The Magic Curtain Part 31

"And these are your friends? Ah, yes! Come! You will see!" His hand touched Jeanne's. She started back. It was cold, like marble.

They followed in silence. They trod inch-thick rugs. There came no sound save the tok-tok-tok of some great, slow clock off there somewhere in the dark.

"I am not afraid," Jeanne told herself. "I am not going to be afraid. I have seen all this before."

Yet, when she had descended the narrow, winding stairs, when a small, Oriental rug was offered her in lieu of a chair, her limbs gave way beneath her and she dropped, limp as a rag, to the comforting softness of the rug.

That which followed will remain painted on the walls of never-to-be-forgotten memories.

Figures, dark, creeping figures, appeared in this dimly lighted room.

Once again the curtain, a red and glowing thing, crept across the stage.

She gripped Marjory Dean's hand hard.

Some figures appeared before the curtain. Grotesque figures. They danced as she had imagined only gnomes and elves might dance. A vast, many-colored dragon crept from the darkness. With a mighty las.h.i.+ng of tail, he swallowed the dancers, then disappeared into the darkness from which he had come.

"Oh!" Jeanne breathed. Even Marjory Dean, who had witnessed many forms of magic, was staring straight ahead.

A single figure appeared on the stage, one all in white. The figure wore a long, flowing robe. The face was white.

From somewhere strange music began to whisper. It was like wind sighing in the trees, the trees in the graveyard at midnight. And this was midnight.

Next instant Jeanne leaped straight into the air. Someone had struck a gong, an Oriental gong.

Mortified beyond belief, she settled back in her place.

And now the magic curtain, like some wall of fire, burned a fiercer red.

From the shadows the dragon thrust out his head once more.

The white-faced figure ceased dancing. The wind in the trees sang on. The figure, appearing to see the dragon, drew back in trembling fright.

He approached the fiery curtain, yet his back was ever toward it. There was yet a s.p.a.ce between the two sections of the curtain. The figure, darting toward this gap, was caught in the flames.

"Oh!" Jeanne breathed. "He will die in flames!"

Marjory Dean pressed her hand hard.

Of a sudden the floor beneath the white figure opened and swallowed him up.

Jeanne looked for the dragon. It was gone. The fiery red of the curtain was turning to an orange glow.

"Come. You have seen." It was Hop Long Lee who spoke. Once again his marble-cold hand touched Jeanne's hand.

Ten minutes later the four figures were once more in the street.

"Midnight in an Oriental garden," Angelo breathed.

"That," breathed Marjory Dean, "is drama, Oriental drama. Give it a human touch and it could be made supreme."

"You--you think it could be made into a thing of beauty?"

"Surely. Most certainly, my child. Nothing could be more unique."

"Come," whispered Jeanne happily. "Come with me. The night is young. The day is for sleep. Come. We will have coffee by my fire. Then we will talk, talk of all this. We will create an opera in a night. Is it not so?"

And it was so.

A weird bit of opera it was that they produced that night. Even the atmosphere in which they worked was fantastic. Candle light, a flickering fire that now and then leaped into sudden conflagration, mellow-toned gongs provided by the little lady of the cameo; such were the elements that added to the fantastic reality of the unreal.

In this one-act drama the giant paper dragon remained. The flaming curtain, the setting for some weird Buddhist ceremony, was to furnish the motif. A flesh and blood person, whose part was to be played by Marjory Dean, replaced the thing of white cloth and paper that had danced a weird dance, and became entangled in the fiery curtain. Oriental mystery, the deep hatred of some types of yellow men for the white race, these entered into the story.

In the plot the hero (Marjory Dean), a white boy, son of a rich trader, caught by the lure of mystery, adventure and tales of the magic curtain, volunteers to take the place of a rich Chinese youth who is to endure the trial by fire.

A very ugly old Chinaman, who holds the white boy in high regard, learning of his plans and realizing his peril, prepares the trap-door in the floor beneath the magic curtain.

When the hour comes for the trial by fire, the white boy, being ignorant of the secrets that will save him, appears doomed as the flames of the curtain surround him, consuming the very mask from his face and leaving him there, his ident.i.ty revealed in stark reality.

Then as the rich Chinaman, who has planned the trial, realizes the catastrophe that must befall his people if the rich youth is burned to death, prepares to cast himself into the flames, the floor opens to swallow the boy up, and the curtain fades.

There is not s.p.a.ce here to tell of the motives of love, hate, pride and patriotism that lay back of this bit of drama. Enough that when it was done Marjory Dean p.r.o.nounced it the most perfect bit of opera yet produced in America.

"And you will be our diva?" Jeanne was all eagerness.

"I shall be proud to."

"Then," Angelo's eyes shone, "then we are indeed rich once more."

"Yes. Your beautiful rugs, your desk, your ancient friend the piano, they shall all come back to you." In her joy Jeanne could have embraced him.

As it was she wrung his hand in parting, and thanked him over and over for his part in this bit of work and adventure.

"The music," she whispered to Swen, "you will do it?"

"It is as well as done. The wind whispering in the graveyard pines at midnight. This is done by reeds and strings. And there are the gongs, the deep melodious gongs of China. What more could one ask?"

What more, indeed?

"And now," said Florence, after she had, some hours later, listened to Jeanne's recital of that night's affairs, "now that it is all over, what is there in it all for you?"

"For me?" Jeanne spread her hands wide. "Nothing. Nothing at all."

"Then why--?"

"Only this," Jeanne interrupted her, "you said once that one found the best joy in life by helping others. Well then," she laughed a little laugh, "I have helped a little.

"And you shall see, my time will come."

Was she right? Does one sometimes serve himself best by serving others?

We shall see.