by Anne Nesbet
And then she hung on to the sides of the basket and let herself gaze freely in all directions, willing her mind to remember these images forever. After all, she might never again see the world from such a colossal height! It was a thrill, a true thrill, and the feeling she kept bottled up inside her came out dancing. Everything was so tiny down there below her: toy motorcars rumbled slowly along thin threads of roads, and toy boats steamed back and forth across the Hudson. And over there, the buildings of Fort Lee and the various photoplay studios looked like dollhouses, some of them with those astonishing glass walls twinkling in the sun. It was all beautiful seen from this height.
That was when she noticed that the houses were growing somewhat larger.
The balloon was not meant for long voyages. And she herself had turned that valve. She reached for it again now, and — Oh, no! It refused to budge.
Everything began to happen too fast, which is the way accidents and disasters like to work. As the gas in the balloon escaped, the whole contraption began to sag, down, down toward the earth. For a moment, Darleen let herself feel that sharp (but wicked) pang of regret; it was so lovely being up in the sky! And then she focused on the more pressing issue, which seemed like it might be quite a challenge:
Getting back to the ground in — oh, please, oh, please — one unbroken piece.
The balloon was swaying back and forth now as it drifted lower across Fort Lee. Darleen could see an open field ahead. Oh, but would she make it that far? Now that the balloon had decided it was coming down, it seemed very determined to get the job done fast.
She did not want to bang into any roofs! So she unhooked one of the smaller sandbags and threw it down, then another. The balloon gained a little height, so she was encouraged. One more sandbag over and away, and then she was safely past the roofs and drifting across the field, where, if the balloon didn’t veer toward those houses on the right, there was nothing much to do her harm but the ground itself — and a surprised-looking horse being held back from bolting by the elegant woman on its back.
“Hold on!” shouted the woman to Darleen as the balloon angled itself toward the ground. Darleen was holding on to ropes, to the basket, to anything she could grasp. She braced herself, hoped for the best, and shut her eyes.
Bump! Bump! And then came a trailing series of little bounces as the balloon in its last gasp dragged its basket some way across the field.
Darleen stretched her limbs, opened her eyes, and fought to catch her breath. She was surprised to discover that, apart from an aching howl from her thigh, which had apparently made very rough contact with the top of the basket, her body seemed to be in one piece and only slightly battered.
The balloon, however, had lost any hint of its former rotund glory. It had become a flattened blob stretched out across the grass, like a jellyfish washed up on the Jersey shore.
The basket lay toppled onto its side. Darleen took another breath and crawled out into the solid, earthbound world that was where her feet (she told herself firmly) belonged. Oh, but her head was still spinning from its ride through that wide, wild, wonderful air!
The lady on horseback was already slipping off her horse as gracefully as any circus rider (or, for that matter, as gracefully as any exiled princess).
“Mais alors!” the woman said, her face full of concern and surprise and even a hint of laughter.
Darleen’s eyes snapped into focus, and now it was her turn to be surprised, because this person was indeed the very same elegant French-speaking woman she and Victorine had encountered on the ferry, the one who had been carrying a picnic basket full of Snake. “But it is one of my little snake charmers, fallen now from the sky! My dear girl, whatever has happened to you that you are crashing to earth in a balloon practically in my own front yard? Yes, I live over here, in this house here. Oh, do let me take your elbow, if you don’t mind.”
In fact, it was quite necessary, just for that moment. It turns out that it is completely normal for one’s body to have a moment of feeling quite weak and helpless when one has just plummeted from the sky in a deflating balloon.
“There now, there now,” said the elegant woman soothingly. “Do you think you can make it to my door? A few steps more and we’ll be nearly there, Miss Darling. Look, the curious onlookers are beginning to arrive!”
It was true: some people were walking toward the field now. They must have spotted the balloon falling from the sky and were curious to see it up close.
“Please, won’t you be a very kind fellow,” the woman said to the first man who arrived on the run, “and trot off to alert the people from Matchless studios. They’ll be at Palisades Amusement Park right now if I’m not mistaken. Is that Mr. Mancini’s balloon, dear? I think they will be worried about their lost aeronaut. Tell them I am dosing her with a restorative tea.”
She had quite a lovely way of giving orders: firmly and kindly, both at the same time.
The young man swept his hat off and nodded.
“Yes, of course. Pleased to be of service, Madame Blaché,” he said, and then he turned around and ran back the other way. Someone else was already taking care of the horse.
Darleen gave a start. The lights had just turned on in her head, all at once. In fact, her head was so ablaze with sudden insight that it might as well have been Coney Island, lit up by thousands of electric light bulbs, all spelling out a name: ALICE GUY BLACHÉ!
“Oh, my,” said Darleen. “Of course! That’s why you seemed so familiar back on the ferry. You’re Madame Blaché! Oh, my goodness.”
Madame Alice Guy Blaché, the French-born founder of the Solax Company, whose film studio was located not two hundred feet from Matchless Photoplay.
That is to say, the most famous and most powerful woman in all of Fort Lee. And for that matter, maybe the most famous and most powerful woman in all of New Jersey. Certainly one of the most artistically gifted women anywhere. Why, she had made hundreds and hundreds of pictures, first in France, and now here!
“That is who I am, indeed,” said Madame Blaché. “How convenient that we recognize each other. Now can you climb the stairs up to the door?”
It was a lovely old house that Madame Blaché lived in, with a little porch that seemed practically octagonal, and windowed alcoves pushing forward and giving it an interestingly complicated air.
“You’re so awfully kind,” said Darleen as Madame Blaché guided her in through the doorway and beckoned to a maid. “I’m sorry to be causing so much trouble.”
“Not a trouble, not at all!” said Madame Blaché. She settled Darleen into a lovely chair. “Poor girl, you are trembling. You will have a nice comforting cup of tea, and then you will tell me how this all happened. I am right to think it is the balloon from the Palisades that brought you here so unexpectedly? Mr. Mancini’s balloon? But that is a great surprise to me. We have all worked with him before, and he has always seemed most helpful and dependable. But here his balloon seems to have galloped off with you! Have a sip of this tea, now, dear, won’t you?”
The maid had brought in the pot of tea, and Madame Blaché poured a cup for Darleen and another for herself.
“There, now, is that a little better?” said Madame Blaché as Darleen took a sip of tea. “You are a brave girl! Though that was perhaps not your most elegant leap out there just now. Do you know” — her eyes were sharp and kind, both at once, as she leaned a little closer, over the teapot —“sometimes, in your pictures, when you jump so bravely from your railway bridges, and do a beautiful . . . how is it in English? In French we say saut périlleux — a perilous rolling in the air. Do you know what it is I mean?”
“A somersault?” said Darleen, feeling the warm tea spread through her veins already.
“That is it! Exactement!” said Madame Blaché with great satisfaction. “In any case, Miss Darling, when I see you in a glorious somersault or scaling the cliffs so beautifully, do you know what I think? I think, This girl is a dancer at heart, like her mother —”
“There now, there now, I foolishly startled you,” said Madame Blaché, handing her a second cup. “Let us try again with our tea, Miss Darling, and I will try to be less shocking.”
“But you said . . . you said . . . my mother?” whispered Darleen.
“Yes, dear Miss Darling, I did say that,” said Madame Blaché. “May I tell you a little story? I have been wanting to tell you this story ever since you girls charmed our naughty snake back into his basket on that ferry boat and I realized who you were. Have more sugar, brave girl. It is most helpful when one has suffered a shock.”
She went ahead and popped another sugar cube into Darleen’s slightly trembling cup of tea, and then she sat up quite straight and elegant again and said, “And so, my histoire! When I was very young and working as a secretary in a firm so as to support my poor, widowed mother — Oh, yes, I was a secretary! But already then, I worked very well with all the new machines. I was a typist-stenographer, you know, and I thought myself very moderne. And then one day, I went to an exhibition with my employer, and we saw some tall boxes with peepholes in them. ‘These are the new kinetoscopes from America!’ they said. ‘In them is magic! Pictures that move!’ And, Miss Darling, when I looked through the peephole into that great box, what do you think I saw?”
“Oh!” said Darleen, her heart too full with a sudden hope to say more than that.
“Yes, you have guessed it,” said Madame Blaché. “I saw the tiniest, most beautiful dancer, so graceful with her wings and her flowing skirts. ‘Loveliest Luna,’ they called her, and I thought —”
“You saw my mother!” said Darleen, and Madame Blaché didn’t seem to mind a smidge that she had been interrupted.
“Oh, brave girl, it is not just that I saw her!” she said. “It is that some creative ember, some spark, flared up in me when I saw her! I thought, This new magic, these moving pictures — I want to use them to create beauty, to tell fairy tales, to make the world dance! And so I did. More tea?”
Darleen blinked. Madame Blaché smiled very sweetly and lifted the teapot into the air.
“I cannot thank her, your mother, for showing me what a camera could do, but I can certainly serve you, her daughter, a grateful cup of tea!”
And then she looked out toward the field, where the blob that once was a balloon could still be seen, and laughed. “And shall I also pour a cup, perhaps, for your faithful young friend, the French-speaking girl who is incognita — and who is just now running so very quickly past my front window?”
Oh, Vic — I mean, Bella Mae!” said Darleen, rising up from her chair. “Is she really here?”
“Does she have so many names, the anonymous one?” said Madame Blaché, and she added a few more words in French for the maid, who hurried to the front door.
In a moment, Victorine was in the parlor with them. In fact, she and Darleen had flung their arms around each other and for a while were very nearly sobbing with relief and surprise.
“When that balloon flew overhead,” said Victorine, “and I looked up, and there you were! Of course, I understood they meant to film you today in a balloon, but an actual crash! An accident for real! How reckless these movie people are! Darleen, weren’t you simply petrified? And to think that on the same day at your own home, there was — Oh, madame, c’est vous!”
Victorine had finally glanced in the direction of their elegant rescuer and hostess.
“How sorry I am! I didn’t realize it was you, madame! Please, please, excuse my rudeness, do. I find I’m all in a dither.”
Madame Blaché smiled with great benevolence.
“Of course you must be in a, as you say, ‘dither,’” she said. “It is not every day one’s friend falls out of the sky like the poor ancient Icarus.”
And then, after the briefest pause, in which she poured yet another cup of tea and offered it to Victorine: “Tell me, Miss Bella Mae — as I believe Miss Darling called you — are you still hoping to remain incognita, dear girl? I, for one, would rather not be. I am Madame Blaché, as your friend has already learned.”
“She founded Solax,” said Darleen, a little worried that Victorine might not appreciate how illustrious a person Madame Alice Guy Blaché was. “That’s another photoplay studio — not far from Matchless, you know. More or less around the corner. And her husband, Mr. Blaché — he runs a studio too. Two studios in one family! But it’s Madame Blaché who makes the most wonderful pictures!”
Madame Blaché made a dismissive gesture that said that even if her pictures were indeed made with considerable skill and dedication, they were not really the topic of conversation now.
“Since you mention Matchless, Miss Darling, I gather there was some trouble at Matchless the other day — an intruder, is that so? Oh, do not look so surprised, my girls. I keep always an ear, as you say here, to the ground, especially when there is talk of robbers and mayhem. Alas, Fort Lee! What is happening to our rustic little village?”
At that very moment, a child started crying in another room of that large house. Madame Blaché listened for a moment, gauging, as a parent will do, whether the crying would stop on its own or whether her presence was required. In the end, she stood up.
“Excuse me one moment, girls,” she said. “Please make yourselves comfortable.”
And as soon as she left the room, Victorine pulled her chair closer to Darleen.
“Oh, Darleen,” she said. “I was about to tell you. The kidnapper, that bandit! He came to your house! Not with the Mr. Lukes who acts in your photoplays, not this time. All alone.”
“What?” said Darleen. “What do you mean? The one who drove the car? Do you mean he came in while you were there?”
“Yes, yes!” said Victorine. “That’s the frightening part of it all. I was writing my Grandmama’s will, you know, at the table in the kitchen, where the light comes in so naturally through the windows. All was peaceful. And then suddenly there was a crashing sound from the back-porch door! So I took my paper and pen and slipped right under the table — you know how low that cheerful tablecloth you have hangs down to the ground. I got under the table and tried to stay as still as any mouse, though, my goodness, I’m sure anyone listening with half an ear would have been able to hear my heart pounding away.”
“You’re all right, aren’t you?” said Darleen. She was still feeling a little faint from the many shocks of that day. “You’re here with me, Victorine, so you must be all right. You hid and stayed quiet? And there really was someone there?”
“Yes, indeed there was. His shoes walked across the kitchen floor. They were noisy, you know, and I saw them go by. Darleen, if he hadn’t left the kitchen, I don’t know — I’m afraid I might have simply screamed out loud and given myself away! That’s how frightened I was. And then here’s the horrible thing: he went upstairs, and he shouted my name. ‘You, Victorine Berryman,’ he shouted, with his ugly, ugly voice — and that’s how I recognized him. ‘Are you here? You’d better come out now if you don’t want anyone else to get hurt!’”
“Oh, no!” said Dar. “Oh, how terrible! I guess they didn’t believe me when I said I thought you had gone back to the city.”
“And then he made an awful racket upstairs,” said Victorine. “I think he was looking for something, opening drawers and closets and so on. I don’t know whether he went away with anything. But he slapped something down on the table two inches above my head right before he left.”
“You stayed hidden, though,” said Darleen. “He didn’t find you!”
She was so glad of that.
“He didn’t find me at all, even though I was in fact directly under his nose. Those kidnappers are evil to the core, but I don’t think they’re very intelligent, to be honest. And so he banged out through the door again, and I waited
under the table until I was sure, absolutely sure, that he had gone far away, and then I crept out — in relief, you can imagine! And I finished my work. But Darleen, here is the paper he left on your table.”
She handed over the scrap of paper to Darleen.
On it was scrawled: YOU CANT MAKE FOOLS OF US GIVE BACK THAT GIRL YUR HIDING SHES NOT YORES — WE WILL GO AFTER YORES NOW YOULL SEE
“His spelling isn’t very good,” said Victorine. “But of course we must overlook that. I have known many a person with poor spelling and poor grammar but who possessed a sharp brain and warm heart. Not that that is the case here. This man has no scruples and no sense. He is a brute.”
“And then he came after me at the amusement park!” said Darleen. “He was with Jasper Lukes then. Why, I suppose it must have been Jasper Lukes who told him where our house was.”
“That is possible, I’m afraid,” said Victorine. “The more one learns about the depths of human nature, the more discouraging the whole enterprise becomes. Still, most people are good. Most don’t kidnap children or hit people’s fathers over the head.”
“The gall of him!” said Darleen. “‘SHES NOT YORES’! Talking about you as if you were a possession!”
“But of course that is exactly what I am to them,” said Victorine. “A possible source of wealth, like the Black Sapphire in your photoplay. But anyway! Look what I have accomplished, bandit or no bandit!”
And she brought forward something that must have been in her hand when she came running, but that Darleen hadn’t even noticed until now. It was a brownish-grayish rectangle that turned out to be ordinary kitchen wrap carefully folded around a thicker, whiter sheet, protected by sheets of blotting paper.
“My Grandmama’s will,” she said. “Improved and updated for the modern era.”
