"She is so shy," he pleaded.
"Pretty shyness, indeed!" replied Kate, as she saw me, with the sudden familiarity of childhood, pa.s.s my arm around the neck of her brother, and rest my head on his shoulder. "Daisy, it is bed-time."
She rose, but I could not bear to leave Cornelius on the first evening of his kindness. I clasped my two hands around his neck, and looked beseechingly in his face.
"Another quarter of an hour, Kate," he said.
"Not another minute," she replied, taking my hand, for I lingered in his embrace like our mother Eve in Eden. "If you are good." she added, to comfort me, "you shall stay up half an hour longer as the days increase."
"But they are shortening now," I said, mournfully.
"Let her stay up for this one evening," entreated Cornelius, "to make up for her dull day in the back-parlour."
Miss O"Reilly allowed herself to be mollified; but as she returned to her place and sat down, she said emphatically, looking at the fire--
"He will spoil that child, you"ll see he will."
Cornelius only smiled; he did not attempt to contradict the prophecy by putting me away; as long as I liked, he allowed me to remain thus--once more an indulged and very happy child.
From that evening Cornelius liked me. By making him all to me, I had succeeded in becoming something to him; for there is this mysterious beauty in love, that it wins love; unlike other prodigals, it is in the very excess of its bounty that it finds a return.
CHAPTER IX.
Early the next morning I stole up to the study. I did not knock; I entered on tiptoe; I closed the door softly; I did not bid Cornelius good morning; but I brought forward a high stool, placed it so that it commanded a good view of him and of his drawing, and, with some trouble, I clambered up to its summit: once there, I moved no more, but watched him with intense interest.
He neither moved nor looked up; his task absorbed every faculty of his being; he looked breathless; every feature expressed the concentration of his mind and senses towards one point. For an hour he never stirred; at length he pushed away his drawing, threw himself back in his chair, and, having been up since dawn, indulged in a very unromantic yawn. I sat rather behind him; it was some time before he remembered me; he then suddenly turned round, and looked at me in profound silence. I was too much on my guard to infringe the agreement by either moving or opening my lips.
"You have a good eye for a position," he said.
I did not answer.
"Are you comfortable, perched up there?" he continued.
"I don"t mind it, Cornelius."
"You can come down now."
I obeyed with great alacrity.
"May I speak now?" I asked with a questioning look.
"You may ease yourself a little," was his charitable reply.
"Cornelius, is not that Juno?"
"The wife of Jupiter and the mamma of Vulcan--precisely."
I was standing by him. There were other drawings on the table; I raised the corner of one and glanced at Cornelius; he smiled a.s.sent. I drew it forth; it represented an Italian boy sitting on sunlit stone steps.
"That is the boy to whom Kate gave the piece of bread the other morning,"
I exclaimed eagerly, "is it not, Cornelius?"
I looked up into his face; he seemed charmed: first praise is like early dew, very fresh and very sweet. He drew forth another drawing, and asked whose face it was. Breathless with astonishment, I recognized myself; then Kate, Deborah, Miss Hart, and even Mr. Trim, pa.s.sed before me in graphic sketches. I felt excited; I now knew the power of Cornelius: he had actually, if not created, yet drawn from obscurity, those forms and faces by the mere force of his will.
"Why, how flushed and animated you look!" said Cornelius, with an amused smile, as he put away the drawings.
"Cornelius," I said eagerly.
"Daisy."
"Don"t you think that if you like--" I paused: he was not attending to me.
"I hear you," he observed, stooping to pick up a stray drawing,--"don"t I think that if I like--"
"Don"t you think that if you like you may become as great a painter as Raffaelle or Michael Angelo?"
I spoke seriously and waited for his reply, as if it were to decide the question. Cornelius looked at me with his drawing in his hand; he tried to laugh, but only reddened violently.
"You ambitious little thing!" he said, "what has put Raffaelle or Michael Angelo into your head?"
"Papa told me they were the two greatest painters, but I don"t see why you should not be as great as either of them."
"One can be great and yet be unlike them;--ay, and be famous too!"
"Will you be famous?"
"Who was it never bade me good morning?" asked Cornelius, kissing me.
But in the very midst of the caress, as his lips touched my cheek, I repeated my question, with the unconquerable persistency of children:
"Will you be famous?"
"Would you like it?" he asked, smiling.
"Oh! so much!" I exclaimed, with my whole heart.
"Then, on my word, my dear, I shall do my best to please you; and now let us go down to breakfast."
He was unusually late, but his sister did not complain. She received him with pleasant cheerfulness; yet several times, in the course of that day, I overheard her sighing to herself very sadly.
I have since then wondered at the secretiveness of Cornelius; but though he was religious, he never spoke of religion; he rarely alluded to his country, for which he could do nothing, whose wrongs he resented too proudly to lament, and yet which he carried in his heart; and, perhaps because he loved it so ardently, he had never made painting the subject of daily speech. When it became the avowed occupation of his life--a task instead of a feeling--this reserve lessened; something of it remained with his sister; little, I might almost say nothing, with me.
I was a child, but I gave him sympathy, a food which the strongest hearts have needed. I loved him, I admired him, I believed in him; he soon liked to have me in his study, or studio, as by a convenient change of the vowels it was now called. He could talk to me, amuse himself with my criticisms, then with a look consign me to silence. Perhaps it was thus he became so fond of me,--too fond, his sister said; all I know is, he was very kind and the winter a very happy time.
The spring that followed it was lovely. One day I remember especially for its joyous brightness. The garden was green and blooming; Kate sat sewing on the bench by the house; I stood at the door looking down the lane. The hawthorn hedge that faced the west was ready to break out in blossom; the sun was warm; the air clear; the south-western wind was gently blowing; the newly leaved trees seemed rejoicing in a second birth; afar, through the stillness of this quiet place, the cuckoo"s voice was faintly heard.