If Jules had tried, he would have been unable to explain the fascination
that Lottie King's performance had for him. In daring it was greatly
inferior to his wife's plunge; but the fact that Blanche had lost
courage lent her rival's serene indifference to danger an added
attractiveness for him.
Every night he watched her with more delight. Besides being plucky and
skilful, she was so pretty and so amusing! Jules liked to talk with her
in the evening before she made her appearance, and she used to convulse
him with laughter by her sallies. She soon fell into the habit of
running into Blanche's room to ask Madeleine to do services for her, and
toward Blanche she adopted a manner of half-amused patronage. By the end
of the first week, Blanche had conceived a great dislike for her. This
might have been at least partly due to her discovery of the pleasure
which Jules took in the diver's society.
Mrs. Tate had expected that, after ceasing to make her plunge, Blanche
would improve in health; but she speedily saw that she was mistaken. One
afternoon she called at the hotel in Albemarle Street and found Blanche
alone with the little Jeanne; Madeleine had just gone out to do some
errands. They had a long talk, during which Blanche was obliged to
confess that the pain in her back troubled her just as much as ever, and
that she was very unhappy. When Mrs. Tate tried to find out why she was
unhappy, she could elicit no satisfactory explanation. As soon as she
arrived home that night, she repeated the conversation to her husband.
"Do you suppose the little creature can be mercenary, Percy?" she said.
"Do you think she can be sorry she isn't risking her neck every day? I
wanted to tell her this morning she ought to be ashamed of herself--she
ought to think of her child. Suppose she had been killed! What would
have become of the child, _I'd_ like to know!"
"That other person has made a hit, I see. They're booming her in the
papers. Did she speak of her?"
"Not a word!"
"H'm!"
"What do you mean by that, Percy?"
"Oh, nothing."
"I suppose you think she's jealous of her."
"Jealous?" Tate repeated, lifting his eyes. "You told me yourself that
she was jealous before she even saw the other performer."
"Yes, and now she's jealous of her success."
"Oh, _professional_ jealousy," he said, throwing back his head. A moment
later he added: "There are worse kinds of jealousy than that in the
world."
Mrs. Tate looked at him closely, but his eyes were fixed on his plate.
For a few moments they did not speak; she was pondering his last remark.
They understood each other so well that they often divined each other's
thoughts. Now she saw that he did not care to discuss the subject, and
she let it drop. She continued to think about it so much, however, that
she determined to go to the Hippodrome alone some day, to a _matinee_,
and see for herself what Blanche's successor as a star performer was
like.
She returned home with a sickly feeling of regret and torturing
anticipation; she had not only seen Lottie King, but she had also
studied the face of Jules Le Baron, who, unconscious of her gaze, stood
within a few yards of her seat. What she had observed in his expression,
however, she did not communicate to her husband.
Her visit at the Hippodrome made her resolve to be even kinder to
Blanche than she had been; she would take her and the child to drive in
the Park two or three times a week,--oftener if she could. Mrs. Tate
tried to shake off her forebodings, but for the rest of the day they
clung to her, and the next morning she woke with them fresh in mind. So
she resolved to drive at once to Albemarle Street. The weather was too
dull to take the child out, and she would pass the morning with Blanche
and try to cheer her up.
When she reached the hotel she felt relieved to find Blanche in a much
better frame of mind than she had been on the occasion of her last call.
The pain had left her for a few days, Blanche explained, and she had
been greatly encouraged; even Jules had spoken of her improvement; he
had been so patient with her, and now she felt ashamed of having been so
dispirited. Mrs. Tate went away with a feeling that she had been a fool,
that her forebodings were ridiculous.
One night at the end of the week, Tate returned home with the
announcement that he was to start for Berlin the next day, to confer
with the heads of a banking-house there with regard to the floating of a
great loan. He gave her the choice of staying at home or of starting
with him after only a few hours of preparation. She chose to start, and
for two months she did not see London again; for, once away from the
routine of his work, Tate took advantage of the opportunity to run for a
holiday from Berlin down to Dresden, and thence over to Paris. During
this time Mrs. Tate forgot her self-imposed cares, and gave herself up
to the pleasures of travelling.
When she returned home, she was surprised to hear that Madame Le Baron
had called several times, and had left word that she was anxious to see
her as soon as she came back. This news sent her with a throbbing heart
to Albemarle Street; she felt sure that something terrible had happened,
something she might have prevented by staying in London. She was always
assuming responsibilities and then dropping them! How often her husband
had told her that! She had been more than culpable, she kept saying to
herself, in going away without even bidding Blanche good-bye, without
even leaving an address.
When she arrived at the hotel, at the close of a cold, foggy afternoon,
she was surprised to be told by the _garcon_ that Madame Le Baron had
left, and had gone to an apartment in Upper Bedford Place. "It was too
expensive for them here," the _garcon_ explained with a contemptuous
grin. "So they went to a private house."
Mrs. Tate drove at once to the number the boy gave her, and a few
moments later she was climbing the stairs to Blanche's apartment. She
was out of breath when she rapped on the door, and still breathing hard
when Madeleine admitted her into the shabby drawing-room. A moment
later, as Blanche appeared from the next room, she uttered an
exclamation.
"Good Heavens, child, what has happened to you! You're whiter than ever,
and so _thin_! What have you been doing to yourself? Have you had an
illness?"
Blanche shook her head. "No, I haven't been ill," she replied, but her
looks and her manner seemed to belie her words. The gray cloth dress
which had once fitted her tightly now hung loosely about her; her face
was drawn and of a chalklike pallor, and under the eyes were two black
lines betraying weeks of suffering and sleeplessness.
"You were thin enough before I went away," said Mrs. Tate, "but now
you're a perfect spectre."
Then she went on to explain how she had happened to desert her friends
for so long a time. "I know you have something to tell me," she said,
starting from her seat, "but before you begin I want to see Jeanne. How
is she? But first tell me how you happened to come way up here. Isn't it
a long distance for you to climb after your performance every night?"
"Jules chose these rooms because they were so much cheaper than the
hotel," Blanche replied simply. "We prepare our own meals, too, and we
save in that way. You know my salary is so much smaller than it used to
be."
Mrs. Tate made no comment, and they went into the other room, where
Jeanne was sleeping in the crib.
"She sleeps nearly all the time," said Blanche, with a faint smile that
seemed to exaggerate the expression of pain and weariness in her face.
"How big she's growing!" Mrs. Tate whispered. "There's certainly nothing
the matter with _her_, the dear little thing, with her fat rosy cheeks.
I'd just like to take her in my arms and hug her."
For several minutes they stood talking about the child; then they left
her with Madeleine and went back to the drawing-room, which Mrs. Tate's
keen eyes discovered was used also as a bedroom. "They must be
economizing with a vengeance," she thought. Blanche closed the door, and
took a seat behind her visitor on the couch.
"Now I want to hear all about it," Mrs. Tate cried. "Something has
happened. What is it?" She took both of Blanche's hands and looked into
her eyes. "What is it?" she repeated.
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."
"I don't see anything very prophetic about that," he said, walking into
the drawing-room, where she followed him, clutching at the lace
handkerchief in her hand. "It was as plain as daylight to any one that
heard him talk and saw what kind of man he was."
"I don't mean your seeing merely that. I could tell from what you said
that you saw a great deal more. Don't you remember what you said about
_professional_ jealousy not being the worst kind of jealousy in the
world? That was the first thing that opened my eyes. I went to the next
_matinee_ to see for myself if it could be true, and if I hadn't been an
idiot I should have realized it all then. But the next day, just before
we left for Berlin, I called on that poor woman, and she seemed so much
easier in mind, I thought I must have misunderstood what you meant and
been mistaken about that look."
"My dear, I don't quite follow you. Aren't you just a little bit
illogical?"
"No, I'm not. I'm perfectly logical. I never was more logical in my
life."
"I suppose you mean that the fellow has got tired of his wife, now that
she's given up her dive, and he's fallen in love with the other woman."
Mrs. Tate rose tragically from her chair and made a sweeping gesture
with her right hand. "With the other woman's _performance_."
Tate looked at her for a moment, with smiling incredulity. "How
ridiculous!" he said.
"That's exactly what I said when you told me he had fallen in love with
his _wife's_ performance. I said it was the most ridiculous thing I'd
ever heard in my _life_. I couldn't have believed it if I hadn't
observed it with my own eyes. But that afternoon I saw him--he stood
near me, leaning against the railing--and I wish you could have seen the
expression in his face while that woman was exhibiting herself,
especially when she made her horrible dives."