Daisy in the Field Part 62

"Because, I know you can do what you like. You always could manage things for me."

He smiled a little, but went on in an unchanged tone.

"You are too young; and - excuse me - you have another disqualification."

"I will do just as you tell me," I said.

"If I let you in."

"You will let me in."

"I do not see that I ought. I think I ought not."

"But you _will_, Dr. Sandford. My cousin was very dear to me when I was a child at Melbourne - I love him yet very much - no one would take so good care of him as I would; and it would be a comfort to me for ever. Do let me go in! I have come for that."

"You might get sick yourself," he said. "You do not know what you would be obliged to hear and see. You do not know, Daisy."

"I am not a child now," - I replied.

There was more in my answer than mere words; there was more, I know, in my feeling; and the doctor took the force of it. He looked very sober, though, upon my plan, which it was evident he did not like.

"Does Mrs. Randolph give her consent to this proceeding?" he asked.

"She knows I came that I might look after Preston. I did not tell her my plan any further."

"She would not like it."

"Mamma and I do not see things with the - same eyes, some things, Dr. Sandford. I think I _ought_ to do it."

"I think she is right," he said. "You are not fit for it. You have no idea what you would be obliged to encounter."

"Try me," I said.

"I believe you are fit for anything," he broke out in answer to this last appeal; "and I owned myself conquered by you, Daisy, long ago. I find I have not recovered my independence.

Well - you will go in. But you cannot be dressed - _so_."

"No, I will change my dress. I will do it immediately."

"No, not to-night!" exclaimed the doctor. "Not to-night. It is bad enough to-morrow; but I shall not take you in to-night.

Rest, and sleep and be refreshed; I need not say, be strong; for that you are always. No, I will not take you with me to- night. You must wait."

And I could do no more with him for the time. I improved the interval, however. I sent out and got some yards of check to make ap.r.o.ns; and at my ap.r.o.ns I sat sewing all the evening, to Mrs. Sandford's disgust.

"My dear child, what do you want of those things?" she said, looking at them and me with an inexpressible disdain of the check.

"I think they will be useful, ma'am."

"But you are not going into the hospital?"

"Yes; to-morrow morning."

"As a visitor. But not to stay."

"I am going to stay if I am wanted," I said, displaying the dimensions of my ap.r.o.n for my own satisfaction.

"My dear, if you stay, you will be obliged to see all manner of horrible things."

"They must be worse to bear than to see, Mrs. Sandford."

"But you cannot endure to see them, Daisy; you never can.

Grant will never allow it."

I sewed in silence, thinking that Dr. Sandford would conform his will to mine in the matter.

"I will never forgive him if he does!" said the lady. But that also I thought would have to be borne. My heart was firm for whatever lay before me. In the hospital, by Preston's side, I was sure my work lay; and to be there, I must have a place at other bedsides as well as his. In the morning Mrs. Sandford renewed her objections and remonstrances as soon as she saw her brother-in-law; and to do him justice, he looked as ill pleased as she did.

"Daisy wants to go into the hospital as a regular nurse," she said.

"It is a weakness of large-hearted women now-a-days."

"Large-hearted! Grant, you are not going to permit such a thing?"

"I am no better than other men," said the doctor; "and have no more defences."

"But it is Daisy that wants the defences," Mrs. Sandford cried; "it is she that is running into danger."

"She shall want no defences while she is in my hospital."

"It is very well to say; but if you let her in there, you cannot help it. She must be in danger, of all sorts of harm."

"If you will prevent it, Mrs. Sandford, you will lay me under obligations," said the doctor, sitting down and looking up at his sister-in-law somewhat comically. "I am helpless, for I have pa.s.sed my word. Daisy has the command."

"But just look at the figure she is, in that dress! Fancy it!

That is Miss Randolph."

The doctor glanced up and down, over my dress, and his eye turned to Mrs. Sandford with provoking unconcern.

"But you will not let her stay there, Grant?"

The doctor looked up at me now, and I saw an answer ready on his lips. There was but one way left for me, I thought; I do not know how I came to do it, but I was not Daisy that morning; or else my energies were all strung up to a state of tension that made Daisy a different person from her wont. I laid my hand lightly over the doctor's mouth before he could speak. It silenced him, as I hoped. He rose up with a look that showed me I had conquered, and asked if I were ready. He must go, he said.

I did not keep him waiting. And once out in the street, with my hand on his arm, I was quite Daisy again; as humble and quiet as ever in my life. I went like a child now, in my guardian's hand; through the little crowds of men collected here and there, past the sentinels at the hospital door, in through the wide, clean, quiet halls and rooms, where Dr.

Sandford's authority and system made everything work, I afterwards found, as by the perfection of machinery. Through one ward and another at last, where the rows of beds, each containing its special sufferer, the rows of faces, of various expression, that watched us from the beds, the attendants and nurses and the work that was going on by their hands, caused me to draw a little closer to the arm on which I leaned and to feel yet more like a weak child. Yet even then, even at that moment, the woman within me began to rise and put down the feeling of childish weakness. I began to be strong.

Out of the wards, into his own particular room and office, comfortable enough, Dr. Sandford brought me then. He gave me a chair, and poured me out a gla.s.s of wine.

"No, thank you," said I, smiling. "I do not need it."