‘My daughter is too good,’ he would say to his friends; ‘it is her virtue which keeps her back. If she vere like de rest of de vomen on your stage, it would be different—ah ciel, yes I De managers are in a conspiracy to give her bad parts and to break her leetel heart.’
And Mathilde herself was of the same opinion. Her face was quite worn and haggard with brooding over her professional wrongs, her heart torn daily by the success of her rivals and the real or fancied neglect of the public. Once or twice a week she had violent fits of hysteria, during which she would think and talk of suicide. Recovering from these, she would eat a hearty dinner and drink large quantities of bottled stout—to which she was very partial, chiefly because it was said to be fattening, and her enemies in the stalls considered her too lean.
In the eyes of Madeline, who had hitherto only known the coarse beauties of Grayfleet, Mathilde was a vision of loveliness. The child loved colour and splendour and beauty, and Mathilde seemed to represent all these. The actress’s bedroom, too, was like a palace of enchantment, with its delicate rose-coloured curtains, its white French bed and bedding, its bright carpet, and its delicious perfumes.
Mathilde was not particularly fond of children, but homage from any one pleased her, and thus it happened that Madeline became a constant visitor in the sanctuary. When, one day, Mathilde opened her wardrobe and showed all her magnificent costumes, both those she used in private life and those she reserved for the theatre, the bliss of the sight was almost too much to bear. It was like a glimpse of heaven itself!
So the weeks passed away, and the new strange life was growing gradually familiar. The thought of the little Grayfleet home was still bright in the child’s mind, and every night she said a prayer that Uncle Luke had taught her, and every night she cried when she went over the beloved names, but her spirit was kindled into a new kind of feverish activity, such as she had never been conscious of before.
In the course of her daily visits to the studio, where even the misanthropic Judas, as he had been profanely christened on account of his forbidding aspect, now gave her a welcome, she saw many things which awakened her wonder. Her previous ideas of Art had been chiefly connected with house-decoration and sign-painting, and she marvelled much at the creations on canvas of young Mr. Cheveley. For White she soon contracted a passionate affection, which deepened into idolatry when the good-natured Bohemian began, in his idle moments, to teach her to draw.
The quickness with which she learned the rudiments of this accomplishment reminded White that her general education was being neglected altogether.
‘My dear,’ he said to her one afternoon, 41 think I shall have to send you to school.’
She was standing at his side, looking over his shoulder, as he ‘touched up’ for her a picture of a house which reeled to one side like the leaning tower at Pisa, a tree or two like inverted mops, and a very shabby-looking bridge.
She looked at him right in the eyes, which was her custom.