The Martyrdom of Madeline

by Robert Williams Buchanan

Now the good man, though he had the perennial heart of a boy, was not young. Time, which had dealt gently with his disposition, had thinned his once flowing hair, made his limbs feeble, and set many a crowsfoot under his kindly eyes. Nor where the habits of the Bohemia he still inhabited favourable to longevity. The small hours always found him up, at work or play, and he saw little of the early sunshine. He was always behindhand with his work, always working against time; feeding irregularly, and at unreasonable hours; drinking, alas! more than was good for him, and even consuming that nicotine which would destroy even a Promethean liver. He had saved nothing, so that rest was denied him; and indeed he could not have rested, for he loved labour, in the old, reckless, perfunctory, Bohemian way. His old friends had gradually drifted away from him, died and been buried, or passed up to those shining social heights where dress suits and white linen are provided for aspiring pilgrims. Even managers of theatres, grown genteel too, pitied him. ‘Poor White,’ they would say; ‘he is such a Bohemian!’ So that his occupation partly failed him Good old blank-verse plays were no longer in demand. Brand-new adaptors, fresh from picking the pockets of French authors in Parisian forays, splashed him with the wheels of their triumphal chariots; gorgeous Jew entrepreneurs shook their heads at him. ‘Vat ve vant now, my boy, is realism; plenty of swell clothes, and upholstery, and last cackle; the public don’t vant poetry, and as for blank verse, it ventilates de theatre. They’ll stand Shakespeare now and then, especially when Eugene Aram does it, because it’s genteel; but all de rest of de drama comsh from France.’ In his anxiety to suit the market he too tried pocket-picking, but he lacked the deft rapidity and supreme impudence of the dramatic thief by profession. He took too much trouble with work of this kind, and the public found it old-fashioned.

So it came to pass that from one reason and another, whether because he was physically tired out or intellectually weary of a race in which he was unevenly handicapped, White began to show signs of failing health. Once or twice he took to his bed with some trifling ailment, and on each occasion so weak were his bodily powers that he found it hard work to get up again. He himself attached no importance to those indications of weakness; he was as cheerful to outward seeming, as sanguine, and as full of magnificent ‘subjects,’ as ever. He still sketched out tragedies which no one would produce on such pert subjects as ‘Semiramis,’ ‘Julian the Apostate,’ and ‘Boadicea,’ and infinitely laboured comedies full of the spirit of the Restoration. His style was still that of the last decadence, when Lalor Shiel was a genius and Sheridan Knowles a prophet. He still clung to the superstition which placed Bulwer Lytton in the pantheon of tinsel divinities. But the game was all over. Et ille in Bohemia fuit, that was all.

One night, or rather early one morning, he came home to the old studio in St. John’s Wood, evidently under the influence of violent fever. He had caught cold, he thought, at the wings of the Duchess’s Theatre, and, though he had tried the panacea of hot whisky and water, applied in allopathic doses, it had only seemed to make him worse. He went to bed, and the next day he was unable to rise.

When Madeline went to his bedside she was shocked at his appearance. He looked haggard and old, the great veins on his temple were blue and swollen, and he gasped like one who could hardly get his breath. The ghost of his old smile came to his face as he reached out his trembling hands, which were hot as fire.

‘Don’t be alarmed, my dear,’ he said cheerily, but in a strange, faint voice. ‘I’m not quite myself, but I shall be all right presently. I think it’s the effect of Burnard’s jokes. He was at the “Harum-Scarum” last night, so I’m afraid I partook too freely of pun-salad, which is worse than the nightmare-producing lobster.’

He tried to laugh, but the laugh died away into a moan, and he sank back upon his pillow.

Later on in the day the symptoms became so alarming that a physician was sent for. He made light of the patient’s condition, but wrote him a prescription, and ordered him to be kept as quiet as possible.

Within the next twenty-four hours the symptoms became manifestly those of low or gastric fever. Madeline wrote a hurried line for Forster, who came almost immediately, accompanied by the celebrated Dr. Tain, well known for his kindness to literary men. The good doctor looked somewhat grave, but expressed his opinion that the case would yield to treatment.

From that time forward Madeline scarcely left her guardian’s bedside, ministering to him with infinite tenderness and care. The fever ran its course for fourteen days, during several of which White was more or less insensible. On the morning of the fourteenth day he opened his eyes, saw Madeline seated by his bedside, and smiled brightly.

‘Are you there, my dear?’ he asked. ‘I was dreaming about you. I thought you were a little girl again, and I—dear me, how weak I feel! Have I been very ill?’