Mademoiselle Blanche

She kissed Blanche on both cheeks, after the French fashion. "I sha'n't forget, you know. We have great secrets together already," she laughed, turning to Jules as she passed out of the door.

XIV

As soon as Percy Tate confronted his wife at the table that night he saw that something was on her mind.

"You've been to see those circus people," he said.

"How did you know that?"

"Oh, clairvoyance, – my subtle insight into the workings of your brain!"

"I suppose Hawkins told you. Well, I have been to see them."

Tate began to pick at the bread beside his plate. He often became preoccupied when he knew his wife wanted him to ask questions; this was his favorite way of teasing her.

"It's the strangest ménage I ever saw in my life," Mrs. Tate exclaimed at last, unable to keep back the news any longer. "And it's just as I thought it would be. That poor little creature simply lives in terror of being killed."

Tate rolled his eyes. "'In the midst of life we are in death,'" he said solemnly.

"It's altogether too serious a matter to be made a joke of, Percy. If you could have heard – "

"Now, my dear, you know what I told you. You went to see that woman with the deliberate expectation of finding her a person to be sympathized with, and I can see that you've imagined a lot of nonsense about her. Why in the world don't you let such people alone? You belong in your place and she belongs in hers, and the world is big enough to hold you both without obliging you to come together. You can't understand her feelings any more than she can understand yours. You wonder how you'd feel if you were in her place; you can't realize that if you were in her place you'd be an altogether different person. If you had to go through her performances, of course you'd be scared to death; but you forget she's been brought up to do those things; it's her business, her life. I knew you'd go there and work up a lot of ridiculous sympathy, and badger that woman for nothing!"

At the beginning of this speech Mrs. Tate had sat back in her chair with an expression of patient resignation in her face. When her husband finished she breathed a long sigh. "I hope you've said it all, Percy. You're so tiresome when you make those long harangues. Besides, you've only succeeded in showing that you don't understand the case at all."

Then, as they finished their soup, Mrs. Tate gave an account of her call of the afternoon, ending with a graphic repetition of the talk with Blanche about the pains in her back.

"I shall certainly tell Dr. Broughton about it," she cried. "That poor child – she really is nothing but a child – she's just killing herself by inches, and her husband is worse than a brute to let the thing go on."

"So you want to stop it and take away their only means of support."

"It isn't their only means of support. It seems the husband has money. That makes it all the worse."

"Now, let me say right here, my dear, I wash my hands of this affair. If you want to rush in and upset those people's lives, go ahead, but I'll have nothing to do with it."

"I wish you wouldn't scold me so, Percy. It seems to me I usually bear the consequences of what I do. And I don't see what harm there can be in consulting Dr. Broughton. You're always cracking him up yourself."

Tate burst into a loud laugh. "If that isn't just like a woman! Turning it onto poor old Broughton."

"Oh, sometimes you're so aggravating, Percy!"

Two days later, in spite of her husband's opposition, Mrs. Tate consulted Dr. Broughton, and he promised, as soon as he could, to call some morning at the little hotel in Albemarle Street. Before he appeared there Mrs. Tate ingratiated herself into the affections of the family. As Blanche grew more familiar with her, she confided to her many details of her life, and Mrs. Tate speedily possessed the chief facts in connection with it. These facts did not increase her esteem for Jules, whose days, in spite of his duties as his wife's manager, were spent in what she regarded as wholly unpardonable idleness. She also suspected that Jules disliked her; it must have been he who sent word that they would be unable to accept her invitation for dinner on Sunday evening. This, however, did not prevent their being invited for the following Sunday. Mrs. Tate was determined to secure her husband's opinion of her new protégés.

Before Sunday came Dr. Broughton unexpectedly made his appearance in the Tates' drawing-room one evening.

"I've seen your acrobat," he said to the figure in yellow silk and lace, reading beside the lamp. "Don't get up. Been out? I hardly thought I'd find you in; you're such a pair of worldlings."

"We came away early. I had a headache," said Tate, shading his eyes with one hand and offering the other to the visitor. "Or, rather, I pretended I had."

The Doctor, a short, stout man of fifty, with grayish brown hair, and little red whiskers jutting out from either side of his face, and with enormous eyebrows shading his keen eyes, gathered his coat-tails in his hand, and took a seat on the couch.

"It's late for a call – must be after ten. But I knew this lady of yours would want to hear about her acrobat. Nice little creature, isn't she? Seems ridiculous she should belong to a circus."

"She doesn't belong there," Mrs. Tate replied, briskly inserting a paper-knife in her book and laying the book on the little table beside her. "I've never seen any one so utterly misplaced. Did you have a talk with her?"

"Yes – a talk. That was all; but that was enough. Her husband was out."

"O, you conspirators!" Tate exclaimed.

"Then you've satisfied yourself about her?" said his wife, ignoring him.

"Yes. She has a very common complaint, a form of meningitis; slumbering meningitis, it's often called. Many people have it without knowing it; and she might have had it even if she hadn't taken to thumping her spine half a dozen times a week. The trouble's located in the spine."

"There, I told you so!" exclaimed Mrs. Tate; and "What a lovely habit women have of never gloating over anything!" her husband added amiably.

"Percy, I wish you'd keep quiet! Do you really think it's serious, Doctor?"

The Doctor held up his hands meditatively, the ends of the fingers touching, and slowly lifted his shoulders. "In itself it may be serious or it may not. Sometimes trouble of that sort is quiescent for years, and the patient dies of something else. Sometimes it resists treatment, and leads to very serious complications, – physical and mental. I've had cases where it has affected the brain and others where it has led to paralysis. In this case it is likely to be aggravated."

"By the diving, you mean?" said Mrs. Tate.

"Exactly. That has probably been the cause of the trouble lately – if it wasn't the first cause. It may go on getting worse, or it may remain as it is for years, or it may disappear for a time, or possibly, altogether."

Mrs. Tate breathed what sounded like a sigh of disappointment. "Then it isn't so bad as I thought," she said.

For a moment the Doctor hesitated. Then he replied: "Yes, it's worse. The mere physical pain that it causes Madame Le Baron is of comparatively little account. I think we may be able to stop that. The peculiarity of the case is the nervousness, the curious fear that seems to haunt her."

In her excitement Mrs. Tate almost bounced from her seat. "That is exactly what I said. The poor child hasn't a moment's peace. It's the most terrible thing I ever heard of. And to think that that man – her husband – "

"It's always the husband," Tate laughed. "Broughton, why don't you stand up for your sex?"

"Percy wants to turn the whole thing into ridicule. I think it's a shame. I can't tell you how it has worried me. I feel so – "

"For Heaven's sake, Broughton, I wish you'd give my wife something to keep her from feeling for other people. If you don't, she'll go mad, and I shall too. She wants to regulate the whole universe. I have a horrible fear that she's going to get round to me soon."

The Doctor smiled, and bent his bushy eyes on the husband and then on the wife.

"It's a peculiar case," he repeated thoughtfully, when they had sat in silence for several moments. "It couldn't be treated in the ordinary way."

"How in the world did you get so much out of her?" Mrs. Tate asked. "She's the shyest little creature."

"I had to work on her sympathies. I got her to crying, – and then, of course, the whole story came out. As you said, she's haunted by the fear of being killed."

"But that's the baby," said Mrs. Tate quickly. "She told me she never had the least fear till her baby was born."

The Doctor lifted his eyebrows. "It's several things," he replied dryly, refusing to take any but the professional view.

Then they discussed the case in all its aspects. The haunting fear Dr. Broughton regarded as the worst feature. "She says when she goes into the ring, that usually leaves her; but if it came back just before she took her plunge it would kill her. The least miscalculation would be likely to make her land on her head in the net, and that would mean a broken neck. It's terrible work, – that. The law ought to put a stop to it."