CHAPTER VI

BOBBY ENDEAVORS TO SHOW THE ASTONISHED COMPTON HOW TO BEHAVE

“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.”