Even as she asked this question, the girl emerged from the water, shook back her tangled hair, drew a rough blue overall over her dripping bathing suit, and then, leaping away like a wild deer, cleared the breakwater at a bound and in a twinkling lost herself on a narrow path that wound through the jungle of low willows and cottonwoods.
“She is gone!” Florence exclaimed. “I have lost her!” Nevertheless, she went racing along the beach to enter the jungle over the path the girl had taken. She had taken up a strange trail. That trail was short. It ended abruptly. This she was soon enough to know.
Petite Jeanne was a person of courage. Times there had been when, as a child living with the gypsies of France, she had believed that she saw a ghost. At the heart of black woods, beneath a hedge on a moonless night some white thing lying just before her had moved in the most blood-chilling fashion. Never, on such an occasion, had Jeanne turned to flee. Always, with knees trembling, heart in her throat, she had marched straight up to the “ghost.” Always, to be sure, the “ghost” had vanished, but Jeanne had gained courage by such adventures. So now, as she glided down the soft-carpeted, circular staircase with the heavy odor of incense rising before her and the play of eerie green lights all about her, she took a strong grip on herself, bade her fluttering heart be still, and steadily descended into the mysterious unknown.
The scene that met her gaze as at last she reached those lower levels, was fantastic in the extreme. A throng of little brown people, dressed in richest silks, their faces shining strangely in the green light, sat in small circles on rich Oriental rugs.
Scattered about here and there all over the room were low pedestals and on these pedestals rested incense burners. Fantastic indeed were the forms of these burners: ancient dragons done in copper, eagles of brass with wings spread wide, twining serpents with eyes of green jade, and faces, faces of ugly men done in copper. These were everywhere.
As Jeanne sank silently to a place on the floor, she felt that some great event in the lives of these people was about to transpire. They did not speak; they whispered; and once, then again, and yet again, their eyes strayed expectantly to a low stage, built across the far end of the room.
“What is to happen?” the girl asked herself. She shuddered. To forget that she was in a secret place at the very heart of a Chinese temple built near the center of a great city—this was impossible.
“I shouldn’t be here,” she chided herself. “Something may happen to me. I may be detained. I may not be able to reach the Opera House in time. And then—”
She wondered what that would mean. She realized with a sort of shock that she was strangely indifferent to it all. Truth was, events had so shaped themselves that she was at that moment undecided where her own best good lay. She had ventured something, had begun playing the role of a boy. She had done this that she might gain a remote end. The end now seemed very remote indeed. The perils involved in reaching that end had increased four-fold.
“Why go back at all?” she asked herself. “As Pierre I can die very comfortably. As Petite Jeanne I can live on. And no one will ever know. I am—”
Her thoughts were interrupted, not by a sound nor a movement, but by a sudden great silence that had fallen, like a star from the sky at night, upon the assembled host of little people.
Petite Jeanne was not a stranger to silence. She had stood at the edge of a clearing before an abandoned cabin, far from the home of any living man just as the stars were coming out, when a hush had fallen over all; not a leaf had stirred, not a bird note had sounded, and the living, breathing world had seemed far away. She had called that silence.
She had drifted with idle paddle in a canoe far out upon the glimmering surface of Lake Huron. There, alone, with night falling, she had listened until every tiniest wavelet had gone to rest. She had heard the throb of a motor die away in the distance. She had felt rather than heard the breath of air stirred by the last lone seagull on his way to some rocky ledge for rest. She had at last listened for the faintest sound, then had whispered:
“This is silence.”
It may have been, but never had a silence impressed her as did the silence of this moment as, seated there on the floor, far from her friends, an uninvited guest to some weird ceremony, she awaited with bated breath that which was to come.
She had not long to wait. A long tremulous sigh, like the tide sweeping across the ocean at night, passed over the motionless throng; a sigh, that was all.
But Petite Jeanne? She wished to scream, to rise and dash out of the room crying, “Fire! Fire!”
She did not scream. Something held her back. Perhaps it was the sigh, and perhaps the silence.
The thing that was happening was weird in the extreme. On the stage a curtain was slowly, silently closing. No one was near to close it. It appeared endowed with life. This was not all. The curtain was aflame. Tongues of fire darted up its folds. One expected this fire to roar. It did not. Yet, as the little French girl, with heart in throat and finger nails cutting deep, sat there petrified, flames raced up the curtain again and yet again. And all the time, in great, graceful folds, it was gliding, silently gliding from the right and the left.
“Soon it will close,” she told herself. “And then—”
Only one thought saved Jeanne from a scream that would have betrayed her; not a soul in that impassive throng had moved or spoken. It was borne in upon her that here was some form of magic which she did not know.
“It’s a magic curtain.” These words, formed by her lips were not so much as whispered.
But now from a dark corner of the stage a figure appeared. A weird stooping figure he was, clothed all in white. He moved toward the curtain with slow, halting steps. He seemed desirous of passing between the folds of the curtain before the opening; yet a great fear appeared to hold him back.
At this moment there came to Jeanne’s mind words from a very ancient book:
“Draw not nigh hither. Put off thy shoes from thy feet.”
“The burning bush!” she whispered. “It burned but was not consumed; a magic bush. This is a magic curtain.”
“Remove thy shoes.”
She seemed to hear someone repeat these words.
Her hands went to her feet. They were fully clad. A quick glance to right and left assured her that not another person in the room wore shoes.
“My shoes will betray me!” Consternation seized her. One look backward, a stealthy creeping toward the soft-carpeted stair, another stealthy move and she was on her way out.
But would she make it? Her heart was in her throat. A quarter of the way up she was obliged to pause. She was suffocating with fear.
“I must be calm,” she whispered. “I must! I must!” Of a sudden life seemed a thing of solemn beauty. Somehow she must escape that she might live on and on.
Once again she was creeping upward. Did a hand touch her foot? Was someone preparing to seize her? With an effort, she looked down. No one was following. Every eye was glued upon the magic curtain. The curtain was closed. The white-robed figure had vanished. What had happened? Had he passed through? Had the curtain consumed him? She shuddered. Then, summoning all her courage, she leaped up the stairs, glided silently across the room above, and passed swiftly on until she gained the open air.
Then how she sped away! Never had she raced so swiftly and silently as now.
It was some time before she realized how futile was her flight. No one pursued her.
In time she was able to still her wildly beating heart. Then she turned toward home.
Once she stopped dead in her tracks to exclaim: “The magic curtain! Oh! Why did I run away?”
Then, as another mood seized her, she redoubled her pace. Florence, she hoped, awaited her with a roaring fire, a cup of hot chocolate and a good scolding.
By the time she reached the doorway that led to her humble abode, Petite Jeanne was in high spirits. The brisk walk had stirred her blood. Her recent adventure had quickened her imagination. She was prepared for anything.
Alas, how quickly all this vanished! One moment she was a heroine marching forth to face that which life might fling at her; the next she was limp as a rag doll. Such was Petite Jeanne. The cause?
The room she entered was dark; chill damp hung over the place like a shroud. Florence was not there. The fire was dead. Cheer had passed from the place; gloom had come.
Jeanne could build a fire. This is an art known to all wanderers, and she had been a gypsy. But she lacked the will to put her skill to the test, so, quite in despair, she threw herself in a chair and lay there, looking for all the world like a deserted French doll, as she whispered to herself:
“What can it matter? Life is without a true purpose, all life. Why should one struggle? Why not go down with the tide? Why—”
But in one short moment all this was changed. The door flew open. Florence burst into the room and with her came a whole gust of fresh lake air, or so it seemed to Jeanne.
“You have been to the island!” she exclaimed, as she became a very animated doll.
“Yes, I have been there.” Excitement shone from the big girl’s eyes. “And I have made a surprising discovery. But wait. What ails the fire?”
“There is no fire.”
“But why?”
Jeanne shrugged. “One does not know,” she murmured.
Seizing the antiquated wood-hamper that stood by the hearth, Florence piled shavings and kindling high. Then, after scratching a match, she watched the yellow flames spread as shadows began dancing on the wall.
“You have been surrendering to gloom,” she said reprovingly. “Don’t do it. It’s bad for you. Where there is light there is hope. And see how our fire gleams!”
“You speak truth, my friend.” Jeanne’s tone was solemn.
“But tell me.” Her mood changed. “You have met adventure. So have I.” Her eyes shone.
“Yes.” Florence was all business at once. “But take a look at the clock. There is just time to rush out for a cup of tea, then—”
“Then I go to jail,” replied Jeanne solemnly. “Tell me. What does one wear in jail?”
“You are joking,” Florence replied. “This is a serious affair. But, since you will go, it will not help to be late. We must hurry.”
A moment later, arm in arm, they passed from the outer door and the dull damp of night swallowed them up.
When, a short time later, Petite Jeanne, garbed as Pierre Andrews, stole apprehensively through the entrance to the great opera house, her ever-fearful eyes fell upon two men loitering just within.
The change that came over one of these, a tall, dark young man with a steely eye, as he caught sight of Jeanne was most astonishing. Turning square about like some affair of metal set on wheels, he appeared about to leap upon her. Only a grip on his arm, that of his more stocky companion, appeared to save the girl.
“Watch out!” the other counseled savagely. “Think where you are!”
On the instant the look in those steely eyes changed. The man became a smiling wolf.
“Hey there, boy!” he called to Jeanne.
But Jeanne, in her immaculate suit of black, gave but one frightened backward look, and then sped for the elevator.
Her heart was doing double time as she saw the elevator door silently close.
“Who could that man be?” she questioned herself breathlessly. “He can’t have been a detective. They do not stand on ceremony. He would be here by my side, with a hand on my arm. But if not a detective, what then?” She could form no answer.
In the meantime, the dark, slim man was saying to the stocky one:
“Can you beat it? You can’t! Thought he’d cut for good! My luck. But no! Here he is, going back.”
“What do you care?” the other grumbled. “They’ll take him, and that’s the end of it. Come on outside.” His eyes strayed to the corner. A deep-chested man whose coat bulged in a strange way was loitering there. “Air’s bad in here.”
They passed out into the night. And there we leave them. But not for long. Men such as these are found in curious places and at unheard-of hours.
But Jeanne? With her heart stilled for a brief period of time, she rose to the floor above, only to be thrown into a state of mind bordering on hysteria at thought of facing the ordeal that must lie just before her.
Seeking a dark corner, she closed her eyes. Allowing her head to drop forward, she stood like one in prayer. Did she pray, or did she but surrender her soul and body to the forces of nature all about her? Who can say but that these two are the same, or at least that their effect is the same? However that may be, it was a changed Jeanne who, three minutes later, took up her post of duty in the boxes, for hers was the air of a sentry. Her movements were firm and steady, the look upon her face as calm as the reflection of the moon upon a still pool at midnight.
That which followed was silent drama. Throughout it all, not a word was spoken, no, not so much as whispered. The effect was like a thing of magic. Jeanne will never erase those pictures from her memory.
Scarcely had she taken her place at the door leading to the box than the great magnate, J. Rufus Robinson, and his daughter, she of the lost pearls, appeared. Jeanne caught her breath as she beheld the cape of green velvet trimmed with white fur and the matchless French gown of cream colored silk she wore. There was no lack of jewels despite the lost pearls. A diamond flashed here, a ruby burned there, yet they did not outshine the smile of this child of the rich.
“I am seeing life,” Jeanne whispered to herself. “I must see more of it. I must! I just must!”
Yet, even as she whispered these words she thought of the bearded man with those luminous eyes. She had asked him if all this was life—this wealth, this pomp and circumstance. And he had replied quite calmly: “It is a form of life.”
At that instant Jeanne thought of impending events that hung over her like a sword suspended by a hair, and shuddered.
Assisting the millionaire’s daughter to remove her wrap, she carried it to the cloak-room at the back, then assisted the pair to arrange their chairs. This done, she stepped back, a respectful distance.
While this was being done, a man, gliding forward with silent unconcern, had taken a place in the shadows at the back of the box. Deeper in the shadows stood a woman in black. Jeanne did not see the woman. She did see the man, and shuddered again. He, she realized, was the detective.
As she turned her back, the detective moved, prepared without doubt to advance upon her. But a curious thing happened. The woman in the shadows darted forward. Touching the arm of the rich young lady, she pointed at Jeanne and nodded her head. The girl in turn looked at the detective and shook her head. Then both the detective and the woman in black lost themselves in the shadows at the back of the box.
All this was lost to Jeanne. Her back had been turned. Her mind had been filled by a magic panorama, a picture of that which was to pass across the opera stage that night. Thus does devotion to a great art cause us to forget the deepest, darkest trouble in our lives.
All during that long evening Petite Jeanne found herself profoundly puzzled. Why was nothing said to her regarding the pearls? Why was she not arrested?
“They have been found,” she told herself at last. Yet she doubted her own words, as well she might.
Two incidents of the evening impressed her. As she left the box during an intermission the rich girl turned a bright smile full upon her as she said:
“What is your name?”
Caught off her guard, the little French girl barely escaped betraying her secret. The first sound of “Jeanne” was upon her lips when of a sudden, without so much as a stammer or blush, she answered:
“Pierre Andrews, if you please.”
“What a romantic name.” The girl smiled again, then passed on.
“Now why did she do that?” Jeanne’s head was in a whirl.
Scarcely had she regained her composure when a voice behind her asked: “Are you fond of the opera?”
“Oh, yes! Yes, indeed I am.” She turned about.
“Then you may see much of it this season.” The mysterious woman in black was already turned about. She was walking away. Jeanne did not see her face, yet there was that about her voice, a depth, a melodious resonance, a something, that thrilled her to the very tips of her slender toes.
“Will wonders never end?” she asked herself, and found no answer.
Petite Jeanne left the opera house that night in a brown study. She was perplexed beyond words. The necklace had not been found. She had made sure of that when, between the second and third act, she had discovered on a bulletin board of the lobby a typewritten notice of the loss and an offer of a reward for the return of the pearls.
“If the pearls had been found that notice would have been taken down,” she assured herself. “But if this is true, why did I go unmolested? One would suppose that at least I would be questioned regarding the affair. But no!” She shrugged her graceful shoulders. “They ask me nothing. They look and look, and say nothing. Oh, yes, indeed, they say: ‘What is your name?’ That most beautiful rich one, she says this. And the dark one who is only a voice, she says: ‘Do you like the opera?’ She asks this. And who is she? I know that voice. I have heard it before. It is very familiar, yet I cannot recall it. If she is here again I shall see her face.”
Having thus worked herself into a state of deep perplexity that rapidly ripened into fear, she glided, once her duties were done, down a narrow aisle, across the end of the stage where a score of stage hands were busy shifting scenes, then along a narrow passage-way, with which, as you will know from readingThe Golden Circle, she was thoroughly familiar. From this passageway she emerged upon a second and narrower stage.
This was the stage of the Civic Theatre. The stage was dark. The house was dark. Only the faintest gleam of light revealed seats like ghosts ranged row on row.
How familiar it all seemed to her. The time had been when, not many months back, she had stood upon that stage and by the aid of her God-given gift, had stirred the audience to admiration, to laughter and to tears.
As she stood there now a wave of feeling came over her that she could not resist. This stage, this little playhouse had become to her what home means to many. The people who had haunted those seats wereherpeople. They had loved her. She had loved them. But now they were gone. The house was dark, the light opera troop was scattered. She thought she knew how a mother robin must feel as she visits her nest long after the fledglings have flown.
Advancing to the center of the stage, she stretched her arms wide in mute appeal to the empty seats. But no least whisper of admiration or disapproval came back to her.
A moment she stood thus. Then, as her hands dropped, her breast heaved with one great sob.
But, like the sea, Jeanne was made of many moods. “No! No!” She stamped her small foot. “I will not come back to this! I will not! The way back is closed. Only the door ahead is open. I will go on.
“Grand Opera, this is all now. This is art indeed. Pictures, music, story. This is Grand Opera. Big! Grand! Noble! Some day, somehow I shall stand upon that most wonderful of all stages, and those people, those thousands, the richest, the most learned, the most noble, they shall be my people!”
Having delivered this speech to the deserted hall, she once again became a very little lady in a trim black dress suit, seeking a way to the outer air and the street that led to home.
She had come this way because she feared that the slender, dark-faced stranger who had accosted her earlier in the evening would await her at the door.
“If he sees me he will follow,” she told herself. “And then—”
She finished with a shudder.
In choosing this way she had counted upon one circumstance. Nor had she counted in vain. As she hurried down the dark aisle toward the back of the theatre which was, she knew, closed, she came quite suddenly upon a man with a flashlight and time clock.
“Oh, Tommy Mosk!” she exclaimed in a whisper. “How glad I am that you are still here!”
The watchman threw his light upon her face.
“Petite Jeanne!” he exclaimed. “But why the masquerade?” Tommy belonged to those other days and, with the rest, had come to love the simple, big-hearted little light opera star. “Petite Jeanne! But why—”
“Please don’t make me tell.” She gripped his arm. “Only let me out, and see me safe into a taxi. And—and—” She put a finger to her lips. “Don’t whisper a word.”
“I—it’s irregular, but I—I’ll do it,” he replied gallantly.
Jeanne gave his arm another squeeze and they were away.
Three minutes later, still dressed as Pierre, the usher, she was huddled on the broad seat of a taxi, speeding for home.
When Florence, whose work as physical director required her attention until late hours three nights in the week, arrived, she found the little French girl still dressed as Pierre, curled up in a big chair shuddering in the cold and the dark.
“Wh-what’s happened?” She stared at her companion in astonishment.
“N-n-nothing happened!” wailed Petite Jeanne. “That is why I am so very much afraid. They have said not one word to me about the pearls. They believe I have them. They will follow me, shadow me, search this place. Who can doubt it? Oh,mon Dieu! Such times! Such troubles!
“And yes!” she cried with a fresh shudder. “There is the slim, dark-faced one who is after me. And how can I know why?”
“You poor child!” Florence lifted her from the chair as easily as she might had she been a sack of feathers. “You shall tell me all about it. But first I must make a fire and brew some good black tea. And you must run along and become Petite Jeanne. I am not very fond of this Pierre person.” She plucked at the black coat sleeve. “In fact I never have cared for him at all.”
Half an hour later the two girls were curled up amid a pile of rugs and cushions before the fire. Cups were steaming, the fire crackling and the day, such as it had been, was rapidly passing into the joyous realm of “times that are gone,” where one may live in memories that amuse and thrill, but never cause fear nor pain.
Jeanne had told her story and Florence had done her best to reassure her, when the little French girl exclaimed: “But you, my friend? Only a few hours ago you spoke of a discovery on the island. What was this so wonderful thing you saw there?”
“Well, now,” Florence sat up to prod the fire, “that was the strangest thing! You have been on the island?”
“No, my friend. In the fort, but not on the island.”
“Then you don’t know what sort of half wild place it is. It’s made of the dumping from a great city: cans, broken bricks, clay, everything. And from sand taken from the bottom of the lake. It’s been years in the making. Storms have washed in seeds. Birds have carried in others. Little forests of willow and cottonwood have sprung up. The south end is a jungle. A fit hide-out for tramps, you’d say. All that. You’d not expect to find respectable people living there, would you?”
“But how could they?”
“That’s the queer part. They could. And I’m almost sure they do. Seems too strange to be true.
“And yet—” She prodded the fire, then stared into the flames as if to see reproduced there pictures that had half faded from her memories. “And yet, Petite Jeanne, I saw a girl out there, quite a young girl, in overalls and a bathing-suit. She was like a statue when I first saw her, a living statue. She went in for a dip, then donned her overalls to dash right into the jungle.
“I wanted to see where she went, so I followed. And what do you think! After following a winding trail for a little time, I came, just where the cottonwoods are tallest, upon the strangest sort of dwelling—if it was a dwelling at all—I have ever seen.”
“What was it like?” Jeanne leaned eagerly forward.
“Like nothing on land or sea, but a little akin to both. The door was heavy and without glass. It had a great brass knob such as you find on the cabin doors of very old ships. And the windows, if you might call them that, looked like portholes taken from ships.
“But the walls; they were strangest of all. Curious curved pillars rose every two or three feet apart, to a considerable height. Between these pillars brick walls had been built. The whole was topped by a roof of green tile.”
“And the girl went in there?”
“Where else could she have gone?”
“And that was her home?”
“Who could doubt it?”
“America—” Jeanne drew a long breath. “Your America is a strange place.”
“So strange that even we who have lived here always are constantly running into the most astonishing things.
“Perhaps,” the big girl added, after a brief silence, “that is why America is such a glorious place to live.”
“But did you not endeavor to make a call at this strange home?” asked Jeanne.
“I did. Little good it did me! I knocked three times at the door. There was no answer. It was growing dark, but no light shone from those porthole windows. So all I could do was to retrace my steps.
“I had gone not a dozen paces when I caught the sound of a half suppressed laugh. I wheeled about, but saw no one. Now, what do you make of that?”
“It’s a sweet and jolly mystery,” said Jeanne. “We shall solve it, you and I.”
And in dreaming of this new and apparently harmless adventure, the little French girl’s troubles were, for the time being at least, forgotten. She slept soundly that night and all her dreams were dreams of peace.
But to-morrow was another day.
And on that new day, like a ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds after a storm, there came to Jeanne an hour of speechless joy.
Having exercised as ever her gift of friendship to all mankind, she was able, through her acquaintance with the watchman, to enter the opera house when she chose. There was only one drawback to this; she must enter always as Pierre and never as Petite Jeanne.
Knowing that some sort of rehearsal would be in progress, she garbed herself in her Pierre costume and repaired to the place which to her, of all places on earth, seemed the home of pure enchantment—the opera.
Even now, when the seats were clothed like ghosts in white sheets, when the aisles, so often adorned with living models all a-glitter with silks and jewels, and echoing with the sound of applause and laughter, were dark and still, the great hall lost none of its charm.
As she tripped noiselessly down the foyer where pillars cut from some curious stone flanked her on every side and priceless chandeliers hung like blind ghosts far above her head, she thought of the hundreds who had promenaded here displaying rich furs, costly silks and jewels. She recalled, too, the remark of that strangely studious man with a beard:
“It is a form of life.”
“I wonder what he meant?” she said half aloud. “Perhaps some day I shall meet him again. If I do, I shall ask him.”
But Jeanne was no person to be living in the past. She dreamed of the future when only dreams were at her command. For her the vivid, living, all-entrancingpresentwas what mattered most. She had not haunted the building long before she might have been found curled up in a seat among the dark shadows close to the back row on the orchestra floor. She had pushed the white covering away, but was still half hidden by it; she could be entirely hidden in a second’s time if she so willed.
Behind and above her, black chasms of darkness, the boxes and balconies loomed. Before her the stage, all dark, seemed a mysterious cave where a hundred bandits might hide among the settings of some imposing scene.
She did not know the name of the opera to be rehearsed on this particular afternoon. Who, then, can describe the stirring of her blood, the quickening of her heart-beats, the thrill that coursed through her very being when the first faint flush of dawn began appearing upon the scene that lay before her? A stage dawn it was, to be sure; but very little less than real it was, for all that. In this matchless place of amusement shades of light, pale gray, blue, rosy red, all come creeping out, and dawn lingers as it does upon hills and forests of earth and stone and wood.
Eagerly the little French girl leaned forward to catch the first glimpse of that unknown scene. Slowly, slowly, but quite surely, to the right a building began looming out from that darkness. The trunk of a tree appeared, another and yet another. Dimly a street was outlined. One by one these objects took on a clearer line until with an impulsive movement, Jeanne fairly leaped from her place.
“It is France!” she all but cried aloud. “My own beloved France! And the opera! It is to be ‘The Juggler of Notre Dame’! Was there ever such marvelous good fortune!”
It was indeed as if a will higher than her own had planned all this, for this short opera was the one Jeanne had studied. It was this opera, as you will remember from readingThe Golden Circle, that Jeanne had once witnessed quite by chance as she lay flat upon the iron grating more than a hundred feet above the stage.
“And now I shall see Marjory Dean play in it once more,” she exulted. “For this is a dress rehearsal, I am sure of that.”
She was not long in discovering that her words were true. Scarcely had the full light of day shone upon that charming stage village, nestled among the hills of France, than a company of peasants, men, women and children, all garbed in bright holiday attire, came trooping upon the stage.
But what was this? Scarcely had they arrived than one who loitered behind began shouting in the most excited manner and pointing to the road that led back to the hills.
“The juggler is coming,” Jeanne breathed. “The juggler of Notre Dame.” She did not say Marjory Dean, who played the part. She said: “the juggler,” because at this moment she lived again in that beautiful village of her native land. Once again she was a gypsy child. Once more she camped at the roadside. With her pet bear and her friend, the juggler, she marched proudly into the village to dance for pennies before the delighted crowd in the village square.
What wonder that Petite Jeanne knew every word of this charming opera by heart? Was it not France as she knew it? And was not France her native land?
Breathing deeply, clutching now and then at her heart to still its wild beating, she waited and watched. A second peasant girl followed the first to the roadside. She too called and beckoned. Others followed her. And then, with a burst of joyous song, their gay garments gleaming like a bed of flowers, their faces shining, these happy villagers came trooping back. And in their midst, bearing in one hand a gay, colored hoop, in the other a mysterious bag of tricks, was the juggler of Notre Dame.
“It is Marjory Dean, Marjory herself. She is the juggler,” Jeanne whispered. She dared not trust herself to do more. She wanted to leap to her feet, to clap her hands and cry: “Ray! Ray! Ray!Vive! Vive! Vive!”
But no, this would spoil it all. She must see this beautiful story through to its end.
So, calming herself, she settled back to see the juggler, arrayed in his fantastic costume, open his bag of tricks. She saw him delight his audience with his simple artistry.
She watched, breathless, as a priest, coming from the monastery, rebuked him for practicing what he believed to be a sinful art. She suffered with the juggler as he fought a battle with his soul. When he came near to the door of the monastery that, being entered, might never again be abandoned, she wished to rise and shout:
“No! No! Juggler! Stay with the happy people in the bright sunshine. Show them more of your art. Life is too often sad. Bring joy to their lives!”
She said, in reality, nothing. When at last the curtain fell, she was filled with one desire: to be for one short hour the juggler of Notre Dame. She knew the words of his song; had practiced his simple tricks.
“Why not? Sometime—somewhere,” she breathed.
“Sometime? Somewhere?” She realized in an instant that no place could be quite the same to her as this one that in all its glories of green and gold surrounded her now.
When the curtain was up again the stage scene remained the same; but the gay peasants, the juggler, were gone.
After some moments of waiting Jeanne realized that this scene had been set for the night’s performance, that this scene alone would be rehearsed upon the stage.
“They are gone! It is over!” How empty her life seemed now. It was as if a great light had suddenly gone out.
Stealing from her place, she crept down the aisle, entered a door and emerged at last upon a dark corner of the stage.
For a moment, quite breathless, she stood there in the shadows, watching, listening.
“There is no one,” she breathed. “I am alone.”
An overpowering desire seized her to don the juggler’s costume, to sing his songs, to do his tricks. The costume was there, the bag of tricks. Why not?
Pausing not a second, she crept to the center of the stage, seized the coveted prizes, then beat a hasty retreat.
Ten minutes later, dancing lightly and singing softly, she came upon the stage. She was there alone. Yet, in her mind’s eye she saw the villagers of France, matrons and men, laughing lovers, dancing children, all before her as, casting her bag upon the green, she seized some trifling baubles and began working her charms.
For her, too, the seats were not dark, covered empties, but filled with human beings, filled with the light and joy of living.
Of a sudden she seemed to hear the reproving words of the priest.
Turning about, with sober face, she stood before the monastery door.
And then, like some bird discovered in a garden, she wanted to run away. For there, in very life, a little way back upon the vast stage, stood all the peasants of the opera. And in their midst, garbed in street attire, was Marjory Dean!
“Who are you? How do you dare tamper with my property, to put on my costume?” Marjory Dean advanced alone.
There was sternness in her tone. But there was another quality besides. Had it not been for this, Jeanne might have crumpled in a helpless heap upon the stage. As it was, she could only murmur in her humblest manner:
“I—I am only an usher. See!” She stripped off the juggler’s garb, and stood there in black attire. “Please do not be too hard. I have harmed nothing. See! I will put it all back.” This, with trembling fingers, she proceeded to do. Then in the midst of profound silence, she retreated into the shadows.
She had barely escaped from the stage into the darkness of the opera pit when a figure came soft-footedly after her.
She wished to flee, but a voice seemed to whisper, “Stay!”
The word that came ten seconds after was, “Wait! You can’t deceive me. You are Petite Jeanne!”
It was the great one, Marjory Dean, who spoke.
“Why, how—how could you know?” Jeanne was thrown into consternation.
“Who could not know? If one has seen you upon the stage before, he could not be mistaken.
“But, little girl,” the great one’s tone was deep and low like the mellow chimes of a great clock, “I will not betray you.
“You did that divinely, Petite Jeanne. I could not have done it better. And you, Jeanne, are much like me. A little make-up, and there you are, Petite Jeanne, who is Marjory Dean. Some day, perhaps, I shall allow you to take my place, to do this first act for me, before all this.” She spread her arms wide as if to take in a vast audience.
“No!” Jeanne protested. “I could never do that. Never! Marjory Dean, I—no! No!”
She broke off to stare into the darkness. No one was there!
“I could almost believe I imagined it,” she told herself.
“And yet—no! It was true. She said it. Marjory Dean said that!”
Little wonder, then, that all the remaining hours of that day found on her fair face a radiance born, one might say, in Heaven.
Many saw that face and were charmed by it. The little rich girl saw it as Jeanne performed her humble duties as Pierre. She was so taken by it that, with her father’s consent, she invited Pierre to visit her at her father’s estate next day. And Pierre accepted. And that, as you well may guess, leads to quite another story.
Having accepted an invitation from a daughter of the rich, Jeanne was at once thrown into consternation.
“What am I to wear?” she wailed. “As Pierre I can’t very well wear pink chiffon and satin slippers. And of course evening dress does not go with an informal visit to an estate in mid-afternoon. Oh, why did I accept?”
“You accepted,” Florence replied quietly, “because you wish to know all about life. You have been poor as a gypsy. You know all about being poor. You have lived as a successful lady of the stage. You were then an artist. Successful artists are middle class people, I should say. But your friend Rosemary is rich. She will show you one more side of life.”
“A form of life, that’s what he called it.”