Читать книгу Broad Arrow - Caroline Leakey - Страница 4

Table of Contents

MAIDA was the only child of a gentleman possessing a small country property in Essex. She lost her mother at an early age. She resembled her in beauty, virtues, and faults. Affectionate, firm, truthful, ardent and generous on the one hand; haughty, passionate and impulsive on the other. She quite governed her father, who was not strong-minded, but kind, generous, and well-educated. He very rarely controlled her in any thought, word, or deed; no wonder, therefore, that any change was distasteful to her. But when she was sixteen her father took her to a first-rate London school, to receive finishing lessons. With much weeping they separated.

Ay, there may well be weeping! Father, thou art sending a treasure from thy bosom; will it ever lie there more? The star of thy hope will set in a fearful eclipse.

Couldst thou look through time's far-seeing telescope, thou wouldst start at the blackened future before thy child. Thou wouldst see her noble purpose, her lofty heart, circumvented by a craft triumphant where strength had failed. We would fain hide from the father the sights this glass reveals. But you must peep in if you would understand the history that will follow.

Look; there is Maida, beaming her loveliest. Her eyes are radiant with joy, as she listens to a gentleman who is talking to her: what he says you cannot tell; there are those who know; let them tell who have learnt how to overcome artlessness with art.

Look again.

As a dissolving view the scene has changed, but the figures are the same. Maida is weeping. Her face depicts great mental agony--his face just such anxiety as a person would feel on seeing a long-sought treasure within hand-grasp.

Now a few sentences reach your ear.

'But why should not I tell my father? You are withholding a joy from him; you cannot know him if you think he would deny me--he never denied me anything; I must tell him, and he shall give me to you, Norwell.'

'No, he would not give you up, and you would be more miserable to do it after he had said nay. If he is so indulgent, he will forgive you. You shall have a letter written all ready to send directly the ceremony is over.'

You hear no more; the sound fades away with the view, which dissolves itself into a moonlight scene. A female in disguise leans on a gentleman's arm. They hurry by; you trace them to a railway-station; they enter a first-class carriage. The whistle is loud, shrill enough to meet your ear; they are whirled off, and the station melts into an upper chamber. But one figure is there--a female; her black hair flats over her shoulders--her eyes glisten; you have seen those eyes before; they glisten, not now with radiant joy; there is a fire in them that you fancy must scathe the object it shall rest upon. A cup is in her quivering hand; you glance involuntarily towards a phial on the table; there is a label on the phial, and on the label there are cross-bones and a skull; beneath the skull is written, in large black letters, 'Poison.'

Her lips seem to tremble forth a prayer; she dashes the cup from her with 'I will be no coward; he shall see I can endure life!'

You must supply the blanks in Maida's history; the blanks which these scenes leave. Happy are you if you cannot do so!

Three years have fled by. The sights that glass revealed as Future have for twelve months been the Past.

And Maida still lives on!