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Read books online » Fiction » The Maid of Maiden Lane by Amelia E. Barr (adventure books to read TXT) 📖

Book online «The Maid of Maiden Lane by Amelia E. Barr (adventure books to read TXT) 📖». Author Amelia E. Barr



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When questioned further she answered, ‘I adore Liberty, I believe in France, I married a Frenchman, for Thomas Jefferson told me I was coming to a great nation and might trust both its government and its generosity.’ They asked her then if she had been used kindly in prison, and she told them her jailor had been to her very unkind, and that he had taken from her the pearl necklace which was her wedding gift, and if you can believe Arenta, they were all extremely polite to her, and gave her at once the papers which permitted her to leave France. The next day a little money she got from Minister Morris, but a very hard passage she had home. And listen now, her jailor was guillotined before she left, and she declares it was the necklace—very unfortunate beads they were, and Madame Jacobus said when she heard of their fate, ‘let them go! With blood and death they came, it is fit they should go as they came!’ Arenta thinks as soon as Fouquier-Tinville heard of them, he doomed the man, for she saw in his eyes that he meant to have them for himself. Well, then, she is also sure that they will take Fouquier-Tinville to the guillotine.”

“After all, it was a lie she told, Joris.”

“That is so, but I think her life was worth a few words. And Thomas Jefferson says she was ten thousand times welcome to the protection his name gave her. I thank my God I have never had such temptation. I will say one thing though, Lysbet, that if coming home some night, a thief should say to me ‘your money I must have’ and if in my pocket I had some false money, as well as true money, the false money I would give the thief and think no shame to do it. Overly righteous we must not be, Lysbet.”

“I am astonished also. I thought Arenta would cry out and that only.”

“What a man or a woman will do and suffer, and how they will do and suffer, no one knows till comes some great occasion. When the water is ice, who could believe that it would boil, unless they had seen ice become boiling water? All the human heart wants, is the chance.”

“As men and women have in Paris to live, I wonder me, that they can wish to live at all! Welcome to them must be death.”

“So wrong are you, Lysbet. Trouble and hardship make us love life. A zest they give to it. It is when we have too much money, too much good food and wine, too much pleasure of all kinds, that we grow melancholy and sad, and say all is vanity and vexation. You may see that it is always so, if you look in the Holy Scriptures. It was not from the Jews in exile and captivity, but from the Jews of Solomon’s glory came the only dissatisfied, hopeless words in the Bible. Yes, indeed! it is the souls that have too much, who cry out vanity, vanity, all is vanity! For myself, I like not the petty prudencies of Solomon. There is better reading in Isaiah, and in the Psalms, and in the blessed Gospels.”

“To-morrow, Joris, I will go and see Arenta. She is fair, and she knows it; witty, and she knows it; of good courage, and she knows it; the fashion, and she knows it; and when she speaks, she speaks oracles that one must believe, even though one does not understand them. To Aurelia Van Zandt she said, my heart will ache forever for my beloved Athanase, and Aurelia says, that her old lover Willie Nicholls is at her feet sitting all the day long—yet for all these things, she is a brave woman and I will go and see her.”

“Willie Nicholls is a good young man, and he is rich also; but of him I saw nothing at all. Cornelia Moran was there and no flower of Paradise is so sweet, so fair!”

“A very proud girl! I am glad she said ‘no’ to my Joris.”

“Come, my Lysbet, we will now pray and sleep. There is so much NOT to say.”







CHAPTER XIII — THE NEW DAYS COME

One afternoon in the late autumn Annie was sitting watching Hyde playing with his dog, a big mastiff of noble birth and character. The creature sat erect with his head leaning against Hyde, and Hyde’s arm was thrown around his neck as he talked to him of their adventures on the Broad that day. Annie’s small face, though delicate and fragile looking was full of peace, and her eyes, soft, deep and heavenly, held thoughts that linked her with heaven.

Outside there was in the air that November feeling which chills like the passing breath of death, the deserted garden looked sad and closed-in, and everywhere there was a sense of the languishing end of the year, of the fading and dropping of all living things. But in the house Annie and Hyde and the dog sat within the circle of warmth and light made by the blazing ash logs, and in that circle there was at least an atmosphere of sweet content. Suddenly George looked up and his eyes caught those of Annie watching him. “What have you been reading, Annie?” he asked, as he stooped forward and took a thin volume from her lap. “Why!” he cried, “‘tis Paul and Virginia. Do you indeed read love stories?”

“Yes. The mystery of a love affair pleases every one; and I think we shall not tire of love stories till we tire of the mystery of spring, or of primroses and daffodils. Every one I know takes their tale of love to be quite a new tale.”

“Love has been cruel to me. It has made a cloud on my life that will help to cover me in my grave.”

“You still love Cornelia?”

“I cannot cure myself of a passion so hopeless. However, as I see no end to my unhappiness, I try to submit to what I cannot avoid. What is the use of longing for that which I have no hope to get?”

“My uncle grows anxious for you to marry. He would be glad to see the succession of Hyde assured.”

“Oh, indeed, I have no mind to take a wife. I hear every day that some of my acquaintance have married, I hear of none that have done worse.”

“You believe nothing of what you say. My uncle was much pleased with Sarah Capel. What did you think of the beauty?”

“Cornelia has made all other women so indifferent to me, that if I cannot marry her, my father may dispose of me as he chooses.”

“Cannot you forget Cornelia?”

“It is impossible. Every day I resolve to think of her no more, and then I continue thinking; and every day I am more and more in love with her. Her very name moves me beyond words.”

“There is no name, George, however sweet and dear, however lovingly spoken, whose echo does not at last grow faint.”

“Cornelia will echo in my heart as long as my heart beats.”

Then they were silent, and Hyde drew his dog closer and watched the blaze

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