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.