CHAPTER XIV

GYPSY TRAIL

If life, for the moment, had been robbed of its adventure for Florence, the little French girl Petite Jeanne had not fared so badly. To her life had come one more thrill. It happened in a strange and quite unexpected manner. Having left the gypsy child with friends in Chicago, she and Madame Bihari had gone on a true gypsy tour of the air. Their destination was anywhere, their home the landing field that appeared beneath them at close of day. Never had Jeanne been so buoyantly happy as now. And who could wonder at this?

One evening just at sunset they came soaring down upon a landing field in the open country. Many years ago some great lover of trees had planted here a long row of hard maples. These now formed the farthest boundary of the landing field. The most glorious days of autumn had arrived. Never had there been such a gorgeous array of colors. Here red, orange, yellow and green were blended in a pattern of matchless beauty.

The light of the setting sun presented all this to the little French girl in a manner that delighted her very soul. As if attracted by some great magnet, her little plane taxied toward them. The planes were all but touching the leaves when at last the ship came to a halt.

“Madame,” Jeanne said, all but breathless with delight, “this is where we stay tonight.” Her tone became deeply serious. “Why do men from Europe say America is ugly? Nowhere in the world is there a moment more beautiful than this!” She took up a handful of golden leaves, lifted them high, then sent them sailing away into the breeze.

“Here is a little pile of wood,” she said a moment later. “There is a bare spot just out from the trees. We shall make a little fire and boil some water for tea. We shall dream just this once that we are back in our so beautiful France on the Gypsy Trail.

“And Madame!” she exclaimed joyously, “Why shouldn’t all gypsies travel in airplanes? How wonderful that would be! When the frost comes biting your toes in this beautiful northland, when the trees lose their glory and stand all bleak and bare, then they could fold their tents to go gliding away to the south. One, two, three, four, five hours racing with the wild ducks in their flight, and see! there you are! Would it not be wonderful?”

“Quite wonderful.” Madame Bihari beamed. Already she had the fire burning, the water on to boil.

They had traveled far that day. Jeanne was tired. Dragging out the pad to her cot, she spread it beneath one of those ancient maples. Stretching herself out upon it, she lay there looking up into the labyrinth of red and gold that hung above her.

“Oh,” she breathed, “if only heaven is half as beautiful as this!”

“Madame,” she said after a very long time, “why is there always trouble? Why do people struggle so much, when all this beauty may be had without asking?”

“If I could answer that,” Madame said soberly, “I should be very wise. But this you must remember, my Jeanne: wherever you go, whether you succeed or fail, you will find people ready to drag you down. Shall you let them? Surely not, my Jeanne. We must fight, my Jeanne.”

“Always?” the little French girl asked as a wistful note crept into her tone.

“Always, my Jeanne.”

For a time after that they sat staring dreamily at the fire. Then, seeming to recall half forgotten words, Jeanne murmured softly, “Does the road lead uphill all the way?” Then, as if answering her own question, “Yes, my child, to the very end.

“Trouble,” Jeanne whispered. At once she thought of her good pal Florence, then of Danby Force and the problem they were trying to solve.

“Madame,” she whispered, “do you suppose Florence has found her spy?”

“Who knows?” Madame’s words were spoken slowly. “Spies are hard to find. Some, I am told, went all through the great war and were not captured.”

“We should help her,” Jeanne decided quite suddenly. “We shall go to that little city. Perhaps tomorrow we shall go.”

At that moment some wood sprite might have whispered, “No, Jeanne, not tomorrow.”

With the lightning bugs flashing about them and the song of tree toads in their ears, they drank their tea, munched some hard crackers, and felt that life was indeed very beautiful.

“Shall you sleep now?” Madame asked a half hour later. “The tent is ready.”

“No. Not yet.” Jeanne wrapped herself in a blanket, then stretched out beneath her canopy of gold. “How wonderful autumn is!” she sighed. “It makes you wish that life were all like this and that one might go on living forever. But this we cannot do, so it is best to sing.

“‘Dance, gypsy, dance. Sing, gypsy, sing, Sing while you may, and forget That life must end.’

“I should go in,” she told herself after a time. But she did not go. Dry leaves, rustling in the breeze, seemed to whisper, stars, peeping through the trees, appeared to wink at her. The whole world seemed at peace. Even the dog that barked from some place far away appeared to be singing in the night.

“How like it is to one of those lovely nights in France,” she thought to herself. “I was only a small child. There were many gypsies, sometimes fifty, sometimes a hundred. They sang and they danced. Their violins! Ah yes, how sweetly they sounded out into the night!

“And yet—” her mood changed. “Would I go back to that? Perhaps not. This is America. This is a new day. There are exciting things to do. There are mysteries to solve, people to be helped. I shall solve those mysteries. I shall help those people. I—the little French girl they call Petite Jeanne!” She laughed a low laugh.

“I should go in,” she said again. She took in three deep breaths of the pure night air, yet she did not move. Very soon after, had one been passing, he might have said, “She is asleep.” He would have spoken the truth.

When she awoke some time later, a sense of strangeness filled her mind. A spot of light in the sky caught her eye. An exclamation escaped her lips. “I am still dreaming,” she murmured. She pinched herself hard. It hurt. She must be wide awake, yet, up there in the sky, gleaming as a white tower gleams when a hundred spotlights are upon it, was a silver ship—an airplane.

“Angels!” she murmured. “They too must have taken to the air in planes.” This, she knew well enough, was pure fancy. What could this silver ship be? And what kept it glistening like a star? That there were no spotlights near, she knew well. And if there were, their beams of light would stand out against the darkness.

The silver ship began to circle as for a landing. Jeanne shuddered. What if this strange visitor of the night should land close to her own tiny plane! She was about to spring up and dash for the tent, when a vision of extraordinary beauty caught her eye. The plane, having arrived at a point directly above her leafy bower, formed a gleaming white background against which the red and gold of maple leaves stood out like the colors of the most costly tapestries.

So lost in her contemplation of this was the little French girl, she did not miss the plane when it was gone. The after-image lingered on the picture walls of her mind.

“It is gone!” she cried softly at last, “Gone!” So it was. As if swallowed up by the night, the silver ship had vanished.

“Perhaps it has gone over to the depot,” she told herself. “I may see that mysterious ship in the morning.”

Then, as if in need of companionship and protection, she rolled up her thin mattress and disappeared within the tent.

“There is a plane by the depot, a silver plane!” Jeanne exclaimed excitedly the moment she thrust her head from the tent next morning. “I must see it. There was one that glowed white all over last night. Is this the one? I must know.”

Since it was some distance to the depot Jeanne, using her plane as another might an automobile, warmed up the motor and went taxiing over.

To Madame’s vast astonishment, ten minutes later as the silver plane went gliding over the field to at last rise in air, Jeanne’s dragon fly went speeding on its trail and, in an astonishingly short time, both planes were lost in the blue.