Bonnie May

by Louis Dodge

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.