Chapter 12

A VICTORY

"Daisy, - you are very happy!" my father said one day when I was sitting with him. We were looking out upon the lake, which our windows commanded; but I found papa's look had come back from the window to me.

"You are very happy!" he said.

"Yes, papa, - pretty happy."

"Pretty happy?" said he, putting his hand under my chin and turning my face again round to him, and then kissing me. "Pretty _and_ happy, you mean."

"No, papa," I said laughing; - "I don't mean that."

"It is true, though," said he. "There was a bit of a smile upon your mouth just now - before I spoke; - what were you thinking of?"

"Papa, it is so glorious, - the lake and its shores in this sunlight."

"That was all?"

"No, not quite all, papa."

"I thought not. What was the rest of it, Daisy?"

"Papa, I was thinking with joy, that I belong to the wonderful One who made all that; and so, that the riches of his power and glory are in a certain sense mine; - just as everything good in you is mine, papa."

He folded me in his arms and kissed me again, very fondly.

"There is not much good in me, Daisy."

"Yes, papa, - for me."

"But there is a great deal in you, - for somebody."

"For you, papa."

"Nobody else, Daisy?"

He was holding me close in his arms and looking down into my face. I believe the colour must have come into my cheeks.

"Ah, I thought so!" he said. "Even so soon, Daisy, you are leaving me for somebody else."

"Papa!" I exclaimed, hiding my face in his neck, - "I will never leave you, till you say so."

"Till I say so? I will not be over selfish, my dear child. I do not mean that."

"Who is it to be, Daisy?" my mother's voice said behind us.

I started up in absolute terror. What had I said? and what did she mean? I looked at her, speechless.

"Well?" she said laughing, "what is the matter? You need not turn white about it. Is your father the only one to be in your confidence? I will withdraw then."

"Stop! - Mamma!" I cried; "what are you saying? There is no confidence. What are you talking about?"

"I only asked, who it was to be, Daisy? I thought you were talking of leaving us, and naturally concluded it was to be with somebody."

"Mamma - oh, mamma, I was speaking only in the abstract."

Mamma laughed. "In the abstract! Well, you will have to come from generals to particulars, Daisy. Abstractions will not satisfy anybody long."

I was in great difficulty and great confusion. Papa drew me into his arms again and kissed my lips and cheeks and eyes, as if he would have hid my blushes.

"You shall be as abstract as you like," he said; "and as long as you like. I give you leave."

"That's nonsense, though, Mr. Randolph," said my mother, standing at the back of his chair. "Daisy cannot live in abstractions for ever. She must choose, and let her choice be known; and the sooner the better. Nobody can guess it now. She has been abstract enough."

I was in the greatest perplexity at this speech, which conveyed to me no meaning whatever. Let my choice be known? Did mamma know about Mr. Thorold? I knew she could not; but then, what did she mean?

"There is no hurry, Felicia," said papa.

"I will not have Daisy marry any but an American, Mr. Randolph."

"Agreed. There is no present likelihood that she will."

"But when we get to Florence, Mr. Randolph, and she is seen in the great world, things may not absolutely be within your control - or mine."

Mamma stood tapping her fingers upon the back of my father's chair, and I thought her very odd indeed. Her last sentence, however, had a word that I could answer. I stood up and faced her.

"Mamma," I said, "I am going to say something that you will not like."

"Then do not say it, Daisy."

"I would not, if I could help it. But you know, mamma, I am a servant of God - I have not changed, - and I and the 'great world' have nothing in common."

"Well? -" said mamma calmly.

"I do not belong to it. I have no place in it."

"No, of course. You are just out of school. A few months more will change all that."

"No, mamma, - please!"

"Yes, Daisy, - please!" she said, tapping my cheek with her finger, and then leaning forward to kiss me with smiling lips. "You do not know what you are talking about, my love. You are made for the great world, Daisy. There is no danger of turning your head; so I have no objection to explain to you that you are magnificent."

"Mamma, what difference can that possibly make?"

They both laughed at me, and mamma said I would soon see.

"But, mamma," I urged, "that world and I have nothing in common. I should be out of my place in it, and it would find me something strange."

"It is quite time to have that altered then," she said. "You may be a nun if you choose afterward; but you shall know what the great world is, before you give it up; and it shall know you. You may spend your odd minutes in considering what dress you will wear for your first appearance, Daisy. Don't ask me for a white cambric and an apron with pockets."

I stood in much perplexity, not resolved what I ought to say next. Papa took my hand.

"It is not much, to show yourself," he said kindly. "What is the difficulty, Daisy?"

"You mean, show myself in a fine dress and in a fine assembly, papa?"

"I don't care about the dress," he answered.

"Yes, but you do, Mr. Randolph," said my mother. "Daisy would not wear a print, for instance, to the Grand Duke's ball. Your complexion, Daisy, will take any sort of colour; but rubies will look especially well on this skin, and pearls." She touched my face caressingly as she spoke, pushing back the hair from my temple and then bringing her hand down to take hold of my chin. "Little fool!" said she laughing - "does it dismay you?"

"Yes, mamma, - the thought of crossing your pleasure."

"You shall not do that. Good children always obey their mothers, I am not going to have you settled down on a plantation at home, east or west, without at least letting the world see you first."

"Daisy does not want jewels," said my father. "She is too young."

"One day she will," said mamma; "and an occasion might make it proper, even now. I hope so; for I want to see the effect."

Mamma went away, with that; and I sat down again by papa's side. Not to dream over the sunlight on the lake any more; I was busy with cloudy realities. "Children, obey your parents _in the Lord_." Oh, why did duty bid me go contrary to the pleasure of mine! I would have so gladly pleased them to the utmost limits of my power. Papa was watching me, though I did not know it, and presently said very gently, -

"What is it, Daisy?"

"Papa, I want to please you and mamma so much!"

"And cannot you?"

"Not in this, papa."

"Why? Explain to me. I do not understand your position, Daisy."

"Papa, I am a servant of Christ; and a servant is bound to do his Master's will."

"But you are begging the question."

"If you will have patience, papa, I will try to tell you how it is. You know the Lord said, 'If any man serve me, let him follow me.' You know how He lived and what He lived for. Should I be following in his footsteps, when I was dressing and dancing and talking nonsense or nothings and getting so tired that I could do nothing but sleep all the next day? And papa, that is not all. It is so difficult, when one is dressed to look well and others are dressed in like manner, or for the same object, I mean, - it is very difficult not to wish to look well, and to wish to look better than other people, and to be glad if one does; and then comes the desire for admiration, and a feeling of pride, and perhaps, emulation of somebody else; and one comes home with one's head filled with poor thoughts, and the next day one is fit for nothing. And is that, following Christ? who went about doing good, who sought not His own, who was separate from sinners. And He said to His people, 'Ye are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.' "

"Why, Daisy," said my father, passing over the last part of my speech, "how do you know all this? Have you been out into the great world already?"

"No, papa; but if the little world has such effects what must the great one do?"

"Pray, what little world have you seen?"

"The little world of West Point, papa. And something of the world of Washington."

"_That_ is not much like a European court," said my father. "How did you like West Point?"

"Very much indeed."

"Did you go to balls there?"

"Oh, no, sir! only little hops, that the cadets have in the evenings."

"Was Preston there then?"

"He was entering upon his last year at the Academy."

"Had he improved?"

"Papa. - I thought he had _not_."

My father smiled. "Which of these young friends of ours do you like the best, Daisy?"

"Mr. Marshall and Mr. De Saussure, do you mean?"

"I mean them."

Something in papa's tone made my answer, I was conscious, a little constrained. I was very sorry, and could not help it.

"Papa - I think - Don't you think, Mr. Marshall has the most principle?"

"Do you always like people best that are the best, Daisy?" said papa laughing. "Because, I confess I have a wicked perverseness to do the other way."

After this conversation I seemed to see several clouds rising on my horizon in different quarters. I thought it was wisest not to look at them; but there was one that cast a shadow always on the spot where I was. It was so long since I had heard from Mr. Thorold! I had told him he must not write to me; but at the same time he had said that he would, and that he would enclose a letter to my father. Neither letter had come. It was easy to account for; he might not have had a chance to write; or in the confusions at home, his despatch might have been detained somewhere; it might reach me after a long interval, or it might never reach me! There was nothing strange about it; there was something trying. The hunger of my heart for one word from him or of him, grew sometimes rapacious; it was a perpetual fast day with me, and nature cried out for relief. _That_ cloud cast a shadow always over me now; only except when now and then a ray from the eternal sunshine found a rift in the cloud, or shot below it, and for a moment my feet stood in light. I had letters from the Sandfords; I had even one from Miss Cardigan; it did me a great deal of good, but it broke my heart too.

Mamma and I kept off the subject of the great world for a while; I think my father purposely prolonged our stay at Geneva, to favour my pleasure; and I hoped something after all might prevent the discussion of that subject between mamma and me, at least for the present. So something did.

I came down one afternoon to the green bank behind the house, where a table stood, and where we took our meals when the weather was fine. Our three young men were around it and the air was fragrant with the fumes of their cigars. The cigars of two of them were tossed away on my appearance. Ransom held his in abeyance.

"I did not know you were here," I said, "or I should have scrupled about interrupting anything so pleasant."

"You do not think it pleasant, confess, Miss Randolph," said De Saussure, drawing near to look over the progress of my work.

"Do you dislike it, honestly, Miss Randolph?" said Hugh Marshall.

"I don't dislike sugar-plums," I said.

"Daisy likes nothing that ordinary people like," cried Ransom. "I pity the man that will marry you, Daisy! He will live within a hedge-row of restrictions. You have lived among Puritans till you're blue."

I lifted my eyes to Ransom without speaking. What there was in my look, I do not know; but they all laughed.

"What connection is there between cigars and sugar-plums?" Hugh Marshall asked next.

"None, I suppose," I said. "Only, - what would you think of a lady who sat down regularly to eat sugar-plums three or four times a day and the last thing before going to bed? and who evidently could not live without them."

"But why not take a sugar-plum, or a cigar, as well as other things - wine, or fruit, for instance?" said Marshall.

"It is an indulgence - but we all allow ourselves indulgences of one sort or another."

"Besides, with a lady it is different," said De Saussure. "We poor fellows have nothing better to do, half the time."

I had no wish to lecture Mr. De Saussure, but I could not help looking at him, which again seemed to rouse their amusement.

"You seem to say, that is an insignificant way of life," Hugh Marshall added.

"We'll try for something better to-morrow," said De Saussure. "We have laid a plan to go to see the lake of Annecy, Miss Randolph, if we can secure your company and approbation. It will just take the day; and I propose that each one of us shall go prepared to instruct the others, at luncheon, as to his or her views of the worthiest thing a man can do with his life; - cigars being banished."

"Cigars are not banished yet," said Ransom, taking delicate whiffs of his own, which sent a fragrant wreath of blue smoke curling about his face.

"What do you say, Miss Randolph?" Hugh asked.

"Wouldn't you like to see the house of Eugene Sue?" said De Saussure.

"Who was Eugene Sue?" was my counter question; and they laughed again, our two friends with sparkling eyes.

"Look here, Daisy!" said Ransom, suddenly bringing down his chair on four feet and sitting upright, - "I wish you would put an end to this indulgence of sight-seeing and your society, and send these gentlemen home with me. I must go, and they ought to go too and do their duty. A word from you would send either of them straight to Beauregard's headquarters. Talk of indulgences!"

"I do not wish to send either of them there," was my incautious answer.

"Do you think it is always wrong to fight?" De Saussure asked.

I said no, with an internal shiver running through me from head to foot. They went into a mutual gratulation on the causes for fighting that existed on the part of the Southern States, and the certainty that the warlike spirit of the North would "die off like a big fungus," as one of them phrased it. I could not discuss the point with them, and I got away as soon as it could gracefully be done.

But something in this little talk, or in what went before it, had unsettled me; and I slept little that night. Anxieties which had lain pretty still, and pain which had been rather quiet, rose up together and shook me. My Bible reading had given me a word which for a time helped the confusion. "No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please Him who hath chosen him to be a soldier."

Not to be entangled with the affairs of this life! - and my heart and soul were in a whirl of them; I might say, in a snarl. And true the words were. How could I please Him who had chosen me to be a soldier, with my heart set on my own pleasure, and busy with my own fears? I knew I could not. The quiet subjection of spirit with which I left Washington, I had in a measure lost at Lucerne. Somehow, opposition had roused me; and the great distance and the impossibility of hearing had made my imagination restless; and the near probability that mamma would not favour our wishes had caused me to take a sort of life and death grasp of them. The management of myself, that I had resigned, I found I had not resigned it; but my heart was stretching out yearning hands to Thorold and crying for a sight of him. Meanwhile, the particular work that I had to do in Switzerland had been little thought of. What was it?

I spent that night waking. My room looked not to the lake, but over an extent of greensward and orchards, lit up now by a bright moon. I knelt at my window, with a strong recollection of former times, and a vain look back at my little old self, the childish Daisy, whose window at Melbourne, over the honeysuckles, had been so well used and had entertained such a quiet little heart. Then there had been Miss Pinshon's Daisy; but all the Daisies that I could remember had been quiet compared to this one. Must joy take such close hold on sorrow? Must hopes always be twin with such fears? - I asked amid bitter tears. But tears do one good; and after a little indulgence of them, I brought myself up to look at my duty. What was it?

I might love, and fear, and hope; but I must not be "entangled." Not so concerned about myself, either for sorrow or joy, that I should fail in anything to discern the Lord's will, or be unready, or be slow, to do it. Not so but that my heart should be free, looking to God for its chief strength and joy always and everywhere, - yes, and holding my hopes at his hand, to be given up if he called them back. With Thorold parted from me, in the thick of the war struggle, almost certain to be rejected by both my father and my mother, could I have and keep such a disentangled heart? The command said yes, and I knew there were promises that said yes too; but for a time I was strangely unwilling. I had a sort of superstitious feeling, that the giving up of my will about these things, and of my will's hold of them, would be a preliminary to their being taken away from me in good earnest. And I trembled and wept and shrank, like the coward I was.

"And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully."

"God's way is the way," I said to myself, - "and there is no other. I know, in what I said to mamma that afternoon about dressing and going into the world, it was not all principle. There was a mixture of selfish disinclination to go into society, because of Mr. Thorold and my feeling about him. My thoughts and will are all in a tangle; and they must be disentangled."

The struggle was long and sore that night. Worse than in Washington; because here I was alone among those who did not favour Mr. Thorold, and were opposed in everything to his and my views and wishes. Temptation said, that it was forsaking their cause, to give up my will about them. But there is no temptation that takes us and God has not provided a way of escape. The struggle was sharp; but when the dawn broke over the orchards and replaced the glory of the moonlight, my heart was quiet again. I was bent, before all things, upon doing the will of God; and had given up myself and all my hopes entirely to His disposal. They were not less dear hopes for that, though now the rest of my heart was on something better; on something which by no change or contingency can disappoint or fail. I was disentangled. I stood free. And I was happier than I had been in many a long day. "The peace of God." If people could only possibly know what that means!