Mademoiselle Blanche: A Novel

by John D. Barry

She looked around, however, and saw that the room had been redecorated, probably by Monsieur Berthier, and when she felt rested she went all over the house and observed many new pieces of furniture, and many touches here and there that made the place more attractive and homelike. "Ah, it is so good to be at home," she said to her mother when they were alone; and then Madame Berthier took her in her arms and kissed her on the forehead and told her she must have courage for Jules' sake.

After the excitement of Paris and Vienna, Jules found it hard to accustom himself to the dull life at Boulogne. He bought a small yacht, and found amusement in sailing with his new acquaintances, and sometimes, when the weather was fine, he took Blanche and the girls with him. He also occupied himself with the little garden around his cottage; but this soon bored him, and he gave it over to Monsieur Berthier's gardener, who came every few days to look after it. In the afternoons he drove with Blanche far into the country, and sometimes they stopped at a little café by the roadside and had an early dinner, and then hurried home before the damp night should close around them.

On these occasions they had many earnest talks, and Jules was surprised by the seriousness and depth of his wife's mind; at any rate, she impressed him as being wonderfully profound. The longer he knew her, the more she awed and puzzled him; there were moments when she seemed to dwell in another world, a world that made her almost a stranger to him.

Since her return to Boulogne she had grown much more cheerful than she had been during those last weeks in Vienna; but a thousand little things she said showed him that beneath the surface of her thought there still lurked a strange melancholy, an unchangeable conviction that life was slipping away from her. He spoke of this once to her mother, and she explained mysteriously that he must expect that; it was very natural with one of Blanche's temperament. She had known many cases like it before.

As the summer passed, Jules said little to his wife about the circus; indeed, her work was scarcely mentioned between them, though every morning she practised her exercises. Jules, however, had decided that they should go to London late in November and, the first week of the following month, appear at the Hippodrome, which had been established with great success the year before, at a short distance from the Houses of Parliament. The contract had not been signed, for Jules had written to Marshall, the manager, that he could not bind himself to an engagement until early in the autumn; but he explained that his word was as good as any contract.

When September came, Blanche seemed much better for her months of rest; her eyes were brighter, and her cheeks were shot with color. Sometimes Jules wished that she were not quite so religious; she went to early mass every morning now, and rather than let her go alone, he went with her, for Madeleine had assumed the duties of the household. Their evenings, which during the summer had been spent chiefly on the porch of Monsieur Berthier's house, were now passed in their salon, bright with flowers, sometimes with a wood-fire crackling on the old-fashioned hearth. Blanche's fingers were always busy with soft, fleecy garments, which Jules used sometimes to take in his hands and rub affectionately against his face. Then he often noticed a light in her eyes that he had never seen before; it reminded him of pictures of the Madonna. Sometimes he was so touched when he looked at her that he would take her in his arms and hold her close for a long while. Their evenings together became very dear to him; yet they said little to each other: he was content to sit and watch her, with the curtains drawn to shut out the rest of the world.

Occasionally Father Dumény would come in for an hour's chat. He was a large-framed, heavy man, with deep gray eyes shaded by enormous eyebrows that moved up and down as he spoke. He spoke as he walked, slowly and lumberingly, and he had a quaint humor that used to delight Blanche and puzzle Jules. When he appeared, she always brightened, and she liked to hear his doleful accounts of his rheumatism. He seemed to find humor in everything, even in his arduous duties and his ailments.

"Ah, my children," he would say, "why should any one go to the theatre for pleasure? This life is nothing but a comedy, if you only look at it in the right way."

From Blanche he derived a great deal of amusement; that she should perform in a circus always seemed a joke to him, and he was continually making fun over it. He had never been at a circus; so, though he had baptized Blanche and had met her during her visits in Boulogne, he had never seen her perform. Once when Jules showed him a photograph of Blanche as she appeared while posing on the rope, he rolled his eyes and pretended to be much shocked, and they all laughed together.

"I suppose you two people will be leaving this nest of yours before winter comes," he said one night. "You've made your plans already, haven't you?"