Daisy
"Yes, Dr. Sandford."
"So I thought. Then, Daisy, will you make me understand it? For I am
puzzled."
I was sorry that he cared about the puzzle, for I did not want to go
into it. I was almost sure he would not make it out if I did.
However, he lay there looking at me and waiting.
"Those other things cost too much, Dr. Sandford--that was all."
"There is the puzzle!" said the doctor. "You had the money in your
bank for them, and money for Margaret's things too, and more if you
wanted it; and no bottom to the bank at all, so far as I could see.
And you like pretty things, Daisy, and you did not choose them?"
"No, sir."
I hesitated, and he waited. How was I to tell him? He would simply
find it ridiculous. And then I thought--"If any of you suffer as a
Christian, let him not be ashamed."
"I thought I should be comfortable in these things, Dr. Sandford," I
then said, glancing at the little chinchilla cap which lay on the
table;--"and respectable. And there were other people who needed all
the money the other things would have cost."
"What other people?" said the doctor. "As I am your guardian, Daisy,
it is proper for me to ask, and not impertinent."
I hesitated again. "I was thinking," I said, "of some of the people I
left at Magnolia."
"Do you mean the servants?"
"Yes, sir."
"Daisy, they are cared for."
I was silent.
"What do you think they want?"
"Some that are sick want comfort," I said, "and others who are not
sick want help; and others, I think, want a little pleasure." I would
fain not have spoken, but how could I help it? The doctor took his
feet off the sofa and sat up and confronted me.
"In the meantime," he said, "you are to be 'comfortable and
respectable.' But, Daisy, do you think your father and mother would be
satisfied with such a statement of your condition?"
"I suppose not," I was obliged to say.
"Then do you think it proper for me to allow such to be the fact?"
I looked at him. What there was in my look it is impossible for me to
say; but he laughed a little.
"Yes," he said,--"I know--you have conquered me to-day. I own myself
conquered--but the question I ask you is whether I am justifiable."
"I think that depends," I answered, "on whether _I_ am justifiable."
"Can you justify yourself, Daisy?" he said, bringing his hand down
gently over my smooth hair and touching my cheek. It would have vexed
me from anybody else; it did not vex me from him. "Can you justify
yourself?" he repeated.
"Yes, sir," I said; but I felt troubled.
"Then do it."
"Dr. Sandford, the Bible says, 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do
to you, do ye even so to them.'"
"Well," said he, refusing to draw any conclusions for me.
"I have more than I want, and they have not enough. I don't think I
ought to keep _more_ than I want."
"But then arises the question," said he, "how much do you want? Where
is the line, beyond which you, or I, for instance, have too much?"
"I was not speaking of anybody but myself," I said.
"But a rule of action which is the right one for you, would be right
for everybody."
"Yes, but everybody must apply it for himself," I said. "I was only
applying it for myself."
"And applying it for yourself, Daisy, is it to cut off for the
future--or ought it--all elegance and beauty? Must you restrict
yourself to mere 'comfort and respectability'? Are furs and feathers,
for instance, wicked things?"
He did not speak it mockingly; Dr. Sandford never could do an
ungentlemanly thing; he spoke kindly and with a little rallying smile
on his face. But I knew what he thought.
"Dr. Sandford," said I, "suppose I was a fairy, and that I stripped
the gown off a poor woman's back to change it into a feather, and
stole away her blankets to make them into fur; what would you think of
fur and feathers then?"
There came a curious lightning through the doctor's blue eyes. I did
not know in the least what it meant.
"Do you mean to say, Daisy, that the poor people down yonder at
Magnolia want such things as gowns and blankets?"
"Some do," I said. "You know, nobody is there, Dr. Sandford, to look
after them; and the overseer does not care. It would be different if
papa was at home."
"I will never interfere with you any more, Daisy," said the
doctor,--"any further than by a little very judicious interference;
and you shall find in me the best helper I can be to all your plans.
You may use me--you have conquered me,"--said he, smiling, and laying
himself back on his cushions again. I was very glad it had ended so,
for I could hardly have withstood Dr. Sandford if he had taken a
different view of the matter. And his help, I knew, might be very good
in getting things sent to Magnolia.
CHAPTER X.
SCHOOL.
I had another time the next day between Mrs. Sandford and the
mantua-maker. The mantua-maker came to take orders about making my
school dress.
"How will you have it trimmed?" she asked. "This sort of stuff will
make no sort of an appearance unless it is well trimmed. It wants
that. You might have a border of dark green leaves--dark green, like
the colour of this stripe--going round the skirt; that would have a
good effect; the leaves set in and edged with a very small red cord,
or green if you like it better. We trimmed a dress so last week, and
it made a very good appearance."
"What do you say, Daisy?"
"How much will it cost?" I asked.
"Oh, the cost is not very much," said the milliner. "I suppose we
would do it for you, Mrs. Sandford, for twenty-five dollars."
"That is too much," I said.
"You wouldn't say so, if you knew the work it is to set those leaves
round," said the mantua-maker. "It takes hours and hours; and the
cording and all. And the silk you know, Mrs. Sandford, _that_ costs
nowadays. It takes a full yard of the silk, and no washy lining silk,
but good stiff dress silk. Some has 'em made of velvet, but to be
sure, that would not be suitable for a common stuff like this. It will
be very common, Mrs. Sandford, without you have it handsomely
trimmed."
"Couldn't you put some other sort of trimming?"
"Well, there's no other way that looks _distingue_ on this sort of
stuff; that's the most stylish. We could put a band of rows of black
velvet--an inch wide, or half an inch; if you have it narrower you
must put more of them; and then the sleeves and body to match; but I
don't think you would like it so well as the green leaves. A great
many people has 'em trimmed so; you like it a little out of the
common, Mrs. Sandford. Or, you could have a green ribbon."
"How much would _that_ be?" said Mrs. Sandford.
"Oh really, I don't just know," the woman answered; "depends on the
ribbon; it don't make much difference to you, Mrs. Sandford; it would
be--let me see, Oh, I suppose we could do it with velvet for you for
fifteen or twenty dollars. You see there must be buttons or rosettes
at the joinings of the velvets; and those come very expensive."
"How much would it be to make the dress plain?" I asked.
"_That_ would be plain," the mantua-maker answered quickly. "The style
is, to trim everything very much. Oh, that would be quite plain with
the velvet."
"But without any trimming at all?" I asked. "How much would that be?"
I felt an odd sort of shame at pressing the question: yet I knew I
must.
"Without trimming!" said the woman. "Oh, you could not have it
_without trimming_; there is nothing made without trimming; it would
have no appearance at all. People would think you had come out of the
country. No young ladies have their dresses made without trimming this
winter."
"Mrs. Sandford," said I, "I should like to know what the dress would
be without trimming."
"What would it be, Melinda?" The woman was only a forewoman at her
establishment.
"Oh, well, Mrs. Sandford, the naked dress I have no doubt could be
made for you for five dollars."
"You would not have it _so_, Daisy, my dear?" said Mrs. Sandford.
But I said I would have it so. It cost me a little difficulty, and a
little shrinking, I remember, to choose this and to hold to it in the
face of the other two. It was the last battle of that campaign. I had
my way; but I wondered privately to myself whether I was going to look
very unlike the children of other ladies in my mother's position: and
whether such severity over myself was really needed. I turned the
question over again in my own room, and tried to find out why it
troubled me. I could not quite tell. Yet I thought, as I was doing
what I knew to be duty, I had no right to feel this trouble about it.
The trouble wore off before a little thought of my poor friends at
Magnolia. But the question came up again at dinner.
"Daisy," said Mrs. Sandford, "did you ever have anything to do with
the Methodists?"
"No, ma'am," I said, wondering. "What are the Methodists?"
"I don't know, I am sure," she said, laughing, "only they are people
who sing hymns a great deal, and teach that nobody ought to wear gay
dresses."
"Why?" I asked.
"I can't say. I believe they hold that the Bible forbids ornamenting
ourselves."
I wondered if it did; and determined I would look. And I thought the
Methodists must be nice people.
"What is on the carpet now?" said the doctor. "Singing or dressing?
You are attacking Daisy, I see, on some score."
"She won't have her dress trimmed," said Mrs. Sandford.
The doctor turned round to me, with a wonderful genial pleasant
expression of his fine face; and his blue eye, that I always liked to
meet full, going through me with a sort of soft power. He was not
smiling, yet his look made me smile.
"Daisy," said he, "are you going to make yourself unlike other
people?"
"Only my dress, Dr. Sandford," I said.
"L'habit, c'est l'homme!--" he answered gravely, shaking his head.
I remembered his question and words many times in the course of the
next six months.
In a day or two more my dress was done, and Dr. Sandford went with me
to introduce me at the school. He had already made the necessary
arrangements. It was a large establishment, reckoned the most
fashionable, and at the same time one of the most thorough, in the
city; the house, or houses, standing in one of the broad clear
Avenues, where the streams of human life that went up and down were
all of the sort that wore trimmed dresses and rolled about in handsome
carriages. Just in the centre and height of the thoroughfare Mme.
Ricard's establishment looked over it. We went in at a stately
doorway, and were shown into a very elegant parlour; where at a grand
piano a young lady was taking a music lesson. The noise was very
disagreeable; but that was the only disagreeable thing in the place.
Pictures were on the walls, a soft carpet on the floor; the colours of
carpet and furniture were dark and rich; books and trinkets and
engravings in profusion gave the look of cultivated life and the ease
of plenty. It was not what I had expected; nor was Mme. Ricard, who
came in noiselessly and stood before us while I was considering the
wonderful moustache of the music teacher. I saw a rather short, grave
person, very plainly dressed--but indeed I never thought of the dress
she wore. The quiet composure of the figure was what attracted me, and
the peculiar expression of the face. It was sad, almost severe; so I
thought it at first; till a smile once for an instant broke upon the
lips, like a flitting sunbeam out of a cloudy sky; then I saw that
kindliness was quite at home there, and sympathy and a sense of
merriment were not wanting; but the clouds closed again, and the look
of care, of sorrow, I could not quite tell what it was, only that it
was _unrest_, retook its place on brow and lip. The eye, I think,
never lost it. Yet it was a searching and commanding eye; I was sure
it knew how to rule.