Читать книгу: «Mademoiselle Blanche»

I

"André!"

"Yes, monsieur."

The little waiter, with anxiety in his smooth, blond face, hurried to the table.

"Bring me the Soir."

André shot away, and presently returned, paper in hand.

"What is there good at the theatres, André?"

André wiped his hands in his soiled apron, and looked thoughtful.

"There's the Folies Bergères, monsieur. Dumont sings to-night."

"Oh, she tires me. Her voice is cracked."

"There's Madame Judic at the Variétés," André suggested, tentatively.

"I saw her in the last piece."

André scratched his head, and stared at the figure at the table.

"Monsieur likes the Cirque, does he not?"

Monsieur did not look up from the paper. "What's at the Cirque now, André?"

"At the Cirque Parisien? There's Mademoiselle Blanche, the acrobat. They say she's a marvel, monsieur, – and beautiful, – the most beautiful woman in Paris. She dives from the top of the building backwards – hundreds of feet."

"So you think it's really good, André?"

André nodded. Monsieur dropped the paper, paid his bill, left a little fee for the garçon, and took himself off. At the entrance he stopped and surveyed the surging crowd in the Boulevard Montmartre. He had just finished an excellent dinner with a glass of chartreuse verte; so he felt particularly complacent. As he prodded his teeth with the easy grace of the Frenchman who knows no shame of the toothpick, he tried to think out a plan for the evening. Nothing better occurred to him than André's suggestion. He was not in the mood for the Casino de Paris, nor for any of the other concert halls, nor even for the theatres. Yes, he would go to the Circus. He hadn't been there for ten days.

For years Jules Le Baron had attended the Cirque Parisien at least once a fortnight; his friends used to chaff him for his fondness for it. Those who had known him from a boy liked to remind him of his first great ambition – to be a performer on the trapeze. Though this amused him now, he had never lost his love for feats of daring and skill. Whenever he felt particularly tired from his work at the wool-house, he would go to the Circus; it refreshed him, and he fancied that it made him sleep well afterwards. His first love had been a beautiful Roumanian, who jumped through hoops of fire, landing on her velvet-caparisoned horse, without even singeing her long, blond hair. He was fifteen then, and he discovered that the lady was forty-five, though he could have sworn there was not a difference of more than three years in their ages. Since that time he had become enamoured of many of the glittering amazons of the arena, who shot through the air, or through hoops, or out of the mouths of cannons, or crossed dizzy heights on the tight-rope, or juggled with long, villainous-looking knives falling in showers into their hands.

Those episodes, however, brightened Jules Le Baron's life long before he was twenty-five. He had since had many similar experiences in the larger arena of the world. Indeed, he gloried in his susceptibility; he used to give people to understand that, though fairly successful in business, he had a very keen appreciation of the sentiments, and of all the refinements of life. To a foreigner he would have expressed this complication by saying that he was Parisian to his finger-tips. In America, where, at the age of twenty-six, he passed three wretched months, he had been appalled by the lack of sentiment among the people. Of course, as he represented there the wool-house with which he had been connected since his sixteenth year, he met chiefly business men; but even these ought to have displayed an interest in something outside their commercial routine.

It was those three months in America that gave Jules Le Baron his zest for Paris. Of course, he had always loved it; but till he left it, his love had not become self-conscious. America taught him what he had only dimly known before, that for him Paris was the only city in the world worth living in. He knew that people born away from Paris liked other cities; secretly, however, this amused him. He believed that no one, after living in Paris, could find any other place habitable. Indeed, any places, any people, any customs foreign to Paris seemed to him so droll that at the thought of some of them he often laughed aloud. America had given him things to laugh at for the rest of his life.

Of course, Jules was proud of having visited America; it gave him a delightful feeling of superiority to his friends and acquaintances at home. He always felt pleased when the English and Americans that he met in business complimented him on his English; it enabled him to say carelessly: "Oh, I just picked it up when I was in America." He really had learned very little English there; nearly all he knew had been taught him by his father, a professor of chemistry in a small school in Paris, who had spent six months in England during the siege. He had acquired there, however, a smattering of American slang; on his lips it sounded delicious. His friends in Paris thought he spoke English beautifully, and frequently referred to his talent for languages. He had given them glowing accounts of his adventures in America, and said nothing of his desolate loneliness there; so they looked upon him as a born traveller, – as, altogether, a man of remarkable qualities. But for his English and his travels, they would merely have shrugged their shoulders at the mention of his name, and dismissed him with a "Bon garçon!"

Jules Le Baron knew that he was much more than a bon garçon. His attitude toward the world expressed this; he always acted as if he felt the world had been made exclusively for him. After losing his father at fourteen, he promptly proceeded to link his mother in the closest bonds of slavery. Yet he was kind to her, too, and, in his way, he loved her, for she was made to obey, just as he had been born to command. When she died and left him alone at the age of twenty with a small property, he took a miniature apartment in the rue de Lisbonne, and adjusted himself to his new life. His salary at the wool-house, where his English helped to make him valuable, together with the property, gave him an income of ten thousand francs a year. He considered himself rich, a personage, one who ought to marry well.

Jules had thought so much about marriage that, at thirty, it was surprising he should have remained unwedded. Every young woman he met he regarded as a candidate for his hand, and he spent a large part of his leisure in rejecting these innocent suitors. Even now, as he slowly made his way up the Boulevard, he fancied that the girls he passed were looking at him admiringly and enviously. He often smiled back at them, for he was rarely unkind and he never gratuitously wounded any one's feelings. With his mother, it is true, he had been occasionally severe, but merely to discipline her, to make her see things as he saw them. At this moment he felt particularly amiable. He was in Paris, on the Boulevard that he loved, surrounded by the people that he loved, in the atmosphere which, as he had discovered in America, was as the very breath to his being. The spectacle was all for him! Paris, had been created that he might enjoy it!

II

Saturday was the fashionable night at the Cirque Parisien, and the night when Jules usually attended it. This was Tuesday, however, and Jules decided not to be fashionable, but simply to amuse himself. As he approached the letters of light that flashed the name of the Cirque into the eyes of the boulevardiers, he suddenly remembered that he had promised to meet two of his comrades of the wool-house in the evening. He turned into the rue Taitbout, and as he was walking slowly through the long passageway leading into one of the large apartment-houses there, he felt himself suddenly seized in the darkness by two pairs of hands. He looked quickly around, and dimly recognized Dufresne and Leroux, who had come up from behind him. They were both types, short and swarthy, with oily faces, thick black moustaches, and pointed beards.

"Why didn't you come before?" and "We've been waiting an hour," they cried together.

"He's been up to some adventure, I'll wager," said Leroux.

"Answer! The truth! No lies!" Dufresne exclaimed, shaking him by one shoulder.

Jules pulled away with an effort.

"I thought you were going to rob me!" he laughed.

"You see, he doesn't answer," said Dufresne. "I told you he was up to some adventure."

"Up to some adventure!" Jules repeated. "I've just been taking dinner, and I forgot I'd promised to meet you to-night. Where are you going?"

"We're going to the Folies Bergères, and then to a masked ball in Montmartre," Leroux answered, resuming his grip. "Come along."

Jules pulled away with a laugh.

"Thanks. Not to-night. I don't feel like it. Besides, I'm not dressed."

"But we're not dressed," they cried together, throwing open their coats. "You won't have to dress. Come on."

Jules shook his head decidedly.

"No," he insisted, "it's all very well for you young bucks. I'm too old. It tires me out for the next day; can't do my work. I think I'll look in at the Circus. Come along with me."

They scoffed at the idea of going to the Circus, and tried to persuade him to accompany them, since he had kept them waiting so long. But he resisted, and, as he turned away from them, they clutched at him again, but he escaped, laughing, into the street, and he saw them shaking their fists after him. Those two "boys," as he called them, were always trying to drag him into their escapades. They looked so much alike that at the office they were called "the twins," and they were always getting into scrapes and into debt together.

Before buying his ticket for the Circus, Jules looked carefully over the program on the posters in the long entrance. Some of the performers he had already seen and the names of a few of them were unfamiliar to him. One name was printed in larger letters than the others – Mademoiselle Blanche. Jules read the paragraph printed below, announcing Mademoiselle Blanche as the most marvellous acrobat in the world, and proclaiming that, in addition to giving her act on the trapeze, she would plunge backward from the top of the theatre, a height of more than seventy-five feet, into a net below. Jules smiled, and felt a thrill of his old boyish excitement at the prospect of seeing the feat performed.

When he turned to buy his ticket, he noticed a large photograph on an easel, standing near the box-office. The name of Mademoiselle Blanche, printed under it, attracted him. The acrobat, her long sinuous limbs encased in white tights, was suspended in mid-air, one arm bent at the elbow, clinging to a trapeze. The tense muscles of the arm made a curious contrast with the expression of the face, which was marked by unusual simplicity and gentleness. The profile was clear, the curving eyelashes were delicately outlined, and the eyes were large and dark. Something about the lines of the small mouth attracted Jules. He studied the picture carefully to discover what it was. The whole expression of the face seemed to him to be concentrated in the mouth; he felt sure that the teeth were small and very white, and the woman's voice was soft and musical. The face differed from the ordinary types of performers he had seen; it reminded him of the faces of some of the girls in the convent of Beauvais, where his mother had once taken him to visit his cousin. The woman must be clever to make herself up so attractively. He wondered if the appearance of youth that she presented was also due to her cleverness. She might easily pass for twenty. Her figure looked marvellously supple; she had probably been trained for the circus from infancy, and she might be fifty years old.

He decided not to buy a seat, but to go into the balcony where he could walk about and look down at the performance. If it bored him, he could rest on one of the velvet-cushioned seats till a new "turn" began. He found more people in the balcony than he had ever seen there before; as a rule they made only a thin fringe around the railing; now they were five and six deep. He established himself beside a post where he could catch glimpses of the arena and get a support, and there he remained for half an hour.

To-night, however, the antics of the clown, the phenomenal intelligence of the performing dogs, even the agility of the Schaeffer family of acrobats, did not interest him. He was impatient to see Mademoiselle Blanche. Her name stood last on the program; she was probably reserved for a crowning attraction. Jules dropped on one of the velvet cushions, and rested there for another half-hour. Then some knife-throwing attracted him, and he slowly worked his way through the crowd to a place where he could look down at the performers. The knife-throwing was followed by an exhibition of trick-riding, which preceded the acrobat's appearance.

Before this appearance took place, however, there was a long wait caused by the preparations made for the great plunge. A thick rope was suspended from one of the beams that supported the roof of the building, and under it a net was spread. Then the half-dozen trapezes that had been tied to the walls, were loosened, and as they swung in the air and the band played, Mademoiselle Blanche, in white silk tights, with two long strips of white satin ribbon dangling from her throat, ran into the ring, and bowed in response to the applause of the crowd.

Jules Le Baron drew a long breath. The long supple limbs, the firm white arms and throat, the pale oval face, framed in dark hair that curled around the forehead, created a kind of beauty that seemed almost ethereal. The glamour of youth was over her, too; she could not be, at most, more than twenty. As she ran up the little rope ladder to the net and climbed hand over hand along the rope to one of the trapezes, Jules thought he had never seen such grace, such exquisite sureness of movement and agility. After reaching the trapeze, she sat there for a moment, smiling and rubbing her hands. Then she began to swing gently, and a moment later she shot through the air to another trapeze several feet away, and from that she passed on to the others with a bewildering swiftness.

Jules had never seen a woman perform alone on the trapeze before, and this exhibition of skill and resource fascinated him. The feats were nearly all new, and some of them of unusual difficulty. When the girl had finished her performance on the trapeze she returned to the rope, and began to pose on it, twisting it around her waist, and hanging suspended with her arms in the air. In this way she rolled gently down to the net.

The event of the evening was yet to come, however. After resting for a moment, Mademoiselle Blanche seized the rope again, and, hand over hand, she climbed to the top of the building; there she sat on a beam, so far from the audience that she seemed much smaller than she really was. The ring-master, a greasy-looking Frenchman in evening dress, appeared in the arena and commanded silence.

"Mademoiselle Blanche must have perfect quiet," he cried, "in order to perform her great feat. The least noise might disturb her, and cause her death."

Jules smiled at this speech; it was very clever, he thought. Of course, it was made merely to impress the audience. He wondered how Mademoiselle Blanche felt at that moment, perched up there so quietly, ready to hurl herself into the air. He did not have time to think much about this, for as he strained his eyes toward her, the signal for the fall was given, the white figure plunged backward, spun to earth, landed with a tremendous thump in the padded net, bounded into the air again, and Mademoiselle Blanche was bowing and kissing her fingers.

For a moment not a sound was heard. Then the audience burst into applause, and Jules Le Baron breathed. He felt as if his heart had stopped beating. He had never seen such a thrilling exhibition before. All his old delight in the circus had come back to him. As he walked out with the crowd, he congratulated himself on not having gone with Dufresne and Leroux. He would not have missed his evening for a dozen balls in Montmartre!

At the door he met Roger Durand, dramatic critic of the Jour. He had known Durand as a boy, and they had continued on a footing of half-hostile friendship.

"So you've come to see the new sensation?" said the journalist, as they shook hands.

"Just by chance," Jules replied. "I've never been more surprised in my life. Who is she?"

"That's just what I haven't been able to find out. I've been talking about her tonight with old Réju – he's the man who makes the engagements – but he didn't seem to know much more about her than I did. He said he first heard of her in Bucharest. She made a hit there, too, some time last year."

"But she's French, isn't she? Parisian?"

"She's French, but Réju says she isn't Parisian – comes from the provinces somewhere. There's a woman goes about with her, her mother, I suppose. Réju says mamma keeps her down here," the journalist added with a smile, making a significant gesture with his thumb. "Mamma gets all the money, and Mademoiselle does all the work."

Jules shrugged his shoulders. "Going to your office?" he said. "You have to turn night into day, haven't you?"

"My dear fellow, night is the best part of life. Days were made for sleep. We've got mixed up, that's all, and only a few of us are clever enough to find it out. Come and have a glass of absinthe with me before I go back."

Jules shook his head.

"Some other time. A glass of absinthe would spoil me for to-morrow. Au revoir."

He was glad to be alone again so that he might think over the evening. The beautiful figure whirling through the air still haunted him. "Mademoiselle Blanche!" The name seemed to sing in his mind. He wondered what her real name was. So she had a mother who kept her under her thumb! Then he wondered what she was like out of the circus – ignorant and vulgar, probably, like the rest of them. Yet in her looks she was certainly different from the rest. At any rate, he must go and see her performance again. He would go several times.

III

When Jules arrived home he found supper on the table of his little dining-room. Madeleine, the old woman who had served his mother for years and remained with him after his mother's death, always left something for him at night. Now he turned away from it in disgust. His face was burning; he felt nervous, excited. After going to bed, he was unable to sleep. He kept seeing Mademoiselle Blanche tumbling through the air! He could not think of her except as in motion. He tried to recall her as she stood in the net, just before climbing the rope to the trapeze, but her figure was vague and shadowy. Then he tried to think out her features as he had observed them, and he found that he had quite forgotten her face; all that remained was an impression of sweetness, of a ravishing smile.

When, finally, he fell asleep, he dreamed of her, still flashing through the air, striking with a thud the padded net, and bouncing to her feet again. He woke several times and felt impatient with himself for not being able to drive the thought away; yet when he sank again into sleep, the dream came back persistently.

At half-past seven he rose, tired from his broken rest. He went at once to the long mirror that covered the door of his wardrobe, expecting to be confronted with the face of an invalid. His gray eyes were slightly inflamed and his cheeks had more than their usual color; otherwise his appearance was normal. For several moments he surveyed himself. As a rule he did not think much about his looks; he knew that he was considered handsome, and this gave him a half-unconscious gratification. When he wanted to please a woman he seldom failed. Now he had a distinct pleasure at the sight of the aristocratic curve of his nose, the strong outline of his chin, the full red lips under his thick brown moustache. Jules wished that he could keep from growing fat; but after all, he reflected philosophically, there was a difference in fatness; some men it made gross and vulgar; his own complexion, however, was so fair that he could never look gross. Even now there was a suggestion about him of the sleekness of a well-kept pigeon.

When he went out to breakfast he found Madeleine looking doleful. Madeleine had known Jules from birth and considered herself a second mother to him. She was short and stout, with a mouthful of very bad teeth, some of which rattled when she spoke, as if they were about to fall out.

"Monsieur Jules did not eat last night," she said as she poured his coffee and pushed his rolls into the centre of the little table.

"No, Madeleine, I wasn't hungry." Jules took up the Figaro that was lying on the table and began to look for a reference to Mademoiselle Blanche.

"The coffee will grow cold, Monsieur Jules."

Jules did not hear her. When preoccupied, he had a habit of ignoring Madeleine. Yet, in his way, he liked her; he often wondered what he would do without her; she was docile and attentive to his wants as his mother had been, and she was very inexpensive. For five minutes he read; then, when he found no reference to the acrobat, he threw down the paper with an exclamation of impatience, and seized his cup and sipped his coffee.

"It's cold!" he cried.

Madeleine's look of distress deepened.

"Let me take that away," she said. "I'll get another cup."

When she brought the cup and poured some of the hot coffee into it, Jules drained it, and pushed his chair away from the table.

"But you have eaten nothing, Monsieur Jules!"

"I'm not hungry this morning."

"And you didn't eat anything last night," the old woman repeated, following him with her eyes. "Are you sick?"

"No, no!" Jules replied, impatiently. "I don't feel like eating, that's all. Give me my hat and coat, Madeleine; I shall be late if I don't hurry."

"Monsieur Jules doesn't look well," said Madeleine timidly, as she helped him on with his coat.

"Oh, don't worry about me." At the door Jules turned. "I shall be out late again to-night, Madeleine. You needn't leave the light burning."

The wool-house of Ballou, Mercier & Co., where Jules worked, was only ten minutes' walk from the rue de Lisbonne. On his way there, Jules resolved to say nothing to the twins about Mademoiselle Blanche. Of course, Leroux would ask him about the evening, and he would say simply that he had been rather bored. He wanted to keep Mademoiselle Blanche to himself. He even hoped that her performance would not be noised abroad, that she would not become one of those women whom all Paris went to see and every one talked glibly about. But she must be well-known already; it was evidently her performance that had crowded the Circus.

At the office the twins had a great deal to say about the masked ball of the previous night, but Jules hardly heard them. He was still so haunted by the thought of Mademoiselle Blanche that he made several mistakes in his letters; since his return from America he had been placed in charge of all the English correspondence, and it was important that he should be exact. The day had never seemed so long to him, nor his work, in which he usually took pride, so dull. He was impatient for the evening. When six o'clock came, he hurried away without bidding the twins good-night.

Jules walked toward the little restaurant in the Boulevard where he had dined the night before. He wanted to see André again, to talk over Mademoiselle Blanche with him. He felt almost a personal affection for André now. The little garçon was bewildered by Jules' affability, and overcome by the generous tip which he received as Jules left the place. Indeed, freed from the labors of the day, Jules felt buoyant and happy. But when he reached the Circus, his spirits sank; he had forgotten that Mademoiselle Blanche did not appear till nearly eleven. He would have to wait for her at least three hours!

He felt so vexed that he turned away from the theatre and walked along the Boulevard. It was late in October, and a light rain was falling, mixed with snow. The Boulevard was crowded with people, hurrying under umbrellas. Jules turned up the collar of his overcoat, and shivered. What was he to do till eleven? He might go to one of the theatres, but he would not enjoy it. When he reached the Opéra, he had not made up his mind what to do, and he walked on as far as the Madeleine. He entered a café opposite the church, and called for a bock and one of the illustrated papers. For an hour he sat there, sipping the beer and pretending to read. The jokes, however, which he usually enjoyed, seemed to him vulgar. He was thinking of the figure in white silk tights, shooting through the air. A score of times he called himself a fool for not being able to put that thought out of his mind; yet he felt nervous and irritable, simply because he was impatient to see the spectacle again. At last he became so uneasy that he looked for the waiter to pay his bill and leave. Then he felt a slap on the shoulder, and Durand's smiling face confronted him.

There was no reason why Jules should have been displeased at seeing Durand; yet at that moment he felt resentful. The journalist was small and dapper, with the ends of his black moustache carefully waxed. His little black eyes were always sparkling with humor, and when he smiled he showed two rows of regular white teeth. Yet, in spite of the care of himself which he seemed to take, he never looked quite clean; his thick black hair was always dusty with dandruff, which fell on the shoulders of his coat. He spoke in a high thin voice and with a patronizing air that exasperated Jules.

"I thought I recognized your back," he said, when Jules had turned his face toward him.

Jules grunted and pointed to a chair at the little table. He wanted to show by his manner that he didn't like that familiar slap. Durand, however, was unruffled.

"What are you doing here, anyway? Why aren't you at the theatre or one of the cafés chantants?"

Jules took a puff of his cigarette, and then looked down at the little figure.

"I might ask you the same question."

"Oh, I'm working. This is a busy night for me." Then Durand's face lighted. "What do you suppose I've got to do to-night?"

Jules knocked the ashes of his cigarette against the edge of the table. "Now, do you mean? I can't imagine. You're always doing impossible things."

"I'm going to interview the little acrobat."

Jules came very near jumping. He controlled himself, however, and carelessly lifted the cigarette to his lips again.

"What little acrobat?" he asked, screwing his eyes.

"The one you saw last night – at the Cirque– the Cirque Parisien."

"Oh, Mademoiselle – Mademoiselle – what's her name – the one who dives from the top of the building?"

"Yes, Mademoiselle Blanche. When I went back to the office last night, I told old Bargy about her – cracked her up to the skies, and he swallowed the bait, and sent me round to interview her to-night. Ah, my dear boy, that's one of the advantages of being a newspaper man. It opens every door to you. Whenever I want to get acquainted with a pretty actress, I simply go and interview her."

He sat back in his seat and smiled and hummed a popular song, rapping the table with his fingers. The waiter came up and asked for his order.

"Two bocks!" said Durand, looking at Jules.

"No, no more for me. I haven't finished this yet." When the waiter went away, Jules glanced sleepily at the journalist. "You're a very lucky fellow, it seems to me. I should think it would be rather agreeable to know the pretty actresses."

Durand shrugged his shoulders. "Sometimes, yes – sometimes, no. Usually it spoils the illusion."

Jules stared thoughtfully at his bock. "Aren't you afraid you'll be disillusioned by Mademoiselle Blanche?"

"Oh, probably. They're all alike – when you come to know them. But there's something about her that made me think she might be a little different from the rest. At any rate, she's dev'lish pretty, isn't she?"

"Do you think so?" Jules asked, with a deprecating lift of the eyebrows.

"Think so! I know so! If you don't think so you must be hard to please."

"Oh, I thought she was pretty in her circus rig. I should like to see her out of the ring. They make up so, those women. You can't tell whether they're really pretty or not."

"Well, come around with me, and I'll introduce you. Then you can see for yourself."

Jules nearly jumped again, but his cigarette helped him to disguise the impulse. "I'm afraid I shall be in the way," he said, after a meditative puff.

Durand had seized the bock left on the table by the waiter, and was holding it over his head. When half the contents had disappeared, he smacked his lips and wiped them with his handkerchief. "Not at all. You'll help me draw her out. They say she does the shy-young-girl act; so she's hard to talk with. That seems to be a favorite pose of actresses nowadays."

Jules' heart was throbbing. He was afraid that Durand would discover his elation. So he tried to appear indifferent and cynical. Durand's cynicism amused him; yet in the journalist's presence he was always trying to imitate it.

When he had drained his bock, Durand stood up, surveyed with a professional eye the crowd at the tables, nodded to a few acquaintances, and made a sign to Jules that he was ready to go. It had ceased raining, but the sky was still leaden. The splendid portico of the Madeleine loomed out of the darkness, and the lights in the Boulevard des Capucines were gleaming faintly in the mist. They met few people as they walked toward the Opéra, but there was plenty of life around the theatres in the Boulevard des Italiens. When they reached the Cirque, Durand had a whispered consultation with the Control who sat in self-conscious dignity and evening dress at the desk near the main door. He referred the journalist to a short fat man with a white beard, lounging a few feet away, and Jules stood apart while the two had an animated talk. After a few moments, Durand made a sign to Jules to come up, and Jules found himself presented to Réju as "my confrère, Monsieur Jules Le Baron, of the Marseilles Gazette." Réju was very amiable, and Jules felt angry, though he could not help being amused by Durand's serene impudence.