At last a face appeared, a slim pinched face surrounded by a mass of uncombed hair. A second face peeked out, then a third.
“Come here,” Florence beckoned. Like birds drawn reluctantly forward by some charm, the three unkempt children glided forward until they stood beside her chair.
“Who are you?” Florence whispered.
“I’m Tillie,” the largest girl whispered back. “She’s Fronie, and he’s Dick. Our mother’s gone away. Myrtle takes care of us, sort of like.”
“We—we’re going to have ice cream and cake for dinner!” Fronie burst forth in a loud whisper. “The beautiful lady gave Myrtle two whole dollars. We always have ice cream and cake when Myrtle gets a dollar. This time it’s two.” The child’s pathetic face shone.
Within, Myrtle Rand, the fortune teller, was saying to Jeanne:
“You may shuffle the cards. Now cut them twice with your right hand. That’s it.
“Now—one, two, three, four, five, six; and one, two, three, four, five, six. I see a change in your life. I think you will go to California. Yes, it is California. One, two, three, four, five, six.” She spread out a third row of cards, then paused to study Jeanne’s face intently.
“Your hair is beautifully done,” she said in a low tone. “Who does it for you?”
“You—you mean you’d like her address?” Jeanne started. How nearly Florence’s words were coming true!
“Yes, yes I would.” There was eagerness in the fortune teller’s tone. Then, as if she had been surprised into revealing too much, she added, “But then it does not matter too much. You see I have a daughter who has a very good position and—”
“She might like to try my hair-dresser,” Jeanne supplemented. “Here, I’ll write it down.”
With the pencil proffered her she scribbled down a name and address. The name was Florence Huyler and the address that of their studio. Then she smiled a puzzling smile.
Outside, Florence was saying to Tillie, “How do you know the beautiful lady has given Myrtle two dollars?”
“We—we—we saw them through the crack,” Fronie sputtered. “Two whole dollars! Mostly it’s only quarters and sometimes dimes that Myrtle gets for telling ’em things. Then we have bread that is dry and hard and sometimes soup that is all smelly.”
“Myrtle, she’s good to us,” the older child confided. “Good as she can be. But the rent man comes every week and says, ‘Pay, or out you go!’ So all the quarters get gone!”
“For a quarter Myrtle, she tells ’em their husbands will come back next week, and some day they’ll have money, plenty of money.” The little girl leaned forward eagerly and confidingly.
“But for two whole dollars—o-o-oh, my, what a swell fortune! She—”
Just then the outer door opened. A shabbily dressed woman, carrying a bundle that looked like a washing she was taking home to be done, came in and dropped wearily into a chair. Her eyes lighted for an instant with hope as she stared at the closed door, then faded.
The children vanished. A moment later a second drab creature entered, and after that a third.
“All working women,” Florence thought, “and all ready to part with a hard-earned quarter that they may listen to rosy prophecies about their future.” She found her spirits sinking. She hoped Jeanne’s fortune would be a short one.
It was not short. The cards were shuffled three times. Then the crystal ball on the table was gazed into. Jeanne’s fortune grew and grew. “I see fine clothes and a big car for you. You will go to California. Yes, yes, I am sure of that. And money—much money. You have rich relatives. Is it not so? And they are quite old.” Myrtle Rand went on and on.
At last Jeanne said, “I—I think I must go now.”
“But you will return?” Myrtle Rand’s tone was eager. “There is much more to be told. Very much more. Next time I will tell of your past. I shall tell you many strange things. It will surprise you.”
Jeanne managed to slip from the room without committing herself. A moment later the poor woman with the large bundle took her place before the crystal ball.
“Well,” Jeanne laughed low as she and Florence walked into the bright light of day, “I have a very rosy future! I am to have all that heart could desire—love, money, automobiles, travel, everything!”
“And next time you are going to be very much surprised,” Florence added.
“How did you know that?” Jeanne stared. “You can’t have heard.”
“No, but it’s true nevertheless.”
“And you,” Jeanne laughed afresh, “you are now my hair-dresser. You are to be at home between three and four o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Why you made me tell that fib is something I don’t at all understand.”
“You will,” Florence laughed merrily. Then, “Here’s our car. Let’s hurry.”
Next day Miss Mabee and Jeanne journeyed to Maxwell Street in search of Bihari and his gypsy blacksmith shop. Jeanne carried a stool and folding easel, Miss Mabee her box of beautiful colors and her brushes.
It was a lovely winter’s day. Even the drab shops of Maxwell Street seemed gay.
Bihari’s shop was not hard to find. Miss Mabee fell in love with it at once. “Long and narrow. Plenty of light, but not too much. The very place!” was her joyous commendation. “And here are the women!”
Sure enough, there was a group of women patiently waiting to have their pots and pans repaired.
“But where are the children?” she asked.
For answer Bihari stepped to the door, put two fingers to his lips, blew a loud blast, and behold, as if by magic the place swarmed with children.
“This one. That one. This, and that one.” Miss Mabee selected her cast quickly.
Disappointed but not in the least rebellious, the remainder of the band moved away. The shop door was closed and work began.
Never had Jeanne experienced greater happiness than now. To be the constant companion of a famous artist—what more could one ask? It was not so much that Marie Mabee was famous. Jeanne was no mere hero-worshiper. The thing that counted most was their wonderful association. Somehow Jeanne felt the power, the sense of skill that was Miss Mabee’s flowing in her own veins. And now that she, for the time, was not the model, but the onlooker, she experienced this sense of fresh power to a far greater degree.
To sit in a remote corner of Bihari’s long narrow shop, to witness the skill with which Miss Mabee assembled the cast for a great picture, ah, that was something! To watch her skilful fingers as by some strange magic she placed a daub of color here, another there, twisted her brush here and twirled it there, sent it gliding here, gliding there, until, like the slow coming of a glorious dawn, there grew a picture showing Bihari, the powerful gypsy blacksmith, the ragged gypsy children, the anxious housewives, all in one group that seemed to glorify toil. Ah, that was glory indeed!
Jeanne would never be a painter, she knew this well enough. Yet she had sensed a great fact, that all true art is alike, that a painter draws inspiration and fresh power from a great musician, that a novelist listens to a symphony and goes home to write a better book, that even a dancer does her part in the world more skilfully because of her association with a famous painter. So Jeanne basked in the light that Miss Mabee spread about her and was gloriously happy.
In the meantime Florence was keeping an appointment on the telephone and, to all appearances having a grand time of it. She was saying:
“Yes, yes—yes, indeed!—Oh, yes, very rich.—And old. Oh, quite old, perhaps eighty—Famous?—Oh, surely, terribly famous.—Glorious pictures. Yes—In Hollywood? She hasn’t told me for sure. But yes, I think so.”
This went on for a full ten minutes. From time to time she put a hand over the mouth-piece while she indulged in peals of laughter. Then, sobering, she would go on with her conversation.
When the thing was all over, the receiver hung up, she went into one more fit of laughter, then said as she slowly walked across the floor, “That’s great! I wonder how many
of them do it just that way? Perhaps all of them, and just think how they can rake in the money if they go after it in a big way!”
A big way? Her face sobered. That beautiful girl, June Travis, had met her once more at the newspaper office. She had confided to her that Madame Zaran had asked her for a thousand dollars.
“A thousand dollars!” Florence had exclaimed. “For what?”
“To tell me where my father is.” She turned a puzzled face toward Florence. “Why not? If you were all alone in the world and if you had even a great deal of money, wouldn’t you give it all just to get your father back?”
“Yes, perhaps,” Florence replied slowly, “if they really did bring him back.”
“Oh, they will!” the girl exclaimed. “They will! Madame Zaran knows a truly great man in the east. He has done wonderful things. His fees are high. But great lawyers, great surgeons ask large fees too. So,” she sighed, “if my father is not found before I get my money, I shall pay them.”
“Yes, and perhaps much more,” Florence thought with an inward groan. “But her father shall be found. He must be, and that in natural ways. He really must!
“But how?” Her spirits drooped. How? Truly that was the question.
A key in the door startled her from her troubled thoughts. It was Jeanne back from Maxwell Street.
“Did you find that thieving gypsy?” Florence asked.
“No, but we did a glorious sketch of Bihari in his shop.”
“But what of the poor widow? She can’t eat your pictures.”
“N-no.” Jeanne put on a sad face. “I shall find her for you, though! Perhaps tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” said Florence with a lightning-like change to a lighter mood, “you shall go to that place on North Clark Street and have your past as well as your future told.
“And,” she added with a chuckle, “lest you be too much surprised by your fortune, I will say this much: Myrtle Rand will tell you that you have a grandfather who is very old and very rich—”
“But, Florence, I have no grandfather. I—”
Florence held up a hand for silence. “As for yourself, she will tell you that you have been a gay deceiver, that you are a truly famous young artist, a painter of landscapes, a—”
“But, my dear, I—”
“Yes, I know. But how can I help that? This is to be your past and future. If you don’t like the future, you may ask her to change it. But what is done is done! You can’t change your past!
“As for your future,” she went on, grinning broadly, “you are to journey to Hollywood. There you shall be employed by a great moving picture company simply to plan magnificent backgrounds against which the world’s greatest moving picture dramas are to be played.”
By this time Jeanne was so dazed that she had no further questions to ask.
“Only tomorrow will tell,” she sighed as she sank into a chair.
CHAPTER XIII
A STARTLING REVELATION
And tomorrow did tell. Scarcely had Jeanne paid her two dollars to the fortune teller, Myrtle Rand, than the fortune Florence had promised her began unfolding itself.
“The cards say this—” Myrtle Rand shuffled and dealt, shuffled and dealt again. “I see this and this and this in the crystal ball.” Nothing of importance was changed. Jeanne had heard it all before. Florence had told her.
“But how could she know that the fortune teller would say all this?” she kept asking herself. “And almost all of it untrue.”
She was still asking herself this question when she joined Florence for lunch two hours later.
“How could you know?” she demanded.
“Very simple,” Florence replied in high glee. “I told her all that over the phone.”
“But why?” Jeanne stared.
“Can’t you see?” Florence replied, “I was testing her system which, after all, is a very simple one. The first time you visited her she, on a very simple pretext, got the name and address of someone who knows you. On still another pretext she called me on the phone to ask about you, thinking me your hair-dresser, and I told her things that were entirely untrue.”
“And if they had been true,” Jeanne exclaimed, “if I had known nothing of the phone call, how astonished I should have been to find that she could get so much of my past from the cards and the crystal ball!”
“To be sure. And, quite naturally, you would have had great faith in her prophecies for the future.”
“Florence!” Jeanne cried, “she is a fraud!”
“Yes,” Florence agreed. “But not a very great fraud.
“Tillie, Fronie and Dick will have ice cream and cake for dinner,” she said softly.
“Who are they?” Jeanne asked in surprise.
“They are three foundlings that Myrtle Rand is befriending. So-o,” Florence ended slowly, “I shall not write up Myrtle Rand, at least not with her real name and address. I shall, however, make a good story of our grand discovery.
“And that,” she added abruptly, “brings me to another subject. Sandy is flying north tomorrow to witness the moose trapping.”
“Tomorrow!”
“That’s it. You may as well hurry home and pack your bag. As for me, that may spell defeat. I’ll have to write my own stories, and if I fail—” She did not finish, but the look on her face was a sober one. She had come to love her strange task. She had planned some things that to her seemed quite important. She must not fail.
That evening at ten they sat once more before the fire, Florence, Jeanne and Miss Mabee. Because Jeanne was to go flying away through the clouds next morning, they were in a mellow mood.
Marie Mabee rested easily in her deeply cushioned chair before the fire. She was wrapped in a dressing gown of gorgeous hue, a bright red, trimmed in deepest blue. Upon the sleeves was some strange Oriental design. On her feet, stretched out carelessly before the fire, were low shoes of shark skin, red like the gown. With her sleek black hair combed straight back from the high forehead, with her deep dark eyes shining and her unique profile half hidden by shadows, she seemed to Florence some strange princess just arrived from India.
“What is it,” Marie Mabee spoke at last, “what is it we ask of life?”
“Peace. Happiness. Beauty,” Jeanne spoke up quickly.
“Success. Power,” Florence added.
“Peace—” Marie Mabee’s tone was mellow. “Ah, yes, how many there are who seek real peace and never find it! I wonder if we have it, you and you and I.” She spread her long slender hands out before the fire.
“And why not?” She laughed a laugh that was like the low call of birds at sunset. “Is this not peace? We are here before the fire. No one wishes to do us harm, or at least they cannot reach us. We have food, shelter and a modest share of life’s beautiful things. Do we not have peace? Ah, yes. But if not, then it is our own fault.
“‘The mind has its own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, or a hell of heaven.’
“But beauty?” Her tone changed. She sat bolt upright. “Yes, we want beauty.” Her eyes swept the room. There were elaborate draperies, a tiny clock of solid gold, an ivory falcon, an exquisite bust of pure white marble, all the works of art she had gathered about her, and above them all, one great masterpiece, ‘Sheep on the Hillside.’ “Yes,” she agreed, “we have a craving for beauty. All have that perhaps. Some much more than others. But beauty—” she sprang to her feet. “Beauty, yes! Yes, we must have beauty first, last and always.”
As she began marching slowly back and forth before the fire, Florence was shocked by the thought that she resembled a sleek black leopard. “Nonsense!” she whispered to herself.
“Happiness? Yes.” Marie Mabee dropped back to her place of repose. “Happiness may be had by all. The simplest people are happiest because their wants are few. Or are they?”
Neither Jeanne nor Florence knew the answer. Who does?
“But success,” Florence insisted. “Yes, and power.”
“S
uccess?” There was a musing quality in Marie Mabee’s voice. “I wonder if success is what I am always striving for? Or do I make pictures because I enjoy creating beauty?
“After all—” she flung her arms wide. “What does it matter?
“But power!” Her tone changed. “No! No! I have no desire for power. Leave that to the rich man, to the rulers, anyone who desires it. I have no use for power. Give me peace, beauty, happiness, and, if you insist, success, and I will do without all the rest.”
After that, for a long time there was silence in the room. Florence studied the faces of her companions, each beautiful in its own way, she wondered if they were thinking or only dreaming.
For herself, she was soon lost in deep thought. To her mind had come a picture of Frances Ward. Her littered desk, her tumbled hair, her bright eager eyes, the slow procession of unfortunate and unhappy ones that passed all day long before that desk of hers—all stood out in bold relief.
“What does Frances Ward want?” she asked herself. “Peace…beauty…happiness…success?” She wondered.
Here were two people, Marie Mabee and Frances Ward. How strangely different they were! And yet, what wonderful friends they had both been to her!
“Life,” she whispered, “is strange. Perhaps there was a time when Frances Ward too wanted peace, beauty, happiness, success for herself, just as Miss Mabee does. But now she desires happiness for others—that and that alone.
“Perhaps,” she concluded, “I too shall want only that when I am old.
“And yet—”
Ah, that disquieting “And yet—.” She was wondering in her own way what the world would be like if everyone sought first the happiness of others.
Upon her thoughts there broke the suddenly spoken words of Marie Mabee, “Let us have beauty. By all means! Beauty first, last and always!”
Two hours later Florence sat alone in the half darkness that enshrouded the studio. The others had retired for the night. She was still engaged in the business of putting her thoughts to bed.
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