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 way 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 wet!" 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 excessively 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 enquiring "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 enquired, as soon as we were out
of earshot.
"Do you mean yesterday?"
"Of course I mean yesterday! I saw you cross in to 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 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 don't 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
mussed 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 of different make and quality. 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! 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 just let
me 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 commonise 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 away we went.
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 all, 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 individualise 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.