Mademoiselle Blanche: A Novel

by John D. Barry

For a moment they sat looking at each other. Then Blanche bent forward, buried her head on Mrs. Tate's lap, and burst into tears. Mrs. Tate said nothing, and allowed the paroxysm to spend itself. Then, gradually, the story came out.

Jules didn't love her any more, Blanche moaned. He had been cruel to her, oh, so cruel; he had said such dreadful things! And then there had been days and days when he scarcely spoke to her or to the little Jeanne or to Madeleine, and he had grown so strict with them all; he hardly allowed Madeleine enough to buy the things they needed. And once, he had said such dreadful things about Jeanne. He didn't love even Jeanne any more,—poor little Jeanne! He said they would have been better off if she had never been born. Oh, that had nearly killed her, that he should have spoken so about Jeanne. She didn't care so much about herself, though sometimes she wanted to die. One night she had prayed that God would take her and Jeanne together. Jules had always been so good to her until—until that woman came, that woman who had taken her place in the circus. It was that woman who had come between them, with her white teeth and her mocking laugh. She was making a fool of Jules; she did not care for him, but she pretended that she did, just to amuse herself. Jules followed her about everywhere; he even talked of going to America, because she was to go in a few weeks, when her engagement at the Hippodrome was over. But Blanche would die; she would throw herself into the river with Jeanne in her arms rather than go there now. Ah, it had been so hard for her, alone in a strange country, with no one but Madeleine to confide in. Madeleine had been so good; but she, too, had grown afraid of Jules in these last weeks. They scarcely dared to speak when he was at home, now.

From broken utterances, Mrs. Tate pieced together the whole miserable story. For the moment, her pity was lost in admiration for her husband's perspicacity. He had foreseen this! Now, for the first time, she realized what she had vaguely surmised before, the full meaning of his mysterious remark about Blanche and Jules. Then she turned her attention to the prostrate figure before her, offering sympathy and counsel. She knew that she was speaking in platitudes, but they were all she could offer then; and, after all, it was Blanche's own outburst that would do the poor pent-up creature the most good, the consciousness that she had some one to confide in.

Mrs. Tate stayed in the little apartment a long time, and when she went away, Blanche seemed to feel more hopeful. "Act as if he were just as kind to you as ever," was her parting injunction, "and I know everything will come out all right. He'll find out that that dreadful woman is only making a fool of him, and then he'll care more for you than ever."

In her heart, however, Mrs. Tate knew that what she said was not true. Jules had probably grown tired of his wife. The more she thought of the case, the more she pitied Blanche,—the more she realized what a tragedy in the poor little woman's life it meant. And she really had been to blame, she kept saying to herself. But for her interference, Blanche would have gone on with her diving, that other performer would not have come to the Hippodrome, and all of Blanche's agony of jealousy and neglect would have been avoided.

Oh, what a lesson it taught her! Never, never would she interfere in a family again! She would have done much better to let Blanche go to her death, rather than to drive her to despair, perhaps to a worse form of death by her meddling.

On reaching home, she was in a fever of remorse and sympathy, and she passed a miserable hour waiting for her husband to return. When at last he did appear, she met him in the hall.

"Percy," she cried dramatically, "you're a prophet!"

"Am I, indeed?" he said, putting his umbrella in the rack. "Do you mean to say this is the first time you've found it out?"

"I'll never doubt your word again, Percy," she went on, stifling a sob. Her appeal to her husband for sympathy threatened to make her hysterical, but she controlled herself and gasped out: "Don't you remember what you said about that man, Le Baron,—you know, the night he dined here, about his falling in love with his wife's performance! Well, that's just what he did do. He didn't fall in love with her; he's never been in love with her, poor thing. Fortunately she doesn't know that. It's only her performance, that horrible plunge she used to make, that he's been in love with all along."