We left Leigh the next day, and Cornelius, according to the philosophic injunction of Kate, locked up the house and brought the key in his pocket.
CHAPTER XIII.
Our journey was short and pleasant. Cornelius seemed quite gay again. In order to surprise Kate, we stepped down from the cab at the end of the lane, talking of that evening seven years before, when he had brought me along the same path to the same dwelling.
"Oh, Cornelius," I exclaimed, looking up at him, "was it not kind of Mr Thornton to let me come back?"
He looked down at me, and smiled as he replied:
"I don't know that he meant it as any particular kindness to me; but that he could do me none greater, I mean to show him yet."
The lane was long; we walked slowly; the evening was one of early autumn's most lovely ones, brown and mellow, our path was strewn with fallen leaves, but the beauty of summer was still in the sky, and its warmth in the glorious setting sun. As we approached the well-known door, we saw Kate in her hair, standing on the threshold and talking to two little Irish beggars, whom she was scolding and stuffing at the same time. As she turned round, she saw us, and looked at us with incredulous astonishment. I ran up to her, and threw my arm around her neck.
"I am come back," I cried, "indeed I am."
"I see and feel it; but is it for good?"
"To be sure."
She kissed me heartily, then pushed me away and said, "there was no getting rid of that girl, but that she knew well enough Cornelius would not come back without her," then she turned to the two petitioners, bade them be off and never show their faces again, and ended by telling them to call for some cold meat on Monday. This matter dispatched, she shut the door and followed us in. As we passed through the garden, I saw with surprise that it was no longer separated from its neighbour.
"No," said Kate, with some pride, "it is now one garden and one dwelling, Daisy. No more tenants, you know. I like room. Are you too tired to come and see the changes I have made?"
We both said "No," and Miss O'Reilly took us over the whole house at once. It was much larger, and much improved; we had parlours to spare now; drawing-rooms elegantly furnished, bed-rooms more than we needed; so that, as Kate said, if any old friend came from Ireland--though she was afraid they must be all dead, for they never came--or if those two good friends of Cornelius, Schwab and Armari, should leave fair Italy for smoky London, they could be accommodated easily. Thus talking carelessly, Miss O'Reilly took us to the top of the house, where we found the old dream of Cornelius fairly realised: several rooms thrown into one, with a skylight. She laughed at his surprise; pushed him away, and told him to keep his distance when he kissed her, then suddenly flung her arms around his neck and embraced him ardently.
We returned to our old life on the very next day, as if it had known no interruption. I sat to Cornelius, who painted with renewed ardour; towards dusk he took me out walking; when evening had fairly set in, he gave me my Italian lesson, and when that was over, he sang and played or read aloud. He never seemed to think of going out; one evening, when his sister insisted on making him leave us, he returned at the end of ten minutes. "He had not been able," he said, "to get beyond the end of the grove. There was, after all, no place like home."
"Domestic man!" observed Kate, smiling as he sat down by me on my sofa.
Without seeming to hear her, he took up Shakespeare from the table, and began reading aloud the most fervent and beautiful passages from Romeo and Juliet. Then he suddenly closed the book and turning on me, asked how I liked the story of the two Italian lovers.
"Were they not a little crazy, Cornelius?" I replied; "but I suppose love always makes people more or less ridiculous."
On hearing this heretic sentiment, Cornelius looked orthodox and shocked.
"Ridiculous!" he said, "who has put such ideas into your head?" He glanced suspiciously at Kate who hastily observed:
"I had nothing to do with it."
"Do you think I could not find that out alone?" I asked, laughing.
But Cornelius remained quite grave. Did I not know love was a most exalted feeling? That angels loved in Heaven, and that poor mortals could not do better than imitate them on earth? That love was the attribute of the female mind, its charm and its power? On these high moral grounds, he proceeded to give me an eloquent description of the universal passion. It was pure, it was noble, tender and enduring; it was light and very joyous; it had sweetness and great strength; it refined the mind; it purified the heart; and, though seemingly so exclusive, it filled to overflowing with the sense of universal charity. It was a chain of subtle and mysterious sympathies.
Here I rapidly passed my forefinger along his profile, and resting it on the tip of his nose, I said gravely:
"Kate! is it aquiline or Roman? Aquiline, I think."
On feeling and hearing this piece of impertinence, Cornelius turned round on me with such a start of vexation and wrath, that I jumped up, and ran off to the chair of Kate. She only laughed at her brother's discomfiture.
He said nothing, but sat fuming alone on the sofa.
"Serve you right," she said, "why will you explain love philosophically to a girl of seventeen? Don't you see her hour is not come, and that if it were, she would know more than you could tell her?"
Cornelius sharply replied "that was not at all the question, but that when he spoke, he thought he might be listened to."
"I did listen to you," I said, "your last words were: 'a chain of subtle and mysterious sympathies.'"
He did not answer, but took up Shakespeare, and looked tragic over it.
"He's vexed," I whispered audibly to Kate. "He looks like Othello, the Moor of Venice. What shall I do? I am afraid of the sofa-pillow, if I go near him! He looked a while ago as if he longed to throw it at me; just because I said his nose was aquiline, and broke his chain of subtle and mysterious sympathies."
"Kate!" said Cornelius, looking up from his book, "can't you make that girl hold her tongue?"
Kate declined the office, and sent me back to him. He pretended to be very angry, but when I deliberately took Shakespeare from him and shut it, he smiled, smoothed my hair, and called me by two or three of the fondest of the many fond and endearing names in Irish, English, and Italian, which it was now his habit to bestow upon me, and thus our little quarrels always ended.
I was very happy; yet here as well as at Leigh, the restless spirit of youth was stirring within me. Kate had suffered much, she liked repose; Cornelius had travelled, home sufficed him. My sorrows had been few, and Leigh was the extent of my peregrinations. Of home, of the daily comedies and dramas, which can be enacted in a human dwelling, I knew something; but of life, busy, active, outward life I knew less than most girls of my age, and they--poor things--knew little enough. Kate seldom went beyond her garden; when Cornelius took me out in the evening, it was for a quiet walk in the lanes. I said nothing, but I never passed by the landing window on my way to or from the studio, without stopping to look with a secret longing at the cloud of smoke hanging above London. Cornelius found me there on the afternoon which followed his Shakspearian reading, and he said with some curiosity:
"Daisy, what attraction is there in that prospect of brick and smoke?"
"What part of London lies next to us?" I asked, instead of answering.
"Oxford Street; you surely know Oxford Street?"
"I remember having been there two or three times."
"Two or three times! You do not mean to say you have never been in Oxford Street more than two or three times!"
"Indeed I do, Cornelius. I was ten when I came here, always weak and sickly; then we went to Leigh, and we have been back about a fortnight.
It is not so wonderful, you see."
Cornelius smiled, smoothed my hair, and said something about "violets in the shade, and birds in their nests."
"Yes, but birds leave their nests sometimes, don't they, Cornelius?" I asked a little impatiently.
"You want to go to town," he exclaimed, astonished.
I smiled.
"Oh!" he said, reproachfully, "have you really a wish, and will you not give me the pleasure of gratifying it? Do tell me what you wish for, Daisy--pray do."
He spoke warmly, and looked eagerly into my face.
"Well, then," I replied, "take me some day to Oxford Street. I know the Pantheon is there, and I remember it as a sort of fairy-palace."
"Some day!--to-day, Daisy--this very day. Though this is not the season, there must be places worth seeing; museums, exhibitions--"