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Read Ebook: The Chautauquan Vol. 04 October 1883 by Chautauqua Institution Chautauqua Literary And Scientific Circle Flood Theodore L Editor
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COLLECTION
DAISY BURNS BY JULIA KAVANAGH.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
TAUCHNITZ EDITION
NATHALIE 2 vols.
GRACE LEE 2 vols.
RACHEL GRAY 1 vol.
ADELE 2 vols.
A SUMMER AND WINTER IN THE TWO SICILES 2 vols.
SEVEN YEARS AND OTHER TALES 2 vols.
FRENCH WOMEN OF LETTERS 1 vol.
ENGLISH WOMEN OF LETTERS 1 vol.
QUEEN MAB 2 vols.
BEATRICE 2 vols.
SYBIL'S SECOND LOVE
DORA 2 vols.
SILVIA 2 vols.
BESSIE 2 vols.
JOHN DORRIEN 2 vols.
DAISY BURNS;
A TALE
JULIA KAVANAGH,
IN TWO VOLUMES.
LEIPZIG
BERNHARDT TAUCHNITZ
JULIA KAVANAGH
DAISY BURNS.
As I sat alone this evening beneath the porch, the autumn wind rose and passed 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 grassy 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, passed 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 passed 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 passionately 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 grassy 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 shore, 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 surpasses 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.
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--
"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.
"God 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."
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