Mademoiselle Blanche

"The law ought to put a stop to a good many things that it doesn't," Mrs. Tate snapped. "To think that in this age of civilization – "

"There she goes, reforming the world again!" her husband interrupted.

"But if the law doesn't stop it in this case," she went on, "I will."

For a time they turned from the subject of Blanche and her ills to other themes; but when, about midnight, Dr. Broughton rose to leave, Mrs. Tate went back to it. "We're going to have the Le Barons here for dinner next Sunday," she said. "I wish you'd come in if you can. I want Percy to see what they're like."

"She relies on my judgment after all," said Tate, following the guest to the door. As they stood together in the hall, "You think the case is serious then?" he asked quietly.

The Doctor whispered something in his ear, and Tate nodded thoughtfully. "And how do you think it'll end if she doesn't stop it?"

Dr. Broughton tapped his forehead with his hand. "This is what I'm most afraid of." He seized his stick and thrust it under his arm. "But giving up her performance, I'm afraid, would be like giving up her life. She was practically born in the circus, you know, and I suspect from what your wife has told me that her husband fell in love with her in the circus. Outside of that she seems to have no interest in anything, – except, of course, her family and her baby. But to take her out of the circus would be like pulling up a tree by the roots."

Dr. Broughton was so used to making hurried exits from patients' houses that he lost no time in getting away from Tate. As he went down the steps his host stood with one hand on the knob of the front door, thinking. The Doctor had unconsciously given him a most fascinating suggestion. Around this his mind played as he walked back to the drawing-room, where his wife was yawning, and gathering, some books to take upstairs. He said nothing to her about it; before expressing his fancy, he decided to wait until he saw those curious people.

XV

Mrs. Tate was right in surmising that Jules had conceived a dislike for her. The first day he saw her he decided that she was a tiresome, interfering Englishwoman, and he watched with annoyance her growing intimacy with Blanche, whom he wished to keep wholly to himself. Of his wife's success at the Hippodrome he felt as proud as if it were his own; he loved to read the notices of it in the papers, and while Blanche was performing, to walk about in the audience and hear her praises. He had come to look upon her as part of himself, as his property; and this sense of proprietorship added to the fascination that her performance had for him.

Though his first ardor of devotion had passed, he was still tender with her; but his tenderness always had reference more to her work than to herself. He watched her as the owner of a performing animal might have watched his precious charge. Sometimes he used to lose patience with her for her devotion to the little Jeanne; if Jeanne cried at night she would want to leave the bed to soothe her. In order to prevent this, Jules had the child's crib moved into Madeleine's room, to the secret grief of the mother, who, however, did not think of resisting his commands. In his way Jules was fond of Jeanne; but he could not help thinking that before she came Blanche had given all her love to him. However, there was some excuse for that; but there was no reason why a stranger like Mrs. Tate should come in and take possession of them, act like a member of the family, and put a lot of silly ideas into his wife's head.

The mere fact that Mrs. Tate was English would have been enough to prejudice Jules against her even if he had not objected to her personal qualities. He hated the English, and he hated England, especially London. Even Blanche, who was blind to his faults, speedily discovered that his boast of being a born traveller had no foundation in fact. On arriving in London he had gone straight to a French hotel, where he was served to French cooking by a garçon trained in the cafés of the Boulevards. Since then he had associated only with the few French people he could find in the city; if he hadn't been eager to read everything printed about Blanche, he would never have looked at any but French papers. At home he spent a large part of his time in ridiculing the English, just as on his return from America he had ridiculed the Americans. Now, at the thought of being obliged to dine with a lot of those bêtes d'Anglais he felt enraged. He had already refused one invitation. Why wasn't that enough for them? The second he would have refused too, if Blanche had not insisted that another refusal would be a discourtesy to Father Dumény's friends. Ah, Father Dumény, a fine box he had got them into, the tiresome old woman that he was, with his foolish jokes and his rheumatism!

Jules never forgot that dinner. In the first place, he was awed by the magnificence of the Tates' house; it surpassed anything of the kind he had ever seen in France or in America; it had never occurred to him that the English could have such good taste. Then, too, in spite of the efforts of his hosts to make him comfortable, he felt awkward, ill at ease, out of place. As soon as he entered the drawing-room, Blanche was taken upstairs by Mrs. Tate, and Jules was left with the husband and with Dr. Broughton.

A moment later the Doctor disappeared, and for the next half-hour Jules tried to maintain a conversation in English. Tate turned the conversation to life in Paris as compared with the life of London, but Jules had so much difficulty in speaking English that they fell at last into French.

Meanwhile, Blanche sat in the library with Mrs. Tate and Dr. Broughton, whom she had not seen since the day of his call upon her. The Doctor had at once won her confidence, and since her talk with him she had felt better, and she fancied that the tonic he gave her had already benefited her. But she still had that pain in her back, she said, and that terrible fear; every night when she kissed the little Jeanne before going to the Hippodrome, she felt as if she should never see the child again. If she didn't stop feeling like that, she didn't know what would happen.

"If you could give up the plunge for a while," the Doctor suggested, "you'd be very much better for the rest. Then you might go back to it, you know."

"But I'm engaged for the season," Blanche replied in French, which the Doctor readily understood, but refused to speak. "I can't break my contract."

"Perhaps you could make a compromise," Mrs. Tate suggested. "You could go on with your trapeze performance, – with everything except the dive."

"I was really engaged for that," said Blanche, a look of dismay appearing in her face. "There are many others that perform on the trapeze."

"But you might try to make some arrangement," Mrs. Tate insisted. "Your husband could talk it over with the managers."

"Ah, but he would not like it," Blanche replied with evident distress. "It would make him so unhappy if he – if he knew."

"If he knew you were being made ill by your work!" Mrs. Tate interrupted. "Of course it would make him unhappy, and it would be very strange if it didn't. But it's much better to have him know it than for you to go on risking your life every night."

Dr. Broughton gave his hostess a glance that made her quail. A moment later, however, she gathered herself together.

"I didn't mean to say that, dear, but now that I have said it, there's no use mincing matters. The Doctor has told me plainly that if you go on making that plunge every night in your present state of nervousness it will certainly result in your death – in one way or another. So the only thing for you to do, for the sake of your baby, and your husband, and for your own sake too, – the only thing for you to do is to stop it, at least for a time. If you were to break your neck it would simply be murder, – yes, murder," she repeated, glancing at the Doctor, who was looking at her with an expression that showed he thought she was going too far.

Tears had begun to trickle down Blanche's cheeks, and now they turned to sobs. For a few moments she lost control of herself, and her frail figure was shaken with grief. Dr. Broughton said nothing, and he looked angry. Mrs. Tate paid no attention to him; she went over to Blanche, took her in her arms, and began to soothe her. In a few moments the sobbing ceased, and Mrs. Tate went on: —

"It's best that you should know this, dear, though perhaps I've been cruel in telling it to you so bluntly. We must tell your husband about it, too. I'm sure he'll be distressed to hear how much you've suffered, and he'll be glad to do anything that will help you. So now we'll send the Doctor away, and bathe your face with hot water, and go down to dinner and try to forget about our troubles for a while."

If Jules had not been absorbed in his own embarrassment at the dinner-table he might have discovered traces of agitation in his wife's face. He was secretly execrating the luck that had brought him among these people, and he resolved when he returned home to tell Blanche that he would have nothing more to do with them. If she was willing to have that prying Englishwoman about her all the time, she could, but she mustn't expect him to be more than civil to her. The conversation had turned on English politics, and as Jules had nothing to offer on the subject, his enforced silence increased his discomfort. Mrs. Tate was devoting herself to Blanche, who sat beside her, relating in French stories of her life in Paris. Jules felt resentful; no one paid attention to him; when he dined out in Paris he was always one of the leaders in the talk. He wanted to justify himself, to show these people that he was no fool, that he was worthy of being the husband of a celebrity.

By a fortunate chance, the talk drifted to American politics, and Jules, seeing his opportunity, seized it. A few moments later he was launched on an account of his travels in the United States. Tate, relieved at having at last found a topic his guest could discuss, gave Jules full play, and listened to him with a light in his eyes that showed his wife he was secretly amused. Indeed, Jules' criticisms of America and his descriptions of the peculiarities of Americans greatly entertained them.

The dinner closed in animated talk, much to the relief of Mrs. Tate, who feared it would be a great failure; it made her realize, however, that as show people the Le Barons were quite useless. She was afraid Blanche had been bored; she had been sitting almost speechless during the meal, sighing heavily now and then, as if thinking that in a few hours her respite would be over, and she would have to return to her horrible work.

Mrs. Tate was quite ready to make any sacrifice to rescue Blanche from the terrors of her circus life; in the enthusiasm of the moment she said to herself, that rather than let her continue making that plunge, she would offer to pay her husband what she earned, in order to take his wife out of the ring altogether. At the thought of persuading him to do this, Mrs. Tate felt that at last she had a definite task to perform; it was almost like a mission, and the harder it proved to be, the more exalted she would feel.

After their return to the drawing-room, Mrs. Tate, with a delightful feeling that she was engaged in a conspiracy, made a mysterious sign to Dr. Broughton to come to her.

"I suppose Percy's been whispering to you not to have anything to do with this scheme of mine, but don't pay any attention to him. Do you know, I think the best way would be to take the husband into the library and have it out there. He must be told, you know. He hasn't a suspicion of it, – not a suspicion. You wait a few minutes, and as soon as I get a chance, I'll ask him to follow me out."

The Doctor smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

"You must take the responsibility," he said carelessly. "I shall merely do my professional duty. Mr. Tate has just been telling me about a curious idea – "

"Don't pay any attention to his ideas. Percy thinks everything ought to be left to regulate itself. A fine world it would be if every one thought as he does. Now you go back to him, and follow me when I tell you. No, I have a better plan. You go into the library with Percy. I'll come in there in a few minutes."

A quarter of an hour later, when Mrs. Tate entered the library with Jules, she found her husband and the Doctor there, half-hidden in a cloud of smoke.

"This poor man, too, has been dying for another cigar," she said; "but he's too polite to say so. So while he's smoking we can have our talk. We'll take our coffee in here, too. Percy, you go and see that Madame Le Baron is properly served. I've had to leave her there alone for a minute, but I said I'd send you in. Dr. Broughton and I are going to have a secret conference with Monsieur Le Baron."

"Secret conferences are always dangerous," Tate replied, rising to leave the room. "Look out for them!" he added with a smile to Jules, as he hesitated at the door. When he had closed the door behind him, he stood in the hall a moment, thinking.

Tate was a man of sense, of "horse-sense," one of his friends used to say of him, and not given to forebodings. Now, however, he had a distinct regret that his wife was interfering in this matter, and fear of the consequences. She often did things that he disapproved, and he made no objection, for he believed that she had as much right to independence as himself; but in this case he would have liked to interfere. He had spoken to Dr. Broughton about his feeling in the matter, and the Doctor had merely laughed. Well, the Doctor knew better than he did; perhaps, after all, his own theory was absurd. At any rate, he could not be held accountable for any trouble that might result from his wife's meddling. This thought, however, gave him little consolation. He usually suffered for her mistakes much more than she did herself.

When he went back to the drawing-room, he had difficulty in sustaining a conversation with Blanche; he kept thinking of the conference in the next room, wondering what the result would be. He was prepared to see Jules enter with a pale face and set lips and with wrath in his eyes.

When Jules finally entered between his hostess and the Doctor, Tate scanned his face narrowly; it was not white, and the lips were not set, but the whole expression had changed to a look of dogged determination and ill-concealed rage. He sat near his wife, staring at her as if he had never seen her before.

For a few moments the conversation was resumed, but the atmosphere seemed chilled. Then the Doctor rose to say good-night, explaining that he had promised to call on a patient in Curzon Street before going home. This seemed to be the signal for the breaking-up, and all of the guests left at the same moment, Mrs. Tate calling out to Blanche at the door of the drawing-room that she would look in on her the next day if she were not too busy.

When the front door had closed, Tate turned to his wife.

"Well, you had a stormy time of it, didn't you?"

She walked toward the centre of the drawing-room and stood under the chandelier, keeping her eyes fixed on her husband's face, which seemed to be much more serious than usual.

"What makes you think so?" she asked, removing a bracelet from her arm and nervously twirling it.

"I could tell from the expression in his eyes, and from the way you and the Doctor acted. He was furious, wasn't he?"

"Furious? Le Baron? Hardly; though I could see he didn't believe a word we said. He was almost too startled to understand it at first. The little goose hadn't said a word to him about it."

"And what did he say when you told him she ought to give up her performance? How did he like that?"

"He didn't like it at all, apparently. But I didn't expect him to like it. It means money out of his pocket."