Daisy
"Jem," said I, "why don't you come to the house Sunday evenings any
more?"
"It don't 'pear practical, missie." Jem was given to large-sized
words, when he could get hold of them.
"Mr. Edwards hinders you?"
"Mass' Ed'ards berry smart man, Miss Daisy. He want massa's work done
up all jus' so."
"And he says that the prayer-meeting hinders the work, Jem?"
"Clar, missis, Mass' Ed'ards got long head; he see furder den me," Jem
said, shaking his own head as if the whole thing were beyond him. I
let him go. But a day or two after I attacked Margaret on the subject.
She and Jem, I knew, were particular friends. Margaret was oracular
and mysterious, and looked like a thundercloud. I got nothing from
her, except an increase of uneasiness. I was afraid to go further in
my inquiries; yet could not rest without. The house servants, I knew,
would not be likely to tell me anything that would trouble me if they
could help it. The only exception was mammy Theresa; who with all her
love for me had either less tact, or had grown from long habit
hardened to the state of things in which she had been brought up. From
her, by a little cross questioning, I learned that Jem and others had
been forbidden to come to the Sunday readings; and their disobeying
had been visited with the lash, not once nor twice; till, as mammy
Theresa said, "'peared like it warn't no use to try to be good agin de
devil."
And papa was away on his voyage to China--away on the high seas, where
no letter could reach him; and Mr. Edwards knew that. There was a fire
in my heart now that burned with sharp pain. I felt as if it would
burn my heart out. And now took shape and form one single aim and
purpose, which became for years the foremost one of my life. It had
been growing and gathering. I set it clear before me from this time.
Meanwhile, my mother's daughter was not willing to be entirely baffled
by the overseer. I arranged with Darry that I would be at the
cemetery-hill on all pleasant Sunday afternoons, and that all who
wished to hear me read, or who wished to learn themselves, might meet
me there. The Sunday afternoons were often pleasant that winter. I was
constantly at my post; and many a one crept round to me from the
quarters and made his way through the graves and the trees to where I
sat by the iron railing. We were safe there. Nobody but me liked the
place. Miss Pinshon and the overseer agreed in shunning it. And there
was promise in the blue sky, and hope in the soft sunshine, and
sympathy in the sweet rustle of the pine-leaves. Why not? Are they not
all God's voices? And the words of the Book were very precious there,
to me and many another. I was rather more left to myself of late. My
governess gave me my lessons quite as assiduously as ever; but after
lesson-time she seemed to have something else to take her attention.
She did not walk often with me as the spring drew near; and my Sunday
afternoons were absolutely unquestioned.
One day in March I had gone to my favourite place to get out a
lesson. It was not Sunday afternoon, of course. I was tired with my
day's work, or I was not very strong; for though I had work to do, the
witcheries of nature prevailed with me to put down my book. The scent
of pine-buds and flowers made the air sweet to smell, and the spring
sun made it delicious to feel. The light won its way tenderly among
the trees, touching the white marble tombstones behind me, but resting
with a more gentle ray upon the moss and turf where only little bits
of rough board marked the sleeping-places of our dependants. Just out
of sight, through the still air I could hear the river, in its
rippling, flow past the bank at the top of which I sat. My book hung
in my hand, and the course of Universal History was forgotten, while I
mused and mused over the two sorts of graves that lay around me, the
two races, the diverse fate that attended them, while one blue sky was
over, and one sunlight fell down. And "while I was musing the fire
burned" more fiercely than ever David's had occasion when he wrote
those words, "Then spake I with my tongue." I would have liked to do
that. But I could do nothing; only pray.
I was very much startled while I sat in my muse to hear a footstep
coming. A steady, regular footstep; no light trip of children; and the
hands were in the field, and this was not a step like any of them. My
first thought was, the overseer's come to spy me out. The next minute
I saw through the trees and the iron railings behind me that it was
not the overseer. I knew _his_ wideawake; and this head was crowned
with some sort of a cap. I turned my head again and sat quiet; willing
to be overlooked, if that might be. The steps never slackened. I heard
them coming round the railing--then just at the corner--I looked up to
see the cap lifted, and a smile coming upon features that I knew; but
my own thoughts were so very far away that my visitor had almost
reached my side before I could recollect who it was. I remember I got
up then in a little hurry.
"It is Doctor Sandford!" I exclaimed, as his hand took mine.
"Is it, Daisy?" answered the doctor.
"I think so," I said.
"And I _think_ so," he said, looking at me after the old fashion. "Sit
down, and let me make sure."
"You must sit on the grass, then," I said.
"Not a bad thing, in such a pleasant place," he rejoined, sending his
blue eye all round my prospect. "But it is not so pleasant a place as
White Lake, Daisy."
Such a flood of memories and happy associations came rushing into my
mind at these words--he had not given them time to come in slowly. I
suppose my face showed it, for the doctor looked at me and smiled as
he said, "I see it _is_ Daisy; I think it is certainly Daisy. So you
do not like Magnolia?"
"Yes, I do," I said, wondering where he got that conclusion. "I like
the _place_ very much, if----"
"I should like to have the finishing of that 'if'--if you have no
objection."
"I like the _place_," I repeated. "There are some things about it I do
not like."
"Climate, perhaps?"
"I did not mean the climate. I do not think I meant anything that
belonged to the place itself."
"How do you do?" was the doctor's next question.
"I am very well, sir."
"How do you know it?"
"I suppose I am," I said. "I am not sick. I always say I am well."
"For instance, you are so well that you never get tired?"
"Oh I get tired very often. I always did."
"What sort of things make you tired? Do you take too long drives in
your pony-chaise?"
"I have no pony-chaise now, Dr. Sandford. Loupe was left at Melbourne.
I don't know what became of him."
"Why didn't you bring him along? But any other pony would do, Daisy."
"I don't drive at all, Dr. Sandford. My aunt and governess do not like
to have me drive as I used to do. I wish I could!"
"You would like to use your pony and chaise again?"
"Very much. I know it would rest me."
"And you have a governess, Daisy? That is something you had not at
Melbourne."
"No," I said.
"A governess is a very nice thing," said the doctor, taking off his
hat and leaning back against the iron railing, "if she knows properly
how to set people to play."
"To play!" I echoed. "I don't know whether Miss Pinshon approves of
play."
"Oh! She approves of work then, does she?"
"She likes work," I answered.
"Keeps you busy?"
"Most of the day, sir."
"The evenings you have to yourself?"
"Sometimes. Not always. Sometimes I cannot get through with my
lessons, and they stretch on into the evening."
"How many lessons does this lady think a person of your age and
capacity can manage in the twenty-four hours?" said the doctor, taking
out his knife as he spoke and beginning to trim the thorns off a bit
of sweetbriar he had cut. I stopped to make the reckoning.
"Give me the course of your day, Daisy. And by-the-by when does your
day begin?"
"It begins at half past seven, Dr. Sandford."
"With breakfast?"
"No, sir. I have a recitation before breakfast."
"Please of what?"
"Miss Pinshon always begins with mathematics."
"As a bitters. Do you find that it gives you an appetite?"
By this time I was very near bursting into tears. The familiar voice
and way, the old time they brought back, the contrasts they forced
together, the different days of Melbourne and of my Southern home, the
forms and voices of mamma and papa, they all came crowding and
flitting before me. I was obliged to delay my answer. I knew that Dr.
Sandford looked at me; then he went on in a very gentle way--
"Sweetbriar is sweet, Daisy,"--putting it to my nose. "I should like
to know how long does mathematics last, before you are allowed to have
coffee?"
"Mathematics only lasts half an hour. But then I have an hour of study
in mental philosophy before breakfast. We breakfast at nine."
"It must take a great deal of coffee to wash down all that," said the
doctor, lazily trimming his sweetbriar. "Don't you find that you are
very hungry when you come to breakfast?"
"No, not generally," I said.
"How is that? where there is so much sharpening of the wits, people
ought to be sharp otherwise."
"My wits do not get sharpened," I said, half laughing. "I think they
get dull; and I am often dull altogether by breakfast time."
"What time in the day do you walk?"
"In the afternoon, when we have done with the schoolroom. But lately
Miss Pinshon does not walk much."
"So you take the best of the day for philosophy?"
"No, sir, for mathematics."
"Oh! Well, Daisy, _after_ philosophy and mathematics have both had
their turn, what then?--when breakfast is over."
"Oh, they have two or three more turns in the course of the day," I
said. "Astronomy comes after breakfast; then Smith's 'Wealth of
Nations;' then chemistry. Then I have a long history lesson to recite;
then French. After dinner we have natural philosophy, and physical
geography and mathematics; and then we have generally done."
"And then what is left of you goes to walk," said the doctor.
"No, not very often now," I said. "I don't know why--Miss Pinshon has
very much given up walking of late."
"Then what becomes of you?"
"I do not often want to do much of anything," I said. "To-day I came
here."
"With a book," said the doctor. "Is it work or play?"
"My history lesson," I said, showing the book. "I had not quite time
enough at home."
"How much of a lesson, for instance?" said the doctor, taking the book
and turning over the leaves.
"I had to make a synopsis of the state of Europe from the third
century to the tenth--synchronising the events and the names."
"In writing?"
"I might write it if I chose, I often do, but I had to give the
synopsis from memory."
"Does it take long to prepare, Daisy?" said the doctor, still turning
over the leaves.
"Pretty long," I said, "when I am stupid. Sometimes I _cannot_ do the
synchronising, my head gets so thick; and I have to take two or three
days for it."
"Don't you get punished for letting your head get thick?"
"Sometimes I do."
"And what is the system of punishment at Magnolia for such deeds?"
"I am kept in the house for the rest of the afternoon sometimes," I
said; "or I have an extra problem in mathematics to get out for the
next morning."
"And _that_ keeps you in, if the governess don't."
"Oh no," I said; "I never can work at it then. I get up earlier the
next morning."
"Do you do nothing for exercise but those walks, which you do not
take?"
"I used to ride last year," I said; "and this year I was stronger, and
Miss Pinshon gave me more studies; and somehow I have not cared to
ride so much. I have felt more like being still."
"You must have grown tremendously wise, Daisy," said the doctor,
looking round at me now with his old pleasant smile. I cannot tell the