Bonnie MayCHAPTER ITHE INTRUSION OF AN ACTRESS
Bonnie May
Somewhereup in the gallery an usher opened a window. Instantly a shaft of sunlight pierced the dark interior of the theatre. It created a mote-filled aerial avenue across a vast space and came to an end in a balcony box.
As if it were part of a general theatrical scheme it served as a search-light and brought into brilliant relief the upper part of a child’s body. There were blue eyes made lustrous by dark lashes; hair the color of goldenrod, which fell forward over one shoulder and formed a kind of radiant vehicle above for the support of a butterfly of blue ribbon. There were delicate red lips, slightly parted.
The child leaned forward in her place and rested her elbows on the box railing. Her chin nestled in a little crotch, formed by her two hands. She would have resembled one of Rubens’s cherubs, if Rubens hadn’t conceived his cherubs on quite such a vulgar plane.
It was so that Baron saw her during a brief interval. Then the window up in the gallery was closed, and darkness reigned in the theatre again.The child disappeared as Marguerite always disappears before Faust has obtained more than a seductive glimpse of her.
Baron wondered who she was. She was so close to him that he could have touched her. He wondered how she could have slipped into the box without his seeing or hearing her. The lights had been on when he took his seat, and at that time he had occupied the box alone. She must have crept in with the cautiousness of a kitten; or perhaps she had come under cover of the noise of applause.
Then he forgot her. All sorts of people were likely to come into a playhouse during a matinée performance, he reflected.
Dawn was merging into day—in the play. The purple of a make-believe sky turned to lavender, and to pink. The long, horizontal streaks of color faded, and in the stronger light now turned on the stage a gypsy woman who seemed to have been sleeping under a hedge came into view—a young creature, who patted back a yawn which distorted her pretty mouth. Other persons of the drama appeared.
Baron succumbed to the hypnotic power of the theatre: to the beguiling illusions of the stage, with its beautiful voices; the relaxed musicians, unobtrusively disinterested; the dark, indistinct rows of alert forms down in the parquet. Despite what he was pleased to believe was a distinguished indifference in his manner, he was passionately fond of plays, amazingly susceptible to their appeal.
The act ended; light flooded the theatre. Baron’s glance again fell upon the intruder who had come to share his box with him. The child really might have been mistaken for an exquisite bit of architectural ornamentation, if she had been placed in a niche in the big proscenium arch. Color and pose and outline all suggested the idea. But now her bearing changed. As she had been absorbed in the meaning of the play, now she became equally interested in the audience, rising in long rows from parquet to gallery. She looked almost aggressively from point to point, with a lack of self-consciousness that was quite remarkable.
People in the audience were noticing her, too; and Baron felt suddenly resentful at being so conspicuously perched before hundreds of eyes, in company with a child he knew nothing about.
She appeared to have scrutinized “the house” to her satisfaction. Then she turned as if she were slightly bored, and gazed with perfect frankness into Baron’s eyes.
“Sold out,” she said, as if she were gratified.
Baron did not clearly grasp the fact that she was referring to “the house.” A question as to her age occurred to him, but this he could not answer. She must be absurdly young—a baby; yet he noted that she had gained command of a glance that was almost maturely searching and complacent. She was not the least bit agitated.
When, presently, she stood up on her chair toobtain a general view of the audience, Baron frowned. She was really a brazen little thing, he reflected, despite her angelic prettiness. And he had a swift fear that she might fall. Looking at her uneasily, he realized now that she was quite tawdrily dressed.
His first impression of her had been one of beauty unmarred. (He had not seen immediately that the blue butterfly which rode jauntily on her crown was soiled.) Now a closer inspection discovered a fantastic little dress which might have been designed for a fancy ball—and it was quite old, and almost shabby. Yet its gay colors, not wholly faded, harmonized with some indefinable quality in the little creature, and the whole garment derived a grace from its wearer which really amounted to a kind of elfish distinction.
She spoke again presently, and now Baron was struck by the quality of her voice. It was rather full for a little girl’s voice—not the affected pipe of the average vain and pretty child. There was an oddly frank, comrade-like quality in it.
“Do you know what I’ve got a notion to do?” she inquired.
Baron withdrew farther within himself. “I couldn’t possibly guess,” he responded. He shook his head faintly, to indicate indifference. She leaned so far over the edge of the box that he feared again for her safety.
“I think you might possibly fall,” he said. “Would you mind sitting down?”
She did as he suggested with a prompt and sweet spirit of obedience. “I’m afraid I was careless,” she said. Then, looking over more guardedly, she added: “I’ve got a notion to drop my programme down on that old duck’s bald head.”
Baron looked down into the parquet. An elderly gentleman, conspicuously bald-headed, sat just beneath them. Something about the shining dome was almost comical. Yet he turned to the child coldly. He marvelled that he had not detected a pert or self-conscious expression of countenance to accompany the words she had spoken. But she was looking into his eyes quite earnestly.
He turned his face away from her for an instant, and then, with an air of having worked out a problem——
“I don’t believe I would,” he said.
“It might frighten him?” she suggested.
“Not that. He might not think it very polite.”
She looked at him studiously a little, her earnest eyes seeming to search his soul. Then she ventured upon a story:
“I got on a street-car with Miss Barry to-day, and we sat down on a seat with a fat woman; and, believe me, the big thing nearly squeezed the gizzard out of me.”
Her eyes grew wide with excitement as she achieved the climax. She waited for his comment.
His eyelids quivered slightly. He decided to pay no more attention to her, despite her prettiness.What language! He stared resolutely at his programme a full minute. But he could not shake off the influence of her steady gaze. “I think you must be exaggerating,” he said finally, with mild irritation.
“Not at all, really.”
“Well, then,” he added impatiently, “I think your language is—is indelicate.”
“Do you, indeed?” She considered this. “Of course that’s a matter of opinion.” She abandoned the subject and seemed to be searching his face for a topic which might be more acceptable. “A good many things have happened to me,” she ventured presently. “I came within an inch of getting caught by the curtain once.”
He had no idea what she meant.
She continued: “It was in a regular tank town somewhere. I never pay any attention to the names of the little towns.” Her tone clearly conveyed the fact that she wished to get away from controversial topics. She waited, plainly puzzled, rather than discouraged, because she received no response. “You know,” she elaborated, “the audiences in the little towns don’t care much whether it’s something legitimate, or a tambourine show with a lot of musty jokes.”
Still Baron’s inclination was to make no response; but really there was such an amazing contrast between her innocent beauty and her gamin-like speech that he could not easily ignore her.
“I’m not sure I know the difference myself,” he confessed.
“Well, you’d rather see ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ than a lot of Honey Boys, wouldn’t you?”
“I’m afraid I’d be in favor of the Honey Boys, whoever they are, unless they are pretty bad.”
She looked incredulous, and then disappointed. For an instant she turned her back on him with resolution. He observed that she squirmed herself into a position of dignified uprightness in her chair.
After a brief interval she turned to him with renewed hope. “Maybe you’re prejudiced against ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’?” she ventured.
“Frankly, I am.”
“You’re not down on the legitimate, though?”
“I like plays—if that’s what you mean.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “Certainly that’s what I mean. What did you think I meant?”
“Why, you see, I wasn’t quite sure.”
She searched his eyes suspiciously; then suddenly she dimpled. “Tell me—are you an actor? Or aren’t you?”
“No—assuredly not!”
She was genuinely embarrassed. She allowed her face to drop into her hands, and Baron felt from her gesture that she must be blushing though he could see that she was not.
After a little she laughed weakly. “How childish of me!” she exclaimed. “I really had no rightto make such a mistake. But please tell me how you happen to be up in this box?”
“The manager was good enough to direct an usher to bring me here.”
“Well, you know, I thought this box was always given to us—to the profession, I mean. I do hope you’ll forgive me.” She seemed prepared to withdraw her interest from him then, as if he no longer concerned her in any way.
But Baron was looking at her searchingly, almost rudely. “Are you an—an actress?” he managed to ask.
Her manner changed. For the first time Baron detected an affectation. She looked beyond him, out toward the chattering audience, with an absurd assumption of weariness.
“I thought everybody knew me,” she said. “I’m Bonnie May. You’ve heard of me, of course?” and she brought her eyes back to his anxiously.
“Why, yes, of course,” he assented. He was uncomfortable over the untruth—or over the fact that he had not told it adroitly.
“I wouldn’t have talked to you so freely if I hadn’t thought you were an actor,” she explained. “You know we always treat one another that way.”
His manner softened. “I’m sure I understand,” he assured her.
I thought everybody knew me“I thought everybody knew me,” she said. “I’m Bonnie May.”
“I thought everybody knew me,” she said. “I’m Bonnie May.”
“I thought everybody knew me,” she said. “I’m Bonnie May.”
He perceived that, despite the lightness of her manner, she was truly ashamed of her mistake. It seemed to him that she was regretfully slipping backinto her own world, her own realm of thought. And she was speedily becoming, to him, not a pert minx, but just a lonely, friendly little child.
“I don’t believe I know just where you are appearing now,” he said. For the moment he could not do less than appear to be interested in her.
She moved uncomfortably in her chair. “I’m not doing anything just now,” she said. Then her eyes brightened. “The manager skipped just when business was picking up. We had to close our season. Such a jay town we closed in. The people wanted to hold our trunks!”
“But they didn’t?”
“No, we gave one more performance, so we could square up.”
“Why shouldn’t you have kept on giving performances?”
“Of course, you wouldn’t understand. You see, the manager was our Simon Legree, and we couldn’t do without him.”
“But that last performance——”
“The constable who came to hold our things said he’d take the part of Simon Legree just once, so we could pay our bills and get out of town. He said there was sure to be a crowd if it was known that he would be one of the actors. He said he’d always wanted to be an actor, but that his parents thought it would be sinful for him to act.”
“But did he know the part?”
“He didn’t have to. Even in the professionthere are a lot of us who don’t know our parts half the time. You may have noticed. The constable said he could ‘pop a whip’ and we told him that would do, if he would remember to say ‘You black rascal!’ every little while. That would be to Uncle Tom, you know. Our Uncle Tom did both parts. That happens lots of times. With any play, I mean. He’d say: ‘Yo’ say Ah b’longs to you, Massa Legree? Oh, no, Massa Legree, Ah don’ b’long to you. Yo’ may own mah body, but yo’ don’ own mah soul.’ Saying both parts, you know.”
When Baron laughed at this she joined in the merriment and even promoted it. “The constable enjoyed it,” she said. “He said he’d like to leave town with us and play the part all the time.”
“He’d got over thinking it was sinful for him to act?”
“Yes, but the rest of us thought his first hunch was right. Besides, there were other difficulties. You see, our Topsy was the manager’s wife, and she wouldn’t play any more until she found her husband. She wasn’t much of an artist. Anyway, we had to quit.”
Baron sent a wandering glance over the theatre; but he was thinking of neither audience nor play. He wondered whose child this could be, and by what chance a little creature so alert and so friendly in her outlook upon life should be deeply submerged in the make-believe of men, when she should have been reading only the primer of real things.
Then by chance his eyes fell upon Thornburg, the manager, who stood just inside the foyer, engaged in what was seemingly an intense conversation with a tall, decidedly striking-looking woman. And even as his eyes rested upon these two they looked up at him as if he were the subject of their conversation. Or were they not, more probably, discussing the child who sat near him?
He had no time to pursue his reflections. The orchestra brought to its climax the long overture which it had been playing with almost grotesque inadequacy, and the curtain went up on the next act.
There was the sudden diminuendo of voices throughout the house, and the stealthy disturbance of an individual here and there feeling his way to his seat. Then again Baron was lost in the progress of the play.
The child shrank into herself again and became once more an absorbed, unobtruding little creature.
Baron sat in rapt silence for half an hour; and then the master dramatist, Fate, intervened, and proceeded to make him a figure in one of those real dramas before which all make-believe fades into insignificance.
At the left of the stage a flame went leaping up along the inner edge of one of the wings, and took swift hold of a cloud of filmy fabric overhead. The theatre was afire!
Baron saw and was incredulous. The child near him remained undisturbed. The persons on thestage continued their work with an evenness which, to Baron, became suddenly a deadly monotony. But back in those realms in the theatre which were all but hidden from him he saw the swift movements of men who were confronted with an unwonted, a fearful task.
He turned to the child with sudden purpose, with a manner that was harsh and peremptory. “Come!” he said. His voice was subdued yet vibrant.
The child noted the vibration and quickly caught the expression of command in his eyes. She put out a hand toward him obediently, but he excitedly ignored that. He gathered her into his arms and disappeared from the box. In an instant he was carrying her cautiously yet swiftly down a narrow stairway.
He skirted the wall of the theatre and passed the manager in the foyer. He paused long enough to whisper a few startling words, and then hurried toward the entrance. His ears were fortified for the screams of women; but he heard only the dull sound of the asbestos curtain being lowered as he passed out to the street. He did not hesitate until he had turned a corner and was well out of the way of a possible panic-stricken crowd.
He put the child down on the sidewalk; she was really a good deal above the weight of those children who are usually carried. A few steps and they had reached a confectioner’s shop, in which women and children were sitting at little tables, oblivious to all menaces, far or near.
“Let’s go in here,” he said, trying to assume a matter-of-fact tone. The child looked searchingly into his eyes. “What was it?” she asked.
“What was what?”
“Don’t!” she exclaimed with impatience. And then she looked up and down the street, where the constant stream of strangers passed. She felt forlorn, alone. She turned again to Baron as to a final refuge. “I behaved myself,” she said. “I didn’t wait to ask what was the matter—I didn’t say a word. But I knew something had happened. I could hear your heart beating. I knew it was something terrible. But you could tell me now!”
Baron guided her to a chair and released her with a feeling of relief. His impulse was to take his departure and let the incident end as it might. But that wouldn’t do, certainly! What would the confectioner do with the child? Besides, there was something about her——
Through the fitful symphony of the city’s noises the clang of an alarm-bell sounded.
The child lifted her head; her eyes became wide with excitement. “There’s a fire!” she exclaimed.
“Yes,” admitted Baron. “It’s in the theatre. I thought we ought to come out, though of course it may not amount to anything. We’ll wait here until the excitement is over, and then we’ll go out and find your——”
He did not finish the sentence. He realized that he did not know how. Instead he turned to a clerkand ordered something—he scarcely knew what. He was listening to those noises out in the street; he was noting, soon with great relief, that they were abating rapidly. Clearly there had been no real danger, after all.
He led his charge from the place presently. He noticed that she had not touched a little dish of something the clerk had set before her.
On the street again he was surprised to perceive that the normal activities of the neighborhood had been resumed. The audience in the theatre had been dismissed upon some pretext of a nature not at all terrifying. The fire had been extinguished. The lobby was deserted. No one was searching or waiting for a little girl, or seemed to be remotely interested in one.
“Strange!” reflected Baron. He was wholly outside the realm of make-believe now. He was amid painfully prosaic surroundings.
He turned to his companion. “Er—your name has escaped me for the minute——”
“Bonnie May.”
“Of course. Well, Bonnie May, I think I’ll have to take you home.”
“Whose home—yours?” she asked.
“Good gracious, no! To your own!”
She peered into the lobby searchingly, the light slowly fading from her eyes.
“But I haven’t any home,” she said.