1853.

JULIA KAVANAGH

DAISY BURNS.

CHAPTER I.

It has chanced that for a week or more this narrative has been laid aside. This evening I thought I would resume it, and, before doing so, I looked back on what I had written.

Alas, how long it takes us to forget the angry and evil feelings of our childhood! How I traced, in this record of the past, a lingering animosity against the enemy of my youth, which years, it seems, had failed to efface from my heart! How sad and humbling a lesson has this been to me, of passion warping judgment and holy charity forgotten!

I have represented Miriam without one redeeming trait, and conscience tells me that she was not thus. I now remember many touches of human feeling and human kindness, which, I feel it remorsefully, need not have been omitted, when all that was evil was so faithfully registered.

She had many high qualities. In worldly affairs she was generous and disinterested. Her word was inviolable; she gave it rarely, and never broke it. She was devoted to her blind old nurse, and patient with her infirm aunt. Her temper was calm and enduring; she had in her something of the spirit which makes martyrs, and could have borne persecution with unshaken fortitude. She never spoke of religion, and I doubt if she had any religious feeling; but she was charitable to the poor; she had sympathy for their misery and compassion too for bodily suffering: I remember that once, when I cut my hand rather severely, she showed a concern which even I felt to be sincere. Had I been wholly in her power, and provoked her to the utmost, I knew she would neither have ill-used me herself, nor allowed me to be neglected by others. Her hatred was pitiless; yet in one sense it was not mean, for it disdained to inflict useless pangs. She had an object in tormenting me, but to do so gave her no pleasure. I know that had I not been so tenacious of the affection of Cornelius, so obstinate and proud, she would never have sought my ruin; but she was not one to brook the rivalry or opposition even of a child; I chose to place myself in her path, and she treated me as an obstacle to be removed, or, if that failed, to be conquered, and, if needful, crushed.

She was one of those outwardly calm persons whose real nature can never be known, unless when drawn forth by something or some one. I do not think that one action to be concealed had marked her life until we met. We were antagonistic principles, and, from our conflict, the worst points of each were displayed. But for her Cornelius would never have suspected my jealous nature; but for that jealousy he would never have known the real character of his betrothed. Even Kate, though she had never liked her, was, as I afterwards learned, taken by surprise, and declared, "Cornelius had had a most fortunate escape from marrying such a cruel, treacherous woman." Was Miriam such? I do not think so. True, she had little principle, and was not stopped by falsehood when she held it necessary: but she was never cruel, never treacherous without a purpose. She might have been good but for one mistaken idea—that good and evil are indifferent in themselves; and great but for one sin—self-idolatry.

She lacked that centre of all hearts—God. He who made us, made us so that in Him alone we shall find peace. We may make idols of honour, duty, love, art; of human ideas and human beings; but even this is not to fall utterly. The sense of honour and duty are His gifts; He gave us hearts to love with, souls to know the beautiful, minds to conceive, feelings to spend and bestow. So long therefore as its action is outward, even our grossest idolatry will be pervaded with the sanctity of adoration and the majesty of God. But self-worship is the sin of Satan: we were never meant to be our own centre, our own hope, our own aim and divinity; there never has been a drearier prison than that which can be to itself a human heart; the other circles of hell are broad and free, compared to this narrowest of dungeons—self locked in self.

It was this that, whilst outwardly she seemed so calm and cool, made Miriam internally so restless and unquiet. There was a healthy serenity in the ardour of Cornelius; but hers was agitated like an ever-troubled sea. She sought not in love its divine oblivion of self, but, on the contrary, a consciousness of existence, rendered more intense by the very tumult of passion.

To love, for her, was not to be merged in some other being, but to absorb that other being in herself. All I know of her first lover was, that he was a captain in the navy, and that he perished with his ship four or five years before she met Cornelius. Her affection may have been outwardly devoted, but must have been selfish at heart. To have lovud again would have been no crime; but to wish to do so showed that the man had been nothing in comparison with the feeling.

Even thus with her sister. Whilst she existed, Miriam seemed wrapped in her; once the young girl was in her grave, her name was never mentioned; everything that could recall her was studiously set aside as too painful; a new object, a new passion were eagerly grasped at; she had been, and she was no more. To those who love truly, there may be separation, but there is no death: their heart, like a hospitable lord, keeps sacred for ever the place of the guests he has once received and cherished. With Miriam it was not thus. Once the being in whom she had delighted could no longer minister to her delight, it ceased to occupy her. I never saw her after her parting from Cornelius, yet I can scarcely think that he, to win whose exclusive affection she had done so much, gave her one sad thought; she had not loved, but he had, and to him she left all the sorrow.

How did he bear it? This was a question neither his sister nor I could have answered. He had gone out on the night of the discovery, sent forth by that impulse which in great grief urges us to seek spots no eye can haunt, and the calm silence, so soothing to the troubled senses and wounded heart, of our mother nature. He came in the next morning, looking worn and weary, like one who had wandered far, vainly seeking peace. His sister looked at him sadly, and said, in her gentlest tones—

"It is hard. Cornelius."

He looked up in her face and replied calmly, "It is, Kate; but there is no sorrow that cannot be crushed and conquered."

Pride, stung at having been so deceived, made him shun sympathy, and forbade him to complain. He struggled against his bitter grief in manful spirit. He quietly called me up one morning to the studio, there to resume the sittings for the Stolen Child; in the course of the same week he procured two Gipsy sitters, and gave to work his whole mind, heart, and energies. Yet there were moments when his hand flagged, when his look became drearily vacant, when it was plain that not even all the might of will could compel attention any longer. There were other signs too which I heeded.

A mile down the lane rose a homely little house of God, consecrated to the worship of that faith which, like their country, was only the more dear to Cornelius and Kate for the insults daily heaped upon it. There, Sunday after Sunday, with a brief interruption, I had for three years sat and knelt by the side of Cornelius, and taken a childish pleasure in reading from the same book. But now—and I was quick to notice it—though his hand still held the volume, his eyes no longer perused the page with mine; in his abstracted face I read a worship far more intense, inward, and sorrowful than the quiet attention of old times. Once, as we walked home together, he asked me what the sermon had been about.

But nothing endures in this world. The grief of Cornelius was not of a nature to be brooded over for ever: we never knew exactly when he recovered his inward serenity, but that he recovered it, an event which occurred in the course of the winter proved beyond doubt.

One afternoon, when both Kate and her brother were out, Mr. Smalley called. He had obtained a living somewhere in the North, and was come to bid us adieu. He expressed much regret that his friend and Miss O'Reilly should not be at home, and inquired after them with his usual benignant gentleness.

"They are both quite well; and are you too quite well, Mr. Smalley?" I asked, for as he sat before me, his slender frame slightly bent, I could not but be struck with the pallor and thinness of his face.

"I am very well indeed," he replied with a smile, "and in a very happy— though not, I hope, too elated—frame of mind, which is natural enough considering my recent good fortune. Rugby—have you ever heard of Rugby, my dear?"

"No, Sir, I don't think I have."

"Well, it is rather odd, but really nobody seems to hare heard of Rugby, and Trim will have it that it is an imaginary place altogether; but I tell him this is a point on which I must differ from him, as I have actually seen Rugby Well, Rugby, as I was saying, is an extremely picturesque village, almost too picturesque, rising on the brow of a steep hill, with an old church and very quaint parsonage; then there's a splendid torrent, that inundates the place twice a year, but the people are used to it and don't mind it, so it makes no difference, you know."

"But is it not rather unpleasant, Sir?"

"Well, perhaps it is," quietly replied Morton Smalley; then added with a sigh, "but life has greater trials; every one has his or her trial, my dear."

"Yes," I answered, "Miss O'Reilly can't let her house; it is such a pity, is it not?"

"Have her tenants left?" asked Mr. Smalley, a little troubled.

"Miss Russell has given notice; the bill is up, did you not see it?"

"I did not look," he replied in a low tone; then he again said—

"Has Miss Russell left?"

"Her furniture is still there; but she is always at Hastings."

There was a pause; but Mr. Smalley made an effort and asked—

"Is her niece with her?"

"I don't know, Sir."

"Don't you?"

"Oh no! we don't know anything more about Miss Miriam, since she is not to marry Cornelius."

Mr. Smalley turned pale and red, and pale again; but he never put a question to me. He constrained himself to talk of the weather, of what a fine day it was (the rain was drizzling), of how happy it made him to hear Cornelius was so successful (we had never said a word about his success); then he left off at once, rose and bade me good-bye, to my infinite relief, for I was conscious of having committed an indiscretion, and not the first either.

Within the course of the same month, as we sat at breakfast, Kate, who was reading the newspaper, suddenly uttered an exclamation which she as hastily checked. Cornelius took the paper from her hand, glanced over it, and read aloud very calmly—

"On the twelfth instant, at St. George's, Hanover Square, the Rev. Morton
Smalley, of Rugby, to Miriam Russell, eldest daughter of the late Thomas
Russell, Esq., of Southwell, Norfolk."

"Smalley deserved a better wife," said Cornelius; and he handed back the paper to Kate, without betraying the least sign of emotion. It was thus we learned how utterly dead Miriam was in his heart.

What sort of a wife did she make to Morton Smalley, in his wild northern home? I know not, no more than I know what, unless the thirst of agitation and change, could induce a spirit so feverish and unquiet to unite itself to that pure and calm nature. Did she find peace in his devoted love, and in fulfilling the duties that fall to the lot of a clergyman's wife? Perhaps she did, and perhaps too he drew forth whatever her nature held of good and true. A year after her marriage she died in giving birth to a child, who still lives, and whom her father persists in calling the image of his dear departed saint, though his eyes alone can trace in her the faintest resemblance to her dead mother.

I was not with Cornelius when this event occurred, and how he felt on learning the death of the woman with whom he had thought to spend his life, is more than I have ever known.

Cornelius had, as I said, recovered his serenity, but he was not what he once had been. A boyish lightness of temper had deserted him—his early faith was shaken, and he looked on life a sadder and a wiser man. To his sister he was the same as before; to me far kinder. He loved me all the more for having been to him the cause of so much trouble: a less generous mind and heart could not have forgiven me the mistakes into which I had made him fall, and the disadvantageous position in which I had placed him; both rendered me more dear to Cornelius. The only allusion he made to the past, was to say to me one wintry evening, as, the lessons over, we sat together by the fire-side—

"I think you are happy now, Daisy."

"Yes, Cornelius," I replied, a little moved, "very happy."

"That's right," he said, and rose.

"You are going out," observed Kate, anxiously.

"Yes; shall be in at nine."

"Come back by the Grove."

"Why so?"

"The lanes are not safe."

He laughed, said there was no fear, and left us. I saw him go with a sinking heart. The road by which he meant to return was lonely and had witnessed several recent cases of highway robbery. The evening passed quietly; but nine struck and Cornelius came not back. I gave Kate a terrified look.

"Nonsense!" she said indignantly, "how dare you think of such a thing? Go to bed directly."

In vain I begged hard to be allowed to sit up until his return; she said she would have no more such looks, and again bade me go to bed. I felt too wretched to scruple at disobeying her. I left the parlour indeed, but instead of going up-stairs to my room, I softly stole out of the house, crossed the garden, and unlocking the back-door I left it ajar, and stepped out to look in the direction along which Cornelius was to come. The night was dark; a keen wind swept down the lonely lane; I drew the skirt of my frock over my head and crouched within the shelter of the neighbouring hedge. There, with my ear bent to catch every sound, I remained for what seemed an age. Once my heart leaped as I heard a distant tread, and fell again when it drew nearer, and I was conscious of a stranger, who, unaware of my presence, passed by me whistling carelessly.

Dismal visions of Cornelius lying bleeding and inanimate in some dreary spot, haunted me until I felt nearly wild with terror and grief; but at once a sudden joy pervaded my being; I heard his quick, light step coming up the lane—I was sure it was he; he was safe—the dark vision fled like an evil spirit put to flight by a good angel. I could have laughed for gladness, I felt so happy. Joy however did not make me forget my disobedience and its probable consequences; I thought to slip in and go up to my room unperceived, but to my dismay I found that the door had closed on me—I was shut out. There was no remedy for it; so I waited until Cornelius came up and rang, then I made a slight noise in the hedge.

"What's that?" he asked sharply.

"Don't be afraid, Cornelius," I replied in a low voice, "it is only me."

"Daisy! What brings you here, child?"

"I felt so miserable at your not returning that I came out here to watch for you. The door shut, so I could not get in when I heard you—don't let Kate scold me, Cornelius."

Before he could reply, the door was opened by Kate herself, a proof that she was not without secret uneasiness. In her haste she had brought no light.

"Is that you?" she said quickly.

"Of course it is, Kate."

"Thank God! I was so uneasy; and there's that foolish Midge, whom I sent to bed an hour ago, and who, I am sure, is still lying awake, listening, poor child! I felt angry with her for being so nervous, and I am as bad myself."

She closed the door as she spoke. I had slipped in unperceived, and I might have escaped detection, for Cornelius did not seem inclined to betray me, when, as we were going up the steps leading to the porch, Deborah suddenly appeared bringing a light; she stared at me as I slunk behind Cornelius; Kate turned round, saw me, and uttered an exclamation of astonishment.

"It is very wrong of her," hastily said Cornelius, "but you must forgive her, Kate. I found her outside the door waiting for me. I suppose she had worked herself into a terror of my being waylaid and assassinated, and scarcely knew what she was about."

"Ah!" replied Kate, and she said no more.

We entered the parlour. Cornelius sat down, made me sit down by him, and chafed my cold hands in his. He chid me rather severely, forbade me ever to do such a thing again, said he was very angry, and ended by taking me in his arms and kissing me. Kate had never uttered one word of reproof, but she looked unusually grave. As I sat by her brother, indulged and caressed, spite of my foolish disobedience, I had an unpleasant consciousness of her look being fastened on us both, and shunned it by keeping mine pertinaciously fixed on the kind face which, as if to efface all memory of the past, now seemed unable to look down at me with anger or displeasure.

"Cornelius!" at length said Kate.

"Well!" he replied, looking from me to her.

"Do you remember the story of Goethe's Mignon?"

Cornelius reddened, turned pale, reddened again, and looked both irritated and ashamed.

"What about it, Kate?" he asked at length.

"Nothing." she quietly replied, "only I think of it now and then."

Cornelius did not reply; but he slowly turned towards me, and as I sat by his side, my two hands clasped on his shoulder and my head resting on them, I saw him give me a look so troubled and so strange, that I could not help asking—

"What is it, Cornelius?"

"Nothing," he replied hastily, "but don't you think you had better go to bed?"

"Well then, good-night, Cornelius;" I attempted to bend his face to mine; he looked annoyed, and averted it impatiently.

"I knew you were vexed with me for having waited for you outside," I observed, feeling ready to cry; "I am sure of it now; that is why you won't kiss me."

Cornelius bit his lip, and, giving my forehead an impatient kiss, said, shortly—

"There, child, are you satisfied?"

"Well, but am I not to kiss you?" I asked in the same tearful tone.

"Please yourself," he replied, resignedly allowing me to embrace him.

"I am sure you are still vexed with me," I said, lingering over the caress as children will, "you speak so sharply, and look so cross." He smiled; his brow smoothed; he looked from me to his sister.

"Oh! Kate," he said, "she is such a mere child," and with a sudden return of kindness he again made me sit down by him.

"Indeed, I am not such a child!" I said, rather piqued, "and you need not make me out such a little girl either, Cornelius, for you are only ten years older than I am."

"Only ten years! Why, my dear, the Roman Lustrum consisted of five years, and the Greek Olympiad of four. So that, if I were a grave Roman, I should twice have offered solemn sacrifices to the Gods, or if I were a sprightly young Greek I should twice, and a little bit over, have distinguished myself in the Olympic Games by chariot-driving, racing, leaping, throwing, wrestling, boxing, and other gentlemanly pastimes,— and all this, Midge, whilst you were still in your cradle! Why, you are a mere baby to me."

"Papa was ten years older than Mamma," I persisted: "was she a mere baby to him?"

"My dear, she was grown up."

"Well then, when I am grown up I shall not be a mere baby to you!" I replied triumphantly.

"You obstinate little thing!" observed Kate, who had listened with evident impatience; "don't you see this is a very different matter? you are as good as the adopted child of Cornelius."

"Precisely," he hastened to observe, "and as I mean to be very paternal,
I expressly desire you to be very filial."

"You want to make quite a little girl of me!" I said ruefully.

"Did your father do so?"

"Well, but he was my real father, and you are not, and could not be."

Kate declared there never had been such an obstinate child in all Ireland. Cornelius looked very grave, and said, as I did not value the privilege of being his adopted daughter, he should not press the point. I protested so warmly against this reproach, that he at length looked convinced, said it was all right, and again bade me good-night. I demurred, he insisted.

"Ah!" I said reproachfully, "you are not as fond of me as Papa was?"

"Why so, child?"

"If I had asked him to stay up awhile, he would not have said 'No:' he would have said, 'Yes, Margaret, my dear, it is only ten; you may stay up another quarter of an hour.'"

"Well then, stay," replied Cornelius, unable to repress a smile, "but you will make a nice exacting daughter."

"A spoiled one," said Kate.

"Let her," he replied; then laying his hand on my head, he kindly added, "Kate, this child is the only boast and good deed of my life. She makes me feel venerable and paternal, and, like a good Papa, I'll work hard to give her a marriage portion some day."

"I don't want to marry," I observed pettishly; "I don't want to leave you, Cornelius."

"Nonsense!" drily said Kate, "you'd do like your Mamma, run away, if one attempted to keep you."

I denied it indignantly; she insisted. I was beginning to utter a most vehement protest against the mere idea of ever forsaking Cornelius, when he interfered, and informed me that his paternal pride and feelings would be wounded to the quick at the idea of my remaining an old maid. He appealed to my sense of filial duty; I generously sacrificed myself, but not without making some preliminary conditions.

"He must be an Irishman," I said.

"Ah!" observed Cornelius, stroking his chin, "he must be an Irishman!"

"Yes, and an artist."

Cornelius looked uncomfortable, but he merely echoed—

"An artist!"

"Yes, and his name must be Cornelius."

Cornelius looked disconcerted.

"Nonsense!" sharply said Kate, "what are you talking of? an Irishman—an artist—name Cornelius? nonsense!"

"Then I won't have him at all," I replied, rather provoked: "I did not want him, Kate, and you know it too. I want to stay with Cornelius."

"Mrs. O'Reilly may have a word or two to say to that," very quietly observed Kate.

I felt Cornelius start like one who receives the sting of a sudden pain, but he did not contradict his sister. Mrs. O'Reilly! the mere name was hateful to me. I did not reply; Kate continued—

"You look quite charmed at the idea of your Papa marrying."

"No girl ever liked a stepmother yet," I answered, reddening.

"Then you will be an exception, I am sure," very gravely said Cornelius.

I was not at all sure of that; but I did not dare to say so. He saw very well that I was anything but cured of my old jealousy; and though I believe nothing was then further from his thoughts than marriage, he insisted on this point, to warn me, I suppose, of the necessity of self- subjection.

"You must be the governess of the children," he said.

"Yes, of course she must," decisively said Kate.

I turned on her triumphantly:

"Then don't you see," I said, "that if I am the governess I shall always stay with him?"

Cornelius looked both annoyed and amused.

"There is a wonderful degree of obstinacy in that child," he observed; "she always comes back to her idea of staying with me."

"Because there is nothing she likes half so well," I said, looking up into his face.

"Ah! Mignon! Mignon!" sighed Kate.

"Who is Mignon?" I asked, struck with the name which I heard for the second time.

"It is more than a quarter past ten," was the reply Miss O'Reilly gave me.

I looked at Cornelius, but he showed no wish to detain me; so I submitted and left them.

From that day there was a very marked change in his manner towards me. He was as kind, but by no means so familiar, as he once had been. He was always calling me his little daughter, yet I no sooner availed myself of this imaginary relationship to claim more freedom and tenderness, than he seemed bent on repelling me by the most pertinacious coldness. He received my caresses with chilling indifference, often with an annoyance he could not conceal; he seldom returned them, and when he did so, it was not with the friendliness and warmth to which he had accustomed me for years. When I felt this, and became dispirited and unhappy, Cornelius looked distressed, and, in his anxiety to restore me to cheerfulness, returned to his free and kind manner, in which he persevered until some remark of his sister, or some action of mine too fond and endearing, again rendered him cool and guarded.

I could not imagine then the reason of all this. I could not imagine why, when I showed Cornelius how much I loved him, he looked so wretched; I could not understand why, when Kate once said to him, in her most ominous tones, "Cornelius, that child won't always be a child," he started up and began to walk up and down the room like one distracted. Still less could I make out how, when he seemed more attached to me than ever he had been, more anxious for my welfare, more bent on improving me by every means in his power, he was so provokingly cool and reserved.

At length I could stand it no longer.

"You don't like me," I once said to him, a little angrily,—"you know you don't; you never kiss me now—you know you never do." And I began to cry.

Cornelius looked almost ludicrously perplexed. He hit his lip; his upraised eyes sought the ceiling; he tapped his foot; he sighed profoundly, then hung down his head, and looked melancholy.

"I wish you would always remain a little girl of thirteen or so," he said ruefully, "it would be a great deal more convenient and comfortable."

I was piqued with the wish, and checked my tears to inform Cornelius I hoped I should not remain a little girl; indeed I was sure of it, and that though he did not care about me at all, he should not prevent me from caring about him. He smiled, but not cheerfully; then he made an effort, and said,—

"Never mind, Daisy, you shall be happy, let it cost what it may; only don't tell Kate."

"What must I not tell her, Cornelius?"

"Never mind; but don't tell her."

"But, Cornelius, I must know in order not to tell."

"You are very inquisitive," was his short answer.

I did not know what to make of him. He looked as oddly as he spoke, and I had not the faintest idea of the generous sacrifice he resolutely contemplated, at an age when most men are dead to all, save the gratification of their own vehement passions.

Since then I have understood both what Cornelius feared and what he intended to do. I have admired his generosity and wondered at his rashness in forgetting what was not merely likely to happen, but what really did happen; namely, that he was to love again.

This imprudent resolve had however the result of giving him momentary peace, and, perhaps because its realization was still so distant, of banishing from his mind all thought of the future.