Baby Daisy.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 123, 7 July 1871, Page 6

Baby Daisy.

I.—The Golden Age.

Few persons feel more acutely than artists and literary men the miseries of city life during the summer months. Instead of being cooped up in glaring, dusty squares, where never a whiff from the breezy woodlands freshens the sickly foliage of the grimy trees, one should be abroad among green hedgerows, or day-dreaming in the mossy nooks of the sea-cliffs. Books should be laid aside, and no heavier reading taken in hand than that of the purple letters of the hyacinth. Canvas should be rolled up, and no lessons be conned except at Nature's easel, as she paints in her summer.

Such thoughts as these were passing through Edgar Dashwood's mind as he sat idle at his easel, with a brush in his hands, which to-day had somehow lost its usual ease and felicity. " I think it is time to give up," said he, stretching himself listlessly, " I am worn out after ali! Evangeline's face must turn to the wall and be forgotten for the present."

Whereupon lie fell to thinking of whither he should betake himself. He had several invitations to the country ; many of his friends were at the seaside ; but he was in no mood to accept the one or join the other. What he wanted was to escape from civilisation and run wild for awhile. He would have been well pleased to turn gipsey or wild Indian for a radical change and a cooling freshness. In fact, he had overworked himself, as ambitious and clever young men will. At length he bethought him of a letter from an old college friend, who had been appointed to a living in the north-east of Scotland, and who had invited him to spend a few weeks at the manse during his next Highland tour.

" You will be delighted," the letter said, " with this primitive people. The sea is only three miles away ; this I throw in as a strong inducement. I can't do justice to the beauty of the country. Come and see if your pencil will not be more fortunate. You shall find excellent deio, which is gathered on the mountains, and held in great reverence by these simple folk —a sort of Scotch manna. I shall also introduce to your ornithological tastes a new species of poultry, known hereabouts as the ' Tappit Hen.' You shall introduce yourself to the bounie lassies." So it came to pass that Edgar Dashwood found himself at Cruden. A. quainter, happier-looking village never nestled among green hills. It looked like a dream of centuries ago. The sunshine of the Grolden Age seemed to sleep over it. The thatch and tiles of the roofs were green with years ; the red brick walls had become of a warm purple, streaked with velvet moss. An old church crowned one of the near hills, and the trees had all gathered about it and pitched their everlasting tents, as though they had said, "It is good frusto be here." Trees grew in the streets and all round the village. A brook, broad, shallow, and frolicsome, babbled by the very thresholds '.ill it passed under the massy stone bridge.. Above and below the houses it played " hide-and-seek " in immense woods. Before Edgar had been here a week he was much attached to the spot. Sometimes with a fishing-rod in his hand, sometimes with a sketch-book under his arm, and a camp stool, which folded so as to serve for a walking-stick, he sallied forth at early morning, mused in the woods or along the brook, or climbed some hill which commanded a view of the sea on one side, and of farmsteads, villages, and purple uplands on the others. He was often absent for a great part of the day, but at the manse his movements occasioned no remark.

"Do as you lite; make yourself at. home, my dear, fellow," the minister had said, " I shall always be at your service, but I know that you imaginative men have your moods —your hobbies ; and I am not so selfish as to put a snaffl.; on yours." " Thank you,' Edgar had answered, "I will take carte hixnoks; bat on one condition, you must never keep dinner waiting for me." At first he used to come home with a basket of trout or a few sketches, but of late he had returned empty-handed, and in high spirits. There was a reason for this, which the minister never suspected. Edgar did not muse in the woods alone.

II. —The Obange Wkeath. A painter from his cradle, Edgar Dashwood had devoted his manhood to the cultivation of one splendid talent, which seeined to have absorbed all his faculties till it had grown the master passion of his existence. Life to him was a studio filled

with incomplete masterpieces —marvellous freaks of unfinished skill and power; Medicean and Angelesque rough-work not yet tested by the tinger-nail of the artist, with here and tlier-e a perfect Canova—" a Helen of the heart." These last were rare, and met, how rarely even once in a lifetime. The world was a picture gallery of miraculous workmanship—perfect from the light flock of cloud in the distant blue sky to the pollen on the flower or the jewel-dust on the insect's wing. . With keen eye of a true artist he saw beauty in the meanest as well as in the grandest. He painted, on a large scale, a mere handfull of grass plucked at hazard and thrown carelessly on the table; nor was this the least striking of his pictures. With his microscope he explored the unimaginable life which throngs a drop of water, and portrayed it in its beauty, crystal-limbed golden-haloed, or fierce-eyed, dragontanged, in all its terror. These, however, were not the themes of Edgar's predilection. His sympathies were too warmly human for him to make any but human beauty the ambition of his pencil; and it was this beauty in its plenitude' which he sought to satisfy his ruling passion. Like Appelles, he stole some feature, some subtilty of color, some charm of expression, from the many faces he met, to make up one surpassing image of peerless sweetness and majesty ; but never yet had he been able to pray, like the ancient sculptor, that the shape he had fashioned with his own hands might be warmed into loving flesh and blood. He had ever an ideal, before which the efforts of his art seemed contemptible. This was well; there is still hope of a higher excellence so long as our work is inferior to our conception. Notwithstanding his idealism—which was the sealed book of his nature no eye had ever scanned, bat to which he added daily some golden record—Dashwood was too physically healthy not to enjoy life in the prosaic fashion of his neighbors. On the contrary, he had a greater zest for, and temptation to, enjoyment than men constitutionally epicurean. His idealism refined his senses ; his senses stimulated his idealism. As a natural consequence, he was boyishly impressionable. It was no wonder, then, that when he first saw the pure face of Daisy Eairweather his heart leaped with glad hands to welcome another fairy gift. Daisy was in her nineteenth year, but still retaiued so much of the wondering purity, the dewy beauty of childhood, that it seemed only natural she should be lovingly called Baby Daisy. I will do her beauty no such wrong as to attempt a description of it. Edgar saw and loved. It would have been comprehensible enough had he been no artist; but gifted as he was, no one could feel more than he that no light or tint can vie with the jewel-gleam of a woman's ineffably pure eyes, no subtilty of shading with the blending of colors in her face, no wonder of plumage with the crowning charm of her hair; none feel more than he how much all nature's other works fall short, lacking the magic— hi outshining of the is the heirloom of human beauty alone. Daisy was of one of the highest families of the village. Her father was dead, but her brother, now grown io manhood, supplied to all but the widow's heart the sad vacancy caused by his death, Daisy was marriageable, and, setting aside the charms which are proverbially skin deep, and rarely affect deeper than the skin, which is sensitive enough in most of us, she was what is called a good match. Longing eyes followed her as she passed through the streets of the village ; and many a young man worked with a will and a timid hope in the seeds of time. Charley Heathers tone, the son of the miller, a village magnate, had at last plucked up heart and told his love. Daisy had given him encouragement, as they say. But now that she had seen and spoken to Edgar, a new world had been discovered to her, a new planet had swum into her skies. She dreamed her dreams, poor woodland flower, and her heart schemed to realise them. It is unnecessary to detail*how she and Dashwood first met; how finally the exchange of compliments had resulted in a promise to meet him alone. What bright visions thronged through her mind as she lay down to sleep that night after she had given the promise; what golden anticipations of to-morrow ! Little as she had seen of the artist, he had seemed a prince compared with her rustic admirers. How her heart panted with happiness as she recalled how he too had called her Bnby Daisy, as she felt in fancy the thrilling pressure of his hand. She dropped off to sleep at last and had unspeakable dreams!

Dashwood was up and abroad an hour before the time of their assignation. Hi' wandered through the wood impatiently, for his heart wxs a-flutter to feel her presence, his lips a-flutter to pour out the story which is as old as, and sweeter than, the son» of the nightingale, his hands ailutfcer to clasp and make sure that the creature he loved was a reality.

" At last," he fancied, " I have chanced

on wliat lias been the dream of the world, —a pure, beautiful creature; fresh and untainted by society, ignorant of the mean ways of the world!" And so he went on dreaming and building love-cottages in the air. Strange dream of man; nympholepsy, the poet calls it. Far back in the mythic past KinoNuma had his Egoria; how many hundreS years later did Byron exclaim—

Oh ! that the desert were my dwelling place, With one fair spirit for my minister." Strange flutterings of the created heart for the uncreated!

Chance, or some secret sympathy led him on, for as he came to where the wood skirted the brook, he saw Daisy fording it. She was half-way across. Her white skirts were gathered up in one hand, and the water glittered about her knees. She wore a scarlet cloak and straw hat, and her hair fell in golden clusters about her shoulders. As lie approached she raised her head, and smiled and blushed, but did not pause till she had reached the green rushes at the edge. "Now," said Daisy, "you will please go away till I have put on my stockings and shoes. Edgar smiled, and withdrew into the wood. Could X but paint such a picture, thought he; wait though, only wait a little. In a few moments Daisy joined him and said,

X did not think you would be here yet, so I came across the brook. You are not shocked, are you ?" From what has been already written, the reader may imagine the tone of their conversation. Xt was followed by many others, unknown and unsuspected, till one evening Charley Heathers tone met them. The same night Daisy and he quarrelled; but Charley, poor fellow, could not so easily pluck up the love which had rooted so long and closely around his heart; the flower alone was gone. He watched her continually, and was often near enough to overhear them as they passed. He hated but they never met, and the hatred throve on silence and concealment. People remarked the change which had come over Charley, but he never breathed the cause of it. He was not the man to " wear his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at." In a few weeks more Dashwood lett. Cfuden, and time began to bring round its revenges.

llX.—The Lost Pleaid. Again in the busy city, Edgar soon lost much thought of Daisy. For the first few weeks he had dreamed of her continually. He had painted the scene of the brook, which was hailed with universal admiration. Daisy's face made sunshine in more than one of his pictures. He was rising rapidly in reputation. But Cruden had grown gradually into the past; even Daisy was beginning to seem far off—a thing of the past, very different from the sweet girl who a short time ago smiled from his canvas, who but a few weeks before nestled in his bosom. She wrote to him, and he answered, but little by little he grew briefer and colder; sometimes a week or two elapsed before he could force himself to write at all.

During this time Edgar's industry was untiring; and, possessing that swiftness and precision of str which are acquired by slow and laborious practice, he was able to send out picture after picture, each a greater success, a higher step in art, than the former, almost as rapidly as a poet in his best mood strings his rhymes. The papers were loud in his praise; he was sought after and lionised. But all this pleasure in sincere praise, all this triumph in labor successfully achieved, was attended by a secret stiug, which struck deeper as time passed by. Daisy's letters, before distasteful, grew now disquieting. Strange, sorrowful hints or wild, impassioned entreaties shaped a terrible conviction in his mind that he could not throw her aside as easily as he had hoped. The day-dream had died out with the day, and his love had grown cold ; but the fair creature he had longed to prove a reality was one., which threatened to stand between him and his ambition. He had hoped she would forget him, as he wished to forget her little dreaming how inescapable was the web time was weaving about his life. The hour passes, the scene passes, but the action—never. The deed of an immortal soul is immortal. As a mirror reflecting a mirror, every human act is perpetuated on the earth.

Daisy was a portion of lxis existence for ever and for ever. In his blindness he thought he had left her far behind him, bat now that his eyes were open she was his shadow. How to shut his eyes upon that shadow for ever !

He wrote her kind re-assuring letters, and pondered. Left to himself, Ed«ur would probably have obeyed his better impulses ; but there was a disastrous influence driving him onward to shame and misery. His spreading fame had acquired him new friends, and among them one who was some day to be nearest and dearest. Edgar was engaged. Poor Daisy dwindled into insignificance beside this

new ideal, who, to great beauty and accomplishments, added the charms of wealth and position. Too much success had hardened ]2dgar as it hardens many a man. He had grow mercenary as well as selfish. A secret sin, a remorse, which was not repentance, but rather a dread of retribution, was working an awful transformation. In the myth, the lace of the Gorgon turns the beholder to stone ; and the presence of evil hardens to a fossil the heart which fixes its eyes 011 it. JSdgar, then, was engaged—had made a splendid match. The path of his ambition was smooth but for one obstacle. What could be done with Daisy ? What could be done with Daisy ? Poor girl, she knew only too well. But one of two things could be done. If Edgar would not do the one, she would do the other. Seven long, long months ago she was as bright and lovely a being as ever made a Heaven of home. Now she was pale and haggard. A wild light was in her eyes, a strange silence on her lips. She took no care of herself, and her beauty was running to weeds. Siie did her best to hide her continual sickness, and tried to wear a cheerful face, but she played a sorry part. A great fear was gnawing at her poor mother's heart—a fear too awful for words ; so she only waited and watched and watched, with a hope that was week after week growing more desperate. Once she had found Daisy in her room, lying on the door, weeping bitterly, and had tried to gain her confidence, but her daughter had risen to her feet, and spoken with a chilling reserve which would have estranged any but a mother's heart.

And was this her Baby Daisy of a year ago? Alas ! she was fearfully changed ! An evil power was taking possession of her. There was but one star of trust in the darkness round her, and if that failed at the extreme hour she would throw her arms up and die in the darkness. It was not G-od's star ! A strange rumor, too, was being spread through the village. It never reached Daisy's ears, but whenever she went abroad she read it in the suspicious whispering—in the cold, curious glances that were lixed on her, tryiug to pluck out the heart of her secret. So she kept at home, and the village gossips pieced out their scandal with her absence.

Time was now passing with terrible speed. It was the end of May, and still Edgar had not come; a little, only a little longer, and it would be too late. And Daisy began to count the days with a despair which seemed changing her to marble.

At last a great hope roused her from her torpor: Edgar had written. He would meet her ou an evening of that week at their usual trysting-place. jNever came reprieve to condemned criminal at the toot of the scaffold accompanied by such a joy as that letter brought to her. The love of life, which had long ago died within her, revived with a convulsive energy. Edgar would save her; he was her angel; he was true ; how could she ever have doubted him ? The roses budded again in her cheeks ; the old glad light brightened her eyes. Otice liure she looked at her long, golden hair in the mirror, and arranged it in the fashion he liked best, but she shook her head with a sad smile as she did so, for there were tokens of suffering on her face which it would take years of h ippines 5 o efface.

The day of rescue came. How her heart fluttered and her cheeks flushed and whitened all that long forenoon ! Slowly, how slowly time wore on to evening 1 iSiie slipped away, at last, from the house, and hastened through the wood. She ran, laughing and crying, till she was breathless. She reached the edge of the nnor; Edgar was there ; in a moment she was in his arms, laughing, weeping, without ]jower of speech. It was a long time before a word was spoken. Dashwood at length broke silence. He had come to her prepared and collected, with a selfish plan to rid himself of her. If she would not accept it he had done all he could, and would consider his hands clean of the affair. But the of the little creature, once so passionately loved and loving, had an unlooked for effect ou him. SUe liad lost much of her girlish beauty, but at this moment there was such a couiiding sweetness, such a pathos in her pure weeping eyes and upturned face, that his heart smote him and his resolution was shaken. A few moments, however, served to recall his former self. We have said he was hardened. If he did Daisy justice, he argued, he would lose position, wealth, an honorable name—in a word, all that makes life worth having in a worldling's eyes. No! It was too late for hi.n to recede now. The past was dead ; he must eolHn it in stone, and bury it deep, deep. " Daisy," he said gently, 44 1 could not come sooner." She interrupted him—- " You have come at last you have ci»ng t my darling, my darling! D rn't speak of it. L™t us say nothing at all for a littles while."

(To be concluded in our next.)