Daisy
good family. Don't you have anything to do with them, Daisy!--mind;--not
with one of them, unless I tell you who he is."
"With one of whom? What are you speaking of?"
"The cadets."
"Why I have nothing to do with them," I said. "How should I?"
Preston looked at me curiously.
"Nor at the hotel, neither, Daisy--more than you can help. Have
nothing to say to the Yankees."
I thought Preston had taken a strange fancy. I was silent.
"It is not fitting," he went on. "We are going to change all that. I
want to have nothing to do with Yankees."
"What are you going to change?" I asked. "I don't see how you can help
having to do with them. They are among the cadets, and they are among
the officers."
"We have our own set," said Preston. "I have nothing to do with them
in the corps."
"Now, Preston, look; what are they about? All the red sashes are
getting together."
"Parade is dismissed. They are coming up to salute the officer in
charge."
"It is so pretty!" I said, as the music burst out again, and the
measured steps of the advancing line of "red sashes" marked it. "And
now Captain Percival will unbend his stiff elbows. Why could not all
that be done easily, Preston?"
"Nonsense, Daisy!--it is military."
"Is it? But Mr. Blunt did it a great deal better. Now they are going.
Must you go?"
"Yes. What are you going to do to-morrow?"
"I don't know--I suppose we shall go into the woods again."
"When the examination is over, I can attend to you. I haven't much
time just now. But there is really nothing to be done here, since one
can't get on horseback out of the hours."
"I don't want anything better than I can get on my own feet," I said
joyously. "I find plenty to do."
"Look here, Daisy," said Preston--"don't you turn into a masculine,
muscular woman, that can walk her twenty miles and wear hobnailed
shoes--like the Yankees you are among. Don't forget that you are the
daughter of a Southern gentleman--"
He touched his cap hastily and turned away--walking with those
measured steps towards the barracks; whither now all the companies of
grey figures were in full retreat. I stood wondering, and then slowly
returned with my friends to the hotel; much puzzled to account for
Preston's discomposure and strange injunctions. The sunlight had left
the tops of the hills; the river slept in the gathering grey shadows,
soft, tranquil, reposeful. Before I got to the hotel, I had quite made
up my mind that my cousin's eccentricities were of no consequence.
They recurred to me, however, and were as puzzling as ever. I had no
key at the time.
The next afternoon was given to a very lively show: the light
artillery drill before the Board of Visitors. We sat out under the
trees to behold it; and I found out now the meaning of the broad
strip of plain between the hotel and the library, which was brown and
dusty in the midst of the universal green. Over this strip, round and
round, back, and forth, and across, the light artillery wagons rushed,
as if to show what they could do in time of need. It was a beautiful
sight, exciting and stirring; with the beat of horses' hoofs, the
clatter of harness, the rumble of wheels tearing along over the
ground, the flash of a sabre now and then, the ringing words of
command, and the soft, shrill echoing bugle which repeated them. I
only wanted to understand it all; and in the evening I plied Preston
with questions. He explained things to me patiently.
"I understand," I said, at last, "I understand what it would do in war
time. But we are not at war, Preston."
"No."
"Nor in the least likely to be."
"We can't tell. It is good to be ready."
"But what do you mean?" I remember saying. "You speak as if we might
be at war. Who is there for us to fight?"
"Anybody that wants putting in order," said Preston. "The Indians."
"O Preston, Preston!" I exclaimed. "The Indians! when we have been
doing them wrong ever since the white men came here; and you want to
do them more wrong!"
"I want to hinder them from doing us wrong. But I don't care about the
Indians, little Daisy. I would just as lief fight the Yankees."
"Preston, I think you are very wrong."
"You think all the world is," he said.
We were silent, and I felt very dissatisfied. What _was_ all this
military schooling a preparation for, perhaps? How could we know.
Maybe these heads and hands, so gay to-day in their mock fight, would
be grimly and sadly at work by and by, in real encounter with some
real enemy.
"Do you see that man, Daisy?" whispered Preston, suddenly in my ear.
"That one talking to a lady in blue."
We were on the parade ground, among a crowd of spectators, for the
hotels were very full, and the Point very gay now. I said I saw him.
"That is a great man."
"Is he?" I said, looking and wondering if a great man could hide
behind such a physiognomy.
"Other people think so, I can tell you," said Preston. "Nobody knows
what that man can do. That is Davis of Mississippi."
The name meant nothing to me then. I looked at him as I would have
looked at another man. And I did not like what I saw. Something of
sinister, nothing noble, about the countenance; power there might
be--Preston said there was--but the power of the fox and the vulture
it seemed to me; sly, crafty, selfish, cruel.
"If nobody knows what he can do, how is it so certain that he is a
great man?" I asked. Preston did not answer. "I hope there are not
many great men that look like him." I went on.
"Nonsense, Daisy!" said Preston, in an energetic whisper. "That is
Davis of Mississippi."
"Well?" said I. "That is no more to me than if he were Jones of New
York."
"Daisy!" said Preston. "If you are not a true Southerner, I will never
love you any more."
"What do you mean by a true Southerner? I do not understand."
"Yes, you do. A true Southerner is always a Southerner, and takes the
part of a Southerner in every dispute--right or wrong."
"What makes you dislike Northerners so much?"
"Cowardly Yankees!" was Preston's reply.
"You must have an uncomfortable time among them, if you feel so," I
said.
"There are plenty of the true sort here. I wish you were in Paris,
Daisy; or somewhere else."
"Why?" I said, laughing.
"Safe with my mother, or _your_ mother. You want teaching. You are too
latitudinarian. And you are too thick with the Yankees, by half."
I let this opinion alone, as I could do nothing with it; and our
conversation broke off with Preston in a very bad humour.
The next day, when we were deep in the woods, I asked Dr. Sandford if
he knew Mr. Davis of Mississippi. He answered Yes, rather drily. I
knew the doctor knew everybody.
I asked why Preston called him a great man.
"Does he call him a great man?" Dr. Sandford asked.
"Do you?"
"No, not I, Daisy. But that may not hinder the fact. And I may not
have Mr. Gary's means of judging."
"What means can he have?" I said.
"Daisy," said Dr. Sandford suddenly, when I had forgotten the question
in plunging through a thicket of brushwood, "if the North and the
South should split on the subject of slavery, what side would you
take?"
"What do you mean by a 'split'?" I asked slowly, in my wonderment.
"The States are not precisely like a perfect crystal, Daisy, and
there is an incipient cleavage somewhere about Mason and Dixon's
line."
"I do not know what line that is."
"No. Well, for practical purposes, you may take it as the line between
the slave States and the free."
"But how could there be a split?" I asked.
"There is a wedge applied even now, Daisy--the question whether the
new States forming out of our Western territories, shall have slavery
in them or shall be free States."
I was silent upon this; and we walked and climbed for a little
distance, without my remembering our geological or mineralogical, or
any other objects in view.
"The North say," Dr. Sandford then went on, "that these States shall
be free. The South--or some men at the South--threaten that if they
be, the South will split from the North, have nothing to do with us,
and set up for themselves."
"Who is to decide it?" I asked.
"The people. This fall the election will be held for the next
President; and that will show. If a slavery man be chosen, we shall
know that a majority of the nation go with the Southern view."
"If not?"--
"Then there may be trouble, Daisy."
"What sort of trouble?" I asked hastily.
Dr. Sandford hesitated, and then said, "I do not know how far people
will go."
I mused, and forgot the sweet flutter of green leaves, and smell of
moss and of hemlock, and golden bursts of sunshine, amongst which we
were pursuing our way. Preston's strange heat and Southernism, Mr.
Davis's wile and greatness, a coming disputed election, quarrels
between the people where I was born and the people where I was brought
up, divisions and jealousies, floated before my mind in unlovely and
confused visions. Then, remembering my father and my mother and Gary
McFarlane, and others whom I had known, I spoke again.
"Whatever the Southern people say, they will do, Dr. Sandford."
"_Provided_--" said the doctor.
"What, if you please?"
"Provided the North will let them, Daisy."
I thought privately they could not hinder. Would there be a trial?
Could it be possible there would be a trial?
"But you have not answered my question," said the doctor. "Aren't you
going to answer it?"
"What question?"
"As to the side you would take."
"I do not want any more slave States, Dr. Sandford."
"I thought so. Then you would be with the North."
"But people will never be so foolish as to come to what you call a
'split,' Dr. Sandford."
"Upon my word, Daisy, as the world is at present, the folly of a thing
is no presumptive argument against its coming into existence.
Look--here we shall get a nice piece of quartz for your collection."
I came back to the primary rocks, and for the present dismissed the
subject of the confusions existing on the surface of the earth; hoping
sincerely that there would be no occasion for calling it up again.
For some time I saw very little of Preston. He was busy, he said. My
days flowed on like the summer sunshine, and were as beneficent. I was
gaining strength every day. Dr. Sandford decreed that I must stay as
long as possible. Then Mr. Sandford came, the doctor's brother, and
added his social weight to our party. Hardly needed, for I perceived
that we were very much sought after; at least my companions. The
doctor in especial was a very great favourite, both with men and
women; who I notice are most ready to bestow their favour where it is
least cared for. I don't know but Dr. Sandford cared for it; only he
did not show that he did. The claims of society however began to
interfere with my geological and other lessons.
A few days after his brother's arrival, the doctor had been carried
off by a party of gentlemen who were going back in the mountains to
fish in the White Lakes. I was left to the usual summer delights of
the place; which indeed to me were numberless; began with the echo of
the morning gun (or before) and ended not till the three taps of the
drum at night. The cadets had gone into camp by this time; and the
taps of the drum were quite near, as well as the shrill sweet notes of
the fife at reveille and tattoo. The camp itself was a great pleasure
to me; and at guardmounting or parade I never failed to be in my
place. Only to sit in the rear of the guard tents and watch the
morning sunlight on the turf, and on the hills over the river, and
shining down the camp alleys, was a rich satisfaction. Mrs. Sandford
laughed at me; her husband said it was "natural," though I am sure he
did not understand it a bit; but the end of all was, that I was left