But only a few days later, as White sat alone in the studio working
at the scenario of a new play, the door was thrown open and in rushed
Madeline. Her hair was dishevelled, her dress disordered, her whole face
distorted with passion. Before he had time to speak she threw herself on
a sofa and burst into an agony of tears.
‘Madeline!’ he cried, bending over her, ‘what is the matter? Why are you
not at school?’
For a time there was no answer, but at last, between the sobs, the girl
spoke--
‘Oh! take me home; let me go back to Grayfleet!’
White took her hand softly, and spoke to her soothingly, but his
gentleness only made her worse. At last he yielded to his irritation and
insisted on an explanation.
Drying her eyes she sat up and looked at him, and he was startled by the
white determination in her delicate face.
‘Why are you not at school?’ he repeated.
‘Because I’ve left, and I’ll never go back to school again.’
‘Madeline!’
‘It’s true, and I want to go home, I won’t stay here, and I won’t go
back to school.’
‘But what has happened?7
Madeline gave a wild hysterical laugh, and her face assumed an
expression of exultation.
‘I struck her in the face, Mr. White, and I pulled down her hair, and
when she saw I was angry she was frightened and screamed. If I had been
stronger, I would have killed her--I would! I would!’
Completely perplexed by this enigmatical tirade, White quietly took his
hat and walked off to the young ladies’ seminary, which was only a few
streets away. Arrived there, he found everything in commotion and the
lady superintendent highly indignant.
It appeared, on explanation, that Madeline, for some reason unexplained,
had, during the midday play hour, made a savage attack upon a young lady
of sixteen, a parlour boarder excellently connected; had sprung upon her
with fury, scratched her face, and had clung to her until torn away by
force. The superintendent’s mind was made up: Madeline must not return
to the school.
‘She is a very violent child. I have again and again had to rebuke
her for fits of passion. I have now discovered, moreover, that her
connections are not what I should wish in members of my seminary.
Miss de Castro, whom she assaulted, is a sweet girl, incapable of
provocation. Her papa is in the India Office. She is niece of Sir
Michael de Castro, late Governor of Chickerabad, and I cannot have her
assaulted by a common child.’
White stared silently at the lady, and without a word strode back to
the studio. There, with a severity unusual to him, he demanded a
full explanation. He thus learned that the _fons et origo_ of all the
mischief was Uncle Luke’s letter. By some accident it had fallen from
Madeline’s bosom and been picked up by Miss de Castro. That ‘sweet girl’
had read it through to a group of the elder pupils, doing full justice
to the orthography, and mimicking, as far as she could imagine them, the
living manners of the writer. In the midst of her amusement, Madeline
had appeared and demanded her property, which Miss de Castro immediately
thrust behind her back, while she indulged in a series of witticisms at
the expense of Madeline and all her relations, especially the country
correspondent. This was enough. Almost before she herself knew it
Madeline was at her throat, and in a white heat of passion. The sweet
girl screamed. Madeline was torn away and thrust violently out of the
school-yard gate, but not before she had recovered her uncle’s letter
and thrust it into her bosom. Then she had flown home.
White was greatly perplexed how to act. In his secret heart he sided
with the child, and cursed the cruelty of ignorance and caste; but he
nevertheless perceived that fits of passion and violence were not to be
encouraged. So he frowned terribly, and read Madeline a long and stern
lecture on the wickedness of giving up to wrath.
She heard him out with great attention, and with her great eyes fixed
pathetically on his. At the conclusion of the harangue, she took out
Uncle Luke’s letter and quietly kissed it--then smiled faintly through
her tears at the thought of her wrongs. It was clear that she was quite
impenitent.
Madeline did not go back to school. For some months she remained at home
with the De Bernys; White, in his indolent way, postponing the question
of where she was to go next.
He was a good deal occupied at this time with the adaptation of a new
play which was being acted with great success at the Porte St. Martin,
and, as it was necessary to see the play represented by the French
actors, he spent some weeks in Paris. He discovered that by carefully
lopping the leading idea, making the chief female virtuous instead of
vicious, altering the scenes, and turning the moral upside down, he
could make the great drama pure enough for the sight of the British
playgoer. His English manager approved, sent him a small cheque on
account, and begged him ‘to do the trick’ as quickly as possible.
At this period, therefore, Madeline was thrown more and more into the
society of Mademoiselle Mathilde. That vision of loveliness found
the child useful, sent her on endless errands, made of her a sort of
companion in miniature, and extempore lady’s maid. Madeline was only too
delighted to serve and worship, and great was her joy when any of the
cast-off splendour fell to her share. One evening Madame de Berny took
her to the theatre, on the occasion of her daughter’s ‘benefit.’ There
was a serio-comedy in which Mathilde played the leading part, and a
burlesque to follow, in which (for that occasion only, for she generally
despised burlesque) she enacted a fairy prince. Madeline was entranced;
the spell of the footlights came upon her once and for ever.
That night, after they had returned home, and the Vision had supped well
on oysters and bottled stout, Madeline proffered a request which had
lately become a very common one with her,
‘Oh, Mamzelle, let me brush your hair!’
Mathilde took a sleepy sensuous pleasure in that part of her toilette,
and would sit by the hour together under the soothing manipulation of
the brush. So she let down her golden locks, and placed herself, with
her eyes half closed, before the mirror, while Madeline began her task,
prattling between whiles of the theatre, of all the wonders she had
seen, and of the longing that would possess her until she saw them
again.
‘I used to feel like you once,’ yawned Mathilde, ‘when I was a dear
little thing, with my hair growing down to my waist, and little satin
shoes on my feet, and Pa used to take me to the pantomimes. Ah, dear,
that’s over and done. I hate the theatre.’
‘You hate it, Mamzelle?’
‘Yes, and sometimes I hate Pa for ever letting me go nigh to it. I
suppose it all comes of Ma marrying a Frenchman; for Pa used to teach me
to say those long speeches in rhyme out of the French plays, and then
I got a taste for recitation. But I hate French now, and I hate the
theatre. It’s nothing but worry and vexation. There was only five pounds
ten in the stalls to-night besides the tickets Pa and Ma sold, and
the dress circle was not half full. Did you notice a dark fat man in a
private box, who threw a bouquet to Miss Harlington?’
‘Do you mean a gentleman with a hook nose, Mamzelle, and his fingers all
over big rings?’
‘Yes. Well, that was Isaacs, proprietor of the “Evening Scrutator.” A
nasty beast, always smelling of cigars and rum-and-water. He hates me
because I keep myself respectable, and he never suffers any one of his
critics to say a good word about me.’
‘Who are _they_, Mamzelle?’
‘The critics? Tomfools who write in the papers, and don’t know good
acting from bad, and if they did daren’t say so. Why, they praise Miss
Harlington--who played “Princess Pretty pet” in the burlesque!’
‘Oh, yes,’ cried Madeline, in rapture. ‘Her in the pink dress with the
spangles and the flowers in her hair. Oh, wasn’t she lovely, Mamzelle?’
Mathilde tossed her head under the brush, and flushed With virtuous
contempt.
‘A bandy-legged thing with a voice like a goat. Did you hear the
creature sing? I wonder they don’t hiss her off the stage. But the men
run after her, and she’s kept by an earl; and there she is every day in
her victoria, driving in the Row among real ladies, while I must go down
to rehearsal in the bus. It’s disgusting--that’s what it is. Do take
care. Madeline--you’re brushing it all the wrong way.’
She added as an afterthought, less in real consideration for her hearer
than as a parade of her own wrongs--
‘Never you be an actress, child. Sweep a crossing first, or serve behind
a counter, or do anything dreadful. The stage isn’t fit for any decent
person, and so I’ve told Pa and Ma a thousand times.’
From this and from many other similar conversations, and from several
subsequent visits to the theatre, both before and behind the scenes,
Madeline began to acquire a precocious insight into some of the
mysteries of life in London. She was clever and quick, and soon
understood as much as was comprehensible to so pure a child. Mathilde
de Berny, like many of her class, talked freely about things which might
well have been nameless, and never seemed to reflect that the listener
was so young. Fortunately, Madeline’s perfect innocence and simplicity,
combined with her real strength of character, kept her pure from taint;
but by slow degrees the glory was beginning to depart from the great
world of which she knew so little.
Not at all too soon White saw that Madeline was in danger of
degeneration. He was a shrewd fellow, and understood that Mathilde de
Berny, though a perfectly virtuous young woman, was not really the best
companion she could have found. It irritated him too, at last, to see
the child sinking into a mere appendage of the actress and general
drudge of the house.
‘I must get her away,’ he said to himself, ‘before they spoil her
altogether. They neglect her and impose upon her, and teach her things
she ought not to know. I don’t want Fred’s child to grow into a little
slattern, with the education, and perhaps the moral instinct, of a
ballet-girl. They make a small parasite of her, and she goes errands;
they’ve even got in the habit of sending her for the beer. I’ll put a
stop to it at once.’
The only way of putting a stop to it was to send Madeline to a
boarding-school; and this he ultimately determined to do. He had begun
to feel quite a paternal interest in her, and he was more and more
struck by her physical beauty and strong natural affection.
After seeking about for some time, and studying the advertising columns
of the daily newspapers, he discovered a quiet school at Merton, in
Surrey, under the superintendence of a very superior French lady. Hither
it was arranged that Madeline should go.
So, after a fond parting with White, Madeline repaired to the seminary
at Merton.
For a long time after her departure White was melancholy.
He missed her bright face and her loving ways; and so, in a less degree,
did his companion of the studio. But White was a busy man, part of a
busy world, and he had no time to be heartbroken about a little girl.
Every month or so he received a formal account of her doings, signed by
the superintendent, and still oftener a very effusive and loving letter
from Madeline herself. She appeared to have become resigned very rapidly
to the new conditions of her life; to be sanguine and full of promise;
and the official notes of her educational progress were flattering in
the extreme.
*****
At this point, our business with Madeline’s childhood ceases. We take
the dramatist’s licence, and at one leap pass over a period of several
years.
The school was in connection with a similar one in Normandy, and the
pupils had the advantage of being transferred, at a certain stage
of their progress, and at little additional expense, to the French
establishment. The superintendent was a sensible woman, and so White
told her the whole story.
It was presently decided that it would be for Madeline’s advantage to go
to France for a year, without seeing anything of White or any of her
new friends. She was still only a very rough diamond, and needed very
considerable polishing to make her approach perfection. A long
period spent in pleasant discipline, and with only the most refined
surroundings, was absolutely essential to her moral development. So at
least thought the lady superintendent; and White agreed.
On receiving the information that she was to be again transplanted,
Madeline was in high grief and dudgeon, for she had been thoroughly
happy with the De Bernys, and desired no better than to become again a
kind of Cinderella to the fair Mathilde.
During her residence at Merton Marmaduke White has been fairly well
satisfied with his ward. Beyond complaints of certain erratic habits,
and of her general disposition to act from passionate impulse, he had
heard little to her detriment, much to her credit.
He had seen her from time to time, and she had spent many of her
holidays at Willowtree Road.
From the tone of her letters, and from her words when they met, he
gathered that she was happy. She had gained the wish of her heart;
had learnt ‘French and music,’ as well as the other elegances which
constitute a good education.
So Madeline was sent to Normandy, with a contingent of young girls from
the school at Merton.
One day, when nearly eighteen months had elapsed since their last
meeting, White received a photograph from France. It represented a fair
maiden, with great wistful eyes, and a face of singular beauty.
At first he scarcely knew it; then he turned it over, and read in a bold
handwriting:--
_Madeline Hasleere, taken at Rouen on her 17th birthday._
‘Little Madeline!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why, she looks quite a woman!’
About a week after this event, Judas (now grown into a disjointed being
of seventeen or eighteen) entered with a telegram. White opened it,
and saw with astonishment that it was from Madame Brock, the lady
superintendent of the school at Merton.
Then he read as follows:--
_Please come down at once. I have had terrible news from Millefleurs._
_Your ward, Madeline Haslemere, has run away. I fear it is an elopement._