And when the camera gave its last click, when the screen went white and the lights flashed on, she said to herself, “It was not I.”
Yet, even as she sat there they crowded about her, the members of the cast of that picture, the reporters, the critics. They lifted her to their shoulders, carried her to the platform, set her on her feet, and shouted.
“Speech! Speech!”
Speech? Her head was in a wild whirl.
Then her eyes fell upon the clock. “Listen!” She held up a hand for silence.
“Listen!” Her voice rose like a captain’s shouting a command. A hush, the hush that can come only at two in the morning, fell over the group. But into that hush there came no unusual sound, only the distant chimes heralding the hour of two in the morning.
“My hour of enchantment!” Jeanne sighed blissfully.
“And now you listen!” It was Florence who spoke. “I have heard you say that many times. What do you mean—your hour of enchantment?”
“All right, I’ll tell you.” The little French girl’s face beamed. “Long ago a gypsy woman, a very old and very wise fortune teller, said to me, ‘Your hour of enchantment is two o’clock in the morning.’
“You too,” she hurried on, “each one of you has an enchanted hour—an hour when wonderful things will come to you; good fortune, riches, a proposal, marriage, all these will come to you on that enchanted hour.
“It is true!” She was deeply in earnest, this little French girl, so sincerely in earnest that she did not realize that she was about to betray a secret.
“You think it strange that my enchanted hour is two in the morning when most good people are in their beds.
“But you are forgetting that I am at heart a gypsy, that indeed I once was a gypsy, a French gypsy, a very good gypsy.” She smiled. “But a gypsy all the same.” At this instant the lips of Mr. Soloman parted in a low exclamation of excitement.
“So that is who you are!” he exclaimed. “You are the little French girl, Petite Jeanne! For days I have wracked my brain saying to myself, ‘She is not Lorena LeMar. Who is she?’ And now look! You are Petite Jeanne, the star of my most wonderful picture.”
“Oh, Mr. Soloman!” Jeanne’s arms came perilously near encircling his fat neck. “You knew I was a fraud, and yet you let me go on! How—how so very wonderful!”
“A fraud!” he thundered. “No! I did not know you were a fraud. I knew you were a very great star.
“And now, Miss Jeanne,” his voice became confidential, “your name will go on that picture and in the lights of every Broadway of the land, for it was you who made that picture, not Lorena LeMar.”
“Oh!” Jeanne caught her breath. “Do you think that would be right?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” came in screams from the crowd.
“And what a story that will make!”
“Boys,” the producer turned to a group of reporters, “those pictures you took, they must go with the greatest story of all time, the story of a double who in two short weeks became a star.”
“Yes! Yes! You bet! Rah, rah, for Jeanne!” came from the reporters.
“And now, Miss Jeanne.” Soloman drew a paper from his pocket. “Here is a contract for you. We have made you—no, no, you have made yourself—a star; and of course you will make another picture; many, many more.”
“Please,” Jeanne pressed the paper back into his hand, “not to-night. My head is in a whirl. Perhaps never at all, but surely not to-night.”
“To-morrow then. I can wait.” The great little man folded his paper neatly and thrust it deep in his pocket.
“This moving picture,” said Jeanne, still feeling that she must make a speech. “It is beautiful. I have seen. You have seen. It is truly beautiful. But it is not I who have made it. It is you, my friends, Mr. Soloman, Pietro, Anthony, Scott Ramsey and all the rest. It is the spirit of those so beautiful mountains. It is the soul of that so great American, Mr. Lincoln. It is every one. It is everything. It is not I.
“And now,” she murmured after the applause had died away, “I am very tired. Will you please take me home, not to that so grand hotel but to the little rooms where my good Florence and I have lived so happily. No longer am I Lorena LeMar. I am only Petite Jeanne, the gypsy.”
Once more they bore her in triumph on their shoulders, and tucked her away at last in the taxi between Florence and Jensie, while Erik Nord and Tom Tobin took their places on the drop seats before her.
There was little left to be told. It was told in the shabby third floor rooms that were the private castle of Florence and Jeanne. With Tom as her bodyguard Jeanne hurried to the little hotel where she presented her check and received in exchange her well filled laundry bag.
When Tom had carried this to the top floor room, she bade him pour its contents on the floor.
“Behold the bell, the banners!” she exclaimed. “I have had them hidden away all the time. Do not ask me why. I am a gypsy. A gypsy needs no reason.
“And now, Mr. Nord, with my good friend’s permission, I return them to you. Florence has told me of the cute Chinese children. May they all get well speedily.”
“And the reward?” Erik Nord looked from Florence to Jeanne.
“Florence may have the reward,” Jeanne responded quickly.
“And you will visit China?” He smiled at Florence.
“Perhaps. Some time.” She looked away quickly.
Jensie went to college. Jeanne was called back to France. The great Fair closed, as all fairs do. So ended another year.
Did Jeanne return to America? Did she renew her rightful claim of stardom in the movie world? Did Florence indeed visit that “mysterious land, China”? You may find the answer in the next book, The Phantom Violin.
Transcriber’s Notes
- Copyright notice provided as in the original printed text—this e-text is public domain in the country of publication.
- Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and dialect unchanged.
- In the text versions, italic text is delimited by _underscores_.