CHAPTER XI HAPPY DAYS

Happy days followed. Petite Jeanne, whose circle of true friends in this great world had been pitiably small, found her horizon greatly enlarged. Truly the day of adventures in Merry’s cellar and out in the park while she danced the sun up from the depths of the lake had been her lucky day. For one might well have gone about the city of three million souls holding a lamp before every face without finding the equal to that brave trio, Angelo the playwright, Swen the maker of melodies and Dan Baker the beloved vagabond of the stage.
88

Happy days they were, and busy ones as well. Each evening found them assembled in Angelo’s studio. In order that they might talk as they ate, they brought dinner along. Each member of the little group contributed something. Swen provided chops, steaks, oysters or fish; Angelo added such strange viands as he could devise, curious hot Mexican dishes, rich preparations from his native land, or unthinkable Russian mixtures; Florence and Petite Jeanne arrived each evening with apple-squares, date-tarts or some other form of tempting dessert; Dan Baker practiced the ancient and all but lost art of coffee brewing so skilfully that after drinking they all felt that dawn was on the point of breaking, and they were ready to walk out into a dewy morn.

Wild, hilarious, dizzy hours followed. Was a light opera ever before produced in such a fantastic fashion?

Angelo was continuously prepared with fresh script. This dark-eyed youth was a worker. Swen kept pace with musical compositions.

And how Swen could beat out those melodies on the battered piano reposing in the corner!
89

When it was music for her dance Petite Jeanne, bare-footed, bare-armed, with eyes shining, sprang into motion with such abandon as made her seem a crimson cardinal, a butterfly, a mere flying nothing.

How Swen would throw back his blonde mane and laugh! How Dan Baker shook his old head and sighed with joy!

“Our play!” he would murmur. “Our play. How can it fail? With such an angel of light even Heaven would be a complete success.”

So for hours they labored. Testing music, words, lighting effects, dances, everything, until their heads were dizzy and their eyes dim.

Then, as the blaze flamed up in the broad fireplace, they cast themselves upon Angelo’s rugs of wondrous thickness and softness, and sighed deep sighs of content.

“How wonderful it is to have beautiful things!” Jeanne exclaimed, as on one of these occasions she buried her white hands in the thick, velvety surface of a Persian rug.

“Ah, yes!” Angelo sighed. “When you are sure you are to keep them.”
90

“But they are your own.”

“Oh, yes. Now they are mine. They belonged to some one else before me. They may belong to others. The success of our play, that alone, will make them secure. My happiness, yours, all our joy depends upon that.” A shadow fell across his dark face.

This shadow reminded Petite Jeanne of a wider shadow that had been sweeping over the wondrous land men called America. For long years this land had known such joyous prosperity as no land before had ever known. But now, as if struck by some mysterious blight, this prosperity was falling away. Factories had been closing. Streets that once were thronged with shoppers, were thronged no more. Stores and shops were all but deserted. Wise men said, “Prosperity will return. It is just around the corner.” Yet it did not return at once.

And Petite Jeanne, sensitive soul that she was, ever conscious of the woes that come to others, was touched by the signs of fear and distress that she saw all about her.
91

When she spoke of it to Angelo he, too, appeared distressed, not for himself, but for others.

“This will make no difference to our play,” was his optimistic pronouncement. “When hard times come, the people feel the need of amusement, diversion, more than before. Only one playhouse in our city is dark.”

“If so, where is our play to open?” Jeanne asked quickly.

“Leave that to me.” He shrugged. “Plays come. Plays go. A house dark to-night will be aglow to-morrow. I have friends. Once our light opera is on, it will go on forever.”

So they labored and hoped, shouted, danced, sang, dreamed, despaired and hoped again, only at last to go creeping away in the wee small hours to seek sleep. And the morning hours knew them not. So passed fourteen happy, busy, delirious days.

All this time the light opera was taking form. At the close of Act I the gypsy caravan, with Petite Jeanne and Dan Baker riding on burros, departed for Paris.
92

In Paris Petite Jeanne and her amiable substitute for the bear danced in the beautiful public gardens. There, surrounded by noble statues and flowering trees, they were discovered by the chorus who at this time were dressed in bright smocks, posing with brushes, stools and easels as artists from the Latin Quarter.

They joined the pair in a beautiful “Dance of the Flowers,” and then lingered to sketch Dan Baker, Petite Jeanne and their burros. Meanwhile Dan Baker entertained Petite Jeanne and all who cared to listen with one of his wondrously impossible tales of fairyland: America across the seas.

Scarcely were the sketches completed, the tales brought to an end, than a stranger, stepping from the throng of onlookers, denounced Dan Baker as an impostor and accused him of being one of the richest men in America. The ancient wanderer resented the accusation. A fight ensued in which a burro assisted the aged dancer to win a victory by butting his adversary over and then sitting on him.
93

Millionaire or no millionaire, Dan Baker adopted Petite Jeanne as his daughter. The next scene found them in a beautiful private garden, all their own, still dancing.

A young hero appeared. He found Jeanne dancing barefooted before a fountain and fell madly in love with her.

They were interrupted by the chorus, now doing a nature dance to spring, and arrayed much as spring damsels are supposed to be dressed.

A villain appeared in the shadows. He had discovered that Petite Jeanne, who had lived after the death of her parents with wandering gypsies, was rich in her own name. He, a terrible apache, proposed to kidnap her.

The plot grew apace. Dan Baker told one more story while the villain stood not ten feet away, ready, if need be, to stab him.

The fool of the play, a young Scotchman who missed every golden opportunity because he held his pennies too tightly gripped, appeared.
94

By the aid of the chorus, now dressed as wild and terrible apache damsels, Petite Jeanne was kidnapped.

The fool barely missed eternal glory by rescuing her. He took a three cent subway car instead of spending a whole nickel on the plush seated car boarded by the villain and his band.

The last scene was in a stone paved, walled court of a fearsome secret prison, where Dan Baker, who had become a voluntary prisoner, revived the fainting Jeanne with one more romantic tale.

Meanwhile, the hero, at the head of a brave band of gendarmes, who in the end proved to be the chorus in disguise, stormed the secret prison and rescued the fair gypsy maid.

The truth of her riches was revealed to Jeanne. She wept on the hero’s shoulder. Then she and Dan Baker, joined once more by the chorus—this time in the most gorgeous of filmy French creations—danced the wild Dance of the Fire God beneath the moon while the ancient god, lighted in some magical way, beamed and grimaced at them from the dark.
95

Such was the rough outline for the opera, presented by Angelo.

“Of course,” he added many times, with a smile, “the young hero may turn up later with a rich, pompous and irate mother who does not purpose to marry her son to a gypsy. There may be many other complications. But we shall iron them out one by one.

“Fortune is with us in one respect. The plot of a light opera is never very closely knit. So long as there is music and dancing, mirth and song, all is well. And that we shall have in superabundance.”

“But where are we to get the donkeys?” Petite Jeanne asked on one occasion.

“My dear!” exclaimed Dan Baker. “Nothing is easier. There are nearly as many donkeys on the stage as off it.”

The laugh went round.

When it had subsided Angelo said: “I know where there are two burros, in a vacant lot on the west side. They’ve been on the stage in vaudeville. One is trained to bowl a man over and sit on him.
96

“So, you see,” his grin broadened as he turned to Dan Baker, “I have written that part expressly for him, just as I have for the other donkeys in the cast.”

The laugh was now on Dan Baker. He responded by narrating one more fantastic yarn, and the work went on.

Then came the night when Angelo exclaimed over the last wild dance, when even Florence joined in the ballet, “It is enough! To-morrow I go to seek a producer. To-night, before you sleep, say a little prayer for our success.”
97

Let us hope no one will be shocked when we declare that on that night, long after Florence was lost in slumber, Petite Jeanne crept from the warm bed to the cold floor, pried up the loose boards, drew forth the hidden God of Fire and whispered to him some words that sounded suspiciously like a prayer. For, after all, you must recall that Petite Jeanne was more than half gypsy. Besides, she was dreadfully in earnest. For had she not, in an impersonal way, come to love very much the fiery little composer, the blonde-maned musician and, most of all, the appealing old trouper, he of long gray locks and plaintive, melodious voice? For these more than for herself she wished the light opera to be a great and lasting success.