DANCES AND DREAMS
“Jeanne, what can you be doing?”
Florence stared at her eccentric little friend in surprise.
“But can you not see?” Jeanne did not pause for an instant. “I am doing a
gypsy dance, practicing for my so very wonderful moving picture. We begin
rehearsals to-morrow, and must I not be prepared?”
“Yes, but—”
Florence could say no more. The whole affair was too fantastic for words.
Here was Jeanne in the sumptuous apartment of Lorena LeMar. She was
clothed in a filmy thing of nile-green that floated around her as clouds
float about a mountain peak. She was as radiant, too, as any mountain
peak at dawn. She was doing one of her gypsy dances, one of those exotic,
fairy-like dances that, now dreamy, now wild as a bird in flight, drug
one’s very senses.
“But Jeanne!” she exclaimed, when at last the little French girl threw
herself upon a low couch. “Your moving picture is to be one of those
simple, human affairs, a story of the Cumberlands. You are to be Zola, an
innocent little mountain child.”
“Ah, yes!” Jeanne sat up. Vibrant, alive to the very tips of her toes,
she shook her finger at Florence. “There is the trouble! No contrast,
none at all. And what is a movie, what can any dramatic thing be, without
contrast?
“Our Zola,” she hurried on, “is not so simple as you think.
“You remember she is rescued from a car-load of soft coal, very black,
and she is scrubbed up?”
“Yes.” Florence smiled.
“Well!” Jeanne struck a dramatic pose. “When she is washed up she is
introduced to the president of the railroad. He thinks she is a—how would
you say it?—a ‘wow’!
“So! He takes her home. He has a son and a daughter about her own age.
This daughter dresses her up in this.” She touched the filmy gown.
“They are in a place like this.” She glanced about the apartment. “Only
grander, much grander; you know: high ceilings, marble pillars, ancestral
portraits, butler, and all that.” She threw her arms wide.
“When they have dressed our Zola of the box car up, she does like this.”
Once again she went drifting like a butterfly across the room and again
alighted upon her downy perch.
“And then,” she cried exultantly, “they _know_ she is a wow!”
“But, Jeanne,” Florence objected, “where could a little mountain girl
learn that dance?”
“Gypsies, traveling gypsies. They go everywhere.
“And,” she went on, “when Zola does that dance, they want to keep
her—just the way you’d like to keep a beautiful wild bird who flies into
your window.
“They do keep her, too, for a few days. But the little wild thing longs
for her mountain home. So, one starry night, she folds up the gorgeous
pink nightie they have given her, puts on her old calico dress and steals
away, back to her home on the side of Big Black Mountain.
“See!” she exclaimed. “Contrast! Is it not wonderful?” Once again, like
some strange tropical bird, she drifted across the room.
“But Jeanne!” Again the skeptic protested. “Is all this in the scenario?”
“Not yet. I am putting it in to-morrow.”
“Putting it in?” Florence was aghast.
“Yes, yes. And why not? Why must one be a star, a movie queen, if she is
not to have her own way?”
“And Lorena LeMar is gone?”
“Yes. She ’phoned me this morning, only a few words. She was off on the
yacht. I must move in this very day. To-morrow we must rehearse. And
_voila_! Here we are!”
“And you do not know where you can reach her in case—”
“In case what?”
“In case they detect that you are an impostor.”
“Oh, no, my friend, not an impostor!” Jeanne held up her hands in horror.
“Only a twin star.”
“Or in case you fail.”
“Fail? But how could I? The movie is already—how shall I say it?—a flop.
“And I—I shall make it a grand success. I, Petite Jeanne, who has never
failed. Nevair! I have willed that this so beautiful picture shall be a
success!”
“Well,” Florence’s voice was deep and low, “here’s wishing you success.
“To-morrow—” She spoke again after some moments of silence. “To-morrow
will tell the story. If you can carry it off to-morrow you are on your
way.”
“Ah, yes!” Jeanne was drooping a little now. She was like a butterfly who
has ridden the sunbeams long and far. “Ah, yes. To-morrow we shall know.”