The Martyrdom of Madeline. Robert Williams Buchanan

CHAPTER I.—A DANCING LESSON UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

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      Twelve years before the occurrence of the incident described in my prologue, a curious group was assembled in a quiet corner of Grayfleet Churchyard. Gray fleet is a damp, aguish, lonely, desolate village, on the verge of the great Essex marshes; and its old church, like a skull with two empty, lifeless eyes, gazes with two dreary windows right down on the marshes, towards that low-lying mist where they mingle with the sea.

      The group of which I have spoken consisted of some six girls and one little boy. The girls were of divers ages, from six to sixteen, and all were more or less smartly dressed in holiday clothes, for it was a Good Friday. They stood in a ring round a flat tombstone, grey with age, and green with slime of moss. On this tombstone a fair little girl of eight, with dishevelled hair and flushed cheeks, was practising the first steps of a dance. Her instructress was the eldest of the party, a pale, red-haired wench of sixteen, who watched her with keenly critical eyes, and at times stepped forward, took her place on the tombstone, and showed her how to use her feet.

      First position—heel and toe—cut and shuffle.

      ‘Lookee here, Mawther!’ cried one of the girls to a passer by. ‘Come and see Polly Lowther teaching Mark Peartree’s girl to dance.’

      Another girl came running into the churchyard, and joined the group.

      ‘That’s the style!’ exclaimed Polly Lowther, as the red-haired girl was called. ‘You’ll soon learn, if you only try. Look at me, Madlin. Watch my feet.’

      First position—heel and toe—cut and shuffle.

      The girls clapped their hands enthusiastically, and the little boy, who was sitting astride on a green grave, grinned approval.

      Fired by the applause bestowed on her teacher, the little fair girl—‘Madlin,’ as the others called her—began wildly practising the steps.

      First position—heel and toe—cut and shuffle.

      Suddenly there was a rush, a cry. The troop of girls scattered on every side and disappeared: the little boy cried and ran. Only ‘Madlin’ remained, so absorbed for the time being in her dancing that for a moment she did not notice that she was left alone, and that a tall figure in black, with white neckcloth, stood frowning at her.

      The next moment she was conscious of her predicament. Flushed and panting, she stood and gazed, and recognised to her horror the Rector of the parish.

      She gave one glance around, to see if she was quite abandoned, and then, seeing no trace of her companions, she curtsied timidly, and stood her ground.

      ‘Little girl,’ said the Rector, in a terrible voice, ‘I don’t know you—what is your name?’

      She hung her head awkwardly, and made no reply.

      ‘Do you hear me? What is your name?’

      The little girl raised her head, looked straight at the Rector, and answered in a clear voice—

      ‘If you please, sir, I’m Madlin—Mark Peartree’s girl.’

      The Rector’s brows came down still more.

      ‘Mark Peartree; I think I know the man—he lives down at the ferry, and sails in a barge. Is he your father?’

      The girl, who had a common straw hat swinging by the ribbon in her mouth, gnawed the ribbon, and replied shortly—

      ‘No, he ain’t.’

      ‘What is he, then?’ asked the Rector. ‘Some relation?’

      ‘No,’ was the immediate reply. ‘I call him uncle, but he isn’t a real uncle, nor Uncle Luke neither. I’m a foundling—Aunt Jane found me, out there!’

      And with a back sweep of her hand, the little girl indicated the great marshes, steaming and reddening in the setting sun.

      ‘And whoever you are, are you not aware,’ said the Rector, improving the occasion, ‘that you are a very wicked little girl? Upon this holy day of all days in the year I find you practising a vicious pastime here, in God’s own acre! On a tombstone! Little girl, do you know that there is a dead fellow-creature lying under you, and that you are profaning his place of rest?’

      The girl gave a start and a scared look downward, as if half expecting the dead man to arise and confront her; then half unconsciously she edged off the tombstone and stood ankle deep in the long churchyard grass.

      ‘I am afraid,’ said the Rector, shaking his forefinger at her. ‘I am really very much afraid that you have been very badly brought up. Tell me, have you ever heard the word of God? Do you ever go to church?’

      The answer was at any rate prompt and explicit.

      ‘No—never.’

      ‘Ah, I thought so. A sad case. And your father—I mean your adopted father—is he not ashamed of himself to bring you up in ignorance and sin?’

      This was touching rather a dangerous chord. The little girl flushed, panted, opened her large blue eyes full on the minister and exclaimed—

      ‘Uncle Mark isn’t ashamed of himself, no more is Uncle Luke! They go to their meeting, and I go too. They’re United Brethren, and when I grow up, I’m to be a Brethren too!9

      ‘Brethren!’

      This was said in a tone which clearly implied that their cup of moral delinquency, in the Rector’s eyes, was now full and overflowing. The good pastor could have endured a family which repudiated Christianity altogether, but any form of Dissent was worse even than the rankest blasphemy. It is doubtful what turn the interview would have taken, but just at this moment an unexpected diversion took place. A thin shrill voice, doubtless appertaining to one of the little girl’s late companions, suddenly pealed out, from some mysterious corner where its owner lay hidden—

      ‘Look out, Madlin! Here’s your Uncle Luke a-comin’!’

      Madeline looked startled; then, strange to say, her face grew quite bright and eager. The Rector seemed perplexed, and uncertain what to say next. Just then the gate of the churchyard opened, and a little man, with very short legs and a very large head, looked in, and seeing Madeline, quietly entered.

      ‘Uncle! Uncle Luke!’

      The little man nodded his head and smiled. Then, seeing the Rector, he took off his hat and grinned.

      It was a peculiarity of the little man that he expressed all thoughts and moods by means of a rather mindless smile, sometimes broadening into a grin. For the rest, he had large watery eyes and a large mouth, and his general appearance was homely and awkward in the extreme.

      By this time Madeline was at his side, holding his hand and looking up into his face.

      The Rector strode across the churchyard.

      ‘I have just been warning this child against dancing