HOPS.
The afternoon was very sultry; however, Mr. Thorold came, and we went
for our walk. It was so sultry we went very leisurely and also met few
people; and instead of looking very carefully at the beauties of
nature and art we had come to see, we got into a great talk as we
strolled along; indeed, sometimes we stopped and sat down to talk. Mr.
Thorold told me about himself, or rather, about his home in Vermont
and his old life there. He had no mother, and no brothers nor sisters;
only his father. And he described to me the hills of his native
country, and the farm his father cultivated, and the people, and the
life on the mountains. Strong and free and fresh and independent and
intelligent--that was the impression his talk made upon me, of the
country and people and life alike. Sometimes my thoughts took a
private turn of their own, branching off.
"Mr. Thorold," said I, "do you know Mr. Davis of Mississippi?"
"Davis? No, I don't know him," he said shortly.
"You have seen him?"
"Yes, I have seen him often enough; and his wife, too."
"Do you like his looks?"
"I do not."
"He looks to me like a bad man--" I said slowly. I said it to Mr.
Thorold; I would hardly have made the remark to another at West Point.
"He is about bad business--" was my companion's answer. "And yet I do
not know what he is about; but I distrust the man."
"Mr. Thorold," said I, beginning cautiously, "do you want to have
slavery go into the territories?"
"No!" said he. "Do you?"
"No. What do you think would happen if a Northern President should be
elected in the fall?"
"Then slavery would _not_ go into the territories," he said, looking a
little surprised at me. "The question would be settled."
"But do you know some people say--some people at the South say--that
if a Northern President is elected, the Southern States will not
submit to him?"
"Some people talk a great deal of nonsense," said Mr. Thorold. "How
could they help submitting?"
"They say--it is said--that they would break off from the North and
set up for themselves. It is not foolish people that say it, Mr.
Thorold."
"Will you pardon me, Miss Randolph, but I think they would be very
foolish people that would do it."
"Oh, I think so too," I said. "I mean, that some people who are not
foolish believe that it might happen."
"Perhaps," said Mr. Thorold. "I never heard anything of it before.
You are from the South yourself, Miss Randolph?" he added, looking at
me.
"I was born there," I said. And a little silence fell between us. I
was thinking. Some impression, got I suppose from my remembrance of
father and mother, Preston, and others whom I had known, forbade me to
dismiss quite so lightly, as too absurd to be true, the rumour I had
heard. Moreover, I trusted Dr. Sandford's sources of information,
living as he did in habits of close social intercourse with men of
influence and position at Washington, both Southern and Northern.
"Mr. Thorold,"--I broke the silence,--"if the South should do such a
thing, what would happen?"
"There would be trouble," he said.
"What sort of trouble?"
"Might be all sorts," said Mr. Thorold, laughing; "it would depend on
how far people's folly would carry them."
"But suppose the Southern States should just do that;--say they would
break off and govern themselves?"
"They would be like a bad boy that has to be made to take medicine."
"How could you _make_ them?" I asked, feeling unreasonably grave about
the question.
"You can see, Miss Randolph, that such a thing could not be permitted.
A government that would let any part of its subjects break away at
their pleasure from its rule, would deserve to go to pieces. If one
part might go, another part might go. There would be no nation left."
"But how could you _help_ it?" I asked.
"I don't know whether we could help it," he said; "but we would try."
"You do not mean that it would come to _fighting_?"
"I do not think they would be such fools. I hope we are supposing a
very unlikely thing, Miss Randolph."
I hoped so. But that impression of Southern character troubled me yet.
Fighting! I looked at the peaceful hills, feeling as if indeed "all
the foundations of the earth" would be "out of course."
"What would _you_ do in case it came to fighting?" said my neighbour.
The words startled me out of my meditations.
"I could not do anything."
"I beg your pardon. Your favour--your countenance, would do much; on
one side or the other. You would fight--in effect--as surely as I
should."
I looked up. "Not against you," I said; for I could not bear to be
misunderstood.
There was a strange sparkle in Mr. Thorold's eye; but those flashes of
light came and went so like flashes, that I could not always tell what
they meant. The tone of his voice, however, I knew expressed pleasure.
"How comes that?" he said. "You _are_ Southern?"
"Do I look it?" I asked.
"Pardon me--yes."
"How, Mr. Thorold?"
"You must excuse me. I cannot tell you. But you _are_ South?"
"Yes," I said. "At least, all my friends are Southern. I was born
there."
"You have _one_ Northern friend," said Mr. Thorold, as we rose up to
go on. He said it with meaning. I looked up and smiled. There was a
smile in his eyes, mixed with something more. I think our compact of
friendship was made and settled then and at once.
He stretched out his hand, as if for a further ratification. I put
mine in it, while he went on,--"How comes it, then, that you take such
a view of such a question?"
There had sprung up a new tone in our intercourse, of more
familiarity, and more intimate trust. It gave infinite content to me;
and I went on to answer, telling him about my Northern life. Drawn on,
from question to question, I detailed at length my Southern experience
also, and put my new friend in possession not only of my opinions, but
of the training under which they had been formed. My hand, I remember,
remained in his while I talked, as if he had been my brother; till he
suddenly put it down and plunged into the bushes for a bunch of wild
roses. A party of walkers came round an angle a moment after; and
waking up to a consciousness of our surroundings, we found, or _I_
did, that we were just at the end of the rocky walk, where we must
mount up and take to the plain.
The evening was falling very fair over plain and hill when we got to
the upper level. Mr. Thorold proposed that I should go and see the
camp, which I liked very much to do. So he took me all through it, and
showed and explained all sorts of things about the tents and the
manner of life they lived in them. He said he should like it very
much, if he only had more room; but three or four in one little tent
nine feet by nine, gave hardly, as he said, "a chance to a fellow."
The tents and the camp alleys were full of cadets, loitering about, or
talking, or busy with their accoutrements; here and there I saw an
officer. Captain Percival bowed, Captain Lascelles spoke. I looked for
Preston, but I could see him nowhere. Then Mr. Thorold brought me
into his own tent, introduced one or two cadets who were loitering
there, and who immediately took themselves away; and made me sit down
on what he called a "locker." The tent curtains were rolled tight up,
as far as they would go, and so were the curtains of every other tent;
most beautiful order prevailed everywhere and over every trifling
detail.
"Well," said Mr. Thorold, sitting down opposite me on a
candle-box--"how do you think you would like camp life?"
"The tents are too close together," I said.
He laughed, with a good deal of amusement.
"That will do!" he said. "You begin by knocking the camp to pieces."
"But it is beautiful," I went on.
"And not comfortable. Well, it is pretty comfortable," he said.
"How do you do when it storms very hard--at night?"
"Sleep."
"Don't you ever get wet?"
"_That_ makes no difference."
"Sleep in the rain!" said I. And he laughed again at me. It was not
banter. The whole look and air of the man testified to a thorough
soldierly, manly contempt of little things--of all things that might
come in the way of order and his duty. An intrinsic independence and
withal control of circumstances, in so far as the mind can control
them. I read the power to do it. But I wondered to myself if he never
got homesick in that little tent and full camp. It would not do to
touch the question.
"Do you know Preston Gary?" I asked. "He is a cadet."
"I know him."
I thought the tone of the words, careless as they were, signified
little value for the knowledge.
"I have not seen him anywhere," I remarked.
"Do you want to see him? He has seen you."
"No, he cannot," I said, "or he would have come to speak to me."
"He would if he could," replied Mr. Thorold--"no doubt; but the
liberty is wanting. He is on guard. We crossed his path as we came
into the camp."
"On guard!" I said. "Is he? Why, he was on guard only a day or two
ago. Does it come so often?"
"It comes pretty often in Gary's case," said my companion.
"Does it?" I said. "He does not like it."
"No," said Mr. Thorold, merrily. "It is not a favourite amusement in
most cases."
"Then why does he have so much of it?"
"Gary is not fond of discipline."
I guessed this might be true. I knew enough of Preston for that. But
it startled me.
"Does he not obey the regulations?" I asked presently, in a lowered
tone.
Mr. Thorold smiled. "He is a friend of yours, Miss Randolph?"
"Yes," I said; "he is my mother's nephew."
"Then he is your cousin?" said my companion. Another of those
penetrative glances fell on me. They were peculiar; they flashed upon
me, or through me, as keen and clear as the flash of a sabre in the
sun; and out of eyes in which a sunlight of merriment or benignity was
even then glowing. Both glowed upon me just at this moment, so I did
not mind the keen investigation. Indeed, I never minded it. I learned
to know it as one of Mr. Thorold's peculiarities. Now, Dr. Sandford
had a good eye for reading people, but it never flashed, unless under
strong excitement. Mr. Thorold's were dancing and flashing and
sparkling with fifty things by turns; their fund of amusement and
power of observation were the first things that struck me, and they
attracted me too.
"Then he is your cousin?"
"Of course, he is my cousin."
I thought Mr. Thorold seemed a little bit grave and silent for a
moment; then he rose up, with that benign look of his eyes glowing all
over me, and told me there was the drum for parade. "Only the first
drum," he added; so I need not be in a hurry. Would I go home before
parade?
I thought I would. If Preston was pacing up and down the side of the
camp ground, I thought I did not want to see him nor to have him see
me, as he was there for what I called disgrace. Moreover, I had a
secret presentiment of a breezy discussion with him the next time
there was a chance.
And I was not disappointed. The next day in the afternoon he came to
see us. Mrs. Sandford and I were sitting on the piazza, where the heat
of an excessive sultry day was now relieved a little by a slender
breeze coming out of the north-west. It was very hot still. Preston
sat down and made conversation in an abstracted way for a little
while.
"We did not see you at the hop the other night, Mr. Gary," Mrs.
Sandford remarked.
"No. Were you there?" said Preston.
"Everybody was there--except you."
"And Daisy? Were _you_ there, Daisy?"
"Certainly," Mrs. Sandford responded. "Everybody else could have been
better missed."
"I did not know you went there," said Preston, in something so like a
growl that Mrs. Sandford lifted her eyes to look at him.
"I do not wonder you are jealous," she said composedly.
"Jealous!" said Preston, with growl the second.
"You had more reason than you knew."
Preston grumbled something about the hops being "stupid places." I
kept carefully still.
"Daisy, did _you_ go?"
I looked up and said yes.
"Whom did you dance with?"
"With everybody," said Mrs. Sandford. "That is, so far as the length
of the evening made it possible. Blue and grey, and all colours."
"I don't want you to dance with everybody," said Preston, in a more
undertone growl.
"There is no way to prevent it," said Mrs. Sandford, "but to be there
and ask her yourself."
I did not thank Mrs. Sandford privately for this suggestion; which
Preston immediately followed up by inquiring "if we were going to the
hop to-night?"
"Certainly," Mrs. Sandford said.
"It's too confounded hot!"
"Not for us who are accustomed to the climate," Mrs. Sandford said,
with spirit.
"It's a bore altogether," muttered Preston. "Daisy, are you going
to-night?"
"I suppose so."
"Well, if you must go, you may as well dance with me as with anybody.
So tell anybody else that you are engaged. I will take care of you."
"Don't you wish to dance with anybody except me?"
"I do not," said Preston, slowly. "As I said, it is too hot. I
consider the whole thing a bore."
"You shall not be bored for me," I said. "I refuse to dance with you.
I hope I shall not see you there at all."
"Daisy!"
"Well?"
"Come down and take a little walk with me."
"You said it is too hot."
"But you will dance?"
"You will not dance."
"I want to speak to you, Daisy."
"You may speak," I said. I did not want to hear him, for there were no
indications of anything agreeable in Preston's manner.
"Daisy!" he said, "I do not know you."
"You used to know her," said Mrs. Sandford; "that is all."
"Will you come and walk with me?" said Preston, almost angrily.
"I do not think it would be pleasant," I said.
"You were walking yesterday afternoon."
"Yes."
"Come and walk up and down the piazza, anyhow. You can do that."
I could, and did not refuse. He chose the sunny western side, because
no one was there. However, the sun's rays were obscured under a thick
haze and had been all day.
"Whom were you with?" Preston inquired, as soon as we were out of
earshot.
"Do you mean yesterday?"
"Of course I mean yesterday! I saw you cross into the camp With whom
were you going there?"
"Why did you not come to speak to me?" I said.
"I was on duty. I could not."
"I did not see you anywhere."
"I was on guard. You crossed my path not ten feet off."
"Then you must know whom I was with, Preston," I said, looking at him.
"_You_ don't know--that is the thing. It was that fellow Thorold."
"How came you to be on guard again so soon? You were on guard just a
day or two before."
"That is all right enough. It is about military things that you do not
understand. It is all right enough, except these confounded Yankees.
And Thorold is another."
"Who is _one_!" I said, laughing. "You say he is _another_."
"Blunt is one."
"I like Major Blunt."
"Daisy," said Preston, stopping short, "you ought to be with your
mother. There is nobody to take care of you here. How came you to know
that Thorold?"
"He was introduced to me. What is the matter with him?"
"You ought not to be going about with him. He is a regular Yankee, I
tell you."
"What does that mean?" I said. "You speak it as if you meant something
very objectionable."
"I do. They are a cowardly set of tailors. They have no idea what a
gentleman means, not one of them, unless they have caught the idea
from a Southerner. I don't want you to have anything to do with them,
Daisy. You _must_ not dance with them, and you must not be seen with
this Thorold. Promise me you will not."
"Dr. Sandford is another," I said.
"I can't help Dr. Sandford. He is your guardian. You must not go again
with Thorold!"
"Did you ever know _him_ cowardly?" I asked.
I was sure that Preston coloured; whether with any feeling beside
anger I could not make out; but the anger was certain.
"What do you know about it?" he asked.
"What do you?" I rejoined. But Preston changed more and more.
"Daisy, promise me you will not have anything to do with these
fellows. You are too good to dance with them. There are plenty of
Southern people here now, and lots of Southern cadets."
"Mr. Caxton is one," I said. "I don't like him."
"He is of an excellent Georgia family," said Preston.
"I cannot help that. He is neither gentlemanly in his habits nor true
in his speech."
Preston hereupon broke out into an untempered abuse of Northern things
in general, and Northern cadets in particular, mingled with a
repetition of his demands upon me. At length I turned from him.
"This is very tiresome, Preston," I said; "and this side of the house
is very warm. Of course, I must dance with whoever asks me."
"Well, I have asked you for this evening," he said, following me.
"You are not to go," I said. "I shall not dance with you once," and I
took my former place by Mrs. Sandford. Preston fumed; declared that I
was just like a piece of marble; and went away. I did not feel quite
so impassive as he said I looked.
"What are you going to wear to-night, Daisy?" Mrs. Sandford asked
presently.
"I do not know, ma'am."
"But you must know soon, my dear. Have you agreed to give your cousin
half the evening?"
"No, ma'am--I could not; I am engaged for every dance, and more."
"More!" said Mrs. Sandford.
"Yes, ma'am--for the next time."
"Preston has reason!" she said, laughing. "But I think, Daisy, Grant
will be the most jealous of all. Do him good. What will become of his
sciences and his microscope now?"
"Why, I shall be just as ready for them," I said.
Mrs. Sandford shook her head. "You will find the hops will take more
than that," she said. "But now, Daisy, think what you will wear; for
we must go soon and get ready."
I did not want to think about it. I expected, of course, to put on the
same dress I had worn the last time. But Mrs. Sandford objected very
strongly.
"You must not wear the same thing twice running," she said, "not if
you can help it."
I could not imagine why not.
"It is quite nice enough," I urged. "It is scarcely the least tumbled
in the world."
"People will think you have not another, my dear."
"What matter would that be?" I said, wholly puzzled.
"Now, my dear Daisy!" said Mrs. Sandford, half laughing--"you are the
veriest Daisy in the world, and do not understand the world that you
grow in. No matter; just oblige me, and put on something else
to-night. What have you got?"
I had other dresses like the rejected one. I had another still, white
like them, but the make and quality were different. I hardly knew what
it was, for I had never worn it; to please Mrs. Sandford I took it out
now. She was pleased. It was like the rest, out of the store my mother
had sent me; a soft India muslin, of beautiful texture, made and
trimmed as my mother and a Parisian artist could manage between them.
But no Parisian artist could know better than my mother how a thing
should be.
"That will do!" said Mrs. Sandford approvingly. "Dear me, what lace
you Southern ladies do wear, to be sure! A blue sash, now, Daisy?"
"No, ma'am, I think not."
"Rose? It must be blue or rose."
But I thought differently, and kept it white.
"_No_ colour?" said Mrs. Sandford. "None at all. Then let me just put
this little bit of green in your hair."
As I stood before the glass and she tried various positions for some
geranium leaves, I felt that would not do either. Any dressing of my
head would commonize the whole thing. I watched her fingers and the
geranium leaves going from one side of my head to the other, watched
how every touch changed the tone of my costume, and felt that I could
not suffer it; and then it suddenly occurred to me that I, who a
little while before had not cared about my dress for the evening, now
did care and that determinedly. I knew I would wear no geranium
leaves, not even to please Mrs. Sandford. And for the first time a
question stole into my mind, what was I, Daisy, doing? But then I said
to myself, that the dress without this head adorning was perfect in
its elegance; it suited me; and it was not wrong to like beauty, nor
to dislike things in bad taste. Perhaps I was too handsomely dressed,
but I could not change that now. Another time I would go back to my
embroidered muslins, and stay there.
"I like it better without anything, Mrs. Sandford," I said, removing
her green decorations and turning away from the glass. Mrs. Sandford
sighed, but said "it would do without them," and then we started.
I can see it all again; I can almost feel the omnibus roll with me
over the plain, that still sultry night. All those nights were sultry.
Then, as we came near the Academic Building, I could see the lights in
the upper windows; here and there an officer sitting in a window-sill,
and the figures of cadets passing back and forth. Then we mounted to
the hall above, filled with cadets in a little crowd, and words of
recognition came, and Preston, meeting us almost before we got out of
the dressing-room.
"Daisy, you dance with me?"
"I am engaged, Preston, for the first dance."
"Already! The second, then, and all the others?"
"I am engaged," I repeated, and left him, for Mr. Thorold was at my
side.
I forgot Preston the next minute. It was easy to forget him, for all
the first half of the evening I was honestly happy in dancing. In
talking, too, whenever Thorold was my partner; other people's talk was
very tiresome. They went over the platitudes of the day; or they
started subjects of interest that were not interesting to me. Bits of
gossip--discussions of fashionable amusements with which I could have
nothing to do; frivolous badinage, which was of all things most
distasteful to me. Yet, amid it, I believe there was a subtle incense
of admiration which by degrees and insensibly found its way to my
senses. But I had two dances with Thorold, and at those times I was
myself and enjoyed unalloyed pleasure. And so I thought did he.
I saw Preston, when now and then I caught a glimpse of him, looking
excessively glum. Midway in the evening it happened that I was
standing beside him for a few moments, waiting for my next partner.
"You are dancing with nobody but that man whom I hate!" he grumbled.
"Who is it now?"
"Captain Vaux."
"Will you dance with me after that?"
"I cannot, Preston. I must dance with Major Banks."
"You seem to like it pretty well," he growled.
"No wonder," said Mrs. Sandford. "You were quite right about the
geranium leaves, Daisy; you do not want them. You do not want
anything, my dear," she whispered.
At this instant a fresh party entered the room, just as my partner
came up to claim me.
"There are some handsome girls," said the captain. "Two of them,
really!"
"People from Cozzens's," said Mrs. Sandford, "who think the cadets
keep New York hours."
It was Faustina St. Clair and Mary Lansing, with their friends and
guardians, I don't know whom. And as I moved to take my place in the
dance, I was presently confronted by my school adversary and the
partner she had immediately found. The greeting was very slight and
cool on her side.
"Excessively handsome," whispered the captain. "A friend of yours?"
"A schoolfellow," I said.
"Must be a pleasant thing, I declare, to have such handsome
schoolfellows," said the captain. "Beauty is a great thing, isn't it?
I wonder, sometimes, how the ladies can make up their minds to take up
with such great rough ugly fellows as we are, for a set. How do you
think it is?"
I thought it was wonderful, too, when they were like him. But I said
nothing.
"Dress, too," said the captain. "Now look at our dress! Straight and
square and stiff, and no variety in it. While our eyes are delighted,
on the other side, with soft draperies and fine colours, and
combinations of grace and elegance that are fit to put a man in
Elysium!"
"Did you notice the colour of the haze in the west, this evening, at
sunset?" I asked.
"Haze? No, really. I didn't know there was any haze, really, except in
my head. I get hazy amidst these combinations. Seriously, Miss
Randolph, what do you think of a soldier's life?"
"It depends on who the soldier is," I said.
"Cool, really!" said the captain. "Cool! Ha! ha!--"
And he laughed, till I wondered what I could have said to amuse him so
much.
"Then you have learned to individualize soldiers already?" was his
next question, put with a look which seemed to me inquisitive and
impertinent. I did not know how to answer it, and left it unanswered;
and the captain and I had the rest of our dance out in silence.
Meanwhile, I could not help watching Faustina. She was so very
handsome, with a marked, dashing sort of beauty that I saw was
prodigiously admired. She took no notice of me, and barely touched the
tips of my fingers with her glove as we passed in the dance.
As he was leading me back to Mrs. Sandford, the captain stooped his
head to mine. "Forgive me," he whispered. "So much gentleness cannot
bear revenge. I am only a soldier."
"Forgive you what, sir?" I asked. And he drew up his head again, half
laughed, muttered that I was worse than grape or round shot, and
handed me over to my guardian.
"My dear Daisy," said Mrs. Sandford, "If you were not so sweet as you
are, you would be a queen. There, now, do not lift up your grey eyes
at me like that, or I shall make you a reverence the first thing I do,
and fancy that I am one of your _dames d'honneur_. Who is next? Major
Banks? Take care, Daisy, or you'll do some mischief."
I had not time to think about her words; the dances went forward, and
I took my part in them with great pleasure until the tattoo summons
broke us up. Indeed, my pleasure lasted until we got home to the
hotel, and I heard Mrs. Sandford saying, in an aside to her husband,
amid some rejoicing over me--"I was dreadfully afraid she wouldn't
go." The words, or something in them, gave me a check. However, I had
too many exciting things to think of to take it up just then, and my
brain was in a whirl of pleasure till I went to sleep.