CHAPTER XIV GYPSY TRAIL
If life, for the moment, had been robbed of its adventure for Florence,the little French girl Petite Jeanne had not fared so badly. To her lifehad come one more thrill. It happened in a strange and quite unexpectedmanner. Having left the gypsy child with friends in Chicago, she andMadame Bihari had gone on a true gypsy tour of the air. Theirdestination was anywhere, their home the landing field that appearedbeneath them at close of day. Never had Jeanne been so buoyantly happyas now. And who could wonder at this?
One evening just at sunset they came soaring down upon a landing fieldin the open country. Many years ago some great lover of trees hadplanted here a long row of hard maples. These now formed the farthestboundary of the landing field. The most glorious days of autumn hadarrived. Never had there been such a gorgeous array of colors. Here red,orange, yellow and green were blended in a pattern of matchless beauty.
The light of the setting sun presented all this to the little Frenchgirl in a manner that delighted her very soul. As if attracted by somegreat magnet, her little plane taxied toward them. The planes were allbut touching the leaves when at last the ship came to a halt.
"Madame," Jeanne said, all but breathless with delight, "this is wherewe stay tonight." Her tone became deeply serious. "Why do men fromEurope say America is ugly? Nowhere in the world is there a moment morebeautiful than this!" She took up a handful of golden leaves, liftedthem high, then sent them sailing away into the breeze.
"Here is a little pile of wood," she said a moment later. "There is abare spot just out from the trees. We shall make a little fire and boilsome water for tea. We shall dream just this once that we are back inour so beautiful France on the Gypsy Trail.
"And Madame!" she exclaimed joyously, "Why shouldn't all gypsies travelin airplanes? How wonderful that would be! When the frost comes bitingyour toes in this beautiful northland, when the trees lose their gloryand stand all bleak and bare, then they could fold their tents to gogliding away to the south. One, two, three, four, five hours racing withthe wild ducks in their flight, and see! there you are! Would it not bewonderful?"
"Quite wonderful." Madame Bihari beamed. Already she had the fireburning, the water on to boil.
They had traveled far that day. Jeanne was tired. Dragging out the padto her cot, she spread it beneath one of those ancient maples.Stretching herself out upon it, she lay there looking up into thelabyrinth of red and gold that hung above her.
"Oh," she breathed, "if only heaven is half as beautiful as this!"
"Madame," she said after a very long time, "why is there always trouble?Why do people struggle so much, when all this beauty may be had withoutasking?"
"If I could answer that," Madame said soberly, "I should be very wise.But this you must remember, my Jeanne: wherever you go, whether yousucceed or fail, you will find people ready to drag you down. Shall youlet them? Surely not, my Jeanne. We must fight, my Jeanne."
"Always?" the little French girl asked as a wistful note crept into hertone.
"Always, my Jeanne."
For a time after that they sat staring dreamily at the fire. Then,seeming to recall half forgotten words, Jeanne murmured softly, "Doesthe road lead uphill all the way?" Then, as if answering her ownquestion, "Yes, my child, to the very end.
"Trouble," Jeanne whispered. At once she thought of her good palFlorence, then of Danby Force and the problem they were trying to solve.
"Madame," she whispered, "do you suppose Florence has found her spy?"
"Who knows?" Madame's words were spoken slowly. "Spies are hard to find.Some, I am told, went all through the great war and were not captured."
"We should help her," Jeanne decided quite suddenly. "We shall go tothat little city. Perhaps tomorrow we shall go."
At that moment some wood sprite might have whispered, "No, Jeanne, nottomorrow."
With the lightning bugs flashing about them and the song of tree toadsin their ears, they drank their tea, munched some hard crackers, andfelt that life was indeed very beautiful.
"Shall you sleep now?" Madame asked a half hour later. "The tent isready."
"No. Not yet." Jeanne wrapped herself in a blanket, then stretched outbeneath her canopy of gold. "How wonderful autumn is!" she sighed. "Itmakes you wish that life were all like this and that one might go onliving forever. But this we cannot do, so it is best to sing.
"'Dance, gypsy, dance. Sing, gypsy, sing, Sing while you may, and forget That life must end.'
"I should go in," she told herself after a time. But she did not go. Dryleaves, rustling in the breeze, seemed to whisper, stars, peepingthrough the trees, appeared to wink at her. The whole world seemed atpeace. Even the dog that barked from some place far away appeared to besinging in the night.
"How like it is to one of those lovely nights in France," she thought toherself. "I was only a small child. There were many gypsies, sometimesfifty, sometimes a hundred. They sang and they danced. Their violins! Ahyes, how sweetly they sounded out into the night!
"And yet--" her mood changed. "Would I go back to that? Perhaps not.This is America. This is a new day. There are exciting things to do.There are mysteries to solve, people to be helped. I shall solve thosemysteries. I shall help those people. I--the little French girl theycall Petite Jeanne!" She laughed a low laugh.
"I should go in," she said again. She took in three deep breaths of thepure night air, yet she did not move. Very soon after, had one beenpassing, he might have said, "She is asleep." He would have spoken thetruth.
When she awoke some time later, a sense of strangeness filled her mind.A spot of light in the sky caught her eye. An exclamation escaped herlips. "I am still dreaming," she murmured. She pinched herself hard. Ithurt. She must be wide awake, yet, up there in the sky, gleaming as awhite tower gleams when a hundred spotlights are upon it, was a silvership--an airplane.
"Angels!" she murmured. "They too must have taken to the air in planes."This, she knew well enough, was pure fancy. What could this silver shipbe? And what kept it glistening like a star? That there were nospotlights near, she knew well. And if there were, their beams of lightwould stand out against the darkness.
The silver ship began to circle as for a landing. Jeanne shuddered. Whatif this strange visitor of the night should land close to her own tinyplane! She was about to spring up and dash for the tent, when a visionof extraordinary beauty caught her eye. The plane, having arrived at apoint directly above her leafy bower, formed a gleaming white backgroundagainst which the red and gold of maple leaves stood out like the colorsof the most costly tapestries.
So lost in her contemplation of this was the little French girl, she didnot miss the plane when it was gone. The after-image lingered on thepicture walls of her mind.
"It is gone!" she cried softly at last, "Gone!" So it was. As ifswallowed up by the night, the silver ship had vanished.
"Perhaps it has gone over to the depot," she told herself. "I may seethat mysterious ship in the morning."
Then, as if in need of companionship and protection, she rolled up herthin mattress and disappeared within the tent.
"There is a plane by the depot, a silver plane!" Jeanne exclaimedexcitedly the moment she thrust her head from the tent next morning. "Imust see it. There was one that glowed white all over last night. Isthis the one? I must know."
Since it was some distance to the depot Jeanne, using her plane asanother might an automobile, warmed up the motor and went taxiing over.
To Madame's vast astonishment, ten minutes later as the silver planewent gliding over the field to at last rise in air, Jeanne's dragon flywent speeding on its trail and, in an astonishingly short time, bothplanes were lost in the blue.