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 assent. 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, passed 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.
I know not why I record these things, save that there is a portion of our
hearts to which the aspects of this lovely world ever cling, and that, as
I stood there looking, Cornelius came up the lane. He had gathered the
ripest hawthorn bough; he gave it to me smiling; entered and sat down on
the bench by his sister: I sat on a step at their feet. For awhile they
talked of indifferent things, then he said--
"Kate, will you sit to me?"
"What for?" she asked, looking rather startled.
"A little oil painting: subject, Mother and child. You we to be the
mamma, Daisy the child."
"Where will you send it?"
"To the Academy, of course. Can you give me early sittings?"
"I can; but can Daisy?"
I saw his face express keen disappointment, and I said eagerly--
"I shall get up early, Cornelius; with dawn; I shall not mind a bit."
"Nonsense, you shall get up at your usual hour--and there's an end of
it."
"Cornelius, may I speak to you?"
"No:" he started up, walked across the garden, came back and threw
himself down, exclaiming--
"It will never be finished, never!"
"Cornelius," I said again, "let me speak to you _now_."
"Speak, and have done with it," he said, impatiently.
"If I go to bed early, may I not get up early? Early to bed and early to
rise, you know."
He bent on me a face that lit with sudden gladness.
"And will you really do that for me?" he asked eagerly. "Will you, who
hate going to bed early, do that for my sake?"
"Oh yes, Cornelius, and be so glad to help you a little!"
"God bless you, my good little girl!" cried Cornelius, as he caught me up
in his arms, and accompanied the benediction with a warm kiss, "I shall
never forget that, never!"
He looked touched and delighted. He who had heaped so many kindnesses on
me, was as quick to feel this little proof of my grateful affection, as
though he had done nothing to call it forth.
"Now, is not that good of her?" he said to Kate, "to offer to go to bed
early just as she is beginning to stay up that half-hour later? Is it not
good of her?"
"She shall be put to the test this very evening," replied Kate, smiling.
I stood the test with a heroism only to be equalled by my patience as a
sitter on the following morning. I was as submissive as Kate was
rebellious.
"Kate," once remonstrated her brother, "will you do nothing for Art,--not
even to sit quietly?"
"Nonsense!" she impatiently replied.
"Nonsense!" he mournfully echoed, "she calls Art nonsense! Art, that is
to win her brother so much honour, ay; and with this very picture!"
Kate sighed deeply.
"How very odd," said Cornelius, pausing in his work to look at her--"how
very odd you do not see what is so clear to me, that I must succeed! I am
surprised you do not see it, Kate."
There was not the shadow of a doubt on his clear brow; not a sign of fear
in his secure and ardent look.
"Our poor father used to say just the same, Cornelius, only if one
doubted, he would fly out."
"Then I do not; there is the difference."
"He was not bad-tempered; but disappointment--"
"Kate, your manner of supporting Daisy is getting less and less maternal;
pray do not forget that you are very miserable about your darling. Daisy,
my pet, your doll was put there to show you are too ill to enjoy it, not
to look at."
The sitting was long; our attitudes were rather fatiguing: Kate lost
patience.
"You will be late," she said, "and Daisy is tired."
"I am not tired," I observed.
"Don't you know, Kate," said her brother, smiling, "that if I were to ask
her to jump out of that window, she would?"
"Nonsense!" shortly replied Miss O'Reilly.
"There," she added, as I reddened indignantly at what I considered an
imputation on my devotedness,--"there, did you see the look the little
minx gave me?"
"I see that, as my attitudes are spoiled, I [must] release you. Ah, Daisy
is the best sitter of the two," he added, as his sister jumped up with
great alacrity; and he thanked me with a caress so kind, that Kate said,
in a displeased tone--
"You may make that child too fond of you, Cornelius."
"And if I do, Kate, have I not the antidote? Am I not getting very fond
of her myself?"
He was, and I knew it; and daily rejoiced in the blessed consciousness.
Spring yielded to summer; summer passed; the picture progressed;
Cornelius devoted to it his brief holiday in the autumn.
"You look pale and ill," said Kate; "you want rest."
"I feel in perfect health; work is my holiday," was his invariable reply.
And to work he fell--harder than ever.
"Yes, yes," she sadly said, "the fever is on you."
The fever was indeed on him; that strange, engrossing fever to which
passion is nothing; which to the strong is life, but death to the weak.
He revelled in it as in a new, free, delightful existence. Pale and thin
he was, but his brow had never been more serene, his glance more hopeful,
his whole bearing more living and energetic. But as autumn waned, as days
grew short, as leisure to work lessened, the serenity of Cornelius
vanished. He rose long before dawn and paced his little studio up and
down, impatiently watching the east: with the first streak of daylight he
was at work, and day after day it became more difficult to tear him from
his task. When he came home at dusk, his first act was to run up to his
picture. I often followed him unnoticed, and found him standing before
it, fastening on his unfinished labour a concentrated look that seemed as
if it would struggle against fate and annihilate the laws of time. When
he turned away, it was with an impatient sigh unmixed with the least atom
of resignation.
We were sitting dull enough in the parlour, one evening just before
Christmas, when Kate said to him, in her sudden way--
"The days will get long in January."
"And I shall then be a free man," he replied, with a smile.
"You have been discharged!" she exclaimed, dismayed.
"I have discharged myself. Now, Kate, don't look so startled! The picture
shall be finished in time."
"I dare say it will, Cornelius," she replied, ruefully.
"Well, then, what do you fear?"
"Suppose," she hesitatingly suggested, "that it cannot get exhibited!"
"I do not see how that can be," composedly replied Cornelius.
"Bless the boy! do they never reject pictures?"
I sat by Cornelius, whose hand played idly with my hair; he stopped short
to give his sister an astonished glance, then he shook his handsome head,
and laughed gaily.
"Reject _that_ picture, Kate!"
"He is his father all over," she sighed.
He smiled at her blindness, and turning to me, said--
"What do you say, Daisy?"
"They shan't reject it; they dare not," was my ready reply.
"It is too absurd to suppose such a thing, is it not?" he added, to teaze
his sister, who disappointed him by unexpectedly veering round.
"Cornelius," she said, decisively, "your energy and decision in this
matter give me more hope than your enthusiasm. I like a man to act for
himself; but you must go on as you have begun, and give yourself up
entirely. Will you be a student at the Royal Academy? Will you study
under some great master? Will you travel? Speak, I have money."
"Thank you, Kate; I am glad you think I have acted rightly; but I have
begun alone, and alone I must go on, with experience for my sole teacher.
I must keep my originality."
Kate remonstrated, but Cornelius, once in the fortification of his
originality, was not to be ejected thence.
"Just like his poor father!" sighed Kate; "he was always for his
originality."
Cornelius also resembled his poor father in the possession of a will of
his own. Kate knew it, and wisely gave up the point.
In a few days more Cornelius was free. His tread about the house had
another sound; his eyes overflowed with gladness and burned with the hope
of coming triumphs. He exulted in the endless sittings we gave him, and
amused himself like a child with day-dreams and air-castles. His
favourite one--the fame and fortune were both settled--was a skylight.
"Yes, Kate," he once said, looking up at the ceiling, "to keep your
brother under your roof, you must knock it down and give him a skylight.
Some artists prefer studios in town; but I, domestic man, stick to the
household gods: with a skylight you may keep me for ever."
"Conceited fellow!"
"Conceited! now is not this a nice bit of painting?" he drew her to his
side and made her face the easel.
"Indeed it is," she replied admiringly: "where will you send it?"
"To the Academy, Kate, the first place or none."
"Oh!" she hastened to answer, "I only fear they may not hang it as well
as it deserves. Jealousy, you know, or even want of room."
"There is always room for the really good pictures," replied Cornelius.
This was in February, but his sister evidently felt some uneasiness on
the subject, for she recurred to it several times, and when nothing led
to the remark, observed to Cornelius with a wistful look--
"I hope it may be well hung, Cornelius."
"I hope so," he quietly replied.
At length came the day on which this interesting fact was to be
ascertained. A bright May day it was; Cornelius wished to go alone,
"there always was such a crowd on the first day," and had his wish. We
stayed at home trying to seem very careless, very indifferent, but Miss
O'Reilly could not work and I could not study. We began sudden
conversations on common-place themes, that broke off as they had
commenced, at once and without cause. Of the real subject that occupied
our thoughts we never spoke. I went up and down the house with unusual
restlessness, ever coming back to the window that overlooked the Grove.
"I should like to know what you mean by it?" suddenly asked Miss
O'Reilly. "Why do you look out of that window?"
"Cornelius told me he would come by the Grove."
"And why do you fidget about his coming back on this particular day? Just
get out of my light, if you please."
I obeyed; but the next thing Kate did herself was to open the window and
look down the Grove. The day was waning; Cornelius did not return; she
could not keep in, but said anxiously--
"I am afraid it is not well hung, after all."
"I am afraid it is not," I replied, for I too began to feel very
uncomfortable.
"No, decidedly it is not well hung," she continued, "but I don't see why
that should prevent him from coming back;" and no longer caring to hide
her impatience, she took her seat at the window, which she left no more.
"There is Cornelius!" I said, with a start, as a ring was heard at the
garden-door.
"Hold your tongue!" indignantly exclaimed Kate. "Why should he slink in
by the back way? Daisy, I forbid you to open; it is a run-away ring:
Cornelius indeed!"
I obeyed reluctantly; I was sure it was Cornelius, and as I had not been
forbidden to look, I went to the back-parlour window. I reached it as
Deborah opened the door. It was Cornelius, with his hat pulled down over
his brow, and what could be seen of his face, of a dull leaden white. He
passed by the girl without uttering a word, entered the house, and went
upstairs at once. I heard him locking himself up in his room, then all
was still.
I returned to the front parlour. Miss O'Reilly was pacing it up and down
in great agitation, wringing her hands and uttering many broken
ejaculations of mingled grief and anger.
"My poor boy! my poor boy!" she exclaimed, with a strange mixture of
pathos and tenderness in her voice, like a mother lamenting over her
child; then stopping short, she added, her brown eyes kindling with
sudden and rapid wrath--"What a bad set they are! a bad envious set! They
thought they would not let him get up and eclipse them all. Oh no!--not
they--they knew better than that--crush him at once--don't give him
time--crush him at once!"
She laughed sarcastically, then resumed, in a tone of indignant and
dignified wonder, "I am astonished at Cornelius. What else could he
expect? Has he not genius, and is he not an Irishman? Why did he not put
Samuel Smith or John Jenkins or Leopold Trim at the bottom of his
picture?--it would have got in at once; but with such a name as Cornelius
O'Reilly, it was ludicrous to expect it."
"Don't they take in the pictures of Irish artists?" I asked.
"Hold your tongue!" was the short reply I got.
"Please, Ma'am," said Deborah, opening the door, "don't you want the
tea?"
"And why should we not want the tea?" asked Miss O'Reilly, giving her a
suspicious look,--"can you tell me why, Deborah? Can you give me any
reason?--I should like to know why?"
Deborah opened her mouth in mute wonder.
"Bring up the tea-tray," continued her mistress, "and henceforth don't be
uppish and make remarks, for you see it won't go down with me."
Deborah endured the reproof with a perplexed air, retired, and returned
with the tray. Miss O'Reilly made the tea with a deep sigh. We had eaten
little at dinner; but had Cornelius dined at all? He gave us no sign of
existence, and Kate did not seem inclined to go near him. When the tea
was poured out, she turned to me and said, in a low tone--
"Go and tell Cornelius tea is ready."
I obeyed in silence.