“Right and honest. They took their time about it, too.”
“And if we build our lives that way, right and honest, taking our time, we’ll last, too.”
“There’s reason to hope so.” He gave forth a low chuckle.
“Shall we go up on deck and sit a while?”
“I’d love to.”
So it happened that they found themselves settled comfortably in a dark corner watching the parade of boats pass by.
It was a warm night. The lagoon was crowded. All manner of boats were there, speed boats and tiny motor boats, row boats, canoes, dugouts and gondolas. For some time Florence watched in vain for a certain type of boat. When at last her vigil was rewarded, she received a shock.
“Look!” she exclaimed, seizing Erik Nord by the arm. “Look there, at that Dodge-Em!”
“What’s unusual about that?” He looked at her curiously.
“But see who’s riding in it!”
“A Chinaman.” Erik chuckled. “Suits their style. Goes only just so fast. A Chink is seldom in a hurry.”
“But look who it really is—your long-eared Chinaman! The one who—”
There was not time to finish. One look and Erik Nord was away, dragging Florence by the hand across the deck.
* * * * * * * *
Having witnessed the astonishing performance of Indian magic, Jeanne spent an hour wandering about the Fair grounds in a sort of trance. It was impossible to drive from her highly sensitive mind the memory of the booming drum, squeaking flute and whirling magician. And this walking in a trance, as we have suggested, ended in her undoing.
She had wandered, without thinking much about it, into an all but deserted corner of the grounds, when with the suddenness of thought three figures swooped down upon her.
“Lorena! Lorena LeMar!”
The sound of their voices warned her of danger, but too late.
“The play-boys!” Her mind registered these words, then like a ship sinking at sea her brain went into a wild whirl.
Before she could scream or flee, they were upon her, all three of the play-boys. A hand went over her mouth, others lifted her from the earth. She was dropped with little ceremony onto an upholstered seat, a powerful motor purred, and they were away.
As the car shot down the drive an observer might have noticed that a tall, thin young man loitering near had suddenly leaped into action. Spinning about, he dashed to the nearest waiting taxi, delivered an order in a low tone, leaped in and went rushing away in the direction the car had taken.
Poor little French girl! Once inside that car she found her head spinning round with unimaginable terror. What was to happen? For a time she was unable to think.
When at last a certain degree of composure took possession of her, the car had passed from the Fair grounds and was speeding along the boulevard.
“They think me Lorena LeMar,” she told herself. She shuddered afresh as she thought how she had tricked them on that other occasion.
“They must have been furious.” Her heart sank. “Miss LeMar had been their playmate on other occasions; then to treat them like that!
“Oh, if I get out of that I’ll—”
What would she do? That mattered very little now. What truly mattered was the problem of her immediate conduct and ultimate escape.
“Of course,” she assured herself, “I could tell them I am not Lorena LeMar. But would they believe it? Probably not. And if they did?”
She thought of her hopes and plans, of the movie that had inspired her, of the young Italian actor who was dreaming dreams, and of Jensie.
“No,” she whispered, “not if I can help it.
“I know what I’ll do! I’ll play up to them. Let them think I am Miss LeMar. They will want me to dance. Very good, I shall dance.
“They will—”
She dared think no further.
“I’ll escape,” she told herself stoutly. “I must! But how?”
Her heart sank. Too often she had read of the cruelties practiced by these rich play-boys.
“They should not be permitted to be at large!” she told herself bitterly.
“But none of this! I must seem happy, full of spirits, gay. I must sing, I must dance. And then—”
Before a three-story gray stone building the car came to a grinding halt. All the curtains were drawn, but lights shone through the cracks.
“Some sort of club,” she told herself.
If it indeed was a club it was a very little frequented place. She did not see a person beside her escort as, carrying out her well-formed plan, she romped with them up the steps and into a rather large room where there were numerous chairs and a rather large wood-topped table.
At the far end of the room was a broad fireplace and near it were card tables with cards scattered over them.
“A kindergarten for rich play-boys,” Jeanne smiled to herself in spite of her predicament.
Throwing off her dull coat, with an air of abandon she did a dozen fancy steps across the polished floor.
“Oh, look!” exclaimed the tallest of the three play-boys. “Lorena’s a gypsy to-night!”
Truth was, until that moment Jeanne had forgotten her gown.
“Yes!” she exclaimed in a tone of forced gaiety. “I’m a gypsy to-night. Shall I dance my gypsy dance?”
“Yes, yes!”
“On the table!” A pair of stout arms caught her to toss her up.
Catlike, she landed on her feet. She was angry. “But I must not! I must not be angry!” she told herself fiercely. “I must dance. Time must pass. Surely something will happen.”
Forgetting time and place, she began the weird, wild dance of the gypsies. That her audience was impressed she knew at once. So she prolonged the dance.
All things must have an end. The end of the dance found her heart all aflutter. What next?
“Bravo! Bravo!” they applauded. “That calls for refreshments.”
Taking a bottle from a concealed locker, the shortest of the trio filled four glasses.
“Now! A toast!” He passed one glass to her. “Here’s to Lorena LeMar! Here’s to the new picture!”
When the play-boys lifted their glasses Jeanne followed their example. The stuff in the glass burned her lips. The glass slipped from her hand to go crashing upon the table.
“Oh! She dropped it! Too bad! Here’s another.” There was a note of insolence in the voice of the youth as he poured a second glass. “Here! Drink this!”
“No, my friend!” Her voice was like thin, clear ice. “No, I will not drink it.” No longer was she Lorena LeMar. She was Jeanne, the gypsy. In her veins there coursed the wild, free, fighting spirit of a true vagabond. Had she possessed a knife.... Ah, well, she had no knife.
One weapon alone she possessed, truly a woman’s weapon—a scream.
This weapon she used. Not in vain had she practiced for hours a stage scream. When her slender voice rose shrill and high the three play-boys became rigid as stone.
The effect of that scream was sudden and most astonishing. Some bulk struck the door. Again; yet again. Then the lock broke and a tall, slim youth half stepped, half fell into the room. He was followed by a taxi driver.
Recovering from his shock, the leader of the play-boys took a step forward. Hot words were on his lips. They were not spoken. He was met by a heavy chair thrown with lightning-like speed by the astonishing stranger.
Taking him in the pit of the stomach the chair hurled the play-boy backward into his companions. Like so many tenpins they went down with a crash.
Not a word was spoken as the tall stranger gathered Jeanne up in his arms, marched out of the room and down the steps, deposited his burden in the taxi, sprang in beside her, gave the driver orders, then watched the building narrowly as they drove away.
“And I would take my oath I never saw him,” Jeanne whispered to herself. Sinking deep among the cushions, she suddenly felt very small, very young and quite helpless.
When Erik Nord and Florence caught sight of the long-eared Chinaman placidly cruising the lagoon in a Dodge-Em, Erik, as we have said, led the girl away in hot pursuit.
Unfortunately, on reaching the nearest available craft, they found it to be but another slow going, doddering old Dodge-Em.
“We’ll take it,” Erik decided on the instant.
“Have to. Nothing else in sight. Probably he hasn’t seen us. Slip up on him without the least trouble.”
“And if he goes ashore I’ll get him. I can run. No Chinaman has out-distanced me yet.” He stepped on the gas and they were away, away at the breakneck speed of four miles an hour.
“Think of finding him right here in Chicago!” Erik exulted. “How’d you come to know him?”
Florence did not reply.
“Look!” She leaned far forward. “There he goes! He’s headed straight down the lagoon.”
“He’ll never go outside. Probably land. We’ll get him!” Erik trod angrily on the lever that kept the motor going. “If only a fellow could get one burst of speed out of this thing!”
He was making that same remark a quarter of an hour later. The long-eared one had not gone ashore. Instead, he had headed straight down the lagoon and out into the open lake where darkness and silence reigned. And Erik Nord, with all the stubbornness of his race, had followed in slow pursuit.
“It’s a turtle race,” he said without apparent emotion. “Two turtles. The question is, which will tire first?”
“We’ll run out of gas,” Florence murmured.
“Something like that.”
“And be stuck out here for the night.” Florence thought this, but did not say it. The moon would be out in an hour. And then—
Slowly but doggedly the Dodge-Em pushed its stout rubber nose through the black water. The Chinaman, a dark spot above the water, was ever before them. They did not lose. They did not gain. They only followed on.
“I’ve been told that a man crossed the lake in one of these,” Erik rumbled. “Safe enough, I guess. Anyway, when you’ve lived in China you get used to any mode of travel.”
Florence wondered if they would cross the lake. “And after that?” she whispered to herself. The rumble of the city was dying away in the distance, the lights of the Fair were growing dim. It was strange to be out here in the night with one she had known for so short a time. And yet this was the turn chance had taken.
Leaning back, she closed her eyes. It had been a long day. The night air sweeping in from the lake fanned her cheek. The darkness had been kind to her tired eyes. Now she felt the need for rest.
Did she fall asleep? Perhaps. Perhaps not. All she knew was that when she opened her eyes at last she became conscious of a change. “Wha—what is it?”
“Motor stopped. We lose,” Erik grumbled. “We lose.”
“And here we are.” She caught a long breath. The moon was just beginning to roll, a ball of red, along the black horizon.
“Here we are,” Erik agreed, then settled back comfortably in his corner.
* * * * * * * *
It was at about this same moment that Jeanne found herself speeding away in a taxi with a man she had never seen before.
“He saved me,” she told herself. “Saved me from a horrible night. He knew I was there. How? He willed to get me out of that place. Why?” To these questions she could find no answers. There was, she believed, but one thing to do; to sit back and allow the future to unfold itself.
They were entering the Loop. There was comfort in that. In the Loop were many people. And in numbers there is always a degree of safety.
“You’ll be in need of a cup of coffee after that,” her companion suggested. “Supposing we stop in here.” The cab had stopped before a well lighted coffee house.
Without a word Jeanne followed him inside and back to a small table in the rear. “Who is he? What does he want?” She was determined now to see the thing through.
“I’m Tom Tobin of the News,” the strange rescuer announced when coffee had been ordered.
“Oh!” Jeanne caught her breath. “You were after news! And—and I—I will be in the paper! That explains—”
“It explains nothing.” Tom Tobin’s smile was disarming. “I wasn’t looking for news, and this will not get you in the paper. Far from it.
“I was keeping tab on you,” he added.
“Tab on me?” Her wide eyes registered astonishment.
“Well, sort of guarding you, if that sounds better. I did it for a very good reason, too.
“You see,” he leaned forward over the table, speaking in a voice scarcely above a whisper, “I know you better than you think. You are not Lorena LeMar.”
“Not—”
He held up a hand for silence. “No use!” he warned. “You are the little French girl, Petite Jeanne.
“No, I’ll not betray you.” He had read the consternation in her eyes. “Why should I? You—you’re doing a big thing for me.”
“For you?”
“You are planning to make a success of the scenario I wrote, ‘When the Dogwood Is in Bloom.’”
“You wrote it? How—how wonderful!” Jeanne stretched a slim white hand across the table. Tom Tobin grasped it frankly. “Here’s luck!” His frank eyes shone.
“And here’s our coffee. How jolly!” Fear had flown from Jeanne’s eyes. She was her own bright, joyous self once more.
“But how could you know I am to make a success of your picture?” she demanded eagerly. “I do not know it myself.”
“Old Sollie, Mr. Soloman, your producer, told me. He’s all het up about it; says you showed him how to make a great picture of it and get a lot of free publicity. He’s working on the scene, got men after real mountain ivy and rhododendrons and dogwood. Sent for two log cabins like the ones in the Lincoln Group, and all that.
“Say!” he exclaimed, “Suppose we get together and work over the dialogue and all that! Sollie says you know a lot about the mountains.”
“No, I’ve never been there.”
“But he told me—”
“Yes, I know.” Jeanne smiled. “I have a friend who prompted me. She has lived there all her life.”
“Then she’ll help us. We’ll work it over together, beginning to-morrow afternoon.”
“That—” Jeanne favored him with her loveliest smile. “That—how do you say it? That is a go! Eh, what?”
“That’s it!” Tom grinned. “We’ll get on grand. You’re a regular guy!”
“And why not?” Jeanne laughed a merry laugh.
A half hour later, as Jeanne entered the lobby of the hotel after bidding Tom Tobin a heartfelt “Happy dreams!” the porter stared at her for a moment as if uncertain of her identity, then said in a matter-of-fact tone: “Your trunk has gone up, Miss LeMar.”
“My trunk?” She stared. “Oh, but I have not—”
She broke short off. Was she about to betray her secret? She was Miss LeMar. Perhaps the real Lorena LeMar had ordered a trunk sent over without informing her.
Her tone changed. “Very well. Thank you.” She dropped a coin into his hand, then hurried away.
“But a trunk?” she thought. “A trunk in our apartment!” An unreasoning terror swept upon her.
“But only a trunk!” She shook herself free of this wild fear. “What is a trunk?”
What indeed?
“Tell me about that mysterious land, China.” Florence settled back in her place in the stupid little Dodge-Em that, refusing to travel farther, had left them stalled far out on the black waters of night.
“China.” Erik Nord’s tone was full of the enchanting melody of the Far East. “How is one to tell you of China? There are sampans where whole families live their lives away, sampans on the river and great cities on their banks. Farther up there are villages and on the river great old junks. Ships from out of the past, they loom before you in the dark. You never know whether they are manned by brigands who will rob you or soldiers who may take your possessions from you in the name of the law. You—”
“Listen!” Her hand was on his arm. There had come a sound from the water. “Do—do you think his Dodge-Em has stalled too? Wouldn’t it be strange if we drifted together in the moonlight?”
“Nothing would suit me better!”
Florence believed him.
“But that long-eared one has the knife,” she told herself as a thrill coursed up her spine. Closing her eyes she seemed to witness a battle on the water, a fight between a square-jawed white man from China whose ancestors had built boats that were good fifty years later, and a Chinaman inspired by who knows what superstitious terror.
“If only we’d sight him!” Nord’s words came from between his teeth. “I think I might help out a bit, rip a board off this tub of ours and use it for a paddle or something.”
“It seems pretty solid.” Florence felt the boat over. “Besides, we haven’t seen him, we’ve only caught a sound. It might not have been his boat. Probably his gas held out and he’s gone back to land, vanished by now—the vanishing Chinaman.”
“By the way,” Erik’s voice took on a new note, “how did it happen you recognized him out there on the water?”
“I—why, I’ve seen him before.” She was stalling for time. Should she tell him all about the chest, the knife, the banners? She was not proud of the affair. They had been careless, she could see that now. And yet, if he knew, they might work together.
She looked away at the golden moon. Her eyes followed the path it painted across the water.
“Yes,” she said, “I’ll tell you. It was like this. We bought that chest full of your treasures at an auction sale, bought it for I—I’m ashamed to tell you how little. And now—now it’s gone; all gone but the chest.”
“Gone?”
“He got it, that long-eared one.”
“Tell me about it.” Erik leaned forward eagerly.
She told him all there was to tell, described the knife, the bell and all the banners as best she could.
“Gone!” he murmured. “All gone. You have missed much, and the little ones of China have missed more. There was a reward for the return of that chest, five hundred dollars.
“Five hun—”
“Five hundred in gold. With that you could have visited this land that seems to you so mysterious. With care you could have stayed a long time in China, delved into all manner of Oriental mysteries.”
“I’ll do it yet!” He saw her stout figure stiffen with resolve. “I’ll get that long-eared one yet! You wait! You shall have all those treasures back, every one!”
“Splendid! But have a care, my friend. Have a care!” There was a note of warning in his voice. “Those Orientals are dangerous when some superstitious terror takes possession of them. There is something we do not know about those temple adornments; that knife and bell are forces to fight demons. Who can say what demons have taken possession of our vanishing Chinaman? Have a care! Just when you wish for your very life’s sake that he might vanish, you will find him insisting upon being very much of a present reality. He—”
“Listen!” Again her hand rested on his arm.
* * * * * * * *
There are certain people who “feel” events before they transpire. This, psychologists will tell you, is intuition. Jeanne’s intuition caused her knees to tremble as she walked from the elevator to Lorena LeMar’s apartment which, for the time, was her own.
“A trunk,” she whispered. “A trunk beyond that door.” By this time her key was in the lock. She wished to turn back; she willed to go forward. In the end courage won. She pushed open the door. She entered the room.
But she did not go far. One look was enough. The trunk, a huge affair such as is used by commercial traveling men, stood in the center of the room. Its lid was up. It was empty! And the whole apartment, as far as her startled eyes could take it in, was in a state of wild confusion.
Next, without exactly knowing how it happened, she found herself outside with the door locked behind her.
Her heart was beating painfully. As if to still its wild beating she clutched at her breast. Her brain was in a state of wild confusion. For some little time she could not think two thoughts in a row.
When at last her senses returned it all came to her in a flash. “It is that little yellow man with the long ears,” she assured herself. “He or one of his friends. He believed that those things, those priceless banners and that curious bell from the temple, were in this place. He had himself strapped tight in that monstrous trunk and shipped himself to this hotel, ‘To Miss LeMar’s apartment.’ To—”
She broke off. “He knows!” The thought fairly floored her. “This long-eared one knows I am not Lorena LeMar. He knows I am Petite Jeanne. Will he tell? Will he spoil all my fine plans?” Here indeed was a terrible probability.
“If I make it possible for him to have just what he wants,” she whispered slowly, “perhaps he will go away and no one will know, no one but Florence and Miss LeMar and Tom Tobin, who will never tell.”
Here indeed was temptation. She did not know that these treasures had been intended as a gift to a children’s hospital, for the little ones of China. Florence had not told her. She only knew that at present they were her own, that she and Florence had bought them and had received a bill of sale for them.
Startling as was this revelation, it did not occupy her thoughts long. Her mind took a fresh turn.
“Florence,” she whispered. “Where is she? The hour is late.”
Once again her head was in a whirl. Where could Florence be?
“Perhaps she is in there! They may have found her. She may have been murd—”
She could not say the word. Her love for her big companion was all but compelling her to re-enter that room.
“He may still be there, that little yellow one with the long ears.” She was fairly beside herself.
Should she call the house detective? This she feared to do. In the excitement of the moment she might give away the secret of her dual personality.
“No! No! I must not! I must be brave!”
Once again she approached the door. Her fingers trembled as she fitted key to lock, yet she did not turn back. The lock clicked. The door opened. She stepped inside. The door closed behind her.
The sound that came to Florence’s listening ears out there on the lake in the stalled Dodge-Em was a welcome one: the low put-put of a motor boat.
“If it only comes close enough we’re saved from a night on the water,” she said hopefully.
“Chilly business, staying out here,” Erik Nord agreed.
The put-put grew louder. A light came swimming across the expanse of black water. Now they saw it and now it was gone.
“She’s passing to the right of us,” Erik judged. “We’ll have to hail her.”
Standing up in the boat he cupped his hands to shout:
“Ahoy there!”
Never had Florence heard such a roar.
“Ahoy there!” came floating back faintly.
“Give us a lift. We’re stalled.”
“Right O! We’re coming!” The voice seemed very far away.
Presently across the shimmering waters of night a dark bulk loomed.
It was only a fishing boat headed for the dock. This craft smelled of herring and tar, but she carried, too, a hearty welcome such as one might not find on a handsomer boat.
“Give us yer line!
“Now! There we are! Where y’ bound fer in that thing?” the sun-tanned skipper boomed.
“Nowhere in particular. We want to get back to the lagoon.”
“Right O! We’ll tow y’ in.”
Next moment the stranded ones found themselves leaning back comfortably in the broad seat, watching the play of moonlight upon the water that rippled and rolled about their prow.
“It would be a grand world to live in,” Erik murmured, “if all its people were as simple and obliging as these fishermen.”
“They’re common folks.” There was a world of meaning in the girl’s words.
“Uncommon, I’d say, very uncommon indeed.”
“All a matter of point of view, I suppose.”
The fishermen had demanded no pay for their services, were loath in the end to accept it. They did not, however, depart unrewarded.
When, a half hour later, Florence burst into the apartment, she found Jeanne sitting before the window, looking out into the night. The trunk had been sent to a room where empty trunks were kept. The apartment was in apple pie order. Jeanne did not say, “Oh, my friend, such a terrible thing has happened! We have been searched again.” She said nothing at all; she just kept on looking out into the night.
The reason for this is apparent enough. The little French girl harbored a secret. This secret she had hidden even from her bosom pal. The secret had to do with that laundry bag still reposing in a cubicle back there in the small hotel near their own shabby rooms. The check boy was still custodian of her secret.
Why did Jeanne guard this secret so closely? Perhaps for no reason at all. Jeanne was at heart a gypsy. A gypsy has a reason for doing a thing if he chooses. A mere impulse is reason enough for him. Life for him is action, not thought. He dances, he sings, he plays the violin. He travels where he will. If you say to him, “Why?” he shrugs his shoulders. Jeanne was like that.
But to Jeanne, as on other nights long after Florence was asleep, there came, as she sat there before the window, strange fantastic pictures of the past and visions of the future. Of these she wondered as in a dream.
Clouds had come drifting in from the west. They filled the sky. From time to time a powerful radio beacon, swinging in its orbit, appeared to paint pictures on those clouds. In Jeanne’s fanciful vision these pictures took on fantastic forms.
Some of the pictures that came to her as she sat there were vivid, as real as life itself, and some were as indistinct as a mirage on the far horizon.
A hearse in the moonlight. “A sign.” She shuddered. “A hearse with two black horses and a coffin.” Again she shuddered.
But now it was gone. Instead there was a sloping hillside where little streams rushed from beneath dark canopies of mountain ivy. The dark clouds turned white under the powerful light.
“Will it ever be?” She dared to hope now. “Will our moving picture succeed?” Tom Tobin had inspired her. She could see his face on the clouds. Young, slender, eager, full of vitality, he invited hope as sunshine invites a bud to become a flower.
But now in a cavern of the darkened clouds a great trunk yawned. Out from it, like a jack-in-the-box, leaped a little yellow man with long ears. “He wants that bell, those banners. He risks everything to get them. I wonder why?” She mused for a moment; then the scene in this fairyland of clouds changed once more.
A slender white cloud curled upward. Its tip became a rope that rose higher, higher, higher, toward a dark night sky. Up that rope a figure appeared to glide. “He did go up!” she whispered hoarsely. “I saw him!”
The airplane beacon swung about. The sky went black. It became dark waters, and on those waters were two boats gliding one after the other, moving silently out to sea.
“That long-eared one,” she murmured, “he is everywhere at once.
“But Florence—” A smile played about her lips. “Florence and that white man from China. How romantic to be out there with him beneath the moon all alone! Surely one may endure mystery, suspense, anything, if it leads to romance!”
Strangely enough, the night sky took on a tinge of green. In this she saw a frail child of France garbed all in green and gold. Her eyes opened wide. It was her very own self.
Yet even as she looked the picture faded, and in its place was a broad green hill topped by a stately building of brown stone. And after that all visions vanished.
Florence found her there in the morning fast asleep in the great upholstered chair before the window. A shaft of sunshine playing across her face made her seem to smile. A morning breeze from the lake set her golden hair waving a salute.
She did not sleep long after Florence had stolen away to her work, this little French girl. Tom Tobin had wakened hope in her heart. He had set her glorious mind to dreaming. And dreamers seldom sleep too much.
Having wakened, she sprang into action. A shower, ten minutes of wild dancing to set her blood racing, a cup of coffee with crisp squares of hard toast, and she was away.
Gathering up the little mountain girl, Jensie, she hurried her away to the movie lot. There, by great good chance, she came upon Mr. Soloman, who was, after all, only Assistant Production Manager for a great Hollywood producer, and no one to be greatly afraid of.
“Ah, Miss LeMar!” he exclaimed. “How very good it is to see you. Look! Already they have mountain ivy and rhododendrons from the nursery. The dogwood, too, will come, and there are two cabins to come. And now, Miss LeMar, might I ask what more would you suggest?
“This,” said Jeanne, pushing Jensie forward, “is my property lady. We will look over the set together.”
An hour later when she and Jensie reappeared they carried four pages of notes.
Seated there on the improvised hillside in the sun, they discussed details with the eager Mr. Soloman, who said, “Yes, Miss LeMar. Yes, Miss LeMar, this also can be done,” through it all. “A coonskin drying on the outside of the cabin, a well with an oaken bucket, hound dogs, yes, yes, three hound dogs. A long-barreled rifle. Yes, yes, we will have all these.
“And, Miss LeMar, I am wiring Hollywood to-day for approval of my plans. If they say O. K., then we will have a special car and we will go to this Big Black Mountain for long shots and such things that cannot be taken here. What would you say to that?”
“Oh, Mr. Soloman!” Before Jeanne knew what she was doing she had kissed the chubby little man on the cheek.
“Think, Jensie!” she cried. “Think of going right down to your Big Black Mountain! And of course you must come along!”
“But my work!”
“Only for two or three days. We will fix that.” The little man smiled broadly.
“That is all for to-day?” said Jeanne.
“That is all, Miss LeMar. You are very beautiful to-day, Miss LeMar. There is color in your cheeks. Ha! This is wonderful!” He gave Jeanne such a sharp look that deep in her soul she trembled. Was he beginning to guess? And if he knew?
She returned to Lorena LeMar’s apartment with a very sober face. Life had begun to be quite wonderful. If some one spoiled it all by a sudden discovery or a betrayal, what then?
By early afternoon Jeanne’s old cheerful smile was back again. And why not? Was she not seated between two friends, Jensie and Tom, studying the dialogue of this altogether absorbing movie that hour by hour took on a more vivid picture of reality?
They were having a gay time there in Lorena LeMar’s living room. From time to time peals of laughter came drifting out through the open window.
Jensie was the critic. And a very expert critic she turned out to be.
“No. He would never say that, your old Jud who lives at the foot of Big Black Mountain. He would not say, ‘Those horses are fast travelers.’ He’d say, ‘Them’s the travelin’est hosses I ever most seed.’ He wouldn’t say, ‘It’s done.’ He’d say, ‘I done done it.’”
“But Jensie,” Jeanne protested, “if we change all this, how are the people going to know what it’s all about? Might as well have him talk German.”
“W-e-l-l, you asked me.” Jensie puckered her fair brow. “That’s the way we talk down there. We don’t say ‘rifle,’ but ‘rifle-gun.’ We say ‘we-uns’ and ‘you-all.’”
“Well,” said Tom after a moment’s thought, “a great deal of that is easy enough to understand. It does make the whole thing seem a lot more real. And if we find old Jud talking too much, why, we’ll just shut him up and make him talk with his hands and his feet.”
“And his pistol-gun,” Jensie added. “Pistol-guns talk a heap down there in the mountings.”
They all had a good laugh, and once more the work moved on smoothly.
“To-morrow,” Jeanne said to Jensie before bidding her good-bye, “to-morrow morning we will go out to that so beautiful college you have been telling me about. What do you say?”
“That,” Jensie laughed joyfully, “that’s a right smart clever idea.”
“Then we shall go.” Jeanne gave her hand a squeeze. “I am tired. There are trees, you say, and grass, very much grass. Good! We shall sit upon the grass beneath those spreading elms and forget this noisy city.”
They went. The electric car whirled them away to the country. It seemed that but a moment had passed when they found themselves walking up a path shaded by two rows of ancient elms.
“So green the grass!” Jeanne murmured. “So graceful the trees and so strong! And that fine old building of limestone. It is like France, my so beautiful France!
“But listen!”
She paused. From a smaller building with very high windows there floated the words of a song.
“Singing? It is Chapel! Come!” Jeanne seized Jensie by the hand. “Come quick! We will slip into a back seat. It has been so long, oh, so long since I heard such singing.”
As they entered the door all heads were bowed in prayer. Deeply religious, as all the best of her race are, Jeanne bowed her head reverently.
The prayer at an end, six hundred young voices burst into song.
“And how they sing it!” There were tears in Jeanne’s eyes. “They sing what they believe. How very, very wonderful!”
Hidden away in a high-backed seat, they listened to the simple, sincere message of a white-haired professor as he talked to this silent audience of young people about God and His relation to their lives.
Jeanne was strangely silent as she left the place. Perhaps in her mind was a picture of the little stone church in her own land where she had so often knelt in prayer.
“It is good,” she murmured at last. “Tomorrow as I try to tell to the world in pictures the story of simple, kindly folks who live in the mountains, I shall do it better because of having been here.”
For a long time they sat on the grass beneath the elms. A gray squirrel came down a tree to chatter at them. A robin, whose nest was in a nearby lilac bush, sang them a song. A cricket chirped. From far away came a dog’s bark. A cobweb went floating high overhead.
“Come!” Jeanne whispered reluctantly. “We must go back.”
That night as she sat looking out into the half darkness of the night, Jeanne saw again in her mind’s eye the girl in a nile-green dress and golden slippers. And as before, the green changed its shade and became a sloping hill where broad elms sighed in the breeze.
“There will be no nile-green dress and golden slippers,” she whispered. “Instead, if success is ours, Jensie shall go to that so beautiful college where they sing that which they believe and ask such wonderful prayers.”
And down in her heart of hearts she knew that she would strive harder for success than ever before, because she was working for another’s happiness and not entirely for her own.
This brief period of rest was the last Petite Jeanne was to enjoy for many days. The work on that little section of Big Black Mountain progressed more rapidly than had been expected. In order that the re-making of the scenario should progress quite as rapidly, Tom Tobin secured a brief leave of absence from his newspaper work. He and Jeanne, together with Jensie when she could be spared from her beloved Tavern, were together at all hours of day and night.
So long as Tom was with her, Jeanne had no fear of Lorena LeMar’s boy friends. Her only fear was that they might discover that she was not Miss LeMar at all, and end by betraying her secret.
“But what do you care!” Tom exploded one day. “You are as good as Lorena LeMar.”