The Magic Curtain Part 2

"But what can you do?"

"I can act. I can sing."

"But no one wants you to act or sing."

"On the stage," Jeanne had shrugged, "perhaps no. But in life one may always act a part. I shall act. But what shall I be?"

"There, now!" she had cried a moment later. "I shall be a boy. I shall become an usher, an usher in Grand Opera. If I may not be on the stage, I may at least spend every night in the aisles. I shall see all the operas, and I shall earn a little."

"But, Pet.i.te Jeanne!"

"No! No! Do not resist me!" Jeanne had cried. "I will do it. I must! It is my soul, my life, the stage, the opera. Hours each day I shall be near it. Perhaps I may steal out upon the stage and sing an aria when the hall is dark. Perhaps, too, I shall meet Marjory Dean, the great one this city adores.

"And who knows," she had clasped her hands in ecstasy, "who knows but that in some mysterious way my opportunity may come?"

"My opportunity," she thought now, as, sitting before the glowing fire, she contemplated the future, "appears to be a bed in jail. But who knows?"

Jeanne refused to be depressed. Casting off her dressing gown, she sprang away in a wild dance as she chanted:

"Now I am Pierre, Now I am Jeanne.

To-night I sleep on eiderdown, To-morrow I am in jail.

"Oh, sweet mystery of life."

Her voice rang out high and clear. Then, like the flash of sunshine across the brow of a hill, her mood changed.

"To-morrow!" she exclaimed, dropping into the depths of a great chair by the fire. "Why think of to-morrow? See! The tea kettle sings for us. Why not one good cup of black tea? And then--sweet dreams."

A moment later there was a clinking of thin china cups. A belated midnight lunch was served.

An hour later, as Pet.i.te Jeanne twisted her pink toes beneath her silk-covered eiderdown, brought all the way from her beloved France, she whispered low:

"To-morrow!"

And after a time, once again, faint, indistinct like a word from a dream:

"To-morrow."

CHAPTER III ON THE VERGE OF ADVENTURE

Long after Pet.i.te Jeanne's dainty satin slippers had danced her off to bed, Florence Huyler sat before the fire thinking. If your acquaintance with Florence is of long standing, you will know that she was possessed of both courage and strength. For some time a gymnasium director, she had developed her splendid physical being to the last degree. Even now, though her princ.i.p.al business in life had for some time been that of keeping up with the little French girl, she spent three hours each day in the gymnasium and swimming pool. Her courage surpa.s.sed her strength; yet as she contemplated the step Pet.i.te Jeanne had taken and the events which must immediately follow that move, she trembled.

"It's all too absurd, anyway," she told herself. "She wants to be an opera singer, so she dresses herself up like a boy and becomes an usher.

What good could possibly come of that?"

All the time she was thinking this she realized that her objections were futile. Pet.i.te Jeanne believed in Fate. Fate would take her where she wished to go.

"If she wished to marry the President's son, she'd become a maid in the White House. And then--" Florence paused. She dared not say that Pet.i.te Jeanne would not attain her end. Up to this moment Jeanne had surmounted all obstacles. Adopted by the gypsies, she had lived in their camps for years. She had inherited their fantastic att.i.tude toward life. For her nothing was entirely real, and nothing unattainable.

"But to-morrow night!" Florence shuddered. The little French girl meant to don her dress suit and as Pierre Andrews return to her post as usher in the boxes of that most magnificent of all opera houses.

"A necklace worth thousands of dollars was stolen." She reviewed events.

"Pet.i.te Jeanne was near. When they looked for her, she had vanished. She stole the necklace. What could be more certain than this? She stole it!

They will say that. They'll arrest her on sight.

"She stole it." She repeated the words slowly. "Did she?"

The very question shocked her. Pet.i.te Jeanne was no thief. This she knew right well. She had no need to steal. She still had a little money in the bank. Yet, as a means to an end, had she taken the necklace, intending later to return it?

"No! No!" she whispered aloud. "Jeanne is reckless, but she'd never do that!

"But where is the necklace? Who did take it?" For a time she endeavored to convince herself that the precious string of pearls, having become unclasped, had slipped to the floor, that it had been discovered and even now was in its youthful owner's possession.

"No such luck." She prodded the fire vigorously. "In the end fortune smiles upon us. But in the beginning, nay, nay!

"And to-morrow evening--" She rose to fling her splendid arms wide.

"To-morrow my little friend walks in, after many brave detectives have spent the day in a vain search for her, and says quite nonchalantly:

"'There you are, madame. Shall I remove your sable coat? Or will you wear it? And will you have the chair, so? Or so? _Voila!_'

"Who can say it is not going to be dramatic? Drama in real life! That's what counts most with Jeanne. Oh, my dear little Jeanne! What an adorable peck of trouble you are!"

And all the time, quite lost in the big, eager, hungry world that waited just outside her window, the little French girl lay among her pink eiderdown quilts and slept the sleep of the just.

The cold gray dawn of the morning after found Pet.i.te Jeanne considerably shaken in her mind regarding the outcome of this, her latest adventure.

"Will they truly arrest me?" she asked herself as, slipping into a heavy robe, she sought the comfort of an early fire. "And if they arrest me, what then?" She shuddered. She had once visited a police court in this very city. An uninviting place it had been, too. With judge and lawyers alternately laughing and storming at crestfallen individuals who stood, some quite bewildered, others with an air of hopelessness about them, with two women weeping in a corner, and with an ill-smelling, ogling group of visitors looking on, the whole place had depressed her beyond words.

"Am I to stand there to be stared at? Will the lawyers and the judge make a joke of my misfortune?" She stamped her little foot angrily. "No! No!

Nevair! They shall not!

"And yet," she thought more soberly, "I must go back. I truly must!

"Oh, why did I run away? Why did I not say: 'Search me if you must. You will see that I do not have your necklace!'

"But no!" She flushed. "As Pet.i.te Jeanne I might be searched. But as Pierre. Ah, no! No!"

A cup of steaming coffee revived her spirits; but for a few hours only.

Then the dull, drab day bore down upon her with greater force than ever.

And indeed it was no sort of day to enliven spirits and bolster up courage. Gray skies, gray streets, gray fog, dripping walls of great buildings, these were all about her. And in the end a slow, weepy, drizzling rain began to fall.