Darkness had fallen when Florence stepped from the theatre, just one week later. Rehearsal had started at five on that afternoon. Two members of the cast had found it impossible to be there at an earlier hour. Once into the swing of the thing, they had worked on and on quite unconscious of the fleeing hours.
She shuddered a little as she closed the door behind her. In her right hand was her leather Boston bag. As upon other occasions, a short chain, running through two rings at the top of the bag, held it tight shut. The ends of the chain were united by a stout little padlock.
Strong custodian of his Highness, the God of Fire, she peered through the darkness, looking north and south for a cab. Her brow wrinkled. On entering the building that night she had spied two dark-faced men loitering outside.
“And it’s important,” she told herself, setting her lips tight. “Very, very important.”
She was thinking of the strange God of Fire. Many times his story had been told that week. On the dramatic pages of daily papers and even in one magazine his ugly face had appeared. And always beside him, as if for contrast, was the lovely face and figure of the “sweetest dancer of all time,” Petite Jeanne.
“Day after to-morrow is the night of nights.” She caught her breath. How much it meant to them all; to Angelo, to Swen, to Dan Baker, to Petite Jeanne and to all the rest.
This night they had held dress rehearsal. And it had been such a glorious affair! She had not dreamed that such a multitude of lovely scenes and heavenly melodies could be packed into two short hours. Everyone, from Solomon, the manager, to the least and youngest of the chorus, was jubilant. They were made! In a lean year they would score a triumph. The thing would run for months. They would ride in taxis and find flowers in their dressing rooms each night.
“But I must not dream.” Shaking herself free from these thoughts, Florence tucked a small package securely under her arm. Then picking up the bag she stepped out.
She must find a cab for the little French girl. Still warm from exercise and excitement, Jeanne must not be exposed to the night’s damp chill.
No cab was in sight. “Must go round the corner and call one.”
She was about to do so when, with the suddenness of thought, a terrible thing happened. Springing from the shadows of a great pillar, two short, dark men dashed at her. Ten seconds of mad tussle in which her dress was torn, her arm wrenched, and her cheeks bruised, and they were away—with the leather bag!
The thing Florence did next was little short of amazing. She did not cry: “Stop thief!” did not call out at all. Instead, she ran after the fleeing men. But when they arrived at the end of the building, turned and darted into the darkness beside a bridge, she followed no longer; but, taking a tighter grip on the paper-wrapped package under her arm, she redoubled her speed and raced straight on. This soon brought her into the shadow of a block-long shed which housed derelict automobiles and river boats.
Arrived at the end of this shed, she turned, abruptly to the left and lost herself in a labyrinth of railway tracks and freight cars.
Here, beside a car marked BANANAS, she paused for breath. Strangely enough, at this moment she laughed a low, musical laugh.
She tarried there for only a moment. Then, like a startled deer, she sprang to attention. Heavy footsteps sounded in the night.
With a hasty glance this way and that, she crept from her hiding place and darted from shelter to shelter until she caught the dark gleam of the river.
Beyond the last car was a steep incline built of ashes and street rubbish. At the river’s brink this broke off abruptly. She knew its purpose. Men backed dump trucks up this incline to spill their contents of rubbish into a scow waiting at the bank of the river.
Darting into the shadow of this crude embankment, she crouched, waiting, straining her ears for the sound of her pursuers.
For a moment she allowed her eyes to stray to the river. “There,” she assured herself, “is the last scow towed in for loading.
“Not been used for months,” she thought. “No smell of freshly dumped rubbish here.”
Hardly had she arrived at this conclusion than a new crisis presented itself. Two dark shadows had darted from one box car to another.
“They’ll be here in another moment. Find me. I can’t escape. But then, I—”
She thought of the scow. It was deep. She could only guess how deep. It was as dark as a well.
“They’d never expect to find me there.” She was away like a streak. Over the side of the scow she went, and dropped. But not all the way. With her hands she clung to the side of the scow. Her feet did not touch bottom.
As she clung there, wondering whether or not to release her hold, the paper-wrapped package slipped from beneath her arm and dropped with a splash.
“Dumb!” she muttered. Then, “Oh, my glory! Water! I wonder how deep!”
But what of Petite Jeanne? Had she, arriving at the door, missed her companion and gone back into the building? Or, over-anxious for Florence’s safety, had she, too, gone into the street and been trapped? She had done neither. Yet adventure of quite another sort had come leaping at her.
Fascinated, as always, by the thought of that great opera stage at the end of the hall, and feeling that she had a few moments to spare, she had gone tiptoeing down the hall. She had found the door open and was preparing to look in upon the stage when a sidewise and backward glance gave her a severe shock. Standing not three paces behind her was a man. With arms stretched, he was approaching silently as one does who hopes to catch some creature off guard.
Striving in vain to still the beating of her heart, for she had recognized in this man the enemy she had made during the “battle of Maxwell Street,” Jeanne took one step out upon the opera stage. Then, realizing at a glance what was going on there, she played a bold hand. Turning half about, she hissed: “Dare to come one step nearer and I shall scream. Do you hear? The opera is in progress. The company is on the stage. I shall scream. And then—”
She did not finish. There was no need.
A performance of Grand Opera was truly in progress at that very instant. Through a thin wall of trees and shrubs painted on canvas, came a peculiar light, a transparent blue that suggested birds, flowers and springtime.
Even as the girl’s lips closed there came a burst of song from the front of the stage where, hidden by the partition, there were many singers.
Licking his lips like a tiger prepared to spring the man crouched, then moved a step forward.
“I’ll scream!” Petite Jeanne spoke aloud.
The sound of her voice was drowned by the chorus on the stage.
A scream would not be drowned. The man knew that well enough. But did she dare scream? This was the question at the back of the man’s shrewd but narrow mind.
She had said she would scream. To do this would be to invite a panic. A girl’s scream coming from back-stage during a dramatic moment of a Grand Opera performance could mean something little short of murder.
And yet the man, standing there irresolute, read in her eyes the answer: she would scream.
She looked down for an instant. When she lifted her eyes, he was gone. And the Grand Opera performance went on.
But now what? She dared not retrace her steps. The man would be lurking there.
Dashing across the back of the stage, she seized the handle of a door. It came open noiselessly. She passed through and closed it after her.
But where was she? In a mere cubby-hole of a place. A closet? No. An elevator, a French lift, the sort you operate yourself. You punch a button here and you go up; you press another button there and you stop.
She pressed a button. Up she glided. There were floors above, many, many floors. She would come to a halt at some floor, leave the elevator, and go speeding away.
She had glided up how many floors? She could not tell. Then she became frightened.
“I’ll bump!”
She touched a second button and stopped the steel cage with a suddenness that caused her teeth to snap.
She tried to open the door. It would not budge. She pressed the button and went gliding upward once more. A light gleamed before her. Once more she stopped.
This time she could open the door. She stepped from the lift, not into a room, not a hallway, but out upon an iron grating. And this grating, fifteen stories up, lay directly above the opera stage.
At first frightened, then fascinated, she threw herself flat upon the grating to watch with eager eyes the doings of the dwarf-like figures far below.
To this girl, born to the stage as a canary is born to the cedar and the humming bird to his flowering bush, the scene spelled irresistible enchantment.
To make the affair more compelling she recognized the star of the evening almost at once.
The scene beneath her was one of entrancing beauty: a flower garden and a village green in her native land. And dancing upon that green, arrayed in the most colorful of costumes, were the peasants of that village.
From time to time certain members of the group left their companions and danced away toward a back-stage corner, where they stood laughing and seeming to beckon to some one hidden from the view of Jeanne as well as the audience.
At last the long awaited one appeared. And then, oh, joy of joys!
“Marjory Bryce! My Marjory!” The little French girl was choked with emotion as these words escaped her. Fortunately they were too faint to be heard below.
That settled the matter. All other desires, all duties, all hopes and dreams were lost in one great desire. She must see the star of all time, her Marjory, perform, not in some dimly distant time, but right here in the golden now.
So, little dreaming what this resolve might mean, she pressed her cheeks against two iron bars and awaited the next move in this singing drama which she but dimly understood.
“Anyway,” she whispered softly, “I’ve got a top-stage seat. Who could ask for more?”
In the meantime a passing stranger, who had witnessed from a distance Florence’s struggle with the two men before the theatre door, and had arrived on the scene too late to be of any assistance, had rushed into the theatre lobby to spread the alarm.
There he fell into the arms of Solomon. His tale was quickly told, and at once three greatly excited persons ran into the street. They were Solomon, Angelo and Dan Baker.
Sprinting along in the direction indicated by the stranger, Angelo plunged boldly into the dark shadows by the bridge.
There was no one there. But by good chance he came upon Florence’s Boston bag lying on the ground.
The exclamation of joy that escaped his lips at sight of it died suddenly. As he lifted it from the earth he found it almost as light as air.
“Gone!” he exclaimed. “The Fire God is gone!”
“What could you expect?” Solomon grumbled. “They were after it. Why should they leave it?
“See!” he added after one look at the bag. “They ripped it open.”
As he turned to retrace his steps he stumbled over a hard object.
“A brick,” he mumbled after casting the light of a pocket torch upon it. “Only a brick.”
“But how strange!” There was surprise in Angelo’s voice. “The thing is dry. And it rained only two hours ago. And see! There are two of them.”
“Those men threw them there,” was Solomon’s pronouncement. “Probably meant to brain some one if necessary.”
He could not have guessed how wrong he was.
Since no further trace of the missing girl and her precious burden could be found there was nothing for them but to return. This they did. Then they discovered that Petite Jeanne, too, was missing.
The police were notified at once. An alarm was broadcast over the police radio network. After that there seemed nothing to do but wait.
* * * * * * * *
Florence was a girl of strength and courage. Not without reward had she spent hours in the gymnasium. Swinging from ring to ring in mid-air, twisting through ladder and trapeze, torturing the medicine-ball, she had developed muscular strength far beyond her years.
There was need of grip and grit now, as she clung, with the mysterious pursuers above her, and with water, perhaps fathoms of it, beneath her, to the side of that abandoned scow.
Footsteps approached. Grumbles and curses sounded in her ears. Trembling, she held her breath. Her fingers, she knew, were in the shadows. Flattened as her body was against the dark side of the scow, she hoped she might not be seen if anyone looked for her there.
To her great relief they did not look but went grumbling away toward some fish shanties a block away.
“Do they live there?” she asked herself. “I wonder.”
Moments passed. Her courage and her grip weakened.
“What’s the use?” she murmured at last. “I can swim. Swimming is better than this, even in a city dump scow.”
Relaxing her hold, she dropped with a low splash into some ten inches of black, muddy water.
“So far, so good,” she philosophized. “But now?”
Groping about in the muddy water she retrieved her paper-wrapped package and tucked it under her arm.
Her next task was a survey of her temporary prison. She was in no great danger, but the water was frightfully cold.
“Must get out of here some way,” she told herself. “Besides, there’s Petite Jeanne. She’ll fret her poor little heart.”
Had she but known!
Slowly she made her way about, feeling the walls of her strange prison. Everywhere the walls were too high. Even by leaping she could not grasp them.
“And if that were possible,” she told herself, “I could not climb up without some foothold.”
It was a foothold she sought. “Only some cleats or patches, or a rusty chain dangling down,” she all but prayed. Her prayer was not answered.
“Oh, well,” she sighed. And with that, propping herself in a corner, she stood first on one foot, then on the other, and almost fell asleep.
But what was this? Did she catch the sound of footsteps? Yes. She was sure of it, light footsteps as of a woman. She knew not whether to tremble or rejoice.
The sound grew louder, then ceased.
After that, for a long time there was silence. The silence was broken at last by a startling sound. A rusty harmonica suddenly lent its doubtful harmonies to the night.
Curiosity and desire drew her from the shadows. Then she all but laughed. A ragamuffin of a newsboy with three frayed papers under his arm sat, legs adangle, on top of the dump, pouring out his soul to the moon in glorious discord.
Instantly she knew that here was her savior. She understood boys well enough to realize that the raggedest of them all could not be hired to watch a lady freeze in a well of a prison.
“Hey, there!” she called in a loud whisper, as the disharmony died away.
This came near being her undoing. The boy’s eyes bulged as he scrambled to his feet, prepared to flee. His whole being said: “I have heard a ghost!”
“No, no!” she cried aloud. “Don’t run away! I am down here. In the scow. I—I fell in. Help me out. I’ll buy your papers, a jitney for every one, and a dime to boot!”
Reassured, he dropped to the top of the scow and peered down.
“Gee!” he exclaimed. “You are in it! Been in long?”
“About an hour.”
“Gee!”
“I’ll go for help,” he said, after a moment’s thought.
“No, don’t,” she begged. “Find a rope, can’t you? Tie it up here. I can climb out.”
“I’ll try.”
He disappeared. A moment later there came a clanking sound.
“Here’s a chain,” he called back. “Gee, it’s heavy!”
He succeeded in dragging it to the top of the scow and knotting one end about a broken bit of plank. He threw the free end over the edge. With a mighty jangle and bump, it extended its length to the water’s edge.
“Fine!” she applauded. “Now watch this!” She threw her paper-bound package to the dump beside him.
“Man! It’s heavy!” he exclaimed as he picked it up.
“Now! Here I come!” Florence’s agility in climbing a chain surprised even a boy. He was still more surprised when, after thrusting a shiny half dollar in his hand, she grasped her mysterious package and hastened away among the box cars.
Ten minutes later she emerged upon an all but deserted street. To her great relief she succeeded in hailing a passing taxi at once and went whirling away from the scene of her peril.
In the meantime, though lifted to the seventh heaven by the scene of entrancing beauty that lay beneath her, Petite Jeanne was suffering pangs of conscience.
“I must go!” she whispered to herself as, lying flat upon the iron grating, she drank in the beauty of the opera. “I surely must. Florence will miss me. There will be a fearful fuss. But one more look, only one.”
So she lingered and the minutes sped away.
The scene beneath her was the first from The Juggler of Notre Dame, one of matchless beauty. And, more than this, was not her friend playing the part of the Juggler?
Marjory Bryce was dressed in the very costume she had worn beneath her purple cape on that day when she sat beside Solomon and reviewed the light opera.
Now as she glided with matchless grace across the stage, as her crystal clear voice came drifting up, as she performed her act as a juggler, as she listened later in despair to the priest as he denounced her trick as inspired by the Devil, as at last, yielding, she consented to give up her gay life and enter the monastery, Jeanne found her an artist rare and inspired.
“No wonder her audience loves her!” she whispered to herself.
But now the scene was ended. Swiftly men worked, lifting stage settings toward her and lowering others to the stage, for in this modern playhouse all stage equipment was hung high above the stage. She realized that her time for escape had come. She had but to let herself down to the stage; the lift would do this for her; then she might dash unobserved across the back of the stage, and down the corridor.
“And if that man is there still,” she told herself stoutly, “I’ll see that three husky stage hands do for him just what needs to be done.”
There was no one in the hallway when she reached it. How the man entered the building, how he hoped to carry Petite Jeanne from it, and how he made his escape after his evil plans had been frustrated, will remain a mystery.
As she entered the theatre she fell into the arms of the delighted and all but tearful old trouper.
“And Florence?” he demanded. “Where is she?”
“Florence?” The little French girl stared. “How could I know?”
“Were you not with her?”
“Absolutely not!”
“Then she and the God of Fire have vanished.”
“Vanished?”
Dan Baker told her all he knew.
“Well,” said Angelo as he concluded, “there’s nothing left but to go to the studio and await any news that may come. The police are on the job.”
“No news will come,” was Petite Jeanne’s sad comment. “And to think that all this time I have been so happy!” She buried her face in her hands and wept.
At the studio, overcome by anxiety and weariness, Jeanne slumped down in a broad, upholstered chair before the fire and fell asleep.
As for the others, they, too, drew chairs to the fire, but did not sleep. They spent an hour in thoughtful silence.
Then there was a rattle at the doorknob and in stepped Florence herself. Ruddy-cheeked and apparently quite unharmed, she stood before them.
Angelo sprang forward. “Where have you been?” he gasped.
“Your feet!” he exclaimed. “They’re soaking. Must be frozen!”
“Not quite. Help me off with them, will you?” She spoke of shoes, not of feet.
In a gallant, brotherly manner, he removed her shoes and stockings. Then leading her to a place before the fire, he proceeded to chafe the purple from her all but frozen toes.
“Wh—where’s the god?” he asked suddenly.
For answer she put out a hand to reclaim her water-soaked paper-bound package. Tearing away the wrapping, she revealed its contents and then set it at the edge of the fire to dry.
“The God of Fire, as I live!” he exclaimed.
“None other.”
“But how—how did you get it back?”
“Had it all the time.”
“But they got your bag!”
“Sure. And it contained two good bricks. No use taking a chance like that. I had this god under my arm done up in a newspaper all the time.” She looked at the Fire God and he appeared to leer back at her, as much as to say: “You’re a good one! You are keen!”
“They very nearly got me, for all that!” she said, after a moment. Then she told of her flight, the pursuit, the old scow and the ragged little musician.
“We’ll be going,” said Angelo, beckoning to his companions when she had finished. “She’ll need a good, long sleep.” He nodded his head toward Jeanne. “Your room, Florence, is far away. I’ll spend the night with Swen.
“I’d like,” he added, “to see her face when she sees him!” Once more he nodded toward Jeanne, then toward the god.
“Why not? She must be wakened.” Florence touched Jeanne’s cheek with a cold hand. She wakened with a start.
“See!” Angelo’s tone was tense with emotion. “The god!”
Jeanne stared for a moment. Then a look of distrust overspread her face. “No,” she cried, “it can’t be! You are deceiving me. It is made of clay! You made it.”
She put out her hand to grasp it and dash it to pieces. Finding it both hot and heavy, she dropped it quickly. Then there came over her face a look like nothing so much as a spring sunrise, a look that would repay a thousand miseries, as she whispered softly:
“It is! My own gypsy God of Fire! How perfect! Now I shall live anew!”
In a broad old spool-bed, beneath home woven covers from the hills of Italy, and with doors double locked and bolted, the two pals, Florence and Jeanne, fell asleep a short time later. They were wakened just as the shop people on the streets far below were hurrying out for their noonday luncheon.
In a bright colored dressing gown, her golden hair falling about her shoulders, Petite Jeanne sat buried deep among cushions in her great easy chair.
It was high noon of her great day. She had slept late. Now, as she sat sipping tea and munching toast, she thought of the past and of the future.
Behind her in the past lay disappointments, heartaches and many perils. Were they gone forever? Did only a golden future lay before? She hoped so.
And yet—she thought of the dark-faced gypsy whose one purpose in life appeared to be to come into possession of her gypsy Fire God; she thought, too, of the enemy of Maxwell Street. It was he, she felt sure, who was hounding poor old Dan Baker for money.
“He’s a blackmailer! I hope we have heard the last of him!” she cried passionately.
Soon she was to know that they had not!
Since the affair at the door of the opera stage and the theft of Florence’s Boston bag, the ever thoughtful Solomon had secured a special taxi driver, a man of skill and courage, to carry Florence and Petite Jeanne wherever they must go. But until now nothing further had happened.
“And to-night is the night!” She poked her pink toes out from the blanket in which they were wrapped and murmured: “And to-night, you feet, you must do what Florence calls your durndest!” She laughed a merry laugh.
At four their special cabman honked in the street below. They would go to the theatre. There in her dressing room Petite Jeanne would rest, partake of a belated tea, and await the zero hour.
She was thinking of this in a dreamy way as they sped toward the theatre when, as they paused before a crossing signal, shocking things began to happen.
“Make room!” a gruff voice demanded. A man in a huge overcoat attempted to crowd in beside Florence. She resisted. All her splendid muscles went into play. The taxi driver was not lagging in his part. Swinging the car sharply about, he attempted to dislodge the intruder from the running board. A car coming from the opposite direction struck his hind wheel. His cab spun around, skidded sharply to the right and struck the curb with a crash.
The shock threw the intruder from his place. He went sprawling, struck his head on the street curb and lay there dazed.
In an instant Florence, filled with honest courage and righteous indignation, leaped upon him.
But now a second man, springing from his car, dashed at her. She could hardly cope with both of them. But reinforcements were coming. A crowd was gathering. From this crowd sprang a stout, ruddy faced man. With one deft blow he felled the oncoming assailant and, with apparent satisfaction proceeded to pin him to the pavement.
Florence felt the man she held struggle to free himself. But just then two burly policemen, arriving on the scene, relieved her of her task.
Trembling from head to toe, Petite Jeanne had left the wrecked cab and was standing by the curb when the man who had come to their rescue approached with lifted hat.
“I have a car here, a rather good one.” He half apologized for intruding. “Your cab’s smashed. The driver tells me you are bound for your theatre. It would be a pleasure—” Suddenly he stopped and stared with dawning recognition at the little French girl.
“Why, upon my word!” he exclaimed. “It is you! Petite Jeanne! The very person for whom I am looking!” He stripped off a glove to hold out his hand.
Until that time, thinking him only a gallant stranger, Jeanne had taken no notice of this man. Now, after one surprised look, she cried, with the feeling native to her race:
“Preston Wamsley! My very dear friend!”
It was, indeed! Having returned, after a month of travel, to his hotel in New York, and finding there Jeanne’s letter regarding his long lost luggage, this friend of her sea journey had hastened immediately to this city and to Angelo’s studio. There he had received the French girl’s address and had been driving to her home when these strange happenings had arrested his progress.
“Nothing,” he said, with a ring of genuine emotion in his voice, “could give me greater pleasure than to drive you to your theatre. Your friend may come with us. You have an unusual taxi driver. He appears to know the ropes. He will make all necessary reports and see that those rascals are put behind bars where they belong. It was a kidnaping plot beyond a doubt.
“No,” he said a moment later, as Jeanne, after sinking into the cushions of the great car he had employed, started shakily to explain, “you need not tell me a thing to-night. To-morrow will do quite as well. Your nerves have been shaken. And this, the driver assures me, is to be your great night.”
“It is,” Petite Jeanne murmured. Then sitting up quite suddenly, she produced a ticket from her purse. “This,” she said, “is the last one in my private row. You must take it.”
“I could not well refuse.” He tucked it away in his billfold; then, as Jeanne sat quite still with eyes closed, striving to still her madly beating heart, they glided onward toward the theatre and her night of nights.
As Petite Jeanne entered her dressing room she found a diminutive figure hidden away in a corner. At sight of the little French girl this person sprang to her feet with a cry of joy:
“Oh, Petite Jeanne! I have waited so long!” It was Merry.
“But see!” She pointed proudly at Jeanne’s dressing table. “I brought him to you. He will bring you luck to-night, I am sure. For, only look! He is still gazing toward the sky!” On Petite Jeanne’s dressing table rested the marble falcon.
“My own Merry!” Jeanne clasped her in her arms. “You think only of others.
“And you—” She clasped her friend at arm’s length. “Has the marble falcon brought you good fortune?” Seeing how pinched was the face of the little Irish girl, she realized with a pang that in all the rush and excitement of the last two weeks Merry had been sadly neglected.
Merry hung her head for ten seconds. But her blue eyes were smiling as she whispered hoarsely:
“Tad says good times are right round the corner. Our luck will change.”
“Yes, indeed!” exclaimed Jeanne. “It will. It must.” And she made a solemn vow that in the future her success must bring success to her dear little Irish friend.
Unknown to Jeanne, powerful influences had been at work. Her friend, the famous prima donna, enjoyed a large following. More than one morning she had seated herself at her telephone and had whispered words this way and that. The house had been sold out four days before the opening night. This had been glorious news.
“The best of the city will be here,” Solomon had said with a sober face. “One must remember, however, that the best are the most critical, too, and that their judgment is final. No curtain calls on the first night: good-bye, dear little light opera!”
What wonder then that Petite Jeanne’s fingers trembled as she toyed with a rose in her dressing room fifteen minutes before the lifting of the curtain on that night of nights!
“But I must be calm!” she told herself. “So much depends upon it: the success and happiness of all my Golden Circle! And with the success of this circle we may expand it. Merry shall enter it, and Tad, and perhaps others?
“I have only to be real, to be quite natural, to dance as I have danced by the garden walls of France; to say to that audience of rich and wise and beautiful people:
“‘See! I have for you something quite wonderful. It came from the past. Only the gypsies have seen it. Now I show it to you. And not alone I show it, but this sweet and good old dancer and all these, my chorus, so fresh and fair and young. Have you ever seen anything quite so enchanting? No. To be sure you have not!’”
Reassured by her own words, she rose to skip across the floor, then on down the vestibule toward the stage.
When the curtain rose on a scene of matchless beauty, a gypsy camp somewhere in France; when the beholders found themselves looking upon the gorgeous costumes, colorful tents, and gaudily painted vans clustered about a brightly glowing campfire; when the music, which might well have been the whispering of wind among the trees, began stealing through the house, a hush fell upon the place such as is seldom experienced save in the depths of a great forest by night.
When the little French girl, a frail wisp of humanity all done in red and gold, came spinning upon the stage to dance before the leering God whose very eyes appeared to gleam with hidden fire, the silence seemed to deepen.
All through that first act, not a sound was heard save those which came from the stage. Not a programme rustled, not a whisper escaped.
When at last, having told his quaint story and been accepted as a dancer in place of the bear, the old trouper with Jeanne as his partner danced twice across the stage and disappeared into the shadows, the silence was shattered by such a roar of applause as the beautiful little playhouse had never before known.
Seven times the curtain rose. Seven times the little French girl dragged her reluctant hero, Dan Baker, out to the footlights to bow to the still applauding audience.
When at last the curtain fell for good, she whispered, “What a beginning! But there is yet more.”
Who can describe in mere words of black on white the glories of that night? The scenes, done by an artist who had lived long in France, reproduced faithfully the gypsy camp by the roadside, the garden of the Tuileries in Paris and the little private garden of a rich French home.
To many who saw them, these scenes brought back tender memories of the past. Some had been soldiers there, and some had gone there to enjoy the glory that is Paris.
And when Jeanne, a golden sprite, now leaping like a flame, now gliding like some wild thing of the forest, now seeming to float on air like a bird, poised herself against these marvelous settings, there came at every turn fresh gasps of surprise and delight.
Nor did Jeanne seek all the glory. She appeared ever eager to bring forward those who were about her. When Dan Baker did his fantastic rustic dance and told his more fantastic yarns, she watched and listened as no others could. And hers was the first shrill scream of delight.
When the chorus came weaving its way across the stage she joined them as one who is not a leader, but a humble companion.
Indeed as the evening wore on, the delighted audience became more and more conscious of the fact that the little French dancer was not, in spirit, on that stage at all, but by some roadside in France and that, while contributing her share to the joy of the occasion, she was gleaning her full share from those who joined her in each act.
This was exactly what had happened. And Jeanne was not conscious of the row on row of smiling, upturned faces. She saw only one row. And in that row, by her request, sat the members of what she had playfully termed her “Outer Golden Circle.”
And what a strange circle it was! First and most delighted of all, was the great prima donna, Marjory Bryce. Beside her was Merry, and on round the circle, Tad, Weston, Kay King, Big John and the ruddy faced Englishman, Preston Wamsley. To this group Florence had added three persons. These were dark mysterious beings with red handkerchiefs about their necks. Jeanne had started at sight of two of them. They were the gypsy mother and father who had once aided in kidnaping her. But the third! She all but fell upon the stage at sight of him. It was Bihari, her gypsy foster father who having learned, in the way these wanderers have, that Jeanne was to appear on the stage this night, had come all the way from France that he might be a guest of honor.
What a night for Jeanne! Little wonder that she outdanced her wildest dream! Little wonder that when the last curtain fell thunderous applause appeared to rock the great building. Little wonder that they called her back again and yet again.
For all this, the night was not over. The keen mind of Abraham Solomon had thought up a fitting climax for so great a triumph. As, on the final curtain, they stood there in a group, Jeanne and her stage lover, Dan Baker, Angelo, Swen and Solomon, Jeanne broke away to scream in her high pitched voice:
“This is our Golden Circle.” At that, whipping out a long roll of golden paper tape, she raced about the little group entwining them again and again, at last including herself within the circle.
The audience went wild. They applauded; they whistled; they stamped their feet.
More was to come. As the company of beautiful maidens, her chorus, gathered close, she encircled them to cry once more:
“And this, too, is our Golden Circle.”
At this moment came the little dancer’s turn for surprise; for the audience, rising as one man, shouted in unison: “This is our Golden Circle!”
At this instant the entire auditorium seemed to burst into yellow flame. The effect was startling in the extreme. Only ten seconds were required, however, for those on the stage to realize that the wise old Solomon, their manager, had put something over on them. The gold was the flash and gleam of a thousand golden streamers thrown to every point of the compass by delighted patrons. Solomon had provided the streamers with their programmes. Each person had been told in advance that when the time came for using these they would know. And few there were that did not realize when the real moment arrived. Truly, this was an occasion long to be remembered.
Petite Jeanne’s face loomed large next day on every page devoted to dramatic art in the day’s papers. And beneath each were the words: “Girl of the Golden Circle.”
* * * * * * * *
There is little left to tell; Petite Jeanne, the old trouper, Angelo, Swen, and all the rest had scored a triumph that would not soon be forgotten.
Jeanne’s success did not, however, rob her of her interest in others; on the contrary, it served to increase it. On that very evening, as she was ushered into a magnificent reception room where she was to meet a very select company of patrons, the highly educated, the influential and the rich, she began her missionary work by whispering in every ear a deep secret of some tiny shop hidden away in a cellar where unusual objects of art might be purchased at unheard of prices. On the very next day Merry was astonished by the arrival of customers of such quality and importance as her little shop had not before known. It was no time at all before the little shop was humming merrily, Tad was busy at his bench and Merry back at her place at auction sales buying shrewdly for future needs.
One of the men captured by Florence and the friendly Englishman turned state’s evidence. By his confession, a band of contemptible rogues, who for a long time had been preying upon theatre folk, was apprehended and brought to justice.
As for the dark-faced evil-minded gypsy who coveted the God of Fire, good old Bihari made short work of him. He revealed to the immigration authorities that this man had entered the country without a passport. And since he was the very one who had stolen the treasured god in the first place, when he set foot in France he was outlawed by the gypsies themselves.
As Jeanne had known all the time, the wealthy Englishman, Preston Wamsley, had prized the articles of great beauty in his traveling bags, not because of their value in dollars, but because of his associations with those who from time to time had presented them to him. He had been broken-hearted upon learning that a blundering shipping clerk had billed them to the wrong name and address and that he had probably lost them forever.
Good fortune having knocked at his door, he was duly grateful. When Petite Jeanne had told the story, he insisted upon driving her out to Kay King’s tiny book shop, whereupon he rewarded the young man handsomely for the generous spirit he had shown in sacrificing sure financial gain in order to spare the feelings of a friend.
During all the long run of the highly successful light opera, the marble falcon remained in its place on Petite Jeanne’s dressing table.
“To me,” she said to her friend, the prima donna, one day, “it will always remain the symbol of one who, buffeted and broken by the storms of life, keeps his eyes fixed upon the clouds until at last he has achieved an abiding success.”
“Ah, yes, how beautifully you say it!” exclaimed the great one. “But you, Petite Jeanne, you are the marble falcon of all time.”
“I?” Petite Jeanne laughed a merry laugh. “For me life has been wonderful. There are always my many friends, you know.”
“Ah, yes, your Golden Circle. If it were not for these, our golden circles, how could we be brave enough to live at all?”
The End