Daisy Burns.
Volume 1.
by Julia Kavanagh.
CHAPTER I.
As I sat alone this evening beneath the porch, the autumn wind rose and pa.s.sed amongst the garden trees, then died away in the distance with a low murmuring. A strange thrill ran through me; the present with its aspects vanished; I saw no more the narrow though dearly loved limits which bound my home; the little garden, so calm and grey in the dewy twilight, was a wide and heaving sea; the low rustling of the leaves seemed the sound of the receding tide; the dim horizon became a circular line of light dividing wastes of waters from the solemn depths of vast skies, and I, no longer a woman sitting in my home within reach of a great city, but an idle, dreaming child, lay in the gra.s.sy nook at the end of our garden, whence I watched the ships on their distant path, or sent a wandering glance along the winding beach of sand and rock below.
A moment effaced years, and my childhood, with its home, its joys, and its sorrows, pa.s.sed before me like a thing of yesterday.
Rock Cottage, as my father had called it, rose on a lonely cliff that looked forth to the sea. It was but a plain abode, with whitewashed walls, green shutters, and low roof, standing in the centre of a wild and neglected garden, overlooked by no other dwelling, and apparently far removed from every habitation. In front, a road, coming down from the low hills of Ryde, wound away to Leigh; behind, at the foot of a cliff, stretched the sea. The people of Leigh wondered "how Doctor Burns could live in a place so bleak and so lonely," and they knew not that to him its charms lay in that very solitude with its boundless horizon; in the murmurs of the wind that ever swept around his dwelling; in the aspect of that sublime sea which daily spread beneath his view, serene or terrible, but ever beautiful.
This was not however the sole recommendation of Rock Cottage; it stood conveniently between the two villages of Ryde and Leigh, of which my father was the only physician. There was indeed a surgeon at Ryde, but he never pa.s.sed the threshold of the aristocratic mansions to which Doctor Burns was frequently summoned, and whence he derived the larger portion of his income. That income, never very considerable, proved however sufficient to the few wants of the lonely home where my father, a widower, lived with me, his only child.
Of my mother I had no remembrance; my father seldom mentioned her name; but there was a small miniature of her over our parlour mantle-piece, and often in the evening, sitting by our quiet fireside, he would look long and earnestly on the mild and somewhat mournful face before him, then give me a silent caress, as I sat on my stool at his knee, watching him with the ever-attentive look of childhood.
I was sickly and delicate, and he indulged me to excess. "Study," he said, "would only injure me, for I was a great deal too clever and precocious for a child;" so he taught me himself the little I knew, and put off from month to month his long contemplated and still cherished project of sending me to some first-rate school. I believe that in his heart he felt loath to part from me, and was secretly glad to find some excuse that should keep me at home. He never left me in the morning without a caress, and often, when he returned late from visiting some distant patient, his first impulse, as well as his first act, was to enter my room and kiss me softly as I slept. I loved him pa.s.sionately and exclusively, and years have not effaced either his memory or his aspect from my heart. I remember him still, a man of thirty-five or so, tall, pale, and gentlemanly, with wavy hair of a deep golden brown, and dark grey eyes of singular light and beauty. How he seemed to others I know not: to me he was all that was good and great.
I felt happy to live thus alone with him; I never wished for the companionship of other children; I asked not to move beyond the limits of our home. Silence, repose, and solitude, things so antipathetic to childhood, were the chief pleasures of mine; partly on account of my bad health, and partly, too, because I had inherited from my father a jealous sort of exclusiveness and reserve, by no means held to be the general characteristic of his countrymen.
My happiest moments were those spent in that gra.s.sy nook at the end of our garden, to which I have already alluded. A group of dark pine-trees, growing on the very edge of the cliff, sheltered it from the strength of the breeze; close by began a steep path, winding away to the sh.o.r.e, and to which a wooden gate, never locked, gave access. But more blest than ever was Eve in her garden,--for in mine grew no forbidden fruit,--I could spend there an entire day, and forget that only this easy barrier stood between me and liberty. My father, seeing how much I liked this spot, had caused a low wooden bench to be placed for me beneath the pine- trees. In the fine weather my delight was to lie there, and to read and dream away whole hours, or to gaze on the clear prospect of the beach below, and, beyond it, on that solemn vastness of sea and sky which, in its sublimity and infinitude, so far surpa.s.ses the sights of earth.
It was thus, I remember, that I spent one mild and hazy autumn afternoon, reading, for the twentieth time, the touching story of Pracovia Loupouloff--not the Elizabeth of Madame Cottin, but the real and far more pathetic heroine,--and for the twentieth time, too, thinking with a sort of jealousy and regret, that I was sure I could do quite as much for my father if he were only an exile, when he came and sat down by me. He was going out, and, as usual, would not leave home without giving me a kiss.
As he took me on his knee, he saw the book lying open on the bench; he looked at me wistfully, and said with a sigh--
"I wish you would not read so much, my darling. You are always at the books. I have just found my History of Medicine open: what could you want with that?"
"I was reading about the circulation of the blood."
"Well, who discovered it?"
"William Harvey--I wish he had not."
"Why so?" asked my father, looking surprised.
"Because _you_ would," I replied, pa.s.sing my arms around his neck, and laying my cheek close to his.
He smiled, kissed my forehead, rose to go, took a few steps, came back, and, stooping over me as I lay on the bench, he pressed his lips to mine with lingering tenderness, then left me. I saw him enter the house. I heard him depart, and I even caught a glimpse of him and his grey mare as he rode up the steep path leading to Ryde. I looked and listened long after he had vanished and the tramp of the horse had ceased. Then turning once more towards the sea, I idly watched a fisherman"s boat slowly fading away in the grey horizon, and thought all the time what a great man my father might hare been, if William Harvey had not unfortunately discovered the circulation of the blood two hundred years before. I lay there, dreaming the whole noon away, until Sarah came down the garden path in quest of me, and, in her mournful voice, observed--
"Miss Margaret, _will_ you come in to tea?"
"No," I said coolly, "I won"t yet."
Sarah turned up her eyes. I certainly was a spoiled child, and I dare say not over-civil; but I did not quite make a martyr of her, as she chose to imagine and liked to say.
"G.o.d forgive you and change your heart!" she said piously.
I did not answer. Most children are aristocratic, and I had a certain intuitive scorn of servants; besides, Sarah had only been a few days with us.
"Will you come in to tea?" she again asked. I took up my book, as if she had not spoken. "Miss," she said solemnly, "there"ll be a judgment on you yet."
With this warning she left me. I went in when it pleased me to do so. On entering the parlour, I perceived two cups on the tea-tray. "Is Papa come back?" I asked, without looking at Sarah.
"Miss," she said indignantly, "servants aint dogs, nor cats either. I am ashamed of you, Miss."
"Is Papa come back?" I asked again, with all the insolence of conscious security.
If Sarah had dared, I should then have got a sound slap or box on the ear, but I knew well enough she would not dare: her predecessor had been dismissed for presuming to threaten me with personal chastis.e.m.e.nt, so she swallowed down her resentment to reply, rather sharply, "No, Miss, the Doctor is not come back, Miss."
I looked at the two tea-cups, and said haughtily, "I"ll have my tea alone."
Sarah became as crimson as the ribbons in her cap, gave me a spiteful look, laughed shortly, and vindictively replied. "No, Miss, you"ll not have tea alone, Miss. Mr. O"Reilly is come, and as he is not an unfort"nate servant, perhaps you won"t mind taking tea with him, Miss."
I sulked on hearing the news.
Cornelius O"Reilly was the friend and countryman of my father, who had known him from his boyhood, and helped to rear and educate him. He came down every autumn to spend ten days or a fortnight at Rock Cottage. He never failed to bring me a present; but this did not render his visits more welcome to me. Whilst he was in the house, I was less petted, less indulged, and, above all, less noticed by my father. It was this I could not forgive the young man.
On noticing the unamiable look with which I heard the news of his arrival, Sarah indignantly exclaimed, "You ought to blush, Miss, you ought, for being so jealous of your poor Pa! Do you think he is to look at n.o.body but you? Suppose he were to marry again?"
"He won"t, you know he won"t," I interrupted, almost pa.s.sionately; "and you know he said you were not to say it."
This was true; for Sarah, once feeling more than usually "aggravated"
with me, had chosen to inform me "that if my Pa went every day to see Miss Murray, it was not all because she was poorly, but because he was going to marry that lady; and that I and her nephew William were to be got rid of by being sent to school as soon as the wedding was over."
She spoke positively. I believed her, and took the matter so much to heart that my father perceived it, learned the cause, and, after relieving me with the a.s.surance that he was quite determined never to marry a second time, and that I was to be his only pet and darling, called in Sarah, and in my presence administered to her a short and severe reprimand, which she resentfully remembered as one of my many offences. Being now beaten on this point, she sharply observed, "Well, Miss, is it a reason, because our Pa won"t marry again, that we are to be rude to our Pa"s friend?"
I did not answer.
"I am sure he is kind," she continued, "it"s in his face."
No reply.
"I never saw a better-tempered looking gentleman."
I was obstinately silent.
"Nor a handsomer one," persisted Sarah, on whom the young Irishman"s appearance seemed to have produced a strong impression; "there is not one like him from Ryde to Leigh."
She spoke pointedly. I felt myself redden.
"He is not half so handsome as Papa," I replied indignantly.
"Right, Margaret," observed a good-humoured voice behind us; and Cornelius O"Reilly, who had overheard the latter part of our discourse, entered the parlour as he spoke.
Sarah uttered a little scream, then hung down her head in maidenly distress; to recover from her confusion, and perhaps to linger in the room, she began to shift and rattle the tea-things, whilst Cornelius, sitting down by the table, signed me to approach. I did do so,--not very graciously, I am afraid. He took both my hands in one of his, and resting the other on my head, looked down at me with a smile. I had often seen him before, yet when I look back into the past, I find that from this autumn noon, as I stood before him with my hands in his, dates my first clear and distinct recollection of Cornelius O"Reilly.