Once again, as she stood there motionless, awaiting the first haunting wail of the violin, she felt herself float and glide like a cloud over the dewy grass of some village square in France; once again heard the wild applause as her bright shawl waved before a sea of up-turned faces in the Paris Opera.
“And I am not doing this for myself, but for that poor child with the lame knee,” she thought as her lips moved in a sort of prayer.
It is safe to say that Maxwell Street will not soon again see such dancing as was done on that rough platform in the moments that followed. Jeanne’s step was light, fairy-like, joyous. Now, as she sailed through space, she seemed some bird of bright plumage. Now, as she floated out from her bright shawl, as she spun round and round, she seemed more a spirit than a living thing. And now, for ten full seconds, she stood, a bright creature, gloriously human.
Seizing a tambourine that lay at the drummer’s feet, she struck it with her hand, shook it until it began to sing, then tossing it high, set it spinning first on a finger, then upon the top of her golden head. And all this time she swayed and swung, leaped and spun in time with the rhythmic music.
When at last, quite out of breath, she sprang high to clear the platform and land squarely in the stout arms of Bihari who, holding her still aloft, shouted, “Viva La Petite Jeanne! Long live the little French girl!” the crowd went mad.
Was there any question regarding the winner of the dance contest? None at all. When the tumult had subsided, without a word the man on the platform tossed the sheaf of bills straight into Jeanne’s waiting hands.
“Here!” Jeanne whispered hoarsely to the frail girl whose shawl she had borrowed, “Take this and hide it deep, close to your heart!” She crowded the prize money into the astonished girl’s hand. Then, as the crowd began surging in, she threw the bright shawl to its place on the girl’s shoulders.
“Tha—thanks for trusting the prize with me.” The girl smiled.
“Trusting you!” Jeanne exclaimed low. “It’s yours, all yours! Take it to your mother.”
“You can’t mean it! All—all that?” Tears sprang to the girl’s eyes.
“I do,” Jeanne replied hurriedly. “This is the spirit of the road. We are gypsies, you and I. Today I have a little. Tomorrow I shall be poor and someone shall help me. This is life.”
Next instant the crowd had carried Jeanne away. But close by her side was Bihari.
As the crowd thinned a little Jeanne caught sight of a forbidding face close at hand. It was the woman who, a few moments before, had believed her own dancer to be the winner. Stepping close, she hissed a dozen words in Jeanne’s ear. The words were spoken in the language of the gypsies. Only Jeanne understood. Though her face blanched, she said never a word in reply.
“Bihari,” she said ten minutes later as they sat on stools drinking cups of black tea and munching small meat pies, “do you remember that dark woman?”
“Yes, my Jeanne.”
“She is a bad one. I wonder if she could be our thief who stole the poor widow’s four hundred dollars?”
“Who knows, my Jeanne? Who knows? I too have read of that in the paper. I too have been ashamed for all gypsies. We must find her. She must be punished.”
“Yes,” said Jeanne, “we must find her.” Then in a few words she told of her own part in that search.
“As ever,” said Bihari, “I shall be your helper.”
“But you, Bihari,” Jeanne asked, “why are you not in our most beautiful France?”
“Ah!” Bihari sighed, “France is indeed beautiful, but she is very poor. In America, as ever, there is opportunity. Right here on Maxwell Street, where there is much noise and many smells, I have my shop. I mend pots and pans, yes, and automobiles too, for people who are as poor as I. So we get on very well.” He laughed a merry laugh.
“And because I am here,” he added, “I can help you all the more.”
CHAPTER VIII
A VISION FOR ANOTHER
That same afternoon Florence met Sandy at the door of his glass box. “Are—are you leaving?” she asked in sudden consternation. “I didn’t get my story in.”
“Oh, that’s O. K.” Sandy, who was small, young, red-haired and freckled, threw back his head and laughed. “I did it for you. It’s gone to press. Remember that psychoanalyst who wears some sort of a towel wrapped round his head and claims he is a Prince of India?”
“Oh, yes. He was funny—truly funny. And he wanted to hold my hand.” Florence showed her two large dimples in a smile.
“Yes. Well, I did him for you. So! Come on downstairs for a cup of coffee.”
“Sure.” Florence grinned. She was not on a diet and she was ready for just one more cup of coffee any time. Besides, she wanted to tell Sandy about her latest finds, Madame Zaran, June Travis, and the crystal ball.
“It’s the strangest thing,” she was saying fifteen minutes later as, seated in a remote corner of the cafeteria maintained for employees only, she looked at Sandy over a steaming cup of coffee. “I gazed into the crystal and, almost at once, I began seeing things!”
“What did you see?” There was a questioning look on Sandy’s freckled face.
“Trees, evergreen trees.” Florence’s eyes became dreamy. “Trees and dark waters, rocks—the wildest sort of place in the great out-of-doors.”
“And then?”
“And then it all changed. I saw the same trees, rocks and waters covered with ice and snow.”
“That surely is strange!” The look on Sandy’s face changed. “You must have been seeing things for me.”
“For you?” The girl’s eyes opened wide.
“Absolutely.” Sandy grinned. “You see, they’re trapping moose on Isle Royale, and—”
“Isle Royale!” Florence exclaimed. “I’ve been there, spent a whole summer there. It’s marvelous!”
“Tell me about it.” Sandy leaned forward eagerly.
“Oh—” Florence closed her eyes for a space of seconds. “It—why it’s wild and beautiful. It’s a big island, forty miles long. It’s all rocks and forest primeval. No timber has ever been cut there. And there are narrow bays running back two miles where, early in summer, marvelous big lake trout lurk. You put a spoon hook on your line and go trolling. You just row and row. You gaze at the glorious green of birch and balsam, spruce and fir; you watch the fleecy clouds, you feel the lift and fall of your small boat, and think how wonderful it is just to live, when Zing! something sets your reel spinning. Is it a rock? You grab your pole and begin reeling in. No! It moves, it wobbles. It is a fish.
“Ten yards, twenty, thirty, forty you reel in. There he is! What a beauty—a ten pounder. You play him, let out line, reel in, let out, reel in. Then you whisper, ‘Now!’ You reel in fast, you reach out and up, and there he is thrashing about in the bottom of your boat. Oh, Sandy! You’ll love it! Wish I could go. Next summer are you going?”
“Next week, most likely.”
“Next week! Why, it’s all frozen over. There are no boats going there now.”
“No boats, but we’ll take a plane, land on skiis. You see,” Sandy explained, “our nature editor has gone south. Now this moose-trapping business has come up and our paper wants a story. The thing has been dumped in my lap. I’ll probably have to go.”
“Oh!” The big girl’s face was a study. She loved the wide out-of-doors and all wild, free places. Isle Royale must be glorious in winter. “Wish I could go along! But I—I can’t.”
“Why not?” Sandy asked.
“I’ve got this girl, June Travis, on my hands. And, unless something is done, I’m afraid it will turn out badly.”
“June Travis?” Sandy stared.
“Yes. Didn’t I tell you? But of course not. It’s the strangest, most fantastic thing! I should have told you that first, but of course, like everyone else, I was most interested in my own poor little experience.”
“Tell me about it.”
Florence did tell him. She told the story wel
l, about June gazing into the crystal ball, the moving figures in that ball, June’s fortune which she was soon to possess, the voodoo priestess and all the rest. She told it so well that Sandy’s second cup of coffee got cold during the telling.
“I say!” Sandy exclaimed. “You have got something on your hands. Look out, big girl! They may turn out too many for you. My opinion is that all fortune tellers are fakes, and that the biggest of them are crooked and dangerous, so watch your step.”
“Oh, I know my way around this little town,” Florence laughed. “And now allow me to get you a fresh cup of coffee.”
“Sandy,” Florence said a moment later, “the little French girl, Petite Jeanne, was with me on Isle Royale. She’d like to hear all about your proposed trip to the island. We may be able to think up some facts that will be a real help to you. Why don’t you come over to our studio for dinner tomorrow night? I’m sure Miss Mabee would be delighted to have you.”
“All right, I’ll be there. How about your gypsy girl friend preparing a chicken for us, one she has caught behind her van, on the broad highway?”
“Her van has vanished, much to her regret,” Florence laughed. “We’ll have the chicken all the same.”
“And about this story of the crystal ball,” Sandy asked as they prepared to leave the cafeteria. “Shall I run that tomorrow?”
“Oh, no!” Florence exclaimed in alarm. “Not yet. I want to dig deeply into that. I—I’m hoping I may find something truly magical there.”
“Well, don’t hope too much!” Sandy dashed away to make one more “dead-line.”
That had been an exciting day for the little French girl. After she had crept beneath the covers in her studio chamber at ten o’clock that night, she could not sleep. When she closed her eyes she saw a thousand faces. Old, wrinkled faces, pinched young faces and the half greedy, half hopeless faces of the middle-aged. All that Maxwell Street had been as she danced so madly for the prize that meant so little to her and so much to another.
“Life,” she whispered to herself, “is so very queer! Why must we always be thinking of others? Life should not be like that. We should be free to seek happiness for ourselves alone. Happiness! Happiness!” she repeated the word softly. “Why should not happiness be our only aim in life? To sing like the nightingale, to dart about like a humming-bird, to dance wild and free like the fairies. Ah, this should be life!”
Still she could not sleep. It was often so. It was as if life were too thrilling, too joyous and charming to be spent in senseless sleep.
Slipping from her bed, she drew on heavy skating socks and slippers, wrapped herself in a heavy woolen dressing gown; then slipping silently out of her room, felt about in the half darkness of the studio until she found the rounds of an iron ladder. Then she began to climb. She had not climbed far when she came to a small trap door. This she lifted. Having taken two more steps up, she paused to stare about her. Her gaze swept the surface of a broad flat roof, their roof.
“Twelve o’clock, and all’s well,” she whispered with a low laugh. The roof was silent as a tomb. She stepped out upon the roof, then allowed the trap door to drop without a sound into its place. She was now at the top of her own little world.
And what a world on such a night! Above her, like blue diamonds, the stars shone. Hanging low over the distant dark waters of the lake, the moon lay at the end of a path of gold.
Here, there, everywhere, lights shone from thousands of windows. How different were the scenes behind those windows! There were windows of homes, of offices, of hospitals and jails. Each hid a story of life.
So absorbed was the little French girl in all these things as she sat there in the shadow of a chimney, she did not note that a trap door a hundred feet away had lifted silently, allowed a dark figure to pass, then as silently closed. Had she noted this she must surely have thought the person some robber escaping with his booty. She would, beyond doubt, have fled to her own trap door and vanished.
Since she did not see the intruder upon her reveries, she continued to drink in the crisp fresh air of night and to sit musing over the strangeness of life.
Some moments later she was startled by one long-drawn musical note, it seemed to have come from a violin, and that not far away. Before she could cry out or flee, there came to her startled ears, played exquisitely on a violin, the melodious notes of O Sole Mio.
To her vexation and terror, at that moment the moon passed behind a cloud and all the roof was dark. Still the music did not cease.
Awed by the strangeness of it all, captivated by that marvelous music played in a place so strange, Jeanne sat as one entranced until the last note had died away.
“There, my pretty ones!” said a voice with startling distinctness, “how do you like that? Not so bad, eh?”
There was something of a reply. It was, however, too indistinct to be understood.
“Could anything be stranger?” Jeanne asked herself. She knew that the voice was that of a young man, or perhaps a boy. She felt that perhaps she should proceed to vanish.
“But how can I?” she whispered, “and leave all this mystery unsolved?”
Oddly enough, the very next tune chosen by the musician was one of those wild, rocketing gypsy dance tunes that Jeanne had ever found irresistible.
Before she knew what she was about, she went gliding like some wild bewitching sprite across the flat surface of the roof. She was in the very midst of that dance, leaping high and swinging wide as only she could do, when with a suddenness that was appalling, the music ceased.
An ominous silence followed. Out of that silence came a small voice.
“Wha—where did you come from?”
“Ple—oh, please go on!” Jeanne entreated. “You wouldn’t dash a beautiful vase on the floor; you would not strangle a canary; you would not step upon a rose. You must not crush a beautiful dance in pieces!”
“But, ah—”
“Please!” Jeanne was not looking at the musician.
With a squeak and a scratch or two, the music began once more. This time the dance was played perfectly to its end.
“Now!” breathed Jeanne as she sank down upon a stone parapet. “I ask you, where did you come from—the moon, or just one of the stars?” She was staring at a handsome dark-eyed boy in his late teens. A violin was tucked under his arm.
“Neither,” he answered shyly. “Up from a hole in the roof.”
“But why are you playing here?” Jeanne demanded.
“I came—” there was a low chuckle. “I came here so I could play for the pigeons who roost under the tank there. They like it, I’m sure. Did you hear them cooing?”
“Yes. But why—” Jeanne hesitated, bewildered. “Why for the pigeons? You play divinely!”
“Thanks.” He made a low bow. “I play well enough, I suppose. So do a thousand others. That’s the trouble. There is not room for us all, so I must take to the house-tops.”
“But how do you live?” Jeanne did not mean to go on, yet she could not stop.
“I play twice a week in a—a place where people eat, and—and drink.”
“Is it a nice place?”
“Not too nice, but it is a nice five dollars a week they pay me. One may eat and have his collars done for five a week. The janitor of this building lets me have a cubbyhole under the roof, and so—” he laughed again. “I am handy to the pigeons. They appreciate my music, I am sure of it.”
“Don’t!” Jeanne sprang up and stamped a foot. “Don’t joke about art. It—it’s not nice!”
“Oh!” the boy breathed, “I’m sorry.”
“What’s your name?” Jeanne demanded.
The boy murmured something that sounded like “Tomorrow.”
“No!” Jeanne spoke more distinctly. “I said, what’s your name?”
The boy too spoke more distinctly. Still the thing he said was to Jeanne simply “Tomorrow.”
“I don’t know,” she exclaimed almost angrily, “whether it is today stil
l, or whether we have got into tomorrow. My watch is in my room. What I’d like to know is, what do your parents call you?”
“Tomorrow,” the boy repeated, or so it sounded to Jeanne.
Then he laughed a merry laugh. “I’ll spell it for you. T-U-M, Tum. That’s my first name. And the second is Morrow. I defy you to say it fast without making it ‘tomorrow’!
“And that,” he sighed, “is a very good name for me! It is always tomorrow that good things are to happen. Then they never do.”
“Tum Morrow,” said Jeanne, “tomorrow at three will you have tea with me?”
“I surely will tomorrow,” said Tum Morrow, “but where do I come?”
“Follow me with your eye until I vanish.” Jeanne rose. “Tomorrow lift that same trap door, climb down the ladder, then look straight ahead and down. You will probably be looking at me in a very beautiful studio.”
“Tomorrow,” said Tum Morrow, “I’ll be there.”
“And tomorrow, Tum Morrow, may be your lucky day,” Jeanne laughed as she went dancing away.
Tomorrow came. So did Tum Morrow. Jeanne did not forget her appointment. She saw to it that water was hot for tea. She prepared a heaping plate of the most delicious sandwiches. Great heaps of nut meats, a bottle of salad-dressing and half a chicken went into their making.
“Tea!” Florence exclaimed. “That will be a feast!”
“And why not?” Jeanne demanded. “One who eats on five dollars a week and keeps his collars clean in the bargain deserves a feast!”
The moods of the great artist were not, however, governed by afternoon appointments to tea. When Tum Morrow, having followed Jeanne’s instructions, found himself upon the studio balcony, he did not speak, but sat quietly down upon the top step of the stair to wait, for there in the center of the large studio, poised on a narrow, raised stand, was Jeanne.
Garbed in high red boots, short socks, skirts of mixed and gorgeous hues and a meager waist, wide open at the front, she stood with a bright tambourine held aloft, poised for a gypsy dancer.
To the right of her, working furiously, dashing a touch of color here, another there, stepping back for a look, then leaping at her canvas again, was the painter, Marie Mabee.
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