Daisy in the Field Part 57

"Yes."

"She has never spoken about it."

"She thinks it not necessary."

I was silent a moment, pondering, as well I might; but then I kissed papa and thanked him, and went off and wrote and posted my letter with its enclosure. Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.

CHAPTER XIX.

ONE FALLEN

I sent my letter, and waited. I got no answer. The weeks rolled on, and the months. It was palpable, that delays which had kept back one letter for a year might affect the delivery of another letter in the same way; but it is hard, the straining one's eyes into thick darkness with the vain endeavour to see something.

The months were outwardly gay; very full of society life, though not of the kind that I cared for. I went into it to please mamma; and succeeded but partially; for she insisted I was too sober and did not half take the French tone of easy, light, graceful skimming over the surface of things. But mamma could be deep and earnest too on her own subjects of interest.

The news of President Lincoln's proclamation, setting free the slaves of the rebel States, roused her as much as she could be roused. There were no terms to her speech or my aunt Gary's; violent and angry against not only the President, but everything and everybody that shared Northern growth and extraction. - How bitterly they sneered at "Ma.s.sachusetts codfish;" - I think nothing would have induced either of them to touch it; and whatsoever belonged to the East or the North, not only meats and drinks, but Yankee spirit and manners and courage, were all, figuratively, put under foot and well trampled on. I listened and trembled, sometimes; sometimes I listened and rejoiced. For, after all, my own affairs were not the whole world; and a thrill of inexpressible joy went through me when I remembered that my old Maria, and Pete, and the Jems, and Darry, were all, by law, freed for ever from the oppression of Mr. Edwards and any like him; and that the day of their actual emanc.i.p.ation would come, so soon as the rights of the Government should be established over the South. And of this issue I began to be a little hopeful, beginning to believe that it might be possible. Antietam and Corinth, and Fredricksburg and New Orleans, with varying fortune, had at least proclaimed to my ear that Yankees could fight; there was no doubt of that now; and Southern prowess could not always prevail against theirs. Papa ceased to question it, I noticed; though mamma's sneers grew more intense as the occasion for them grew less and less obvious.

The winter pa.s.sed, and the spring came; and moved on with its sweet step of peace, as it does even when men's hearts are all at war. The echo of the battlefields of Virginias wept through the Boulevards with met often; and it thundered at home. Mamma had burst into new triumph at the news of Chancellorsville; and uttered with great earnestness her wish that Jefferson Davis might be able to execute the threat of his proclamation and hang General Butler. But for me, I got no letter; and these echoes began to sound in my ear like the distant outside rumblings of the storm to one whose hearthstone it has already swept and laid desolate. I was not desolate; yet I began to listen as one whose ears were dim with listening. I met Faustina St. Clair again with uneasiness. Not the torment of my former jealousy; but a stir of doubt and pain which I could not repress at the sight of her.

When the summer drew on, to my great pleasure we went to Switzerland again. We established ourselves quietly at Lucerne, which papa was very fond of. There we were much more quiet than we had been the fall before; Ransom having gone home now to take his share in the struggle, and our two Southern friends who had also gone, having no successors like them in our little home circle. We made not so many and not so long excursions. But papa and I had good time for our readings; and I had always a friend with whom I could take counsel, in the grand old Mont Pilatte. What a friend that mountain was to me, to be sure! When I was downhearted, and when anything made me glad; when I was weary and when I was most full of life; its grand head in the skies told me of truth and righteousness and strength; the light and colours that played and rested there, as it held, the sun's beams and gave them back to earth, were a sort of promise to me of beauty and life above and beyond this earth; yes, and of its substantial existence now, even when we do not see it. They were a little hint of what we do not see. I do not exactly know what was the language of the wreaths of vapour that robed and shrouded and then revealed the mountain, with the exquisite s.h.i.+ftings and changings of their gracefulness; I believe it was like, to me, the floating veil that hides G.o.d's purposes from us, yet now and then parting enough to let us see the eternal truth and unchangeableness behind it. I told all my moods to Mont Pilatte, and I think it told all its moods to me. After a human friend, there is nothing like a big mountain. And when the news of Gettysburg and Vicksburg came; and mamma grew furious; and I saw for the first time that success was truly looming up on the horizon of the North, and that my dear coloured people might indeed soon be free; that night Mont Pilatte and I shouted together.

There came no particular light on my own affairs all this time. Indeed mamma began to reproach me for what she called my disloyal and treacherous sentiments. And then, hints began to break out, very hard to bear, that I had indulged in traitorous alliances and was an unworthy child of my house. It rankled in mamma's mind, that I had not only refused the connection with one of the two powerful Southern families which had sought me the preceding year; but that I had also discouraged and repelled during the past winter several addresses which might have been made very profitable to my country as well as my own interests. For what had I rejected them all? mamma began to ask discontentedly. Papa s.h.i.+elded me a little; but I felt that the sky was growing dark around me with the coming storm.

One never knows, after all, where the first bolt will come from. Mine struck me all unawares, while I was looking in an opposite quarter. It is hard to write it. A day came, that I had a father in the morning, and at night, none.

It was very sudden. He had been feeble, to be sure, more than usual, for several days, but n.o.body apprehended anything.

Towards evening he failed - suddenly; sent for me, and died in my arms, blessing me. Yes, we had been walking the same road together for some time. I was only left to go on awhile longer alone.

But Mont Pilatte said to me that night, "There remaineth a rest for the people of G.o.d." And while the moon went down and the stars slowly trooped over the head of the mountain, I heard that utterance, and those words of the hymn -

"G.o.d liveth ever: "Wherefore, soul, despair thou never."

I could go no farther. I could think no more. Kneeling at my window-sill, under the starry night, my soul held to those two things and did not loose its moorings. It is a great deal, to hold fast. It was all then I could do. And even in the remembrance now of the loneliness and desolate feeling that came upon me at that time, there is also a strong sense of the deep sweetness which I was conscious of, rather than able to taste, coming from those words and resting at the bottom of my heart.

I was in some measure drawn out of myself, almost immediately, by the illness of my mother. She fell into a nervous disordered condition, which it taxed all my powers to tend and soothe. I think it was mental rather than bodily, in the origin of it; but body and mind shared in the result, as usual. And when she got better and was able to sit up and even to go about again, she remained under the utmost despondency.

Affairs were not looking well for the Southern struggle in America; and besides the mortification of her political affections, mamma was very sure that if the South could not succeed in establis.h.i.+ng its independence, we should as a family be ruined.

"We are ruined now, Daisy," she said. "There can be nothing coming from our Magnolia estates - and our Virginia property is a mere battle ground, you know; and what have we to live upon?"

"Mamma, there will be some way," I said. "I have not thought about it."

"No, you do not think but of your own favourite speculations.

I wish with all my heart you had never taken to fanatical ways. I have no comfort in you."

"What do you mean by fanaticism, mamma?"

"I will tell you!" replied mamma with energy. "The essence of fanaticism is to have your own way."

"I do not think, mamma, that I want to have my own way."

"Of course, when you have it. That is what such people always say. They don't want to have their own, way. I do not want to have mine, either."

"Is not Dr. Sandford attending to our affairs for us, mamma?"

"I do not know. Your father trusted him, unaccountably. I do not know what he is doing."

"He will certainly do anything that can be done for us, mamma; I am persuaded of that. And he knows how."

"Is it for your sake, Daisy?" mamma said suddenly, and with a glitter in her eye which boded confusion to the doctor.

"I do not know, mamma," I said quietly. "He was always very good and very kind to me."

"I suppose you are not quite a fool," she said, calming down a little. "And a Yankee doctor would hardly lose his senses enough to fall in love with you. Though I believe the Yankees are the most impudent nation upon the earth. I wish Butler could be hanged! I should like to know that was done before I die."

I fled from this turn of the talk always.

It was true, however brought about I do not know, that Dr.

Sandford had been for some time kindly bestirring himself to look after our interests at home, which the distressed state of the country had of course greatly imperilled. I was not aware that papa had been at any time seriously concerned about them; however, it soon appeared that mamma had reason enough now for being ill at ease. In the South, war and war preparations had so far superseded the usual employments of men, that next to nothing could be looked for in place of the ordinary large crops and ample revenues. And Melbourne had been let, indeed, for a good rent; but there was some trouble about collecting the rent; and if collected, it belonged to Ransom. Ransom was in the Southern army, fighting no doubt his best, and mamma would not have scrupled to use his money; but Dr. Sandford scrupled to send it without authority. He urged mamma to come home, where he said she could be better taken care of than alone in distant Switzerland. He proposed that she should reoccupy Melbourne, and let him farm the ground for her until Ransom should be able to look after it. Mamma and Aunt Gary had many talks on the subject. I said as little as I could.

"It is almost as bad with me," said my aunt Gary, one of these times. "Only I do not want much."

"I _do_," said mamma. "And if one must live as one has not been accustomed to live, I would rather it should be where I am unknown."

"You are not unknown here, my dear sister!"

"Personally and socially. Not exactly. But I am historically unknown."

"Historically!" echoed my aunt.

"And living is cheaper here too."

"But one must have _some_ money, even here, Felicia."

"I have jewels," said mamma.

"Your jewels! - Daisy might have prevented all this," said Aunt Gary, looking at me.

"Daisy is one of those whose religion it is to please themselves."

"But, my dear, you must be married some time," my aunt went on, appealingly.

"I do not think that is certain, Aunt Gary."

"You are not waiting for Preston, are you? I hope not; for he is likely to be as poor as you are; if he gets through the battles, poor boy!" And my aunt put her handkerchief to her eyes.

"I am not waiting for Preston," I said, "any more than he is waiting for me."

"I don't know how that is," said my aunt. "Preston was very dependent on you, Daisy; but I don't know - since he has heard these stories of you" -