I will send it to Miss Cardigan - sheloves me almost as well as you do - I will tell her; and ifthere is any truth in mamma's story, Miss Cardigan will knowand she will burn the letter, just as well as you. And so youwould escape doing a great wrong."
"You may be mistaken, my child."
"Then Miss Cardigan will burn the letter, papa. I can trusther."
"Can _I_ trust her?"
"Yes, papa, through me. Please let me have it. There shallcome no harm from this, papa."
"Daisy, your mother says he is engaged to this girl."
"It is a mistake, papa."
"You cannot prove it, my child."
"Time will."
"Then will be soon enough for my action."
"But papa, in the mean time? - think of the months he has beenwaiting already for an answer -"
I suppose the tears were in my eyes, as I pleaded, with myhand still upon papa's hand, covering the papers. He slowlydrew his hand away, leaving the letter under mine.
"Well!" - said he, - "do as you will."
"You are not unwilling, papa?"
"I am a little unwilling, Daisy; but I cannot deny you, child.I hope you are right."
"Then, papa, add that one word about letters, will you?"
"And if it is all undeserved?"
"It is not, papa."
Papa set his teeth for a moment, with a look which, however,wonted perhaps in his youthful days, I had very rarely seencalled up in him. It passed then, and he wrote the brief wordI had asked for, of addition to his letter, and gave it to me;and then took me in his arms and kissed me again.
"You are not very wise in the world, my Daisy," he said; "andmen would say I am not. But I cannot deny you. Guard yourletter to Miss Cardigan. And for the present all this mattershall sleep in our own bosoms."
"Papa," I asked, "how much did mamma know - I mean - how muchdid she hear about me that was true?"
"It was reported that you had been engaged."
"She heard that."
"Yes."
"She has never spoken about it."
"She thinks it not necessary."
I was silent a moment, pondering, as well I might; but then Ikissed papa and thanked him, and went off and wrote and postedmy letter with its enclosure. Sufficient to the day is theevil thereof.
CHAPTER XIX.
ONE FALLEN
I sent my letter, and waited. I got no answer. The weeksrolled on, and the months. It was palpable, that delays whichhad kept back one letter for a year might affect the deliveryof another letter in the same way; but it is hard, thestraining one's eyes into thick darkness with the vainendeavour to see something.
The months were outwardly gay; very full of society life,though not of the kind that I cared for. I went into it toplease mamma; and succeeded but partially; for she insisted Iwas too sober and did not half take the French tone of easy,light, graceful skimming over the surface of things. But mammacould be deep and earnest too on her own subjects of interest.The news of President Lincoln's proclamation, setting free theslaves of the rebel States, roused her as much as she could beroused. There were no terms to her speech or my aunt Gary's;violent and angry against not only the President, buteverything and everybody that shared Northern growth andextraction. - How bitterly they sneered at "Massachusettscodfish;" - I think nothing would have induced either of themto touch it; and whatsoever belonged to the East or the North,not only meats and drinks, but Yankee spirit and manners andcourage, were all, figuratively, put under foot and welltrampled on. I listened and trembled, sometimes; sometimes Ilistened and rejoiced. For, after all, my own affairs were notthe whole world; and a thrill of inexpressible joy wentthrough me when I remembered that my old Maria, and Pete, andthe Jems, and Darry, were all, by law, freed for ever from theoppression of Mr. Edwards and any like him; and that the dayof their actual emancipation would come, so soon as the rightsof the Government should be established over the South. And ofthis issue I began to be a little hopeful, beginning tobelieve that it might be possible. Antietam and Corinth, andFredricksburg and New Orleans, with varying fortune, had atleast proclaimed to my ear that Yankees could fight; there wasno doubt of that now; and Southern prowess could not alwaysprevail against theirs. Papa ceased to question it, I noticed;though mamma's sneers grew more intense as the occasion forthem grew less and less obvious.
The winter passed, and the spring came; and moved on with itssweet step of peace, as it does even when men's hearts are allat war. The echo of the battlefields of Virginias wept throughthe Boulevards with met often; and it thundered at home. Mammahad burst into new triumph at the news of Chancellorsville;and uttered with great earnestness her wish that JeffersonDavis might be able to execute the threat of his proclamationand hang General Butler. But for me, I got no letter; andthese echoes began to sound in my ear like the distant outsiderumblings of the storm to one whose hearthstone it has alreadyswept and laid desolate. I was not desolate; yet I began tolisten as one whose ears were dim with listening. I metFaustina St. Clair again with uneasiness. Not the torment ofmy former jealousy; but a stir of doubt and pain which I couldnot repress at the sight of her.
When the summer drew on, to my great pleasure we went toSwitzerland again. We established ourselves quietly atLucerne, which papa was very fond of. There we were much morequiet than we had been the fall before; Ransom having gonehome now to take his share in the struggle, and our twoSouthern friends who had also gone, having no successors likethem in our little home circle. We made not so many and not solong excursions. But papa and I had good time for ourreadings; and I had always a friend with whom I could takecounsel, in the grand old Mont Pilatte. What a friend thatmountain was to me, to be sure! When I was downhearted, andwhen anything made me glad; when I was weary and when I wasmost full of life; its grand head in the skies told me oftruth and righteousness and strength; the light and coloursthat played and rested there, as it held, the sun's beams andgave them back to earth, were a sort of promise to me ofbeauty and life above and beyond this earth; yes, and of itssubstantial existence now, even when we do not see it. Theywere a little hint of what we do not see. I do not exactlyknow what was the language of the wreaths of vapour that robedand shrouded and then revealed the mountain, with theexquisite shiftings and changings of their gracefulness; Ibelieve it was like, to me, the floating veil that hides God'spurposes from us, yet now and then parting enough to let ussee the eternal truth and unchangeableness behind it. I toldall my moods to Mont Pilatte, and I think it told all itsmoods to me. After a human friend, there is nothing like a bigmountain. And when the news of Gettysburg and Vicksburg came;and mamma grew furious; and I saw for the first time thatsuccess was truly looming up on the horizon of the North, andthat my dear coloured people might indeed soon be free; thatnight Mont Pilatte and I shouted together.
There came no particular light on my own affairs all thistime. Indeed mamma began to reproach me for what she called mydisloyal and treacherous sentiments. And then, hints began tobreak out, very hard to bear, that I had indulged intraitorous alliances and was an unworthy child of my house. Itrankled in mamma's mind, that I had not only refused theconnection with one of the two powerful Southern familieswhich had sought me the preceding year; but that I had alsodiscouraged and repelled during the past winter severaladdresses which might have been made very profitable to mycountry as well as my own interests. For what had I rejectedthem all? mamma began to ask discontentedly. Papa shielded mea little; but I felt that the sky was growing dark around mewith the coming storm.
One never knows, after all, where the first bolt will comefrom. Mine struck me all unawares, while I was looking in anopposite quarter. It is hard to write it. A day came, that Ihad a father in the morning, and at night, none.
It was very sudden. He had been feeble, to be sure, more thanusual, for several days, but nobody apprehended anything.Towards evening he failed - suddenly; sent for me, and died inmy arms, blessing me. Yes, we had been walking the same roadtogether for some time. I was only left to go on
awhile longeralone.
But Mont Pilatte said to me that night, "There remaineth arest for the people of God." And while the moon went down andthe stars slowly trooped over the head of the mountain, Iheard that utterance, and those words of the hymn -
"God liveth ever:"Wherefore, soul, despair thou never."
I could go no farther. I could think no more. Kneeling at mywindow-sill, under the starry night, my soul held to those twothings and did not loose its moorings. It is a great deal, tohold fast. It was all then I could do. And even in theremembrance now of the loneliness and desolate feeling thatcame upon me at that time, there is also a strong sense of thedeep sweetness which I was conscious of, rather than able totaste, coming from those words and resting at the bottom of myheart.
I was in some