Happy days followed. Petite Jeanne, whose circle of true friends in this great world had been pitiably small, found her horizon greatly enlarged. Truly the day of adventures in Merry’s cellar and out in the park while she danced the sun up from the depths of the lake had been her lucky day. For one might well have gone about the city of three million souls holding a lamp before every face without finding the equal to that brave trio, Angelo the playwright, Swen the maker of melodies and Dan Baker the beloved vagabond of the stage.
Happy days they were, and busy ones as well. Each evening found them assembled in Angelo’s studio. In order that they might talk as they ate, they brought dinner along. Each member of the little group contributed something. Swen provided chops, steaks, oysters or fish; Angelo added such strange viands as he could devise, curious hot Mexican dishes, rich preparations from his native land, or unthinkable Russian mixtures; Florence and Petite Jeanne arrived each evening with apple-squares, date-tarts or some other form of tempting dessert; Dan Baker practiced the ancient and all but lost art of coffee brewing so skilfully that after drinking they all felt that dawn was on the point of breaking, and they were ready to walk out into a dewy morn.
Wild, hilarious, dizzy hours followed. Was a light opera ever before produced in such a fantastic fashion?
Angelo was continuously prepared with fresh script. This dark-eyed youth was a worker. Swen kept pace with musical compositions.
And how Swen could beat out those melodies on the battered piano reposing in the corner!
When it was music for her dance Petite Jeanne, bare-footed, bare-armed, with eyes shining, sprang into motion with such abandon as made her seem a crimson cardinal, a butterfly, a mere flying nothing.
How Swen would throw back his blonde mane and laugh! How Dan Baker shook his old head and sighed with joy!
“Our play!” he would murmur. “Our play. How can it fail? With such an angel of light even Heaven would be a complete success.”
So for hours they labored. Testing music, words, lighting effects, dances, everything, until their heads were dizzy and their eyes dim.
Then, as the blaze flamed up in the broad fireplace, they cast themselves upon Angelo’s rugs of wondrous thickness and softness, and sighed deep sighs of content.
“How wonderful it is to have beautiful things!” Jeanne exclaimed, as on one of these occasions she buried her white hands in the thick, velvety surface of a Persian rug.
“Ah, yes!” Angelo sighed. “When you are sure you are to keep them.”
“But they are your own.”
“Oh, yes. Now they are mine. They belonged to some one else before me. They may belong to others. The success of our play, that alone, will make them secure. My happiness, yours, all our joy depends upon that.” A shadow fell across his dark face.
This shadow reminded Petite Jeanne of a wider shadow that had been sweeping over the wondrous land men called America. For long years this land had known such joyous prosperity as no land before had ever known. But now, as if struck by some mysterious blight, this prosperity was falling away. Factories had been closing. Streets that once were thronged with shoppers, were thronged no more. Stores and shops were all but deserted. Wise men said, “Prosperity will return. It is just around the corner.” Yet it did not return at once.
And Petite Jeanne, sensitive soul that she was, ever conscious of the woes that come to others, was touched by the signs of fear and distress that she saw all about her.
When she spoke of it to Angelo he, too, appeared distressed, not for himself, but for others.
“This will make no difference to our play,” was his optimistic pronouncement. “When hard times come, the people feel the need of amusement, diversion, more than before. Only one playhouse in our city is dark.”
“If so, where is our play to open?” Jeanne asked quickly.
“Leave that to me.” He shrugged. “Plays come. Plays go. A house dark to-night will be aglow to-morrow. I have friends. Once our light opera is on, it will go on forever.”
So they labored and hoped, shouted, danced, sang, dreamed, despaired and hoped again, only at last to go creeping away in the wee small hours to seek sleep. And the morning hours knew them not. So passed fourteen happy, busy, delirious days.
All this time the light opera was taking form. At the close of Act I the gypsy caravan, with Petite Jeanne and Dan Baker riding on burros, departed for Paris.
In Paris Petite Jeanne and her amiable substitute for the bear danced in the beautiful public gardens. There, surrounded by noble statues and flowering trees, they were discovered by the chorus who at this time were dressed in bright smocks, posing with brushes, stools and easels as artists from the Latin Quarter.
They joined the pair in a beautiful “Dance of the Flowers,” and then lingered to sketch Dan Baker, Petite Jeanne and their burros. Meanwhile Dan Baker entertained Petite Jeanne and all who cared to listen with one of his wondrously impossible tales of fairyland: America across the seas.
Scarcely were the sketches completed, the tales brought to an end, than a stranger, stepping from the throng of onlookers, denounced Dan Baker as an impostor and accused him of being one of the richest men in America. The ancient wanderer resented the accusation. A fight ensued in which a burro assisted the aged dancer to win a victory by butting his adversary over and then sitting on him.
Millionaire or no millionaire, Dan Baker adopted Petite Jeanne as his daughter. The next scene found them in a beautiful private garden, all their own, still dancing.
A young hero appeared. He found Jeanne dancing barefooted before a fountain and fell madly in love with her.
They were interrupted by the chorus, now doing a nature dance to spring, and arrayed much as spring damsels are supposed to be dressed.
A villain appeared in the shadows. He had discovered that Petite Jeanne, who had lived after the death of her parents with wandering gypsies, was rich in her own name. He, a terrible apache, proposed to kidnap her.
The plot grew apace. Dan Baker told one more story while the villain stood not ten feet away, ready, if need be, to stab him.
The fool of the play, a young Scotchman who missed every golden opportunity because he held his pennies too tightly gripped, appeared.
By the aid of the chorus, now dressed as wild and terrible apache damsels, Petite Jeanne was kidnapped.
The fool barely missed eternal glory by rescuing her. He took a three cent subway car instead of spending a whole nickel on the plush seated car boarded by the villain and his band.
The last scene was in a stone paved, walled court of a fearsome secret prison, where Dan Baker, who had become a voluntary prisoner, revived the fainting Jeanne with one more romantic tale.
Meanwhile, the hero, at the head of a brave band of gendarmes, who in the end proved to be the chorus in disguise, stormed the secret prison and rescued the fair gypsy maid.
The truth of her riches was revealed to Jeanne. She wept on the hero’s shoulder. Then she and Dan Baker, joined once more by the chorus—this time in the most gorgeous of filmy French creations—danced the wild Dance of the Fire God beneath the moon while the ancient god, lighted in some magical way, beamed and grimaced at them from the dark.
Such was the rough outline for the opera, presented by Angelo.
“Of course,” he added many times, with a smile, “the young hero may turn up later with a rich, pompous and irate mother who does not purpose to marry her son to a gypsy. There may be many other complications. But we shall iron them out one by one.
“Fortune is with us in one respect. The plot of a light opera is never very closely knit. So long as there is music and dancing, mirth and song, all is well. And that we shall have in superabundance.”
“But where are we to get the donkeys?” Petite Jeanne asked on one occasion.
“My dear!” exclaimed Dan Baker. “Nothing is easier. There are nearly as many donkeys on the stage as off it.”
The laugh went round.
When it had subsided Angelo said: “I know where there are two burros, in a vacant lot on the west side. They’ve been on the stage in vaudeville. One is trained to bowl a man over and sit on him.
“So, you see,” his grin broadened as he turned to Dan Baker, “I have written that part expressly for him, just as I have for the other donkeys in the cast.”
The laugh was now on Dan Baker. He responded by narrating one more fantastic yarn, and the work went on.
Then came the night when Angelo exclaimed over the last wild dance, when even Florence joined in the ballet, “It is enough! To-morrow I go to seek a producer. To-night, before you sleep, say a little prayer for our success.”
Let us hope no one will be shocked when we declare that on that night, long after Florence was lost in slumber, Petite Jeanne crept from the warm bed to the cold floor, pried up the loose boards, drew forth the hidden God of Fire and whispered to him some words that sounded suspiciously like a prayer. For, after all, you must recall that Petite Jeanne was more than half gypsy. Besides, she was dreadfully in earnest. For had she not, in an impersonal way, come to love very much the fiery little composer, the blonde-maned musician and, most of all, the appealing old trouper, he of long gray locks and plaintive, melodious voice? For these more than for herself she wished the light opera to be a great and lasting success.
Angelo had a few well chosen friends in the world of stage people. As soon as offices were open the next morning, his card was presented to one of these. An hour later, with a bulky manuscript under his arm and a letter of introduction in his pocket, he entered the lobby of a second office.
He was ushered at once into the presence of a broad shouldered, rather dull, but quite determined appearing man who sat in a swivel chair before a birch-mahogany desk. In another corner of the room sat a tall, dark, young man whose face had the appearance of having been moulded out of chilled gray steel.
“It’s a light opera,” said Angelo, placing his manuscript on the desk. “If you’ll let me tell you about it I am sure you will be able to decide at once whether or not it will fit the Blackmoore Theatre.”
The stout man nodded.
Angelo began to talk. As he continued to talk he began to glow. He was full of his subject.
“Wait!” The stout man held up a hand.
“Drysdale,” he said to the gray, steel-eyed man, “you had better sit in on this.”
Gray Steel arose, dragged a chair forward and sat down.
“All right.” The stout man nodded to Angelo.
“Shall—shall I begin over again?”
“Not necessary. Drysdale is clever. Takes a thing in the middle, and works both ways.”
Angelo talked and glowed once more. For fully half an hour, like a small car on a country road at night, he rattled and glowed.
“What do you think of it?” the stout man demanded, when the recital was finished. “Drysdale, what do you think? Find a chorus, right enough. Know one right now. House is dark. What do you think?”
“Paris.” Gray Steel Face cupped his chin. “Americans go wild over Paris.”
“Sure they do, just wild. They—” Angelo’s flow of enthusiasm was cut short by a glower from Gray Steel Face.
“Mr. Drysdale is our director,” the stout man explained. “Directed many plays. Very successful. Makes ’em march. You’re right he does!”
“Gypsy stuff goes well,” Drysdale continued. “But who ever heard of taking a gypsy for a star? She’d need training. No end of it.”
“Oh, no! She—”
“We’d have to read the script. Have to see them perform.” Drysdale gave no heed to Angelo. “Say you bring ’em here to-morrow night, say eight o’clock.”
“No stage,” said the stout manager.
“We—we have a small one,” Angelo explained eagerly. “Come to my studio, won’t you? There you’ll see them at their best.”
“What say, Drysdale?”
“We’ll be there. Mind! Eight sharp. None of your artistic foolishness!”
Next night, the two men did see Petite Jeanne and Dan Baker at their best.
Was their best good enough? The face of the director was still a steel mask. He conferred with his manager in the corner of the room for half an hour.
In the meantime Angelo perspired profusely. Petite Jeanne felt hot and cold spasms chase one another up her back, but Dan Baker sat placidly smoking by the fire. He was an old trouper. The road lay always before him.
But for Angelo and Jeanne hopes had run high. Their ambitions were on the altar. They were waiting for the fire.
“We’ll have a contract for you by eleven o’clock to-morrow,” said the stout man, in a tone as unemotional as he might have used to call a waiter. “Drysdale here says it’s a bit crude; but emotional stuff—got some pull, he believes. Office at eleven.”
Petite Jeanne could scarcely await their departure. Hardly had the door closed when, in true French fashion, she threw her arms about the old trouper and kissed him on both cheeks. Nor was Angelo neglected.
“We’re made!” she cried joyously. “The footlights, oh, the blessed footlights!” She walked the young composer about the room until she was dizzy. Then, springing like a top, she landed in a corner by the fire and demanded a demi-tasse of coffee.
As they drank their coffee Angelo was strangely silent. “I don’t like what they said about the opera,” he explained, when Jeanne teased him. “They’ll want to tear it all to pieces, like as not, and put in a lot of half-indecent stuff.
“And that theatre,” he sighed. “It’s a frightful old barn of a place. Going to be torn down to make way for a skyscraper next year, I’m told. I hope you may not hate it too much.” As he looked at Petite Jeanne two wrinkles appeared on his high forehead.
“Oh, the Paris Opera,” she laughed. “That was but a small bit. I am sure I shall be quite deliriously happy!”
It was thus that she left Angelo’s studio. But the morrow, a gray day, was to find them all in quite another mood.
When Angelo returned to the studio next day at noon, he was in a sober mood.
His eyes lighted as he found a small table standing before the fire, spread with spotless linen and piled with good things to eat.
“This,” he said, taking Petite Jeanne’s hands in his own, “is your doing.”
“Not entirely, and not hardly at all,” laughed the little French girl. “I’m a poor cook, and a very bad manager. You may credit it all to Florence.”
Florence, at that, stepped from the shadows. For once her ready smile was not forthcoming.
“Florence!” he exclaimed in surprise. “How is it you are here? I thought you were at your work at the gym.”
“There is no more gym,” said the girl soberly. “It has been turned into a lodging house for those poor unfortunates who in these sad times have no place to sleep.
“Of course,” she added quickly, as a mellow tone crept into her voice, “I am glad for them! But this leaves me exactly flat; no job, and no prospect of one for months.”
“No job? Of course you have one!” Jeanne placed an inadequate arm about Florence’s ample waist. “You will be my stage ‘mother’ once more.”
At this they turned an inquiring glance upon Angelo. For once it seemed he had nothing to say.
The meal was half finished before he spoke about the matter nearest all their hearts. When he did speak, it was in a very indirect manner. “In this world,” he began quite soberly, “there’s very little real generosity. People who have money cling to it as if it had power to carry them to the very gates of Heaven. Those who have nothing often feel very generous, but have nothing with which to prove the genuineness of their feeling.
“Generosity!” He almost growled. “You read a lot about it in the papers. Capital agrees to do this. Big money is ready to do that. Wages shall be kept up. Those who are in tight places shall be dealt with in a generous fashion. That’s what they give out for publication.
“What they’re really doing, many of them, is undermining the uncertain foothold of those who have very little. They’re cutting wages here, putting on screws there, in secret, wherever they dare. And our friendly enemy, the manager, who wants our light opera, old Mr. Rockledge,” he declared with a flourish, as if to conclude the whole matter, “is no exception.”
“Didn’t he give us a contract?” asked Petite Jeanne, as her eyes opened wide.
“Yes. A contract. But such a contract! He said we could take it or leave it. And old Gray Steel Face nodded his head and snapped his steel jaw shut, so I took it away; but we needn’t sign if we don’t care to.”
The remainder of the meal was eaten for the most part in silence. Just as they finished, Swen and Dan Baker entered. They had been for a long stroll along the lake front, and had dined at a place which Swen had found where they could get genuine black bread and spiced fillet of sole.
“What luck?” Swen demanded.
“Rotten!” Angelo threw the contract on the table. “Read it and weep!” The others crowded around to do so.
A silence, broken only by the rustle of turned pages, ensued.
As the perusal was concluded Jeanne’s face was a brown study. Florence, who had read over her shoulder, was plainly angry. Baker neither smiled nor frowned. Swen smiled.
“Well,” Swen drawled, “since this is to be our first production, and success will keep the wolf from the door for six months to come, I don’t see that it’s so worse. One success calls for another. And it’s on the second that you have a chance to tell ’em where they get off.”
“I think,” said Petite Jeanne quietly, “that Swen is right. It means renewed hope for all of us. Winter is at our door. There are no turnips in our cellar, nor hams in our smoke-house.” She thought of the old days in France.
“That’s me,” agreed Dan Baker.
Since Florence had no contract to sign, she said nothing.
“Then,” said Angelo with a sigh, half of relief and half of disappointment, “we sign on the dotted line. To-day we visit the theatre. To-morrow rehearsals begin. The thing is to be put on as soon as it can be whipped into shape. Every day a theatre is dark means a loss to its owners.”
They signed in silence. Then, drawing chairs before the fire, they sat down for half an hour of quiet meditation. Many and varied were the thoughts that, like thin smoke, passed off into space as they lingered there.
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
Petite Jeanne was a gifted person. She was a dancer of uncommon ability. Those who studied her closely and who were possessed of eyes that truly saw things had pronounced her a genius. Yet she was possessed of an even greater gift; she knew the art of making friends. Defeated by an ancient unwritten law, in her attempt to be a friend to the girls of the chorus, she had found her friends among the lowly ones of the theatre. For with all her art she never lost the human touch.
She had not haunted the ratty old theatre long before Mary, the woman who dusted seats, Jimmie, the spotlight operator, Tom, the stoker who came up grimy from the furnaces, and Dave, the aged night watchman, one and all, were her friends.
That was why, on special occasions, these people did exactly what she wanted. One night at the ghostly hour of eleven she found herself, bare-footed and clad in scanty attire, doing her dance upon the stage while Jimmie, grinning in his perch far aloft, sent a mellow spot of light down to encircle and caress her as a beam of sunshine or a vapory angel might have done.
Dave, the watchman and her faithful guardian, was not far away. So, for the moment, she knew no fear. The rancorous voice of the director, the low grumble of the manager, were absent. Now she might dance as nature and the gypsies had taught her, with joy and abandon.
Since she had fully decided that on the night of nights, when for the first time in months the old Blackmoore was thronged, she would take matters into her own hands and dance as God, the stars and all out-doors had taught her, and feeling that only practice on the stage itself would give her heart the courage and her brain the assurance needed for that eventful hour, she had bribed these friends to assist her. And here she was.
Dance on this night she did. Jimmie watched and marveled. Such grace and simple, joyous abandon, such true melody of movement, such color in motion, he had not known before.
“Ah!” he whispered. “She is possessed! The gypsies have bewitched her! She will never be real again.”
Indeed, had she given one wild leap in the air and risen higher and higher until she vanished into thin darkness as a ghost or an angel, he would have experienced no astonishment.
Surprise came to him soon enough, for all that. Suddenly the fairy-like arms of the dancer fell to her sides. Her lithe body became a statue. And there she stood in that circle of light, rigid, motionless, listening.
Then, throwing her arms high in a gesture of petition, she cried,
“Jimmie! The flutter of wings! Can you hear them? How they frighten me!
“Jimmie,” she implored, “don’t let the spotlight leave me! Can you hear them, Jimmie? Wings. Fluttering wings. They mean death! Do you hear them, Jimmie?”
Leaning far forward, Jimmie heard no wings. But in that stillness he fancied he heard the mad beating of the little French girl’s heart, or was it his own?
So, for one tense moment, they remained in their separate places, motionless.
Then, with a little shudder, the girl shook herself free from the terror and called more cheerily,
“There! They are gone now, the wings. Throw on a light, and come and take me home, Jimmie. I can dance no more to-night.”
As she turned to move toward the spot on the floor where her precious God of Fire stood leering at her, she seemed to catch a sound of furtive movement among the shadows. She could not be sure. Her heart leapt, and was still.
Five minutes later she and Jimmie were on a brightly lighted street.
“Wings,” the little French girl murmured once more. “The flutter of wings!” And again, as they neared her home, “Wings.”
“Aw, forget it!” Jimmie muttered.
She was not to forget. She was to hear that flutter again, and yet again.
During all these busy days Petite Jeanne did not entirely lose track of her friend Merry of the smiling Irish eyes. Being endowed with a particularly friendly nature, she was more than glad to find friends outside the little circle in which she moved. Besides, she was deeply grateful to the little girl who had led her to the place where she had, in so miraculous a manner, purchased the priceless Fire God for only three silver coins.
“It was the beginning of all my good fortune,” she said to Merry on one occasion. “And,” she added quickly, “all my very hard work as well.”
So it happened more than once that she took the elevated train to the office where the auction sale of unclaimed, and damaged express packages was held every Friday. There she sat in the front row beside Merry and enjoyed two hours of relaxation. The endless variety of goods on sale, from a baby buggy without wheels to a black and white puppy with an enticing bark, intrigued her more and more; particularly the “union,” Merry’s little circle of choice friends.
To a casual observer these men would have seemed a rough lot. Soon enough Jeanne, with her power of looking into men’s hearts, learned that these men who struggled daily for their bread had been endowed by nature with hearts of gold.
Their interest in Merry was of a fatherly and sportsman-like sort. Knowing her brother and his handicaps they were glad to help her.
Unfortunately, at this time there was little they could do for her. Each Friday she brought a smaller purse and carried fewer articles away. The little basement shop, where Tad toiled incessantly, was feeling the pinch of hard times. Few were the visitors that came down the cellar stairs these days, and fewer still were the purchases they carried away. Only when the blue eyes of the girl spied some article for which she had an immediate sale did she venture a bid.
More than once when some particular member of the “union” had made a fortunate purchase and met with an immediate sale, he offered Merry a loan. Always the answer was the same: a loyal Irish smile and, “Thanks. You’ll be needing it next time.”
Little wonder that Petite Jeanne, sitting in the glowing light of such glorious friendships, absorbed warmth that carried her undaunted through rehearsals amid the cold and forbidding circle within the old Blackmoore walls.
It was on one of these visits to the auction house that the little French girl received an invitation to an unusual party.
Weston, the ruddy-faced German who kept a shop near Maxwell street, together with Kay King and a stout man known by the name of John, had bid in a large number of traveling bags and trunks. They were an unusual lot, these bags and boxes. Many of the trunks were plastered from end to end with foreign labels. Three of the bags, all exactly alike, were of the sort carried only by men of some importance who reside in the British Isles.
“How I’d love to see what’s in them!” Jeanne exclaimed.
“Do you want to know?” Weston demanded. “Then I’ll tell you. Junk! That’s all. I buy only junk. Inside these are some suits. Moths eat holes in them. Silk dresses, maybe; all mildewed.”
“Must be fun to open them, though. You never can tell what you might find.”
“Ja, you can never tell,” Weston agreed.
“Do you want to see what’s in them?” Kay King, who was young and good looking, leaned forward. “Come down to Maxwell Street on Sunday. We’ll save them until then, won’t we?” He appealed to his companions.
“Ja, sure!”
“Sure we will!”
Petite Jeanne turned to Merry. “Will you go?” she asked, suddenly grown timid.
“Yes, I’d like to,” Merry assented quickly. “I’ve never seen their shops. I’d love to.”
“All right,” Jeanne said with a smile. “We’ll come. And perhaps we’ll bring some friends.”
“Ja, bring friends. As many as you like. Mebby we could perhaps sell them some suitcases?”
Kay King gave Jeanne his card. And there, for the time, the matter rested. But Jeanne did not allow it to escape her memory. It was to be, she told herself, one of the strangest and most interesting opening-up parties it had been her privilege to attend.
That night Petite Jeanne once more danced alone beneath the yellow glow of Jimmie’s spotlight. The affair of two nights before had frightened her more than she cared to admit. But this little French girl possessed an indomitable spirit. She knew what she wanted; knew quite as well why she wanted it, and was resolved that, come what might, she should have it.
On this particular night she would gladly have taken her strong and fearless companion, Florence, with her to the theatre. But Florence had come upon a bit of good fortune; she had been employed to conduct classes in a settlement house gymnasium two hours each evening.
“That,” she had exclaimed joyously, “means bread and butter!”
So Petite Jeanne had come alone. And why not? Was not Jimmie over there in the balcony? And was not her friend, the night watchman, somewhere in the building?
“What of the gypsy who would steal your god if he might?” Florence had asked.
“Well, what of him?” Jeanne had demanded. “We haven’t seen him prowling about, have we? Given up, and gone south. That’s what I think. In New Orleans by this time.”
Long ere this, as you will recall, Jeanne had resolved what she should do on the opening night. When the curtain rose for her first big scene, when she received the cue to begin her dance, she would make it her dance indeed. At that moment, before the throng of first-nighters, she would defy the tyrannical director. She would forget the steps they had taught her. Before the gypsy campfire she would become a gypsy once again and dance, as never before, that native dance to the Fire God. Bihari, the gypsy, had taught her that dance, and there was nothing like it in all the world, she felt sure.
It was a daring resolve and might, she knew, result in disaster. Yet the very daring of it inspired her. And why not? Was she not after all, in spirit at least, a gypsy, a free soul unhampered by the shams and fake pretenses, the senseless conventions of a city’s life?
With this in mind, she danced in the dark theatre with utter abandon. Forgetting all but the little Fire God whose tiny eyes glowed at the rim of the yellow circle of light, she danced as she had many times by the roadsides of France.
She had reached the very zenith of the wild whirl. It seemed to Jimmie that she would surely leave the floor and soar aloft, when suddenly he became conscious that all was not well. He read it in her face. She did not stop dancing. She did not so much as speak; yet her lips formed words and Jimmie read them:
“Wings, fluttering of wings!”
“A plague on the wings!” exclaimed Jimmie, as his muscles stiffened in readiness for an emergency.
Wings! Did he hear them? He could not be sure. He would see what he could see!
He touched a button and a light flashed brightly from a white globe aloft.
His keen eyes searched the place in vain. Yet sixty seconds had not elapsed before there came the sound of a slight impact, followed by a terrific crash. The light above blinked out.
In his excitement, Jimmie threw off the spotlight and the theatre beneath him became a well of darkness.
And what of Jeanne? When the crash came her dance ended. When the spotlight blinked out she sprang back in terror. At that instant something touched her ankle.
With a little cry of fright, she bounded forward. Her foot came in contact with some solid object and sent it spinning.
“The Fire God!” she thought in consternation. “I have kicked him across the stage.”
Then the house lights flashed on, and all was light as day.
Flashing a quick look about the stage, the girl found everything as it had been, except that the Fire God was standing on his head in a corner, and half way down the center aisle was a pile of shattered glass. This glass had, a moment before, been the white globe aloft.
“Jimmie!” she called. “It’s all right. The globe fell, that’s all.”
“Must have been loose,” Jimmie grumbled. “Good thing it fell now. Might have killed somebody.”
But Jeanne was sure it had not been loose. She had not forgotten that flutter of wings.
“Some one,” she told herself, “is trying to frighten me. But I shan’t be frightened.”
At that she walked to the corner of the stage, took up her Fire God, slipped on her coat and prepared to go home.
“Jimmie,” she called, loud enough for anyone who might be hiding in the place to hear, “that’s all for to-night. But come again day after to-morrow. What do you say?”
“O. K.,” Jimmie shouted back.
Jeanne was to regret this rashness, if rashness it might be called.
“But what is it?” Petite Jeanne stepped back, half in terror, as she gripped Florence’s arm and stared about her.
They had just alighted from a Halsted Street car and had entered the maze of booths, carts, rough board counters, and wagons. “This is Maxwell Street on a bright Sunday afternoon in late autumn,” replied Merry with a smile.
They were on their way, Petite Jeanne and Merry, to the promised party at which many mysterious bags and trunks were to be opened. Florence was with them; so, too, was Angelo. Dan Baker also had agreed to come at the last moment. So they were quite a party, five in all.
About these portable stores swarmed a motley throng. Some were white, some brown, some black. All, stall keepers and prospective purchasers alike were poor, if one were to judge by attire.
“Don’t be afraid,” Merry smiled at the little French girl. “These are harmless, kindly people. They are poor, to be sure. But in this world, ninety out of every hundred are poor and probably always will be.
“Some of these people have a few poor things to sell. The others hope to purchase them at a bargain; which indeed they often do.
“So you see,” she ended, “like other places in the world, Maxwell Street deserves its place in the sun, for it serves the poor of this great city. What could be nobler?”
“Ah, yes, What could be nobler?” the little French girl echoed.
“How strange!” she murmured as they walked along. “There is no order here. See! There are shoes. Here are cabbages. And here are more shoes. There are chickens. Here are more shoes. And yonder are stockings to go with the shoes. How very queer.”
“Yes,” Florence sighed, “there is no order in the minds of the very poor. Perhaps that is why they are poor.”
“Come!” Merry cried impatiently. “We must find the shops of our friends. They are on Peoria Street. Two blocks up.”
“Lead the way.” Petite Jeanne motioned her friends to follow.
As they wedged their way through the throng, Petite Jeanne found her spirits drooping. “How sad it all seems!” she thought to herself. “There is a little dried up old lady. She must be eighty. She’s trying to sell a few lemons. And here is a slip of a girl. How pinched her face is! She’s watching over a few wretched stockings. If you whistled through them they’d go into rags.
“And yet,” she was ready to smile again, “they all seem cheerful.”
She had said this last aloud. “Yes,” Merry answered, “cheerful and kind. Very considerate of one another. It is as if suffering, hunger, rags, disease, brought friends who cannot be bought with gold.”
“It is true. And such a beautiful truth. I—”
Petite Jeanne broke short off, then dodged quickly to one side. She had barely escaped being run down by an automobile. Coming in from behind, the driver had not honked his horn.
The man was large. The companion at his side was large. The bright blue car was large. The whole outfit fairly oozed comfort, riches and self-satisfaction.
“Stand gawking around and you’ll get a leg taken off!” The driver’s voice was harsh, unkind. He spoke to the little French girl.
The hot fire that smouldered behind Angelo’s dark eyes blazed forth.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” he demanded in a fury. “Running people down! Crowding them about! You with your big car! If you want to gaze, why don’t you walk as we do?”
The car came to a halt. A deep flush had spread over the driver’s face. Springing from the car, he launched a blow that sent the slight Italian youth spinning into the crowd behind him.
But what was this? Hardly had the man swayed back, a leer of satisfaction on his face, than a whirling catapult launched itself upon him. A circle of steel closed about his neck. He found himself whirling through space. He landed with a mighty clatter atop a pile of frying pans and stew kettles.
Quickly scrambling to his feet, he glowered at the gathering throng as he demanded,
“Who did that?”
For the count of ten, no one answered. Then a scrawny little Irishman, who wore a Cross of Honor on his ragged jacket, pushed Florence forward as he whispered hoarsely,
“Tell ’im, Miss. I’m wid y’. Me, as never lost a battle yet.”
“I did!” The girl’s words were clear and quite distinct.
A hush fell over the thickening crowd. A fight on Maxwell Street is always an occasion. But a fight between a prosperous man and a good looking girl! Who had seen this before?
Florence, as you will recall, was not one of those weaklings who subsist on pickles and ice-cream in order to develop a slender figure. She weighed one hundred and sixty, was an athletic instructor, knew a few tricks and was hard as a rock.
There was no fight. The man looked her up and down. Then he called her a name. It was a nasty name, seldom heard on Maxwell Street. For the people there, though poor, are a gentle folk.
Then Maxwell Street, slow going, gentle, kindly, poverty-stricken Maxwell Street, went mad. Who threw the first ripe tomato that struck this prosperous insulter squarely on the jaw? No one will ever know. Enough that it was thrown. It was followed quickly by a bushel more, and after that by a cart load of over-ripe fish.
When at last the irate but badly beaten man of importance turned his car southward and fled from Maxwell Street, his beautiful car was no longer blue. It was tomato-pink and fish-yellow. And his costume matched the car.
Then Maxwell Street indulged in a good laugh. In this laugh Angelo did not join. He divided his attention between the business of nursing his swollen jaw and paying the poor venders of tomatoes and fish for their missing wares.
“Some people,” he might have been heard to grumble to himself, “talk too much.”
“The battle of Maxwell Street!” exclaimed Merry at his elbow. Her eyes shone. “And we won!”
“I am sure of it!” Angelo agreed heartily. “However, I am out four dollars and sixty-five cents for fish and tomatoes.”
“But look!” Merry pointed to the battered little Irishman with the Cross of Honor. “He is taking up a collection. You will be paid.”
“No, no! That cannot be!” True distress was in the Italian boy’s eyes. “Stop him.”
“No. We must not!” Merry’s tone was tense with emotion. “You are their hero. You stood up for their rights. Would you be so mean as to rob them of the right to do homage to their hero?”
“Ah, me!” Angelo rubbed his eyes. “This is a very strange world.”
In the end he departed with a heavy sack of nickels and pennies, while the crowd shouted their approval of the “brave little Dago.” And for once Angelo did not hate this name they had given his people.
They had gone another block before Angelo spoke again. What he said both puzzled and troubled the little French girl. “That whole affair,” he said quietly, “was a faux pas.”
“How could it be!” she exclaimed. “I thought it quite wonderful. What right have those big, bluffing bullies to run down poor people on Maxwell Street?”
“None at all,” Angelo replied soberly. “But after all, the battle of Maxwell Street is not our battle. This is a large city. Yet it is strange the way we meet the same people again and again. If that man really comes upon me in some other place, if he finds out what I do and where I live, he will do his best to ruin me. That is the way of his kind.”
Little did Angelo guess the manner in which his prophecy was to come true, much less the manner of vengeance that would be employed.
Petite Jeanne remained silent for a moment. Then she gave Angelo’s arm an affectionate squeeze as she answered: “I shall pray every night that he may never see you even once again.”
Even to Merry, who had never before visited her friends on Peoria Street just off Maxwell Street, the shop of Weston was something of a shock. It was nothing more than a hollow shell of a building with a great heap of second-hand goods of all sorts piled in one corner. Not a shelf, counter or table adorned this bleak interior. The plaster was cracked, the walls threatening to fall.
“I sell all in the street,” he explained in answer to their looks of astonishment. With a wave of his hand he indicated rough board counters where a miscellaneous assortment of human beings were pawing over a stock in trade as varied as themselves.
Now and again one would hold up an article in one hand, a coin in the other, and a bargain was speedily made.
“I don’t see how he lives,” Petite Jeanne whispered.
“He’s been doing this for twenty years, and he’s not bankrupt yet,” Merry whispered back.
They were led next to the shop of Kay King. This boasted of some little magnificence. There were shelves and tables and one glass showcase. Since his principal stock was composed of second-hand books, the wall was lined with them.
“A curious place for a book store, this Maxwell Street,” Dan Baker mused.
“I don’t do so badly,” Kay King smiled. “The poor wish to read. And here for a nickel, a dime, a quarter, I sell them a lamp to their feet, a light to their pathway.”
“Truly a missionary enterprise in a city wilderness,” the gentle old man murmured.
As for Petite Jeanne, her eyes had roamed up and down the dusty rows of books and had come to rest at last upon a badly hung pair of portieres at the back of the room.
“That,” she told herself, “is where he sleeps when the day is done, a dark and dingy hole.
“And yet,” she mused, “who can help admiring him? Here in his dingy little world he is master of his own destiny. While others who sell books march down each morning to punch a clock and remain bowing and scraping, saying ‘Yes mam’ this and ‘Yes mam’ that to females who think themselves superior beings, he moves happily among his own books selling when and as he chooses.”
Her reflections were broken off by a word from Kay King himself.
“There’s a story in every one.” He nodded toward the row of trunks and bags they had come to inspect.
“Little does one dream as he packs his trunk for a journey that he may never see that trunk again. Sad as it may seem, this is often the case.
“So, all unconscious of curious prying eyes, we tuck the very stories of our lives away in our trunks and watch them go speeding away in a motor van.”
“How?” Petite Jeanne asked.
“How? Look at this. Here is one I purchased some time ago.” He swung a large, strongly built wardrobe trunk about, threw it open and produced a bundle of letters. “This,” he explained, “is a young man. These letters are from his mother. And these,” he produced another packet, “are from other women. Still others are from his pals. They tell his story. And what a story! Bright, well educated, from a good family. But oh, such a rotter! He betrays his employer, his sweetheart, his pals. He deludes his trusting mother. And, how he lies to her!
“It is all written here.” He patted the letters.
“I had a letter from him yesterday,” he continued. “He wants the trunk; says it is a treasure and an heirloom; wants the contents, too; says sentiment makes him treasure these things. Sentiment!” He fairly stormed. “He knows but one emotion! He loves; ah yes, he loves himself supremely! He has not a redeeming trait.
“He wants this trunk because he is afraid. Afraid of me!” His laugh was bitter. “Me! I never hurt a flea. I only wish I could; that I were hard and ruthless as some men are, stamping their way through, trampling over others to fortune!
“But he shall pay,” he went on more calmly after a moment. “I mean to charge him twenty dollars.
“Then,” he smiled, “I shall return this one to its owners free.” He placed a hand on a sturdy little army locker. “This one belongs to a little family. How many trunks do! Father, mother and the little ones, all their clothes in one trunk! And then lost!
“There should be a society for the return of lost baggage to poor people.
“There are many like these. People come to a strange city for work. There is no work. They leave their trunks in the depot. Storage piles up. They cannot pay.
“But this must bore you!”
“No, no! Please go on.”
“There is not much more to tell. See!” He lifted the lid of the trunk. “Everything is spotlessly clean. A man’s shirts, a woman’s house dresses, little frocks and rompers for two tiny girls. Poor folks they are, like you and me. He was a soldier, too. There is a sharp-shooter’s medal on a pin cushion. There’s a child’s birth certificate, a doll with its nose kissed white, and a small Bible. They lost all that.
“And I—I shall send it back.”
“They will pay you,” said Petite Jeanne.
“They will not pay. They cannot. Some are always poor. These are like that.
“But this one—” His lips curled in sudden scorn. “This big boy who goes strutting through the world, he shall pay, and I shall pass it on to these who need and perhaps deserve it.
“But I am keeping you here!” he cried. “Here are the trunks we have saved for your own eyes. You will see that Weston has spoken truthfully. They are filled for the most part with junk. But now and then there is a story, a real story of some romantic life. See, this one opens easily. I have found a key for it.”
“Wait!” On Jeanne’s face was a look almost of distress. “You have told me so much. It seems so cruel that we should pry into their lives. It—it’s like coming upon people in the dark. I—I’m afraid. I—”
“Oh, come!” he laughed. “It’s not half as bad as that. Probably we won’t come upon anything of interest at all. Indeed that’s almost sure to be the case, and I am inclined to repent inviting you here.” So saying, he lifted the lid of the first of the row of trunks, and the show began.
Weston’s prophesy that the trunks contained “only junk” proved to be true. As trunk after trunk was opened, their search for hidden treasure continued to be unrewarded. Always there was the suggestion of pinching poverty, carelessness and neglect. These trunks were lost to their owners because they had not the ready money to pay the charges. One need not say that such as these have few valuable treasures to pack in a trunk.
The air of the small shop grew heavy with the odor of soiled clothing, cheap, highly scented soap and spilled talcum powder. The ladies had given up the search and were wandering about, looking at books, when the searching party came at last upon the three large pigskin bags from the British Isles.
“There is something to intrigue you!” exclaimed Angelo. “And see! They are all tightly locked.”
Kay King’s eyes shone. He had bid in these bags at a rather high figure. He was hoping that his judgment regarding their contents had been correct.
“Let me try these.” He rattled a huge bunch of keys. Not one of them would open the bags. “Oh well,” he smiled, “one may pick his own locks.” With skill born of ripe experience he opened the locks with a bit of twisted wire.
“Now!” He breathed deeply. “Now!”
They all crowded around. A wide-mouthed bag flew open, revealing its contents. At once an exclamation was on every lip. Not one of them all but knew on the instant that Kay had made an exceedingly good buy. The bag was packed to the very top with the choicest of wearing apparel. Indeed, not one of them all had worn such rich garments. A man’s outfit included shirts of finest silk and softest woolens, suits of broadcloth and shoes of rarest quality.
The second bag, though varying somewhat in its contents, matched the first in quality.
It was the third bag that set them gasping. For in this one the owner had packed with tender care the articles dearest to his heart. An ivory toilet set mounted with gold, a costly present from some dear friend; a brace of gold-mounted pistols; fountain pens; paper knives, elaborately carved; an astonishing collection of rare articles. And at one side, carefully wrapped in a swathing of silk, were three oval frames of beaten gold. Petite Jeanne’s fingers trembled as she unwrapped them and revealed, one after another, the portraits of a beautiful lady, a handsome boy and a marvelous girl, all dimples and golden hair.
“Oh!” She breathed deeply and the breath was half a sob.
More was to come. Having taken up an unframed picture, she studied it for a space of seconds. Then, as her trembling fingers let the picture fall, her slender form stiffened and her face went white as she said in words that seemed to choke her:
“You can’t sell these things. You truly can’t.”
“Why can’t I?” Kay challenged. He had not looked into her white face.
“Because—” She put out a hand to steady herself. “Because they belong to a friend of mine. That is he,” she said, holding up the picture, “and that,” pointing to a signature at the bottom, “is his name.
“He—he came over on the boat with me. He—he was very, very kind to me. Helped me over the hard places.
“To sell out these would be a sacrilege.
“Sell them to me!” she pleaded, laying a hand on Kay’s arm. “I’ll pay you twice what you gave for them. Please, please do!” She was all but in tears.
She could not know the bargain she appeared anxious to drive. Only Weston and Kay King knew. They knew that in all their pinched and poverty-stricken lives they had never before made such a find; that the bags and their contents were worth not twice but ten times what Kay had paid for them.
And only Angelo, who had accidentally caught sight of her bankbook, knew that for the sake of a friend she had known only on a short voyage, she was willing to spend her all.
“Wha—what will you do with them?” Kay moistened dry lips.
“I—some way I’ll find him and give them to him. And if—if he’s dead I’ll find her.” She pointed to the beautiful lady in the gold frame. “I—I’ll find her and them.” She nodded toward the other portraits.
Kay was not one who measured out charity in a glass and served it with a spoon. “Then,” he said huskily, “you may have them for exactly what I paid—fifteen dollars.”
Without another word, he snapped the bags shut one by one.
A long silence followed. Merry stood this as long as she could; then, seizing a long strand of narrow golden ribbon that had fallen from the trunk, she dashed round and round the group, encircling them all in this fragile band. Then, with a deft twitch, she thrust herself within the band.
“This,” she cried, “is our Circle of Gold.”
“And such a circle as it is!” Dan Baker’s voice wavered. “You could break it with a touch, yet it is stronger than bands of steel, for such a band is but the emblem of a bond of human hearts that must not be broken.”
It was a subdued but curiously happy Petite Jeanne who rode back to the studio that night on a rattling street car. She felt as though she had been at church and had joined in the holiest of communions.
“And this is Sunday, too,” she whispered to Florence.
“Yes,” Florence agreed, not a little surprised at her words, not divining their meaning. “This is Sunday.”
Later in the day, when the shadows had fallen across the rooftops and night had come, Dan Baker sat dozing by Angelo’s fireplace. Jeanne sat at the opposite side, but she was not sleeping. She was deep in thought. The others had gone for a stroll on the boulevard.
Jeanne was trying to recall a name, not the name of the man who had once owned the three bags resting there in the shadows. She knew that. It was Preston Wamsley. But the name of the hotel where he had stopped in New York; this escaped her.
She could picture the place in her mind. She had taken a room there for a night. It was not one of those towering affairs of brick and stone where traveling men uphold the prestige of their firms by paying ten dollars a night for a bed. A humble, kindly old hostelry, it stood mellow with age. Within were many pictures of great men who had stopped there in days gone by.
“There were Presidents and Earls and Dukes,” she told herself. “Yes, and Princes.
“Prince!” she whispered excitedly. “Prince—Prince George! That was the name! I’ll address a letter to him there to-morrow.”
“No.” She changed her mind a moment later. “To-morrow may never come. Better do it now!”
She helped herself to paper and envelope and penned a simple note to her great friend, saying she had his traveling bags which had, no doubt, been lost; and where should she send them?
“That may reach him,” she told herself, as she hurried down to post it. “Here’s hoping!”
She had cast her bread upon the waters, half of all the bread she had in the world. And the cruel Fates had decreed that she should shortly have still less. For all that, her steps were light, her heart gay, as she clambered back up the long flight of stairs.
As she returned to her place by the fire, it seemed to her that the old trouper, Dan Baker, half hidden there in the darkness, was part of a dim, half dream life that at this moment might be passing forever. Her mind went slipping, gliding back over the days that lay in the shadows that were yesterdays.
She thought of the dark-faced gypsy who had followed her on that first morning when she was on her way to dance the sun up from the lake. It was true that she had recognized him. He was a French gypsy. This much she knew. That was all. She had seen him beside some camp fire in the land of her birth.
“And I am sure it was he who peered through the skylight on the first night I danced the dance to the God of Fire,” she told herself. Involuntarily her eyes strayed to that skylight. There was no shadow there now.
“Could it have been that man who stole the God of Fire and sent it to America?” she asked herself. “Did he follow, only to find that it had been lost? And if so, what will he do to retrieve it?”
Knowing all too well the answer to this last question, she shuddered. A strange people, the gypsies care little for laws other than their own. If this man felt that he could formulate a claim to the gypsy God of Fire, he would stop at nothing to retake it.
“But he shall not have it!” she clenched her small hands tight.
From the gypsies she had absorbed a spirit of determination that was unshakable.
She thought of the flutter of wings in the theatre. “Some bird,” she reassured herself. “But what sort of bird? And who let him in?” Her mind was far from at rest on this point.
Nor did the thoughts that came to her as she recalled the “battle of Maxwell Street” bring her comfort. “Angelo was right,” she told herself. “It should not have happened. In times like these one cannot have too many friends; but one enemy is just one too many.”
Warming thoughts filled with great comfort came to her only when she recalled again the three traveling bags. “Ah! There is joy,” she breathed. “To serve another. And he was so big and kind. Perhaps he will come for the bags. It may be that I shall see him again.”
With this comforting thought she curled up in her chair. And there, half an hour later the others, on returning, found her, fast asleep.
As Petite Jeanne prepared to leave her room on the following evening for her third secret visit to the old Blackmoore, where she hoped once more to dance in Jimmie’s golden circle of light, she experienced a strange sensation. Events had been crowding in upon her. There was the strange gypsy, the fluttering of wings, the battle of Maxwell Street, the lost traveling bags. All these had, beyond doubt, exercised a powerful influence upon her. Be that as it may, she felt at that moment as if she were within a great funnel filled with sand. The sand was slipping, sliding, gliding downward toward a vortex and she, battling as she might, was slipping with it. And toward what an uncertain end!
As she closed her eyes, however, she realized that this vision belonged to the remote past—her very earliest childhood. In those days, she faintly recalled, there had been in a room of some house where she lived, an hour glass. This hour glass was composed of two glass funnels whose very narrow tips were made to meet. One of these funnels had been filled with fine sand. Then the broad ends of each had been sealed.
When this hour glass was set down with the empty funnel at the bottom, the sand trickled slowly down from the upper one.
“I seem to be inside the full glass,” she told herself. “The sands of time are sinking and I am sinking with them. Struggle as I may, I sink, sink, sink!
“But perhaps,” she said with a little shudder, “the giant hand of Fate, passing by, will seize the glass and turn it end for end. Then the sand will begin trickling down upon my head.”
The thought did not please her, so, shaking herself free from it, she hastened down the stairs and caught a bus, and whirled away toward quite another world.
As she closed her eyes once more for a moment’s rest, a second vision passed before her. A fleeting but very real vision it was, too—a marble falcon with a broken beak looking intently toward the sky. Then she recalled Merry’s words as they had parted on the previous evening: “Things are rather hard at times, but the falcon still looks up, so all will be well in the end.”
In spite of her efforts at self-control, Jeanne found her knees trembling as she entered Jimmie’s circle of light that night.
“For shame!” She stamped her dainty foot. “What is there to fear? The sound of wings. A bat perhaps, or a pigeon.”
Even as she said the words, she knew that she was lying to herself. There were no pigeons in the place. Pigeons leave marks. There were no marks. Bats there could not be, for bats pass on silent wings. Then, too, they snap their teeth.
“It is nothing,” she insisted stoutly, “and I shall dance to-night as never before!”
Jimmy was ready, later, to testify that she carried out this promise to herself.
“Like some divine one,” was the way he expressed it. “I tell you,” he fairly stammered in his enthusiasm, “you could see her floating about like a ghost on that dark old stage!”
Once her feet began their tapping, Jeanne thought only of the Fire God and her art. Gone were thoughts of rushing wings and crashing glass, of darkness and the terror that lurks in the night.
Gone, too, was the shabby old playhouse with its dingy drapes and tarnished gilt. She seemed not there at all. In spirit she found herself beside a roadway at the edge of a pleasant village in France. It was springtime. The scent of apple blossoms was in the air. The dwarf pear trees that grew so close against the wall, were green with new leaves. The gypsies were about her, they and the country folk. Bihari was sawing at his violin. Jaquis was strumming a guitar and she was dancing bare-foot on the soft grass of spring, while the eyes of the Fire God gleamed softly upon her. It was all so like a dream that she wished it might last forever.
Slowly there drifted into that dream a sound. At first she thought it was only a part of the dream, the clap of night hawks’ wings as they circled in the moonlight.
“But no!” Her face went white. “It is the wings, the fluttering of wings!” She almost cried aloud.
At the same instant she became conscious of some presence among the shadows that circled her on every side.
Panic seized her. She wanted to run away; yet she dared not. Close about her was Jimmie’s friendly circle of light. Beyond that was what? She dared not stir from that circle.
Suddenly her dancing ceased. Standing there alone in that sea of darkness, she stretched slim arms high, and cried:
“Jimmie! Jimmie! I’m terribly afraid! Don’t leave me! Please, please don’t let the light fade!”
Jimmie read real terror in her eyes, and in his honest devotion would have risked anything to save her from the unknown terror that lurked in the dark.
But he was helpless for in an instant the place went black. He had not touched a switch, yet his light had blinked out. His head whirled. His trembling hand found a switch, threw it on. Still no light. Another and yet another.
“The house is dark! The wires are cut!” he told himself frantically.
Feeling his way along the aisle, he began stumbling down a stairway when to his startled ears there came a long drawn, piercing scream.
After that followed silence, silence such as only an empty playhouse holds in the dark night.
For a full minute he saw nothing, heard nothing. Then came a sound. Faint, yet very distinct it came, and appeared to cross the hall from end to end.
“Wings,” he murmured. “Just what she said. The flutter of wings!”
Jimmie went at once for the watchman. He was some time in finding him. At last he stumbled upon him in the front corridor.
“Some one’s been tryin’ the door. Don’t know what it was about. Gone now, I guess. I—”
“Listen!” Jimmie broke in. “A terrible thing’s happened. The girl’s gone!”
“Who’s gone?”
“Jeanne!”
“Where to?”
“Who knows?” Jimmie spread his arms excitedly. “Who can tell? She’s been carried off, I tell you! Devil’s got her, like as not. Never did like that Fire God thing; gypsies and devils, witches and all that.”
“Don’t lose your head, son!” The watchman laid a hand gently on his shoulder. “She’s about the place somewhere. We’ll find her.” He gave a hitch to the big gun he always carried under his left arm and led the way.
Petite Jeanne was not “about the place somewhere.” At least, if she was she was securely hidden. They did not find her.
At last in despair Jimmie called Angelo.
“She’s gone!” he said over the telephone. “Vanished, and the Fire God thing has gone with her. She screamed once after the light blinked out. Some one threw the master-switch. She’s gone I tell you!”
Angelo called Florence. Half an hour had not passed before they were at the theatre. The police had also been notified. Three plain clothes men were there.
Between them they only succeeded in discovering that a side door was open and that Jeanne was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, gone.
When all hope of discovering the little French girl’s whereabouts deserted them, they left the place to the police, to spend a miserable hour before the fire in the studio. Without Jeanne, the place was dead. Without Jeanne—no one said it, but everyone thought it—the light opera, which had cost so much labor, and upon which so much happiness and success depended, was a thing of the past. Jeanne’s part was written for her. Not another person in all the world of stage people could play it.
“She’s gone!” Angelo rose and paced the floor.
“Kidnaped!” Dan Baker’s face looked gray and old.
“Do you really think so?” Florence looked the picture of despair.
“Not a doubt of it.”
“But why?”
“Ransom, perhaps.”
“Ransom!” The girl laughed. It was not a happy laugh. “Who’d pay it, you or I?” She went through the gesture of emptying her pockets.
“They’d hope the manager might. There’s been a lot of things done to stage people these last years. Blackmail. Graft. No end.”
“There’s the gypsies,” said Swen. “Where’d she get that God of Fire?”
“Bought it. Seventy-five cents.”
“Seventy-five cents!” Swen stared.
Florence told him the story of the Fire God. “There’s something in that,” said Swen. “They’re a queer lot, these Romanies. I’ve been studying them in their flats over by the big settlement house. Picked up some fantastic bit of music for the play. Got their own laws, they have. Don’t care a rap for our laws. If they wanted Jeanne and her god, they’d take her. That’s their way.”
In the meantime the hour was growing late. The manager and director must be faced in the morning. An important rehearsal had been set for nine A. M. Angelo could shut his eyes and picture the director’s rage when Jeanne failed to show up.
“He’ll have to be told,” he said.
“Yes,” Dan Baker understood, “he will. What is worse, he’ll have to know how and why. We can’t tell him why. But when we tell him how it all came about and just what she was doing at the time, then may the good Father be kind to us all!”
“We’ll face it all better if we have a little sleep.” Florence moved toward the door. The party broke up. A very sad party it had been.
As Florence rode home she closed her eyes and allowed the events of the past weeks to drift through her mind. These had been happy, but anxious weeks. To her, as to millions of others during this time of great financial depression, when millions were out of work and hunger stalked around the corner, there had come the feeling that something great, powerful and altogether terrible was pressing in upon her from every side.
The loss of her position had depressed her. Still, hope had returned when she secured part-time work at night.
Most of all she had been concerned with the success of the little French girl. Having induced her to come to America, Florence felt a weight of responsibility for her. Her continued success and happiness rested heavily upon Florence’s shoulders.
“And now—” She sighed unhappily.
But after all, what could have happened? She thought of the dark-faced gypsy Jeanne had spoken of; thought, too, of the Fire God that had fallen from some planet, been forged beneath the palms in some tropical jungle, or in one way or another had found its way into the wayside camps and the superstitious hearts of the gypsies.
“There might be many who would risk life itself to come into possession of it,” she told herself.
She thought of the curious phenomena that twice had frightened the little French girl.
“Wings,” she whispered. “Wings! The flutter of wings!”
The conductor called her station. Startled out of the past by the needs of the immediate present, she dashed off the street car, only to find herself thinking of the future.
“To-morrow,” she murmured, “what of to-morrow?”
How many millions had asked that same question during these trying times! And how varied were the answers!