as he moved, the events that had led up to his mischance began to return to his memory—the horrified eyes of Peggy, the big wave coming upon him, and then? What was it happened next? At the moment he could recall no more. Seating himself, he put on shoes and stockings, when all of a sudden as he arose, the awful memory, unbidden, returned. Once more he felt the waves’ might, once more he felt himself whirled and tossed about like a cork, once more he choked as the water forced itself into his gaping mouth. Here his memory ended. Bobby was more frightened by the memory than he had been by the actual happening.

And just then, when the horror of it all had seized upon him, the ground beneath his feet began to oscillate. This was the last straw. Bobby could bear no more. The sea but a short time before had tried to swallow him up; now it was the land itself that would devour him.

Utterly panic-stricken, urged on by a blind instinct in which reason had no share, the little fellow ran at a speed born of fear away from that awful beach. As it happened, there were stairs at that point leading up to the cliff. Bobby took them two at a time. Ocean Avenue was thronged just then with people, strangers in California, who failed, naturally enough, to see anything of humor in an earthquake. Under normal circumstances Bobby, flying at full speed along a highway, would have attracted more than a little attention. But the circumstances were not normal, and the fear which urged Bobby onwards was the same fear which in a measure possessed nearly all of those whom with flying feet he passed.

Bobby had always been a good runner. On this occasion he surpassed himself. On he went until he was alone on the open road; on past orchards of oranges, peaches, lemons, pears and plums. The ground at every step was, as he felt, growing firmer beneath his feet; and once away from the outskirts of Ocean Beach he began to slacken his pace. It was then that the sharp tooting of a horn behind him caused him to turn; an automobile was bearing down upon him.

Bobby, putting on full speed once more, darted to the left side of the road, which at this point sharply curved, only to find another machine bearing upon him swiftly from the opposite direction. There seemed to be no chance of escape. Nevertheless Bobby jumped for his life, landing on hands and knees at the side of the road, while the oncoming machine, now fairly upon him, swung desperately away. It passed within an inch of the boy’s feet as he flew through the air. Bobby did not arise. He collapsed where he had fallen. The machine which had nearly done for him came to a halt full thirty yards up the road, where from it descended a highly excited young man, who, more than emulating Bobby’s burst of speed, ran quickly and picked up the lad in his arms.

“Say, little fellow, you’re not hurt, are you? Now don’t say you’re hurt. It was a close call, but I never touched you.”

But Bobby’s head hung limp, his eyes remained closed.

The man grew pale with fear. Possibly he had frightened the child to death. Gazing with extreme compassion upon the delicate features of the sensitive face, he groaned aloud and, as though his burden weighed nothing, sprinted back to his machine. There he laid the boy on the front seat, and, getting out a water bottle from the tonneau, removed the stopper and dashed a goodly portion of water into the child’s face.

The effect was immediate. Bobby sat up, and looking into the frightened face of his new aggressor, opened his mouth and bawled. Bobby, to do him justice, was a manly little fellow, and manly little fellows of seven or eight are not in the habit of bawling. But he had been through a fearful series of ordeals. He was no longer himself. Panic had entered into his very soul. The sea had tried to get him; the earth, lining itself up with the sea, had shaken beneath his feet; and when he ran from one automobile, another had borne down upon him to such effect that only by a marvel short of the miraculous had he escaped with his life. So Bobby went on bawling.

This exhibition of tears and lungs had a very disconcerting effect on the young man. He was, as the reader has a right to know, John Compton, a promising comedian, engaged recently by a moving-picture company, the head members of which counted upon his becoming shortly one of the leading film comedians of the country. On that very day he had started in upon his second picture. But an hour before he had rehearsed part of the opening scene; and he would have still been rehearsing at that very moment had it not happened that the property man was not on time with the completion of an indoor set; as a consequence of which the director had called off further rehearsal till two o’clock that afternoon. Not thinking it worth his while to disturb his make-up, John Compton had jumped into his automobile and gone out for a spin, with his face painted a sickly yellow and eyebrows fiercely exaggerated. Bobby had never before seen a moving-picture actor in his war paint. No wonder that he continued to bawl; no wonder that he refused to be comforted.

Mr. Compton was at his wits’ end. It was useless to advise the boy to calm himself. To be heard Compton would be obliged to bellow at the top of his voice. And why not? It was an inspiration. Standing outside his own machine, John Compton planted his hands upon his knees, and stooping till his face was on a level with Bobby’s, opened his mouth, a not inconsiderable one, and bawled, too, with all the energy of desperation.

At the awful sound Bobby, opening his eyes to their widest, ceased his outcries and, with his mouth still wide open, stared in incredulous amazement at John Compton. This gentleman, having stopped momentarily for breath, started his strange performance once more. But there was a different tone to the second attempt. Mr. Compton, gaining courage through success, was beginning to perceive a certain humor in the situation; and into his bawling went that sense of humor. The suspicion of a grin came upon the boy’s face. Inspired by this, Compton entered upon a third attempt, which really succeeded in being a clever caricature of Bobby’s bawling.

The boy grinned.

“Never say die,” said the comedian, smiling pleasantly and winking.

“I’ll say so!” returned Bob, and reproduced to a nicety Compton’s identical wink.

Compton’s perplexity was entirely gone. He liked Bobby from the first; but with that wink he loved him. So, light of heart, John Compton forced his features into the exaggerated smile which, in the opinion of his director, would, when once known, be worth a fortune, and Bobby for the first time since the roller came upon him burst into a laugh, clear, silvery—sweeter, dearer at that moment to Compton than all the music that had ever charmed his ears.

“Hey! Do it again,” cried Bobby, standing up and wearing an air of seraphic joy. Mr. Compton accepted the encore gratefully, but lost his great smile almost instantaneously when Bobby, allowing for a smaller mouth and more delicate features, reproduced the million-dollar grin.

“Upon my word!” exclaimed the thoroughly amazed comedian. “I must say I like you.”

“And I like you.”

“In fact, I like you very much.”

“And I like you very much.”

“What’s your name, little screecher?”

“Bobby Vernon.”

“I like that name very much. Mine is John Compton.”

“And I like that name very much. Say, come in and sit with me.”

“One moment. Where are you from?”

“Cincinnati.”

Compton, starting slightly, looked at the boy’s features searchingly.

“Say, Bobby, what was your mother’s maiden name—her name before she was married, you know?”

“Barbara Carberry.”

Compton buried his face in his hands. When he raised his head presently, he discovered Bobby weeping. Stepping into the car, Compton took Bobby in his arms and, gazing once more upon the child’s face, stooped over and kissed him.

“I knew your mother once,” he said quietly.

“And you like her?” asked Bobby eagerly.

“Like her! That’s no name for it. Tell me all about her.”

It was the thought of his mother that had set Bobby to weeping again. No wonder, then, that as he proceeded to recount the events of that morning he was forced sobbing to halt in his narration several times until he had mastered his grief. No child in deep trouble ever had a more sympathetic listener. While Bobby went on with his tale of woe, Compton, deeply attentive, was speeding at the rate of forty-five miles an hour for Los Angeles.

“You see,” he had explained to Bobby, “if I don’t hurry, I’ll be late for that two o’clock rehearsal.”

He stopped once on the road at a telephone station.

“Bobby,” he said when he had returned from the booth, “I’ve made inquiries. Your mother took sick. They say there was an earthquake.”

“I should say there was! Didn’t I tell you how it started me to running till I ran into you?

“That’s true. In fact, I believe there was an earthquake. Seems to me I noticed one myself; but I was so busy thinking about my part in the new production that I didn’t pay much attention to it. Well, anyhow, it made your mother sick. It often does affect strangers that way. And they brought her to her car; and before she knew what happened I reckon the old train started off to bring her to San Luis Obispo without you.”

Bobby’s sensitive upper lip quivered.

“Here, now, don’t you cry. I’ve sent a telegram which will catch her at San Luis Obispo, telling her that you are with me and that I will keep you safe and sound till I hear from her. Cheer up, Bobby! You’ll get word to-morrow. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Mr. Compton was a bad prophet. Bobby did not get word. In fact, owing to the flood of telegrams consequent upon the earthquake, Compton’s message was delayed nearly twenty-four hours, and though it duly reached San Luis Obispo it was never delivered. Barbara Vernon was not there to receive it.

John Compton had vainly attempted to get any details in regard to Bobby’s rescue. It had been a bad day for swimmers at Long Beach. The waters had been unusually rough, and in consequence several bathers were drowned and nearly a score in imminent danger rescued. Over the telephone he got a complete list of those whom the life-savers had brought safely in, but in that list was no name in any wise corresponding with that of Bobby Vernon. Had not the earthquake come along at the wrong moment, Bobby would not, unconsciously breaking his promise, have run away, and Mrs. Vernon would not have been whisked into the Pullman and been borne northward on the wings of steam. No; Bobby would have waited and Mrs. Vernon would have remained. They would have come together very shortly, and this story would not, failing that earthquake, be worth the writing.

Nor would Mrs. Vernon have gone on toward San Luis Obispo utterly broken in spirit. In reply to telegrams and long-distance telephone calls made by Mrs. Sansone and the big-hearted nurse, they learned that no boy corresponding to hers had been rescued, and that it was impossible at the moment to give any adequate report of those who had met death in the angry waters.

As for Bobby’s rescuer, when he returned to the beach and failed to find the boy awaiting him, he was highly disgusted. The boy had broken his promise and gone off without so much as a word of thanks. Being a native, so to speak, it did not occur to him that an earthquake might put a lone little lad into a panic. Meditating grimly on the ungratefulness of mankind in general and of a certain small boy in particular, he turned himself with a glum face to the bathing house. He was already long overdue in the city, and putting the incident out of his mind as an unpleasant memory, he went his way, telling no man of his morning’s adventure. Thus it came about that Bobby’s rescue was recorded only in heaven.

Thus too it came about that Barbara Vernon gave up all hope of her son’s having been rescued. He was dead, and she was alone in the world. In vain did Mrs. Sansone beg her to hope; equally in vain did Mrs. Feehan fold her to her generous heart and whisper in her ear those sweet nothings which love makes more valuable in such circumstances than pearls of great price. Mrs. Vernon, dry-eyed and with set face, speaking nothing, apparently hearing nothing, gazed into vacancy. Even Mrs. Feehan, whose hope was as strong as her love, began to lose courage. Something must be done or the poor bereaved widow might go mad.

Resigning the unhappy lady to the care of the Italian, Mrs. Feehan walked through the car, scanning quickly the face of each passenger. Disappointed in her inspection, she went into the next car, and as she entered, the smile returned to her face.

Seated in a section near her entry was a venerable priest. His thick spectacles failed to conceal the kindly old eyes; while the large, red, weather-beaten face seemed somehow to tell the tale of myriad deeds of consolation and kindness. To look upon him with unprejudiced eyes was by way of loving him. He was sitting with folded hands.

“Oh, Father,” exclaimed the nurse, “pardon me for disturbing you. But there is a woman in the next car who, I fear, will go mad unless some one can reach her. She is a widow, and her only boy has just been drowned. She is a devout Catholic, and I am almost certain that if any one can bring her out of her despair a Catholic priest can do it. I’ve dealt with a number of like cases, and I know it.”

The priest arose, and, as Mrs. Feehan observed, slipped his beads, concealed in his folded hands, into his pocket.

“I’ll talk to her, my good woman, and while I talk, do you pray.”

As they entered the car the porter met them.

“You will find the lady in the drawing-room. I put her in there myself.”

“You’re a trump!” said the priest, patting the porter on the back.

Mrs. Vernon, as they entered, was showing once more some signs of improvement. She was gazing not without a touch of tenderness down upon the tear-stained, almost despairing face of the beautiful little child Peggy, who on her knees was imploring forgiveness.

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Vernon. I lost my wits. But do forgive me.”

“She’s as good a girl as I know,” said the priest. “How are you, Peggy?”

“Oh, Father Galligan, ask her to forgive me!”

“I don’t know what it’s all about,” said the priest, “but I’m sure little Peggy would not wilfully do anything wrong. As you expect God’s help, my dear lady, in this trying hour, send this child away in peace and quiet.”

Mrs. Vernon raised herself up and threw her arms about the little one’s neck.

“There’s nothing to forgive, little dear. But pray, pray for me.”

“I think, madam,” observed the priest, “that if ever you were fit to receive all that comes with the blessing of the Church now is the time. Here, Peggy, kneel down and pray; and you too, Mrs. Sansone. And you too,” he added, addressing himself to the nurse; “though I’m thinking that Peggy’s prayers are worth all yours and mine put together. Now, speed her up, Peggy, while I recite the Gospel of St. John.”

It was, in all seriousness, an exquisite prayer-meeting. If angels can be influenced by human beauty, delicate innocence, and the awful faith of childhood, legions of them must have pressed about the great White Throne to tell the wondrous tale of Peggy’s praying. It is doubtful, also, whether they could have been insensible to the ardent petitions of the nurse and Peggy’s mother. However this may be, one thing is certain: the authorized prayer of a priest uttered in the name of the Church has an efficacy behind it which pierces high heaven. Such a prayer goes flying upward, winged by the power of that Church, in whose name it is uttered.

“Now,” said Father Galligan, closing his little book and gesturing the suppliants to rise from their knees, “you may all go outside and talk about your neighbors; and the more you talk about them the better—provided you speak of their good qualities. This lady is going to entertain me.”

“Well, we’ve all got to go now anyhow,” said Mrs. Sansone. “Los Angeles is our home, and Mrs. Feehan with her dear little daughter is stopping to visit a relation—”

“But if you say the word, Father,” put in Mrs. Feehan, “I’ll go on and see Mrs. Vernon through.”

“I don’t think it will be necessary,” said the Father. “Take your holiday and God bless you all. And don’t you forget, Peggy, to go to communion every day you can. You need it, dear child.”

“Indeed I won’t forget, Father. Good-by, Mrs. Vernon. You are just lovely, and I’ll pray for you every day and for Bobby.”

As Peggy left the compartment the priest lightly laid his hand on the child’s raven-black hair and blessed her.

“Poor child!” he remarked to Mrs. Vernon. “She’s as lovely now and as good as an angel. But she has the fatal gift of beauty, and she’s going to grow up. Lovely, untainted children—and the world is full of them—quite upset me. I don’t want them to die and I don’t want them to grow up. Confound original sin anyway!”

“I’m sure my little boy is in heaven. But I am a mother. Oh, how I want him! I can’t give him up!”

“You don’t know what you can do. None of us knows till we try. Remember, there is a faith that moves mountains.”

“Thank you so much, Father,” said Mrs. Vernon. “A moment ago I was tempted to take my life.”

“I’m sure the angels didn’t notice it, and so it won’t go on the recording book. You have had a great sorrow. But listen to the words of an old priest who has spent his priestly life of forty-three years supping with sorrow—other people’s mainly. When God sends us a great sorrow, He sends us a great strength, if we will only accept it. And more: if we bear our sorrows in simple faith, somehow, somewhere, God will turn our sorrow into joy.”

“Ah, Father, He can never give me back my son!”

“I don’t know about that,” demurred the Father, taking a pinch of snuff. “Didn’t Christ say, ‘Out of these stones I can raise up children to Abraham?’ Never say can’t when you’re talking about God.”

“I see, Father; you want of me the deepest faith.”

“Exactly, my good woman, the faith that moves mountains. ‘Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.’ ”

“Father, I will try.” As she finished these words, Mrs. Vernon fell to weeping.

“Good for you!” commented the priest. “What alarmed me most when I first saw you was the fact of your being so dry-eyed. But let us talk about something else. You don’t belong out here.”

“No, Father. I come from Cincinnati. My name is Barbara Vernon. Almost two years ago I lost my husband. He died a good death; but he was a poor business man, and the thing that bothered him most at his last hour was that he had neglected to renew his life insurance. It lapsed just two weeks before the day of his death.”

“An artist, possibly?”

“I think you might call him so, Father. He was an actor, and, if God had given him a longer life, would have become a playwright. He was engaged on the third and last act of a play when he took sick. I am confident, not only on my own judgment, but on the authority of several critics, that had he lived to complete it he would have made a fortune.”

“These artists are all alike,” commented the priest. “They see everything in the heavens above and the waters under the earth but their own interests. They all die uninsured—most of them, anyhow. But what brings you out here?”

“The hope of straightening out my affairs. You see, my husband, on the strength of his play, borrowed twenty-five hundred dollars on a note which falls due September the first. I want to pay it. I feel it is my duty. He borrowed from a friend who now needs the money. I have been teaching elocution to private pupils ever since my husband’s death, and have managed to put aside seven hundred dollars. Three months ago it became clear to me that I could not possibly get the full amount together. Now, there happens to live in San Luis Obispo a wealthy relation of mine, an uncle whom I have not seen since I was a little girl. He was very fond of me then, and he more than once asked me to call on him if I were ever in trouble.”

“You did very well to come, Mrs. Vernon. He lives, you say, in San Luis Obispo?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Perhaps I know him. I spent three years at San Luis. In fact, I was there all of last year.”

“His name, Father, is Pedro Alvarez.”

The start which the priest gave was almost imperceptible. Not for nothing had he heard over four hundred thousand confessions.

“Do you know him, Father?”

“I do.”

“And is he well?”

“I am just wondering,” mused the priest evasively, “whether he has much money. He was wealthy once, but he lost heavily on some oil investments.”

“But is he well, Father?”

“It is two months,” pursued the priest, “since I was in residence at San Luis Obispo.”

At this moment the train stopped at a small station, and there was heard a commotion without.

“There’s something wrong, I fear,” said the Father, glad of an opportunity to change the subject. He now regretted that he had bidden Mrs. Feehan take her holiday at Los Angeles.

“Reverend,” said the porter, entering suddenly, “there’s a man at the station who’s been injured by a freight, and he is calling for a priest. He may die any moment.”

“Excuse me,” said Father Galligan, rising quickly. “When I come back I have something to tell you.”

Father Galligan did not return. The dying man needed him, and Mrs. Vernon saw the priest no more. He only came and went, and touched her life into a higher faith.

That evening Mrs. Vernon stepped off the car at San Luis Obispo. The station was almost deserted. However, she had little trouble in getting information about Alvarez, once very prominent in the city. He was dead. He had died seven months before almost penniless and prepared by Father Galligan. This it was that Father Galligan had intended telling her.

The train, while Mrs. Vernon was getting this information, departed.

The poor woman was almost beside herself. Wringing her hands, she paced up and down the deserted platform, calling upon the Mother of Sorrows to come to her aid. Five minutes or more passed when she was interrupted.

“I beg your pardon, Miss,” said a plainly dressed man to whose hands were clinging a girl of twelve and a boy who evidently was her younger brother; “but do you know anything about nursing?”

The man’s face was troubled and eager. The two children had been recently crying. Indeed, so it seemed to Mrs. Vernon, it had been a day of calamity.

“I took nearly two years’ course of training.”

“Oh!” cried the girl, breaking into a smile.

“Then for the love of God, come to my help. My wife will die unless she gets good nursing. The doctor has said it. Look at these two children. Think of them without a mother. I’m a ranchman living thirty miles from here. Money is no object. Name your own terms. I know you won’t refuse. All afternoon I’ve looked and looked for a nurse. Before you say no, look at these little ones.”

“Please!” cried the girl, clasping her hands.

“Come on!” entreated the boy, catching her arm.

Could the Mother of Sorrows have sent them?

“I hardly know how to refuse you, sir; but my own little boy has this day been taken from me by drowning, carried out by the undertow at Long Beach. I was not with him at the time, and I must go back and find whether his body has been recovered.”

The ranchman took a careful and appraising look at Barbara.

“Madam,” he said, “I think I understand. I know how you feel. But let me make a suggestion. You are in no condition to return to Long Beach; nor would you know what to do when you got there. Now, I’m familiar with the place and the conditions. I have, in fact, some influence there. Now I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If for the sake of saving my dear wife’s life you will come with me, I’ll take you at once to our home and will return in time to get the next train to Long Beach. And I promise you that I will do all that you could do and more, to learn anything, however trivial it may seem, concerning your boy. Oh, madam, for the love of God, give your consent. I am sure He has sent you to us.”

“Please, ma’am,” implored the girl.

“My mama needs you,” added the boy.

“In God’s name!” said the ranchman.

Taking everything into consideration, Barbara Vernon could not resist these sweet children, this fond husband, and so a few minutes later she was on her way in the ranchman’s machine to enter upon a new phase of life.

Thus it fell that when the telegram from John Compton reached San Luis Obispo the following afternoon no claimant for it could be discovered.

Your true cloister of to-day is a moving-picture studio. The sign “No Admittance,” or some wording of similar meaning, greets the stranger at every door. There is, too, at each entry a dragon on guard, sometimes in the guise of a gracious but firm young woman, sometimes, it may be, in that of a forbidding old man; but no matter how various be the form of these dragons, they are there to see that you don’t go in. To enter without the Open Sesame incurs an excommunication seldom incurred, for the reason that the dragons are always on duty.

As John Compton, holding the hand of Bobby, made to enter the sacred precincts of the Lantry Studio at the entryway provided for the actors, the man on guard cast a severe and forbidding look at the youth.

“You know my orders,” he grumbled, still gazing at Bobby while addressing Compton.

“Sure I do. But this boy is an aunt of mine—er—that is, an uncle. Oh, dash it! what am I talking about? He’s my little nephew, Bobby Compton.”

“Why don’t you get it right?” observed a bright young lady, one of the “stars,” as she passed through the sacred gate. “Don’t you think, on second thought, Mr. Compton, that he’s your grandfather? He looks more like that than an aunt of yours.”

The surly keeper of the gate perceived the joke. It was on record that he had seen through a joke on three distinct occasions during his two years of guardianship. To-day he scored for the fourth time. Bobby as an aunt was really funny. But as a grandfather! The keeper dropped his pipe and lost his scowl, and holding up both hands, palms outward, roared with laughter. He was still in the throes of his mammoth mirth when Compton pushed through the stile—I know no better word for it—and drew Bobby after him. The cloister was violated.

Now, Bobby had by this time wearied of holding Compton’s hand. Moreover he had noticed a certain peculiarity in Compton’s walk which he desired to study to better advantage. So, loosening his hold, and saying, “I’ll follow you,” he dropped behind his newly-discovered uncle.

Mr. Compton, dressed for his part in the rehearsal, wore a nondescript jacket and a vest of startling color. Into the armholes of this vest his thumbs were thrust, the free fingers of his hand extended and waving in unison at each step. Bobby had already studied this peculiarity. Now he was to study the secret of Compton’s strides. They were, to begin with, notably long strides. But most striking of all was the part his feet played. The right foot at each step was turned in, the left out. In justice to Mr. Compton, this was not his proper gait. He was practicing for his part. Bobby, however, liked it. In fact, he liked anything connected with John Compton, and because John Compton did it Bobby saw nothing funny in it at all. It was easy for Bobby to insert his real thumbs into imaginary armholes and to wiggle his fingers with each step. It was not so easy, by reason of the shortness of his legs, for Bobby to catch his uncle’s stride. But he thought it worth while, and he did it. Then Bobby, with surprisingly little difficulty, got his feet to working as though one were going in one direction and the other in another; and so serenely moved on the procession of two, a spectacle for angels and Miss Bernadette Vivian, the young star who had brought to life once more the gate-keeper’s sense of humor.

It was Bernadette’s turn to laugh.

“Look,” she cried to a busy and jaded-looking official, who was hurrying past her with a sheaf of papers in his hands and a lead pencil in his mouth. “Set your eyes on that boy. That’s Compton’s aunt or grandfather—he’s not quite clear which—and of the two, I think, with all respect to Compton, the aunt is the better comedian.”

The official looked and grinned.

“Maybe you’re right,” he observed, removing the pencil from his mouth. “You’re working with Compton. Keep your eye on the kid. We may need him if he’s not engaged already.”

“Come on here, Bobby; you take my hand,” said Compton, turning sharply and detecting his understudy in action. Another man might have been annoyed, Compton was tickled beyond measure.

Threading their way through a maze of sets and scenery, among which busy men—carpenters, electricians, secretaries and what not—were winding in what appeared to be inextricable confusion, they finally arrived at a set arranged to represent the lobby of a hotel.

To the left was a cigar counter, and beyond it an exit, or, possibly, an entryway to some other part of the hotel. The rest, save for a bellhop’s bench, was space. Seated or lounging about were several actors; among them a young lady dressed as a salesgirl; a boy of about Bobby’s size, though evidently several years older, gay in the buttons and livery of a bellhop; a young man in society clothes; and finally a young woman who was evidently a lady.

Hurrying from one to the other of these and speaking quickly certain instructions, was a young man whose intense face expressed infinite patience and strong, though jaded, energy. He was tired—had been tired for six months—but had no time to diagnose the symptoms. This was the stage director, Mr. Joseph Heneman.

“Halloa, John! Glad you’ve come. Everything’s set, and we’re going to move like a house afire. Who’s that fine little boy with you?”

“I’m his aunt,” said Bobby seriously.

Heneman nearly exploded on the spot.

“You young screech-owl!” said Compton, turning a severe face, though his eyes twinkled, upon Bobby. “Who taught you how to lie?”

“You said I was your aunt,” countered Bobby.

“Your uncle—nephew, I mean. This young monkey,” he went on, addressing the manager, the vision of Bobby’s latest mimicry still vivid in his memory, “is my nephew, Bobby Compton.”

“Why, I didn’t know you had a nephew,” said Heneman, still laughing. As he spoke he shook hands with the interesting youth.

“Neither did I till a while ago,” chuckled Compton. “Fact is I adopted him and christened him on the way in. It’s a long story, but he’s in my charge now. He’ll sit still and watch us working. Won’t you, Bobby?”

“I’ll watch you working all right,” said Compton’s new relation. Bobby had no intention of sitting still.

“Halloa, aunty!” said Bernadette, suddenly appearing on the scene, and smiling at Bobby, showing in the act a perfect and shining set of teeth.

“How do you do?” returned Bobby, bowing gravely. “You’ve got it wrong, though. He’s my uncle. He says so himself, and he ought to know.”

Before the rehearsal began every one there heard the story from the fair lady’s cupid-painted lips of the circumstances connected with Bobby’s admission into the Lantry cloister. The story filled with joy all the listeners save one. The bellhop did not even smile. The fact is, the bellhop, yielding to a long-fought temptation, had obtained a quid of tobacco from a stage carpenter, had indulged in his first and probably his last chew, and was just now filled with feelings of wild regret and a desire to lie down in some obscure spot and die.

As a result of Bernadette’s story every one, excepting of course the unhappy bellhop, was in a state of almost hilarious good humor when the rehearsal was called; in such humor that even when the star halted everything for several minutes by insisting that one of her shoes was improperly laced—though to the naked eye there was nothing out of order—and having her attendant do it all over again, no one grumbled.

Mr. Heneman had counted on going on with the rehearsal “like a house afire.” He had reckoned without his host, and the host was the bellhop.

Before going further it may be well to observe that a picture in the making is far from resembling a picture in the viewing. The former is a very slow process. It may require a whole day to produce what one sees on the screen in three or four seconds. Before the camera men “shoot” there may be a dozen or more rehearsals; and the shooting may be repeated seven or eight times.

“Ready!” cried Mr. Heneman. “Positions!”

At the word the salesgirl got behind the cigar counter and, to make everybody understand that she was only a salesgirl, proceeded to chew gum violently. In real life saleswomen sometimes do chew gum; but it is rare to discover one who makes it an almost violent physical exercise. Standing to the right of the saleslady—in the lobby—the young man in the dresscoat, facing the young lady with not enough clothes on her back to make a bookmark, began offering such original remarks as the state of the weather generally evokes. Back of them all, in an alcove near the exit, sat the bellhop, gloom and desolation upon his face.

“Here, you! Don’t stand so the lady can’t be seen. Let the lady turn a little to the right. That’s it. Go on and talk, both of you, and smile as if you were each saying awfully witty things. Bellhop, hold up your head! You look like a drowned rat. Look tough; you’re looking dismal.” Here the director paused, and while the camera men were placing their machines in position, and their assistants were arranging reflectors, and an electrician, perched on high above the shooting line, arranged a powerful light over the head of the salesgirl, he went over to the bellhop, showed him how to sit, how to hold his hands, cross his legs and drop one corner of his mouth. There was some improvement.

“Now, once more!” ordered the director. “Positions! Smile, you two. Talk, talk! Don’t overdo that chewing-gum stuff. Give a yawn, bellhop. Good! Now come on, Compton.”

From off scene to the right enters Compton. He is befuddled with liquor, and on his face is an expression of utmost stupidity. It is doubtful, indeed, if any live human being could be as stupid as he looked. In his right hand he is balancing a cane with a crook. His walk is a marvel of indecision. He hasn’t the least idea, apparently, as to whither he is going.

Bobby, just back of the director, is watching all this with breathless interest. Previous to Compton’s entrance he had assumed the attitude and pose of the “lady,” arms akimbo, head thrown back and a full smile. Upon Compton’s appearance Bobby could at first hardly restrain the exuberance of his delight. The highest admiration often expresses itself in imitation. To the amazement and amusement of several actors stationed behind him, the lad with scarcely an effort threw his features into a close replica of Compton’s.

“He’s as good a nut as Compton,” observed an old actor to a companion.

“I’ll say so!” rejoined the other.

Compton almost jostled the young lady in his onward progress. As it was, the crook of his cane caught upon her elbow and hung there. Without his cane, Compton showed a dim consciousness of feeling that something was wrong. He felt his clothes, his pockets, his face, and then looking for the nonce dimly intelligent, turned around, removed the cane from its improvised hook, raised his hat, dropped it, stooped to get the cane, picked it up, reached for his hat, dropped the cane, and so on. It was simple fun, but made worth while by the manner of the actor. Bobby by this time had a stick and a hat, and without knowing it was giving a capital performance for the exclusive benefit of sixteen actors and several outsiders.

“Hey, salesgirl!” ordered Heneman, “call the bellhop, and tell him to request with all possible politeness the gentleman in liquor to leave the premises.”

The bellhop came at her call, received her message, and strode towards Compton.

“Get back there and do it again!” bawled the director. “You walk as though you were going to church or to your grandmother’s funeral. Turn your shoulders in, drop your mouth, swing your arms. Just imagine you’re going to lick somebody.”

The bellhop tried again, with no sign of improvement. Again and again he failed. No moving-picture actor in that studio, it is probable, ever received such minute directions. But they were all lost on him. However, they were not lost on Bobby. Utterly unconscious of the attention he was exciting, Bobby was following out to the letter every hint coming from Heneman’s mouth.

Among the spectators was a wag. The parts he always figured in were tragic or romantic roles, but in real life he was the most notorious practical joker in the Lantry Studio.

“See here, Johnny,” he said, whispering into the boy’s ear. “Would you like to do an act of kindness?”

“Sure,” said Bobby.

“I’ve been watching you for some time. You know how that bellhop should do his part. Go and show him. It’s no use telling him how. He doesn’t understand. But you just go and show him.”

“Will it be all right?” asked Bobby.

“An act of kindness is always right,” answered the wag, with tragic solemnity. “Look; he’s starting now, and he’s worse than ever. Don’t tell any one I suggested your showing him. Keep it a dead secret. Now, go to it.”

In perfect good faith Bobby stepped forward, passed the director, saying as he went, “Excuse me, sir,” and ignoring Compton and the “lady” and “gentleman,” strode over to the bellhop. All this, happening though it did in a few seconds, produced an unheard-of effect. The saleslady stopped chewing, the lady and gentleman ceased smiling, Compton looked surprised and intelligent, the director let his jaw drop, and the audience, now swollen to double its size, pressed forward to the cameras. The bellhop himself put on a human expression of inquiry. As Bobby came face to face with the victim every one on the stage seemed to be momentarily paralyzed.

“You poor fish,” said Bob, kindness and energy ringing in his accents, “just let me show you. It’s so easy!”

The bellhop sank back into his seat.

“Now look,” continued Bobby. The left-hand corner of his mouth sagged, his shoulders bent in, and with a walk and a swerve redolent of the old Bowery, Bobby advanced towards Compton, whose eyes were protruding.

“You boob!” announced Bobby. “You are politely requested to make a noise like a train and rattle out of here. Get me?” And as Bobby, not in the way of kindness, laid his hand on Compton, cheers and laughter and hand-clapping disturbed scandalously the quiet of the Lantry cloister.

Bobby, nothing disconcerted, bowed, laying his hand over his heart, and smiled affably. But when the star, Bernadette, came running over, her face beaming with delight, and exclaimed, “Aunty, I’m going to kiss you for that,” he blanched and fled to Compton’s arms.

There was a pause and a deliberation. Compton and the manager conferred together for five minutes. The result of their talk was that Bobby was hired on the spot and the victim of tobacco given a vacation till further notice.

Thus did Bobby Vernon “break into the movies.”

“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.”

“Well, here we are, young man,” announced Compton half an hour later and turned into a rather pretentious apartment building.

“It looks very fine from the outside,” commented Bobby.

“And I think you’ll like it inside, too,” returned Compton as they entered the elevator.

Compton had an apartment on the third floor—sitting room, bathroom, bedroom and guest chamber. Bobby examined the suite with manifest delight. Everything was modern and in a sense elegant. If there were anything lacking to John Compton’s comfort, John Compton did not know it, nor did Bobby discover it. Bobby’s critical faculty was not as yet strongly developed. He had nevertheless an abundance of enthusiasm which he was not slow in expressing, and which failed him only in his survey of the pictures and photographs clustered thickly upon the walls of the sitting room. They were, with the exception of several photographs of Compton himself, all women, mainly actresses and all in every variety of dress and the contrary.

“Say, are all your friends women?” exclaimed the youth.

Compton colored and looked uneasy.

“You’re my friend,” he replied.

“There’s something queer about a lot of these pictures,” the boy went on. “I don’t like them.”

Mr. Compton changed the subject. Within twenty-four hours, nevertheless, a good many of those pictures found their way to a place where they properly belonged, and were seen no more in the land of sunshine.

“By the way, Bobby,” he resumed presently, “You haven’t said a word about your mother to-day.”

“I know it,” said Bobby cheerfully.

“Well, I have bad news to tell you.”

“I’ll bet you haven’t.”

“That telegram I sent may not be received by her.”

“No?”

“No. It was delayed. A lot of messages were delayed. You know, it was to have been delivered to her at the station at San Luis Obispo. But there’s no knowing whether it will be forwarded in time to catch her.”

“Look here, uncle; I’ll tell you a secret. I have prayed, and I’m sure—I just know—my prayer is all right. No harm will come to my mother. She is safe; and she will come back when God wants her to.”

“You seem to be on intimate terms with the Almighty!”

“With who?”

“With God.”

“Why not?” inquired Bobby simply. “Don’t you believe in prayer?”

“Upon my word!” gasped the comedian. “I could have answered that question easily enough yesterday; but now I don’t know what I believe and what I don’t.”

What gem of wisdom might have dropped from Bobby’s lips in commenting upon this strange declaration was lost forever when the janitor of the building suddenly entered the room.

“Beg pardon, sir. I wasn’t sure you were here. But I think there’s some mistake. There’s a wagon down below with some furniture and a lot of stuff directed to you, and you—not being a family man—”

“Correct, Johnson. All the same, send them up. There’s no mistake. You see, this boy is Bobby Compton, and he’s going to stay with me. He’s a cousin of mine.”

“Oh, I say!” cried Bobby. “If I’m your aunt or your nephew, I want to know how I’m your cousin.”

“Johnson,” said Compton magnificently, “when I say cousin I always mean nephew. It’s the habit of a lifetime.”

“Oh,” observed Johnson, scratching his head. “Well, I’ll bring them things up anyhow.”

“Well,” sighed Compton, throwing himself back in his chair, crossing his legs, and cupping his hands behind his head, “I’m glad that’s settled. I was afraid they wouldn’t come.”

Bobby took the chair facing his uncle, crossed his legs, and cupped his hands behind his head.

“Afraid what wouldn’t come, uncle?”

“Never you mind, little monkey. Just wait.”

Bobby’s patience was not sorely tried. Up the stairs toiled four men just then, Johnson in the lead, all laden with bundles and various articles of furniture.

“This way, boys,” said Compton, opening the door to the guestroom. “Just wait one moment, Bobby.” And Compton, having seen to each one’s getting through, entered himself and closed the door. He was out a moment later, holding in his hand an attractively bound book.

“Have you ever read ‘Through the Desert,’ by Sienkiewicz, Bobby?”

“No. But I just love any good story.”

“Here, take it. I’ll be busy for a while. The book is yours.”

“Mine for good?” cried Bobby, raising his eyes from the charming frontispiece.

“Of course.”

“Uncle, you’re a dandy!”

The dandy blushingly withdrew, and Bobby forthwith entered into that fairyland of childhood to be found in few books as in the one in his hand. Perhaps one of the strangest phenomena of child life is the power of complete absorption so many little ones possess when they read a good story. People may come and go, laugh, talk and carry on in various ways, while the child buried in his book follows the windings of the story as though he were alone on a desert island. Now for fully three quarters of an hour there went on in the guestroom a moving of furniture, loud hammering, excited conversation, and all manner of noises. But to Bobby’s ears came no sound, and time itself stood still.

When the four men, followed by Mr. Compton, the latter breathing hard and perspiring freely, issued forth, Bobby, seated in a chair with his legs curled under him, was buried in the precious volume. The four men gratefully received various coins and went their way, leaving Mr. Compton gazing wonderingly at the juvenile bookworm. So far as Bobby was concerned, he might without interruption have gone on gazing indefinitely.

“Bobby!” he finally called.

Bobby’s eyes remained fastened on the page.

“Bobby!” he bawled.

The boy raised his eyes.

“Oh, it’s great!” he said. “I’ve read fifty-four pages.”

“You have read enough. Come, I want to show you your room.”

“All right, uncle,” returned the boy, wistfully laying down the story. “You’ve stopped me in a most exciting part.”

Throwing open the guestroom door, Compton said, “Walk in; it’s all yours.”

With an attempt at enthusiasm, Bobby complied. In a moment the forced enthusiasm became genuine. A small shining brass bed, a snow-white counterpane, a case of books filled with the best juveniles, an electric railroad, a baseball equipment, a tiny rocker, an easy chair, and a variety of games—all these and more charmed his eyes into a new brightness and marshaled out upon his features a myriad elves of happiness.

Before Mr. Compton could prepare for the worst Bobby jumped into his arms and caught him a kiss square upon his unprepared mouth.

For two hours Bobby flitted from toy to game, from game to book. He was possibly at that moment the happiest boy in the State of California.

“Now, look you, Bobby, it’s ten o’clock. Don’t you think you might give that bed a tryout?”

“Why, I never thought of that! Gee, but I’m tired!”

Mr. Compton thought, as he closed the door upon his ward, that his dealings with the boy were over till morning. He was mistaken. Presently, clad in rainbow pajamas, Bobby came forth.

“Now I’m ready,” he declared.

“Well, if you’re ready, why don’t you go to bed?”

“Ready,” explained the child, with reproach in his eyes, “for my night prayers.”

“Oh!” exclaimed the comedian. “I never thought of that!”

The lad’s curling lip warned Mr. Compton that his remark was not particularly happy.

“Of course, of course!” he added hastily. “How very absent-minded I am getting! By all means, Bobby, go on and say your prayers.”

As Mr. Compton thus spoke he was lying restfully on a lounge, a cigar in his mouth, a newspaper in his hands, and, within easy reach, a glass filled almost to the brim with a golden liquid. What was his surprise, thus situated, when Bobby plumped down on his knees and, planting his elbows in the softest part of the comedian’s anatomy, made the sign of the cross and recited the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Acts. And he did not stop there. Raising his sweet voice a little higher, and glancing during the first line about the walls of the room, Bobby recited:

Mr. Compton, whose cigar had gone out, laid aside his paper, and forgetting his drink, glanced behind him, almost expecting to see hovering over him some bright and glorious creature of another world. Bobby went on: “May the soul of my dear papa and all the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace. Amen. God bless mamma—and God bless—uncle!”

Compton dropped his cigar.

“And,” continued Bobby, raising beautiful and loving eyes to the ceiling, “Oh, blessed Saviour bring back my mamma to me!”

Here Bobby broke down utterly.

“Steady, Bobby! You know what you told me. Didn’t you say God will bring her back?”

Bobby at these words mastered his tears, made the sign of the cross, and answered as he rose: “And I say so still. Good-night, uncle.”

Bobby leaned over with pursed lips. Compton was perspiring. He raised his head, which was enough for Bobby, who gave him a hearty smack resembling in sound the explosion of a mild firecracker.

About eleven o’clock that night Compton tiptoed into the guestroom. The moon’s silvery rays revealed clearly the sleeping lad. How sweet and calm looked the innocent face in the magic light!

“Is there an angel watching over him?” the man asked himself. Twenty-four hours earlier he would have considered it a silly question, but now—

He stooped lower and gazed more intently upon the child’s face. Was that a tear upon the cheek? He felt the pillow. It was wet in places.

“What a brave little chap he is!” he commented. “He’s feeling his separation from his mother dreadfully. But he keeps it to himself.”

Once more Compton gazed. And then for a moment he saw another face—sweet, noble—the face of Bobby’s mother as he had known her in her early teens.

“Ah,” he considered, “she was the sweetest woman that ever came into my life! What a fool I was not to have taken her advice! I left her for the husks of swine.”

Compton bent down, and with trembling lips touched the boy, lightly, reverently on the brow, and with a suppressed sigh turned away to give to sleep the last hour of the most remarkable day of his life.

It was a little after eight of the clock on the following morning that the comedian took his way along the boulevard towards the Lantry studio. Bobby’s eyes were dancing with mischief; the soul of the weather, gay and bland, had entered into him. As he went his way he dispensed lavish smiles to right and left, and poor indeed was he in human feeling who failed to return smile for smile. Many a passer-by craned his neck, having passed Bobby, to take an admiring look at the tiny dispenser of joy who, attired in black broadcloth knickerbockers, a vest of the same material cut away generously from the breast and decked with two shining buttons where it met at the waist, a white shirt foaming into frills, the sleeves of which were held up above the wrists by two bewitching white ribbons, was really rather like to a lily of the field than Solomon clothed in all his glory.

Of course Hollywood, like all known civilized places where men do congregate, had its array of camera fiends.

“I beg your pardon,” said one of these, a tall severe-looking man with dark glasses, “but would you mind my snap-shotting you?”

Bobby turned, folded his hands, and grinned.

“Shoot,” he said.

“Thank you,” said the man, his severe mien drowned in a wave of smiles almost as gay as Bobby’s.

We have all heard of St. Francis preaching a sermon simply by walking in silence through a thronged city. Does not many an innocent child as he goes his happy way, smiling and wondering, preach a sermon that has for its theme the charm of candid innocence, and the strange and alluring possibility of every one who is so minded to become, by taking himself in hand, a child again? And is it not true that such little children bring a man’s thoughts regretfully and humbly back to the days when he too was young, unsophisticated and unspoiled?

“You’re getting quite popular, Bobby,” observed Compton as they resumed their way. “Everybody seems to like you.”

“So do I,” returned Bobby.

“What’s that?”

“I like everybody, too.”

“Out of the mouths of children,” Mr. Compton murmured to himself.

“I didn’t quite hear you, uncle.”

“I was saying,” translated the elder, “that whether you knew it or not you have given the true secret of popularity.”

“Have we time to go in?” asked Bobby as they neared the Church of the Blessed Sacrament.

“Why, yes, and I’ll be glad to go in with you.”

Mr. Compton’s sign of the cross was beyond criticism, his genuflection not so bad; also, he knelt straight, and, in a word, showed the outward signs of intelligence so lacking on the occasion of his first visit.

“I say, uncle,” Bobby remarked as they came out, “you’ve improved a lot. You didn’t look around a bit.”

“Why should I?”

“People often do, you know, when they’re praying; but it’s not right. Did you notice me looking around at the walls when I said the prayer ‘Angel of God’ last night?”

“Now that you come to speak of it, I believe I did.”

“There was a reason.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Compton, in a tone at once exclamatory and interrogatory.

“Yes. At home when I came to that prayer I always looked at the picture of the guardian angel which hung just above mamma’s head.”

“And you looked around my walls among the pictures to see whether you could find a picture of the guardian angel, eh?”

“Yes, uncle; but I didn’t find a picture anything like one.”

“I should say not!” said Compton with energy. “But, Bobby, I was glad last night when you prayed for me. I hope you’ll keep it up.”

“Aha!” cried Bobby dramatically, jumping in front of his uncle and shaking a triumphant finger at him. “So you do believe in prayer.”

“In your prayers, Bobby. Put that finger down and stop your jigging; everybody is looking at us.”

As a matter of fact, Bobby had achieved a feat seldom achieved on the Hollywood Boulevard. He had, unintentionally of course, excited the attention of nearly every one he had encountered. Now on the gay and festive Hollywood Boulevard, be it known, all varieties of dress and action are to be seen, and nobody seems to bother about them. In the solemn watches of the night cavalcades of cowboys on horseback may come clattering along, shooting in the real sense of the word, and shouting. Possibly some light sleeper may rouse sufficiently to grasp the situation. Turning in his bed, he remarks: “There go them moving-picture fellers again,” and resumes his interrupted slumbers. There’s an old man, white-bearded, redfaced from exposure, bare-footed, clad in a modern substitute for the garments of St. John, and wearing a staff. He is frequently seen on the street, but nobody seems to be concerned so much as to take a second look.

I forgot to say that this imitation St. John the Baptist goes bareheaded. Practically all the men on the boulevard go bareheaded. I myself, I dare say, could patrol that famous thoroughfare in cassock and biretta without exciting any further comment than, “I wonder what picture that fellow’s made up for.” Painted ladies—painted so profusely that their own mothers would not know them—would there escape comment or criticism. It would be taken for granted that they were actresses. The camera would mitigate their extravagance, and their presentment on the screen would be entirely lacking the grossness of their real flesh-and-blood appearances. But Bobby, gay and smiling, taking off now the stride of his uncle, now the gait of a passing flapper, woke the street from its passive acquiescence in all things queer.

It remained for Bobby to create a sensation. He did so, and in the following way.

Mr. Compton, excusing himself and inviting the festive youth to survey the scenery and fill his soul with its beauty, had passed into a shop to renew his supply of cigars. He delayed a few moments, very excusably, to tell a friend what a wonderful find his nephew was.

Now, since their leaving the Hollywood Catholic church, there had been shadowing Bobby, Chucky Snuff, bellhop of yesterday’s play. It had never occurred to Chucky that Bobby’s attempt to help him had been made in the way of kindness. Quite otherwise. In justice to the younger set of moving-picture actors, it should be stated that Chucky Snuff was not up to form. He was, as the girls said, mean. Nobody liked him. A fond father and a foolish mother had accounted him, in his tender years, a swan; and they so petted and spoiled him as to develop him—allowing for difference of sex—into a goose. At the age of ten Chucky was stunted and blasé.

Taking advantage of Compton’s disappearance, Chucky picked up a piece of wood and hastened to overtake Bobby.

“Why, halloa!” said Bobby as Chucky, running in front of him, blocked the way.

By way of return the other put on a face which, had he assumed it in the rehearsal, might have saved him his position.

“There!” he said, placing the wood on his right shoulder, “you knock that chip off my shoulder!”

Bobby’s smile left him, and all the elves of merriment. Perplexity wrinkled his brow. The aggressor was much encouraged. Bobby, he judged, was a coward.

“Go on,” he urged. “I’m going to knock your block off, you big stiff. Do you hear me? Go on and knock it off!”

Bobby perceived that he was in for it. His mind, as usual, worked quickly. It came back to him then how his father had once said, “My son, never indulge in vulgar fist-fighting if you can possibly help yourself; but if you must, it’s a capital thing to get in the first blow.” Accordingly, no sooner had his opponent ceased his adjuration than Bobby’s left hand lightly swept the chip away, while at the same moment his right shot out with what force he could put into it, and landed squarely on the tip of the other’s chin.

Pain, astonishment, vast astonishment, swept over the face of Chucky Snuff. He turned, and with a howl which really attracted attention dashed away for parts unknown.

“Fine work! Excellent!” exclaimed a haughty young man with a close-trimmed mustache and severely aristocratic features as he caught Bobby’s hand, while an admiring audience gathered round to listen avidly to one of the matinee idols of filmdom. “That was splendidly done. That other fellow played the tough to a nicety. The way he had his chin stuck out and the way you landed on it was perfect. Say, it was perfectly rehearsed! You can shoot it right away. Where’s the camera man?”

“Why, that wasn’t acting,” Bobby explained. “That was a real scrap.”

“Oh!” said the actor, deeply chagrined and departing forthwith; and the disappointed spectators, realizing that there was to be no encore, melted away. Thus in Hollywood are real life and reel life confounded.

When John Compton, airily smoking, returned, Bobby was rubbing a skinned knuckle, the cause of which, on inquiry, he explained.

“My fault!” acknowledged the comedian. “You’re in my care and I should not leave you alone. However, perhaps it’s just as well. I know young Chucky Snuff pretty well, and I’m sure he’ll not bother you again.”

Presently Bobby, on his way in the mazes of the Lantry Studio to put himself into the bellhop’s clothes, came upon a little miss seated dolefully in a chair, her head buried in her hands, her shoulders bowed, and dejection in her entire pose. She was dressed like a princess. The elegance of her attire, however, did not impress Bobby; it was her hair, raven-black in a wealth of curls. Where had he seen that hair before? He looked at the hands. They were dark. A light came to him.

“Halloa, Peggy!”

At the words the girl raised her head, and her large wondrously beautiful eyes rested upon Bobby. With a gasp, she sprang from her chair, while her eyes grew larger and larger. Fear and wonder shone from them.

“Don’t you know me, Peggy?” asked the boy, smiling radiantly.

Wonder and fear in those eyes changed to a joy that was nothing less than bliss.

“Oh, Bobby! You’re alive!”

“I’ll say so!”

“Bobby!” she screamed, and threw her arms about his neck.

“Oh, I say!” protested the highly embarrassed youth, “cut out the rough stuff.”

“But, Bobby,” continued Peggy, whose face was irradiated with joy, “I saw you drown myself!”

“You did not. A nice, big man came and fished me out.”

“Oh, thank God! Last night I couldn’t sleep a wink thinking of you and your poor mother. Where is she, Bobby?”

“I wish I knew, Peggy. Didn’t you see her last?”

Then Peggy told Bobby her side of the story.

“And so my mother thinks I’m drowned! I never thought of that, Peggy. But I’ll tell Uncle Compton, and he’ll find where she is and let her know that I’m alive.”

“Uncle Compton! Why, is he your uncle?”

“I don’t know; it all depends. First I was his aunt, and then his uncle, and then his grandfather. He said so himself. Anyhow, I call him uncle. He’s a dandy.”

“Isn’t he, though!” exclaimed Peggy. “I just love him. He’s so kind to children. You know, Bobby, I work with him.”

“What!” cried Bobby, picking up the chair which Peggy in rising had upset, and seating himself. “Why, yesterday you never said a word to me about your being in the movies.”

“I didn’t think it would interest you. I’m in his new play, and there’s an awfully tough bellhop in it who takes a fancy to me, and I reform him.”

Bobby took in a deep breath, and expelled it in a sort of whistle.

“I’m the bellhop,” he said, lowering his eyes, turning down a corner of his mouth, drawing in and upward his shoulders.

“Bobby!” panted Peggy, “let me have that chair.”

Bobby, changing back to himself, arose and helped Peggy to seat herself. Peggy was faint with joy.

“Say,” cried the boy, “we’ll have dead loads of fun.”

“Oh!” said Peggy.

“And we’ll make it go.”

“I know it,” said Peggy. “Just then you looked like the kind of bellhop I’d like to reform. But tell me how you got here.”

“Between the ax, Peggy,” said Bobby, magnificently, after the manner of Compton explaining to the janitor. “I’ll tell you between the ax. I’ll tell you then. I’m now going to dress or I’ll be late.”

There was great headway made on the picture that day. Bernadette, already in love with Peggy, took Bobby into her affections too. Bobby and Peggy worked together like the clever and gifted pals they actually were. Even the “hams” caught the infection of joy, alertness and enthusiasm.

“Say, old man,” said Heneman, in an aside to Compton, “we’ve got something unusual here. Every man, woman and child in this picture is all right from the toes up to the top of the head. None of them are good just as far as the neck. We’re going to speed this thing up and have it out in two weeks. We can do it.”

“I never saw Peggy do so well before, and she always was a corking little actress,” commented Compton.

“It’s Bobby,” explained the director. “He’s got a diffusive sort of pep; it’s catching. I’ve got a great scene coming. When Bob gets to admiring Peggy—in the play, I mean—I’m going to have him show his admiration by imitation. The boy is a born imitator. Of course he’ll have to caricature it, especially her dancing. It’s going to be the very best sort of light comedy.”

“If imitation,” mused Compton, “is the beginning, middle and end of all acting, Bobby will be a star. Between times he’s taking off every carpenter, electrician or camera man around who happens to have any peculiarity.”

“I’d like to see him have a part where he could star,” said Heneman. “It isn’t work to train him. It’s fun.”

The days passed swiftly. Everybody concerned in the production was on edge to get it through. There were no hitches, no delays. Bobby and Peggy worked their parts into an importance undreamed of by the author of the scenario. There was but one unpleasant episode. It happened on the eighth day. A girl of fifteen enjoying a local reputation for calisthenics had been secured to give a short exhibition of her grace and skill. The young miss more than shared the good opinion of her admirers concerning her own ability, and made no secret of it. While awaiting her turn she watched the performers at work, with scarcely veiled contempt. Several of the actors gave her an opportunity to snub them, and in every case she embraced the opportunity.

“You don’t mean to say,” she observed to Peggy, “that they pay you for what you’re doing here.”

“They pay me every week.”

“That’s what you call easy money, isn’t it? And I suppose that little boy there gets paid, too. And all he does is just to be natural. Now, I’ve studied Delsarte for over five years, and fancy dancing for three; and when I appear, though it’s only for four or five minutes, I’m putting into my work the study of a lifetime.” Saying which, the young lady with elevated brows and haughty carriage turned away to seek some other person who ought to be snubbed. When it came to elevating brows and assuming a haughty carriage Bobby Vernon was unusually gifted, as he forthwith demonstrated to Peggy in a splendid caricature of the follower of Delsarte. The girl’s mother was on hand and observed Bobby’s private performance with strong disfavor. She did not like Bobby anyhow. It had become a personal matter with her that Bobby was drawing a higher salary than her own accomplished and superior child.

Presently the dear child performed her stunt. It was really good, good despite a certain superciliousness in the doing. Now Bobby could not help noticing this defect, and it was so easily imitated. He watched carefully for some time until he had got a fair idea of a few of the young miss’s simplest movements; then calling Peggy aside he gave, all things considered, a very good Delsarte exhibition, with a strong injection of the supercilious. Peggy’s sweet voice rang out in laughter which attracted several to the side-show; and Bobby, unconscious of the addition to his original audience of one, went on, gaining in force of caricature with each movement. It was when his nose was tiptilted to an unusual angle and his eyebrows raised as far as he could get them that the fond mother caught him by the hair and gave him, as she afterwards triumphantly declared, “a good wooling.” It took the major part of the spectators to separate the woman from her victim. However, Bobby got a good lesson. It dawned upon him that in “taking off” people he met he might give offense. From that day he became a little more careful. Mr. Compton too, his best friend, let him know that it served him right, although he did not express the opinion in terms so crude. Bobby apologized, and sealed the apology with a box of candy. The young miss, seeing herself as others saw her, received in turn a valuable lesson, with the result that on repeating her part she did it in a way that pleased everybody present, including Bobby himself.

Meditating on all this that afternoon, John Compton got a bright idea.

“Bobby,” he said, as they turned homewards, “for the next seven days I want you to give your evenings to reading while I work.”

“Work?”

“Yes. I’ve just got the idea for a scenario in which you will star. It’s a sure thing. As I see it now it will be something new and, if it goes through as I think, you’ll earn enough money to pay off everything your mother owes.”

“Great!” exclaimed the boy. “Say; you know of course I believe all right. But don’t you think God is taking His time about answering my prayers?”

“I thought you said that you left it all to Him,” remonstrated Compton.

“I do, I do. But I do so miss her, especially at night.”

No one knew this better than John Compton. When the boy’s thoughts were occupied by the day’s work and incidents, he was apparently care-free; but at night alone, as Compton could testify, his tears were frequent.

“Never mind, Bobby. I’m as sure as you that no real harm has befallen your mother. And we’re bound to find her. The detective agency I have put on the case is working hard. Be patient, my boy, and each day of her absence think that you are working for her.”

While the two were thus conversing the object of their talk was standing beside the ranchman’s wife. Like her child, love was the great force of Mrs. Vernon’s life. From the moment she entered the ranchman’s home, her heart went out to the frail, sweet woman upon whom the hand of death seemed to have set his seal. She saw at once that nothing but heroic, constant care and watching would avail. Day after day she gave herself devotedly to the task of fighting with death for the prize of a single life. She hardly slept, she ate little, but the very power of love that had nearly driven her to madness nerved her for an ordeal sublime in its self-sacrifice.

In those eight days a change had come over Barbara. She was thin, hollow-eyed, and a waxen pallor had come upon her face. The light lines of utmost weariness were stamped upon her features. But the chin was set, the mouth firm. The only relief to her constant vigils were the visits of the children. They were grateful beyond their years, and their gratitude manifested itself in little hourly attentions which only love could have devised. It was but natural that Barbara should return their affection, and she did so with interest. And in loving them she felt that she was vicariously spending her love upon her dear lost boy.

Upon this particular afternoon her haggard face, lovely even in its haggardness, was touched by a new expression—satisfaction. Clearly her invalid was better. Even as she gazed the doctor entered the room.

“Good day, Doctor Meehan,” she said, “I’m so glad you came. Don’t you notice a change?”

“Let me look,” responded the doctor, drawing close and peering into the invalid’s face.

“Halloa!” he exclaimed, and felt her pulse.

Jim Regan, the ranchman, with his two children, Agnes and Louis, had followed him into the room.

“By George, Regan!” said the doctor, straightening up and turning with a smile of relief upon the family, “this is no age of miracles. But we have a near-miracle here. Your wife is no longer ill; she’s convalescent. All she needs is rest and food and ordinary care. Barbara Vernon has, with her own hands, dragged her back from the grave. Halloa! What’s the matter?”

It was Mrs. Vernon who had drawn this question from the doctor. On hearing the glad news that brought tears and smiles of joy from the family, Barbara’s face flushed with a sense of relief, went pale again, and, the suspense over, she would have fallen had not the doctor caught her in his arms.

He placed her upon a lounge and made a hasty examination.

“I hope this is not a life for a life,” he said presently. “But the sick person of this house is not your wife, but Barbara Vernon. She’s in for a long siege, I fear.”

“Doctor,” said the ranchman, “if love or money can help her, I’ll not fail. Tell me what to do.”

“I like that sort of talk,” said the physician. “She needs a nurse badly, as badly as your wife needed one. Now, fortunately I have at my disposal the very nurse I would have had for your wife.”

“Can you send her, doctor?”

“I’ll have her here before nightfall, and she’ll bring the necessary medicines and directions as to the line of treatment I want carried out for Barbara, who has collapsed completely. Now mind, it isn’t altogether her care of your wife that has brought this on. If Barbara Vernon has not had some terrible nervous shock before you met her, you may tear up my diploma and put me to carrying a hod. Barbara is threatened with a serious nervous collapse. Put her to bed at once, and keep her there till further orders.”

“And what about my wife?” asked Regan.

“The simplest thing in the world. She hardly needs watching at all, and that jewel of a girl of yours, Agnes, can do all that’s needed to the queen’s taste.”

“Oh, I love to nurse,” said the girl. “I’ve watched dear Miss Barbara, and I’ve learned so much. I know I can do it.”

“I believe you, my girl,” said the doctor kindly. “In fact, I’m sure of you. Now your father and I will carry Barbara to her bedroom, and you will then care for her till our nurse comes. I’ll lose no time in getting her.”

So Barbara was put to bed, and many and many a week passed before she rose from it again.

“Say, uncle,” said Bobby one afternoon as the two were returning from a very successful day’s work at the Lantry Studio, “do you know that Peggy Sansone goes to communion every morning?”

“Oh, she does, does she?”

“Yes, at the seven-o’clock Mass. She used to go only once a week.”

“Why has she changed?”

“That is what gets me, uncle. She’s going every day in thanksgiving because I was not drowned.”

“That’s very nice of her.”

“Isn’t it? And she offers up each communion for my mother.”

“I wish there were more Peggies in the world.”

“So do I. Now look, uncle—I want to go to communion, too. I’m old enough to make my first communion.”

“Sure, Bobby! You just go on and make it. Do you want to do it now?”

“Look here, uncle; I’m—I’m surprised at you.”

“Why, what have I done now?”

“Don’t you know a boy must be prepared, and go to confession and get permission of the priest to go to communion?”

“You don’t say!”

“Yes. And you can’t go any time. Why, uncle, if I were to go into the church now and ask for communion the priest would think I was a nut. No, you must go at Mass in the morning, and be fasting from midnight.”

“What do you mean by communion, Bobby?”

“Don’t you know that? It means the receiving of Our Lord’s body and blood under the form and appearance of bread.”

“Oh, I remember,” said Compton. “One day on our way down to the studio, when we went into the church for your visit, the priest came down from the altar and put small, white, round things on the tongues of some people who came up near the altar. Is that what you mean?”

“No, I don’t. He comes down and gives them Our Lord, and those small, white, round things are the form and appearance of bread.”

“And do you really believe that, Bobby?”

“Believe it!” cried Bobby. “Why, of course I do!”

“Please tell me why. You see, Bobby, if an honest man tells me something about what I don’t see—for instance, that his horse is black—I believe him. But no matter how honest he is, if he tells me the horse he is riding on is black and I see the horse is white, how can I accept his statement?”

“Say, that’s easy,” said Bobby. “Not exactly easy,” he hastened to add, “till it’s been explained right. You see, before I left Cincinnati I was in a communion class, and we had the nicest priest, who seemed to love every child in the class, and there were eighty of us, not one over eight years. We left Cincinnati just one week before our communion day, and that is why I haven’t made it. But he taught us a lot, and that is one of the things he taught us. Do you want me to explain?”

“I certainly do, Bobby.”

“Well, listen. You believe in God, don’t you?”

Compton looked irresolute.

“Say, don’t you?”

“Well, suppose that I do.”

“All right. Now God is the creator of all things. He can make things out of nothing. Can’t He?”

“Go on, Bobby.”

“Now, if He can create out of nothing, He can make a thing nothing again if He wants to.”

“That is,” suggested Compton, “He can annihilate.”

“Say,” cried Bobby, highly gratified, “where did you get that word? It’s the one our priest used, but I couldn’t think of it. It’s easy to teach you. Now look—stand still here.”

Mr. Compton stood still, facing Bobby.

“You’re here now, aren’t you?”

“That’s certain.”

“Couldn’t God, if He wanted, annihilate you just where you are?”

“Let’s suppose He could.”

“Then there wouldn’t be any John Compton.”

“I see.”

“But if God could annihilate you, couldn’t He leave here where you stand a form and appearance that would look just exactly like you?”

“That would be a dummy.”

“Now, you hold on, uncle! Couldn’t God put inside that form and appearance of yours a spirit—an angel maybe—so that your form and appearance, under the power of that angel, would talk and act exactly like you?”

“I don’t think an angel would talk and act like me.”

“Say, you’re getting the idea. It isn’t a question whether an angel would talk and act like you; the question is, could an angel do it?”

“It sounds all right.”

“Now,” said Bobby triumphantly, poking his uncle in the ribs, “suppose that God just now annihilated you and put an angel in your place, how could I know it wasn’t you?”

“Why, you just couldn’t know. You would think it was me.”

“Think again, uncle; it’s a hard question. It stumped the whole of our communion class for five minutes, and I got the right answer, and the priest gave me a holy picture for answering it.”

Mr. Compton wrinkled his brows in thought.

“There’s one thing sure,” he at length said, “God would know that the thing in my place was not John Compton.”

“Uncle, you’re getting hot.”

“And therefore,” pursued Compton, speaking slowly, “if God told you—”

“Hurrah!” cried Bobby, clicking his heels together as he jumped into the air. “You go to the head of the class. I’d know it if God told me.”

“But would you believe it?” objected the elder.

Bobby’s lip curled.

“Say, uncle, didn’t we agree that God could do it?”

“Well, yes.”

“Why shouldn’t we believe Him, then?”

“I guess you’re right. But what’s that got to do with Holy Communion?”

“Listen. At the Last Supper, Christ, who was God, took bread, and blessed it, and said: ‘Take ye and eat; this is my body.’ ”

“I remember hearing that.”

“And didn’t the Apostles believe Him?”

“I suppose they did.”

“And yet what Christ held in His hands looked like bread, tasted and felt and smelt like bread. Was it bread?”

“Yes; I guess it was bread.”

“Now, look here, uncle—who am I to believe, you or Christ?”

“What’s that—Oh, why Christ of course.”

“Well, you say it’s bread, and a whole lot of people say the same thing. But Christ says it is His body, and His word is worth more than the word of all the duffers in the world.”

“Let’s walk on,” said Compton, and fell into thought. “Bobby, why do you want to make your first communion?”

“Because I want to pray for my mother and—and for you, and to get grace and strength. You know, uncle, it’s the greatest thing in the world.”

“Well, suppose we go in and see a priest?”

“Uncle!” exclaimed Bobby, “you’re all right.”

Father Mallory, a zealous, kindly young priest, received Bobby with a rare cordiality, and while Compton sat by in respectful attention, questioned the boy at length.

“Mr. Compton,” said Father Mallory, before ten minutes had quite elapsed, “this boy is as well prepared as any child I ever met. He has brains and, what is immeasurably better, faith. Bobby, you may go to confession, say, three days from now, and then to communion the next day, Saturday morning.”

“Oh, Father,” said Bobby, “thank you! And may I use that telephone?”

“Certainly.”

“That you, Peggy?—Yes, this is Bobby. Say, I’ve got great news.—No, no news of my mother, but I know she’s all right.—Guess again.—No.—You’re getting cold.—Now you’re getting warmer. Oh, say; I’ll bust if I keep it in any longer. I’m going to make my first communion next Saturday.”

The two in waiting heard clearly a scream of delight.

“Isn’t it great?” pursued the boy. “And if Father Mallory, who is a jim-dandy, will let me, I’m going to go every day. Yes, I thought you’d be glad to know. Good-by.”

“I was talking to Peggy,” explained Bobby as he hung up the receiver. “She’s mighty glad, too.”

The next three days were crowded ones. Bobby, who had heard of retreats before first communion, decided that he would try, so far as he could, to make one.

“Uncle,” he said the next morning, “I’ve been thinking last night, and I’m going to keep silence for three days.”

“Eh?” cried Compton.

“Yes; I’m going to make a retreat before my first communion—that is, as much as I can. Of course I’ll work just the same.”

In like manner he conveyed his intentions to Peggy, who thought it a capital idea. And during these three days the company derived no end of innocent merriment from the pantomime performances of Peggy and the boy, who really kept silence, but who nevertheless showed an extraordinary ability in conveying his emotions by gestures and motions and facial expression. On the whole, Peggy and Bobby during these three days had the time of their lives. It must be stated that Bobby more than once fell from grace, and made an attempt at starting a conversation. But Peggy, older by two years, was resolute. Up went her finger to the mouth, while reproach, gentle but sincere, shone from her eyes.

Only once did Peggy fail in her duty as directress of this unusual retreat. On the third day Bobby handed her a note.

“Miss Peggy: I go to communion to-morrow at the eight-o’clock Mass. This is to let you know. Your pal,

“Bobby.”

Who Is the Star of “You Hardly Can Tell?”

 

Bobby Compton the New Juvenile Star or John Compton the Comedian? You Hardly Can Tell.