University of Virginia Library

9. IX.
DAISY AND THE NECKLACE.

Coleridge.

Mortimer was still sleeping an “azure-lidded
sleep,” as Keats has it, when Daisy again came
softly to the door.

A pretty little woman was Daisy Snarle.

She had one of those faces which you sometimes
pass in the street and remember afterward,
ever connecting it with some exquisite picture, or,
if you happen to be in a poetical mood, a dainty
bit of music. That face was very sweet in the
coquettish red and white “kiss-me-quick” which
used to shade it sunny mornings, when Daisy went
to market—a very beautiful face when she looked

up earnestly—a very holy face when she sat thoughtfully
in her room at twilight. Her hair was dark
chestnut, and she wore it in one heavy braid over her
forehead. Her eyes were so gentle and saucy by
turns that I could never tell whether they were gray
or hazel; but her smile was frank, her laugh musical,
and her whole presence so purely womanly,
that one could not but be better for knowing her.
Yet Daisy was not faultless. She had a wild little
will of her own—none the worse for that, however.
She could put her foot down—and a sweet
little foot it was!—a temptation of a foot, cased
in a tight boot—high in the instep, and arched
like the proud neck of an Arabian mare, or the eye-brows
of a Georgian girl. And then the heel of
said boot!—But I daren't trust myself further.

Daisy stood looking at Mortimer with her fond,
thoughtful eyes. Soon she grew tired of this, and,
placing a stool by his chair, sat down and commenced
sewing. From time to time she looked
up from her work and smiled quietly.

“How he sleeps!” said Daisy, with a low laugh.
“Will he be cross if I disturb him?”—and she
laughed again. “I wonder,” she said, at length,
“if a tiny song would awaken him?”

So she sang in a gentle voice those touching
lines of Barry Cornwall, commencing with—

She sang them bewitchingly. The music must
have stolen into Mortimer's dream, for he slept a
quieter sleep than before. Miss Daisy did not
like that, and pouted quite prettily, and shook her
finger at him.

“O, how tiresome you are!” she said. Then she
sewed for ten minutes quite steadily.

“I guess I'll arrange your books, Rip Van Winkle!
and when you wake up, a half century hence, you
won't know them, they'll be in such good order!”

And facetious Miss Daisy broke out in such a
wild, merry laugh, that an early robin, perched on a
tree beside the window, ceased chirping, and listened
to her.

Her fingers grew very busy with Mortimer's
books. Having dusted them carefully, she commenced
to place them in an old black-walnut
book-case, which must have had an antique look
fifty years ago. And Daisy went on laughing and
talking to herself in a most comical manner.

“Here, Mr. Theocritus!” she cried, taking up that
venerable poet, and placing him upside down, “I'll
just set you on your head for absorbing all that
stupid boy's attention one live-long evening, when
I wanted to chat with him.”

An author is supposed to know everything about
his characters; but I cannot tell why Daisy placed
Mortimer's poet in such an uncomfortable position,
unless she thought that the blood might run into
the head of Mr. Theocritus, and cause him to be
taken off with a brain fever!

“And you, Mr. Byron,” Daisy continued, “you're
a very wicked young fellow! and I won't let you sit
next to Mrs. Hemans!” so she placed Plutarch between
them. “But you and Shelly,” Daisy said,
resting her hand on Keats, “you are different sort of
persons; you are too earnest and beautiful to be
impure; and you shall sit side by side between
L. E. L. and our own Alice Cary. And Chatterton!
poor boy Chatterton!” I'll place you in that
shadowy corner of the book-case, where the sunshine
never comes!”

So Daisy made merry or sad, as the case might
be, over her lover's few volumes; and when she
had arranged them to suit her capricious self, she
kissed her hand to Tom Hood, and locked them
all—poets, romancers, and historians—in the black,
sombre old book-case.

Our friend Daisy was in one of those playful,
half-childish moods, which came upon her not unfrequently.

Now she looked around the room for some other

piece of useful mischief to do. She would turn
over Mortimer's papers. Ah, what made her blush
and laugh so prettily then? It was only a sheet of
note-paper, on which Mortimer, in a dreamy moment,
had written her name innumerable times—for know,
good world, that true love takes the silliest ways to
express itself.

Now she was curious.

She stood thoughtfully, with a small morocco
case in her hand. The reader has seen it once
in Flint's office. An undefined feeling stole over
her; and it was some time before she thought of
opening the case. She did so, however, and took
from it a pearl necklace of rare design and workmanship.
The necklace was in three parts, linked
together by exquisitely carved clasps, from the
largest of which hung a
composed of smaller and more costly pearls.

“How beautiful!” and she grew more thoughtful.
Something within her recognized the jewels. It was

not her sight, it was not her touch, but an intuitive
something which is finer and subtler than either.

“I have seen this somewhere—somewhere,” she
said; “but where?”

And she closed her eyes, as if the sunlight
blinded some timid memory that was stealing through
her brain. Her fancy painted pictures of strange
places and things. Now she saw a country-house,
among cool, quiet trees; then a man dying—some
one she loved—but who? Now she was in a large
city, and heard the rumbling of wheels and confused
voices. Now the snow was coming down, flake after
flake, and everything was white; then it was night—
dark, stormy, and dreadful—and she was cold, bitter
cold! Some one had left her in the white, clinging
snow, and she was freezing!

Daisy opened her eyes. The snow and wind were
gone, and April's sunny breath blew shadows through
the open window. The house, the death, the storm
—how were they connected with the string of pearls?
And Daisy held the necklace on her finger-tips and
wondered.

“Somewhere, somewhere—but where?”

Daisy could not tell where.

“I may have seen one like it,” Daisy thought.
“Perhaps this was Bell's, and these stones may

have rested many a time on her little neck. I
wish I had known Bell!”

With this she placed the necklace in the case
again, and tears gathered in her eyes, she knew
not why.

She laid the box in the place where she had found
it, and thought she would not speak to Mortimer of
the necklace; he might be displeased to have her
touch it.

Her gaiety had given place to sadness, and when
she knelt by Mortimer's chair she could not help
sobbing. Mortimer awoke and bent over her.

“What, weeping, Daisy?”