The Return of Helen Redmond
Summary
A velvet-roped Manhattan cabaret exhales smoke and champagne as Helen Redmond—once the brightest corona in a sky of shimmying chorines—trades hearth for footlights, surrendering to the narcotic swirl of jazz-age neon. Neil Forrester, the besotted clubman who wrenched her from the kickline, collapses under the weight of her restlessness; his heart gives out like a tired spotlight filament. Into the vacuum sweeps the brother, a marble-browed cleric who rewrites the family scripture: the child Marjorie will grow up believing her mother died a saint, not a seraph in sequins. Ten circuits of the sun later, Helen—now a porcelain doll patched with midnight regrets—hosts a post-curio soirée where the news of another mother’s vigil cracks her mirrored façade. She slips into the child’s moonlit garden, a ghost in mink, and discovers her own reflection wearing pinafores and patent-leather shoes. The minister’s righteous thunder drives her back into the alley, yet the image festers; in a fevered reverie she foresees Marjorie seduced by the same footlight siren-song, eloping with Helen’s own louche paramour. Awakening to the prophecy’s bile, Helen rips up her marquee name, teaches scales in a drab parlour, and—through renunciation—earns a second-night curtain call beside the daughter who finally learns the truth without losing the dream.
Synopsis
Clubman Neil Forrester marries chorus girl Helen Redmond against his clergyman brother's wishes and a daughter is born to the couple. Helen tires of domestic life, and after a quarrel with her husband she returns to the stage and Bohemia, where she forgets all in its whirl and gaiety. Forrester dies and his brother assumes charge of the child, bringing her up to believe that her mother is dead and was a good woman. One night after the show Helen gives a supper to her friends in her flat, and one of the guests sends her regrets on account of her young daughter's illness. This awakens in Helen thoughts of her own daughter, now 10 years old, and she retires to her own room brokenhearted and resolves to see her the next day. When she goes, she finds that the girl, Marjorie, resembles her, and she humors her by saying that she knew her mother and she was a good woman. The minister returns, recognizes Helen, and orders her out of the house. She first pleads for her daughter, then demands her. The minister changes his tone and tells Helen that it would be wrong to disillusion Marjorie, and a greater wrong to bring her up among Helen's own kind. Helen sinks under these reproaches, but is persistent. While Marjorie is being brought in Helen lapses in a deep reverie. In this state she has visions of bringing her home. The inherited taint manifests itself and Marjorie grows up like her mother, with a weakness for paint, frills, and men's smile, and later Helen's friend elopes with Marjorie. When the minister returns with Marjorie, she tells him she realizes what he says is true and that it is better for her to continue to grow up under his care. She renounces the stage, gives music lessons as a means of livelihood, and is soon reunited with her daughter in the enjoyment of a happy future.
