The Martyrdom of Madeline

by Robert Williams Buchanan

‘Don’t cry, Madame,’ said Madeline gently. ‘I think Marie is happy.’

‘Ah, Miss Madeline, how can I help grieving when I think of all my child has lost? To think that when she was rising so rapidly she could throw herself away upon a man who only betrayed her; that she should cause her father to die of a broken heart, and bring me to this!’ As Madeline listened she sank into a chair, and let her weary head rest upon her hands. Her face was paler than it had been before, and Madame de Berny looking at her saw that a look of terrible sadness, which she had often noticed before, was creeping again into her eyes.

‘Madeline, my dear,’ she said, ‘you at least ought to be happy.’

The girl raised her head and smiled, and the smile was even more pitiful to behold than the look of sadness had been.

‘Yes, you are right, Madame de Berny,’ she said, ‘I ought to be happy, so I will try to be from this night forth;’ and as if to avoid further conversation she passed out into the sitting-room, where she found White awaiting her with a look of contented happiness in his face.

Puzzled and thoughtful, the old lady saw her go. What was the matter with the girl? She could not tell. Some few months before that day, when, in answer to an appeal from her, White had offered her a home, with himself and ward, she had come full of her own troubles, expecting to find a bright-eyed vivacious beautiful girl to soothe and cheer her. But instead of being the comforted she became the comforter. The first sight of the girl rent her heartstrings. Could this be Madeline Hazelmere? Could this be the lissome blue-eyed child, who had been the very impersonation of happy impulse and joy? This woman with the pale cheeks and strange, sad eyes? Madame de Berny paused before her shattered vision, gave one prolonged look, and burst into tears.

‘Do not cry, dear Madame,’ Madeline had said, kindly taking her old friend affectionately in her arms; ‘the poor chevalier has gone from a world in which it is more terrible to live than to leave. I hope he has no memory of it—that at least he is at peace.’

Strange words, to come from a girl scarcely twenty years of age. They affected the Frenchwoman curiously at the time, and set her pondering afterwards.

The longer she remained with White the more she became impressed with the painful change that had taken place in Madeline. It was not that the child had become a woman, and had learnt to subdue her spirits to a sadder, more womanly tone; her soul was haunted by a memory which poisoned every pleasure which was lifted to her lips, and converted the world into a tomb. What the memory was, Madame could not understand, but she knew, whenever the girl’s prospects seemed brightest, it haunted her the most, and that on that night when she had shone forth upon the world, and made hundreds envy her, it seemed to loom before her eyes more terribly than ever.

For several days after that night when she had achieved her great theatrical triumph, Madeline was too much occupied with business to give much thought to herself. She seemed to be lifted on a whirlwind, and carried along in tumult—forgetting the past, thinking nothing of the future, and scarcely conscious even of the bewildering present.