Daisy Burns Volume II Part 16

"What else?"

"Yes; do you not take Daisy with you?"

"If you can spare her."

"Of course I can," replied Kate, whose clouded face immediately brightened, "child, why are you not ready?"

What could I do but comply, and again go out walking with Cornelius? I resolved, however, that it should not be so on the following day. I declined accompanying him, giving him my reason, to which he submitted with a silent smile. I even managed to send him off without the knowledge of his sister. He had not long been gone when she came up from the kitchen where she had been engaged. She gave a rapid look round the room, and said hastily:

"Where is Cornelius?"

"He is gone out sketching, Kate," I replied without looking up from my work.

"Why did not you go with him?"

I did not answer.

"Did he not ask you?"

"I did not like to leave you."

"Did he ask you?"

"Yes, he did."

"Do you know where he is?"

"He said he would go down the beach."

"Well, then, put on your bonnet and be off."

I remonstrated, but she was peremptory. I felt the kindness hidden beneath her imperative ways, and, as I rose and pa.s.sed by her, I could not help giving her a kiss, and saying:

"How good you are, Kate."

"And how foolish you and he are," she replied, smiling, "not to make the most of this good time."

"Why, Kate, we have a whole summer before us, and with it I trust, plenty of fine weather."

She told me not to stand dallying there; in a few minutes I was ready, and running down the path that led to the sands. To my surprise, I found Cornelius quietly sitting on a rock at the base of a cliff, and smoking a cigar. He rose on seeing me, came to meet me, and as he took my arm, said:

"How long you were."

"Did you expect me?"

"Of course I did."

"But you could not know Kate would send me?"

"But I could guess it."

"And if she had not sent me, Cornelius?"

"I should have gone to fetch you."

"Then it seems it is quite a settled matter that I must go out with you every day?"

Cornelius stopped short, and looking at me, said earnestly:

"Do you object, Daisy?"

"Ah," I replied, with a remorseful sigh, "you know very well I only like it too much."

He smiled, and we walked on. There were woods about Leigh, and I took him to one, where we lingered, until its glades and avenues, instead of a golden light pouring in from above through the green foliage, were lit up from beneath by the long, red streaks, of a low, setting sun. As I write, there rises before me a vision of a mossy dell, low sunk down and overshadowed by three wide-spreading oaks, beneath which Cornelius and I sat during the still and burning hours of noon. There was little sketching, yet what we said and of what we conversed I know not now. But memory will sometimes keep the aspects of outward nature, when that which impressed them on the mind has faded away and is lost for ever. I had often seen that wood before, but on no day do I seem to have felt so much the calm of its silence, the freshness of its deep shadow, the sweetness of its many murmurs, ever rising from unknown depths, and dying away again as mysteriously as they had awakened. Never do I seem to have breathed in with so much delight, that wild forest fragrance sweeter than the perfumes of any garden.

Thus pa.s.sed not merely that day, but many other days, of which I remember still less. There is always something vague and dreamy in the memory of happiness. Seen from afar, that time is like a sunny landscape, beheld through light and warmth. Dazzled and enchanted, you scarcely know what the pa.s.sing hour was like, and scarcely remember afterwards what it has been; all that remains is a warm, golden hue cast over all things, and such to me was then in the present, and is in memory, the presence of Cornelius.

At the end of a delightful fortnight, I wakened to the consciousness that, though Cornelius went out sketching daily, he sketched very little; and that the two rainy days we had been obliged to spend at home, had been devoted to the task of teaching me Italian, and to nothing else. The little back parlour had been destined, by Kate, to be her brother's studio; but though Mary Stuart stood there, with her face turned to the wall, there came no intimation of a successor to this hapless lady.

"Decidedly," I thought, "things cannot go on so." Accordingly, the morning, when, after breakfast, Cornelius stepped up to me, and said:

"Where is it to be to-day?"

I put on a grave face, and replied:

"I must stay at home to-day, Cornelius. I cannot leave everything to Kate, you know."

"Very true," answered he, submissively.

"Therefore, whilst you are out sketching, I shall just sit here in the window, with work-box and work-basket, and make up for lost time."

Before I knew what be was about, the chair was in the window, and near it stood the work-box and work-basket. I felt a little confused at his civility, for which I was, however, going to thank him, when I saw him draw a chair near mine.

"Are you not going out?" I asked.

"No," he quietly replied, and sat down by me. I worked in perfect silence. He sat, with his elbow resting on the back of my chair, and his eyes following the motion of my darning-needle, handing me my scissors when I wanted them, and picking up my thimble, which fell once or twice.

I thought he would get tired of this, but he did not. At length, unable to keep in, I looked up, and said:

"Do you not feel dull, Cornelius?"

"Not at all," he replied, smiling. "I had no idea that to watch the darning of stockings was so entertaining."

As to entertain Cornelius was, by no means, my object, I quietly put by my work, and went up to my room. I had not been there half an hour, when I heard a low tap at my door. I guessed from whom it came, and did not answer it any more than the cough, and the low "Daisy!" which followed.

He waited a while, then went down. In a few minutes, Kate entered my room.

"Child," she said, "what keeps you here? Cornelius has just found his way to the kitchen, to inform me that you had vanished, and that he felt morally certain you were unwell."

"I am quite well," I replied, gravely; "but, as you see, particularly engaged in airing my things, for fear of the moths."

"Make haste, then, for he is fidgeting in the front parlour."