He had reached the impressionable age without falling deeply in love, and his mind and heart happened to be in a peculiarly receptive state when Fanchon suddenly burst upon his vision. Her beauty, the subtle charm and mystery of those fawn-like eyes, and her caressing voice, captured his youthful fancy. He could understand why William loved her, and he became at once her slave and worshiper. Then, when he saw the attitude of the family revealed in pitiless criticism, he became her still more devoted champion. Fanchon saw it, and she coaxed the boy into still deeper infatuation. It was her triumph to secure at least one ally in a hostile family, and she used him as a buffer. She always had a kind word for Leigh, a soft pat of the hand, an errand which she conferred as a favor. Leigh, immersed in romantic visions, saw her as the loveliest and most persecuted of beings, and he was ready to give battle to the entire family in her behalf. As Emily expressed it, he would have made himself into Sir Walter Raleigh’s cloak for Fanchon to tread upon.
The storm that had followed upon her disappearance on horseback had beaten upon Leigh’s nerves. He had lashed himself into a dumb fury in the solitude of his room because his father and mother dared to doubt his paragon, and William, her husband, merely sat and waited for her to come back. William’s supineness was the last straw. Leigh had been in a frenzy when Fanchon finally returned, and the meeting on the stairs and her soft kiss of gratitude had gone to his head. He had refused to join a game of baseball that afternoon because he wanted to go home and complete a poem to his sister-in-law.
Fanchon had sent him on an errand to the nearest chemist. She had given him a prescription for some headache powders, she said, and Leigh did not know that he was returning with a peculiarly effective preparation of “bloom” that she usually applied at night. He carried the package with something of the air and feeling with which Sir Lancelot might have worn the colors of Elaine.
It happened that his way led him past a corner of the main street, where Mr. Bernstein had just made special arrangements for showing Rosamond Silvertree’s feature pictures at the little local theater. Mr. Bernstein himself, in a new plaid suit with a diamond scarf-pin, was viewing a poster of Rosamond in the effective, if rather startling, costume of “A Belle from Borneo.” He had encountered Leigh on one or two previous occasions, and knew him to be the youngest son of Johnson Carter. As the boy approached, looking a little pale from his night’s vigil, Mr. Bernstein eyed him shrewdly.
“Looks like a regular moon-calf,” he thought; “but I guess he’s got gumption enough to take a warnin’ to the rest of ’em. Hello, young man!” he called out. “Been in to see this picture? Greatest picture on the screen! There’s a matinee to-day and two showings to-night.”
Leigh shook his head, stopping to gaze in some amazement at the highly colored portrait of the fair Rosamond.
“Gee!” he remarked. “She’s fat!”
“Fat?” Mr. Bernstein blew his cheeks out and stared at him with a kindling eye. “Fat, boy? Why, she’s superb! That’s Rosamond Silvertree, the most beautiful star on the screen!”
Leigh giggled. He giggled like a girl, a faint pink color coming into his beardless cheeks, and his girlish eyes dancing.
“How much do you suppose she weighs?” he asked gleefully. “Looks to me like four hundred pounds—and some spangles!”