THE BRIGHT SHAWL
When Jeanne left that place of many gypsies who were not gypsies, she
quickly lost herself in the throng that ever jams the narrow sidewalks on
Maxwell Street. She was glad, for the moment, to be away from that place.
It somehow frightened her. But she would go back; this she knew. When one
is looking for a certain person, one looks into many faces, to at last
exclaim, “This is the one!” Jeanne was looking for a certain thieving
gypsy woman. She must look into many gypsy faces.
But now, pushed this way, then that by the throng, she listened with deaf
ears, as she had often done before, to the many strange cries and
entreaties about her. “Lady, buy this! Buy this and wear diamonds.” “Shoe
strings, five cents a dozen! Shoe strings!” “Nize ripe bananas!” “Here,
lady, look! Look! A fine coat with Persian lamb collar, only seventeen
dollars!” The cries increased as she passed through the thick of it. Then
they began to quiet down.
As she looked ahead, Jeanne spied a crowd thicker than all the rest. It
centered about a rough board stand. Since she was a small child Jeanne
had been unable to resist crowds. She pressed forward until she was in
the thick of this one.
Just then a man mounted to the platform, took up a microphone and began
to speak. His voice carried far.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “there is to be conducted on this
platform a dancing contest. It is open to gypsy dancing girls only. Let
me repeat, gypsy dancing girls.”
Gypsy dancing girls! Jeanne’s heart bounded. It had been a long time
since she danced in public. But always, as long as she could remember,
she had danced. By the roadsides of France, on the streets of gay Paris,
in the Paris Opera, in light opera in America she had danced her way,
almost to fame.
“And now to think of dancing on _this_ street, before this crowd! Why
should I think of it?” Yet she had thought of it, and the thought would
not quiet down. Once a gypsy, always a gypsy. Once a dancer, always a
dancer. And yet—she would wait.
“Where are the gypsy dancers?” Jeanne asked a slender girl in a bright
shawl who was packed in close beside her.
There were gypsy dancers enough, Jeanne saw this at once. They came on,
one at a time. A four-piece orchestra played for them. Some were bright
and well-dressed, some ragged and sad. Some brought their own music and
flashed their tambourines in wild abandon. Some danced to the music that
was offered and did very badly indeed. “None,” Jeanne thought, “are very
good. And yet—”
Of a sudden she began to wonder what the purpose of it all might be. Then
she caught the gleam of a movie camera lens half-hidden behind an awning.
“They’ll be in the movies,” she thought. This did not thrill her. To be
in movies of this sort, she knew too well, was no great honor.
And yet, as she stood there listening to the mad rhythm of saxophone,
violin, oboe and trap-drums, her feet would not stand still. It was
provoking. She wished she might move away, but could not. She seemed to
have lost her will power.
Then she once more became conscious of the slender girl in the bright
shawl.
“The prize is twenty-five dollars,” the girl was saying in a low tone.
“How grand to have that much money all at one time!”
Jeanne stared at her with fresh interest. As she made some manner of
reply, she found herself, without willing it, dropping into the curious
lingo that is gypsy speech. To her surprise, she heard the girl answer in
that same lingo.
“So you are a gypsy,” she said. “And you dance.” She could see the
child’s slim body sway to the rhythm of the music. “Why do you not try
for the prize?”
“I would love to,” the girl murmured. “God knows we need the money! And I
could beat them, beat them blind, if only—”
“If only what?” Jeanne breathed.
“If only I did not have a bad knee. But now, for me to dance is
impossible.”
At that moment Jeanne became conscious of a coarse-featured, dark-faced
woman who was pushing forward a young girl. She recognized the girl on
the instant. She was one of those girls who, but half an hour before, had
insisted they were gypsies, but who could not speak the gypsy language.
“Yes,” the woman was saying, “yes, she can dance, and she is a gypsy. Try
her. You shall see. She dances better than these. Bah!” She scowled.
“Much better than these.”
“I do not believe she is a gypsy,” Jeanne whispered to the girl beside
her.
“She is not a gypsy,” the lame girl said soberly. “But if we tell—ah,
then, look out! She is a bad one, that black-faced woman.”
“So we shall be very wise and keep silent.” Jeanne pressed the girl’s
arm. How slender it was! Jeanne’s heart reproached her. She could win
that dance contest in this girl’s stead. And yet, she still held back.
The girl, pushed forward by the dark-faced woman, was now on the
platform. She danced, Jeanne was forced to admit, very well, much better
indeed than any of the others. The crowd saw and applauded.
“She is a good dancer,” Jeanne thought, “very good. And yet she is
sailing under false colors. She is not a gypsy. Still,” she wondered, “am
I right? Do all American gypsies know the gypsy tongue?” She could not
tell. And still, her feet were moving restlessly. Not she, but her feet
wished to dance.
And then, with the suddenness of the sun escaping from a cloud, came
great joy to Jeanne. A powerful arm encircled her waist and a gruff voice
said:
“_Tiens!_ It is my Jeanne!”
It was Bihari, Bihari, Jeanne’s gypsy step-father! She had supposed him
to be in France.
“Bihari!” she cried, enraptured. “You here?”
“Yes, my child.”
“But why?”
“Does it matter now?” Bihari’s tone was full of serious joy. “All that
matters now is that you must dance. You are a gypsy. We are all gypsies,
all but that one, the one who, without your dancing, will win. She is an
impostor. She is no gypsy. This I know. Come, my Jeanne! You must dance!”
“Here!” Jeanne sprang forward, at the same time dragging the bright shawl
from the slender girl’s shoulders. “Here! I, too, am a gypsy! I, too,
will dance.”
“She a gypsy?” The dark-faced one’s cheeks purpled with anger. “She is no
gypsy! Did I not this moment see her drag the shawl from this girl’s
shoulders?” She lifted a heavy hand as if to strike the little French
girl. That instant a hand that was like a vice closed upon her uplifted
arm.
“Put that arm down or I will break it off at the elbow!” It was the
powerful Bihari.
The woman’s cheek blanched. Her hand dropped. She shrank back into the
crowd.
“She _is_ a gypsy,” Bihari said quietly to the man on the platform. “I am
her step-father. She traveled in my caravan. I will vouch for her. And
she can dance—you shall see.”
Perhaps Bihari, the gypsy smithy, was not unknown to the man on the
stand. At any rate, Jeanne had her chance.
She had not forgotten her own bright gypsy shawl of days gone by, nor the
prizes she had won while it waved and waved about her slim figure. Now,
in this fantastic setting, it all came back to her.
Once again, as she stood there motionless, awaiting the first haunting
wail of the violin, she felt herself float and glide like a cloud over
the dewy grass of some village square in France; once again heard the
wild applause as her bright shawl waved before a sea of up-turned faces
in the Paris Opera.
“And I am not doing this for myself, but for that poor child with the
lame knee,” she thought as her lips moved in a sort of prayer.
It is safe to say that Maxwell Street will not soon again see such
dancing as was done on that rough platform in the moments that followed.
Jeanne’s step was light, fairy-like, joyous. Now, as she sailed through
space, she seemed some bird of bright plumage. Now, as she floated out
from her bright shawl, as she spun round and round, she seemed more a
spirit than a living thing. And now, for ten full seconds, she stood, a
bright creature, gloriously human.
Seizing a tambourine that lay at the drummer’s feet, she struck it with
her hand, shook it until it began to sing, then tossing it high, set it
spinning first on a finger, then upon the top of her golden head. And all
this time she swayed and swung, leaped and spun in time with the rhythmic
music.
When at last, quite out of breath, she sprang high to clear the platform
and land squarely in the stout arms of Bihari who, holding her still
aloft, shouted, “_Viva La Petite Jeanne!_ Long live the little French
girl!” the crowd went mad.
Was there any question regarding the winner of the dance contest? None at
all. When the tumult had subsided, without a word the man on the platform
tossed the sheaf of bills straight into Jeanne’s waiting hands.
“Here!” Jeanne whispered hoarsely to the frail girl whose shawl she had
borrowed, “Take this and hide it deep, close to your heart!” She crowded
the prize money into the astonished girl’s hand. Then, as the crowd began
surging in, she threw the bright shawl to its place on the girl’s
shoulders.
“Tha—thanks for trusting the prize with me.” The girl smiled.
“Trusting you!” Jeanne exclaimed low. “It’s yours, all yours! Take it to
your mother.”
“You can’t mean it! All—all that?” Tears sprang to the girl’s eyes.
“I do,” Jeanne replied hurriedly. “This is the spirit of the road. We are
gypsies, you and I. Today I have a little. Tomorrow I shall be poor and
someone shall help me. This is life.”
Next instant the crowd had carried Jeanne away. But close by her side was
Bihari.
As the crowd thinned a little Jeanne caught sight of a forbidding face
close at hand. It was the woman who, a few moments before, had believed
her own dancer to be the winner. Stepping close, she hissed a dozen words
in Jeanne’s ear. The words were spoken in the language of the gypsies.
Only Jeanne understood. Though her face blanched, she said never a word
in reply.
“Bihari,” she said ten minutes later as they sat on stools drinking cups
of black tea and munching small meat pies, “do you remember that dark
woman?”
“Yes, my Jeanne.”
“She is a bad one. I wonder if she could be our thief who stole the poor
widow’s four hundred dollars?”
“Who knows, my Jeanne? Who knows? I too have read of that in the paper. I
too have been ashamed for all gypsies. We must find her. She must be
punished.”
“Yes,” said Jeanne, “we must find her.” Then in a few words she told of
her own part in that search.
“As ever,” said Bihari, “I shall be your helper.”
“But you, Bihari,” Jeanne asked, “why are you not in our most beautiful
France?”
“Ah!” Bihari sighed, “France is indeed beautiful, but she is very poor.
In America, as ever, there is opportunity. Right here on Maxwell Street,
where there is much noise and many smells, I have my shop. I mend pots
and pans, yes, and automobiles too, for people who are as poor as I. So
we get on very well.” He laughed a merry laugh.
“And because I am here,” he added, “I can help you all the more.”