“I—I’d like to learn about crystal gazing,” she said as she entered the room of midnight blue. “Is—is it frightfully difficult?”
“To learn?” The Tiger Lady, as Florence was to call her, elevated her eyebrows. “A certain way, it is not difficult. But to go far, very far, as I have done—” the Tiger Woman sighed. “Ah, that is a matter of years. Then, too, there are secrets, deep secrets.” Her voice took on an air of mystery. “Secrets regarding the meaning of light, sound, and feelings; secrets regarding the moon and the stars, which we who have journeyed far could not afford to share.
“But if you care to go a little way—” she spread out her hand. “Then I am here to show you for—let me see—” She pretended to consider. “Oh, you shall pay me two dollars. Huh? Will that be O. K.?” Her voice took on a playful note.
“Two dollars will be all right. And may I begin at once?” There was in Florence’s words a note of eagerness that was genuine.
“This,” she was thinking, “is a fresh way of approach. Perhaps thereissomething to this crystal gazing. I may become a famous gazer. How grand that will be!
“Besides,” came as an afterthought, “I may be able to discover some worthwhile facts about that girl who saw those pictures in the crystal ball. Surely those pictures were real enough. But how did they come there? Could her imagination produce them? If so, would I too be able to see them?” She had a feeling that they had been produced by some strange magic—or was it magic? She could not be sure.
“Now—” Madame Zaran, the crystal-gazer, took on a manner quite professional as she hid Florence’s two dollars on her person. “Now we shall proceed.”
She motioned the girl to the ebony chair beside the table where the crystal ball rested. Then with nervous, active fingers she began arranging articles on that table.
Florence was interested in these few objects. A raven carved from black marble, a bronze dragon with fiery eyes, and a god of some sort with an ugly countenance and a prodigious mouth, all these were on that table. Madame arranged them about the crystal ball, but some distance away from it. Then, as if the ball were a sacred thing, she lifted it with great care to place it in a saucer-like receptacle over which a bronze eagle perpetually hovered.
The girl was much interested in the gazer’s hands. In her wanderings about the city in search of fortune telling facts, she had picked up interesting bits about hands. She was convinced that long slender fingers belonged to a person of a nervous and artistic temperament and that a very broad hand told of force coupled with great determination. Madame’s hand was fairly broad, but her fingers were not long. Instead they were short and curved. “Like the claws of some great cat,” the girl thought with a shudder. Never had she seen fingers that seemed better suited to clawing in hoards of gold.
“And she would not care how she came by it,” Florence thought. And yet, how could she be sure of that?
“Now,” Madame said in a changed tone, “look at the crystal. Concentrate. There is no spirit moving in the crystal. You need not draw one out. The pictures of past and future you are to see by gazing in the crystal are to come from within your own mind, or shall come to you from the spirit world outside the crystal.
“Do not stare. Relax. Look quietly at the crystal. In this room there is nothing to disturb you, no radio with its noise, no ticking clock, nothing. The light is subdued. I myself shall retire. You have only to gaze in the crystal. This time you may see much. Then again, you may see nothing. It is not given to all, this great gift of looking into the future.
“If it is given you to see, you will find first that the crystal begins to look dull and cloudy, with pin points of light glittering out of that fog. When this appears, you shall know that you are beginning to have crystalline vision. In time this shall vanish. In its stead will come a sort of blindness wherein you shall appear to float through great spaces of blue. It is against this background of blue that your vision must appear.
“Ready? Concentrate. Gaze.
“I am gone,” came in a tone that sounded faint and far away. Florence was alone—alone in the room of midnight blue and the faintly gleaming crystal ball.
She was alone with the crystal—or was she? She could not be sure. Which is more disturbing, to be alone in a room where a half-darkness hangs over all, or to feel that there is someone else in the room?
Only yesterday she had been seized by a clutching hand and ushered out of that room. Where now was the owner of that hand? She had no way of knowing. One thing was sure, that had not been Madame Zaran’s hand. Those fingers had been long, slim and bony. Madame’s were not like that.
“But I must concentrate!” She shook herself vigorously. “I must gaze at the crystal.” As she focussed her attention on the crystal ball, she became conscious of two gleaming green eyes. These were small but piercing. They belonged to the bronze eagle that, hovering over the ball in this dim light, seemed to have suddenly come alive.
“Bah!” she exclaimed low, “what a bother sometimes an imagination may become! It must be controlled. I shall control it!” she ended stoutly.
In the end she did just that and with the most surprising results. Settling back easily in her chair, feeling the cool darkness of the place and heaving a sigh, she fixed her eyes dreamily upon the crystal ball. For a full five minutes there was no change. The ball remained simply a faintly gleaming circle of light. Then, ah, yes! a change came. The ball lost some of its distinctness. It turned gray and cloudy. Pin points of light like shooting stars appeared against the gray.
This continued for some time. Then, of a sudden, warmth came over the girl as she saw that gray turn to the faint blue of a morning sky. Leaning eagerly forward, she waited.
“Yes! Yes!” Her lips formed words she did not speak. The lower portion of that blue turned to gray and green. She was looking now at rocky ridges half overgrown with glorious trees—spruce, birch, and balsam. Beneath this were dark, cool waters. Above, fleecy clouds raced across a dark blue sky. On the water were no boats, in the forest no people. She was gloriously alone.
“Oh!” Florence breathed, stretching out her hands as if to gather it in.
Now there came another change. Fading away as in the movies, half the trees became bare and leafless. The rocks, the grass and all the barren branches were bedecked with snow. The surface of the water glistened. “Winter,” she whispered. Then, as a strange emotion swept over her, she cried, “Where? Where?”
As if frightened away by that sudden sound, the vision vanished and there she sat staring at a glass ball that was, as far as her eyes could tell her, just a hard glass ball and nothing more.
“How strange!” She pinched herself. “How very strange!”
But now a change was coming over the room itself. It was slowly filling with a dim light. She made out indistinctly a broad, black, dead fireplace, and above it on the mantel a great green dragon with fiery eyes.
Then with a sudden start she sat straight up. On the opposite wall, against the midnight blue velvet, a shadow had appeared, a very distinct shadow of a man. Or was it of a man? The nose was long and sharp. The chin curved out like the tip of a new moon. It was a terrifying profile.
“The—the Devil!” She did not say the words—only thought them. At the same time she seemed to hear her dead aunt say, “All this fortune telling business belongs to the Devil.”
“Well? How about it?”
Florence could not have been more startled by these words had they been shouted in her ear. They had been said quietly by Madame Zaran. She had returned. And in the meantime the sinister shadow had vanished from the wall.
“I—why, I—” With a sort of mental click the girl’s mind returned to her vision of water, forest, and sky. “I saw—”
“Wait! Do not tell me, not now.” Madame held up a hand. “Ah, you are one of those who are fortunate! It is given to very few that they shall see visions in the crystal ball on the very first time of their trying. You will go far. You must come again and again.”
Madame’s hands were in motion. Florence fancied she could see those claw-like fingers raking in piles of crisp new greenbacks.
“But I may be doing her a grave injustice,” she reproved herself.
“I shall return,” she found herself saying to Madame Zaran.
“Perhaps tomorrow?”
“Perhaps tomorrow.”
Scarcely knowing what she did, the girl let herself out of the room, caught the elevator, and next moment found herself in the bright sunlight, which, after all that midnight blue darkness and air of mystery, seemed very strange indeed.
“Now for Sandy and his glass box,” she thought to herself when her mind had become accustomed to the world of solid reality about her. Sandy was her youthful red-headed reporter. Sandy was her “ghost writer.” She supplied the material of her own column, “Looking Into the Future.” It was Sandy who pounded it all into form on his trusty typewriter. His “glass box,” as she laughingly called it, was an office on the sixth floor of the newspaper office building that looked down upon the city’s slow, easy-going river.
Sandy was not at all like the river. He was up-and-coming, was Sandy. The instant she came into his glass box he bounced out of his chair.
“Hope you’ve got something good today!” he cried. “Big Girl, we’ve got a real thing here. Knocking ’em cold, we are. Look at this!” He put his hand on a wire basket filled to overflowing with letters. “All for you, all fan mail. And the things they want to know!” He laughed a merry laugh. “Old maid wanting to know some charm for attracting a man; a mother wanting the name of a crystal-gazer who can see where her long lost boy is; men wanting a fortune teller that will give them tips on the stock market. Funny, sad, tragic little old world of ours! It wants to gaze into the future right enough. They—
“But say!” he broke off to exclaim. “You look as if you’d seen a ghost.”
“Do I?” Florence’s eyes brightened. “Well, I’ve got a real story this time. I—
“Wait a minute!” Florence broke short off to go dashing out of the glass box, then started gliding on tiptoe after a girl who was hurrying down the long narrow corridor.
“It doesn’t seem possible,” she whispered to herself. “But it’s true. That’s the girl I saw in that room of midnight blue velvet, the one who saw moving figures in the crystal ball. And here she is hurrying along toward Frances Ward’s desk. I’ll get her story. I surely will. Imust!” she murmured low as she hurried on.
She was mistaken in part at least. There are some people whose stories are not to be told at a single sitting. The girl hurrying on before her was one of these.
Frances Ward it had been who found Florence her latest opportunity for work, mystery and adventure. As Florence thought of all this now, a great wave of affection for the gray-haired woman swept over her.
Frances Ward was old, perhaps past seventy. Her hair was frizzy, her dress plain and at times almost uncouth. Her desk was always covered with a littered mess of letters, paper files, scribbled notes and pictures. “A poor old woman,” you might say. Ah, no! Frances Ward was rich—not in dollars perhaps; still shewasnot altogether poor at that—she was rich in friends. For Frances Ward was, as someone had named her, “Everybody’s Grandmother.” She called herself, at the head of one column, “Friend of the People.” This, in a great busy sometimes selfish, sometimes wicked city, was Frances Ward at her best, the Friend.
Because of this, the mysterious young girl whom Florence had only the day before seen gazing into the crystal ball and apparently seeing most mysterious pictures of her early life, was now calling upon Frances Ward for advice.
As Florence reached the door of Mrs. Ward’s office, she heard the mysterious girl say, “I—I am June Travis.”
“Oh!” There was a note of welcome in the aged woman’s voice. “Won’t you have a chair? And what can I do for you?”
Frances Ward did not so much as look up as Florence, after slipping by her, seated herself before a narrow table in the corner of her office and began scribbling rapidly. This was not Florence’s accustomed place. But Frances Ward was old. She understood many things.
“Well, you see—” the strange girl’s fingers locked and unlocked nervously. “I—I read your column al—almost every day. It—it has interested me, the way you—you help people. I—I thought you might be able to help me.”
“Yes.” Frances Ward bestowed upon her a warm, sincere smile. “I might be able to help you. Will you please tell me how? You see—” she smiled broadly. “I am neither a mind reader nor a fortune teller, so—”
“No!” The girl shuddered. “No, of course you’re not. But just think! It is partly that, about fortune tellers, I wanted to ask you. Do you believe in them, crystal-gazers and all that?”
“No—” Frances Ward appeared to weigh her words. “N-no, I’m afraid I don’t, at least not very much. Of course, some of them are keen students of human nature. If they can read your face, understand your actions, they may be able to help you to understand yourself so as to meet with greater success. But—”
“Do you believe they could make you see people in the crystal ball—people that you have not seen for years and years?” The girl leaned forward eagerly.
“I should say that would be quite unusual.” Frances Ward smiled. “I should like to witness such a feat. I should indeed.”
“Perhaps you can!” June Travis exclaimed. “I saw it only last evening, saw it with my own eyes. I saw my father, whom I have not seen for ten years—saw him distinctly in the crystal ball!”
“You seem quite young.” Frances Ward spoke slowly. “You must have been a very small child when your father—” she hesitated. “Did he die?”
“No! Oh, no!” the girl exclaimed. “He—he just went away. But he didn’t desert me. He left money, plenty of money, for my care. That—that’s why I am so anxious to find him now. It’s the money. There is quite a lot of it, and I shall soon be sixteen. And then—then I shall have to manage the money all by myself. And that—that frightens me.”
“Money. Plenty of money,” Florence was repeating to herself in the corner. Strangely enough, at that moment she seemed to see the shining crystal ball. About the ball, with wings that carried them round and round in ever widening circles, were bank notes. Ten, twenty, fifty, one hundred dollar bills, they circled round and round. And, swinging wildly, clawing at them frantically but never catching one, was a hand, the Tiger Woman’s hand, the hand of Madame Zaran, the crystal-gazer.
While Florence was having a close look into the mystery of the crystal ball, the little French girl Petite Jeanne was not idle; in truth, Jeanne was seldom idle. She was like the sparrow of our city streets, always on the move.
Since the artist did not require her services as a model that day, she considered it her duty to search out the haunts of certain gypsy groups, and to discover if possible what had happened to the poor widow’s four hundred dollars.
“Bah! I don’t like it!” she exclaimed as she drew on an old gray coat and crowded a small hat over her gorgeous golden hair. “It is dangerous, this looking for a thief. But it is exciting too. So there you are! I shall go.” And go she did.
Since Maxwell Street had been mentioned in connection with the theft, it was to that street she journeyed. It was a bright winter’s day. Wares that had been dragged indoors during severe weather had been hauled out again. And such wares as they were! Rags and old iron were offered as clothing and tools. There were stalls of vile smelling fish, racks of curious spices, crates of weary looking chickens and turkeys, everything that one may find in the poor man’s market of any great city. Jeanne had seen it all in Paris, in London, in New York and now in Chicago. Always she shuddered. Yet always, too, her heart went out to these poor, brave people who through sunshine and storm, winter’s cold and summer’s heat struggled to sell a little of this, a little of that, and so to keep themselves alive by their own efforts rather than accept charity.
Out of all this drab scene one figure stood bright and colorful, a dark-eyed maiden dressed in all the many-hued garments of a gypsy. Jeanne went straight to her.
“Want a fortune told?” The girl’s eyes gleamed. “Step inside. Read your palm. Tell your fortune with cards. Perhaps today is not so good.” She looked at Jeanne’s purposely drab costume. “Tomorrow may be better—much better. You shall see. Step right inside.”
Jeanne stepped inside. The place she entered was blue with cigaret smoke. Idling about the large room, on couches and rugs were a half dozen girls dressed, as this other one, in bright costumes. At the back of the room was a booth, inside the booth a small table and a chair.
Instantly Jeanne found herself ill at ease in these surroundings. She had seen much of gypsy life, but this—somehow a guardian gnome seemed to whisper a warning in her ear.
Turning, she said a few words. She spoke in a strange tongue—the lingo of her own gypsy people. The girl she addressed stared at her blankly. Turning about, she repeated the words in a louder tone. Every girl in the room must have heard. Not one replied.
“You are not gypsies!” Jeanne exclaimed, stamping her foot. “You do not know the gypsy language.”
“Not gypsies! Not gypsies!” The swarm of girls were up and screaming like a flock of angry bluejays. “Wearegypsies! Wearegypsies!”
“Well,” said Jeanne, backing toward the door, “you don’t seem much like gypsies. You should be able to speak the language—”
“Paveoe, our mistress, she speaks that silly nonsense!” one of the girls exclaimed. “Come when she is here and you shall hear it by the hour.”
“And does she run this place?” Jeanne asked. She was now at the door and breathing more easily.
“Y-yes,” the girl said slowly, “Paveoe is the woman who runs this place.”
“I’ll be back.” Jeanne opened the door, closed it quietly and was gone.
“I wonder if this Paveoe is the woman I am looking for,” she whispered to herself. “Perhaps she has the money. Perhaps that is why she is not here.”
As she crowded through the ragged, jostling and quite merry throng on Maxwell Street, Jeanne found her heart filled with misgivings. A spirit of prophecy belonging to gypsy people alone seemed to tell her that this woman, Paveoe, was bad, that they should meet, and then—. At that point the spirit of prophecy failed her.
Meanwhile, in Frances Ward’s office the mystery girl, June Travis, was saying:
“No, I do not remember my father—that is, hardly at all. And yet, it seems so strange I recognized him instantly when I saw him in—in the crystal ball! And the girl who was with him—it was I.” June broke off to stare out of the window and down at the slow-moving river.
Florence wanted to say, “Yes, yes, she was in the crystal ball. I saw her. It could have been no other.” She opened her mouth to speak; but no sound came out. She had recalled that she was there to listen and not to talk. “But what a story this promises to be!” she thought to herself. Then, with a sudden start she began taking notes.
“June Travis. Plenty of money. Much money when she is sixteen,” she wrote. “Money—” her pencil stopped. She had thought of the poor widow with four hundred dollars and the gypsy fortune tellers. “Wolves,” she thought, “human wolves, they are everywhere.” Once again her pencil glided across the paper.
“It does seem a little extraordinary.” Frances Ward was speaking slowly, thoughtfully. She was facing June Travis, still smiling. “Strange indeed that you should see yourself as you were more than ten years ago, and that you should recognize your father.”
“It was a beautiful room.” A look of rapture stole over the girl’s face. “A very beautiful room. Books, a fireplace, everything. Just the sort of place my father must have had to live in—for he must be rich. If he wasn’t, how could he leave me all that money?
“And he was to come back.” Her tone became eager. “Hewillcome back. Madame Zaran, that’s the crystal-gazer, says she’s sure he will come back. She’s told me wonderful things. I am to travel—California, the Orient, Europe, around the world.
“But father—” her voice dropped. “She says she can’t get through to father. That will take money, much money. And very soon I shall have much money. Only—” she shuddered. “Somehow that makes me afraid.”
“Yes.” Frances Ward nodded her wise old head. “You must not forget to be afraid, and to be very, very careful. I should like to meet this wonderful Madame Zaran.”
“You shall meet her!” the girl exclaimed. “But, Mrs. Ward, you are so kind! You have helped so many. Can’t you help me find my father?” Her voice rose on a high note of appeal.
“Yes.” Frances Ward spoke with all the gentleness of a mother. “Yes, I think perhaps I can. But first you must do everything possible for yourself. Where is your money kept?”
“In a great bank.”
“Good!” Frances Ward’s face lighted. “What do they tell you of your father?”
“Nothing.” The girl’s face fell. “The man my father left the money with at the bank is dead. The others know that the money is for me and how it is to be given out.”
“And you live—”
“At a very fine home for girls, only a few girls, twelve girls, all very nice.”
“And what does the person in charge tell you of your father?”
“Nothing—nothing at all. I was brought there by a woman who was not my mother, a little old gray-haired woman who said I was to be kept there. She gave them some money. She told them where the other money was. Then she went away.”
“Strange,” Frances Ward murmured softly, “very, very strange. But, my child!” Her tone changed. “You may be able to be your own best helper. You were not a baby when your father left you. Under favorable conditions you might be able to think back, back, back to those days, to recall perhaps rooms, houses, faces. You might describe them so accurately that they could be found. And, finding them, we might come upon someone who knew your father and who knows where he has gone.”
“Oh, if only I could!” The girl clasped and unclasped her hands. “If only I could!”
“That,” said Mrs. Ward, “may take considerable time, but I feel that it is a surer and—” she hesitated, “perhaps a safer way than some others might be.
“My dear,” she laid a hand gently on June’s arm, “you will not go to that place at night?”
“Oh, no!” June’s eyes opened wide. “We are never allowed to go anywhere after dark unless Mrs. Maver, our matron, is with us.”
“That’s good.” The frown on the aged woman’s face was replaced by a smile.
“Florence!” She turned half about in her chair. “You should know June Travis. I feel sure you might aid her. Perhaps you’d like to take her out for a cup of something hot. What do young ladies drink? Nothing strong, I hope.” She laughed.
“Not I!” Florence replied, “I’m always in training.”
“Which every girl should be,” Frances Ward replied promptly.
“My dear,” she put out a hand to June, “I have a ‘dead-line’ to make. You wouldn’t know about that, but it’s just a column that must be in the paper a half hour from now. You will come back, won’t you?”
“Yes, I will,” said June. “Thank you. I feel so much better a—about everything now.”
“That,” said Florence as the two girls walked down the corridor, “is ‘Everybody’s Grandmother.’ She’s truly wonderful. She knows so much about everything.”
“And,” she added aside to herself, “she knows just how much to say. If she had told this girl I was engaged in the business of hunting fortune tellers, that would have spoiled everything. But she didn’t. She didn’t.”
“Have you visited fortune telling studios before?” she asked the bright-eyed June as they sipped a hot cup of some strange bitter drink Florence found in a narrow little hole-in-the-wall place.
“Oh, yes, often!” The girl’s eyes shone. “I’m afraid I’ve become quite a fan. And they do tell you such strange things. Honestly,” her voice dropped, “Madame Zaran told me things that happened weeks ago and that only I knew about—or at least only one or two other girls.
“But this—” her voice and her face sobered. “This is different. This is what Polly, one of our girls, would call ‘very tremendous.’ Think of seeing yourself and your own father just as you were years and years ago!”
“Yes,” Florence agreed without hypocrisy, “itistremendous.”
“But it costs so much!” June sighed. “Don’t you tell a soul—” her voice dropped to a whisper, “I saved and saved from my allowance until I had it all—two hundred dollars!”
“Two hundred dollars! Did they charge you that for gazing into the crystal? Why, they—”
Florence did not finish. She was trying to think how much those people would charge for their next revelation when, perhaps, this girl had come into possession of much money.
As she looked at the young and slender girl before her, a big-sister feeling came sweeping over her. “We—” she placed her large, strong hand over June’s slender one, “we’re going to stick together, aren’t we?”
“If—if you wish it,” the other girl replied hesitatingly.
“And now—” she rose from her chair. “I must go. There’s a wonderful woman on the south side. Everyone says she’s marvelous. She’s a fortune teller too, a voodoo priestess, black, you know.”
“From Africa?”
“No. Haiti. She tells such marvelous fortunes. Her name is Marianna Christophe. She’s a descendant of a black emperor. And she has a black goat with golden horns.”
“Perhaps,” Florence laughed, “she borrowed the goat from the gypsy girl in a book I once read. What’s the address? I must have her tell my fortune.”
“It’s 3528 Duncan Street. I wish—” the girl hesitated. “I wish you were going now.” She shuddered a little. “She’s black, a voodoo priestess. She has a black goat with golden horns. I’m always a little scared of black things.”
“Say!” Florence exclaimed, seized by a sudden inspiration, “why don’t you wait until tomorrow, then I can go with you to see this voodoo priestess?”
“I—I’d love it.” The girl’s face brightened.
“She’s beautiful, this June Travis,” Florence told herself, “beautiful in a peculiar way, fluffy hair that is not quite red, a round face and deeply dimpled cheeks. Who could fail to love her and want to protect her?”
“Let me see,” she said, speaking half to the girl, half to herself, “No, I can’t go tomorrow. How will the day after do?”
“That will be fine.”
“You’ll meet me here at this same hour?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Then I’ll be going.” Florence held out a hand. “Goodbye and good luck. I have a feeling,” she added as a sort of afterthought, “that we are going to do a lot of exploring together, you and I.”
As she hurried toward Sandy’s glass box Florence repeated, “An awful lot.” At that, she had not the faintest notion what a truly awful lot that would be.
When Jeanne left that place of many gypsies who were not gypsies, she quickly lost herself in the throng that ever jams the narrow sidewalks on Maxwell Street. She was glad, for the moment, to be away from that place. It somehow frightened her. But she would go back; this she knew. When one is looking for a certain person, one looks into many faces, to at last exclaim, “This is the one!” Jeanne was looking for a certain thieving gypsy woman. She must look into many gypsy faces.
But now, pushed this way, then that by the throng, she listened with deaf ears, as she had often done before, to the many strange cries and entreaties about her. “Lady, buy this! Buy this and wear diamonds.” “Shoe strings, five cents a dozen! Shoe strings!” “Nize ripe bananas!” “Here, lady, look! Look! A fine coat with Persian lamb collar, only seventeen dollars!” The cries increased as she passed through the thick of it. Then they began to quiet down.
As she looked ahead, Jeanne spied a crowd thicker than all the rest. It centered about a rough board stand. Since she was a small child Jeanne had been unable to resist crowds. She pressed forward until she was in the thick of this one.
Just then a man mounted to the platform, took up a microphone and began to speak. His voice carried far.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “there is to be conducted on this platform a dancing contest. It is open to gypsy dancing girls only. Let me repeat, gypsy dancing girls.”
Gypsy dancing girls! Jeanne’s heart bounded. It had been a long time since she danced in public. But always, as long as she could remember, she had danced. By the roadsides of France, on the streets of gay Paris, in the Paris Opera, in light opera in America she had danced her way, almost to fame.
“And now to think of dancing onthisstreet, before this crowd! Why should I think of it?” Yet she had thought of it, and the thought would not quiet down. Once a gypsy, always a gypsy. Once a dancer, always a dancer. And yet—she would wait.
“Where are the gypsy dancers?” Jeanne asked a slender girl in a bright shawl who was packed in close beside her.
There were gypsy dancers enough, Jeanne saw this at once. They came on, one at a time. A four-piece orchestra played for them. Some were bright and well-dressed, some ragged and sad. Some brought their own music and flashed their tambourines in wild abandon. Some danced to the music that was offered and did very badly indeed. “None,” Jeanne thought, “are very good. And yet—”
Of a sudden she began to wonder what the purpose of it all might be. Then she caught the gleam of a movie camera lens half-hidden behind an awning. “They’ll be in the movies,” she thought. This did not thrill her. To be in movies of this sort, she knew too well, was no great honor.
And yet, as she stood there listening to the mad rhythm of saxophone, violin, oboe and trap-drums, her feet would not stand still. It was provoking. She wished she might move away, but could not. She seemed to have lost her will power.
Then she once more became conscious of the slender girl in the bright shawl.
“The prize is twenty-five dollars,” the girl was saying in a low tone. “How grand to have that much money all at one time!”
Jeanne stared at her with fresh interest. As she made some manner of reply, she found herself, without willing it, dropping into the curious lingo that is gypsy speech. To her surprise, she heard the girl answer in that same lingo.
“So you are a gypsy,” she said. “And you dance.” She could see the child’s slim body sway to the rhythm of the music. “Why do you not try for the prize?”
“I would love to,” the girl murmured. “God knows we need the money! And I could beat them, beat them blind, if only—”
“If only what?” Jeanne breathed.
“If only I did not have a bad knee. But now, for me to dance is impossible.”
At that moment Jeanne became conscious of a coarse-featured, dark-faced woman who was pushing forward a young girl. She recognized the girl on the instant. She was one of those girls who, but half an hour before, had insisted they were gypsies, but who could not speak the gypsy language.
“Yes,” the woman was saying, “yes, she can dance, and she is a gypsy. Try her. You shall see. She dances better than these. Bah!” She scowled. “Much better than these.”
“I do not believe she is a gypsy,” Jeanne whispered to the girl beside her.
“She is not a gypsy,” the lame girl said soberly. “But if we tell—ah, then, look out! She is a bad one, that black-faced woman.”
“So we shall be very wise and keep silent.” Jeanne pressed the girl’s arm. How slender it was! Jeanne’s heart reproached her. She could win that dance contest in this girl’s stead. And yet, she still held back.
The girl, pushed forward by the dark-faced woman, was now on the platform. She danced, Jeanne was forced to admit, very well, much better indeed than any of the others. The crowd saw and applauded.
“She is a good dancer,” Jeanne thought, “very good. And yet she is sailing under false colors. She is not a gypsy. Still,” she wondered, “am I right? Do all American gypsies know the gypsy tongue?” She could not tell. And still, her feet were moving restlessly. Not she, but her feet wished to dance.
And then, with the suddenness of the sun escaping from a cloud, came great joy to Jeanne. A powerful arm encircled her waist and a gruff voice said:
“Tiens!It is my Jeanne!”
It was Bihari, Bihari, Jeanne’s gypsy step-father! She had supposed him to be in France.
“Bihari!” she cried, enraptured. “You here?”
“Yes, my child.”
“But why?”
“Does it matter now?” Bihari’s tone was full of serious joy. “All that matters now is that you must dance. You are a gypsy. We are all gypsies, all but that one, the one who, without your dancing, will win. She is an impostor. She is no gypsy. This I know. Come, my Jeanne! You must dance!”
“Here!” Jeanne sprang forward, at the same time dragging the bright shawl from the slender girl’s shoulders. “Here! I, too, am a gypsy! I, too, will dance.”
“She a gypsy?” The dark-faced one’s cheeks purpled with anger. “She is no gypsy! Did I not this moment see her drag the shawl from this girl’s shoulders?” She lifted a heavy hand as if to strike the little French girl. That instant a hand that was like a vice closed upon her uplifted arm.
“Put that arm down or I will break it off at the elbow!” It was the powerful Bihari.
The woman’s cheek blanched. Her hand dropped. She shrank back into the crowd.
“Sheisa gypsy,” Bihari said quietly to the man on the platform. “I am her step-father. She traveled in my caravan. I will vouch for her. And she can dance—you shall see.”
Perhaps Bihari, the gypsy smithy, was not unknown to the man on the stand. At any rate, Jeanne had her chance.
She had not forgotten her own bright gypsy shawl of days gone by, nor the prizes she had won while it waved and waved about her slim figure. Now, in this fantastic setting, it all came back to her.
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.”