Daisy in the Field Part 26

"Undoubtedly; but the preservation of liberty is one of the strongest that can be conceived."

"Papa - you know I want liberty for the blacks."

"It is like you, my dear child," my father said, after pausing a minute; "it is like your generous nature; but Daisy, I think those people do not want it for themselves."

"Papa, if they did not, I should think it would be one of the strongest arguments on my side; but I am sure they do. I know a great many of them that do."

"Did not you, perhaps, bring about that desire in them, by your kind and possibly somewhat misjudged indulgences?"

"No indeed, papa; it was our overseer, with his wicked ways.

That Mr. Edwards is dreadful, papa!"

"All overseers are not good," said my father with a sigh. "The people at Magnolia are as well treated, on the whole, - as they can be anywhere, I think, - I hope."

"You do not know, papa. If they are, you have said all. And there is our old Maria, who has nothing to do with Mr.

Edwards; she has no hope nor antic.i.p.ation which does not go beyond this world; and it is so with a great many of them.

They have that hope; but they sing, "I am bound for the promised land!" - in a minor key; and to a plaintive air that makes your heart ache."

"Yours, Daisy," said my father with a somewhat constrained smile.

"Papa," I went on, trembling, but I thought it best to venture, - "if the issue of this war could be to set all those people free, I could almost be glad."

"That will not be the issue, Daisy," he said.

"Papa, what do you think will?"

"It can have but one issue. The Southern people cannot be put down."

"Then, if they succeed, what will be the state of things between them and the North?"

"It is impossible to tell how far things will go, Daisy, now that they have actually taken up arms. But I do not think the Southern people want anything of the North, but to be let alone."

"How would it be, if the North succeeded, papa?"

"It cannot succeed, Daisy. You have heard a different language, I suppose; but I know the men, - and the women, - of the South. They will never yield. The North must, sooner or later."

I could not carry this on, and turned the conversation. But I had to listen to a great deal of the same sort of thing, in which I took no part. It came up every day. I discovered that my mother was using her influence and all her art to induce our two young friends to return home and enter the Southern army. She desired with equal vehemence that Ransom should take the same course; and as they all professed to be strong in the interests and sympathies that moved her, I was a little puzzled to understand why they delayed so long. For they did delay. They talked, but nothing came of it. Still we went on fresh excursions and made new expeditions; spending days of delight on the mountain sides, and days of enchantment in the mountain valleys; and still our party was of the same four. It is true that papa did not at all share mamma's eagerness to have Ransom go; but Ransom did not greatly care for papa's likings; and in the case of the others, I did not see what held them.

The printed news from home we had of course, regularly; and as far as I could without being watched, I studied them. The papers after all were mostly Southern, and so filled with outrageous invective and inflated boasting, that I could not judge anything very certainly, from what they said. Nothing of great importance seemed to be transpiring between the belligerent parties. I supposed that it wanted but some such occurrence or occasion to send off our three young men like a ball from a rifle, straight to the seat of war. Meanwhile we enjoyed ourselves. Others did, and I did also, whenever I could put down fear and lift up hope; and I was young, and that happened to me sometimes. So the weeks ran on.

"I really don't see why I should be in a hurry to plunge myself into that angry confusion of things at home," Hugh Marshall said one day. "It seems to me, they can get through it without my help."

"Well, you are not in a hurry." I answered.

We were out as usual for a day's pleasure among the mountains, and Hugh and I were resting on a sunny bank waiting for the others to come up. We had distanced them.

"What do you think about it?" he said, suddenly drawing himself up from the gra.s.s and looking in my face.

"Men do not rule their course by what women think," - I answered.

"No, you are wrong; they do! Sometimes they do," - he said. "I have no mother nor sister to counsel me; only Mrs. Randolph bids me go home and be a soldier; but I would as lieve take advice from you. What would you tell me to do - if I were your brother?"

"I do not tell Ransom anything."

"He is under his mother's tutelage; but I am not. Tell me what to do, Miss Randolph. I am sure your counsel would be good. Do you wish me to go and fight the North, as your mother says I ought?"

"I wish people would not fight at all," I said, with my heart straitened.

"Of course; but here we are in it, or they are; and it is the same thing. Don't you think they can get through it without me? or do you say as your mother, - 'Every one go!' "

He looked at me more earnestly than was pleasant, and I was greatly at a loss what to answer. It was wisest for me not to commit myself to a course opposed to my mother's; and yet, truth is wisest of all. I looked to see Ransom and Mr. De Saussure, but they were not in sight.

"You are not speaking in jest," I said; "and I have no business to speak in earnest."

"You never speak any other way," he rejoined. "Tell me your mind. You are never violent; do you feel as Mrs. Randolph does about it? Would you like me better if I went heart and soul into the fray at home?"

"That would depend upon the-views and motives with which you went into it."

"Well - if I did it for love of you?" he said smiling.

"I cannot imagine that anybody should do such a thing for love of me. Nothing but the strongest and purest convictions of duty can justify such a thing as fighting."

"I suppose I know what that means," he said somewhat gloomily.

"No," said I hastily, "I don't think you do."

"What does it mean, then?" he asked.

"Permit me to ask first, Are your convictions strong and clear, that it is your duty to go home and enter the war for the South?"

"That's a searching question," he said laughing. "To say yes, would be to condemn myself at once. To say no, - what would that do for me with Mrs. Randolph?"

"You are not speaking to Mrs. Randolph," I said, half under my breath.

He looked up eagerly in my face. "You do not think as she does!" he said. "You do not believe in fighting, under any circ.u.mstances?"

"Yes, I do, Mr. Marshall," I said; and I felt myself colour.

"I do believe in fighting, when it is to relieve the oppressed, to deliver those who are trampled upon, or to save ourselves or others from worse than death."

"Our friends at the South can hardly be said to be in such extremity," he said, looking rather perplexed; "unless you believe all that the papers say about Yankee invaders; and I for one am not ready to do that."

"Nor I," I said; "I know them too well."

"Then who is so bitterly oppressed just now, Miss Randolph?"

"If you do not know of anybody, I would not fight, Mr.

Marshall."

"Really?" said he. "Perhaps I ought to go home and take care of my twelve hundred people at Vincennes. Is that your thought?"