CHAPTER X

BOBBY, ASSISTED BY PEGGY, DEMONSTRATES A METHOD OF OBSERVING SILENCE, AND CELEBRATES A RED-LETTER DAY

“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.”

Peggy in the course of these three days had received twenty-four written communications from her pal. They were all carefully preserved among her treasured possessions.

“Oh, Bobby,” she exclaimed on the reading of this, the twenty-fifth, “may I sit next to you, and go up alongside and receive with you?”

“I was hoping you would ask that,” returned Bobby. “I won’t miss mother so much.”

And then with bright and flashing eyes they broke into a conversation which would not interest the reader, but which, I am sure, was listened to with loving attention by at least two angels. How long they would have continued is beyond conjecture had not Miss Bernadette Vivian happened along.

“So you’re talking once more, are you?” she remarked. “Let me in, too, on this conversation.”

“Oh, I forgot,” said Bobby, looking contrite.

“And so did I,” added Peggy. “Bobby!”

Bobby looked into her reproving eyes and beheld a warning finger at her lips. They talked no more that day.

During this odd triduum Bobby made it a point on the way home to visit the Blessed Sacrament. He remained on each occasion for half an hour, during which time his uncle indulged in conversation with Father Mallory.

On the last day Bobby made his general confession, while Peggy waited without on her knees, her eyes fastened on the tabernacle, her lips moving in prayer that her pal might make it a good one. They parted wordlessly without the vestibule, though it was a matter of five minutes before their adieus were completed. Indeed, they might have gone on for a much longer period in their making of farewells had not a bright-eyed boy, an acolyte of the church, after watching them for a few minutes in wide-eyed amazement, called out to a young friend on the sidewalk, “Hey, Jimmie, come on here quick. There’s a couple of deaf-mutes here talking the sign language.”

Then they parted.

The next morning the romantic little church at Hollywood had, considering that it was a week day, an unusual number of worshipers at the eight-o’clock Mass. The director, Joseph Heneman, was there, and every actor in the play now nearing completion. Even the exponent of the Delsarte system, a chastened young lady, was in attendance. Many were non-Catholics. Many had come to see, but, I firmly believe, all remained to pray.

Just before the Mass Mr. Compton, looking like the last possibility in the way of a comedian, walked up the aisle behind Bobby, who, with eyes cast down and hands clasped in reverence, seemed oblivious, as in fact he was of course, of everything and every one. Compton saw him into a seat in the front pew and modestly took his own place in the pew behind. A few seconds later Peggy appeared. She walked up the aisle rather briskly. Nor were her eyes cast down. Peggy had business. It was no difficult task to discover Bobby, and to him she went. Leaning over so as to bring her head on a line with that of the kneeling boy, she handed him an ivory-bound prayer-book, her own communion present for the lad. Then she opened the book and pointed out to Bobby the prayers he should recite in preparation for his first communion.

Bobby and Peggy were dressed in white; and if ever that color, emblematic of innocence, was appropriate to any occasion, it was appropriate to this. To some gazing on the two it was a vision. A non-Catholic, a man who had scored and been scarred in the battle of life, whispered to his neighbor:

“How those little ones love each other!”

“You are right,” returned the other. “And it is a love which draws down in admiration ‘the angels in heaven above,’ and sends ‘the demons down under the sea’ scattering.”

“That’s just what I mean,” said the first, and—a thing that had not occurred in his life since early boyhood—fell to praying.

Peggy, having accomplished her mission, now passed over to the opposite pew, where, kneeling as immobile as a statue, she remained until the time of communion. The two went up together, and as they passed up to the communion railing a wave of the supernatural swept over every one present; and when, having received the Body of the Lord, they arose and turned, their faces were enough to make an atheist believe in God.

The non-Catholics present were carried away; and they left the church as though they had seen a vision.

To describe the breakfast, with Bobby at the head and Peggy at the foot, and every member of the company seated between, would be an anti-climax. It was a happy party.