CHAPTER VIII

A VISION FOR ANOTHER

That same afternoon Florence met Sandy at the door of his glass box. “Are—are you leaving?” she asked in sudden consternation. “I didn’t get my story in.”

“Oh, that’s O. K.” Sandy, who was small, young, red-haired and freckled, threw back his head and laughed. “I did it for you. It’s gone to press. Remember that psychoanalyst who wears some sort of a towel wrapped round his head and claims he is a Prince of India?”

“Oh, yes. He was funny—truly funny. And he wanted to hold my hand.” Florence showed her two large dimples in a smile.

“Yes. Well, I did him for you. So! Come on downstairs for a cup of coffee.”

“Sure.” Florence grinned. She was not on a diet and she was ready for just one more cup of coffee any time. Besides, she wanted to tell Sandy about her latest finds, Madame Zaran, June Travis, and the crystal ball.

“It’s the strangest thing,” she was saying fifteen minutes later as, seated in a remote corner of the cafeteria maintained for employees only, she looked at Sandy over a steaming cup of coffee. “I gazed into the crystal and, almost at once, I began seeing things!”

“What did you see?” There was a questioning look on Sandy’s freckled face.

“Trees, evergreen trees.” Florence’s eyes became dreamy. “Trees and dark waters, rocks—the wildest sort of place in the great out-of-doors.”

“And then?”

“And then it all changed. I saw the same trees, rocks and waters covered with ice and snow.”

“That surely _is_ strange!” The look on Sandy’s face changed. “You must have been seeing things for me.”

“For you?” The girl’s eyes opened wide.

“Absolutely.” Sandy grinned. “You see, they’re trapping moose on Isle Royale, and—”

“Isle Royale!” Florence exclaimed. “I’ve been there, spent a whole summer there. It’s marvelous!”

“Tell me about it.” Sandy leaned forward eagerly.

“Oh—” Florence closed her eyes for a space of seconds. “It—why it’s wild and beautiful. It’s a big island, forty miles long. It’s all rocks and forest primeval. No timber has ever been cut there. And there are narrow bays running back two miles where, early in summer, marvelous big lake trout lurk. You put a spoon hook on your line and go trolling. You just row and row. You gaze at the glorious green of birch and balsam, spruce and fir; you watch the fleecy clouds, you feel the lift and fall of your small boat, and think how wonderful it is just to live, when Zing! something sets your reel spinning. Is it a rock? You grab your pole and begin reeling in. No! It moves, it wobbles. It is a fish.

“Ten yards, twenty, thirty, forty you reel in. There he is! What a beauty—a ten pounder. You play him, let out line, reel in, let out, reel in. Then you whisper, ‘Now!’ You reel in fast, you reach out and up, and there he is thrashing about in the bottom of your boat. Oh, Sandy! You’ll love it! Wish I could go. Next summer are you going?”

“Next week, most likely.”

“Next week! Why, it’s all frozen over. There are no boats going there now.”

“No boats, but we’ll take a plane, land on skiis. You see,” Sandy explained, “our nature editor has gone south. Now this moose-trapping business has come up and our paper wants a story. The thing has been dumped in my lap. I’ll probably have to go.”

“Oh!” The big girl’s face was a study. She loved the wide out-of-doors and all wild, free places. Isle Royale must be glorious in winter. “Wish I could go along! But I—I can’t.”

“Why not?” Sandy asked.

“I’ve got this girl, June Travis, on my hands. And, unless something is done, I’m afraid it will turn out badly.”

“June Travis?” Sandy stared.

“Yes. Didn’t I tell you? But of course not. It’s the strangest, most fantastic thing! I should have told you that first, but of course, like everyone else, I was most interested in my own poor little experience.”

“Tell me about it.”

Florence did tell him. She told the story well, about June gazing into the crystal ball, the moving figures in that ball, June’s fortune which she was soon to possess, the voodoo priestess and all the rest. She told it so well that Sandy’s second cup of coffee got cold during the telling.

“I say!” Sandy exclaimed. “You _have_ got something on your hands. Look out, big girl! They may turn out too many for you. My opinion is that all fortune tellers are fakes, and that the biggest of them are crooked and dangerous, so watch your step.”

“Oh, I know my way around this little town,” Florence laughed. “And now allow me to get you a fresh cup of coffee.”

“Sandy,” Florence said a moment later, “the little French girl, Petite Jeanne, was with me on Isle Royale. She’d like to hear all about your proposed trip to the island. We may be able to think up some facts that will be a real help to you. Why don’t you come over to our studio for dinner tomorrow night? I’m sure Miss Mabee would be delighted to have you.”

“All right, I’ll be there. How about your gypsy girl friend preparing a chicken for us, one she has caught behind her van, on the broad highway?”

“Her van has vanished, much to her regret,” Florence laughed. “We’ll have the chicken all the same.”

“And about this story of the crystal ball,” Sandy asked as they prepared to leave the cafeteria. “Shall I run that tomorrow?”

“Oh, no!” Florence exclaimed in alarm. “Not yet. I want to dig deeply into that. I—I’m hoping I may find something truly magical there.”

“Well, don’t hope too much!” Sandy dashed away to make one more “dead-line.”

That had been an exciting day for the little French girl. After she had crept beneath the covers in her studio chamber at ten o’clock that night, she could not sleep. When she closed her eyes she saw a thousand faces. Old, wrinkled faces, pinched young faces and the half greedy, half hopeless faces of the middle-aged. All that Maxwell Street had been as she danced so madly for the prize that meant so little to her and so much to another.

“Life,” she whispered to herself, “is so very queer! Why must we always be thinking of others? Life should not be like that. We should be free to seek happiness for ourselves alone. Happiness! Happiness!” she repeated the word softly. “Why should not happiness be our only aim in life? To sing like the nightingale, to dart about like a humming-bird, to dance wild and free like the fairies. Ah, this should be life!”

Still she could not sleep. It was often so. It was as if life were too thrilling, too joyous and charming to be spent in senseless sleep.

Slipping from her bed, she drew on heavy skating socks and slippers, wrapped herself in a heavy woolen dressing gown; then slipping silently out of her room, felt about in the half darkness of the studio until she found the rounds of an iron ladder. Then she began to climb. She had not climbed far when she came to a small trap door. This she lifted. Having taken two more steps up, she paused to stare about her. Her gaze swept the surface of a broad flat roof, their roof.

“Twelve o’clock, and all’s well,” she whispered with a low laugh. The roof was silent as a tomb. She stepped out upon the roof, then allowed the trap door to drop without a sound into its place. She was now at the top of her own little world.

And what a world on such a night! Above her, like blue diamonds, the stars shone. Hanging low over the distant dark waters of the lake, the moon lay at the end of a path of gold.

Here, there, everywhere, lights shone from thousands of windows. How different were the scenes behind those windows! There were windows of homes, of offices, of hospitals and jails. Each hid a story of life.

So absorbed was the little French girl in all these things as she sat there in the shadow of a chimney, she did not note that a trap door a hundred feet away had lifted silently, allowed a dark figure to pass, then as silently closed. Had she noted this she must surely have thought the person some robber escaping with his booty. She would, beyond doubt, have fled to her own trap door and vanished.

Since she did not see the intruder upon her reveries, she continued to drink in the crisp fresh air of night and to sit musing over the strangeness of life.

Some moments later she was startled by one long-drawn musical note, it seemed to have come from a violin, and that not far away. Before she could cry out or flee, there came to her startled ears, played exquisitely on a violin, the melodious notes of _O Sole Mio_.

To her vexation and terror, at that moment the moon passed behind a cloud and all the roof was dark. Still the music did not cease.

Awed by the strangeness of it all, captivated by that marvelous music played in a place so strange, Jeanne sat as one entranced until the last note had died away.

“There, my pretty ones!” said a voice with startling distinctness, “how do you like that? Not so bad, eh?”

There was something of a reply. It was, however, too indistinct to be understood.

“Could anything be stranger?” Jeanne asked herself. She knew that the voice was that of a young man, or perhaps a boy. She felt that perhaps she should proceed to vanish.

“But how can I?” she whispered, “and leave all this mystery unsolved?”

Oddly enough, the very next tune chosen by the musician was one of those wild, rocketing gypsy dance tunes that Jeanne had ever found irresistible.

Before she knew what she was about, she went gliding like some wild bewitching sprite across the flat surface of the roof. She was in the very midst of that dance, leaping high and swinging wide as only she could do, when with a suddenness that was appalling, the music ceased.

An ominous silence followed. Out of that silence came a small voice.

“Wha—where did you come from?”

“Ple—oh, please go on!” Jeanne entreated. “You wouldn’t dash a beautiful vase on the floor; you would not strangle a canary; you would not step upon a rose. You must not crush a beautiful dance in pieces!”

“But, ah—”

“Please!” Jeanne was not looking at the musician.

With a squeak and a scratch or two, the music began once more. This time the dance was played perfectly to its end.

“Now!” breathed Jeanne as she sank down upon a stone parapet. “I ask you, where did _you_ come from—the moon, or just one of the stars?” She was staring at a handsome dark-eyed boy in his late teens. A violin was tucked under his arm.

“Neither,” he answered shyly. “Up from a hole in the roof.”

“But why are you playing here?” Jeanne demanded.

“I came—” there was a low chuckle. “I came here so I could play for the pigeons who roost under the tank there. They like it, I’m sure. Did you hear them cooing?”

“Yes. But why—” Jeanne hesitated, bewildered. “Why for the pigeons? You play divinely!”

“Thanks.” He made a low bow. “I play well enough, I suppose. So do a thousand others. That’s the trouble. There is not room for us all, so I must take to the house-tops.”

“But how do you live?” Jeanne did not mean to go on, yet she could not stop.

“I play twice a week in a—a place where people eat, and—and drink.”

“Is it a nice place?”

“Not too nice, but it is a nice five dollars a week they pay me. One may eat and have his collars done for five a week. The janitor of this building lets me have a cubbyhole under the roof, and so—” he laughed again. “I am handy to the pigeons. They appreciate my music, I am sure of it.”

“Don’t!” Jeanne sprang up and stamped a foot. “Don’t joke about art. It—it’s not nice!”

“Oh!” the boy breathed, “I’m sorry.”

“What’s your name?” Jeanne demanded.

The boy murmured something that sounded like “Tomorrow.”

“No!” Jeanne spoke more distinctly. “I said, what’s your name?”

The boy too spoke more distinctly. Still the thing he said was to Jeanne simply “Tomorrow.”

“I don’t know,” she exclaimed almost angrily, “whether it is today still, or whether we have got into tomorrow. My watch is in my room. What I’d like to know is, what do your parents call you?”

“Tomorrow,” the boy repeated, or so it sounded to Jeanne.

Then he laughed a merry laugh. “I’ll spell it for you. T-U-M, Tum. That’s my first name. And the second is Morrow. I defy you to say it fast without making it ‘tomorrow’!

“And that,” he sighed, “is a very good name for me! It is always tomorrow that good things are to happen. Then they never do.”

“Tum Morrow,” said Jeanne, “tomorrow at three will you have tea with me?”

“I surely will tomorrow,” said Tum Morrow, “but where do I come?”

“Follow me with your eye until I vanish.” Jeanne rose. “Tomorrow lift that same trap door, climb down the ladder, then look straight ahead and down. You will probably be looking at me in a very beautiful studio.”

“Tomorrow,” said Tum Morrow, “I’ll be there.”

“And tomorrow, Tum Morrow, may be your lucky day,” Jeanne laughed as she went dancing away.

Tomorrow came. So did Tum Morrow. Jeanne did not forget her appointment. She saw to it that water was hot for tea. She prepared a heaping plate of the most delicious sandwiches. Great heaps of nut meats, a bottle of salad-dressing and half a chicken went into their making.

“Tea!” Florence exclaimed. “That will be a feast!”

“And why not?” Jeanne demanded. “One who eats on five dollars a week and keeps his collars clean in the bargain deserves a feast!”

The moods of the great artist were not, however, governed by afternoon appointments to tea. When Tum Morrow, having followed Jeanne’s instructions, found himself upon the studio balcony, he did not speak, but sat quietly down upon the top step of the stair to wait, for there in the center of the large studio, poised on a narrow, raised stand, was Jeanne.

Garbed in high red boots, short socks, skirts of mixed and gorgeous hues and a meager waist, wide open at the front, she stood with a bright tambourine held aloft, poised for a gypsy dancer.

To the right of her, working furiously, dashing a touch of color here, another there, stepping back for a look, then leaping at her canvas again, was the painter, Marie Mabee.

Evidently Tum Morrow had seen nothing like this before, for he sat there, mouth wide open, staring. At that moment, so far as he was concerned, tomorrow might at any moment become today. He would never have known the difference.

When at last Marie Mabee thrust her brushes, handles down, in the top of a jug and said, “There!” Tum Morrow heaved such a prodigious sigh that the artist started, whirled about, stared for an instant, then demanded, “Where did you come from?”

Before the startled boy could find breath for reply, she exclaimed, “Oh, yes! I remember. Jeanne told me! Come right down! She has a feast all prepared for you.”

She extended both hands as he reached the foot of the stairs. Tum took the hands. His eyes were only for Jeanne.

It was a jolly tea they had, Jeanne, the artist, and Tum. Tum’s shyness at being in the presence of a great personage gradually passed away. Quite frankly at last he told his story. His music had been the gift of his mother. A talented woman, she had taught him from the age of three. When she could go no farther, she had employed a great teacher to help him.

“They called me a prodigy.” He sighed. “I never liked that very much. I played at women’s clubs and all sorts of luncheons and all the ladies clapped their hands. Some of the ladies had kind faces—some of them,” he repeated slowly. “I played only for those who had kind faces.”

“But now,” he ended rather abruptly, “my teacher is gone. My mother is gone. I am no longer a prodigy, nor am I a grown musician, so—”

“So you play for the pigeons on the roof!” Jeanne laughed a trifle uncertainly.

“And for angels,” Tum replied, looking straight into her eyes. Jeanne flushed.

“What does he mean?” Miss Mabee asked, puzzled.

“That angels come down from the sky at night,” Jeanne replied teasingly.

“But Miss Mabee,” she demanded, “what does one do between the time he is a prodigy and when he is a man?”

“Oh, I—I don’t know.” Miss Mabee stirred her tea thoughtfully. “He just does the best he can, gets around among people and hopes something will happen. And, bye and bye, something does happen. Then all is lovely.

“Excuse me!” She sprang to her feet. “There’s the phone.”

“But you?” said Tum, “you, Miss Jeanne, are a famous dancer—you must be.”

“No.” Jeanne was smiling. “I am only a dancing gypsy. Once, it is true, I danced a light opera. And once, just once—” her eyes shone. “Once I danced in that beautiful Opera House down by the river. That Opera House is closed now. What a pity! I danced in the _Juggler of Notre Dame_. And the people applauded. Oh, how they did applaud!

“But a gypsy—” her voice dropped. “With a gypsy it is different. Nothing wonderful lasts with a gypsy. So now—” she laughed a little, low laugh. “Now I’m just a wild dancing bumble bee with invisible wings on my feet.”

“Are you?” The boy’s eyes shone with a sudden light. “Do you know this?” Taking up his violin, he began to play.

“What is it?” she demanded, enraptured.

“They call it ‘Flight of the Bumble Bee.’”

“Play it again.”

Tum played it again. Jeanne sat entranced.

“_Encore!_” she exclaimed.

Then, snatching up a thin gauzy shawl of iridescent silk, she went leaping and whirling, flying across the room.

In the meantime, Miss Mabee, who had returned, stood in a corner fascinated.

And it was truly worthy of her admiration. As a dancer, when the mood seized her Jeanne could be a spark, a flame, a gaudy, darting humming-bird, and now indeed she was a bee with invisible wings on her feet.

“That,” exclaimed the artist, “is a tiny masterpiece of music and dancing! It must be preserved. Others must know of it. We shall find a time and place. You shall see, my children.”

Jeanne flushed with pleasure. Tum was silent, but deep in both their hearts was the conviction that this was one of the truly large moments of their lives.