Daisy

"But what do you mean?" I remember saying. "You speak as if we might be at war. Who is there for us to fight?"

"Anybody that wants putting in order," said Preston. "The Indians."

"O Preston, Preston!" I exclaimed. "The Indians! when we have been doing them wrong ever since the white men came here; and you want to do them more wrong!"

"I want to hinder them from doing us wrong. But I don't care about the Indians, little Daisy. I would just as lief fight the Yankees."

"Preston, I think you are very wrong."

"You think all the world is," he said.

We were silent, and I felt very dissatisfied. What was all this military schooling a preparation for, perhaps? How could we know. Maybe these heads and hands, so gay to-day in their mock fight, would be grimly and sadly at work by and by, in real encounter with some real enemy.

"Do you see that man, Daisy?" whispered Preston, suddenly in my ear. "That one talking to a lady in blue."

We were on the parade ground, among a crowd of spectators, for the hotels were very full, and the Point very gay now. I said I saw him.

"That is a great man."

"Is he?" I said, looking and wondering if a great man could hide behind such a physiognomy.

"Other people think so, I can tell you," said Preston. "Nobody knows what that man can do. That is Davis of Mississippi."

The name meant nothing to me then. I looked at him as I would have looked at another man. And I did not like what I saw. Something of sinister, nothing noble, about the countenance; power there might be – Preston said there was – but the power of the fox and the vulture it seemed to me; sly, crafty, selfish, cruel.

"If nobody knows what he can do, how is it so certain that he is a great man?" I asked. Preston did not answer. "I hope there are not many great men that look like him." I went on.

"Nonsense, Daisy!" said Preston, in an energetic whisper. "That is Davis of Mississippi."

"Well?" said I. "That is no more to me than if he were Jones of New York."

"Daisy!" said Preston. "If you are not a true Southerner, I will never love you any more."

"What do you mean by a true Southerner? I do not understand."

"Yes, you do. A true Southerner is always a Southerner, and takes the part of a Southerner in every dispute – right or wrong."

"What makes you dislike Northerners so much?"

"Cowardly Yankees!" was Preston's reply.

"You must have an uncomfortable time among them, if you feel so," I said.

"There are plenty of the true sort here. I wish you were in Paris, Daisy; or somewhere else."

"Why?" I said, laughing.

"Safe with my mother, or your mother. You want teaching. You are too latitudinarian. And you are too thick with the Yankees, by half."

I let this opinion alone, as I could do nothing with it; and our conversation broke off with Preston in a very bad humour.

The next day, when we were deep in the woods, I asked Dr. Sandford if he knew Mr. Davis of Mississippi. He answered Yes, rather drily. I knew the doctor knew everybody.

I asked why Preston called him a great man.

"Does he call him a great man?" Dr. Sandford asked.

"Do you?"

"No, not I, Daisy. But that may not hinder the fact. And I may not have Mr. Gary's means of judging."

"What means can he have?" I said.

"Daisy," said Dr. Sandford suddenly, when I had forgotten the question in plunging through a thicket of brushwood, "if the North and the South should split on the subject of slavery, what side would you take?"

"What do you mean by a 'split'?" I asked slowly, in my wonderment.

"The States are not precisely like a perfect crystal, Daisy, and there is an incipient cleavage somewhere about Mason and Dixon's line."

"I do not know what line that is."

"No. Well, for practical purposes, you may take it as the line between the slave States and the free."

"But how could there be a split?" I asked.

"There is a wedge applied even now, Daisy – the question whether the new States forming out of our Western territories, shall have slavery in them or shall be free States."

I was silent upon this; and we walked and climbed for a little distance, without my remembering our geological or mineralogical, or any other objects in view.

"The North say," Dr. Sandford then went on, "that these States shall be free. The South – or some men at the South – threaten that if they be, the South will split from the North, have nothing to do with us, and set up for themselves."

"Who is to decide it?" I asked.

"The people. This fall the election will be held for the next President; and that will show. If a slavery man be chosen, we shall know that a majority of the nation go with the Southern view."

"If not?" —

"Then there may be trouble, Daisy."

"What sort of trouble?" I asked hastily.

Dr. Sandford hesitated, and then said, "I do not know how far people will go."

I mused, and forgot the sweet flutter of green leaves, and smell of moss and of hemlock, and golden bursts of sunshine, amongst which we were pursuing our way. Preston's strange heat and Southernism, Mr. Davis's wile and greatness, a coming disputed election, quarrels between the people where I was born and the people where I was brought up, divisions and jealousies, floated before my mind in unlovely and confused visions. Then, remembering my father and my mother and Gary McFarlane, and others whom I had known, I spoke again.

"Whatever the Southern people say, they will do, Dr. Sandford."

"Provided– " said the doctor.

"What, if you please?"

"Provided the North will let them, Daisy."

I thought privately they could not hinder. Would there be a trial? Could it be possible there would be a trial?

"But you have not answered my question," said the doctor. "Aren't you going to answer it?"

"What question?"

"As to the side you would take."

"I do not want any more slave States, Dr. Sandford."

"I thought so. Then you would be with the North."

"But people will never be so foolish as to come to what you call a 'split,' Dr. Sandford."

"Upon my word, Daisy, as the world is at present, the folly of a thing is no presumptive argument against its coming into existence. Look – here we shall get a nice piece of quartz for your collection."

I came back to the primary rocks, and for the present dismissed the subject of the confusions existing on the surface of the earth; hoping sincerely that there would be no occasion for calling it up again.

For some time I saw very little of Preston. He was busy, he said. My days flowed on like the summer sunshine, and were as beneficent. I was gaining strength every day. Dr. Sandford decreed that I must stay as long as possible. Then Mr. Sandford came, the doctor's brother, and added his social weight to our party. Hardly needed, for I perceived that we were very much sought after; at least my companions. The doctor in especial was a very great favourite, both with men and women; who I notice are most ready to bestow their favour where it is least cared for. I don't know but Dr. Sandford cared for it; only he did not show that he did. The claims of society however began to interfere with my geological and other lessons.

A few days after his brother's arrival, the doctor had been carried off by a party of gentlemen who were going back in the mountains to fish in the White Lakes. I was left to the usual summer delights of the place; which indeed to me were numberless; began with the echo of the morning gun (or before) and ended not till the three taps of the drum at night. The cadets had gone into camp by this time; and the taps of the drum were quite near, as well as the shrill sweet notes of the fife at reveille and tattoo. The camp itself was a great pleasure to me; and at guardmounting or parade I never failed to be in my place. Only to sit in the rear of the guard tents and watch the morning sunlight on the turf, and on the hills over the river, and shining down the camp alleys, was a rich satisfaction. Mrs. Sandford laughed at me; her husband said it was "natural," though I am sure he did not understand it a bit; but the end of all was, that I was left very often to go alone down the little path to the guard tents among the crowd that twice a day poured out there from our hotel and met the crowd that came up from Cozzens's hotel below.

So it was, one morning that I remember. Guardmounting was always late enough to let one feel the sun's power; and it was a sultry morning, this. We were in July now, and misty, vaporous clouds moved slowly over the blue sky, seeming to intensify the heat of the unclouded intervals. But wonderful sweet it was; and I under the shade of my flat hat, with a little help from the foliage of a young tree, did not mind it at all. Every bit of the scene was a pleasure to me; I missed none of the details. The files of cadets in the camp alleys getting their arms inspected; the white tents themselves, with curtains tightly done up; here and there an officer crossing the camp ground and stopping to speak to an orderly; then the coming up of the band, the music, the marching out of the companies; the leisurely walk from the camp of the officer in charge, drawing on his white gloves; his stand and his attitude; and then the pretty business of the parade. All under that July sky; all under that flicker of cloud and sun, and the soft sweet breath of air that sometimes stole to us to relieve the hot stillness; and all with that setting and background of cedars and young foliage and bordering hills over which the cloud shadows swept. Then came the mounting-guard business. By and by Preston came to me.

"Awfully hot, Daisy!" he said.

"Yes, you are out in it," I said, compassionately.

"What are you out in it for?"

"Why, I like it," I said. "How come you to be one of the red sashes this morning?"

"I have been an officer of the guard this last twenty-four hours."

"Since yesterday morning?"

"Yes."

"Do you like it, Preston?"

"Like it!" he said. "Like guard duty! Why, Daisy, when a fellow has left his shoe-string untied, or something or other like that, they put him on extra guard duty to punish him."

"Did you ever do so, Preston?"

"Did I ever do so?" he repeated savagely. "Do you think I have been raised like a Yankee, to take care of my shoes? That Blunt is just fit to stand behind a counter and measure inches!"

I was very near laughing, but Preston was not in a mood to bear laughing at.

"I don't think it is beneath a gentleman to keep his shoe-strings tied," I said.

"A gentleman can't always think of everything!" he replied.

"Then you are glad you have only one year more at the Academy?"

"Of course I am glad! I'll never be under Yankee rule again; not if I know it."

"Suppose they elect a Yankee President?" I said; but Preston's look was so eager and so sharp at me that I was glad to cover my rash suggestion under another subject as soon as possible.

"Are you going to be busy this afternoon?" I asked him.

"No, I reckon not."

"Suppose you come and go up to the fort with me?"

"What fort?"

"Fort Putnam. I have never been there yet."

"There is nothing on earth to go there for," said Preston, shrugging his shoulders. "Just broil yourself in the sun, and get nothing for it. It's an awful pull uphill; rough, and all that; and nothing at the top but an old stone wall."

"But there is the view!" I said.

"You have got it down here – just as good. Just climb up the hotel stairs fifty times without stopping, and then look out of the thing at the top – and you have been to Fort Putnam."

"Why, I want you to go to the top of Crow's Nest," I said.

"Yes! I was ass enough to try that once," said Preston, "when I was just come, and thought I must do everything; but if anybody wants to insult me, let him just ask me to do it again!"

Preston's mood was unmanageable. I had never seen him so in old times. I thought West Point did not agree with him. I listened to the band, just then playing a fine air, and lamented privately to myself that brass instruments should be so much more harmonious than human tempers. Then the music ceased and the military movements drew my attention again.

"They all walk like you," I observed carelessly, as I noticed a measured step crossing the camp ground.

"Do they?" said Preston sneeringly. "I flatter myself I do not walk like all of them. If you notice more closely, Daisy, you will see a difference. You can tell a Southerner, on foot or on horseback, from the sons of tailors and farmers – strange if you couldn't!"

"I think you are unjust, Preston," I said. "You should not talk so. Major Blunt walks as well and stands much better than any officer I have seen; and he is from Vermont; and Capt. Percival is from South Carolina, and Mr. Hunter is from Virginia, and Col. Forsyth is from Georgia. They are all of them less graceful than Major Blunt."

"What do you think of Dr. Sandford?" said Preston in the same tone; but before I could answer I heard a call of "Gary! – Gary!" I looked round. In the midst of the ranks of spectators to our left stood a cadet, my friend of the omnibus. He was looking impatiently our way, and again exclaimed in a sort of suppressed shout – "Gary!" Preston heard him that time; started from my side, and placed himself immediately beside his summoner, in front of the guard tents and spectators. The two were in line, two or three yards separating them, and both facing towards a party drawn up at some little distance on the camp ground, which I believe were the relieving guard. I moved my own position to a place immediately behind them, where I spied an empty camp-stool, and watched the two with curious eyes. Uniforms, and military conformities generally, are queer things if you take the right point of view. Here were these two, a pair, and not a pair. The grey coat and the white pantaloons (they had all gone into white now), the little soldier's cap, were a counterpart in each of the other; the two even stood on the ground as if they were bound to be patterns each of the other; and when my acquaintance raised his arms and folded them after the most approved fashion, to my great amusement Preston's arms copied the movement: and they stood like two brother statues still, from their heels to their cap rims. Except when once the right arm of my unknown friend was unbent to give a military sign, in answer to some demand or address from somebody in front of him which I did not hear. Yet as I watched, I began to discern how individual my two statues really were. I could not see faces, of course. But the grey coat on the one looked as if its shoulders had been more carefully brushed than had been the case with the other; the spotless pantaloons, which seemed to be just out of the laundress's basket, as I suppose they were, sat with a trimmer perfection in one case than in the other. Preston's pocket gaped, and was, I noticed, a little bit ripped; and when my eye got down to the shoes, his had not the black gloss of his companion's. With that one there was not, I think, a thread awry. And then, there was a certain relaxation in the lines of Preston's figure impossible to describe, stiff and motionless though he was; something which prepared one for a lax and careless movement when he moved. Perhaps this was fancy and only arose from my knowledge of the fact; but with the other no such fancy was possible. Still, but alert; motionless, but full of vigour; I expected what came; firm, quick, and easy action, as soon as he should cease to be a statue.

So much to a back view of character; which engrossed me till my two statues went away.

A little while after Preston came. "Are you here yet?" he said.

"Don't you like to have me here?"

"It's hot. And it is very stupid for you, I should think. Where is Mrs. Sandford?"

"She thinks as you do, that it is stupid."

"You ought not to be here without some one."

"Why not? What cadet was that who called you, Preston?"

"Called me? Nobody called me."

"Yes he did. When you were sitting with me. Who was it?"

"I don't know!" said Preston. "Good-bye. I shall be busy for a day or two."

"Then you cannot go to Fort Putnam this afternoon?"

"Fort Putnam? I should think not. It will be broiling to-day."

And he left me. Things had gone wrong with Preston lately, I thought. Before I had made up my mind to move, two other cadets came before me. One of them Mrs. Sandford knew, and I slightly.

"Miss Randolph, my friend Mr. Thorold has begged me to introduce him to you."

It was my friend of the omnibus. I think we liked each other at this very first moment. I looked up at a manly, well-featured face, just then lighted with a little smile of deference and recognition; but permanently lighted with the brightest and quickest hazel eyes that I ever saw. Something about the face pleased me on the instant. I believe it was the frankness.

"I have to apologize for my rudeness, in calling a gentleman away from you, Miss Randolph, in a very unceremonious manner, a little while ago."

"Oh, I know," I said. "I saw what you did with him."

"Did I do anything with him?"

"Only called him to his duty, I suppose."

"Precisely. He was very excusable for forgetting it; but it might have been inconvenient."

"Do you think it is ever excusable to forget duty?" I asked; and I was rewarded with a swift flash of fun in the hazel eyes, that came and went like forked lightning.

"It is not easily pardoned here," he answered.

"People don't make allowances?"

"Not officers," he said, with a smile. "Soldiers lose the character of men, when on duty; they are only reckoned machines."

"You do not mean that exactly, I suppose."

"Indeed I do!" he said, with another slighter coruscation. "Intelligent machines, of course, and with no more latitude of action. You would not like that life?"

"I should think you would not."

"Ah, but we hope to rise to the management of the machines, some day."

I thought I saw in his face that he did. I remarked that I thought the management of machines could not be very pleasant.

"Why not?"

"It is degrading to the machines – and so, I should think, it would not be very elevating to those that make them machines."

"That is exactly the use they propose them to serve, though," he said, looking amused; "the elevation of themselves."

"I know," I said, thinking that the end was ignoble too.

"You do not approve it?" he said.

I felt those brilliant eyes dancing all over me and, I fancied, over my thoughts too. I felt a little shy of going on to explain myself to one whom I knew so little. He turned the conversation, by asking me if I had seen all the lions yet.

I said I supposed not.

"Have you been up to the old fort?"

"I want to go there," I said; "but somebody told me to-day, there was nothing worth going for."

"Has his report taken away your desire to make the trial?"

"No, for I do not believe he is right."

"Might I offer myself as a guide? I can be disengaged this afternoon; and I know all the ways to the fort. It would give me great pleasure."

I felt it would give me great pleasure too, and so I told him. We arranged for the hour, and Mr. Thorold hastened away.

CHAPTER XV.

FORT PUTNAM

I AM going to Fort Putnam this afternoon, with Mr. Thorold," I announced to Mrs. Sandford, after dinner.

"Who is Mr. Thorold?"

"One of the cadets."

"One of the cadets! So it has got hold of you at last, Daisy!"

"What, Mrs. Sandford?"

"But Fort Putnam? My dearest child, it is very hot!"

"Oh, yes, ma'am – I don't mind it."

"Well, I am very glad, if you don't," said Mrs. Sandford. "And I am very glad Grant has taken himself off to the White Lakes. He gave nobody else any chance. It will do you a world of good."

"What will?" I asked, wondering.

"Amusement, dear – amusement. Something a great deal better than Grant's 'elogies and 'ologies. Now this would never have happened if he had been at home."

I did not understand her, but then I knew she did not understand the pursuits she so slighted; and it was beyond my powers to enlighten her. So I did not try.

Mr. Thorold was punctual, and so was I; and we set forth at five o'clock, I at least was happy as it was possible to be. Warm it was, yet; we went slowly down the road, in shadow and sunshine; tasting the pleasantness, it seems to me, of every tree, and feeling the sweetness of each breath; in that slight exhilaration of spirits which loses nothing and forgets nothing. At least I have a good memory for such times. There was a little excitement, no doubt, about going this walk with a cadet and a stranger, which helped the whole effect.

I made use of my opportunity to gain a great deal of information which Dr. Sandford could not give. I wanted to understand the meaning and the use of many things I saw about the Point. Batteries and fortifications were a mysterious jumble to me; shells were a horrible novelty; the whole art and trade of a soldier, something well worth studying, but difficult to see as a reasonable whole. The adaptation of parts to an end, I could perceive; the end itself puzzled me.

"Yet there has always been fighting," said my companion.

"Yes," I assented.

"Then we must be ready for it."

But I was not prepared in this case with my answer.

"Suppose we were unjustly attacked?" said Mr. Thorold; and I thought every one of the gilt buttons on his grey jacket repelled the idea of a peaceable composition.

"I don't know," said I, pondering. "Why should the rule be different for nations and for individual people?"

"What is your rule for individual people?" he asked, laugh ing, and looking down at me, as he held the gate open. I can see the look and the attitude now.

"It is not my rule," I said.

"The rule, then. What should a man do, Miss Randolph, when he is unjustly attacked?"

I felt I was on very untenable ground, talking to a soldier. If I was right, what was the use of his grey coat, or of West Point itself? We were mounting the little steep pitch beyond the gate, where the road turns; and I waited till I got upon level footing. Then catching a bright inquisitive glance of the hazel eyes, I summoned up my courage and spoke.

"I have no rule but the Bible, Mr. Thorold."

"The Bible! What does the Bible say? It tells us of a great deal of fighting."

"Of bad men."

"Yes, but the Jews were commanded to fight, were they not?"

"To punish bad men. But we have got another rule since that."

"What is it?"

"If any man smite thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other also."

"Is it possible you think the Bible means that literally?" he said.

"Do you think it would say what it did not mean?"

"But try it by the moral effect; what sort of a fellow would a man be who did so, Miss Randolph?"

"I think he would be fine!" I said; for I was thinking of One who, "when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not." But I could not tell all my thought to Mr. Thorold; no more than I could to Dr. Sandford.

"And would you have him stand by and see another injured?" my companion asked. "Wouldn't you have him fight in such a case?"

I had not considered that question. I was silent.

"Suppose he sees wrong done; wrong that a few well-planted blows, or shots, if you like – shots are but well-directed blows," he said, smiling – "wrong that a few well-planted blows would prevent. Suppose somebody were to attack you now, for instance; ought I not to fight for it?"

"I should like to have you," I said.

"Come!" he said, laughing, and stretching out his hand to shake mine, "I see you will let me keep my profession, after all. And why should not a nation do, on a larger scale, what a man may do?"

"Why it may," I said.

"Then West Point is justified."

"But very few wars in the world are conducted on that principle," I said.

"Very few. In fact I do not at this moment recollect the instances. But you would allow a man, or a nation, to fight in self-defence, would not you?"

I pondered the matter. "I suppose he has a right to protect his life," I said. "But, 'if a man smite thee on the cheek,' that does not touch life."