Mademoiselle Blanche

He turned away and threw himself wearily on the couch. "No, you won't have to pay a forfeit, but you'll have to go on with the engagement."

"With the diving?" she said, her face growing white.

"No, with the other work – on the trapeze and the rope. He said you'd have to elaborate that, and he'd pay you half what you're getting now till you were ready to do the diving again. He wants to keep you on account of your name. He's advertised you all over the city, and even out in the country places near London."

"But he – he doesn't object to my giving up the plunge?" Blanche repeated, in a tone which suggested that her professional pride was hurt.

"He didn't when I told him the Doctor had forbidden your going on with it for a while. Besides, he had another reason for not objecting."

"What was that?"

"He showed me a letter he'd just had from that woman who made such a sensation in Bucharest while we were in Vienna. Don't you remember? I showed you some of her notices. She does a swimming act, and dives from a platform into a tank. She's been playing in the English provinces, and now she wants to come to London."

"So he's going to engage her in my place?" Blanche gasped.

"In your place?" Jules repeated irritably. "How can he engage her in your place when he's going to keep you? We've got to live, and it won't hurt you to go on with your work on the trapeze and the rope. He knows your name will be an attraction, and if he engages that Englishwoman, she'll be another card for him – a big one. He says she's been drawing crowds in Manchester for six weeks."

"What's her name?"

"King – Lottie King – or something like that."

"Is she pretty? Did he show you her pictures?"

"Yes; her manager sent him a whole box of them. She's petite, with wicked little eyes."

"Dark?"

"No, blonde."

"And what is her dive?"

"What?"

"How high is it?"

"Fifty feet, Marshall said; but one of the circus hands told me it wasn't much more, than forty."

"Oh!" There was a suggestion of a sneer in her tone, and Jules looked up in surprise.

"Of course, it's nothing compared with yours," he said, to console her.

"When is she going to begin?" she asked, after a moment.

"Going to begin? Do you mean here in London? Marshall hasn't signed with her yet. She's engaged in Manchester for three weeks longer."

"Then I shall have to go on with my dive till she comes?"

"I suppose so," Jules replied coldly.

She saw that he did not wish to continue the conversation; so she went into the nursery, leaving him lying on the couch, where he often took an afternoon nap; since coming to London he had grown very lazy, and had gained flesh. Blanche found Jeanne wide awake and crowing in Madeleine's arms. She sat beside the cradle, and taking the child in her lap, sent Madeleine out of the room. Jeanne snatched at the brooch she wore at her throat, and laughed into her face. Blanche tried to smile in reply, but the tears welled into her eyes again, and fell in big drops on her cheeks.

XVII

Three days after Jules' talk with Marshall, the forthcoming engagement at the Hippodrome of Miss Lottie King was announced in the London newspapers. Blanche signed a new contract, by which she agreed to perform for several weeks longer on the trapeze and on the rope at half the salary she had been receiving. Marshall said that no mention of the plunge would be made in the papers; her name would continue to "draw," and the public would be satisfied with Miss King's great dive into the tank. This remark made Jules very angry, and it also depressed Blanche, who felt as if she had already been deposed from her supremacy as the chief attraction at the Hippodrome. Indeed, as the time drew near when she was to cease making the plunge, instead of feeling happier, she grew more despondent; she had already elaborated her performance on the trapeze by introducing several new feats that she and Jules had planned together, but with these she was not satisfied; she felt like an actor obliged to play small parts after winning success in leading characters.

As for Jules, he did not try to hide his discontent at the change in his wife's work. In the first place, it made his brief but dramatic public appearance unnecessary; in future he would be obliged to conduct Blanche to the circus, and live again like any mere hanger-on to the skirts of a public performer. The rôle was ignoble, unworthy of him. Then, too, he chafed at the thought of his wife's decline in importance at the Hippodrome; he fancied that when her inability to go on with the plunge had become known to the other performers they would lose respect for her and for himself.

He secretly doubted if the public would accept Blanche merely for her performance on the trapeze and on the rope. Almost any one could do that; but in the plunge she was without a rival. He hoped that, as a compensation for his vexation, the performance of Miss King would be a failure. Forty feet! What did that amount to in comparison with the magnificent plunge of more than ninety feet that Blanche had made at Vienna?

Already Jules had begun to think of his wife in the past tense chiefly, as if she lived in the triumphs she had made by her nightly flight through the air. Indeed, she seemed to him almost another person now. Instead of looking on her almost with reverence, as he had done, he felt sorry for her, as if she were his inferior; and though he continued to treat her with kindness, there was a suggestion of pity, almost of contempt, in his manner toward her. She sought consolation in her child, who, she thought, grew stronger and more beautiful every day. For Jeanne's sake she tried to be glad the time was so near when she should give up risking her life; but the nearer it grew, the more depressed she became, and the more she thought about that woman who was to take her place.

Mrs. Tate, who had definitely taken Blanche under her protection, and called at the little hotel several times each week, had been delighted at what she considered the fortunate solution of a shocking difficulty. Now that Blanche was to stop making that horrible dive, there was no reason why she shouldn't be the happiest woman in the world. With her keen instinct, however, she observed that Blanche was not happy; she wondered, too, at the frequent absence of the husband from this ménage. Jules couldn't be very devoted, she thought, for a man who had been married little more than a year. Perhaps, however, he avoided her; for, in spite of his French politeness, he had not been able to conceal his dislike for her. For this reason she did not ask him to dinner again. She often took Blanche and Jeanne to drive in the afternoon, and pointed out the celebrities that they passed in the Park.

"My husband says I take you to drive just to show you off," she said jokingly one day. "He thinks I have a mania for celebrities."

"Ah, but I'm not a celebrity!" Blanche replied, with a smile that was almost sad.

"Not a celebrity? Of course you are. I haven't a doubt that half the people we meet recognize you. You know, it's been quite the fashion to go to the Hippodrome this year."

"But I sha'n't be a celebrity much longer," said Blanche, glancing at the bare boughs of the trees, and wondering if any other place could be as desolate as London in winter.

"Why not? You don't think of retiring into private life altogether, do you?" Mrs. Tate laughed.

"No, but I shall only be an ordinary performer after this week."

"But I'd rather be an ordinary performer and keep my neck whole than be an extraordinary one and risk my life every night," Mrs. Tate retorted sharply. She was vexed with Blanche for not appreciating her emancipation.

They rode on in silence for a few moments. Then Blanche said, —

"There's some one going to take my place, you know."

"Some one that's going to make that dreadful plunge?" Mrs. Tate cried in horror.

"No, not that. She jumps into a tank of water – from a platform – only about forty feet. My jump is more than seventy-five feet," Blanche added with a touch of pride.

Mrs. Tate rested her hands in her lap and burst out laughing. "What a ridiculous thing! I beg your pardon, dear, but I can't help being amused. Of course it doesn't seem funny to you. You're used to it; but it does to me."

Then she questioned Blanche about the new performer, and Blanche repeated what Jules had told her and what she had since heard of the woman at the Hippodrome. Mrs. Tate was greatly interested, and laughed immoderately; afterward, however, when she had returned home and thought over the conversation, she regarded it more seriously.

"What do you think, Percy?" she said at the dinner table that night. "Those Hippodrome people have engaged a creature to dive into a tank of water from a platform. Of course, that's to take the place of Madame Le Baron's plunge. Could anything be more absurd? The worst of it is that the poor little woman is frightfully jealous already. I could see that from the way she talked. What a dreadful world it is, isn't it? They're all like that, aren't they, even the best of them? Do you remember that poor Madame Gardini who sang here one night? She told me if she had her life to live over again she'd never dream of going on the stage. She said opera-singers were the unhappiest people in the world, – just poisoned with jealousy. And these circus people are exactly like them!"

"What makes you think she's jealous? What was it she said?"

"It wasn't what she said, it was the way she talked about the woman. Her husband says she's a great beauty."

"Ah, the husband says so, does he?" Tate remarked dryly. A moment later he added: "I wish you hadn't had anything to do with those people!"

"You've said that a dozen times, Percy, and I wish you'd stop. For my part, I'm very glad I've met them. If I hadn't, that poor little creature would be in her grave before the end of a year."