Daisy
liberty is wanting. He is on guard. We crossed his path as we came
into the camp."
"On guard!" I said. "Is he? Why, he was on guard only a day or two
ago. Does it come so often?"
"It comes pretty often in Gary's case," said my companion.
"Does it?" I said. "He does not like it."
"No," said Mr. Thorold, merrily. "It is not a favourite amusement in
most cases."
"Then why does he have so much of it?"
"Gary is not fond of discipline."
I guessed this might be true. I knew enough of Preston for that. But
it startled me.
"Does he not obey the regulations?" I asked presently, in a lowered
tone.
Mr. Thorold smiled. "He is a friend of yours, Miss Randolph?"
"Yes," I said; "he is my mother's nephew."
"Then he is your cousin?" said my companion. Another of those
penetrative glances fell on me. They were peculiar; they flashed upon
me, or through me, as keen and clear as the flash of a sabre in the
sun; and out of eyes in which a sunlight of merriment or benignity was
even then glowing. Both glowed upon me just at this moment, so I did
not mind the keen investigation. Indeed, I never minded it. I learned
to know it as one of Mr. Thorold's peculiarities. Now, Dr. Sandford
had a good eye for reading people, but it never flashed, unless under
strong excitement. Mr. Thorold's were dancing and flashing and
sparkling with fifty things by turns; their fund of amusement and
power of observation were the first things that struck me, and they
attracted me too.
"Then he is your cousin?"
"Of course, he is my cousin."
I thought Mr. Thorold seemed a little bit grave and silent for a
moment; then he rose up, with that benign look of his eyes glowing all
over me, and told me there was the drum for parade. "Only the first
drum," he added; so I need not be in a hurry. Would I go home before
parade?
I thought I would. If Preston was pacing up and down the side of the
camp ground, I thought I did not want to see him nor to have him see
me, as he was there for what I called disgrace. Moreover, I had a
secret presentiment of a breezy discussion with him the next time
there was a chance.
And I was not disappointed. The next day in the afternoon he came to
see us. Mrs. Sandford and I were sitting on the piazza, where the heat
of an excessive sultry day was now relieved a little by a slender
breeze coming out of the north-west. It was very hot still. Preston
sat down and made conversation in an abstracted way for a little
while.
"We did not see you at the hop the other night, Mr. Gary," Mrs.
Sandford remarked.
"No. Were you there?" said Preston.
"Everybody was there--except you."
"And Daisy? Were _you_ there, Daisy?"
"Certainly," Mrs. Sandford responded. "Everybody else could have been
better missed."
"I did not know you went there," said Preston, in something so like a
growl that Mrs. Sandford lifted her eyes to look at him.
"I do not wonder you are jealous," she said composedly.
"Jealous!" said Preston, with growl the second.
"You had more reason than you knew."
Preston grumbled something about the hops being "stupid places." I
kept carefully still.
"Daisy, did _you_ go?"
I looked up and said yes.
"Whom did you dance with?"
"With everybody," said Mrs. Sandford. "That is, so far as the length
of the evening made it possible. Blue and grey, and all colours."
"I don't want you to dance with everybody," said Preston, in a more
undertone growl.
"There is no way to prevent it," said Mrs. Sandford, "but to be there
and ask her yourself."
I did not thank Mrs. Sandford privately for this suggestion; which
Preston immediately followed up by inquiring "if we were going to the
hop to-night?"
"Certainly," Mrs. Sandford said.
"It's too confounded hot!"
"Not for us who are accustomed to the climate," Mrs. Sandford said,
with spirit.
"It's a bore altogether," muttered Preston. "Daisy, are you going
to-night?"
"I suppose so."
"Well, if you must go, you may as well dance with me as with anybody.
So tell anybody else that you are engaged. I will take care of you."
"Don't you wish to dance with anybody except me?"
"I do not," said Preston, slowly. "As I said, it is too hot. I
consider the whole thing a bore."
"You shall not be bored for me," I said. "I refuse to dance with you.
I hope I shall not see you there at all."
"Daisy!"
"Well?"
"Come down and take a little walk with me."
"You said it is too hot."
"But you will dance?"
"You will not dance."
"I want to speak to you, Daisy."
"You may speak," I said. I did not want to hear him, for there were no
indications of anything agreeable in Preston's manner.
"Daisy!" he said, "I do not know you."
"You used to know her," said Mrs. Sandford; "that is all."
"Will you come and walk with me?" said Preston, almost angrily.
"I do not think it would be pleasant," I said.
"You were walking yesterday afternoon."
"Yes."
"Come and walk up and down the piazza, anyhow. You can do that."
I could, and did not refuse. He chose the sunny western side, because
no one was there. However, the sun's rays were obscured under a thick
haze and had been all day.
"Whom were you with?" Preston inquired, as soon as we were out of
earshot.
"Do you mean yesterday?"
"Of course I mean yesterday! I saw you cross into the camp With whom
were you going there?"
"Why did you not come to speak to me?" I said.
"I was on duty. I could not."
"I did not see you anywhere."
"I was on guard. You crossed my path not ten feet off."
"Then you must know whom I was with, Preston," I said, looking at him.
"_You_ don't know--that is the thing. It was that fellow Thorold."
"How came you to be on guard again so soon? You were on guard just a
day or two before."
"That is all right enough. It is about military things that you do not
understand. It is all right enough, except these confounded Yankees.
And Thorold is another."
"Who is _one_!" I said, laughing. "You say he is _another_."
"Blunt is one."
"I like Major Blunt."
"Daisy," said Preston, stopping short, "you ought to be with your
mother. There is nobody to take care of you here. How came you to know
that Thorold?"
"He was introduced to me. What is the matter with him?"
"You ought not to be going about with him. He is a regular Yankee, I
tell you."
"What does that mean?" I said. "You speak it as if you meant something
very objectionable."
"I do. They are a cowardly set of tailors. They have no idea what a
gentleman means, not one of them, unless they have caught the idea
from a Southerner. I don't want you to have anything to do with them,
Daisy. You _must_ not dance with them, and you must not be seen with
this Thorold. Promise me you will not."
"Dr. Sandford is another," I said.
"I can't help Dr. Sandford. He is your guardian. You must not go again
with Thorold!"
"Did you ever know _him_ cowardly?" I asked.
I was sure that Preston coloured; whether with any feeling beside
anger I could not make out; but the anger was certain.
"What do you know about it?" he asked.
"What do you?" I rejoined. But Preston changed more and more.
"Daisy, promise me you will not have anything to do with these
fellows. You are too good to dance with them. There are plenty of
Southern people here now, and lots of Southern cadets."
"Mr. Caxton is one," I said. "I don't like him."
"He is of an excellent Georgia family," said Preston.
"I cannot help that. He is neither gentlemanly in his habits nor true
in his speech."
Preston hereupon broke out into an untempered abuse of Northern things
in general, and Northern cadets in particular, mingled with a
repetition of his demands upon me. At length I turned from him.
"This is very tiresome, Preston," I said; "and this side of the house
is very warm. Of course, I must dance with whoever asks me."
"Well, I have asked you for this evening," he said, following me.
"You are not to go," I said. "I shall not dance with you once," and I
took my former place by Mrs. Sandford. Preston fumed; declared that I
was just like a piece of marble; and went away. I did not feel quite
so impassive as he said I looked.
"What are you going to wear to-night, Daisy?" Mrs. Sandford asked
presently.
"I do not know, ma'am."
"But you must know soon, my dear. Have you agreed to give your cousin
half the evening?"
"No, ma'am--I could not; I am engaged for every dance, and more."
"More!" said Mrs. Sandford.
"Yes, ma'am--for the next time."
"Preston has reason!" she said, laughing. "But I think, Daisy, Grant
will be the most jealous of all. Do him good. What will become of his
sciences and his microscope now?"
"Why, I shall be just as ready for them," I said.
Mrs. Sandford shook her head. "You will find the hops will take more
than that," she said. "But now, Daisy, think what you will wear; for
we must go soon and get ready."
I did not want to think about it. I expected, of course, to put on the
same dress I had worn the last time. But Mrs. Sandford objected very
strongly.
"You must not wear the same thing twice running," she said, "not if
you can help it."
I could not imagine why not.
"It is quite nice enough," I urged. "It is scarcely the least tumbled
in the world."
"People will think you have not another, my dear."
"What matter would that be?" I said, wholly puzzled.
"Now, my dear Daisy!" said Mrs. Sandford, half laughing--"you are the
veriest Daisy in the world, and do not understand the world that you
grow in. No matter; just oblige me, and put on something else
to-night. What have you got?"
I had other dresses like the rejected one. I had another still, white
like them, but the make and quality were different. I hardly knew what
it was, for I had never worn it; to please Mrs. Sandford I took it out
now. She was pleased. It was like the rest, out of the store my mother
had sent me; a soft India muslin, of beautiful texture, made and
trimmed as my mother and a Parisian artist could manage between them.
But no Parisian artist could know better than my mother how a thing
should be.
"That will do!" said Mrs. Sandford approvingly. "Dear me, what lace
you Southern ladies do wear, to be sure! A blue sash, now, Daisy?"
"No, ma'am, I think not."
"Rose? It must be blue or rose."
But I thought differently, and kept it white.
"_No_ colour?" said Mrs. Sandford. "None at all. Then let me just put
this little bit of green in your hair."
As I stood before the glass and she tried various positions for some
geranium leaves, I felt that would not do either. Any dressing of my
head would commonize the whole thing. I watched her fingers and the
geranium leaves going from one side of my head to the other, watched
how every touch changed the tone of my costume, and felt that I could
not suffer it; and then it suddenly occurred to me that I, who a
little while before had not cared about my dress for the evening, now
did care and that determinedly. I knew I would wear no geranium
leaves, not even to please Mrs. Sandford. And for the first time a
question stole into my mind, what was I, Daisy, doing? But then I said
to myself, that the dress without this head adorning was perfect in
its elegance; it suited me; and it was not wrong to like beauty, nor
to dislike things in bad taste. Perhaps I was too handsomely dressed,
but I could not change that now. Another time I would go back to my
embroidered muslins, and stay there.
"I like it better without anything, Mrs. Sandford," I said, removing
her green decorations and turning away from the glass. Mrs. Sandford
sighed, but said "it would do without them," and then we started.
I can see it all again; I can almost feel the omnibus roll with me
over the plain, that still sultry night. All those nights were sultry.