Daisy
Then, as we came near the Academic Building, I could see the lights in
the upper windows; here and there an officer sitting in a window-sill,
and the figures of cadets passing back and forth. Then we mounted to
the hall above, filled with cadets in a little crowd, and words of
recognition came, and Preston, meeting us almost before we got out of
the dressing-room.
"Daisy, you dance with me?"
"I am engaged, Preston, for the first dance."
"Already! The second, then, and all the others?"
"I am engaged," I repeated, and left him, for Mr. Thorold was at my
side.
I forgot Preston the next minute. It was easy to forget him, for all
the first half of the evening I was honestly happy in dancing. In
talking, too, whenever Thorold was my partner; other people's talk was
very tiresome. They went over the platitudes of the day; or they
started subjects of interest that were not interesting to me. Bits of
gossip--discussions of fashionable amusements with which I could have
nothing to do; frivolous badinage, which was of all things most
distasteful to me. Yet, amid it, I believe there was a subtle incense
of admiration which by degrees and insensibly found its way to my
senses. But I had two dances with Thorold, and at those times I was
myself and enjoyed unalloyed pleasure. And so I thought did he.
I saw Preston, when now and then I caught a glimpse of him, looking
excessively glum. Midway in the evening it happened that I was
standing beside him for a few moments, waiting for my next partner.
"You are dancing with nobody but that man whom I hate!" he grumbled.
"Who is it now?"
"Captain Vaux."
"Will you dance with me after that?"
"I cannot, Preston. I must dance with Major Banks."
"You seem to like it pretty well," he growled.
"No wonder," said Mrs. Sandford. "You were quite right about the
geranium leaves, Daisy; you do not want them. You do not want
anything, my dear," she whispered.
At this instant a fresh party entered the room, just as my partner
came up to claim me.
"There are some handsome girls," said the captain. "Two of them,
really!"
"People from Cozzens's," said Mrs. Sandford, "who think the cadets
keep New York hours."
It was Faustina St. Clair and Mary Lansing, with their friends and
guardians, I don't know whom. And as I moved to take my place in the
dance, I was presently confronted by my school adversary and the
partner she had immediately found. The greeting was very slight and
cool on her side.
"Excessively handsome," whispered the captain. "A friend of yours?"
"A schoolfellow," I said.
"Must be a pleasant thing, I declare, to have such handsome
schoolfellows," said the captain. "Beauty is a great thing, isn't it?
I wonder, sometimes, how the ladies can make up their minds to take up
with such great rough ugly fellows as we are, for a set. How do you
think it is?"
I thought it was wonderful, too, when they were like him. But I said
nothing.
"Dress, too," said the captain. "Now look at our dress! Straight and
square and stiff, and no variety in it. While our eyes are delighted,
on the other side, with soft draperies and fine colours, and
combinations of grace and elegance that are fit to put a man in
Elysium!"
"Did you notice the colour of the haze in the west, this evening, at
sunset?" I asked.
"Haze? No, really. I didn't know there was any haze, really, except in
my head. I get hazy amidst these combinations. Seriously, Miss
Randolph, what do you think of a soldier's life?"
"It depends on who the soldier is," I said.
"Cool, really!" said the captain. "Cool! Ha! ha!--"
And he laughed, till I wondered what I could have said to amuse him so
much.
"Then you have learned to individualize soldiers already?" was his
next question, put with a look which seemed to me inquisitive and
impertinent. I did not know how to answer it, and left it unanswered;
and the captain and I had the rest of our dance out in silence.
Meanwhile, I could not help watching Faustina. She was so very
handsome, with a marked, dashing sort of beauty that I saw was
prodigiously admired. She took no notice of me, and barely touched the
tips of my fingers with her glove as we passed in the dance.
As he was leading me back to Mrs. Sandford, the captain stooped his
head to mine. "Forgive me," he whispered. "So much gentleness cannot
bear revenge. I am only a soldier."
"Forgive you what, sir?" I asked. And he drew up his head again, half
laughed, muttered that I was worse than grape or round shot, and
handed me over to my guardian.
"My dear Daisy," said Mrs. Sandford, "If you were not so sweet as you
are, you would be a queen. There, now, do not lift up your grey eyes
at me like that, or I shall make you a reverence the first thing I do,
and fancy that I am one of your _dames d'honneur_. Who is next? Major
Banks? Take care, Daisy, or you'll do some mischief."
I had not time to think about her words; the dances went forward, and
I took my part in them with great pleasure until the tattoo summons
broke us up. Indeed, my pleasure lasted until we got home to the
hotel, and I heard Mrs. Sandford saying, in an aside to her husband,
amid some rejoicing over me--"I was dreadfully afraid she wouldn't
go." The words, or something in them, gave me a check. However, I had
too many exciting things to think of to take it up just then, and my
brain was in a whirl of pleasure till I went to sleep.
CHAPTER XVII.
OBEYING ORDERS.
As I shared Mrs. Sandford's room, of course I had very scant
opportunities of being by myself. In the delightful early mornings I
was accustomed to take my book, therefore, and go down where I had
gone the first morning, to the rocks by the river's side. Nobody came
by that way at so early an hour; I had been seen by nobody except that
one time, when Thorold and his companion passed me; and I felt quite
safe. It was pleasanter down there than can be told. However sultry
the air on the heights above, so near the water there was always a
savour of freshness; or else I fancied it, in the hearing of the soft
liquid murmur of the little wavelets against the shore. But sometimes
it was so still I could hear nothing of that; then birds and insects,
or the faint notes of a bugle call, were the only things to break the
absolute hush; and the light was my refreshment, on river and tree and
rock and hill; one day sharp and clear, another day fairylandlike and
dreamy through golden mist.
It was a good retiring place in any case, so early in the day. I could
read and pray there better than in a room, I thought. The next morning
after my second dancing party, I was there as usual. It was a sultry July
morning, the yellow light in the haze on the hills threatening a very hot
day. I was very happy, as usual; but somehow my thoughts went roaming off
into the yellow haze, as if the landscape had been my life, and I were
trying to pick out points of light here and there, and sporting on the
gay surface. I danced my dances over again in the flow of the river;
heard soft words of kindness or admiration in the song of the birds;
wandered away in mazes of speculative fancy among the thickets of tree
stems and underbrush. The sweet wonderful note of a wood-thrush,
somewhere far out of sight, assured me, what everything conspired to
assure me, that I was certainly in fairyland, not on the common earth.
But I could not get on with my Bible at all. Again and again I began to
read; then a bird or a bough or a ripple would catch my attention, and
straightway I was off on a flight of fancy or memory, dancing over again
my dances with Mr. Thorold, dwelling upon the impression of his figure
and dress, and the fascination of his brilliant, changing hazel eyes; or
recalling Captain Vaux's or somebody else's insipid words and looks, or
Faustina St. Clair's manner of ill-will; or on the other hand giving a
passing thought to the question how I should dress the next hop night.
After a long wandering, I would come back and begin at my Bible again,
but only for a little; my fancy could not be held to it; and a few
scarcely read verses and a few half-uttered petitions were all I had
accomplished before the clangour of the hotel gong, sounding down even to
me, warned me that my time was gone. And the note of the wood-thrush, as
I slowly mounted the path, struck reproachfully and rebukingly upon the
ear of my conscience.
How had this come about? I mused as I went up the hill. What was the
matter? What had bewitched me? No pleasure in my Bible; no time for
prayer; and only the motion of feet moving to music, only the flutter
of lace and muslin, and the flashing of hazel eyes, filling my brain.
What was wrong? Nay, something. And why had Mrs. Sandford "feared" I
would not go to the hops? Were they not places for Christians to go
to? What earthly harm? Only pleasure. But what if pleasure that marred
better pleasure--that interrupted duty? And why was I ruminating on
styles and colours, and proposing to put on another dress that should
be more becoming the next time? and thinking that it would be well it
should be a contrast to Faustina St. Clair? What! entering the lists
with her, on her own field? No, no; I could not think of it. But what
then? And what was this little flutter at my heart about gentlemen's
words and looks of homage and liking? What could it be to me, that
such people as Captain Vaux or Captain Lascelles liked me? Captain
Lascelles, who when he was not dancing or flirting was pleased to curl
himself up on one of the window seats like a monkey, and take a
grinning survey of what went on. Was I flattered by such admiration as
his?--or _any_ admiration? I liked to have Mr. Thorold like me; yes, I
was not wrong to be pleased with that; besides, that was _liking_; not
empty compliments. But for my lace and my India muslin and my
"Southern elegance"--I knew Colonel Walrus meant me when he talked
about that--was I thinking of admiration for such things as these, and
thinking so much that my Bible reading had lost its charm? What was in
fault? Not the hops? They were too pleasant. It could not be the hops.
I mounted the hill slowly and in a great maze, getting more and more
troubled. I entering the lists with Faustina St. Clair, going in her
ways? I knew these were her ways. I had heard scraps enough of
conversation among the girls about these things, which I then did not
understand. And another word came therewith into my mind, powerful
once before, and powerful now to disentangle the false from the true.
"The world knoweth us not." Did it not know me, last night? Would it
not, if I went there again? But the hops were so pleasant!
It almost excites a smile in me now to think how pleasant they were. I
was only sixteen. I had seen no dancing parties other than the little
school assemblages at Mme. Ricard's; and I was fond of the amusement
even there. Here, it seemed to me, then, as if all prettiness and
pleasantness that could come together in such a gathering met in the
dancing room of the cadets. I think not very differently now, as to
that point. The pretty accompaniments of uniform; the simple style and
hours; the hearty enjoyment of the occasion; were all a little unlike
what is found at other places. And to me, and to increase my
difficulty, came a crowning pleasure; I met Thorold there. To have a
good dance and talk with him was worth certainly all the rest. Must I
give it up?
I could not bear to think so, but the difficulty helped to prick my
conscience. There had been only two hops, and I was so enthralled
already. How would it be if I had been to a dozen; and where might it
end? And the word stands,--"The world knoweth us _not_."
It must not know me, Daisy Randolph, as in any sort belonging to it or