CHAPTER XIII THE CIRCLE OF BRASS

They entered the theatre together at four o’clock that afternoon, Angelo, Dan Baker and Petite Jeanne. It was a damp, chilly, autumn day. Jeanne had caught the mood of the day before they entered. There was nothing about the empty playhouse to dispel this disturbing gloom. The half light that was everywhere, a small—bright torch of a lamp here and there boring sharply into the darkness—revealed the threadbare, neglected interior of the place. The floor of the stage creaked as they ventured to walk across it. Row on row of plush seats lay dimly before them. The few that were lighted were soiled and faded. The once gay gilt of box seats had cracked off in places, showing the white beneath. The great velvet curtain drooped woefully.
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“How dismal!” Jeanne spoke before she thought.

“My dear,” said Dan Baker, stepping before Angelo to conceal his look of pain, “it is not the house, but the people that make a theatre. The glowing, pulsating throng of living beings. This is a theatre. Picture this broad stage filled with dreams of beauty and grace. Catch a glimpse of the gay costumes. Listen to the songs and laughter.

“And yonder,” he spread his arms wide as if to take in a great multitude, “yonder are the people, hundreds, thousands! Are they less colorful, less gay? Not one whit. For this is their happy hour. Fans, flowers, smiles, color, laughter, beauty. ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever.’ No, no, my child! On our great night you will not see the faults of this poor, gray old house that has known the joys and sorrows of three generations of human souls, and which is now standing among tall skyscrapers waiting its destruction; you will see only the gracious people who have come to catch the glow of light and joy that is our opera.”
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As Petite Jeanne looked at him her heart glowed with fresh fire. To her at this moment the aged trouper, with his flowing locks and drooping hat, was the noblest work of God.

“Thanks, old timer,” said Angelo. His tone was husky as he gripped Dan Baker’s hand.

Jeanne said never a word, but as she touched his hand ever so lightly, he understood even better than if she had delivered an oration.

Her dislike of the ancient theatre, with its narrow, ratty dressing rooms, its steep, worn stairways and its smell of decay, was dispelled. But with the manager, the director, the actors she had not met before, as well as the chorus, it was quite another matter. To her distress she found that they, one and all, treated her quite as an outsider. Dan Baker, too, was quite outside their circle. He understood it, and did not care. Having been a trouper, he realized that in companies such as these there were those who “belonged” and those who did not.
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But poor, friendly, hopeful, big-hearted Jeanne, though she was to have a leading part in the play, had intended from the first to be a friend to them, one and all. And behold, none of them would accept her offering.

Members of the chorus might be engaged in an animated conversation, but let her join them and their gayety ceased while they moved silently away.

Not many attempts were made before the sensitive soul of the little French girl curled up like an oyster in a shell. But it was an aching little heart, at that.

“Why? Why?” she demanded of her conscience, and of her confessor, Dan Baker.

“My child,” the aged dancer smiled faintly, “they live in what might be called a golden circle. The circle is complete. None may enter. It is the way of the stage.
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“You cannot understand,” he said gently, “for you have not long been a trouper. You could not know that they were all practically born on the stage; that their fathers and mothers, yes and their grandparents before them, were stage people. They have traveled together, some of them, for years. As they moved from city to city, the people of each city were only an audience to be amused. They have made the audience laugh; they have made it cry. But always they have thought of that audience as a great lump of humanity. Not one individual in that lump cared for one of them in a personal way. Only among their own group have they found companions. Little by little a strong bond has been formed. Hemming them in, it keeps others out. That is their golden circle.”

“It is a most wretched circle!” cried Jeanne with a touch of anger. “It is not a golden circle, but a circle of brass, brass about their necks; the sign of slavery.”

After this Jeanne made no further attempts to mingle with her fellow workers. When not on the stage she sat in a corner, reading a French novel.
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But her cup of woe was not full. She had hoped to dance her native dances from the gypsyland of France, just as she had learned them there. This was not to be. The director, the tall, dark, youngish man, he of the chilled steel face who never smiled, had a word to say about this. The dances, he decreed, were not right. They must be changed. A girl named Eve, head of the chorus, must teach Jeanne new steps.

Eve taught her, and did a thorough job of it. Born on the west side, Eve had made her way up by sheer nerve and a certain feeling for rhythm.

No two persons could be more unlike than this Eve and our Petite Jeanne. Petite Jeanne was French to the tips of her toes. She loved art for art’s sake. Beauty and truth, sweetness and light, these were words of infinite charm to her. Had the same words been pronounced to Eve, she would have suspected the speaker of pronouncing a spelling lesson to her. Eve lived for one thing only—applause. It had been the thunder of applause that had caused her to set her foot on the first round of the ladder to fame. That same thunder had kept her toiling year after year.
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Petite Jeanne cared little for applause. When she went before an audience it was as if she said to those assembled before her, “See! Here I have something all together beautiful. It has been handed down to us through countless ages, a living flame of action and life, a gypsy dance. This is beauty. This is life. I hope you may forget me and know only this marvel of beauty and truth, sweetness and light.”

And now, under the ruthless hand of Eve, she saw her thing of beauty torn apart and pieced with fragments of bold movements and discordant notes which made her dances much more brazen.

But that was not all. “Your toes,” decreed the merciless, dark-faced director, “are too limber; your legs are too stiff. You must look to the brass rail for remedy.”

“The brass rail?” She did not say the words. Soon enough she found out. In a cold back room she stood for half an hour, gripping a long brass rail safely anchored some three feet from the floor, twisting her toes and bending her poor limbs until she could have screamed with pain. It helped not a bit that a dozen members of the chorus, who never spoke a word to her, were going through the same painful performance.
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She uttered wailing complaints to Angelo in his studio that night. Angelo passed the complaint on to the poker-faced manager.

“If you wish to direct your play,” this dictator decreed, “you may do so, provided,” he prodded Angelo in the ribs until it hurt, “provided you are able and willing also to finance it.”

“It’s a hard life, my child,” Dan Baker said to Jeanne the next night, as the light of the fire played on his weary old face. “You think the brass rail is terrible. But think of me. They have put me in a gymnasium for an hour each day, where a Samson of a chap uses me for a dumbbell, an Indian club and a punching bag.”

Jeanne laughed at his description and felt better.
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“They’re spoiling your dance, little girl,” he said in a more serious tone. “But never mind. Do your old dance in the old way here in this room or in the park, just as you were doing it when I first saw you. Keep it full of freshness, life and beauty, stretch it to fill the time, and when we open,” his voice died to a whisper, “on our great first night, dance your gypsy dance just as you learned it back there in France, and I promise you that all will be more than well.”

Petite Jeanne caught her breath. Here was a bold proposal. Would she dare?

Springing to her feet, she went swinging away in a wild whirl. When she dropped back in her place before the fire, she whispered hoarsely,

“I will!”

Her strong young hand met his in a grip that was a pledge.

But were these things to be? Even as she lay there blinking at the fire, some imp of darkness seemed to whisper, “You will never do it. You never will.”

She looked at the Fire God resting at the edge of the flames, and thought she saw him frown.