CHAPTER IX.

At the end of a fortnight, Kate spoke of returning to our old home in the Grove, which had been vacant for some time. She resolved to go first with Jane and set all to rights, and to leave Cornelius and me to the care of a deaf and half-blind old dame. It was no use, she said, to bring us in the mess. When all was ready, she would write to us; and, as the furniture was not particularly valuable, we could just lock up Rock Cottage, and thus the labours of Cornelius need not be interrupted. He was then working hard at his Young Girl Reading, and entered quite into the spirit of this arrangement.

When Kate had been gone above ten days, she wrote to say we might leave whenever we pleased. I felt delighted, but noticed, with concern, that the prospect of our return affected Cornelius very differently. For several days he looked pale and unwell, yet there appeared about him no sign of physical ailment. He seemed in a strange state of restlessness and fever, and wandered about the house like an uneasy spirit. Two or three times he took long lonely walks, from which he came in so worn and languid-looking, that I once asked uneasily:

"What ails you, Cornelius?"

"Nothing. How flushed you look. Is anything the matter with you?"

"I have been stooping packing up--that is all."

I returned to the task. He moved away, then came back several times, as if to address me, but never spoke. At tea time, I noticed, with concern, that he touched nothing. I said I was sure he was ill. He denied it; but when our aged servant bad removed the tray, he came and sat by me, made me put by my work, and, taking my two hands in his, began looking at my face with a strange troubled gaze--like one who beholds things in a dream--far and dim.

"What is it?" I asked, a little uneasily.

"How pale you look!" was his only reply.

"I feel tired. Sewing there after tea, my eyes seemed to close involuntarily."

"They are closing now. You need sleep, poor child. Go up to your room."

"Have you nothing to say to me?"

"It will do to-morrow. Go! a long night's rest will do you so much good. Sleep well and long."

I said it was too early yet, but even as I spoke, a heaviness not to be conquered by will, pressed down my eyelids. He urged the point and I yielded. How soon I slept that night; how long, deep and peaceful were my slumbers! how light and happy I felt when the morning sun awoke me, and opening my window, I drank in with delight the air still cool with the dews of night. I came down in a happy mood, and ran out to join Cornelius in the garden. He stood by the pine tree, smoking and looking at the sea in a fit of abstraction so deep, that he never heard me, until I passed my arm within his, and said:

"How are you to-day?"

"Quite well, child."

"Then let us have a good, long walk," I said eagerly. "Let us visit once more our old haunts, and take a few green images to smoky London. Shall we?"

"As you please, Daisy."

"I do please. I have a pastoral longing for breezy freshness, lanes, dells, and streams flowing in the shade. So let as go in to breakfast."

He yielded, but with little sympathy for my impatience, he lingered at the meal for an hour and more. When I sought to hurry him, he invariably replied:

"There is time enough."

I went up to dress; when I came down again, I found him in the garden, walking up and down the path. I joined him, and said "I was quite ready."

"Are you?" he quietly answered and continued his walk.

I followed him, impatient at his dilatoriness; but he seemed in no haste, for as he might have spoken on any other morning, he said:

"I like this garden, Daisy. Spite of the sea air, flowers seem to thrive here. I never saw a finer rose than this. Take it."

He gathered it, and gave it to me as he spoke. I murmured a little. This rose was to have been the pride of the bouquet I meant to take to Kate.

"There are plenty left," he replied, gathering a few more; then, looking at his watch, carelessly said:

"It was time to go."

I asked if we should take the path that led to the beach.

"Why not go by Leigh, you were wishing for green fields!"

"True; besides we can come back by the sands."

He did not reply. I took his arm; we traversed the house, and went down the steep path, which had seen some of our first walks in the pleasant lanes and meadows of Leigh.

"Only think," I observed after a while, "I have brought the flowers you gave me. They will be quite withered by the time we are home again."

Cornelius stopped abruptly, and held me back.

"Mind that stone," he said, "you might have hurt yourself. Why did you not look before you?"

"Because I feel as if I trod on air," I replied gaily, "and when one feels so, it seems quite ridiculous to trouble one's self with stones, &c. I don't know when I have been in a mood so light and happy. I feel as if this green lane need have no end or turning, and this pleasant day no sunset."

He did not answer. My flights of fancy won no response from his graver mood; the dazzling brightness of the deep blue sky, the green freshness of the fields, seemed lost upon him, lost the charm and sweetness of the day. But even his unusual seriousness could not subdue the buoyancy and life which I felt rising within me. My blood flowed, as it only flows in youth or in spring, light, warm and rapid, making of every sensation a brief delight, of every aspect and change of nature an exquisite enjoyment, tempered with that under-current of subtle pain which runs through over-wrought emotions, and subdues at their very highest pitch the sweetest and purest joys of mortal sense. I walked on, like one in a dream, scarcely heeding where we went. At length Cornelius stopped, and said:

"Shall we not rest here awhile?"

We stood in that green and lonely nook, by the banks of the quiet stream where we had once lingered through the hours of a summer noon. It so chanced that though we had since then often passed by the spot, we had never made it our resting-place. The thought of once more spending here an hour or two was pleasant. I took off my bonnet and suspended it from the branches of the willow; I sat again beneath it; Cornelius unconsciously took the very attitude in which I remembered him--half reclining on the bank, with his brow resting on the palm of his hand. The same bending trees above, with their glimpses of blue sky; the same clear stream flowing on, with its silent world below, and its green wilderness beyond; the same murmur of low and broken sounds around us; the same sweet sense of freshness and solitude made past weeks seem like one unbroken summer day. I felt that sitting there, I could forget how quickly pass on hours, how rapid is the course of time.

"Daisy!" suddenly said Cornelius, looking up, "how is it you do not ask me what I had to tell you last night?"

"I had forgotten all about it," I answered, smiling, "What is it, Cornelius?"

He did not reply at once, but again taking my hands in his, he looked at me so sadly, that my heart sank within me.

"Cornelius," I exclaimed, "you have not news--of--Kate?"

"No," he quickly replied, "I have sad news for you, my poor child; but Kate is well."

"What is it then? What is it, Cornelius? Has she lost her money? Is the house burned down? What is it?"

"Nothing like this, Daisy; you would never guess--1 must tell you. God alone knows how hard I find it. Daisy, we are going to part."

My arms fell down powerless; I did not speak; I did not weep; I was stunned with the blow. An expression full of trouble and remorse passed over his face.

"What have I done?" he exclaimed in an agitated tone, "I wished to spare you until the last moment. Oh! Daisy, for God's sake do not look so."

I felt, and I dare say I looked, almost inanimate. He took me in his arms and bending over me, eagerly begged me to forgive him.

"It was to spare you, my darling," he said, "I was going to tell you last night, but I thought I would let you sleep in peace, and I kept the weary secret to myself, as I have done these three days."

I heard him drearily. It was true then, an actual, dread reality. I summoned strength to ask--

"Why must we part, Cornelius?"

"Why?" he echoed sadly.

"You must not go, I will not let you," I exclaimed passionately, "or if you go, you must take me with you. I have money of my own; I will be no cost to you, but I will not leave you."

He wanted to speak; I laid my hand on his lips.

"I tell you that you must either stay at home or take me with you," I said wilfully, "I too want to see Spain."

"Daisy, I am not going to Spain."

"Where then? To Italy? What for? Who have you left there that is so very dear? Oh! I see! I see! Go, Cornelius, go." And I disengaged myself with wounded pride from the embrace he could find it in his heart to bestow, with that heart full--as I thought in the jealousy of the moment--of another.

"That's right, Daisy!" he replied bitterly, "that's right! Make me feel to the end the fever and torment of the last two months."

"Are you or are you not going away to marry?" I said, confronting him.

"Marry!" he echoed in an impatient and irritated tone, "Marry! I don't think of it."

A load was raised from my heart. I breathed. I again. His marriage was the only evil to which I could see no remedy.

By the fright it had given me, I perceived how much I had dreaded it; but a vague instinct forbade me to show him this. I quickly changed the subject.

"Take me with you," I said entreatingly, "I will give you no trouble."

"Trouble! Oh, that indeed I were going away and you with me," he half groaned. "Blessed would be that trouble; too sweet, too delightful the task of bearing you away, alone with me, to some far land."

"Cornelius," I said, "tell me all at once. Since you are not going away-- what is it?"

"I suppose," he answered after a brief pause, "you know, though you have never alluded to it, that this park before us is your grandfather's; that the house of which we can discern the roof through this grove of elm and beech, is Thornton House. I am taking you there now."

"But I shall go back to Rock Cottage with you?" I exclaimed eagerly. "I shall go to London with you, and live there in the house of Kate. Shall I not?"

He did not answer; but he half averted his troubled face; his gaze shunned mine.

"Cornelius," I said, clinging to him, "I will not go and live with Mr. Thornton, I will not. I don't love him, and I love you and Kate as my life. He treated me unkindly, and you took me and reared me. Unless you turn me out of your home, I will not leave it for his."

I spoke with passion and vehemence; holding fast to him, as if to brave the power that would seek to divide us.

"Do not speak so wildly," he replied in a soothing tone; "God knows I wish not to compel you--you are free. Daisy."

"Then I stay with you and Kate," I cried throwing my arms around his neck.

"Will you?" he said with a wistful look, and pressing me to his heart for a moment; but the next he put me away with a deep sigh, and added:

"No, Daisy, you cannot, and would not if you could. Do not interrupt me: I have much to say, and I must go far back. You know how your parents married?"

"Secretly, I believe."

"Yes: one evening your mother, then a girl of your age, left her father's house; she never came back, and died, soon after your birth, a disobedient, unforgiven child."

I was sitting by Cornelius with my hand in his, and my head resting on his shoulder.

"He is not my father," I thought, "yet never could I forsake him thus."

He continued:

"This you know, but I scarcely think you know how bitterly your father repented this act of his youth. He often spoke of it to me. 'Cornelius, never rob a man of his child,' he said, 'it is a great sin.' He was right, Daisy; it is a great sin; I felt it then; I feel it far more now; for though you are not my child, I have reared you, and I know that affection is jealous; that to resign a daughter to a stranger, must always be bitter, but that to have her actually stolen from you; to be robbed of the pleasant thing which has for years been your delight and pride, to feel that it is gone beyond recall, the property of another, I know that this is too sharp a pang for speech, almost for thought. I have thought of such a thing; I have thought that another man might step in between you and me, that he might rob me, whilst I looked on powerless and deserted. My God!" he suddenly added, pressing me closer to him, his eyes kindling, his lips trembling, "I have also thought that if it were not for your sake, there was nothing I would not have the heart to do to that man."

"You have thought that?" I said, reproachfully, "as if such a thing could ever happen, Cornelius."

"If I speak so," he replied, "it is to show you what may be the feelings of the wronged father, and when he is a high-minded man like your father, of him by whom he had been wronged. It was the knowledge of this that made me take you to Mr. Thornton. Oh, how could I be so blind as to call in a stranger to share with me the exclusive and precious privilege Heaven had bestowed, but which I knew not then how to prize! You know, Daisy, that when you were at Mrs. Gray's, I wrote to Mr. Thornton, to obtain back again the boon my folly had forfeited; he cared little for you; he knew you were fretting to return; he consented, but on a condition, to the fulfilment of which I pledged my word--that word, Daisy, which it is death to a man's honour to break--that, whenever he wished it, you were his to claim. He was abroad then, but he returned about a week ago, and his first act has been to write and remind me of my promise."

"You pledged yourself for me, Cornelius?" I said dismayed.

"Oh! Daisy, forgive me. I acted as I thought your father would have wished me to act; besides, I could not have had you otherwise."

"And Mr. Thornton actually wants me!" I exclaimed desperately.

"Yes," sadly replied Cornelius.

"But I do not want him; I will not have him, or his wealth, Cornelius."

"He offers you no wealth, my poor child. Every one knows that his extravagance has made him poor; the estate is mortgaged and entailed; his personal property is small; he has little to give, nothing to bequeath. He is still, as when you knew him, wrapped up in his books."

"Then what does he want me for, Cornelius?"

"To be the charm of his home, and the delight of his heart and eyes," replied Cornelius, in a voice full of love, fondness, and sorrow. "To be to him all that you have been, and never more can be to me. I knew not how to value you formerly; and now that you have become all I could imagine, I am not allowed to possess you in peace! Scarcely have I recovered from the dread of seeing you throw yourself away on a mere boy, scarcely do I deem myself secure, when peril comes from the quarter whence I least feared it, and I am despoiled of my heart's best treasure."

"If you liked me," I said, in a low tone, "you would not, because you could not give me up."

"If I liked you!" began Cornelius, but he said no more.

"Yes, if you liked me!" I exclaimed in all the passion of my woe; "if you liked me, Cornelius, you would feel what I feel--that such a separation is like death. Tell me that your art requires your absence, I can bear it; tell me that you are too poor to keep me, that I must go, and earn my bread amongst strangers, and I shall bear that, too; for I shall look to a happy future, and a blessed reunion. But this--this, Cornelius, my very heart shrinks from it. I feel that you are to follow one path; and that, though my very being clings to you and Kate, I must tread in another, and see you both for ever receding from before my aching eyes. I am not yet eighteen, Cornelius, and I am so happy! I cannot afford to waste my youth, and throw away my happiness; and if you cared for me, would you not feel so, too?"

I spoke with involuntary reproach.

"Oh, Daisy!" he exclaimed so scornfully that I immediately repented, "you think me indifferent, because, not to add to your grief, I am silent on mine. You speak of your sorrow; you do not ask yourself what will be to me the cost of this separation. How shall I return alone to the home we left together this morning? What shall I say to Kate--to Kate who reared you--when she asks me for her child'? Why here am I actually giving up to a total stranger, the very thing I most long to keep; here am I taking you from my home, and leading you to the home of another; here am I placing you in the very circumstances that are likely to make me lose you for ever. You are young, Daisy, very young. You will be flattered, caressed, seduced out of old affections, almost unconsciously; and I shall not be there to guard my rights. I know that absence, time, the world will conspire to efface me from your heart; I know it, and yet I accept this."

"But why so?" I asked; "why so?"

"Because," he replied, with a fixed look, and compressed lips, "because to keep even you, Daisy, with the sense of my own engrossing selfishness, violated honour and trust betrayed upon me, would be gall and wormwood to my soul."

"But it is not you who keep me, Cornelius, if it is I who insist on remaining; if I disobey you, brave your authority, say you had no right to pledge yourself for me, and that, whether you like it or not, I will stay with Kate, what can you do then?"

His colour came and went; he turned upon me a strange, troubled look; his lip quivered; he took my hand in his, and almost crushed it, then dropped it as if it were fire.

"Tempt me not," he said, in a low tone, turning away his look as he spoke. "Tempt me not, for God's sake. I am but flesh and blood--I cannot always answer for myself. There are bounds to self-denial, and limits to self-subjection."

I did not answer, but I passed my arm around his neck, and I laid my head on his shoulder.

"Daisy, Daisy, my child!" he exclaimed, "do you know what you are doing? Do you know what it is you want to make me do?"

I did not reply; but I wept and sobbed freely. He looked at me one moment, turned away, looked again, and turned away no more. He pressed me to his heart--he bent over me--he hushed my grief--he kissed away my tears.

"Be it so," he said, desperately. "I have resisted your dangerous tenderness, I cannot resist your grief. Yes, I will break my word to the living, my duty to the dead. I will let it be said of Cornelius O'Reilly, to gratify his own desires he betrayed his trust--he meanly deceived the ignorant affection of the child he had reared. Let those alone dare judge me who, like me, have been tempted."

"Then you do keep me!" I exclaimed, laughing and crying for joy.

"Oh! yes, I do keep you," he replied, bending on me a look that seemed as if he would attract and gather my whole being into his--a look that, through all my blindness, startled me: but, as it lasted--for a moment only. "Yes, I keep you, Daisy Burns. You have asked to remain with me, and you shall. I will bind you to my home and to me by bonds neither you nor others shall dare to break. Again I say, let those alone who have passed through this fiery trial, and conquered, dare to judge me."

I wondered at the repressed vehemence of his tone--at the defiance of his look--at the mingled trouble and scorn which I read in his countenance, usually so pleasant and good-humoured. I wondered, for I felt not thus, as if striving against my own wishes, and arguing with some hidden enemy. With my head still reclining on his shoulder, my hand in his, my mind, heart, and whole being conscious that we were not to be severed--I felt steeped in peace and serene happiness. My eyelids, heavy with recent tears, could almost have closed in slumber, so deep were now the calm and repose that had followed this storm of grief.

Therefore I wondered--I could not but wonder--that if he, too, felt happy, there should be in his look and mien so few of the tokens of joy-- for, surely, joy never wore that flushed aspect and troubled glance. It shocked me to see that the meaning of his face was both guilty and resolute--that he looked like one who does a wrong thing, who knows it, but who will do that thing, come what will. He detected my uneasy look, and said, quickly:

"Never mind, Daisy; I take on myself the deed and the sin. I care not for the world's opinion--I care not for its esteem."

"The world, Cornelius! Why what can it say?"

"Accuse me of selfishness. But I say it again: I care not."

I laughed. He gave me a look of pain.

"Do not laugh so," he said; "do not. I never yet heard that light, girlish laugh of yours, but it presaged some new irritating torment. What are you going to say now?"

I saw his temper was chafed. I answered, soothingly:

"What can I say, Cornelius, save that only your sensitive conscience could imagine the accusation of selfishness? Those who think you selfish must be crazed. Why here am I to keep, a girl of seventeen, with little or no money, and you not a rich man yet! Why any other man would think me a bore--a burden--and be glad enough to get rid of me. But you are so disinterested, so generous, that you cannot see that."

I felt more than I saw the change which these words wrought on Cornelius. It was not that his look turned away; it was not that the arm which encircled me, released its hold; but it was as if a cold shadow suddenly stepped in between us: the life and warmth departed from his clasp; the light and meaning of his look retreated inwardly, to depths where mine could not follow.

"You think me disinterested and generous," he said at length. "Do you mean that I do not care about you?"

"No, Cornelius, I know better; but your affection is disinterested. Oh! my friend, my more than father, though you could not be my father, how often have I felt that other girls might well be jealous of me, if they but knew, as I know, what it is to have a friend, who is not bound to you by the ties of blood, yet in whom you can trust utterly; on whom you can rely without fear--as I do with you, Cornelius."

"Do not," he replied, half pushing me away, and averting his face, "do not, Daisy. I dare not trust myself more than I would trust any other man; and, if I were you, I would not trust the man who could break his word--even for my sake."

The words startled me; they woke a chord which, do what I would, I could not lull to sleep or silence. His look and tone as he said, "if I were you, I would not trust the man who could break his word--even for my sake," told me that the sting of his broken word and tarnished honour had already entered, and would never again leave his soul. Then I saw and felt my selfishness in not redeeming his pledge, in dragging him down from that just pride which he took in his unblemished life. I saw, I felt it all, and there rose within me one of those agonizing struggles without which we should not know the power of life; which are the new and bitter birth of our being.

Kate and Cornelius O'Reilly had the deep religious feeling of their race. They made not religion the subject of frequent speech, but they bore its love in their hearts; above all, dear and sacred in their home, was held the name of their Redeemer and their God. His spirit, the spirit of self- denial and sacrifice, appeared in their lives, obscured by human weakness no doubt, but a living spirit still. How much had Kate done for her brother! How much had that brother done for me! What had I ever done for either? Nothing, nothing. And now that the hour was come, the hour of self-renonciation, I refused to bear my burden: I cast it on Cornelius. I knew how sacred he held a promise; how galling it would be for him to feel within himself the consciousness of violated truth. I knew it, and with this knowledge came the dread conviction that I was not free; that duty, honour, love, all enjoined the same fatal sacrifice.

I said nothing; but Cornelius could feel me, for I felt myself, trembling from head to foot; there were dews on my brow, and a death-like chill had seized my heart; for a moment the inward struggle, "I cannot leave him,"--"thou must," seemed like what we imagine of the spirit torn from the flesh; as bitter and as brief. I submitted silently; but Cornelius required not speech to know it. For a moment he turned pale; for a moment his lips parted, as if to detain me; but he checked the impulse, and said not a word.

I could not weep now; my grief was too bitter. I knew I was turning away from the warmth of my life, to enter a barren, sunless region; and I already felt upon me its desolateness and its gloom. The sacrifice was made; but in no humble, no resigned spirit. My whole being revolted against it with mute and powerless resentment. A captive in the subtle net of fate, I felt as if I could have struggled, even unto death, against those slender bonds which I did not dare to break. Cornelius watched me silently, and read on my face what was passing within me.

"Daisy," he said, in a low, sad tone, "remember we are not men or women until our hearts are mastered, until our passions--ay, the best and purest--lie subdued."

The words subdued my resentful mood to a sorrow more tender and holy. My burden was heavy, but was it more than I could bear? Daughter of the cross, should I dare to repine? I yielded; I tasted the bitter joy which those who bravely drain the cup of sacrifice find in its dregs--a strange sort of sweetness, to be felt, not described, and, alas! not to be envied.

"Cornelius!" I replied, and my faltering voice grew more firm as I uttered his name--"Cornelius, I am willing. Your word shall be redeemed!"

I was going to rise, but lightly resting his hand on my shoulder, he detained me. He stooped, and laid his lips on my brow. He did not say so, but I knew that this was his farewell kiss--the seal set on the love, care, and tenderness of years. The embrace lasted a moment only; the next he had risen. I rose too; I tied my bonnet-strings; he helped me to wrap my scarf around me: mechanically I picked up the flowers he had given me; then silently took his arm, and left the spot where I had decided my destiny.