  Hot tea and a blazing fire took the blue from Jeanne’s lips and restored the natural faint flush to her fair cheeks. “You say your boat was overturned?” Their hostess abruptly broke the silence that had fallen upon them. “Yes.” “A rowboat?” “Yes.” “Was it broken?” “I—I—” Florence hesitated. “I don’t think so.” “Then we should go for it at once. The wind is rising. It is offshore. The boat will drift across the bay. I have a rowboat. Perhaps you would do well to come with me. It will be something of a task to right it.” She had spoken to Florence. When Petite Jeanne understood that she was to be left alone in this windowless cabin, she shuddered ever so slightly, but said not a word. “I will go,” replied Florence. She turned to Jeanne. “You will be more contented here. The night air is very cold.” They departed. Jeanne was alone. When she had made sure they were out of hearing distance, she closed the door and dropped the massive oaken bar in place. Scarcely had she done this than she found herself possessed of the idea that someone beside herself was in the cabin. “There may be other rooms,” she told herself. She searched in vain for doors leading to them. She looked under the bed. Convinced at last that she was alone, she looked with wide-eyed interest at her surroundings. The walls were made of oak paneling, very well executed and polished to the last degree. The fireplace was massive. It was built entirely of the strange honeycomb-like stone that is found in places along the upper bays of Lake Huron. “But why does she live where there is no light?” she asked herself in amazement. Hardly had she thought this than she became conscious for the first time of a faint flush of yellow light lying on the floor at her feet. On looking up to discover its source, she found herself staring at a very broad double skylight some distance above her head. “It’s like those one sees on the cabins of ships,” she told herself. “Only higher up.” Satisfied with her inspection of the place, she dropped into a commodious chair and at once fell into a reverie which had to do with her past and the very near future. How strange her life seemed to her as she reviewed it here in the dim lights of such unusual surroundings! Petite Jeanne, as you well know from reading The Gypsy Shawl, was born in France. Her family, one of the country’s best, had been impoverished by the war. The war had left her an orphan. Possessed only of a pet bear, she had looked about for some means of support. A friendly and honorable gypsy, Bihari, had taken her into his family. She had learned to do the gypsy dances with her bear. These she had performed so divinely that in a contest she had been chosen from many other dancers to represent the wanderers of France in a charity pageant to be given at the Paris Opera. After many perils, brought upon her by the green-eyed jealousy of other gypsies, she had achieved a singular triumph on that great occasion. As guests of this pageant, two Americans sat in a box that night. One was a playwright, the other a producer. As the dance progressed, as Petite Jeanne, seeming fairly to fly through the air, passed from one movement to another in her bewitching dance, one of these men touched the other lightly on the arm to whisper: “She is the one.” “The very one,” the other had whispered back. “We must have her.” “We will.” That was all for the time. But now, after several months, Petite Jeanne, as she sat in this cabin by the side of a great lake, reveled in the dream of flitting through her gypsy dance with two thousand Americans swaying in unconscious rhythm to her every movement, and that not one night, but many nights on end. “Nights and nights and nights,” she now murmured, as she clasped her hands before her. But suddenly, as if a cloud had fallen over all, she became conscious once more of dim light and night. Not alone that. There came to her now a sense of approaching danger. The gypsies are curious people. Who knows what uncanny power they possess? A gypsy, a very old woman, had in some way imparted to Petite Jeanne some of this power. It gave her the ability to divine the presence of those she knew, even when they were some distance away. Was it mental telepathy? Did these others think, and were their thoughts carried by who knows what power, as the radio message is carried over the ether, to this girl’s sensitive brain? Who knows? Enough that a message now came; that it caused her to shudder and glance hurriedly about her. “Gypsies,” she said aloud. “There must be gypsies near, French gypsies, my enemies.” Yet, even as she said this, the thing seemed absurd. She had inquired of the native population concerning gypsies. They did not so much as know that such people existed. This section of the country, where the greater part of all travel is done on water, and where the people are poor, has seldom been visited by a gypsy caravan. “And yet,” she said with conviction, “they are near!” |
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