The Captain was not able to claim Daisy's promise immediately. On their
return to the house he was at once taken up with some of the older
people, and Daisy ran off to her long delayed dinner.
The next day in the course of her wanderings about the grounds, which
were universal, Daisy came upon her cousin Preston. He sat in the shade
of a clump of larches under a great oak, making flies for fishing; which
occupation, like a gentlemanly boy as he was, he had carried out there
where the litter of it would be in nobody's way. Preston Gary was a very
fine fellow; about sixteen, a handsome fellow, very spirited, very
clever, and very gentle and kind to his little cousin Daisy. Daisy liked
him much, and was more entirely free with him perhaps than with any
other person in the family. Her seeing him now was the signal for a
joyous skip and bound which brought her to his side.
"O Preston, are you going fishing?"
"Perhaps--if I have a good day for it."
"When?"
"To-morrow."
"Who's going with you?"
"Nobody, I reckon. Unless you want to go, Daisy."
"O Preston, may I go with you? Where are you going?"
"Daisy, I'm bound for the Hillsdale woods, back of Crum Elbow--they say
there are first-rate trout streams there; but I am afraid you can't go
so far."
"O I can go anywhere, Preston! with Loupe, you know. You're going to
ride, aren't you?"
"Yes, but Loupe! What shall we do with Loupe? You see, I shall be gone
the whole day, Daisy--it's likely. You'd get tired."
"Why we could find somewhere to put Loupe--Sam could take care of him.
And I should like to go, Preston, if you think I would not frighten the
fish."
"O if Sam's going along, that is another matter," said Preston. "_You_
frighten the fish, Daisy! I don't believe you can do that for anything.
But I won't let you get into mischief."
So it was settled, and Daisy's face looked delighted; and for some time
she and Preston discussed the plan, the fish, and his flies. Then
suddenly Daisy introduced another subject.
"Preston, where is the Crimea?"
"The Crimea!" said Preston.
"Yes; where the English and the French were fighting with the Russians."
"The Crimea! Why Daisy, don't you know where it is? You'll find it in
the Black Sea somewhere."
Daisy hesitated.
"But Preston, I don't know where the Black Sea is."
"Why Daisy, what has become of your geography?"
"I never had much," said Daisy humbly, and looking serious;--"and lately
mamma hasn't wanted me to do anything but run about."
"Well, if you take the map of Europe, and set out from the north of
Russia and walk down, you'll find yourself in the Crimea after a while.
Just hold that, Daisy, will you?"
Daisy held the ends of silk he put in her fingers; but while he worked,
she thought. Might it not be possible that a good knowledge of geography
might have something to do with the use or the improvement of her
_talents_? And if a knowledge of geography, why not also a knowledge of
history, and of arithmetic,--and of everything! There could not be a
reasonable doubt of it. What would Preston be,--what would Mr. Dinwiddie
or Capt. Drummond be,--if they knew nothing? And by the same reasoning,
what would Daisy Randolph be? What could she do with her talents, if she
let them lie rusty with ignorance? Now this was a very serious thought
to Daisy, because she did not like study. She liked knowledge right
well, if she could get it without trouble, and if it was entertaining
knowledge; but she did not think geography at all entertaining, nor
arithmetic. Yet--Daisy forgot all about Preston's artificial flies, and
her face grew into a depth of sobriety.
"Preston--" she began slowly,--"is it hard?"
"Not just that," said Preston, busy in finishing a piece of work,--"it
is a little ticklish to stroke this into order--but it isn't hard, if
you have the right materials, and know how."
"O no--I don't mean flies--I mean geography."
"Geography!" said Preston. "O you are at the Crimea yet, are you? I'll
shew it to you, Daisy, when we go in."
"Preston, is the use of geography only to know where places are?"
"Well, that's pretty convenient," said Preston. "Daisy, just look for
that bunch of grey silk--I had it here a minute ago."
"But Preston, tell me what _is_ the use of it?"
"Why, my dear little Daisy--thank you!--you'd be all abroad without it."
"All abroad!" exclaimed Daisy.
"It comes to about that, I reckon. You wouldn't understand anything. How
can you? Suppose I shew you my pictures of the North American
Indians--they'll be as good as Chinese to you, if you don't know
geography."
Daisy was silent, feeling puzzled.
"And," said Preston, binding his fly, "when you talk of the Crimea you
will not know whether the English came from the east or the west, nor
whether the Russians are not living under the equator and eating ripe
oranges."
"Don't they eat oranges?" said Daisy seriously. But that question set
Preston off into a burst of laughter, for which he atoned as soon as it
was over by a very gentle kiss to his little cousin.
"Never mind, Daisy," he said; "I think you are better without geography.
You aren't just like everybody else--that's a fact."
"Daisy," said Capt. Drummond, coming upon the scene, "do you allow such
things?"
"It is Preston's manner of asking my pardon, Capt. Drummond," Daisy
answered, looking a little troubled, but in her slow, womanly way. The
Captain could not help laughing in his turn.
"What offence has he been guilty of?--tell me, and I will make him ask
pardon in another manner. But Daisy, do you reckon such a liberty no
offence?"
"Not if I am willing he should take it," said Daisy. The Captain seemed
much amused.
"My dear little lady!" he said, "it is good for me you are not half a
score of years wiser. What were you talking about the Crimea?--I heard
the word as I came up."
"I asked Preston to shew it to me on the map--or he said he would."
"Come with me and I'll do it. You shouldn't ask anybody but me about the
Crimea."
So getting hold affectionately of Daisy's hand, he and she went off to
the house. No one was in the library. The Captain opened a large map of
Russia; Daisy got up in a chair, with her elbows on the great library
table, and leaned over it, while the Captain drew up another chair and
pointed out the Crimea and Sebastopol, and shewed the course by which
the English ships had come, for Daisy took care to ask that. Then,
finding so earnest a listener, he went on to describe to her the
situation of other places on the Peninsula, and the character of the
country, and the severities of the climate in the region of the great
struggle. Daisy listened, with her eyes varying between Capt. Drummond's
face and the map. The Black Sea became known to Daisy thence and
forever.
"I never thought geography was so interesting!" she remarked with a
sigh, as the Captain paused. He smiled.
"Now Daisy, you have something to tell me," he said.
"What?" said Daisy, looking up suddenly.
"Why you wanted to know about soldiers--don't you remember your
promise?"
The child's face all changed; her busy, eager, animated look, became on
the instant thoughtful and still. Yet changed, as the Captain saw with
some curiosity, not to lesser but to greater intentness.
"Well, Daisy?"
"Capt. Drummond, if I tell you, I do not wish it talked about."
"Certainly not!" he said suppressing a smile, and watched her while she
got down from her chair and looked about among the bookshelves.
"Will you please put this on the table for me?" she said--"I can't lift
it."
"A Bible!" said the Captain to himself. "This is growing serious." But
he carried the great quarto silently and placed it on the table. It was
a very large volume, full of magnificent engravings, which were the sole
cause and explanation of its finding a place in Mr. Randolph's library.
He put it on the table and watched Daisy curiously, who disregarding all
the pictures turned over the leaves hurriedly, till near the end of the
book; then stopped, put her little finger under some words, and turned
to him. The Captain looked and read--over the little finger--
"Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ."
It gave the Captain a very odd feeling. He stopped and read it two or
three times over.
"But Daisy!"--he said.
"What, Capt. Drummond?"
"What has this to do with what we were talking about?"
"Would you please shut this up and put it away, first?"
The Captain obeyed, and as he turned from the bookshelves Daisy took his
hand again, and drew him, child-fashion, out of the house and through
the shrubbery. He let her alone till she had brought him to a shady
spot, where under the thick growth of magnificent trees a rustic seat
stood, in full view of the distant mountains and the river.
"Where is my answer, Daisy?" he said, as she let go his hand and seated
herself.
"What was your question, Capt. Drummond?"
"Now you are playing hide and seek with me. What have those words you
shewed me,--what have they to do with our yesterday's conversation?"
"I would like to know," said Daisy slowly, "what it means, to be a good
soldier?"
"Why?"
"I think I have told you," she said.
She said it with the most unmoved simplicity. The Captain could not
imagine what made him feel uncomfortable. He whistled.
"Daisy, you are incomprehensible!" he exclaimed, and catching hold of
her hand, he began a race down towards the river. Such a race as they
had taken the day before. Through shade and through sun, down grassy
steeps and up again, flying among the trees as if some one were after
them, the Captain ran; and Daisy was pulled along with him. At the edge
of the woods which crowned the river bank, he stopped and looked at
Daisy who was all flushed and sparkling with exertion and merriment.
"Sit down there!" said he, putting her on the bank and throwing himself
beside her. "Now you look as you ought to look!"
"I don't think mamma would think so," said Daisy panting and laughing.
"Yes, she would. Now tell me--do you call yourself a soldier?"
"I don't know whether there can be such little soldiers," said Daisy.
"If there can be, I am."
"And what fighting do you expect to do, little one?"
"I don't know," said Daisy. "Not very well."
"What enemies are you going to face?"
But Daisy only looked rather hard at the Captain and made him no answer.
"Do you expect to emulate the charge of the Light Brigade, in some tilt
against fancied wrong?"
Daisy looked at her friend; she did not quite understand him, but his
last words were intelligible.
"I don't know," she said meekly. "But if I do it will not be because the
order is a _mistake_, Capt. Drummond."
The Captain bit his lip. "Daisy," said he, "are you the only soldier in
the family?"
Daisy sat still, looking up over the sunny slopes of ground towards the
house.
The sunbeams shewed it bright and stately on the higher ground; they
poured over a rich luxuriant spread of greensward and trees, highly
kept; stately and fair; and Daisy could not help remembering that in all
that domain, so far as she knew, there was not a thought in any heart of
being the sort of soldier she wished to be. She got up from the ground
and smoothed her dress down.
"Capt. Drummond," she said with a grave dignity that was at the same
time perfectly childish too,--"I have told you about myself--I can't
tell you about other people."
"Daisy, you are not angry with me!"
"No sir."
"Don't you sometimes permit other people to ask your pardon in Preston
Gary's way?"
Daisy was about to give a quiet negative to this proposal, when
perceiving more mischief in the Captain's face than might be manageable,
she pulled away her hand from him, and dashed off like a deer. The
Captain was wiser than to follow.
[Illustration: MELBOURNE HOUSE.]
Later in the day, which turned out a very warm one, he and Gary
McFarlane went down again to the edge of the bank, hoping to get if they
could a taste of the river breeze. Lying there stretched out under the
trees, after a little while they heard voices. The voices were down on
the shore. Gary moved his position to look.
"It's that child--what under the sun is she doing! I beg pardon for
naming anything warm just now, Drummond--but she is building
fortifications of some sort, down there."
Capt. Drummond came forward too. Down below them, a little to the right,
where a tiny bend in the shore made a spot of shade, Daisy was
crouching on the ground apparently very busy. Back of her a few paces
was her dark attendant, June.
"There's energy," said Gary. "What a nice thing it is to be a child and
play in the sand!"
The talk down on the shore went on; June's voice could scarcely be
heard, but Daisy's words were clear--"Do, June! Please try." Another
murmur from June, and then Daisy--"Try, June--do, please!" The little
voice was soft, but its utterances were distinct; the words could be
heard quite plainly. And Daisy sat back from her sand-work, and June
began to sing something. _What_, it would have been difficult to tell at
the top of the bank, but then Daisy's voice struck in. With no knowledge
that she had listeners, the notes came mounting up to the top of the
bank, clear, joyous and strong, with a sweet power that nobody knew
Daisy's voice had.
"Upon my word, that's pretty!" said the Captain.
"A pretty thing, too, faith," said Gary. "Captain, let's get nearer the
performers. Look out, now, and don't strike to windward."
They went, like hunters, softly down the bank, keeping under
shelter, and winding round so as to get near before they should be seen.
They succeeded. Daisy was intent upon her sand-work again, and June's
back was towards them. The song went on more softly; then in a chorus
Daisy's voice rang out again, and the words were plain.
"Die in the field of battle,
Die in the field of battle,
Die in the field of battle,
Glory in your view."
"Spirited!" whispered Gary.
"I almost think it is a Swedish war song," said the Captain. "I am not
sure."
"Miss Daisy!"--said June--"the gentlemen--"
Daisy started up. The intruders came near. On the ground beside her lay
an open map of Europe; in the sand before her she had drawn the same
outlines on a larger scale. The shore generally was rough and pebbly;
just in this little cove there was a space of very fine sand, left
wetted and adhesive by the last tide. Here the battle of Inkermann had
been fought, and here Daisy's geography was going on. Capt. Drummond,
who alone had the clue to all this, sat down on a convenient stone to
examine the work. The lines were pretty fairly drawn, and Daisy had gone
on to excavate to some depth the whole area of the Mediterranean and
Black Seas, and the region of the Atlantic to some extent; with the
course of the larger rivers deeply indented.
"What is all this gouging for, Daisy?" he said. "You want water here
now, to fill up."
"I thought when the tide came, Capt. Drummond, I could let it flow in
here, and see how it would look."
"It's a poor rule that don't work both ways," said the Captain. "I
always heard that 'time and tide wait for no man;' and we won't wait for
the tide. Here Gary--make yourself useful--fetch some water here; enough
to fill two seas and a portion of the Atlantic Ocean."
"What shall I bring it in, if you please?"
"Anything!--your hands, or your hat, man. Do impossibilities for once.
It is easy to see you are not a soldier."
"The fates preserve me from being a soldier under you!" said Gary--"if
that's your idea of military duty. What are _you_ going to do while I
play Neptune in a bucket?"
"I am going to build cities and raise up mountains. Daisy, suppose we
lay in a supply of these little white stones, and some black ones----"
While this was done, and Daisy looked delighted, Mr. McFarlane seized
upon a tin dipper which June had brought, and filled it at the river.
Capt. Drummond carefully poured out the water into the Mediterranean,
and opened a channel through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, which were
very full of sand, into the Black Sea. Then he sent Gary off again for
more, and began placing the pebbles.
"What is that for, Capt. Drummond?" asked Daisy.
"These are the Alps--white, as they should be, for the snow always lies
on them."
"Is it so cold there?"
"No,--but the mountains are so high. Their tops are always cold, but
flowers grow down in the valleys. These are very great mountains,
Daisy."
"And what are those black ones, Capt. Drummond?"
"This range is the Pyrenees--between France and Spain;--they are great
too, and beautiful. And here go the Carpathians--and here the Ural
mountains,--and these must stand for the Apennines."
"Are they beautiful too?"
"I suppose so--but I can't say, never having been there. Now what shall
we do for the cities? As they are centres of wealth, I think a
three-cent piece must mark them. Hand over, Gary; I have not thrips
enough. There is St. Petersburg--here is Constantinople--here is
Rome--now here is Paris. Hallo! we've no England! can't leave London
out. Give me that spoon, Daisy--" and the Captain, as he expressed it,
went to work in the trenches. England was duly marked out, the channel
filled, and a bit of silver planted for the metropolis of the world.
"Upon my word!" said Gary,--"I never knew geography before. I shall
carry away some ideas."
"Keep all you can get," said the Captain. "Now there's Europe."
"And here were the battles,"--said Daisy, touching the little spot of
wet sand which stood for the Crimea.
"_The_ battles!" said Gary. "What battles?"
"Why, where the English and French fought the Russians."
"_The_ battles! Shades of all the heroes! Why Daisy, Europe has done
nothing but fight for a hundred thousand years. There isn't a half inch
of it that hasn't had a battle. See, _there_ was one,--and there was
another--tremendous;--and there,--and there,--and there,--and
there,--and all over! This little strip here that is getting swallowed
up in the Mediterranean--there has been blood enough shed on it to make
it red from one end to the other, a foot deep. That's because it has had
so many great men belonging to it."
Daisy looked at Capt. Drummond.
"It's pretty much so, Daisy," he said; "all over the south of Europe, at
any rate."
"Why over the south and not the north?"
"People in the north haven't anything to fight for," said Gary. "Nobody
wants a possession of ice and snow--more than will cool his butter."
"A good deal so, Daisy," said Capt. Drummond, taking the silent appeal
of her eyes.
"Besides," continued Gary, "great men don't grow in the north. Daisy, I
want to know which is the battle-field _you_ are going to die on."
Daisy sat back from the map of Europe and looked at Gary with
unqualified amazement.
"Well?" said Gary. "I mean it."
"I don't know what you mean."
"I hear you are going to die on the field of battle--and I want to be
there that I may throw myself after you, as Douglas did after the
Bruce's locket; saying 'Go thou first, brave heart, as thou art wont,
and I will follow thee!'"
"Daisy," said the Captain, "you were singing a battle-song as we came
down the hill--that is what he means."
"Oh!--" said Daisy, her face changing from its amazed look. But her
colour rose too a little.
"What was it?"
"That?" said Daisy. "O that was a hymn."
"A hymn!" shouted Gary. "Good! A hymn! That's glorious! Where did you
get it, Daisy? Have you got a collection of Swedish war-songs? _They_
used to sing and fight together, I am told. They are the only people I
ever heard of that did--except North American Indians. Where did you get
it?"
"I got it from June."
"June! what, by inspiration? June is a fine month, I know--for
strawberries--but I had no idea----"
"No, no," said Daisy, half laughing,--"I mean my June--there she is; I
got it from her."
"Hollo!" cried Gary. "Come here, my good woman--Powers of Darkness! Is
your name June?"
"Yes sir, if you please," the woman said, in her low voice, dropping a
courtesy.
"Well, nobody offers more attractions--in a name," said Gary;--"I'll say
that for you. Where did you get that song your little mistress was
singing when we came down the hill? Can you sing it?"
June's reply was unintelligible.
"Speak louder, my friend. _What_ did you say?"
June made an effort. "If you please, sir, I can't sing," she was
understood to say. "They sings it in camp meeting."
"In camp meeting!" said Gary. "I should think so! What's that! You see I
have never been there, and don't understand."
"If you please, sir--the gentleman knows"--June said, retreating
backwards as she spoke, and so fast that she soon got out of their
neighbourhood. The shrinking, gliding action accorded perfectly with the
smothered tones and subdued face of the woman.
"Don't _she_ know!" said Gary. "Isn't that a character now? But, Daisy,
are you turning Puritan?"
"I don't know what that is," said Daisy.
"Upon my word you look like it! It's a dreadful disease,
Daisy;--generally takes the form of--I declare I don't know!--fever, I
believe, and delirium; and singing is one of the symptoms."
"You don't want to stop her singing?" said Capt. Drummond.
"That sort? yes I do. It wouldn't be healthy, up at the house. Daisy,
sing that gipsy song from 'The Camp in Silesia,' that I heard you
singing a day or two ago."
"'The Camp in Silesia?'" said Capt. Drummond. "Daisy, can you sing
_that_?"
"Whistles it off like a gipsy herself," said Gary. "Daisy, sing it."
"I like the other best," said Daisy.
But neither teasing nor coaxing could make her sing again, either the
one or the other.