Daisy
accustomed to dress, they would know what sphere of life I belonged to.
And then the words bore down upon me again, with their uncompromising
distinctness,--"_the world knoweth us not_." I saw it was a mark and
character of those that belonged to Christ. I saw that, if I belonged to
Him, the world must not know me. The conclusion was very plain. And to
secure the conclusion, the way was very plain too; I must simply not be
like the world. I must not be of the world; and I must let it be known
that I was not.
Face to face with the issue, I started back. For not to be of the
world, meant, not to follow their ways. I did not want to follow some
of their ways; I had no desire to break the Sabbath, for example; but
I did like to wear pretty and elegant and expensive things, and
fashionable things. It is very true, I had just denied myself this
pleasure, and bought a plain dress and coat that did not charm me; but
that was in favour of Margaret and to save money for her. And I had no
objection to do the same thing again and again, for the same motive;
and to deny myself to the end of the chapter, so long as others were
in need. But that was another matter from shaking hands with the world
at once, and being willing that for all my life it should never know
me as one of those whom it honoured. Never _know_ me, in fact. I must
be something out of the world's consciousness, and of no importance to
it. And to begin with, I must never try to enlighten my schoolfellows'
eyes about myself. Let them think that Daisy Randolph came from
somewhere in the country and was accustomed to wear no better dresses
in ordinary than her school plaid. Let them never be aware that I had
ponies and servants and lands and treasures. Nay, the force of the
words I had read went farther than that. I felt it, down in my heart.
Not only I must take no measures to proclaim my title to the world's
regard; but I must be such and so unlike it in my whole way of life,
dress and all, that the world would not wish to recognize me, nor have
anything to do with me.
I counted the cost now, and it seemed heavy. There was Miss Bentley,
with her clumsy finery, put on as it were one dollar above the other.
She patronized me, as a little country-girl who knew nothing. Must I
not undeceive her? There was Faustina St. Clair, really of a good
family, and insolent on the strength of it; must I never let her know
that mine was as good and that my mother had as much knowledge of the
proprieties and elegances of life as ever hers had? These girls and
plenty of the others looked down upon me as something inferior; not
belonging to their part of society; must I be content henceforth to
live so simply that these and others who judge by the outside would
never be any wiser as to what I really was? Something in me rebelled.
Yet the words I had been reading were final and absolute. "The world
knoweth us _not_;" and "us," I knew meant the little band in whose
hearts Christ is king. Surely I was one of them. But I was unwilling
to slip out of the world's view and be seen by it no more. I
struggled.
It was something very new in my experience. I had certainly felt
struggles of duty in other times, but they had never lasted long. This
lasted. With an eye made keen by conscience, I looked now in my
reading to see what else I might find that would throw light on the
matter and perhaps soften off the uncompromising decision of the words
of St John. By and by I came to these words--
"If ye were of the world, the world would love his own. But because ye
are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world,
_therefore the world hateth you_."
I shut the book. The issue could not be more plainly set forth. I must
choose between the one party and the other. Nay, I had chosen;--but I
must agree to belong but to one.
Would anybody say that a child could not have such a struggle? that
fourteen years do not know yet what "the world" means? Alas, it is a
relative term; and a child's "world" may be as mighty for her to face,
as any other she will ever know. I think I never found any more
formidable. Moreover, it is less unlike the big world than some would
suppose.
On the corner of the street, just opposite to our windows, stood a
large handsome house which we always noticed for its flowers. The
house stood in a little green courtyard exquisitely kept, which at one
side and behind gave room for several patches of flower beds, at this
time filled with bulbous plants. I always lingered as much as I could
in passing the iron railings, to have a peep at the beauty within. The
grass was now of a delicious green, and the tulips and hyacinths and
crocuses were in full bloom, in their different oval-shaped beds,
framed in with the green. Besides these, from the windows of a
greenhouse that stretched back along the street, there looked over a
brilliant array of other beauty; I could not tell what; great bunches
of scarlet and tufts of white and gleamings of yellow, that made me
long to be there.
"Who lives in that house?" Miss Bentley asked one evening. It was the
hour before tea, and we were all at our room windows gazing down into
the avenue.
"Why, don't you know?" said slow Miss Macy. "That's Miss Cardigan's
house."
"I wonder who she is?" said Miss Lansing. "It isn't a New York name."
"Yes, it is," said Macy. "She's lived there for ever. She used to be
there, and her flowers, when I was four years old."
"I guess she isn't anybody, is she?" said Miss Bentley. "I never see
any carriages at the door. Hasn't she a carriage of her own, I wonder,
or how does she travel? Such a house ought to have a carriage."
"I'll tell you," said the St. Clair, coolly as usual. "She goes out in
a wagon with an awning to it. _She_ don't know anything about
carriages."
"But she must have money, you know," urged Miss Bentley. "She couldn't
keep up that house, and the flowers, and the greenhouse and all,
without money."
"She's got money," said the St. Clair. "Her mother made it selling
cabbages in the market. Very likely she sold flowers too."
There was a general exclamation and laughter at what was supposed to
be one of St. Clair's flights of mischief; but the young lady stood
her ground calmly, and insisted that it was a thing well known. "My
grandmother used to buy vegetables from old Mrs. Cardigan when we
lived in Broadway," she said. "It's quite true. That's why she knows
nothing about carriages."
"That sort of thing don't hinder other people from having carriages,"
said Miss Lansing. "There's Mr. Mason, next door to Miss Cardigan,--his
father was a tailor; and the Steppes, two doors off, do you know what
they were? They were millers, a little way out of town; nothing else; had
a mill and ground flour. They made a fortune I suppose, and now here they
are in the midst of other people."
"Plenty of carriages, too," said Miss Macy; "and everything else."
"After all," said Miss Bentley, after a pause, "I suppose everybody's
money had to be made somehow, in the first instance. I suppose all the
Millers in the world came from real millers once; and the Wheelrights
from wheelwrights."
"And what a world of smiths there must have been first and last," said
Miss Lansing. "The world is full of their descendants."
"_Everybody's_ money wasn't made, though," said the St. Clair, with an
inexpressible attitude of her short upper lip.
"I guess it was,--if you go back far enough," said Miss Macy, whom
nothing disturbed. But I saw that while Miss Lansing and Miss St.
Clair were at ease in the foregoing conversation, Miss Bentley was
not.
"You _can't_ go back far enough," said the St. Clair, haughtily.
"How then?" said the other. "How do you account for it? Where did
their money come from?"
"It grew," said the St. Clair ineffably. "They were lords of the
soil."
"Oh!--But it had to be dug out, I suppose?" said Miss Macy.
"There were others to do that."
"After all," said Miss Macy, "how is money that grew any better than
money that is made? it is all made by somebody, too."
"If it is made by somebody else, it leaves your hands clean," the St.
Clair answered, with an insolence worthy of maturer years; for Miss
Macy's family had grown rich by trade. She was of a slow temper
however and did not take fire.
"My grandfather's hands were clean," she said; "yet he made his own
money. Honest hands always are clean."
"Do you suppose Miss Cardigan's were when she was handling her
cabbages?" said St Clair. "I have no doubt Miss Cardigan's house
smells of cabbages now."
"O St. Clair!" Miss Lansing said, laughing.
"I always smell them when I go past," said the other, elevating her
scornful little nose; it was a handsome nose too.
"I don't think it makes any difference," said Miss Bentley, "provided
people _have_ money, how they came by it. Money buys the same thing
for one that it does for another."
"Now, my good Bentley, that is just what it _don't_," said St. Clair,
drumming up the window-pane with the tips of her fingers.
"Why not?"
"Because!--people that have always had money know how to use it; and
people who have just come into their money _don't_ know. You can tell
the one from the other as far off as the head of the avenue."
"But what is to hinder their going to the same milliner and mantua-maker,
for instance, or the same cabinet-maker,--and buying the same things?"
"Or the same jeweller, or the same--anything? So they could if they
knew which they were."
"Which _what_ were? It is easy to tell which is a fashionable
milliner, or mantua-maker; everybody knows that."
"It don't do some people any good," said St. Clair, turning away.
"When they get in the shop they do not know what to buy; and if they
buy it they can't put it on. People that are not fashionable can't
_be_ fashionable."
I saw the glance that fell, scarcely touching, on my plain plaid
frock. I was silly enough to feel it too. I was unused to scorn. St.
Clair returned to the window, perhaps sensible that she had gone a
little too far.
"I can tell you now," she said, "what that old Miss Cardigan has got
in her house--just as well as if I saw it."
"Did you ever go in?" said Lansing eagerly.
"We don't visit," said the other. "But I can tell you just as well;
and you can send Daisy Randolph some day to see if it is true."
"Well, go on, St. Clair--what is there?" said Miss Macy.
"There's a marble hall, of course; that the mason built; it isn't her
fault. Then in the parlours there are thick carpets, that cost a great
deal of money and are as ugly as they can be, with every colour in the
world. The furniture is red satin, or may be blue, staring bright,
against a light green wall panelled with gold. The ceilings are gold
and white, with enormous chandeliers. On the wall there are some very
big picture frames, with nothing in them--to speak of; there is a
table in the middle of the floor with a marble top, and the piers are
filled with mirrors down to the floor: and the second room is like the
first and the third is like the second, and there is nothing else in
any of the rooms but what I have told you."
"Well, it is a very handsome house, I should think, if you have told
true," said Miss Bentley.
St. Clair left the window with a scarce perceptible but most wicked smile
at her friend Miss Lansing; and the group scattered. Only I remained to
think it over and ask myself, could I let go my vantage ground? could I
make up my mind to do for ever without the smile and regard of that
portion of the world which little St. Clair represented? It is powerful
even in a school!
I had seen how carelessly this undoubted child of birth and fashion
wielded the lash of her tongue; and how others bowed before it. I had