Daisy
excitement and sorrow and happiness and shame, I could do nothing. The
best I could do was to hide my face; but the breast of that grey coat
was a strange hiding-place for it. With that inconsistent mingling of
small things with great in one's perceptions, which everybody knows, I
remember the soft feel of the fine grey cloth along with the clasp of
Thorold's arms and the touch of his cheek resting upon my hair. And we
stood so, quite still, for what seemed both a long and a short time,
in which I think happiness got the upper hand with me, and pain for
the moment was bid into the background. At last Thorold raised his
head and bade me lift up mine.
"Look up, darling," he said; "look up, Daisy! let me see your face.
Look up, Daisy--we have only a minute, and everything in the world to
say to each other. Daisy--I want to see you."
I think it was one of the most difficult little things I ever had in
my life to do, to raise my face and let him look at it; but I knew it
must be done, and I did it. One glance at his I ventured. He was
smiling at me; there was a flush upon his cheek; his eye had a light
in it, and with that a glow of tenderness which was different from
anything I had ever seen; and it was glittering, too, I think, with
another sort of suffusion. His hand came smoothing down my hair and
then touching my cheek while he looked at me.
"What are you going to do with yourself now?" he said softly.
"I am going on with my studies for another month or two."
"And you belong to me, Daisy?"
"Yes."
He bent his head and kissed my brow. There is an odd difference of
effect between a kiss on the lips and on the forehead, or else it was
a difference in the manner. This seemed a sort of taking possession or
setting a seal; and it gave me a new feeling of something almost like
awe, which I had never associated with the grey coat or with its
wearer before. Along with that came another impression that I suppose
most women know, and know how sweet it is; the sense of an enveloping
protection. Not that I had not been protected all my life; but my
mother's had been the protection of authority; my father's also, in
some measure; Dr. Sandford's was emphatically that of a _guardian_; he
guarded me a little too well. But this new thing that was stealing
into my heart, with its subtle delight, was the protection of a
champion; of one who set me and mine above all other interests or
claims in the world, and who would guard me as if he were a part of
myself, only stronger. Altogether Thorold seemed to me different from
what he had been the last summer; there was a gravity now in his face
and air at times that was new and even stern; the gravity of a man
taking stern life work upon him. I felt all this in a minute, while
Thorold was smiling down into my face.
"And you will write to me?" he said.
"Yes."
"And I will write to you. And I belong to you, Daisy, and to no other.
All I have is yours, and all that I am is yours--after my duty; you
may dispose of me, pretty one, just as you like. _You_ would not have
that put second, Daisy."
A great yearning came over me, so great and strong that it almost took
away my breath. I fancy it spoke in my eyes, for Thorold's face grew
very grave, I remember, as he looked at me. But I must speak it more
plainly than so, at any costs, breath or no breath, and I must not
wait.
"Christian," I whispered, "won't you earn your right to your name?"
He pressed his lips upon mine by way of answer first, and then gave me
a quick and firm "Yes." I certainly thought he had found a mouth he
was talking of a little while ago. But at that instant the sound of
the distant house door closing, and then of steps coming out from the
parlour, made me know that Miss Cardigan's business was over, and that
she was returning to us. I wanted to free myself from Thorold's arm,
but he would not let me; on the contrary, held me closer, and half
turned to meet Miss Cardigan as she came in. Certainly men are very
different from women. There we stood, awaiting her; and I felt very
much ashamed.
"Come on, Aunt Catherine," Thorold said, as she paused at the
door,--"come in, come in, and kiss her--this little darling is mine."
Miss Cardigan came in slowly. I could not look up.
"Kiss her, Aunt Catherine," he repeated; "she is mine."
And to my great dismay he set her the example; but I think it was
partly to reassure me, and cover my confusion, which he saw.
"I have kissed Daisy very often before now," said Miss Cardigan. I
thought I discerned some concern in her voice.
"Then come, do it again," said Thorold, laughing. "You never kissed
her as anything belonging to me, Aunt Catherine."
And he fairly laid me in Miss Cardigan's arms, till we kissed each
other as he desired. But Miss Cardigan's gravity roused me out of my
confusion. I was not ashamed before her; only before him.
"Now, Aunt Catherine," he said, pulling up a comfortable arm chair to
the corner of the hearth, "sit there. And Daisy--come here!"
He put me into the fellow chair; and then built up the wood in the
fireplace till we had a regular illumination. Then drew himself up
before the fire, and looked at his aunt.
"It's like you!" broke out Miss Cardigan. "Ever since you were born, I
think, you did what you liked, and had what you liked; and threw over
everything to get at the best."
"On the contrary," said Thorold, "I was always of a very contented
disposition."
"Contented with your own will, then," said his aunt. "And now, do you
mean to tell me that you have got this prize--this prize--it's a first
class, Christian--for good and for certain to yourself?"
I lifted my eyes one instant, to see the sparkles in Thorold's eyes;
they were worth seeing.
"You don't think you deserve it?" Miss Cardigan went on.
"I do not think I deserve it," said Thorold. "But I think I will."
"I know what that means," said his aunt. "You will get worldly
glory--just a bit or two more of gold on your coat--to match you with
one of the Lord's jewels, that are to be 'all glorious within'; and
you think that will fit you to own her."
"Aunt Catherine," said Thorold, "I do not precisely think that gold
lace is glory. But I mean that I will do my duty. A man can do no
more."
"Some would have said 'a man can do no less,'" said Miss Cardigan,
turning to me. "But you are right, lad; more than our duty we can none
of us do; where _all_ is owing, less will not be overpay. But whatever
do you think her father will say to you?"
"I will ask him when the time comes," said Thorold, contentedly. His
tone was perfect, both modest and manly. Truth to say, I could not
quite share his content in looking forward to the time he spoke of;
but that was far ahead, and it was impossible not to share his
confidence. My father and my mother had been practically not my
guardians during six and a half long years; I had got out of the habit
of looking first to them.
"And what are you going to do now in Washington?" said his aunt. "You
may as well sit down and tell us."
"I don't know. Probably I shall be put to drill new recruits. All
these seventy-five thousand men that the President has called for,
won't know how to handle a gun or do anything else."
"And what is he going to do with these seventy-five thousand men,
Christian?"
"Put down treason, if he can. Don't you realize yet that we have a
civil war on our hands, Aunt Catherine? The Southern States are
mustering and sending their forces; we must meet them, or give up the
whole question; that is, give up the country."
"And what is it that _they_ will try to do?" said Miss Cardigan. "It
is a mystery to me what they want; but I suppose I know; only bad men
are a mystery to me always."
"They will try to defy the laws," said Thorold. "We will try to see
them executed."
"They seem very fierce," said Miss Cardigan; "to judge by what they
say."
"And do," added Thorold. "I think there is a sort of madness in
Southern blood."
He spoke with a manner of disgustful emphasis. I looked up at him to
see an expression quite in keeping with his words. Miss Cardigan cried
out--
"Hey, lad! ye're confident, surely, to venture your opinions so
plainly and so soon!"
His face changed, as if sunlight had been suddenly poured over it. He
came kneeling on one knee before me, taking my hand and kissing it,
and laughing.
"And I see ye're not confident without reason!" added Miss Cardigan.
"Daisy'll just let ye say your mind, and no punish you for it."
"But it is _true_, Miss Cardigan," I said, turning to her. I wished I
had held my tongue the next minute, for the words were taken off my
lips, as it were. It is something quite different from eating your own
words, which I have heard of as not being pleasant; mine seemed to be
devoured by somebody else.
"But is it true they are coming to attack Washington?" Miss Cardigan
went on, when we had all done laughing. "I read it in the prints; and
it seems to me I read every other thing there."
"I am afraid you read too many prints," said Thorold. "You are
thinking of 'hear both sides,' Aunt Catherine? You must know there is
but one side to this matter. There never are two sides to treason."
"That's true," said Miss Cardigan. "But about Washington, lad? I saw
an extract from a letter written from that city, by a lady, and she
said the place was in a terror; she said the President sleeps with a
hundred men, armed, in the east room, to protect him from the Southern
army; and keeps a sentinel before his bedroom door; and often goes
clean out of the White House and sleeps somewhere else, in his fear."
I had never seen Thorold laugh as he did then. And he asked his aunt
"where she had seen that extract?"
"It was in one of the papers--it was in an extract itself, I'm
thinking."
"From a Southern paper," said Thorold.
"Well, I believe it was."
"I have seen extracts, too," said Thorold. "They say, Alexander H.
Stephens is counselling the rebels to lay hold on Washington."
"Well, sit down and tell us what you do know, and how to understand
things," said Miss Cardigan. "I don't talk to anybody, much, about
politics."
So Thorold did as he was asked. He sat down on the other side of me,
and with my hand in his, talked to us both. We went over the whole
ground of the few months past, of the work then doing and preparing,
of what might reasonably be looked for in both the South and the
North. He said he was not very wise in the matter; but he was
infinitely more informed than we; and we listened as to the most
absorbing of all tales, till the night was far worn. A sense of the
gravity and importance of the crisis; a consciousness that we were
embarked in a contest of the most stubborn character, the end of which
no man might foretell, pressed itself more and more on my mind as the
night and the talk grew deeper. If I may judge from the changes in
Miss Cardigan's face, it was the same with her. The conclusion was,
the North was gathering and concentrating all her forces to meet the
trial that was coming; and the young officers of the graduating class
at the Military Academy had been ordered to the seat of war a little
before their time of study was out, their help being urgently needed.
"And where is Preston?" said I, speaking for the first time in a long
while.
"Preston?" echoed Thorold.
"My Cousin Preston--Gary; your classmate Gary."
"Gary! Oh, he is going to Washington, like the rest of us."
"Which side will he take?"
"You should know, perhaps, better than I," said Thorold. "He always
_has_ taken the Southern side, and very exclusively."
"_Has_ taken?" said I. "Do you mean that among the cadets there has
been a South and a North--until now, lately?"