XI

They went straight to Vienna, arriving fatigued from their long journey.

After three days, spent at a little French hotel, Jules found near the

_Ringstrasse_ a furnished apartment that suited him, and they took

possession at the end of the week.

Blanche soon felt at home, but Madeleine, though she had become deeply

attached to her new mistress, and now had more companionship than she

had known since the death of Jules' mother, secretly grieved for her

beloved Paris, and looked and acted as if utterly bewildered.

The day of his arrival in Vienna, Jules proceeded to the Circus and had

a long talk with Herr Prevost, the manager, with regard to his wife's

engagement. He explained the difference in the plunge Blanche would be

obliged to take there from her usual one, and persuaded Prevost to make

this a feature in his advertisements; he also secured permission for

Blanche to practise in the ring every morning till her engagement began.

So he went back to the hotel elated, and explained to Blanche that,

after all, in the theatrical life good management was half the battle.

Now that she had shaken off that worthless Pelletier and he himself had

taken charge of her affairs, she would undoubtedly be recognized in a

very few years as the greatest acrobat in the world.

She must sit at once, in costume, for some new photographs, and he would

send them to the leading managers of Europe and America. If they could

only arrange to go to America under good auspices, their fortune would

be made. Instead of receiving, as they were doing in Vienna, five

hundred francs a week, they would be paid as much as twice that amount

in New York, if not more. Indeed, Jules had so much to say about

America, he seemed to have it on the brain.

Blanche experienced no difficulty in making her plunge in the new

amphitheatre, and after her first trial there, declared that she had no

fear for the public performances. Jules, however, insisted on her

practising every morning; she must keep her muscles limber, he said;

besides, if she didn't practise, she might lose confidence.

He found himself treating her as her mother had done, directing her

movements like those of a child, and she obeyed him as if she considered

his attitude toward her eminently natural and right. Even Madeleine

adopted a motherly tone with her, chose the dresses she should wear each

day, and instructed her in a thousand feminine details.

Blanche, Jules was surprised and secretly annoyed to discover, could

speak German, and in the mornings she sometimes gave him lessons. He

also picked up a good deal of German slang in the _cafes_ that he

frequented during the day, where he drank coffee and read whatever

French and English papers he could find.

After his wife's performances began, he found himself falling into a

routine of life. In spite of his distaste for his duties at the

wool-house, he had expected to miss them at first; but he quickly became

accustomed to his leisure. He really considered himself a busy person,

for in addition to his nightly appearance in the arena, momentary but

intensely dramatic, he spent considerable time in fraternizing with the

Viennese journalists, to secure newspaper puffs for his wife, in

conferring with Prevost, and in corresponding with managers for future

engagements. After his first month in Vienna, he felt as if he had been

connected with the circus for years.

Blanche heard constantly from home, from either her mother or one of the

two girls,--more often from Louise than from Jeanne, who hated to write

letters. Six weeks after her departure from Paris, her mother became

Madame Berthier, without, as she had said, "any fuss," and was now

installed with the children in the big house where Felix had passed so

many lonely years as a bachelor. Jules and Blanche wrote a joint letter

of congratulation, and after that Blanche seemed even happier than she

had been; it was so good, she said, to think that the girls were

provided for.

In the afternoons Jules took walks or drives with his wife, and on

Sundays he accompanied her to early mass in the little church that they

had discovered near their apartment. Blanche would have liked to go to

high mass, but to this Jules strenuously objected; it was too long, and

he couldn't understand the sermon, and altogether it made him sleepy.

Sometimes on Sundays they would go to one of the _cafes_ for _dejeuner_

or dinner, and over this they used to be very happy, for it recalled the

first months of their love.

After a time, however, these walks grew less frequent. Jules stayed at

home more, and Madeleine became solicitous for Blanche's health. Jules

had long talks with Prevost; Blanche had been engaged at the Circus for

three months, and Prevost wished to reengage her for the spring season;

but Jules explained that he had already received several offers for the

spring, and had refused them all; his wife needed a long rest, and from

Vienna they would go to Boulogne for a few months, to be with her

people.

The reference to the engagements was not exactly true; Jules had one

offer only for the summer; that was from Trouville. For the autumn he

had a fairly generous offer from South America, and a better one from

the Hippodrome in London, to begin on the first of December. He had

practically decided to accept the offer from London; but before giving a

definite answer, he resolved to consult Blanche about it.

"It will just fit in with our plans," he said. "On the first of May

we'll take a good long rest. We'll go to your mother's old house. It

hasn't been let yet, you know, and no one will want it before then. So

you and Madeleine and I will live there together, and we'll pass the

days out of doors, and take long walks by the sea, and forget all about

the circus. Then, when you are well and strong again, we'll go to

London, and astonish the English, who think there's nothing good in

France. What do you say, dear? Don't you think that's a good plan?"

"Yes," she said slowly. "It will be very nice, Jules, if--"

"If? If what?"

"If I'm alive," she answered softly, turning her head away.

He took her in his arms and pressed his cheek against hers. "What a

foolish little girl it is to talk like that! Of course you'll be alive,

and you'll be even better and stronger and happier than you are now. And

then think of all the good times you'll have this summer with Jeanne and

Louise and your mother and Monsieur Berthier. We'll have _fetes_ for the

girls at our house, and every day we'll go to see your mother. You don't

think she'll be too proud to receive us, do you, now that she's rich and

important? I suppose she's the queen of Boulogne, with her carriages and

her horses and her servants. She'll soon be getting a husband for

Jeanne, some fine young fellow with a lot of money. And won't Jeanne put

him through his paces? She's a high-stepper, that Jeanne, and I should

pity the man who got her and didn't understand her. Think of trying to

keep Jeanne down!"

In her moments of depression he always spoke to her like that, and for

the time it cheered her; but when the spring came, she drooped visibly,

and Jules became alarmed; sometimes she would have attacks of convulsive

weeping, and these would be followed by hours of profound sadness,

during which she spoke scarcely a word. There were other days when she

would be full of courage and hope, gayer than she had ever been; then

they would drive into the country and she would take deep draughts of

the fresh spring air, and her eyes would brighten and her cheeks flush.

In spite of his anxiety, these days were very happy for Jules; the

thought that he might lose her made her dearer to him. Sometimes he

would take her hand and tell her that without her he couldn't live; she

had made him realize how wretched his existence had been before

marriage; he could not go back to that again. Then she would rest her

head on his shoulder and whisper that she would try to be brave. Her

sufferings seemed to be wholly in her mind; the doctor Jules consulted

said that, bodily, she was perfectly strong, and could easily fill her

engagement at the circus; her work in the ring had given her a

remarkable development of the muscles and the chest; if she stopped the

work now, and ceased to practise, she would suffer from the inaction.

Jules, however, felt relieved when the fifteenth of April came, and they

were able to leave Vienna for Paris. There they remained only a day, for

they were eager to reach Boulogne and the little home that Madame

Berthier had arranged for them, in the house where Blanche had been

born, and had passed the few weeks in each year when she was not

travelling.

When they arrived, early in the afternoon, Madame Berthier and the

girls, together with Berthier, were at the station to meet them, and

they received a rapturous greeting, the girls clinging to their sister

with frantic embraces.

"We had _dejeuner_ prepared for you at your house," said Madame, when

the first greetings were over. "I knew you'd want to go there the first

thing. Then to-night you are to come and dine with us. I feel as if I

hadn't seen you for years."

"But we've never met Madame Berthier before," Jules replied, making a

feeble attempt to be gay, for he saw that Blanche's meeting with her

mother threatened to upset her.

Madame blushed like a young girl, and turning, led the way to the

carriages.

"One of these is for you and Jules," she said. "I don't mean just for

now, but for all the time you are here. Felix chose the horse for you,

dear, and she's so gentle you can drive her alone if you want to."

"I'm going to put the three girls and their mother in the big carriage,"

Berthier said to Jules, "and you and Madeleine and I will follow them."

The arrival of his stepdaughter seemed to have given him as much

pleasure as any of the others, and his good-natured face was radiant.

"Jump in, girls," he cried, holding out his hand to Blanche. "We'll have

to turn those lilies of yours into roses this summer, my dear. Here,

Jeanne, stop flirting with Jules, or we won't let you come with us. You

wouldn't have known our little Louise, Blanche, if you hadn't expected

to find her here, would you? She's grown an inch in four months. It's

the most wonderful thing I've ever known in my life. And would you

believe it?--she's become a perfect chatterbox--she's worse than Jeanne.

Sometimes I have to run out of the room to read my paper in peace and

have a quiet smoke."

The whole family seemed to have agreed to assume toward Blanche the

bantering tone that Jules had adopted. When they reached the house they

continued their gayety, though Blanche, tired from her journey, sank

weakly on the couch in the _salon_.

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 _cafe_ 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 Dumeny 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?"

Jules looked down at Blanche, but she avoided his eyes.

"We haven't decided definitely," Jules replied, "but we think of going

to London."

Blanche sighed, and Father Dumeny glanced at her quickly and then smiled

up at Jules.

"She has a notion that she isn't going to live," Jules added, nodding at

his wife. "Ridiculous, isn't it?"

Father Dumeny put his hands to his sides, and for a moment his great

body shook with laughter.

"Why, I expect to baptize at least half a dozen of your children! In a

few years we shall see them trotting around here in Boulogne and coming

to my Sunday-school to be prepared for their first communion. We need

all the good Catholics we can have, in these days, to fight against the

infidelity that's ruining the country. Ah, my dear child," he said,

patting Blanche's hand, "when you're a grandmother with a troop of

children around you, you'll look back and smile at these foolish little

fears."

After that night he came oftener, and kept Blanche laughing with his

gayety.

"When you go to London," he said one evening, "I shall give you letters

to some dear English friends of mine,--Mr. and Mrs. Tate. I met the

Tates when I was in Paris visiting Father Bremont more than ten years

ago. Mr. Tate represented the banking-house of Welling Brothers, of

London, there, and now he's in London as a member of the firm, I

believe. You'll like Mrs. Tate, my dear. She's a good soul, and she

speaks French almost as well as English. I shall expect to hear that

you've become great friends."

"But we aren't sure of going to England yet," Blanche replied with a

weary smile.

"Perhaps we shall go to America," Jules laughed. "I want Blanche to see

the country."

Toward the end of September Blanche drooped again, and her mother was

with her nearly every moment of the day, remaining sometimes till late

at night. The girls had gone back to the convent, but they were allowed

to come home twice a week, and most of their freedom they devoted to

their sister, whom they treated with a protecting tenderness that used

to afford Jules secret amusement. Madame Berthier maintained a cheerful

composure in her daughter's presence, but when alone with Jules she

became so serious that for the first time he grew nervous. Then as his

anxiety deepened he began to resent it, as he did any long-continued

annoyance. Why should they be kept in idleness and suspense so long? How

stupid to be buried in a wretched provincial town when they might be

earning thousands of francs in Vienna, or Bucharest, or Paris!

Then one night he was suddenly aroused from his sleep, and he felt a

sensation of mingled horror and awe. He dressed himself quickly, his

whole being wrung by the groans he heard from the next room, and tore

out of the house to Doctor Brutiniere's, five minutes away. After

delivering his message, he ran breathlessly to summon Madame Berthier.

It took her scarcely five minutes to dress, and then they were in the

street together. Madame Berthier went at once to Blanche's room, and

Jules paced up and down in the half-lighted _salon_.

That was the ghastliest night of Jules Le Baron's life. He was

overwhelmed by the knowledge that Blanche was in agony, that she was

battling for life, that at any moment he might hear she was dead. Why

should the burden of suffering fall on her? Oh, how cruel Nature was,

how pitiless to women! The poor child, the poor little one, to be

tortured so! Several times he listened for a sound, and the silence

terrified him. Suddenly he heard a shriek, loud and piercing, that only

the most exquisite pain could have wrung, and he clenched his hands in

impotent horror and misery.

The stillness that followed made him fear that she was dead, and he

could hardly keep from rushing up the stairs and learning the truth.

After a few moments, as he stood at the door, he heard another cry,

small, timorous, peevish, that changed to a wail and then died away. He

turned into the room, clapsed his face in his hands, and cried, "Thank

God, thank God! And mercy for her, my God, mercy for my poor little

Blanche!"

After what seemed to him a long time, during which he was tortured with

suspense, a door opened and shut, and he heard a rustling on the stairs.

He stepped out into the hall and saw Madame Berthier descending. She

stopped, smiled, and put her hand to her lips; he could see traces of

tears in her eyes.

"Come up," she whispered. "It's all over. It's a girl, and Blanche has

her in her arms."

Jules bounded up the stairs. "Only a minute, you know," she said softly,

"and you must be very quiet."

When she opened the door he almost pushed her aside in his eagerness to

enter. The Doctor and Madeleine were standing beside the bed, where

Blanche, white but bright-eyed and smiling, was lying with the babe

nestling close to her. Jules flung himself by her side, and kissed her

passionately, murmuring incoherent words of love and thankfulness.