CHAPTER XII
RELATES TO THE PLAYING OF PARTS
Much light is thrown upon the character of Victor Baron when it is said that he was the kind of young man who likes to sit in an attic when the rain is falling.
Such a young man may possess many high virtues, certainly; but he can scarcely hope to escape occasional contact with what is called the world’s cold shoulder. He is clearly not the sort of person who knows what magic there is in the matter of percentages and other such progressive and acquisitive sciences.
We now encounter this peculiar young man in his attic room, on an afternoon when the rain was falling steadily.
Days had passed since Mrs. Baron had driven the manager, Thornburg, from her front door. Something like a fixed status in the case of Bonnie May had been brought about. Seemingly, she had become a permanent member of the Baron household.
Yet Baron was not happy. Having performed his duty in solving one problem, he had now passed on to another, an older problem.
There was the fact of his aimless existence staring him in the face; the fact that he had been home from the university over a year now, and that as yet he had chosen no plough to the handles of which he meant to set his hands.
He did a little newspaper writing when the spirit moved him: articles and reviews which were often quite cordially accepted—and sometimes even urgently solicited—but which were still subjected to a measuring process in the accounting room of the newspaper offices, and which were only meagrely profitable.
To be sure, his needs were quite simple. He made no contributions to the up-keep of the household. He kept his tailor’s bills paid with a reasonable degree of promptitude. Usually, too, he had funds enough for books and other means of recreation. Still, there were occasions when he had to go to his mother for assistance, and this practise he was compelled to contemplate with utter disfavor.
It is true that he never asked his mother for Money. The Barons pronounced the word money as if it were spelled with a capital letter, like certain other more or less unsavory names—Lucretia Borgia, New Caledonia, Christian Science, Prussianism, or Twilight Sleep. He used to ask her, when need arose, if she had any street-car-fare lying about. And she would put her index-finger to her forehead and meditate, and then remember suddenly that there was some in her work-basket on the centre-table, or under something or other on the sideboard. A burglar would have had a discouraging experience in the mansion; not because there was never anything to steal, but because what money there was was always placed lightly in such unpromising places.