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.