“THE BREAK OF DAY”
“Mr. Victor Baron, please.”
An usher with an absurdly severe uniform and a frankly cherubic
countenance had pushed aside the hangings and stood looking into the
Baron box in the Barrymore Theatre.
It was the night of the first performance of Baggot’s play, “The Break
of Day,” in Thornburg’s theatre, and the Barons were all present--by
special and urgent invitation.
Baron had been studying the aisles full of people, eagerly seeking
their seats, and listening to the continuous murmur which arose all
over the house. But when he heard his name called he arose and slipped
out into the shadows.
“Mr. Thornburg sends his compliments and asks if you’ll be good enough
to visit him in his office for a few minutes.” Thus the cherubic usher.
The Barrymore office was off from the lobby, but it commanded a view
not only of the street but also of the procession of men and women who
passed the ticket-office.
Thornburg had left the door open, and Baron, approaching, caught sight
first of a considerable expanse of dazzling white shirt-front and then
of the manager’s ruddy, smiling countenance. Evidences of prosperity
were all about. A procession of motor-cars continued to stop before
the theatre to deposit passengers. Throughout the lobby there was the
shimmer of costly fabrics worn by women, the flashing of jewels, the
rising and falling of gusts of laughter and a chaos of happy speech.
And everywhere there was the glitter of onyx panels and pillars, and
the warmth of hooded lights, and the indefinable odor of fine raiment
and many delicate perfumes.
Thornburg seized Baron’s hand and shoved the door to with his foot.
Happiness radiated from him. “I’ve a secret to tell you,” he began. “I
want you to be one of the first to know.”
“Let’s have it!” responded Baron, trying to reflect a little of the
manager’s gayety.
“You’ll remember my telling you that I had a little daughter by my
first wife?”
“I remember.”
“I’ve found her again!”
“Ah, that’s fine!”
“And that isn’t all. You’re going to see her to-night.”
Baron waited.
“She’s the girl they’ve been making all that fuss about in
Chicago--who’s been known only as ‘The Sprite.’ She’s got the leading
part in ‘The Break of Day.’”
Baron felt his way cautiously. He couldn’t mar such superb complacency,
such complete happiness. “And Mrs. Thornburg--” he began haltingly.
“God bless her, it’s all right with her. She knows, and she’s as happy
as I am.”
Baron shrunk back with a sense of utter loss. “Thornburg,” he said, “I
want you to tell me--is the little girl the daughter of--of Miss Barry?”
The manager clapped a heavy hand on Baron’s shoulder. “No,” he
responded. And after a moment’s almost pensive reflection he regained
his buoyant manner and resumed. “I’d like you to meet her. Between
acts, or after the play. You and your family. She’s young. I think a
little attention, especially motherly attention, will mean a lot to her
just now. Of course she mustn’t be worried to-night; but suppose we
make up a little party, after the performance, and make her feel that
she’s got friends here?”
Baron couldn’t think of refusing. “I’d have time to pay my respects,
at least,” he agreed. “And I’ll put the case before my mother and the
others, just as you have stated it. I think perhaps she’ll consent.”
“That’s a good fellow. I’ll be looking for you,” concluded Thornburg,
and then he joyously shoved Baron out of the office.
The footlights were being turned on and the asbestos curtain lifted
as Baron returned to his seat. Then the orchestra began to play, and
under cover of the music Thornburg’s secret and his invitation were
passed on to Mrs. Baron and to the others in the box.
Baron did not catch his mother’s response, and she did not repeat it.
She had turned to listen to the music. For the moment the orchestra was
commanding a good deal of attention. A cycle of popular melodies was
being played, and under the spell of the singing violins the outside
world was being made to recede into the distance, while the mimic world
became real.
Men and women forgot that out on the winter streets, only a few yards
from them, there was passing that disinterested throng which always
passes the door of every theatre; the eager, the listless, the hopeful,
the discouraged, and that sprinkling of derelicts who have no present
drama at all, but who are bearing inevitably on toward the final
tragedy.
The orchestra completed the popular melodies; and after a brief
interval the leader rapped his music-rack with his baton to enjoin
attention. Then he lifted his hand as if in benediction over a
player to his left, and a wood-wind instrument announced a new
theme--penetratingly, arrestingly. Then the strains of “The Ride of
the Valkyries,” with their strident and compelling quality, filled the
theatre.
Baron was startled by the touch of a hand on his shoulder. Baggot
was leaning toward him. “That’s to create the right atmosphere,” he
whispered, nodding toward the orchestra. “It’s to put the idea of the
supernatural into everybody’s mind, you know.” He withdrew then.
Baron thought that was just like Baggot--to be explaining and asserting
himself, as if he were doing it all. He was glad to be rid of him. He
wanted to feel, not to think. Then he realized that the musicians had
laid aside their instruments and that the curtain was being slowly
lifted.
Applause greeted the setting. The stage represented the heart of a
forest in midsummer--“the heart of the summer storms.” There was a
shadowy dell, shut in by a wilderness. One giant tree in the foreground
rose to invisible heights. At the back a little stream trickled down
over a mossy bank, and during its course it formed a silent pool in one
silent place, and before this a Psyche innocently regarded her face in
the mirror of water.
Then the foliage of the big tree began to be agitated by a rising
storm, and the leaves shook as if they were being beaten by descending
drops.
For a moment the summer-shower effect continued. Then from the highest
point on the stage visible to the audience a character in the drama
appeared--the Sprite. She sprang from some unseen point to the limb of
the ancient tree. The limb gave gently, and she sprang to the next limb
below. The secure platforms making this form of descent possible were
hidden from the audience by heavy foliage. The descent continued until
the fairy figure sprang lightly to the stage.
She was clad in a costume of leaves, the prevailing color of which was
a deep green, rising to natural tints of yellow. She wore a hood which
was cunningly fashioned from one big leaf, around which an automobile
veil of the gauziest texture was wound so that it concealed her face.
She began unwinding this veil as she spoke her first lines.
“Back again where the storms are!” she was saying: “Ah, it is good,
after that dreadful calm.”
Baron realized that his mother had lifted her hands to her bosom as if
to stifle a cry. For himself, a thrill shot through his body, and then
he leaned forward, rigid, amazed.
For when the Sprite had removed the last fold of her veil and faced the
audience he beheld again, after long waiting and vain search, the lost
guest, Bonnie May.
She wore her hair in a little golden knot at the crown of her head;
the waist-line of her dress was just below her arms, and a pair of
tiny golden sandals adorned her feet. When she would have lain the
veil aside a screen of leaves parted and a Titan sprang to her side to
render service.
And so the play began.
But for the moment Baron could not think about the play. He was
thinking of Baggot--Baggot, who had known all the time. Then again he
felt a touch on his arm and, turning, he found himself looking into the
playwright’s eyes; and he could perceive only the delight of a childish
creature, jubilant because he had achieved an innocent surprise.
He tried to respond with a smile--and could not. But little by little
the play caught his attention. The impression grew upon him that
“The Break of Day” was a play of that indefinable quality which goes
unfailingly to the heart. But more--he realized that Bonnie May was
carrying her audience with her with the ease and certainty of an
artist. She ceased to be on trial almost immediately, and those who
watched her began to feel rather than to think, to accept rather than
to judge.
When the first intermission came Baron slipped out of the box and went
in search of Baggot, whom he found standing apart in the foyer.
“I don’t have to tell you I’m glad,” he began; and then, with furrowed
brow, he added, “but surely....”
Baggot read his thought accurately. “I wanted to give you the surprise
of your life! You can’t help being pleased?”
“Pleased! Certainly! But we’ve been distressed about her.”
“Oh--distressed! Well, she belongs to the theatre. She always has. _I_
saw that right away!”
“But if we’d only known! I don’t suppose we could have stood in the
way.”
“But it was her idea--at first. She didn’t want you to know. I mean
when we put the piece on here for a try-out--at first.”
“You don’t mean----”
“Of course! It was when you were laid up. I thought she’d lay down on
me, because you wouldn’t see her that night. And then came the Chicago
engagement. I took my mother along to look after her. I didn’t know she
hadn’t told you anything for a time, and then I left it to her to do
what she wanted to do. It was always her idea to take you by surprise.
I think she cared more for that than for anything else. Great goodness,
man, you don’t imagine _you’ve_ been treated badly?”
Baron’s glance became inscrutable.
“Why, just think of it!” Baggot went on. “She’s drawing the salary of a
regular star. And her reputation is made.”
Baron turned away almost curtly. What was to be gained by discussing
Bonnie May with a creature who could only think of salary and
reputation--to whom she was merely a puppet, skilled in repeating lines
of some one else’s fashioning?
He entered Thornburg’s office. His manner was decidedly lugubrious.
The manager held out his hand expansively. “You’ve come to congratulate
me,” he said. And then he took in Baron’s mood.
“Oh, I see!” he went on. “There’s something that needs explaining.
I played fair with you all right, Baron. You see, I was in the dark
myself, in some ways.”
He took occasion to light a cigar, which he puffed at absent-mindedly.
“Just before Bonnie May showed up here--when you got hold of her--I
learned that her mother had died. It had been kept from me. You see,
I was sending the mother money. And when the little one was only a
year or so old I got a letter from her mother offering to give her up
to me. I’ve told you what happened then. I--I couldn’t take her. Then
I got another letter from the mother saying she was turning Bonnie
May over to her sister for the time being, and that I was to send the
remittances to her. That was Miss Barry.
“I believed the arrangement was only temporary. I didn’t understand
it, of course. But when several years went by I began to suspect that
something was wrong. I didn’t like Miss Barry. She was never the woman
her sister was. She was--well, the brazen sort of woman. I wasn’t
willing to leave the little daughter with her any longer. I wrote to
her and told her she might send Bonnie May to me, if she cared to, but
that there weren’t to be any more remittances. I thought that would
fetch her. I meant to put the little daughter in a home or a school
somewhere. And then they blew in here, and you got her--and your
getting her was just the thing I wanted.”
An incandescent light on the manager’s desk winked once and again. “The
curtain’s going up,” he informed Baron, and the latter hurried back to
his seat.
As he entered the box a flood of cold air from the stage swept over
the audience. And when his mother shivered slightly he observed that
Peter Addis, sitting immediately behind her, quietly leaned forward and
lifted a quilted satin wrap from a chair, placing it deftly about her
shoulders.
She yielded with a nestling movement and with a backward flash of
grateful recognition which told a story of their own.
The audience was stilled again as the second setting was revealed--“the
home of the autumn leaves.” Here was a masterpiece of designing and
painting, Baron realized. A house was being constructed for the Sprite.
Much disputation arose. The sort of talk which precedes the planning of
a home was heard--save that the terms were grotesquely altered. Then
the action was complicated by the arrival of a band of vikings, driven
ashore by a gale.
And then Baron, too, forgot that Bonnie May was a human being, as
Baggot seemed to have done, and was lost in the ingenious whimsicality
of the play.
It was after the third act--in which there was a picture of cruel
winter, with all the characters in the play combating a common foe
in the form of the withering cold--that the Sprite won the heartiest
approval.
Thunders of applause swept over the house; and when the effect of
thunder had passed there was a steady demonstration resembling the
heavy fall of rain. Again and again Bonnie May bowed as the curtain
was lifted and lowered, and again and again the applause took on new
vigor and earnestness. And then she stepped a little forward and nodded
lightly toward some one back in the wings, and the curtain remained up.
She made a little speech. It seemed she had a special voice for that,
too. It was lower, but elaborately distinct. The very unconventionality
of it afforded a different kind of delight. Her manner was one of mild
disparagement of an inartistic custom. She bowed herself from the stage
with infinite graciousness.
She was a tremendous success.
It was only after the curtain went down for the last time that
Thornburg appeared at the Baron box. The scene had been called
“Spring--and the Fairies,” and it had put the pleasantest of thoughts
into the minds of the audience, which was now noisily dispersing.
“I hope you’re all coming back on the stage for a minute,” said the
manager.
He was dismayed by Mrs. Baron’s impetuosity. She was too eager to
remain an instant talking to any one. She could scarcely wait to be
escorted back to the stage--and yet she had no idea how to reach that
unknown territory undirected. Her bearing was really quite pathetic.
And in a moment the entire party had passed through a doorway quite
close to the box, and were casting about in that region where the wings
touch the dressing-rooms. The players were hurrying to and fro, and
one man, carrying a large waxen nose and a pair of enormous ears--he
had been a gnome in the play--paused and looked curiously at the very
circumspect intruders.
Somehow it did not seem at all remarkable to Baron, as it might have
done, that he presently found himself confronting Miss Barry. It was
plain that she had been waiting to enter the child’s dressing-room,
and at the approach of Thornburg she brightened--rather by intention,
perhaps, than spontaneously.
“Oh, how fortunate!” she began. “You’ll be able to help me, of course.
I want to see the new star! I’d lost track of her.” Her practised
smile and shifting eyes played upon Thornburg menacingly, inquiringly,
appealingly. “I want to begin planning for her again. When her
engagement here is over I mean to take her with me to the coast.
She’s reached an age now when I can be of real help to her. Isn’t it
wonderful--the way she has developed?”
Thornburg had paused to hear her to the end. He realized that there
was a pitiful lack of assurance--of conviction--in her manner.
When she had finished he smiled tolerantly, yet with unmistakable
significance. “No, Miss Barry,” he said, replying to her thought rather
than her words. “That’s all ended now. When Bonnie May has finished her
work here I shall see that she has a home in her father’s house.”
The party moved into the dressing-room, where Bonnie May had been
robbed of her fairy trappings and put into a modest frock. Her hair,
released from its little knot, was falling about her shoulders and was
being combed by a maid.
But she escaped from the maid--and for the moment from all the life
which the dressing-room implied--when she saw Mrs. Baron standing in
her doorway.
She had put her arms about the trembling old lady’s neck, and for the
moment they were both silent. And then Mrs. Baron drew back and stood a
moment, her hands framing Bonnie May’s face.
“You do forget that I was a disagreeable old woman!” she murmured.
“Oh, that!” came the warm response; “you know you forget just little
slips when you are happy in your work. And I couldn’t have remembered
such a little thing anyway, when you’d been so lovely to me!”
She took Mrs. Baron’s hand in both her own and clung to it; and lifted
it to her face and laid her cheek against it. “If you only knew how
I’ve thought of you--of all of you--and longed for you! And how much I
wanted you to see me at work, so you would--would _know_ me better! You
know just talking doesn’t prove anything. I wanted so much to have you
know that I was an--an artist!”
In the theatre the orchestra was still playing while the people filed
out. In the distance there was the muffled sound of the procession of
motor-cars starting and of announcers shouting numbers above the din.
It was Flora’s turn to press forward and take her seat beside Bonnie
May now; and while Mrs. Baron stood aside, smiling quite happily, the
manager spoke to her as if he were merely continuing a conversation
which had been interrupted.
“Yes, I’m particularly anxious to have you go on with--with the
lessons, you know. Not just the books and music, you understand,
but--well, say a general influence. You know, she’s tremendously fond
of all of you. I mean to get her off the stage as soon as the run here
is finished. It’s time for her to have a little real life. And I’d like
things to go on about as they were--I mean, having her in your house,
or mine, just as she feels about it. You were the first to give her a
mother’s attention. I’d be grateful if you felt you could go on with
that.”
[Illustration: She had put her arms about the trembling old lady’s
neck, and for the moment they were both silent.]
Mrs. Baron tried to answer this quite punctiliously, but she had to
turn aside to hide her eyes, and when she spoke her words were a
surprise to her.
“I think you’re a good man,” she said. And she did not trust herself to
say anything more. She was gazing at Bonnie May again, and noticing how
the strange little creature was clinging to Flora’s hand with both her
own, and telling--with her eyes illustrating the story gloriously--of
the great events which had transpired since that day when the mansion
went back to its normal condition of loneliness and silence.
Baron was observing her, too. He had found a chair quite outside the
centre of the picture, and he was trying to assume the pose of a casual
onlooker.
But Bonnie May’s eyes met his after a time and something of the
radiance passed from her face. She turned away from Flora and stood
apart a little and clasped her hands up nearly beneath her chin, and
her whole being seemed suddenly tremulous. She was thinking of the home
that had been made for her, and of how it was Baron who had opened
its door. The others had been lovely, but the ready faith and the
willingness to stand the brunt--these had been his.
She moved forward almost shyly until she stood before him, and then her
hands went out to him.
“I must offer my congratulations, too!” he said.
But she ignored that. “Do you remember a time when we talked together
about some words that we thought were beautiful--up in the attic?” she
asked.
“And you told me you didn’t think much of ‘aunt’ or ‘uncle,’ but that
you liked ‘father’ and----”
“Yes, that was the time.”
“I remember perfectly.”
“You know, there’s another word I’ve thought of since then that I’ve
wished I could--could have for my own.”
He seemed to be casting about for that other word.
“It’s a lovely word, too....” She drew closer to him. “Help me!”
she pleaded, and when he looked into her eyes, a bit startled, she
whispered--“Brother ... brother!” Her hand was on his shoulder, and
then it slipped its way to his neck.
“Ah, that _is_ a good word!” said Baron. And then the tempest of
affection broke, and she had her arms about his neck.
He had no idea she was so strong. She was choking him a bit. But no, it
wasn’t really the strength of her arms, after all, he realized.
And then, because his mother and Flora were watching, and
because--well, because he was Baron, he straightened up and got
possession of her hands again. He patted them lightly.
“It is a good word,” he repeated. “It’s one that has come to have a
much bigger meaning for me since I knew you.”
“And you won’t think it’s got anything to do with that silly old
joke...?”
He was really perplexed.
“You know, when they say: ‘I’ll be a sister to you!’” She was bubbling
over with the old merriment now. “Just to make you keep at a distance,
you know.”
“Oh--no, I’ll be sure it hasn’t anything to do with that.”
He regarded her almost dreamily as she turned again to his mother and
Flora. He was thinking of the amazing buoyancy, of the disconcerting,
almost estranging humor which lay always just beneath the surface; of
her fine courage; of the ineradicable instinct which made everything
a sort of play. They would be hers always. Or would there come a time
when she would lose them? He wondered.
“There is our number!” interrupted Peter Addis, who had been listening
to the voice of the announcers. He had brought the party to the theatre
in his own car.
There was a reluctant movement toward the theatre.
“... Oh, a matinée performance now and then, if she likes,” Thornburg
was explaining to Baron. “But for a few years, at least, that will be
all. She’s going to have the things she’s had to go without all her
life.”
They followed the line of the wall around toward the front exit. The
orchestra had quit playing. The time had come to extinguish the lights.
But after the others had gone Baron stood a moment alone. He looked
thoughtfully toward the upper right-hand box.
“I thought she was lost that day,” he mused. “I thought I was rescuing
her. And now I know she wasn’t really lost then. Not until afterward.
And now she has found her home again.”
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.