Daisy in the Field Part 58

"Daisy is nothing to Preston!" my mother broke in with some sharpness. "Tell him so, if he ever broaches the question to you. Cut that matter short. I have other views for Daisy, when she returns to her duty. I believe in a religion of obedience - not in a religion of independent self-will. I wish Daisy had been brought up in a convent. She would, if I had had my way.

These popular religions throw over all law and order. I hate them!"

"You see, Daisy my dear, how pleasant it would be, if you could see things as your mother does," my aunt remarked.

"I am indifferent whether Daisy has my eyes or not," said mamma; "what I desire is, that she should have my will."

The talks came to nothing, ended in nothing, did nothing. My aunt Gary at the beginning of winter went back to America. My mother did as she had proposed; sold some of her jewels, and so paid her way in Switzerland for some months longer. But this could not last. Dr. Sandford urged her return; she wished also to be nearer to Ransom; and in the spring we once more embarked for home.

The winter had been exceedingly sad to me. No word from America ever reached my hands to give me any comfort; and I was alone with my sorrow. Mamma's state of mind, too, which was most uncomfortable for her, was extremely trying to me; because it consisted of regrets that I could not soothe, anxieties that I was unable to allay, and reproachful wishes that I could neither meet nor promise to meet. Constant repinings, ceaseless irritations, purposeless discussions; they wearied my heart, but I could bring no salve nor remedy unless I would have agreed to make a marriage for money. I missed all that had brought so much sweetness into even my Paris life, with my talks with papa, and readings, and sympathy, and mutual confidence. It was a weary winter, my only real earthly friend being Mont Pilatte. Except Mr.

Dinwiddie. I had written to him and got one or two good, strong, kind, helpful answers. Ah, what a good thing a good letter is!

So it was great relief to quit Switzerland and find myself on the deck of the steamer, with every revolution of the paddle wheels bringing me nearer home. Nearer what had been home; all was vague and blank in the distance now. I was sure of nothing. Only, "The Lord is my Shepherd," answers all that. It cannot always stop the beating of human hearts, though; and mine beat hard sometimes, on that homeward voyage. Mamma was very dismal. I sat on deck as much as I could and watched the sea. It soothed me, with its living image of G.o.d's grand government on earth; its ceaseless majestic flow, of which the successive billows that raise their heads upon its surface are not the interruption, but the continuation. So with our little affairs, so with mine. Not for nothing does any feeblest one's fortunes rise or fall; but to work somewhat of good either to himself or to others, and so to the whole. I was pretty quiet during the voyage, while I knew that no news could reach me; I expected to keep quiet; but I did not know myself.

We had hardly entered the bay of New York, and I had begun to discern familiar objects and to realise that I was in the same land with Mr. Thorold again, when a tormenting anxiety took possession of my heart. Now that I was near him, questions could be put off no longer. What tidings would greet me? and how should I get any tidings at all? A fever began to run along my veins, which I felt was not to be cured by reasoning.

Yes, I was not seeking to dispose my own affairs; I was not trying to take them into my own hands; but I craved to know how they stood, and what it was to which I must submit myself.

I was not willing to submit to uncertainty. Yet I remembered I must do just that.

The vessel came to her moorings, and I sat in my muse, only conscious of that devouring impatience which possessed me; and did not see Dr. Sandford till he was close by my side. Then I was glad; but the deck of that bustling steamer was no place to show how glad. I stood still, with my hand in the doctor's, and felt my face growing cold.

"Sit down!" he said, putting me back in the chair from which I had risen; and still keeping my hand. "How is Mrs. Randolph?"

"I suppose you know how she is, from her letters."

"And you?" he said, with a change of tone.

"I do not know. I shall be better, I hope."

"You will be better, to get ash.o.r.e. Will you learn your mother's pleasure about it? and I will attend to the rest."

I thanked him; for the tone of genuine, manly care and protection, was in my ears for the first time in many a day.

Mamma was very willing to avail herself of it too, and to my great pleasure received Dr. Sandford and treated him with perfect courtesy. Rooms were provided for us in one of the best hotels, and comforts ready. The doctor saw us established there, and asked what more he could do for us before he left us to rest. He would not stay to dinner.

"The papers, please," said mamma. "Will you send me all the papers. What is the news? We have heard nothing for weeks."

"I will send you the papers. You will see the news there,"

said the doctor.

"But what is it?"

"You would not rest if I began upon the subject. It would take a good while to tell it all."

"But what is the position of affairs?"

"Sherman is in Georgia. Grant is in Virginia. There has been, and there is, some stout fighting on hand."

"Sherman and Grant," said mamma. "Where are my people, doctor?"

"Opposed to them. They do not find the way exactly open," the doctor answered.

"Hard fighting, you said. How did it result?"

"Nothing is decided yet - except that the Yankees can fight,"

said the doctor, with a slight smile. And mamma said no more.

But I took courage, and she took gloom. The papers came, a bundle of them, reaching back over several dates; giving details of the battles of the Wilderness and of Sherman's operations in the South. Mamma studied and studied, and interrupted her dinner, to study. I took the sheets as they fell from her hand and looked - for the lists of the wounded.

They were long enough, but they did not hold what I was looking for. Mamma broke out at last with an earnest expression of thanksgiving that Sedgwick was killed.

"Why, mamma?" I said in some horror.

"There is one less!" she answered grimly.

"But _one_ less makes very little difference for the cause, mamma."

"I wish there were a dozen then," said she. "I wish all were shot, that have the faculty of leading this rabble of numbers and making them worth something."

But I was getting, I, to have a little pride in Northern blood. I said nothing, of course.

"You are just a traitor, Daisy, I believe," said mamma. "You read of all that is going on, and you know that Ransom and Preston Gary are in it, and you do not care; except you care on the wrong side. But I tell you this, - nothing that calls itself Yankee shall ever have anything to do with me or mine so long as I live. I will see you dead first, Daisy."

There was no answer to be made to this either. It only sank down into my heart; and I knew I had no help in this world.

The question immediately pressed itself upon our attention, where would we go? Dr. Sandford proposed Melbourne; and urged that in the first place we should avail ourselves of the hospitalities of his sister's house in that neighbourhood, most generously tendered us, till he could be at leisure to make arrangements at our old home. Just now he was under the necessity of returning immediately to Was.h.i.+ngton, where he had one or more hospitals in charge; indeed he left us that same night of our landing; but before he went he earnestly pressed his sister's invitation upon my mother, and promised that so soon as the settlement of the country's difficulties should set him free, he would devote himself to the care of us and Melbourne till we were satisfactorily established.

"And I am in hopes it will not be very long now," he said aside to me. "I think the country has got the right man at last; and that is what we have been waiting for. Grant says he will fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer; and I think the end is coming."

Mamma would give no positive answer to the doctor's instances; she thanked him and talked round the subject, and he was obliged to go away without any contentment of her giving.

Alone with me, she spoke out: -

"I will take no Yankee civilities, Daisy. I will be under no obligation to one of them. And I could not endure to be in the house of one of them, if it were conferring instead of receiving obligation."

"What will you do, then, mamma."

"I will wait. You do not suppose that the South can be conquered, Daisy? The idea is absurd!"

"But, mamma? -"

"Well?"

"Why is it absurd?"

"Because they are not a people to give up. Don't you know that? They would die first, every man and woman of them."

"But mamma, whatever the spirit of the people may be, numbers and means have to tell upon the question at last."

"Numbers and means!" mamma repeated scornfully. "I tell you, Daisy, the South _cannot_ yield. And as they cannot yield, they must sooner or later succeed. Success always comes at last to those who cannot be conquered."

"What is to become of us in the mean time, mamma?"

"I don't see that it signifies much," she said, relapsing out of the fire with which the former sentences had been p.r.o.nounced. "I would like to live to see the triumph come."