Daisy
was only a little while before my companions almost all made a pet of
me. It is humbling to know that this effect was hastened by some of
the French dresses my mother had sent me, and which convenience
obliged me to wear. They were extremely pretty; the girls came round
me to know where I got them, and talked about who I was; and "Daisy
Randolph," was the name most favoured by their lips from that time
until school closed. With the exception, I must add, of my four
room-mates. Miss St. Clair held herself entirely aloof from me, and
the others chose her party rather than mine. St. Clair never lost, I
think, any good chance or omitted any fair scheme to provoke me; but
all she could do had lost its power. I tried to soften her; but
Faustina was a rock to my advances. I knew I had done irreparable
wrong that evening; the thought of it was almost the only trouble I
had during those months.
An old trouble was brought suddenly home to me one day. I was told a
person wanted to speak to me in the lower hall. I ran down, and found
Margaret. She was in the cloak and dress I had bought for her; looking
at first very gleeful, and then very business-like, as she brought out
from under her cloak a bit of paper folded with something in it.
"What is this?" I said, finding a roll of bills.
"It's my wages, Miss Daisy. I only kept out two dollars, ma'am--I
wanted a pair of shoes so bad--and I couldn't be let go about the
house in them old shoes with holes in 'em; there was holes in both of
'em, Miss Daisy."
"But your wages, Margaret?" I said--"I have nothing to do with your
wages."
"Yes, Miss Daisy--they belongs to master, and I allowed to bring 'em
to you. They's all there so fur. It's all right."
I felt the hot shame mounting to my face. I put the money back in
Margaret's hand, and hurriedly told her to keep it; we were not at
Magnolia; she might do what she liked with the money; it was her own
earnings.
I shall never forget the girl's confounded look, and then her grin of
brilliant pleasure. I could have burst into tears as I went up the
stairs, thinking of others at home. Yet the question came too, would
my father like what I had been doing? He held the girl to be his
property and her earnings his earnings. Had I been giving Margaret a
lesson in rebellion, and preparing her to claim her rights at some
future day? Perhaps. And I made up my mind that I did not care. Live
upon stolen money I would not, any more than I could help. But was I
not living on it all the while? The old subject brought back! I
worried over it all the rest of the day, with many a look forward and
back.
As the time of the vacation drew near, I looked hard for news of my
father and mother, or tidings of their coming home. There were none.
Indeed, I got no letters at all. There was nothing to cause uneasiness;
the intervals were often long between one packet of letters and the next;
but I wanted to hear of some change now that the school year was ended.
It had been a good year to me. In that little world I had met and faced
some of the hardest temptations of the great world; they could never be
new to me again; and I had learned both my weakness and my strength.
No summons to happiness reached me that year. My vacation was spent
again with my Aunt Gary, and without Preston. September saw me quietly
settled at my studies for another school year; to be gone through with
what patience I might.
That school year had nothing to chronicle. I was very busy, very
popular, kindly treated by my teachers, and happy in a smooth course
of life. Faustina St. Clair had been removed from the school; to some
other I believe; and with her went all my causes of annoyance. The
year rolled round, my father and mother in China or on the high seas;
and my sixteenth summer opened upon me.
A day or two before the close of school, I was called to the parlour
to see a lady. Not my aunt; it was Mrs. Sandford; and the doctor was
with her.
I had not seen Mrs. Sandford, I must explain, for nearly a year; she
had been away in another part of the country, far from New York.
"Why, Daisy!--is this Daisy?" she exclaimed.
"Is it not?" I asked.
"Not the old Daisy. You are so grown, my dear!--so--That's right,
Grant; let us have a little light to see each other by."
"It is Miss Randolph--" said the doctor, after he had drawn up the
window shade.
"Like her mother! isn't she? and yet, not like--"
"Not at all like."
"She is, though, Grant; you are mistaken; she _is_ like her mother;
though as I said, she isn't. I never saw anybody so improved. My dear,
I shall tell all my friends to send their daughters to Mme. Ricard."
"Dr. Sandford," said I, "Mme. Ricard does not like to have the sun
shine into this room."
"It's Daisy, too," said the doctor, smiling, as he drew down the shade
again. "Don't _you_ like it, Miss Daisy?"
"Yes, of course," I said; "but she does not."
"It is not at all a matter of course," said he; "except as you are
Daisy. Some people, as you have just told me, are afraid of the sun."
"Oh, that is only for the carpets," I said.
Dr. Sandford gave me a good look, like one of his looks of old times,
that carried me right back somehow to Juanita's cottage.
"How do you do, Daisy?"
"A little pale," said Mrs. Sandford.
"Let her speak for herself."
I said I did not know I was pale.
"Did you know you had head-ache a good deal of the time?"
"Yes, Dr. Sandford, I knew that. It is not very bad."
"Does not hinder you from going on with study?"
"Oh no, never."
"You have a good deal of time for study at night, too, do you
not?--after the lights are out."
"At night? how did you know that? But it is not always _study_."
"No. You consume also a good deal of beef and mutton, nowadays? You
prefer substantials in food as in everything else?"
I looked at my guardian, very much surprised that he should see all
this in my face, and with a little of my childish fascination about
those steady blue eyes. I could not deny that in these days I scarcely
lived by eating. But in the eagerness and pleasure of my pursuits I
had not missed it, and amid my many busy and anxious thoughts I had
not cared about it.
"That will do," said the doctor. "Daisy, have you heard lately from
your father or mother?"
My breath came short as I said no.
"Nor have I. Failing orders from them, you are bound to respect mine;
and I order you change of air, and to go wherever Mrs. Sandford
proposes to take you."
"Not before school closes, Dr. Sandford?"
"Do you care about that?"
"My dear child," said Mrs. Sandford, "we are going to West Point--and
we want to take you with us. I know you will enjoy it, my dear; and I
shall be delighted to have you. But we want to go next week."
"Do you care, Daisy?" Dr. Sandford repeated.
I had to consider. One week more, and the examination would be over
and the school term ended. I was ready for the examination; I expected
to keep my standing, which was very high; by going away now I should
lose that, and miss some distinction. So at least I thought. I found
that several things were at work in my heart that I had not known were
there. After a minute I told Mrs. Sandford I would go with her when
she pleased.
"You have made up your mind that you do not care about staying to the
end here?" said the doctor.
"Dr. Sandford," I said, "I believe I _do_ care; but not about anything
worth while."
He took both my hands, standing before me, and looked at me, I
thought, as if I were the old little child again.
"A course of fresh air," he said, "will do you more good than a course
of any other thing just now. And we may find 'wonderful things' at
West Point, Daisy."
"I expect you will enjoy it, Daisy," Mrs. Sandford repeated.
There was no fear. I knew I should see Preston, at any rate; and I had
been among brick walls for many months. I winced a little at the
thought of missing all I had counted upon at the close of term; but it
was mainly pride that winced, so it was no matter.
We left the city three or four days later. It was a June day--can I
ever forget it? What a brilliance of remembrance comes over me now?
The bustle of the close schoolrooms, the heat and dust of the sunny
city streets, were all left behind in an hour; and New York was
nowhere! The waves of the river sparkled under a summer breeze; the
wall of the palisades stretched along, like the barriers of fairyland;
so they seemed to me; only the barrier was open and I was about to
enter. So till their grey and green ramparts were passed, and the
broader reaches of the river beyond, and as evening began to draw in
we came to higher shores and a narrower channel, and were threading
our way among the lights and shadows of opposing headlands and
hilltops. It grew but more fresh and fair as the sun got lower. Then,
in a place where the river seemed to come to an end, the "Pipe of
Peace" drew close in under the western shore, to a landing. Buildings
of grey stone clustered and looked over the bank. Close under the
bank's green fringes a little boat-house and large clean wooden pier
received us; from the landing a road went steeply sloping up. I see it
all now in the colours which clothed it then. I think I entered
fairyland when I touched foot to shore. Even down at the landing,
everything was clean and fresh and in order. The green branches of
that thick fringe which reached to the top of the bank had no dust on
them; the rocks were parti-coloured with lichens; the river was
bright, flowing and rippling past; the "Pipe of Peace" had pushed off
and sped on, and in another minute or two was turning the point, and
then--out of sight. Stillness seemed to fill the woods and the air as
the beat of her paddles was lost. I breathed stillness. New York was
fifty miles away, physically and morally at the antipodes.
I find it hard to write without epithets. As I said I was in
fairyland; and how shall one describe fairyland?
Dr. Sandford broke upon my reverie by putting me into the omnibus. But
the omnibus quite belonged to fairyland too; it did not go rattling
and jolting, but stole quietly up the long hill; letting me enjoy a
view of the river and the hills of the opposite shore, coloured as
they were by the setting sun, and crisp and sharp in the cool June
air. Then a great round-topped building came in place of my view; the
road took a turn behind it.
"What is that?" I asked the doctor.
"I am sorry, Daisy, I don't know. I am quite as ignorant as yourself."
"That's the riding-hall," I heard somebody say.
One omnibus full had gone up before us; and there were only two or
three people in ours besides our own party. I looked round, and saw
that the information had been given by a young man in a sort of
uniform; he was all in grey, with large round gilt buttons on his
coat, and a soldier's cap. The words had been spoken in a civil tone,
that tempted me on.
"Thank you!" I said. "The riding-hall!--who rides in it?"
"We do," he said, and then smiled,--"The cadets."
It was a frank smile and a pleasant face and utterly the look of a
gentleman. So, though I saw that he was very much amused, either at
himself or me, I went on--
"And those other buildings?"
"Those are the stables."
I wondered at the neat beautiful order of the place. Then, the omnibus
slowly mounting the hill, the riding-hall and stables were lost to
sight. Another building, of more pretension, appeared on our left
hand, on the brow of the ascent; our road turned the corner round this
building, and beneath a grove of young trees the gothic buttresses and
windows of grey stone peeped out. Carefully dressed green turf, with
gravelled walks leading from different directions to the doors, looked