Daisy Burns Volume I Part 31

"Cornelius, Miss Russell has some property, but I trust you will not think of marriage before you have won a position."

"No, indeed," he replied, reddening, and throwing back his head half indignantly.

I now never went near Cornelius unless when sent by Kate. At first I had hoped he would miss me, but sufficient companions.h.i.+p to him was the charmed presence which haunts the lover's solitude; he asked not why I staid away, and pride forbade me to return.

Pa.s.sion had seized on him, and she absorbed all his faculties save one: he remained faithful to Art. He was a most enamoured lover, but not even for his mistress did he leave his easel, or lose an hour of daylight. She did not put him to a test, of which it was plain that, of his own accord, he would never dream. Every moment he could spare he gave to her; evening after evening he handed over my lessons to Kate, and left us to go next- door: he was still kind, but somehow or other the charm had departed from his kindness.

Several weeks had thus elapsed, when Miriam was suddenly summoned to the sick bed of an aged relative, who dwelt in a retired village twenty miles away. Cornelius seemed to feel this first separation very much. He sighed deeply when the hour struck that usually led him to his beloved, opened his cigar-case, and smoked what, if he had used a pipe, might have been termed the calumet of sorrow. But he was not one of those inveterate smokers who, from the clouds they raise around them, can look down on the tribulations of this world with Olympic serenity. When his cigar was out, he brought forth no other, and half sat on the sofa with a most _ennuy?_ aspect. Kate had gone up to her room, complaining of a bad headache. I sat reading by her vacant chair, in that place which had become the type of my altered destiny.

"Daisy!" all at once said Cornelius.

I looked up.

"Come here," he continued.

I rose and obeyed, and, standing before him, waited to hear what he had to say to me. He said nothing, but stretched out his arm and drew me on his knee, smiling as he met my startled look, and felt my heart beating against the arm that encircled me.

"Are you afraid?" he asked.

"Oh no, Cornelius," I replied, but I felt astonished and happy at this unexpected return of kindness; so happy that, ashamed of it, I hid my face on his shoulder. He laughed because I would not look up, kissed my averted cheek, and finally compelled my burning face and overflowing eyes to meet his gaze.

"How perverse you have been!" he said, chidingly; "I don't know what tempted me to take any notice of you again; I am too fond of you, you jealous, sulky little creature."

His old affection seemed to have returned in all its warmth; his look had the old meaning, his voice the old familiar accent, his manner more than the old tenderness. When I saw myself again so near him, again petted, caressed, loved, how could I but forget Miriam, the past and the future, to yield to the irresistible charm of the moment? Oh! why was he so imprudently kind? Why, when I was growing almost accustomed to his indifference, almost resigned, did he unconsciously destroy the slow labour of weeks, and sow for us both the seed of future torment? But I thought not of that then, nor did he. If I was glad to be once more near him, I saw in his face--and it was that undid me--that he was glad to have back again the child of whom he had for more than two years been so fond. He caressed me as after a long separation, and smoothing my hair, asked the question he had often put to me during my lingering illness--

"What shall we talk about?"

"The Gallery," was my prompt reply.

"Will you never tire of it, my darling?"

"Never, Cornelius."

"Well, I have been making an addition to it lately: a Gipsy couple in a green lane--the husband lying idly on the gra.s.s--his dark-eyed wife cooking."

"And the child?"

"There is none; for I speak of a real Gipsy couple who are to come to sit to me to-morrow, but who have no child."

"Could not I do, Cornelius?"

"Do you, with your fair hair, look like a little Gipsy?"

"I might be a stolen child, Cornelius."

"So you might!" cried Cornelius, his whole face lighting up at the idea; "why, it is an excellent, an admirable subject! What a tender and pathetic contrast!--they the type of rude animal enjoyment and power, you, like divine Una among the Satyrs, a meek and intellectual captive. A sketch! I shall make a picture of it--a fine picture--a great picture, please G.o.d."

He rose, and walked about the room quite excited; his eyes had kindled and burned with inward light; his face glowed with triumph. Once he paused, and with his fore-finger rapidly traced on the air lines which had already struck his fancy for the arrangement of the group; then he came back to me and gravely said--

"I see it, Daisy; it is painted, finished, and hung in the great room; in the meanwhile let us discuss the particulars."

We discussed them, or rather Cornelius spoke, and I approved unconditionally every word he uttered, until, to our common astonishment, the clock struck eleven. As he bade me good-night, Cornelius laid his hand on my head, and said, admiringly--

"You clever little thing to have thought of it! no wonder I am fond of you; but do you know you will have to dress in rags, like a poor little drudge?"

"As if I minded it, Cornelius!" I quickly replied.

He smiled and kissed me very kindly. I went up to my room, to be as restless and wakeful with joy as I had not so long ago been with bitter grief.

Early the next morning I stole up to the studio. Cornelius was already at work; he never looked round as I entered, but observed, with a smile--

"So you have at length found your way up here?"

I did not answer.

"What kept you away so long?" he continued.

"I thought you did not want me."

"Did I ever want you?"

"No, that is true."

"Then why do you come now?"

"Shall I go away, Cornelius?"

He turned round smiling.

"Look at them," he said, nodding towards an open portfolio, "you have not seen them yet."

He alluded to several sketches of a child in various att.i.tudes, intended for the "Happy Time."

"I have seen them, Cornelius," I replied.

"And when, if you please?"

"I came up the other day when you were out. Pray do not be vexed, but I could not bear any longer not to see what you were doing."

Vexed! oh, he did not look vexed at all with this proof of my constant admiration. Flattery is so sweet, so subtle, so intoxicating. All he said was--

"Well, which do you prefer?"

I luckily hit on the very sketch he himself approved.

"That child has a great deal of judgment," he observed, with thoughtful satisfaction: "I could trust to her opinion as to my own: it is the best, of course it is. There, put them all away; you have always kept my things in order for me until lately; see the mess in which they now are."