John Barry - Mademoiselle Blanche

On Saturday night he sent his silk hat to be blocked, and his frock-coat to be pressed, and he bought a pair of white gloves. Madeleine found him much more agreeable on Sunday morning than he had been during the week; but, though he seemed to be recovering his spirits, she still felt worried. In the afternoon he presented himself before her for inspection, asked if his coat set well, if she liked the colour of his gloves, what she thought of the violets that he wore. She became enraptured over his appearance, told him that he had never looked so beautiful, and saw him go away with a radiant face. Then, as the door closed behind him, she went into her little chamber and wept. The truth had flashed upon her! Her Jules was in love! Some one else was going to take his mother's place and hers. She felt all the jealousy and misery that his own mother might have felt at the moment, combined with a pathetic consciousness that she had no right to grieve. Jules was everything in the world to her, she said to herself, and she was nothing to him. She was an old broken woman, and for the rest of her days she should have to live alone.

Jules had become her pride and the source of her happiness. Yet she really saw very little of him – the only meal he took at home was his breakfast – but she really existed for the pleasure of serving him and looking at his face in the morning. Now, in spite of her misery, she knelt before the statue of the Blessed Virgin that stood on a little table beside her bed, and prayed that the woman who was going to take her place might be a good woman, and worthy of her boy. In her simple affection for Jules she believed that he had only to show that he cared for a woman to have her throw herself into his arms.

It was hardly three o'clock, too early for a call, Jules thought, as he walked toward the rue St. Honoré ; but he was so impatient to see Mademoiselle Blanche again that he could not wait till later in the afternoon. During the week the sun had hardly appeared, and the succession of leaden skies had helped to depress his spirits. To-day, however, the sky was blue and the sun shone so brightly that it seemed almost like spring. He was in one of his buoyant moods, when he felt sure of his ability to conquer. In his fine clothes and with his confident manner, he looked very handsome; several pretty girls gratified him by staring at him as he passed. If he impressed people he didn't know, why couldn't he impress Mademoiselle Blanche? He planned a great many things to say to her. He would be particularly amiable to the mother, too, and tell her all about America.

The number in the rue St. Honoré that Madame Perrault had given corresponded with one of the great white stucco apartment houses abounding in Paris. He passed under the wide vaulted entrance, and asked the wife of the concierge if Madame Perrault lived there. " Au sixième ," was the shrill reply, and he started up the narrow stairs. When he reached the sixième , the top floor of the house, he panted and waited for a moment before ringing, to catch his breath. Then he carefully arranged his cuffs, touched with his gloved hand his silk cravat and his flowers and, with a sigh of anticipation, he rang the bell.

A trim little servant of not more than fifteen opened the door. When Jules asked for Madame Perrault, she shook her head.

"She went out an hour ago, monsieur, and she won't be back till four."

Jules' heart sank. Of course, mother and daughter were out together. He was about to turn away despairingly, but he suddenly thought of inquiring if Mademoiselle were at home. The maid nodded.

"Shall I say that monsieur wishes to see her?" she asked, stepping back that he might enter.

"If you please," he replied, as he followed the girl into the little salon . It was furnished wholly in Japanese fashion; the walls were hung with Japanese draperies, and a large thick rug covered the floor. On the mantel, prettily draped with a wide piece of flowered silk, stood a number of photographs, one of them a duplicate of the portrait of Mademoiselle Blanche that he had seen in the entrance of the Circus. As Jules glanced at this, he heard a light step in the adjoining room, and when he turned, Mademoiselle Blanche herself was looking at him out of her dark eyes. She walked toward him, flushing a little, and extended her hand.

"I am sorry mamma is not here," she said. "She went out only a few minutes ago, and she'll be back soon. But we – "

"You didn't expect any one so early. I ought to apologize, but I was impatient to come. Then – I – I hoped to find you alone."

"So you have," she laughed, pointing to a chair near the grate-fire. She wore a dress of dark silk with little white spots in it that became her wonderfully, Jules thought. Around her neck was a piece of muslin, open at the throat, and muslin encircled her wrists. Once again Jules was impressed by the delicacy of her appearance; her skin had an almost transparent whiteness, and there was no colour in her cheeks, save when she flushed, which she did at the least cause.

"How pleasantly you are lodged here," said Jules, looking around the room. The apartment was as small as his own, which he had considered one of the smallest in Paris.

"Yes, we were fortunate to get it. And it seems so odd – it belongs to an actress who's spending the winter in the South of France. We have taken it furnished."

"Then you're to be here all the winter?" said Jules, feasting his eyes on the clear white forehead, the white neck that he could see beneath the muslin. How beautiful she was! His surmise about the teeth had been correct; they were small and white, with little bits of red between them.

"No," she replied, "I've been engaged at the Cirque until the first of January. Then I shall go to Vienna, and appear there for several months."

"Ah!" For a moment Jules was silent. "But you will take a rest before you go to Vienna?"

She shook her head.

"No. I should like to go home for Christmas to be with my sisters. But they will come to Paris instead."

"But doesn't it tire you?"

"No. It isn't hard. And I never like to stop. I must keep in practice."

For an instant Jules was touched by a curious sympathy. There certainly was something pathetic, even abnormal, in the thought that this frail woman hurled herself six days in the week from the top of a building. Then he was thrilled again by the marvel of it, by the consciousness that he was sitting opposite the phenomenon, gazing into her eyes, hearing her voice, receiving her smiles. He could think of nothing to say, but he felt quite happy; he would have liked to sit there for hours in mute admiration. Mademoiselle Blanche, however, looked confused; she seemed to be shaping something in her mind.

"It was very kind of you to send the flowers," she said at last. "I would have thanked you before if I had known where you lived. They were very lovely."

His face shone with pleasure at the thought that she had recognized him as the sender, and he leaned toward her. "You needn't thank me," he said. "I felt repaid when I saw them in your belt."

Then he told her how he had gone to the circus every night just to see her; how he admired her performance, her grace and skill on the trapeze, her courage in making the great plunge. As he spoke, her face kept changing colour. She seemed to him like a bashful child, and he marvelled at her ingenuousness, for surely she must be used to praise. Then he recalled what Durand had said about her affectation of modesty, and he wondered if the journalist could have been right; but when he looked into the girl's clear eyes he saw nothing but beauty and truth.

When he had finished speaking of her performance, he began to talk about himself, his favourite topic with women. He told her about his visit in the United States, and he made fun of the Americans for drinking water instead of wine at table, and for many other customs that had amused him because they were so unlike the ways of Parisians. He also imitated the speech of some of the Americans he had known, and he was surprised to find that she understood what he said. She had learned English from her father, she explained; he had often performed in London, and she had been there with him twice. Then he began to speak with her in English to display his accomplishment, and he felt disappointed on discovering that she could converse quite as fluently, and with a better accent. So he returned to French, and told her about his life in Paris, his dear old Madeleine who kept him so comfortable in his little apartment, his work at the office, and about Dufresne and Leroux. She showed no surprise when he revealed Durand's duplicity; she merely said that she hadn't liked the journalist, and her mother had been vexed by the article. She seemed so interested that he went back to his early days, before the death of his father and mother, described his life at the lycée , his love of sport, his passion for the circus, his boyish adventures at Montmartre, his happy days in summer at Compiègne, his mother's goodness and her foolish pride in him. He was so unconscious in his egotism that it was touching to hear him; Mademoiselle Blanche seemed to be unconscious of it, too, for she listened with a serious, absorbed attention. While he was in the midst of an analysis of his own qualities, the little clock on the mantel struck four and Mademoiselle Blanche looked up quickly.