“MARIE”

If Miss Heale could have watched Tom’s face as he read, much more could she have heard his words as he finished, all jealousy would have passed from her mind:  for as he read, the cynical smile grew sharper and sharper, forming a fit prelude for the “Little fool!” which was his only comment.

“I thought you would have fallen in love with some honest farmer years ago:  but a martyr you shan’t be, even if I have to send for you hither; though how to get you bread to eat I don’t know.  However, you have been reading your book, it seems,—­clever enough you always were, and too clever; so you could go out as governess, or something.  Why, here’s a postscript dated three months afterwards!  Ah, I see; this letter was written last July, in answer to my Australian one.  What’s the meaning of this?” And he began reading again.

“I wrote so far; but I had not the heart to send it:  it was so full of repinings.  And since then,—­must I tell the truth?—­I have made a step; do not call it a desperate one; do not blame me, for your blame I cannot bear:  but I have gone on the stage.  There was no other means of independence open to me; and I had a dream, I have it still, that there, if anywhere, I might do my work.  You told me that I might become a great actress:  I have set my heart on becoming one; on learning to move the hearts of men, till the time comes when I can tell them, show them, in living flesh and blood, upon the stage, the secrets of a slave’s sorrows, and that slave a woman.  The time has not come for that yet here:  but I have had my success already, more than I could have expected; and not only in Canada, but in the States.  I have been at New York, acting to crowded houses.  Ah, when they applauded me, how I longed to speak! to pour out my whole soul to them, and call upon them, as men, to—.  But that will come in time.  I have found a friend, who has promised to write dramas especially for me.  Merely republican ones at first; in which I can give full vent to my passion, and hurl forth the eternal laws of liberty, which their consciences may—­must—­at last, apply for themselves.  But soon, he says, we shall be able to dare to approach the real subject, if not in America, still in Europe; and then, I trust, the coloured actress will stand forth as the championess of her race, of all who are oppressed, in every capital in Europe, save, alas!  Italy and the Austria who crushes her.  I have taken, I should tell you, an Italian name.  It was better, I thought, to hide my African taint, forsooth, for awhile.  So the wise New Yorkers have been feting, as Maria Cordifiamma, the white woman (for am I not fairer than many an Italian signora?), whom they would have looked upon as an inferior being under the name of Marie Lavington:  though there is finer old English blood running in my veins, from your native Berkshire, they say, than in any a Down-Easter’s who hangs upon my lips.  Address me henceforth, then, as La Signora Maria Cordifiamma.  I am learning fast, by the by, to speak Italian.  I shall be at Quebec till the end of the month.  Then, I believe, I come to London; and we shall meet once more:  and I shall thank you, thank you, thank you, once more, for all your marvellous kindness.”