Mademoiselle Blanche

"That's just what I wanted you to say!" Jules cried. "The sooner the better. Tomorrow would suit me."

The glasses had been filled with champagne, and Berthier lifted his glass high in the air, crying:

"Let us drink to the fiancés! May their marriage be long and their engagement short! Here's health and happiness to them!"

They all stood up smiling and drank together. Then as they sat down again, Berthier went on:

"Ah, I know the folly of long engagements. Get married, get married, my children, as soon as you can, while love is young. I once knew a young girl – as beautiful as the morning – more beautiful, a thousand times more beautiful. Well, this young girl loved a handsome, yes, I may say a fairly handsome, at any rate, an honest young fellow, who fairly worshipped her in return. But the stern parents of this beautiful young girl – "

"Taisez-vous!" Madame Perrault repeated. "No more nonsense. If your beautiful young girl hadn't obeyed her parents, where would Blanche Perrault be at this moment, I should like to know?"

"Ah, my friend," said Berthier to Jules, "it's the women who forget. Only the men are constant in this world."

Madame Perrault rolled her eyes in mock horror.

"Constant – the men!" she repeated scornfully. "They don't know what constancy is. If it weren't for the constant women in the world, the men would go straight to the devil."

Berthier burst into hilarious laughter. He loved nothing better than to be vanquished in an argument by Madame Perrault. Indeed, he often argued simply in order to provoke her. He gave Jules a quick glance and a nod which plainly said: "Isn't she a fine woman? Have you ever seen a woman so clever?"

The innocent pleasantries of the old lovers, however, were lost on Jules. He wanted to discuss in all seriousness his forthcoming marriage, and this was certainly a suitable occasion. So he determined to put the conversation on another basis.

"I am sure Monsieur Berthier is right about long engagements," he said, "and there's no reason why our engagement shouldn't be short. I love Blanche, and Blanche loves me, and we think we can make each other happy. I can afford to marry – I have a little property – and when she marries me Blanche will have a protector in her professional career."

"Bravo!" cried Berthier. "That was said like a man!"

"And the sooner I'm married, the better for you," Jules went on, fixing his eyes on Berthier's white beard. "Then Madame Perrault won't be tied down to Blanche, and there's no reason why you shouldn't be married, too."

"We might have a double marriage!" said the little man jocosely.

"No, no, no!" Madame exclaimed. "When I'm married I shall be married very quietly in Boulogne, without any fuss. These children shall be married first. Then some day, Félix, you and I shall walk to the church and it will be over in five minutes."

Berthier breathed a long sigh, and laid his hand gently on Madame Perrault's arm.

"I've waited a great many years for those five minutes, chérie."

"Blanche's engagement at the Circus ends the last day of the year," Jules resumed, "and she begins her season in Vienna on the fifteenth of January. Now, there's no reason in the world that I can think of to prevent our being married between the first of January and the fifteenth."

Then, from every point of view, they discussed the time of the marriage. Madame Perrault raised the question of dresses for the bride, of Jules' inability to arrange his affairs in so short a time, but these and all other objections were overruled.

Blanche herself had very little to say; when her mother asked her point-blank if she wanted the marriage to take place so early, she replied that she was willing if Jules and the others decided it was best. She seemed more like a passive spectator than one actively interested in the discussion; her eyes kept roving from Jules to her mother, and from her mother back to Jules. Berthier supported Jules valiantly, and at two o'clock, Madame Perrault was finally won over, and it was decided that the marriage should take place during the first week in January. Jules kissed Blanche on the cheek, and there was general embracing and laughter. Then the little party broke up, and Monsieur Berthier followed Jules down the stairs.

"Ah, my boy," he said, as they stood on the sidewalk, before saying good-night, "I'd give all the money I've made for your youth. Youth is the time for love. In my youth it came to me, but I lost it. Take good care of it, my friend," he concluded, tapping Jules' hand affectionately as they were about to go their separate ways.

X

Jules at once began preparations for his marriage. He gave notice of his intention to leave the wool-house, and to move from his apartment. Monsieur Mercier showed no regret at his departure. "I've observed that you were no longer interested in your work," he said coldly.

Jules turned away with a sense of disappointment and pain, feeling that he had been badly treated. Though he said nothing to the twins about his going, they speedily heard of it and gibed him for the reason. He preferred to maintain an air of mystery, but one morning Leroux came into the office, shaking a copy of the Triomphe in the air.

"Let me congratulate you!" he cried, extending his hand. "I respect a man that can make a stroke like that. I've known you were up to some game all along," he added insinuatingly.

Jules looked at the paper, and in the column devoted to news of the theatre he read of the engagement of Mademoiselle Blanche, of the Cirque Parisien, to Monsieur Jules Le Baron, a young business man of wealth. Dufresne added his congratulations, and one after another during the day Jules' other comrades came up to shake his hand. No wonder he had been putting on airs with them! They treated him very jocosely, however, teased him about his reputed wealth, and tortured him with their coarse jokes, so that he looked forward with relief to escaping from them.

All of Jules' leisure was passed with Blanche and her family. He made friends with the girls and with Monsieur Berthier. The better acquainted he became with Louise the more he liked her; Jeanne sometimes vexed him by making fun of him, though he was careful not to betray his annoyance. For Monsieur Berthier he felt a genuine esteem; the little man was always in good humor, though Jules suspected that, in spite of his success in business, his whole life had been clouded by the disappointment of his youth. As for Madame Perrault, notwithstanding the apparent lightness of her character, which had at first prejudiced him against her, the effective way in which she managed her affairs made him realize that she was a woman to be respected. Sometimes Jules wondered what kind of man Blanche's father had been; he fancied that of the two the mother had been by far the stronger.

Jules passed Christmas with his friends and spent a month's salary on gifts for Blanche and her sisters. For the girls Madame had a fête in the morning after mass, with a Christmas tree laden with presents, and decorated with candles and trinkets and bonbons. She chose this time of day, as both in the afternoon and evening Blanche gave performances.

The next morning Madame Perrault learned through Pelletier that the circus in Vienna where Blanche had been engaged to appear was a little more than ninety feet high; so the plunge would be fifteen feet deeper than it was in Paris. This news created excitement in the family. It made Madame so nervous that she urged that the engagement be given up and an offer that had come from Nice be accepted; but Jules laughed at the idea.

"What's a difference of fifteen feet to Blanche?" he said. "It's just as easy for her to dive ninety feet as to dive seventy-five. The only thing for Blanche to do is to go to Vienna as soon as her engagement here is over. Then she can practise the plunge every morning for two weeks. We'll simply have to get married a little earlier than we intended."

Madame Perrault saw the force of the argument, and Monsieur Berthier seconded Jules. As for Blanche, she declared that she should not be afraid of the plunge; at Bucharest she had made a plunge of nearly eighty-three feet. So it was agreed that the civil marriage should take place very quietly on the third of January, and the religious ceremony the day after. Jules and his bride could leave Paris by the afternoon train, accompanied by Madeleine. Madame Perrault was anxious to keep any notice out of the papers, if possible; she thought it might injure Blanche professionally. She had been greatly vexed by the paragraph in the Triomphe and had attributed it to Durand; but Jules explained that the Triomphe was not Durand's paper; besides, the journalist had been sent for the winter to the Riviera as correspondent.

On the last day of the year Jules bade farewell to his associates at the wool-house. Most of them regretted his departure, for before his sudden accession of dignity he had been well liked among them. The next morning, on the first day of his emancipation, when he went to the apartment in the rue St. Honoré, he found some pieces of silver there, the gift of his old comrades. He knew at once that the twins had started a subscription for him, and he felt ashamed of his treatment of them during his last weeks among them. He soon forgot about them, however, and was absorbed in the preparations for his new life. He had sold most of his furniture, save a few pieces that were so intimately associated with the memory of his mother that he could not part with them.

For Madeleine this was a trying time; she performed her numerous duties, involving several journeys to the rue St. Honoré, with a look of bewilderment in her face, as if she could not adjust herself to the change that was about to take place in her life.

Two days before the time chosen for their civil marriage, Jules was sitting alone with Blanche, beside the fireplace where he had passed most of his courtship. They had been making plans for Vienna, and Jules felt as if he were already at the head of a household.

"Do you know," he said, glancing at the engagement ring on her left hand that sparkled in the firelight, "I haven't been able to make up my mind yet what to give you for a wedding present. I wish you'd tell me what you'd like. I want to give you something that will please you very much."

She looked intently into the fireplace, and did not reply.

"Isn't there something that you want especially?" Then Jules saw her face flush, and he went on quickly: "Ah, I know there is, but you're afraid to tell. Now, out with it. Is it a diamond brooch, or one of those queer little gold watches that women carry, set with jewels, or one of those bracelets that we saw in the shop in the rue de la Paix the other day?"

She began to laugh, and without turning her eyes toward him, she said: —

"You know I don't care for those things. But there – there is something – "

"Well, out with it."

"It isn't a – it isn't what you think – a present or anything like that; but it is something I should like to have you – something that would make me very happy."

"Then tell me what it is," said Jules, impatiently. "What are you afraid of? Am I such an ogre?"

For a moment she did not answer. Then she said timidly: "I wish you'd go to confession before we're married."

He burst into a laugh that rang through the apartment.

"Oh, is that all? So you're afraid to marry such a wicked person as I am till the Church has forgiven him and made him good again."

She shook her head.

"No, it isn't that, Jules. I don't believe you are wicked. I don't believe you ever were; but I should be so much happier if you would go to confession, and then before we're married in church we could go to communion together."

He threw himself beside her chair, seized her head in his hands, and kissed her on the forehead. "I'm not fit to be your husband. You're too good for me," he said softly.

She drew away from him with a smile.