Daisy in the Field Part 60

"And pride?" said the old lady.

"Why do you ask me?"

"You're so bonny, my darling. You ken you are; and other folks know it."

"Pride? Yes, it tempted me a little," I said; "but it could not for long, Miss Cardigan, when I remembered."

"Remembered? What was it you remembered?" she said very tenderly; for I believe my eyes had filled again.

"When I remembered what I was heir to."

"And ye didn't have your inheritance all in the future, I trust?" said my old friend. "There's crumbs to be gotten even now from that feast; ye didn't go starving, my bairn?"

"I hadn't much to help me, Miss Cardigan, except the Lord's wonderful world which He has made. That helped me."

"And ye had a crumb of joy now and then?"

"I had more than crumbs sometimes," I said, with a sober looking back over the years.

"And it is my own living Daisy and not an image of her? You are not spoiled a bit, my bairn?"

"Maybe I am," I said, smiling at her. "How do I know?"

"There's a look in your eyes which says you are not," she said with a sort of long breath; "and I know not how you have escaped it. Child! the forces which have a.s.sailed you have beaten down many a one. It's only to be strong in the Lord, to be sure; but we are lured away from our strength, sometimes, and then we fall; and we are lured easily."

"Perhaps not when the battle is so very hard to fight, dear Miss Cardigan."

"Maybe no," she said. "But had ye never a minister to counsel ye or to help ye, in those parts?"

"Only when I was in Palestine; nowhere else."

"You must have wanted it sorely."

"Yes, but, Miss Cardigan, I had better teaching all the time.

The mountains and the sun and the sky and the beauty, all seemed to repeat the Bible to me, all the time. I never saw the top of Mont Blanc rosy in the sunset, nor the other mountains, without thinking of those words, 'Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect;' - and, 'They shall walk with me in white.' -"

Miss Cardigan wiped away a tear or two.

"But you are looking very sober, my love," she said presently, examining me.

"I have reason," I said. And I went on to give her in detail the account of the past year's doings in my family, and of our present position and prospects. She listened with the greatest sympathy and the most absorbed attention. The story had taken a good while; it was growing late, and I rose to go. Not till then was her nephew alluded to.

"I'm thinking," then said Miss Cardigan slowly, "there's one person you have not asked after, who would ill like to be left out of our mouths."

I stood still and hesitated and I felt my face grow warm.

"I have not heard from him, Miss Cardigan, since -"

And I did not say since when.

"And what of it?" she asked.

"Nothing -" I said, stammering a little, "but I wait."

"He's waiting, poor lad," she said. "Have ye not had letters from him?"

"Never; not since that one I sent him through you."

"He got it, however," said Miss Cardigan; "for there was no reason whatever why he should not. Did you think, Daisy, he had forgotten you?"

"No, Miss Cardigan; but it was told of him that - he had forgotten me."

"How was that done? I thought no one knew about your loving each other, you two children."

"So I thought; but - why, Miss Cardigan, it was confidently told in Paris to my mother that he was engaged to a schoolmate of mine."

"Did you believe it?"

"No. But I never heard from him again, and of course papa did believe it. How could I tell, Miss Cardigan?"

"By your faith, child. I wouldn't have Christian think you didn't believe him, not for all the world holds."

"I did believe him," I said, feeling a rill of joy flowing into some dry places in my heart and changing the wilderness there. "But he was silent, and I waited."

"He was not silent, I'll answer for it," said his aunt; "but the letters might have gone wrong, you know. That is what they have done, somehow."

"What could have been the foundation of that story?" I questioned.

"I just counsel ye to ask Christian, when ye see him - if these weary wars ever let us see him. I think he'll answer ye."

And his aunt's manner rather intimated that my answer would be decisive. I bade her good bye, and returned along the shadowing streets with such a play of life and hope in my heart, as for the time changed it into a very garden of delight. I was not the same person that had walked those ways a few hours ago.

This jubilation, however, could not quite last. I had no sooner got home, than mamma began to cast in doubts and fears and frettings, till the play of the fountain was well nigh covered over with rubbish. Yet I could feel the waters of joy stirring underneath it all; and she said, rather in a displeased manner, that my walk seemed to have done me a great deal of good! and inquired where I had been. I told her, of course; and then had to explain how I became acquainted with Miss Cardigan; a detail which mamma heard with small edification. Her only remark, however, made at the end, was, "I beseech you, Daisy, do not cultivate such a.s.sociations!"

"She was very good to me, mamma, when I was a schoolgirl."

"Very well, you are not a schoolgirl now."

It followed very easily, that I could see little of my dear old friend. Mamma was suspicious of me and rarely allowed me to go I out of her sight. We abode still at the hotel, where we had luxurious quarters; how paid for, mamma's jewel-box knew. It made me very uneasy to live so; for jewels, even be they diamonds, cannot last very long after they are once turned into gold pieces; and I knew ours went fast; but nothing could move my mother out of her pleasure. In vain Dr.

Sandford wrote and remonstrated; and in vain I sometimes pleaded. "The war is not going to last for ever," she would coldly reply; "you and Dr. Sandford are two fools. The South _cannot_ be conquered, Daisy."

But I, with trembling hope, was beginning to think otherwise.

So the days pa.s.sed on, and the weeks. Mamma spent half her time over the newspapers. I consulted them, I could not help it, in my old fashion; and it made them gruesome things to me.

But it was a necessity for me, to quiet my nerves with the certainty that no name I loved was to be found there in those lists of sorrow.

And one day that certainty failed. Among the new arrivals of wounded men just come into Washington from Virginia, I saw the name of Captain Preston Gary.