CHAPTER XII

JEANNE’S FORTUNE

Next morning it was arranged that Jeanne should go unaccompanied to the fortune teller on Clark Street. Florence would be loitering on the street, not too far away.

Jeanne, as she started forth on this exciting little journey, cut a real figure. She had put on her finest silk dress. White gloves that reached to her elbows were on her hands. Her hat was from one of the best Michigan Avenue shops. And, to make sure that she would be taken for a “little daughter of the rich,” she had borrowed the famous artist’s very best fur coat.

“Ah!” she breathed, “it is wonderful to be quite rich!”

The place on Clark Street surprised her a little. A plain dwelling with ancient brownstone front, it suggested nothing of the mysterious or supernatural. Inside it was no better. A sign read, “Knock on the door.” The door in question was a glass door that had been painted a solid brown.

Jeanne knocked timidly. The door opened a crack, and a feminine voice said, “Y-e-s?”

The eyes that shone out from the narrow opening registered surprise. Such a gorgeous apparition as Jeanne presented in the borrowed coat, apparently had seldom crossed that threshold.

“Dorothy Burns, who sells rare stamps at the Arcade, told me how wonderful you are,” Jeanne murmured wistfully.

This was a well-memorized speech. She was at that moment recalling Florence’s last words before they parted.

“The fortune teller will not ask your name or address. Don’t give them to her. She _will_, under one pretext or another, ask the name and address of some person whom you know, quite probably a rather humble person. However that may be, give her my name and address. Give her our telephone number, too, and tell her I am always in between three and four in the afternoon.” Jeanne smiled in spite of herself, recalling these words.

But the fortune teller was saying, “Won’t you come in, please? There now. Shall I take your coat? You wanted a reading? Is that not so? My very best readings are two dollars.”

Jeanne removed her coat and placed it upon the back of the chair offered her. She produced two crisp one-dollar bills.

“Ah!” The round face of the fortune teller shone. “You are to have a very wonderful future, I can see that at once.”

“I—I hope so.” Jeanne appeared to falter. “You see—” she leaned forward eagerly. “I have been—well, quite fortunate un—until just lately. And now—” her eyes dropped. “Now things are not so good! And I—you know, I’m worried!”

Jeanne _was_ worried, all about that gorgeous coat. She hoped Florence was near and perhaps a policeman as well, but she need have had no fear.

Florence was near, very near. Having slipped through the outer door, she had found a seat in the dimly lighted corridor. There was a corner in the plastered wall just beyond her. From behind this there floated faint, childish whispers.

At last a face appeared, a slim pinched face surrounded by a mass of uncombed hair. A second face peeked out, then a third.

“Come here,” Florence beckoned. Like birds drawn reluctantly forward by some charm, the three unkempt children glided forward until they stood beside her chair.

“Who are you?” Florence whispered.

“I’m Tillie,” the largest girl whispered back. “She’s Fronie, and he’s Dick. Our mother’s gone away. Myrtle takes care of us, sort of like.”

“We—we’re going to have ice cream and cake for dinner!” Fronie burst forth in a loud whisper. “The beautiful lady gave Myrtle two whole dollars. We always have ice cream and cake when Myrtle gets a dollar. This time it’s two.” The child’s pathetic face shone.

Within, Myrtle Rand, the fortune teller, was saying to Jeanne:

“You may shuffle the cards. Now cut them twice with your right hand. That’s it.

“Now—one, two, three, four, five, six; and one, two, three, four, five, six. I see a change in your life. I think you will go to California. Yes, it is California. One, two, three, four, five, six.” She spread out a third row of cards, then paused to study Jeanne’s face intently.

“Your hair is beautifully done,” she said in a low tone. “Who does it for you?”

“You—you mean you’d like her address?” Jeanne started. How nearly Florence’s words were coming true!

“Yes, yes I would.” There was eagerness in the fortune teller’s tone. Then, as if she had been surprised into revealing too much, she added, “But then it does not matter too much. You see I have a daughter who has a very good position and—”

“She might like to try my hair-dresser,” Jeanne supplemented. “Here, I’ll write it down.”

With the pencil proffered her she scribbled down a name and address. The name was Florence Huyler and the address that of their studio. Then she smiled a puzzling smile.

Outside, Florence was saying to Tillie, “How do you know the beautiful lady has given Myrtle two dollars?”

“We—we—we saw them through the crack,” Fronie sputtered. “Two whole dollars! Mostly it’s only quarters and sometimes dimes that Myrtle gets for telling ’em things. Then we have bread that is dry and hard and sometimes soup that is all smelly.”

“Myrtle, she’s good to us,” the older child confided. “Good as she can be. But the rent man comes every week and says, ‘Pay, or out you go!’ So all the quarters get gone!”

“For a quarter Myrtle, she tells ’em their husbands will come back next week, and some day they’ll have money, plenty of money.” The little girl leaned forward eagerly and confidingly.

“But for two whole dollars—o-o-oh, my, what a swell fortune! She—”

Just then the outer door opened. A shabbily dressed woman, carrying a bundle that looked like a washing she was taking home to be done, came in and dropped wearily into a chair. Her eyes lighted for an instant with hope as she stared at the closed door, then faded.

The children vanished. A moment later a second drab creature entered, and after that a third.

“All working women,” Florence thought, “and all ready to part with a hard-earned quarter that they may listen to rosy prophecies about their future.” She found her spirits sinking. She hoped Jeanne’s fortune would be a short one.

It was not short. The cards were shuffled three times. Then the crystal ball on the table was gazed into. Jeanne’s fortune grew and grew. “I see fine clothes and a big car for you. You will go to California. Yes, yes, I am sure of that. And money—much money. You have rich relatives. Is it not so? And they are quite old.” Myrtle Rand went on and on.

At last Jeanne said, “I—I think I must go now.”

“But you will return?” Myrtle Rand’s tone was eager. “There is much more to be told. Very much more. Next time I will tell of your past. I shall tell you many strange things. It will surprise you.”

Jeanne managed to slip from the room without committing herself. A moment later the poor woman with the large bundle took her place before the crystal ball.

“Well,” Jeanne laughed low as she and Florence walked into the bright light of day, “I have a very rosy future! I am to have all that heart could desire—love, money, automobiles, travel, everything!”

“And next time you are going to be very much surprised,” Florence added.

“How did you know that?” Jeanne stared. “You can’t have heard.”

“No, but it’s true nevertheless.”

“And you,” Jeanne laughed afresh, “you are now my hair-dresser. You are to be at home between three and four o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Why you made me tell that fib is something I don’t at all understand.”

“You will,” Florence laughed merrily. Then, “Here’s our car. Let’s hurry.”

Next day Miss Mabee and Jeanne journeyed to Maxwell Street in search of Bihari and his gypsy blacksmith shop. Jeanne carried a stool and folding easel, Miss Mabee her box of beautiful colors and her brushes.

It was a lovely winter’s day. Even the drab shops of Maxwell Street seemed gay.

Bihari’s shop was not hard to find. Miss Mabee fell in love with it at once. “Long and narrow. Plenty of light, but not too much. The very place!” was her joyous commendation. “And here are the women!”

Sure enough, there was a group of women patiently waiting to have their pots and pans repaired.

“But where are the children?” she asked.

For answer Bihari stepped to the door, put two fingers to his lips, blew a loud blast, and behold, as if by magic the place swarmed with children.

“This one. That one. This, and that one.” Miss Mabee selected her cast quickly.

Disappointed but not in the least rebellious, the remainder of the band moved away. The shop door was closed and work began.

Never had Jeanne experienced greater happiness than now. To be the constant companion of a famous artist—what more could one ask? It was not so much that Marie Mabee was famous. Jeanne was no mere hero-worshiper. The thing that counted most was their wonderful association. Somehow Jeanne felt the power, the sense of skill that was Miss Mabee’s flowing in her own veins. And now that she, for the time, was not the model, but the onlooker, she experienced this sense of fresh power to a far greater degree.

To sit in a remote corner of Bihari’s long narrow shop, to witness the skill with which Miss Mabee assembled the cast for a great picture, ah, that was something! To watch her skilful fingers as by some strange magic she placed a daub of color here, another there, twisted her brush here and twirled it there, sent it gliding here, gliding there, until, like the slow coming of a glorious dawn, there grew a picture showing Bihari, the powerful gypsy blacksmith, the ragged gypsy children, the anxious housewives, all in one group that seemed to glorify toil. Ah, that was glory indeed!

Jeanne would never be a painter, she knew this well enough. Yet she had sensed a great fact, that all true art is alike, that a painter draws inspiration and fresh power from a great musician, that a novelist listens to a symphony and goes home to write a better book, that even a dancer does her part in the world more skilfully because of her association with a famous painter. So Jeanne basked in the light that Miss Mabee spread about her and was gloriously happy.

In the meantime Florence was keeping an appointment on the telephone and, to all appearances having a grand time of it. She was saying:

“Yes, yes—yes, indeed!—Oh, yes, very rich.—And old. Oh, quite old, perhaps eighty—Famous?—Oh, surely, terribly famous.—Glorious pictures. Yes—In Hollywood? She hasn’t told me for sure. But yes, I think so.”

This went on for a full ten minutes. From time to time she put a hand over the mouth-piece while she indulged in peals of laughter. Then, sobering, she would go on with her conversation.

When the thing was all over, the receiver hung up, she went into one more fit of laughter, then said as she slowly walked across the floor, “That’s great! I wonder how many of them do it just that way? Perhaps all of them, and just think how they can rake in the money if they go after it in a big way!”

A big way? Her face sobered. That beautiful girl, June Travis, had met her once more at the newspaper office. She had confided to her that Madame Zaran had asked her for a thousand dollars.

“A thousand dollars!” Florence had exclaimed. “For what?”

“To tell me where my father is.” She turned a puzzled face toward Florence. “Why not? If you were all alone in the world and if you had even a great deal of money, wouldn’t you give it all just to get your father back?”

“Yes, perhaps,” Florence replied slowly, “if they really did bring him back.”

“Oh, they will!” the girl exclaimed. “They will! Madame Zaran knows a truly great man in the east. He has done wonderful things. His fees are high. But great lawyers, great surgeons ask large fees too. So,” she sighed, “if my father is not found before I get my money, I shall pay them.”

“Yes, and perhaps much more,” Florence thought with an inward groan. “But her father shall be found. He must be, and that in natural ways. He really must!

“But how?” Her spirits drooped. How? Truly that was the question.

A key in the door startled her from her troubled thoughts. It was Jeanne back from Maxwell Street.

“Did you find that thieving gypsy?” Florence asked.

“No, but we did a glorious sketch of Bihari in his shop.”

“But what of the poor widow? She can’t eat your pictures.”

“N-no.” Jeanne put on a sad face. “I shall find her for you, though! Perhaps tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” said Florence with a lightning-like change to a lighter mood, “you shall go to that place on North Clark Street and have your past as well as your future told.

“And,” she added with a chuckle, “lest you be too much surprised by your fortune, I will say this much: Myrtle Rand will tell you that you have a grandfather who is very old and very rich—”

“But, Florence, I have no grandfather. I—”

Florence held up a hand for silence. “As for yourself, she will tell you that you have been a gay deceiver, that you are a truly famous young artist, a painter of landscapes, a—”

“But, my dear, I—”

“Yes, I know. But how can I help that? This is to be your past and future. If you don’t like the future, you may ask her to change it. But what is done is done! You can’t change your past!

“As for your future,” she went on, grinning broadly, “you are to journey to Hollywood. There you shall be employed by a great moving picture company simply to plan magnificent backgrounds against which the world’s greatest moving picture dramas are to be played.”

By this time Jeanne was so dazed that she had no further questions to ask.

“Only tomorrow will tell,” she sighed as she sank into a chair.