That very day, either with or without her consent, Madeline Hazlemere
was made Madeline Belleisle; at least, a certain form of marriage
was gone through, in the presence of Madame de Fontenay and several
strangers, and before a person in the habit of a priest. Madeline had
now no power to resist, for the influence of some strange opiate was
upon her--dulling all her senses, and making the first few days of her
married life pass in a sort of dream.
They travelled for a couple of days; then paused, and lived for a week
or so in some quaint little village by the sea. Where it was Madeline
did not know; she had not even energy enough to inquire; unresisting,
uncomplaining, she was led about like a lamb going to the slaughter.
In the morning she walked along the sands by the Frenchman’s side, and
dreamily watched the fashionable Parisian bathers disporting themselves
in the waves; then she returned home to spend the rest of the day with
Madame de Fontenay (who, for some mysterious reason, had never once left
the married pair), while Monsieur Belleisle betook himself to the café
to spend his evenings in his own favourite way.
It could not be expected that the days would continue to glide thus
smoothly along; nevertheless the peace was broken rather sooner than one
would have anticipated. One morning, as Madeline rose from the breakfast
table and put on her hat for a stroll along the sands, her husband laid
his hand upon her arm and drew her into her seat again.
‘Madeline, _mon amie!_ he said in his blandest tone, ‘I wish to arrange
with you concerning our domestic life. I should have wished the first
advance to come from you; but since that cannot be, since you take so
little interest in our _menage_ as to be indifferent to it, it is time
for me to speak.’
The girl sat quietly where she had been placed, and fixed her eyes sadly
upon the Frenchman. He had used her like a villain, but for the moment
the part which he had played was partially or entirely forgotten. She
thought only of the man who had first awakened romance within her. Had
Monsieur Belleisle spoken kindly, had he infused into his tone and words
one-half the tenderness which at one time he had at his command, she
might have thrown herself into his arms, with tears of tenderness and
sorrow; but his manner chilled her, and her rising tears were checked by
the presence of Madame de Fontenay, who sat in the room quietly watching
and waiting.
Madeline remained silent; so the Frenchman spoke again--
‘How do you suppose,’ said he, ‘that we are to live, my dear?’
Still Madeline was dumb--what could he mean by asking her such a
question?
‘You will write,’ continued Monsieur Belleisle--‘write at once, for
enough time has been wasted, to your English guardian--M’sieur White, I
think you have called him--and ask him to send you two hundred pounds.’
Still Madeline stared in silence. She was not thinking of the Frenchman
now. All her present surroundings faded away, and she saw only the
pleasant little studio in St. John’s Wood, with the dearly beloved
figure of White standing amidst his brushes, canvas, and paints. But he
was not looking genially about him, as she had so often seen him do; his
eyes were fixed with a look of sad reproach upon the painted face of a
gipsy-like girl of ten, and his voice cried out with a ring of terrible
sorrow--
‘Madeline--my little Madeline!’
The girl saw and heard, and in her anguish she dropped her face in her
hands and burst into a passionate flood of tears.
They were the first tears she had shed since her marriage. The storm had
been long in bursting; but now its violence was intense. For a time she
remained utterly prostrated by her sorrow; when she raised her head she
saw that the Frenchman was calmly looking on..
‘Is it over?’ he asked.
Madeline did not answer him; she stifled her sobs, dried her eyes, and
walked over to the window. The Frenchman followed her with his eyes.
‘You are longing for your morning walk, my wife,’ he said; ‘_eh bien_,
write the letter and you shall go.’
‘I cannot write the letter, M’sieur Belleisle.’
‘Then give me the address of M’sieur White, and I will do so for you,
_mon amie_.’
‘If your only object in writing is to get money,’ remarked Madeline
quietly, ‘you may save yourself the trouble, M’sieur--I do not think Mr.
White has two hundred pounds in the whole world.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just what I say, M’sieur.’
‘That M’sieur White is a poor man?’
‘Very, very poor----
‘And yet he sent you to the pension of Madame Collemache, and you spread
the report in Millefleurs that your English guardian was a great artist
and a rich man.’
‘I am sure I did not spread any such report. Mr. White pinched himself
to pay for my schooling, and I have repaid him by--by----’
She paused, for Belleisle suddenly interposed with an exclamation so
brutal, so coarse and savage, that she stared at him in a new terror.
The outburst over, he sank into a chair, looking positively livid. What
could Madeline say or do? She did not know. She stood staring stupidly
at the Frenchman until he spoke again. He rose and came towards her,
hissing his words through his teeth.
‘If M’sieur White has no money, if you have no money, why then did you
run away from your school and marry _me?_’
‘I ran away from school because I was a foolish, ungrateful, headstrong
girl, M’sieur, and I married you because you used cowardly, cruel means
and forced me to do so!’
The Frenchman laughed, stretching his long thin mouth from ear to ear.
‘I force you to marry me, and make you a martyr, I suppose?--that
is very good. But hear the truth from me, Madame--and unless you are
careful, all the world shall know it too. I marry you simply out of
pity. I am seduced by you to carry you off from school, and then, out
of pity for you, I marry you and save you; yes, I sacrifice myself by
taking a wife whose fame is gone--and then, when I look for a little
help from you, you say “I give you none-----“’
He ended with an expletive which made the girl’s cheek burn with shame,
and brought her trembling to her feet, with wrathful flame in her great
blue eyes. For a moment he shrank before her.
‘Do not try grand airs with _me_. Madame--you had better think how you
are to live!----’ and, with another oath, he hurriedly left the room.
All this while Madame Fontenay had kept her seat; but though her body
had been inactive, her tongue silent, her eyes had done enough for all.
During the whole of the preceding interview they had been fixed with
calm, cold scrutiny on Madeline’s face. She had noted every flush on her
cheek, every curve of the lip, every look that was shot from the tearful
eyes; finally, her cold grey orbs were fixed more steadily than ever
upon the girl as she stood watching the door which had just been closed
upon the enraged husband.
‘Mon Dieu!’ mentally exclaimed Madame de Fontenay, ‘the girl is superb,
is magnificent--a face like that should be fortune enough for any man!’
She rose from her seat and went over to Madeline.
‘My poor child,’ she said, ‘this is your first quarrel, let us hope
it will be your last. Emile Belleisle is a fool and a brute this
morning--but he is not always so. Do not grieve, _ma chère_, or your
good looks will leave you. I will reprove him for his insolence, and
he--well, he shall make amends!’ and she followed her accomplice,
leaving Madeline alone.
For a time the girl stood, moveless, speechless, comprehending only in a
dull, stupefied manner the reality of all that had passed. Her eyes were
tearless, her lips firmly set together, but her hands were trembling and
cold as death. She seemed to see the Frenchman’s face before her, she
seemed to hear his words; then again there came to her the pitiful
refrain from the man whose heart she feared to have broken--
‘Madeline--my little Madeline!’
Again she sank down, crying--ah, what a relief she found in those tears!
When they subsided her brain began to work, and she wondered what she
must do.
Up to that moment she had sometimes pitied Monsieur Belleisle, if she
could not love him. But that was all over; he had slain her pity, and he
had not awakened affection. She knew now why the man wooed her, carried
her off from school, and by force married her--he fancied her a rich
heiress, a girl who would enable him to renounce his slavery of
teaching and live in luxury all his days. Had this indeed been the
case, Belleisle would have made a tolerably quiet husband; the sudden
darkening of his daydreams had turned him into a devil.
Again Madeline thought ‘What shall I do?’ but the answer would not shape
itself. The idea of writing to White repelled her, for she remembered
the letter which she had sent to him little more than three weeks
before--a letter overflowing with eulogiums upon Monsieur Belleisle. She
could not write yet--rather let White think her dead than alive to cause
him further sorrow. She had made her own bed; come what may, she would
lie on it alone.
So she sat, half crying, listening in a vague dreamy way to the traffic
in the village street, when the room door suddenly opened, and Monsieur
Belleisle returned. At his entrance she raised her head; at the sight of
her tormentor she dropped it again, and coldly turned away. He did not
approach her--he walked about the room for some minutes; then he sat,
and there was silence. How still the room was! Madeline could hear the
beating of her heart; her breath came fast and thick: her hands were
growing clammily cold; anger, self-pity, resentment, were struggling in
her breast, but her quivering lips would not open.
She looked round the room. There sat the Frenchman in his easy-chair,
with his eyes fixed gloomily upon the empty hearth. She rose to leave
the room; in a moment the man sprang forward and stood in humiliation
before her.
‘Madeline, my wife--will you forgive me?’
The girl looked at him in blank amazement. She could not answer him, and
he continued--
‘I am a passionate man--I have an uncontrollable temper, but I am not
slow to say I am wrong--forgive me, my Madeline, I have wronged you.’
As he spoke he stretched forth both his hands, but she instinctively
shrank away. It was well that she could not see the expression of his
face as she did so. He bowed before her, and spoke again.
‘_Eh bien!_’ he said softly--so softly, so meltingly, she could hardly
bring herself to believe it to be the same man who had insulted her a
little before. ‘_Eh bien_, I deserve that you should shrink from me,
but now I will make amends for my brutal conduct, and you shall try to
forget, _chérie_.’
If Madeline had been herself she might have remembered that it was in
this very guise of humility that Monsieur Belleisle came to her when
he had determined upon doing her the greatest wrong which she had ever
received in her life; but she was a mere child, and did not remember;
the agonising hours spent in the hotel at Fécamp were for the moment
forgotten, and the Frenchman spoke on.
Ah, yes, his offence had been great; but he determined to make full
reparation. He admitted that he was sorry to find that he had wed a
penniless wife, but his sorrow was gone, his anger overcome; he declared
now that his wife possessed attributes which money could not buy, and
the want of money, save that it might deprive _her_ of certain luxuries,
troubled him not at all. This, then, was his purposed reparation, that
Madeline should go to her room and spend the day in resting; that,
subsequently, she should array herself in evening costume and accompany
her Emile to a pleasant dinner, and go to a place of entertainment
afterwards.
Poor Madeline looked at the man in stupefied amazement. Whether or not
he was straightforward and honest she could not tell, nor did she pause
to inquire; she gave a trembling consent to all his wishes, and passed
alone up to her room.
How quiet it was there! What a blessed relief from the presence of her
tormentor. She poured some eau de Cologne on her forehead, threw herself
on the cool white bed, and closed her aching eyes. How long she lay thus
she did not know; the next thing she was conscious of was a knock at the
door--then a maid entered, hearing some biscuits and a glass of wine.
She informed Madeline that Monsieur had sent this refreshment to Madame,
as he feared that the long day’s fast would make her faint for the
evening; she bore also, from Monsieur, a small three-cornered note,
which Madeline laid aside until the girl had quitted the room, when she
proceeded to acquaint herself with the contents.
_My own little wife--my beautiful Madeline [thus wrote Monsieur
Belleisle, in his own language], if you wish to please me--although I
am not worthy your forbearance--still, sweet one, if you can forgive me,
and will try to please me, you will make yourself look tonight divinely
fair. There are many fair faces in this place--many will meet us
to-night, but I wish my wife to be without a rival in the loveliness
which is hers! Your own_
_Emile._
Madeline read the letter twice, crumpled it in her hand, and threw it
aside. She drank the wine which had been sent to her, and ate a biscuit;
then, feeling somewhat refreshed and a good deal clearer in the head,
she reviewed in her mind the exact state of affairs.
Her first impulse that morning had been to leave her husband, to travel
back to England and throw herself on the compassion of Mr. White. She
knew that he would forgive her, kiss her, cry over her, and, looking
a little saddened perhaps, take her to his hearth, as he had once done
before. But now her common sense told her that a _husband_ could not
be disposed of so readily. It was quite evident to her that Monsieur
Belleisle, despite his violent words in the morning, did not wish to
resign the bride he had taken so much trouble to win. If she were to
return to her home, he might seek her out, and force her to return to
him--or if she hid herself, he would be quite capable in his anger of
making public such a story as would shame her for ever. The affair would
be raked up for public comment, and the woman would be martyred, the man
made a hero--as usual. Mrs. Grundy would hold up her hands in horror at
the idea of a girl, still in her teens, forcing her music master to run
away with her.
Yes, the case would always stand so, for Madeline could not even urge
in palliation of her act of desertion the fact of cruelty. Belleisle
had spoken harshly, to be sure, but then how many husbands often did the
same, and how few of them had the good taste to make so humiliating an
apology? Perhaps after all he loved her in his own peculiar fashion, and
if he was willing to atone, why the best thing she could do was to meet
him half way, and, if she could not be happy, to try at least and be
content.
She looked at her watch; five o’clock. How quickly, and yet how wearily,
the day had gone by! How white, how haggard, and old she looked! And he
wanted her to eclipse the Parisian ladies who had come down to revive
their beauty by the sea. She did not know that she had already done so,
that during her daily walks on the seashore she had several times been
pointed out as ‘the beautiful Mademoiselle Anglaise,’ whose sad eyes had
unconsciously touched many hearts, and whose story many were guessing
at, but no one knew.
At last she shook off her apathy, and tried to forget her sorrow. If she
must appear in public she would not disgrace herself or her nation. She
gave no thought to Monsieur Belleisle, but she rubbed her pale cheeks
until the roses came, and then threw open the doors of her wardrobe to
select a dress for that evening’s wear.
‘Select a dress!’ How farcial it seemed! Belleisle had spoken truly when
he said that he had wed a beggar. The only dress which was at all fit
for her to wear was one which had been presented to her by himself some
two days after their marriage--a dress of black silk, very youthful in
cut, displaying very freely her throat, neck, shoulders, and arms, and
fastening in at the waist with an amber girdle--a dress Greek in design,
French in the arrangement of colours, and looking most bewitching when
draped about the figure of the sad-eyed English girl; whose arms were
so round and white, whose shoulders so graceful and be fair, and
whose whole appearance was pretty enough to subdue the most inveterate
woman-hater in the world.
Arrayed in her simple dress the child stood before the mirror well
pleased with herself.
‘I should like dear, kind, good Mr. White to see me now,’ she said to
herself. ‘I should like just now to run into the dear old studio in St.
John’s Wood, without letting Timothy announce me, as he did once before,
and throw my arms round my dear old guardian’s neck.’
A knock came to the door.
‘Madeline, _mon amie_, forgive me for interrupting you,’ said Madame de
Fontenay, advancing slowly into the room; ‘I knocked twice and you did
not answer me, so I thought you must be sleeping.’
Madeline bit her lip, pretended to arrange some stray locks of her hair,
but said nothing.
‘_Ma foi_,’ continued the widow, ‘but you look charming; add this
diamond and your toilette will be complete.’ As Madeline turned to face
the widow, she started on seeing that she too wore evening dress.
Madame de Fontenay looked more motherly, more thoroughly saddened with
respectability, than ever she had been before. She wore a dress of
heavy widow’s mourning--composed of silk, crape, and jet; a widow’s cap,
composed of three pretty folds, crowned her wavy masses of glittering
grey hair.
‘Do you go with us to-night, Madame?’
‘Emile has done me the honour to ask me, and I have consented. I trust
my presence will not be unpleasant to you, my child.’
For a moment Madeline did not reply. She disliked Madame de Fontenay,
and yet she feared her. She knew that the widow had been instrumental in
marrying her to Monsieur Belleisle, and, not content with that, had kept
with them, watching as the hawk watches the dove the poor victim whom
she had caught, and frequently preventing by her very presence, anything
like a proper understanding between man and wife. And Madeline had a
repulsion for the woman. She felt that she was the Frenchman’s evil
genius, ready to pander to his passions, and counteract any inclination
he might have towards nobility and goodness. Still the pale widow’s star
was in the ascendant just then, and Madeline was powerless. She felt it
would be unwise to make an open enemy of Madame; at any rate until she
had won over her accomplice. So she parried the question politely, and
fixed her eyes on the case which Madame held in her hand.
‘Diamonds, did you say, for me, Madame? I thought Monsieur Belleisle was
poor?’
‘So he was a week ago, but now he gives you these--put them on, my
child--and hurry down, for Emile is waiting;’ and without saying more
she quitted the room.
Madeline opened the case which the widow had left behind her, and looked
in surprise at the contents. Three diamond stones for the hair, a ruby
band for the neck, and a fragile diamond bracelet for the arm.
She put them on, and, throwing a thin lace scarf over her shoulders, ran
down stairs.
She found Monsieur Belleisle waiting for her, clad also in becoming
evening dress, and looking handsomer than she had ever seen him look
before. He glanced at her approvingly from head to foot, kissed her, and
led her to a carriage, which was waiting at the door, and which already
held Madame de Fontenay. As soon as they were seated the horses moved
off; whither, Madeline did not know. A drive of a few minutes brought
them to the door of a brilliantly lighted building. The horses were
pulled up; Monsieur Belleisle alighted, handed out Madame de Fontenay,
then tenderly lifted Madeline in his arms and put her on the ground. He
placed her hand upon his arm and led her forward--through a great lobby,
and finally into a room where some two hundred people were seated at
dinner.
The entrance of the three last guests attracted a good deal of
attention. Madeline, still holding her husbands arm, and led by him down
one side of the long room and up the other, began to blush and cast down
her eyes in confusion, for she felt herself rapidly becoming the centre
of observation.
At length places were found, and they commenced dinner. Again Madeline
was confused and abashed, not by the public gaze this time, but by the
assiduous attentions of her husband and Madame de Fontenay. They treated
her if she were some princess, who condescended when she smiled upon
them and did them honour when she spoke. The girl was more troubled than
ever, but she no longer tried to solve the strange problem. She received
the homage of her husband with becoming gentleness, and ate her dinner
as contentedly as she could under the circumstances.
Dinner over, Monsieur Belleisle rose, offered Madeline his arm, and,
with much bustle and turmoil, conducted her from the room--the pallid
widow following. Again she felt herself the centre of attraction, and,
feeling less abashed, she held up her head with becoming grace and
confidence, and swept her bright eyes along the ranks of flushed,
admiring faces.
‘My dear Madeline,’ said Monsieur Belleisle to her that night, ‘it
is not always a rich wife who brings happiness to a man. I married a
treasure when I married _you, chérie_.’ To the widow he said, when the
two were closeted alone--
‘What say you to our plan now, Madame?’
‘What I said before. The girl has beauty enough to send Paris mad, if
she remains in the hands of a careful master.’