Chapter 21

THE WOUNDED

One desire possessed me, pressing before every other; it was to see Miss Cardigan. I thought I should accomplish this very soon after my landing. I found that I must wait for days.

It was very hard to wait. Yet mamma needed me; she was nervous and low-spirited and unwell and lonely; she could not endure to have me long out of her sight. She never looked with favour upon any proposal of mine to go out, even for a walk; and I could hardly get permission. I fancied that some - latent - suspicion lay beneath all this unwillingness, which did not make it more easy to bear. But I got leave at last, one afternoon early in June; and took my way up the gay thoroughfares of Broadway and the Avenue.

It was June, June all over. Just like the June of four years ago, when Dr. Sandford took me away from school to go to West Point; like the June of three years ago, when I had been finishing my school work, before I went to Washington. I was a mere girl then; now, I seemed to myself at least twenty years older. June sweetness was in all the air; June sunlight through all the streets; roses blossomed in courtyards and looked out of windows; grass was lush and green; people were in summer dresses. I hurried along, my breath growing shorter as I went. The well-known corner of Mme. Ricard's establishment came into view, and bright school-days with it. Miss Cardigan's house opposite looked just as I had left it; and as I drew near I saw that this was literally so. The flowers were blossoming in the garden plots and putting their faces out of window, exactly as if I had left them but a day ago. My knees trembled under me then, as I went up the steps and rang the bell. A strange servant opened to me. I went in, to her astonishment I suppose, without asking any questions; which indeed I could not. What if a second time I should find Mr. Thorold here? Such a thought crossed me as I trod the familiar marble floor, after the wild fashion in which our wishes mock our reason; then it left me the next instant, in my gladness to see through the opening door the figure of my dear old friend. Just as I had left her also. Something, in the wreck of my world, had stood still and suffered no change.

I went in and stood before her. She pulled off her spectacles, looked at me, changed colour and started up. I can hardly tell what she said. I think I was in too great a confusion for my senses to do their office perfectly. But her warm arms were about me, and my head found a hiding-place on her shoulder.

"Sit down, my lamb, my lamb!" were the first words I remember. "Janet, shut the door, and tell anybody I am busy. Sit you down here and rest. My lamb, ye're all shaken. Daisy, my pet, where have you been?"

I sat down, and she did, but I leaned over to the arms that still enfolded me and laid my head on her bosom. She was silent now for a while. And I wished she would speak, but I could not. Her arms pressed me close in the embrace that had so comforted my childhood. She had taken off my bonnet and kissed me and smoothed my hair; and that was all, for what seemed a long while.

"What is it?" she said at last. "I know you're left, my darling. I heard of your loss, while you were so far away from home. One is gone from your world."

"He was happy - he is happy," I whispered.

"Let us praise the Lord for that!" she said in her broadest Scotch accent, which only came out in moments of feeling.

"But he was nearly all my world, Miss Cardigan."

"Ay," she said. "We have but one father. And yet, no, my bairn. Ye're not left desolate."

"I have been very near it."

"I am glad ye are come home."

"But I feel as if I had no home anywhere," I said with a burst of tears which were a great mercy to me at the time. The stricture upon my heart had like to have taken away my breath. Miss Cardigan let me weep, saying sympathy with the tender touch of her soft hand; no otherwise. And then I could lift myself up and face life again.

"You have not forgotten your Lord, Daisy?" she said at length, when she saw me quiet. I looked at her and smiled my answer, though it must have been a sober smile.

"I see," she said; "you have not. But how was it, so far away, my bairn? Weren't you tempted?"

"No, dear Miss Cardigan. What could tempt me?"

"The world, child. Its baits of pleasure and pride and power. Did they never take hold on ye, Daisy?"

"My pleasure I had left at home," I said. "No, that is not quite true. I had the pleasure of being with papa and mamma; and of seeing a great deal of beauty, too. And I had pleasure in Palestine, Miss Cardigan; but it was not the sort to tempt me to forget anything good."

"And pride?" said the old lady.

"Why do you ask me?"

"You're so bonny, my darling. You ken you are; and other folks know it."

"Pride? Yes, it tempted me a little," I said; "but it could not for long, Miss Cardigan, when I remembered."

"Remembered? What was it you remembered?" she said very tenderly; for I believe my eyes had filled again.

"When I remembered what I was heir to."

"And ye didn't have your inheritance all in the future, I trust?" said my old friend. "There's crumbs to be gotten even now from that feast; ye didn't go starving, my bairn?"

"I hadn't much to help me, Miss Cardigan, except the Lord's wonderful world which He has made. That helped me."

"And ye had a crumb of joy now and then?"

"I had more than crumbs sometimes," I said, with a sober looking back over the years.

"And it is my own living Daisy and not an image of her? You are not spoiled a bit, my bairn?"

"Maybe I am," I said, smiling at her. "How do I know?"

"There's a look in your eyes which says you are not," she said with a sort of long breath; "and I know not how you have escaped it. Child! the forces which have assailed you have beaten down many a one. It's only to be strong in the Lord, to be sure; but we are lured away from our strength, sometimes, and then we fall; and we are lured easily."

"Perhaps not when the battle is so very hard to fight, dear Miss Cardigan."

"Maybe no," she said. "But had ye never a minister to counsel ye or to help ye, in those parts?"

"Only when I was in Palestine; nowhere else."

"You must have wanted it sorely."

"Yes, but, Miss Cardigan, I had better teaching all the time. The mountains and the sun and the sky and the beauty, all seemed to repeat the Bible to me, all the time. I never saw the top of Mont Blanc rosy in the sunset, nor the other mountains, without thinking of those words, 'Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect;' - and, 'They shall walk with me in white.' -"

Miss Cardigan wiped away a tear or two.

"But you are looking very sober, my love," she said presently, examining me.

"I have reason," I said. And I went on to give her in detail the account of the past year's doings in my family, and of our present position and prospects. She listened with the greatest sympathy and the most absorbed attention. The story had taken a good while; it was growing late, and I rose to go. Not till then was her nephew alluded to.

"I'm thinking," then said Miss Cardigan slowly, "there's one person you have not asked after, who would ill like to be left out of our mouths."

I stood still and hesitated and I felt my face grow warm.

"I have not heard from him, Miss Cardigan, since -"

And I did not say since when.

"And what of it?" she asked.

"Nothing -" I said, stammering a little, "but I wait."

"He's waiting, poor lad," she said. "Have ye not had letters from him?"

"Never; not since that one I sent him through you."

"He got it, however," said Miss Cardigan; "for there was no reason whatever why he should not. Did you think, Daisy, he had forgotten you?"

"No, Miss Cardigan; but it was told of him that - he had forgotten me."

"How was that done? I thought no one knew about your loving each other, you two children."

"So I thought; but - why, Miss Cardigan, it was confidently told in Paris to my mother that he was engaged to a schoolmate of mine."

"Did you believe it?"

"No. But I never heard from him again, and of course papa did believe it. How could I tell, Miss Cardigan?"

"By your faith, child. I wouldn't have Christian think you didn't believe him, not for all the world holds."

"I did believe him," I said, feeling a rill of joy flowing into some dry places in my heart and changing the wilderness there. "But he was silent, and I waited."

"He was not silent, I'll answer for it," said his aunt; "but the letters might have gone wrong, you know. That is what they have done, somehow."

"What could have been the foundation of that story?" I questioned.

"I just counsel ye to ask Christian, when ye see him - if these weary wars ever let us see him. I think he'll answer ye."

And his aunt's manner rather intimated that my answer would be decisive. I bade her good bye, and returned along the shadowing streets with such a play of life and hope in my heart, as for the time changed it into a very garden of delight. I was not the same person that had walked those ways a few hours ago.

This jubilation, however, could not quite last. I had no sooner got home, than mamma began to cast in doubts and fears and frettings, till the play of the fountain was well nigh covered over with rubbish. Yet I could feel the waters of joy stirring underneath it all; and she said, rather in a displeased manner, that my walk seemed to have done me a great deal of good! and inquired where I had been. I told her, of course; and then had to explain how I became acquainted with Miss Cardigan; a detail which mamma heard with small edification. Her only remark, however, made at the end, was, "I beseech you, Daisy, do not cultivate such associations!"

"She was very good to me, mamma, when I was a schoolgirl."

"Very well, you are not a schoolgirl now."

It followed very easily, that I could see little of my dear old friend. Mamma was suspicious of me and rarely allowed me to go I out of her sight. We abode still at the hotel, where we had luxurious quarters; how paid for, mamma's jewel-box knew. It made me very uneasy to live so; for jewels, even be they diamonds, cannot last very long after they are once turned into gold pieces; and I knew ours went fast; but nothing could move my mother out of her pleasure. In vain Dr. Sandford wrote and remonstrated; and in vain I sometimes pleaded. "The war is not going to last for ever," she would coldly reply; "you and Dr. Sandford are two fools. The South _cannot_ be conquered, Daisy."

But I, with trembling hope, was beginning to think otherwise.

So the days passed on, and the weeks. Mamma spent half her time over the newspapers. I consulted them, I could not help it, in my old fashion; and it made them gruesome things to me. But it was a necessity for me, to quiet my nerves with the certainty that no name I loved was to be found there in those lists of sorrow.

And one day that certainty failed. Among the new arrivals of wounded men just come into Washington from Virginia, I saw the name of Captain Preston Gary.

It was late in the summer, or early in September; I forget which. We were as we had been; nothing in our position changed. Mamma at the moment was busy over other prints, having thrown this down; and feeling my cheeks grow white as I sat there, I held the paper to shield my face and pondered what I should do. The instant thought had been, "I must go to him." The second brought difficulties. How to meet the difficulties, I sat thinking; that I must go to Preston I never doubted for a moment. I sat in a maze; till an exclamation from my mother brought my paper shield down.

"Here's a letter from the doctor, Daisy; he says your cousin is in the hospital."

"_His_ hospital?" I asked.

"I suppose so; he does not say that. But he says he is badly wounded. I wonder how he comes to be in Washington?"

"Taken prisoner, mamma."

"Yes, - wounded," mamma said bitterly. "That's the only way he could. Dr. Sandford bids me let his mother know. She can't go to him; even if my letter could reach her in time and she could get to Washington, which I don't believe she could; she is too ill herself. I shall not write to her."

"Let us go, mamma; you and I."

"I?" said mamma. "_I_ go to that den of thieves? No; I shall not go to Washington, unless I am dragged there."

"But Preston, mamma; think!"

"I am tired of thinking, Daisy. There is no good in thinking. This is the work of your favourite Northern swords and guns; I hope you enjoy it."

"I Would like to remedy it, mamma; to do something at least. Mamma, do let us go to Preston!"

I spoke very earnestly, and I believe with tears. Mamma looked at me.

"Why, do you care for him?" she asked.

"Very much!" I said weeping.

"I did not know you had any affection for anything South, except the coloured people."

"Mamma, let us go to Preston. He must want us so much!"

"I cannot go to Washington, Daisy."

"Can you spare me, mamma? I will go."

"Do you love Preston Gary?" said mamma, sitting up-right to look at me.

"Mamma, I always loved him. You know I did."

"Why did you not say so before?"

"I did say so, mamma, whenever I was asked. Will you let me go? O mamma, let me go!"

"What could you do, child? he is in the hospital."

"Mamma, he may want so many things; I know he must want some things."

"It is vain talking. You cannot go alone, Daisy."

"No, ma'am; but if I could get a good safe friend to go with me?"

"I do not know such a person in this place."

"I do, mamma, - just the person."

"Not a fit person for you to travel with."

"Yes, mamma, just the one; safe and wise to take care of me. And if I were once there, Dr. Sandford would do anything for me."

Mamma pondered my words, but would not yield to them. I wept half the evening, I think, with a strange strain on my heart that said I must go to Preston. Childish memories came thick about me, and later memories; and I could not bear the idea of his dying, perhaps, alone in a hospital, without one near to say a word of truth or help him in any wish or want that went beyond the wants of the body. Would even those be met? My nerves were unstrung.

"Do stop your tears, Daisy!" mamma said at length. "I can't bear them. I never saw you do so before."

"Mamma, I must go to Preston."

"If you could go there properly, child, and had any one to take care of you; as it is, it is impossible."

I half thought it was; I could not bend mamma. But while we sat there under the light of the lamp, and I was trying to do some work, which was every now and then wetted by a drop that would fall, a servant brought in a note to me. It was from Mrs. Sandford, in New York, on her way to Washington to look after a friend of her own; and asking if in any matter she could be of service to me or to mamma. I had got my opportunity now, and I managed to get mamma's consent. I answered Mrs. Sandford's note; packed up my things; and by the early train next morning started with her for Washington.

Mrs. Sandford was very kind, very glad to have me with her, very full of questions, of sympathy, of condolence, and of care; I remember all that, and how I took it at the time, feeling that Daisy and Daisy's life had changed since last I was under that same gentle and feeble guidance. And I remember what an undertone of music ran through my heart in the thought that I might perhaps hear of, or see, Mr. Thorold. Our journey was prosperous; and the next person we saw after arriving at our rooms was Dr. Sandford. He shook hands with his sister; and then, his eye lightened and his countenance altered as he turned to the other figure in the room and saw who it was.

"Daisy!" he exclaimed, warmly grasping my hand, - "Miss Randolph! where is Mrs. Randolph, and what brings you here?"

"Why, the train, to be sure, Grant," answered his sister-in- law. "What a man you are - for business! Do let Daisy rest and breathe and have something to eat, before she is obliged to give an account of herself. See, we are tired to death."

Perhaps she was, but I was not. However, the doctor and I both yielded. Mrs. Sandford and I withdrew to change our dresses, and then we had supper; but after supper, when she was again out of the room, Dr. Sandford turned to me and took my hand.

"I must go presently," he said. "Now, Miss Randolph, what is it?"

I sat down and he sat down beside me, still holding my hand, on a sofa in the room.

"Dr. Sandford, my cousin Gary is a prisoner and in the hospital. You wrote to mamma."

"Yes. I thought his mother might like to know."

"She is ill herself, in Georgia, and cannot come to Washington. Dr. Sandford, I want to go in and take care of him."

"You!" said the doctor. But whatever he thought, his countenance was impenetrable.

"You can manage that for me."

"Can I?" said he. "But, Daisy, you do not come under the regulations."

"That is no matter, Dr. Sandford."

"How is it no matter?"

"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 aprons; and at my aprons 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 apron 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 passed 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 glass of wine.

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

"You are pale."

"That is womanish; but I am not weak or faint, though."

"Do you maintain your purpose?"

"Yes, certainly."

"You had better take off your bonnet and shawl then. You would find them in the way."

I obeyed, and went on to envelope myself in my apron. Dr. Sandford looked on grimly. Very ill pleased he was, I could see. But then I laid my hand on his arm and looked at him.

"I am so much obliged to you for this," I said earnestly. And his face softened.

"I am afraid it is wrong in me," he remarked.

"If you thought it was, you would not do it," I answered; "and I hope I should not ask it. I am ready now. But Dr. Sandford, I want teaching, as to what I ought to do. Who will teach me?"

"I will teach you. But you know how to give a sick man tea or soup, I fancy, without much teaching."

"There are other things, Dr. Sandford."

"It will not be necessary. There are others to do the other things. Captain Gary has only some simple wounds to be dressed."

"But there are others, Dr. Sandford? And I must know how to do all that the nurses do. I am not here to be in the way. I am not going to take care of my cousin only."

"There is enough to do," said the doctor; "but, you will not like it, Daisy."

Something in his wistful look at me, something in the contrast between merely seeing what he was afraid I should see, and the suffering itself which by the sufferers had to be borne, touched me keenly. My eyes filled as I looked at the doctor, but I think the purpose in my heart perhaps came out in my face; for his own suddenly changed, and with a "Come, then!" - he gave me his arm and led the way upstairs and into another succession of rooms, to the ward and the room where my cousin Preston lay.