“The first night!” she whispered to herself. How often, in the last few days, she had heard those words. Experienced actors who had known many “first nights” and many failures as well, spoke them in whispers. Inexperienced youngsters shouted them. As for Jeanne, no one had heard these words fall from her lips.
“So much depends upon tonight,” she told herself. “Success or failure. And who does not wish to succeed grandly?”
The curtain was down, the stage deserted, as she paused in the wings before going to her dressing room, where Tico, curled up in a warm corner, awaited her.
Many times she had stared up into the dark rows of empty seats as she did her dance. In her mind’s eye she could see them even now. But now, too, she caught the rustle of programs. The seats were filling, filling with Americans—to her the great unknown. In wild panic she fled to her dressing room.
The place was bare, barn-like. Only Tico greeted her. It was cruel that Florence could not be here now.
“But she will come,” she assured herself, as a feeling of great hope surged through her being. “They will be there in the audience, she and the gypsy woman. I will see them. They will give me much courage.”
As she changed to her stage costume, a great peace stole over her. But this was not for long.
The sound of the orchestra’s opening number sent fresh chills up her spine. What was she to do? How could she find fresh courage for this hour? No answer came.
The curtain went up. Then, amid such a hush as she had never before experienced, she tremblingly took her place on the stage. The scene was a French gypsy camp, for the play told of gypsy life during the World War.
Fortunately her part in the first act, also in the second, was small. She sat unobtrusively beside the bear in her corner, or moved silently to the side of the ancient gypsy fortune teller.
The story of the gypsies during that war is a fascinating one. Their young men volunteered. They died as bravely as any other true Frenchmen. The older ones, the women and children, wandered here, there, everywhere, enduring the suffering and privation that had fallen upon the land.
In the story of this play, at its beginning, like Cinderella, Petite Jeanne, a diminutive figure, was held in the background. Marie Condelli, a fascinating dark-eyed gypsy girl, dressed in many bright silk skirts, took the front of the stage. It was she for whom feasts were arranged, she with whom a great American officer fell madly in love on the very day before his heroic death on the battlefield, she who was the very darling of gypsy camp and war camp alike.
One night, so the play ran in its second act, the two girls, the dark-eyed one and Petite Jeanne, sat at the feet of the fortune teller when that aged person spread her arms wide as she cried:
“I see a vision. It is a battlefield. Many are dying. A great officer is wounded. He falls. He is a father. She, his child, comes to him. It is a girl, a young woman. She bends over him. I see her face. Now I do not see it. But yes. It is Marie. No, it is little Jeanne. No! No! It is one. Which is it? My God, the vision is gone!” She falls to the earth in a spasm. When she comes to herself, the two girls implore her to tell them the truth. Had she seen one? Had it been the other? For both Marie and Petite Jeanne had been brought up like orphans in the gypsy camp. It had been rumored that one of these was stolen as a babe from a great French family. But which? No one knew.
Such is the story of that drama up to the great third act in which Petite Jeanne was to emerge from her obscurity and play an important role.
One fact we have not mentioned. Early in this play, it is revealed that Petite Jeanne’s gypsy lover has gone to war, and is believed to have been killed.
All during the first act, and again through the second, Jeanne’s eyes strayed to one spot, to the seats that had been allotted to Florence and any friend she might care to bring. Always the seats were unoccupied. At each fresh disappointment her despair deepened.
“Will they not come?” she asked herself over and over. “They must! They must!”
CHAPTER XXXII
PETITE JEANNE’S TRIUMPH
The tale the gypsy woman had to tell was as astonishing as it was fascinating. As we have said, told in her halting speech, it was long. Florence’s face showed her consternation as she looked at her watch when it was done.
“Come!” she cried, seizing the woman’s arm. “We must go to the theatre at once! We will miss some. We must not miss all. It is the first big night.”
She started and all but screamed as a man loomed before her. The officer! She had quite forgotten him.
“No tricks!” he warned. “She must start for Canada tonight.”
“But she must go with me first.” Florence was quick in recovery.
“No tricks,” he repeated.
“None at all. You may go with us. Only—” she hesitated, “we have but two seats.”
The man bent a steady look upon her. “You look all right. I’ll meet you at the box office after the show.”
“Oh, thank—thanks! But we must rush!” Florence was halfway out of the door.
Down the stairs they raced, then round the corner to a taxi stand.
Only once they paused before reaching the theatre. Leaping from the taxi, Florence dashed into a telegraph office. There she sent the following message to Sun-Tan Tillie at her home in the north woods:
“Bring the trunk at once. Your expenses will be paid.”
On returning to the taxi, she murmured, more to herself than to the gypsy woman:
“So they were in that trunk all the time! How perfectly marvelous!”
A moment later the taxi came to a grinding stop before the theatre. Here they were, at last.
* * * * * * * *
At that moment Petite Jeanne sat in a dark corner backstage, engulfed in despair. The curtain was down. The scene shifters were preparing for the great third act. The orchestra could be heard faintly. Her zero hour was at hand.
Thus far, the play had gone well. Its fate now lay in her hands. The big scene, the gypsy dance on a battlefield under the moon, would decide all.
And to Petite Jeanne at that moment all seemed lost. “If only they were my own French people,” she moaned.
At that moment all the hateful acts performed by her people against visiting Americans since the war, passed through her mind.
“How they must hate us!” she thought in deep despair. “And they know I am French. These Americans. They are so tremendous in their approval, so terrible in their disapproval! How can I dance before them? If only Florence and that gypsy woman were here!”
At that moment of sheer despair, a hand was laid upon her shoulder. A voice spoke to her.
“Cheer up, sister!” the voice said. “You are going to be a wonder! Only forget them all, and dance as you danced that night in the forest beneath a real moon. That was heavenly!”
The little French girl started in astonishment. She found herself looking up into the peculiar greenish eyes of the stage star she had thought of as her enemy.
“You—you saw?” Her eyes were filled with wonder. “And you do not hate me?”
“I? Hate you? I am your sister of the stage. Your success is the success of all.”
Petite Jeanne’s mind whirled. Then her thoughts cleared. She stood up straight and strong. She planted one kiss on the cheek of Green Eyes, shed one hot tear, then she was gone.
A few moments later, in the hush of moonlight, with a great throng looking down upon them, she and Tico appeared upon the stage.
In this act, as the play runs, the dark-eyed rival of the girl portrayed by Jeanne discovers her father, a great French officer who has lived unknown to his daughter for years, only to find that he is dying.
The light-haired gypsy comes upon the scene to find the other girl in her dying father’s embrace, thus to learn that her hope of finding as a father some noble Frenchman is dashed to the ground.
Downhearted, despairing, her lover gone, hopes vanished, she remains with bowed head while the dying
officer is carried away. Then, as her bear’s nose touches her hand, she remembers her art, the art of dancing. In this art she finds solace.
Moving gracefully into the dance, Petite Jeanne danced as she had never danced before. One pair of eyes in all that vast audience inspired her most. Gypsy eyes they were, the eyes of a stranger who had belonged to the camps of her enemy in France, but who, in a strange land, had become her friend. Florence and the strange gypsy had arrived in time.
The spell woven over the audience at that hour was sheer magic. The moonlight, the battlefield with its broken cannons; all this, with the bewitching dance of the tarantella, held the throng breathless, spellbound.
Then, at the dramatic moment, a soldier appeared. He was dressed in the uniform of a French poilu, but his face was the face of a gypsy.
He stood motionless, entranced, till the dance was done. Then, with a cry of joy, he clasped Petite Jeanne to his heart. He was her long lost lover.
To crown all, there comes from the distance a sound of shouting. Jeanne lifts her head to listen.
“What is it?” she asks hoarsely.
“That?” There is the joy of heaven in her lover’s eyes. “That is the armistice. The war is over!”
At these words, like the roar of a pent-up torrent, applause from those silent walls of humanity broke loose. Never before in the history of the theatre had there been such acclaim.
Petite Jeanne took curtain after curtain. She dragged forth her rival and her lover, all the cast. At last, quite exhausted, she fled to her dressing room, where she found Florence and the faithful Tico awaiting her.
“Oh, Florence!” Her voice broke as she threw herself into her boon companion’s arms. “These Americans! They are so very wonderful!”
“Down deep in our hearts we love the French as we love no other people.” Florence’s tone was solemn. “Two millions of our boys have lived in your villages. They shared your homes. They ate at your tables. They know how brave and generous the French people are. How could they help loving them?
“But, oh, Jeanne!” Her voice rose to a high tremolo. “I know all! All that we wish to know about those mysterious affairs of the north country!”
“Stop!” implored the little French girl. “You shall not tell me now. We must escape. We will go to our room. There we will have coffee and some most wonderful wafers, and we shall talk until it is day. Is this not the way of actors? And I am an actress now!” She laughed a merry laugh.
“Yes,” said Florence, “you are a very great actress!”
“Tico and I are very great,” Petite Jeanne laughed again, for at that moment she was the happiest girl in the world.
One moment that wild enthusiasm lasted; then again came desire to know, to hear the answers to many sealed secrets.
“Come!” she said. “Let us tell secrets by the light of a candle.”
CHAPTER XXXIII
FAST WORK
In the meantime, in the far-away Northland, there was great commotion within one small cottage. Tillie had received Florence’s message. She had read it over twice before showing it to her father and to Turkey Trot.
At last she read it aloud: “Bring the trunk at once. Your expenses will be paid.”
“What trunk does she mean?” her father asked in surprise.
“It’s a trunk we foolishly took from the lady cop’s cottage last summer,” Tillie replied, and groaned.
“But oh, father!” she cried a moment later, “I must go!”
Without a word her father disappeared through a door. He reappeared a moment later holding a well-worn leather bag. In it were their summer’s savings. He counted out some soiled bills. “She said she’d pay it back,” was his quiet comment. “Such folks don’t often go back on their word. Here’s the money.”
“Turkey,” he addressed himself next to his son, “you hitch old Billy to the stone-boat and go after the trunk. We’ll get Mike Donovan to drive Tillie over to the station. If we hurry, there’ll be just about time.”
So it happened that an excited girl stepped from the train in mid-afternoon of the next day in the great city of Chicago. This was Tillie. She had wired ahead to Florence, who was there to meet her. They clasped each other tightly.
“Have you got it?” Florence asked breathlessly.
“The trunk? I have. Here’s the check.”
“Good! It’s fearfully important and too mysterious for words. Let’s go after it at once.”
They were some little time in finding the baggage room in the large depot. When they did there was a crowd waiting and they were obliged to stand in line. To such a pair of eager spirits these waits seemed endless. But at last their time came. With trembling fingers Florence handed over the check. The agent disappeared with it. After some little delay he returned. The check was in his hand.
“Sorry,” he apologized. “Not here yet.”
“Not in,” Florence voiced her disappointment. “It was on the Copper Express.”
“The Copper Express!” The man seemed puzzled. “What sort of a trunk? That baggage—”
Just then a strange thing happened. Gripping Florence’s arm hard, Tillie exclaimed in a shrill whisper, “Look! There goes the trunk! That young man has it!”
Florence could not believe her ears. She did not doubt the testimony of her eyes. The mystery trunk was fast disappearing down a passageway that led to the street. It was on a strange young man’s back.
“Come on!” she cried. “He is stealing it! We must not let him.”
After that things happened so rapidly that there was no time to call for aid. They dashed away after the thief. They found him dumping the trunk into the back of a low-built, high power automobile. Another young man was seated at the wheel. With a sudden leap of the heart, Florence recognized this young man. He was the one Tillie had pitched so unceremoniously into the water.
“Here, you,” she cried, seizing the trunk stealer by the shoulder and whirling him about, “that’s our trunk.”
Taken completely by surprise, the man did not act at once. It was well, for when he did come to his senses, he flashed an automatic. A second too late. He saw his gun whirl into space as Florence launched her full one hundred and sixty pounds against his chest. He went down in a heap.
His companion, attempting to come to his aid, found himself expertly tripped by the versatile Tillie. The next instant, like some jaguar, she was at his throat and he heard her hiss: “Now we got you. You gamblin’, robbin’ kidnapper.”
It was fortunate for the girls that they were not obliged to hold their poses long. Half a dozen coppers arrived in time to give them aid, and assured them that matters would be adjusted in court at the proper time.
An investigation revealed the astonishing fact that the slick crooks had learned in some way, perhaps through Florence’s telegram, that the trunk was on the way. They had boarded the train at an up-state station, forged a check for the trunk and claimed it.
“They nearly got it that time,” Florence sighed as two red-caps tumbled the trunk into a waiting taxi and she and Tillie whirled away. “We’ll take it to Petite Jeanne’s apartment. It will be safe enough there. The gypsy told us where we could find the lady cop. We have located her. She and the ‘poor little rich girl’will be with us at Petite Jeanne’s show tonight. After that we will go to the apartment and have the formal opening of the trunk. Won’t that give us a thrill?”
“Won’t it, though?” Tillie bobbed up and down in her excitement.
“Those young men we just caught,” Florence said after a time, “were the last of the band.”
“What band?”
“A band of gamblers and thieves the law has been after for a long time. Through information provided by our gypsy friend, the others were taken today. They will not be bothering the kindly people of your settlement for some time to come. There is enough chalked up against them to last half a lifetime.”
“I suppose,” replied Tillie thoughtfully, “that I should feel sorr
y for them. But I just can’t. They went too far.”
“About two miles too far,” agreed Florence, recalling their heart-breaking swim in the cold night waters of Lake Huron.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE TREASURE CHEST
That night, just as the clock was striking twelve, an interesting company gathered in Petite Jeanne’s parlor. The lady cop was there. So, too, was Sun-Tan Tillie. Minus her faded bathing suit, looking quite stunning in a new dress of dark green, her big eyes shining with interest, Tillie sat in a corner. Close beside her was the “poor little rich girl,” who once had pledged her parents’rubies, and lost. She knew Tillie and, without having the least notion what it was all about, had come at her request. Petite Jeanne and Florence completed the company.
A tale was to be told. Secrets, they hoped, were to be revealed. With her taste for the dramatic, Petite Jeanne had insisted that the affair be carried off in the grand manner.
Electric lights were off. Shades were down. Four flickering candles furnished faint illumination for the room. On the very center of the rug rested the mysterious oriental trunk which had caused many a palpitation of the heart. It gave off a pungent odor of the forest.
“But how did you get it?” the lady cop exclaimed, on seeing it. “When I learned that the gamblers did not take it on their flight, I gave it up. Thought it was burned in their cottage.”
Florence held up a hand. It had been Jeanne’s decree that she should tell the story. “You will remember,” Florence began, “that it was my good fortune to be permitted to pour a few quarts of water from the lungs of a gypsy child.”
“In other words, you saved her life,” suggested the lady cop.
“Something like that. The gypsies are a loyal and grateful people. I have always known that. From the time I saved her child’s life, that gypsy mother had it in mind to repay the service. She has done it. Three nights ago she told me the answer to the riddles that have vexed our minds and lost us sleep. Yes, she even told me where I would find the three oriental rubies, which were so unfairly taken from Miss Erie.”
“The—the rubies!” The Erie girl sprang to her feet.
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