Daisy

And she turned her face full upon me with a smile of so much quiet resting in that truth, that for just a moment it silenced me.

"Miss Daisy ain't looking quite so peart as she use to look," Maria went on. But I slipped away from that diversion.

"Maria," I said, "you don't tell me what is the matter; and I wish to know. What keeps the people, Pete, and Eliza, and all, from coming? What hinders them, Maria? I wish to know."

Maria busied herself with her fish for a minute, turning and washing it; then, without looking up from her work, she said, in a lowered tone, —

"'Spect de overseer, he don't hab no favour to such ways and meetin's."

"But with me?" I said; "and with Aunt Gary's leave?"

"'Spose he like to fix t'ings his own way," said Maria.

"Does he forbid them to come?" I asked.

"I reckon he do," she said, with a sigh.

Maria was very even-tempered, quiet, and wise, in her own way. Her sigh went through my heart. I stood thinking what plan I could take.

"De Lord is berry good, Miss Daisy," she said, cheerily, a moment after; "and dem dat love Him, dere can be no sort o' separation, no ways."

"Does Mr. Edwards forbid them all to come?" I asked. "For a good many do come."

"'Spect he don't like de meetin's, nohow," said Maria.

"But does he tell all the people they must not come?"

"I reckon he make it oncomfor'ble for 'em," Maria answered gravely. "Dere is no end o' de mean ways o' sich folks. Know he ain't no gentleman, nohow!"

"What does he do, Maria?" I said, trembling, yet unable to keep back the question.

"He can do what he please, Miss Daisy," Maria said, in the same grave way. "'Cept de Lord above, dere no one can hinder – now massa so fur. Bes' pray de Lord, and mebbe He sen' His angel, some time."

Maria's fish was ready for the kettle; some of the other servants came in, and I went with a heavy heart up the stairs. "Massa so fur" – yes! I knew that; and Mr. Edwards knew it too. Once sailed for China, and it would be long, long, before my cry for help, in the shape of one of my little letters, could reach him and get back the answer. My heart felt heavy as if I could die, while I slowly mounted the stairs to my room. It was not only that trouble was brought upon my poor friends, nor even that their short enjoyment of the word of life was hindered and interrupted; above this and worse than this was the sense of wrong done to these helpless people, and done by my own father and mother. This sense was something too bitter for a child of my years to bear; it crushed me for a time. Our people had a right to the Bible as great as mine; a right to dispose of themselves as true as my father's right to dispose of himself. Christ, my Lord, had died for them as well as for me; and here was my father —my father– practically saying that they should not hear of it, nor know the message He had sent to them. And if anything could have made this more bitter to me, it was the consciousness that the reason of it all was that we might profit by it. Those unpaid hands wrought that our hands might be free to do nothing; those empty cabins were bare, in order that our houses might be full of every soft luxury; those unlettered minds were kept unlettered that the rarest of intellectual wealth might be poured into our treasury. I knew it. For I had written to my father once to beg his leave to establish schools, where the people on the plantation might be taught to read and write. He had sent a very kind answer, saying it was just like his little Daisy to wish such a thing, and that his wish was not against it, if it could be done; but that the laws of the State, and for wise reasons, forbade it. Greatly puzzled by this, I one day carried my puzzle to Preston. He laughed at me as usual, but at the same time explained that it would not be safe; for that if the slaves were allowed books and knowledge, they would soon not be content with their condition, and would be banding together to make themselves free. I knew all this, and I had been brooding over it; and now when the powerful hand of the overseer came in to hinder the little bit of good and comfort I was trying to give the people, my heart was set on fire with a sense of sorrow and wrong that, as I said, no child ought ever to know.

I think it made me ill. I could not eat. I studied like a machine, and went and came as Miss Pinshon bade me; all the while brooding by myself and turning over and over in my heart the furrows of thought which seemed at first to promise no harvest. Yet those furrows never break the soil for nothing. In due time the seed fell; and the fruit of a ripened purpose came to maturity.

I did not give up my Sunday readings, even although the number of my hearers grew scantier. As many as could, we met together to read and to pray, yes, and to sing. And I shall never in this world hear such singing again. One refrain comes back to me now —

"Oh, had I the wings of the morning —
Oh, had I the wings of the morning —
Oh, had I the wings of the morning —
I'd fly to my Jesus away!"

I used to feel so too, as I listened and sometimes sung with them.

Meantime, all that I could do with my quarterly ten dollars, I did. And there was many a little bit of pleasure I could give; what with a tulip here and a cup of tea there, and a bright handkerchief, or a pair of shoes. Few of the people had spirit and cultivation enough to care for the flowers. But Maria cherished some red and white tulips and a hyacinth in her kitchen window, as if they had been her children; and to Darry a white rose-tree I had given him seemed almost to take the place of a familiar spirit. Even grave Pete, whom I only saw now and then this winter at my readings, nursed and tended and watched a bed of crocuses with endless delight and care. All the while, my Sunday circle of friends grew constantly fewer; and the songs that were sung at our hindered meetings had a spirit in them, which seemed to me to speak of a deep-lying fire somewhere in the hearts of the singers, hidden, but always ready to burst into a blaze. Was it because the fire was burning in my own heart?

I met one of the two Jems in the pine-avenue one day. He greeted me with the pleasantest of broad smiles.

"Jem," said I, "why don't you come to the house Sunday evenings any more?"

"It don't 'pear practical, missie." Jem was given to large-sized words, when he could get hold of them.

"Mr. Edwards hinders you?"

"Mass' Ed'ards berry smart man, Miss Daisy. He want massa's work done up all jus' so."

"And he says that the prayer-meeting hinders the work, Jem?"

"Clar, missis, Mass' Ed'ards got long head; he see furder den me," Jem said, shaking his own head as if the whole thing were beyond him. I let him go. But a day or two after I attacked Margaret on the subject. She and Jem, I knew, were particular friends. Margaret was oracular and mysterious, and looked like a thundercloud. I got nothing from her, except an increase of uneasiness. I was afraid to go further in my inquiries; yet could not rest without. The house servants, I knew, would not be likely to tell me anything that would trouble me if they could help it. The only exception was mammy Theresa; who with all her love for me had either less tact, or had grown from long habit hardened to the state of things in which she had been brought up. From her, by a little cross questioning, I learned that Jem and others had been forbidden to come to the Sunday readings; and their disobeying had been visited with the lash, not once nor twice; till, as mammy Theresa said, "'peared like it warn't no use to try to be good agin de devil."

And papa was away on his voyage to China – away on the high seas, where no letter could reach him; and Mr. Edwards knew that. There was a fire in my heart now that burned with sharp pain. I felt as if it would burn my heart out. And now took shape and form one single aim and purpose, which became for years the foremost one of my life. It had been growing and gathering. I set it clear before me from this time.

Meanwhile, my mother's daughter was not willing to be entirely baffled by the overseer. I arranged with Darry that I would be at the cemetery-hill on all pleasant Sunday afternoons, and that all who wished to hear me read, or who wished to learn themselves, might meet me there. The Sunday afternoons were often pleasant that winter. I was constantly at my post; and many a one crept round to me from the quarters and made his way through the graves and the trees to where I sat by the iron railing. We were safe there. Nobody but me liked the place. Miss Pinshon and the overseer agreed in shunning it. And there was promise in the blue sky, and hope in the soft sunshine, and sympathy in the sweet rustle of the pine-leaves. Why not? Are they not all God's voices? And the words of the Book were very precious there, to me and many another. I was rather more left to myself of late. My governess gave me my lessons quite as assiduously as ever; but after lesson-time she seemed to have something else to take her attention. She did not walk often with me as the spring drew near; and my Sunday afternoons were absolutely unquestioned.

One day in March I had gone to my favourite place to get out a lesson. It was not Sunday afternoon, of course. I was tired with my day's work, or I was not very strong; for though I had work to do, the witcheries of nature prevailed with me to put down my book. The scent of pine-buds and flowers made the air sweet to smell, and the spring sun made it delicious to feel. The light won its way tenderly among the trees, touching the white marble tombstones behind me, but resting with a more gentle ray upon the moss and turf where only little bits of rough board marked the sleeping-places of our dependants. Just out of sight, through the still air I could hear the river, in its rippling, flow past the bank at the top of which I sat. My book hung in my hand, and the course of Universal History was forgotten, while I mused and mused over the two sorts of graves that lay around me, the two races, the diverse fate that attended them, while one blue sky was over, and one sunlight fell down. And "while I was musing the fire burned" more fiercely than ever David's had occasion when he wrote those words, "Then spake I with my tongue." I would have liked to do that. But I could do nothing; only pray.

I was very much startled while I sat in my muse to hear a footstep coming. A steady, regular footstep; no light trip of children; and the hands were in the field, and this was not a step like any of them. My first thought was, the overseer's come to spy me out. The next minute I saw through the trees and the iron railings behind me that it was not the overseer. I knew his wideawake; and this head was crowned with some sort of a cap. I turned my head again and sat quiet; willing to be overlooked, if that might be. The steps never slackened. I heard them coming round the railing – then just at the corner – I looked up to see the cap lifted, and a smile coming upon features that I knew; but my own thoughts were so very far away that my visitor had almost reached my side before I could recollect who it was. I remember I got up then in a little hurry.

"It is Doctor Sandford!" I exclaimed, as his hand took mine.

"Is it, Daisy?" answered the doctor.

"I think so," I said.

"And I think so," he said, looking at me after the old fashion. "Sit down, and let me make sure."

"You must sit on the grass, then," I said.

"Not a bad thing, in such a pleasant place," he rejoined, sending his blue eye all round my prospect. "But it is not so pleasant a place as White Lake, Daisy."

Such a flood of memories and happy associations came rushing into my mind at these words – he had not given them time to come in slowly. I suppose my face showed it, for the doctor looked at me and smiled as he said, "I see it is Daisy; I think it is certainly Daisy. So you do not like Magnolia?"

"Yes, I do," I said, wondering where he got that conclusion. "I like the place very much, if – "

"I should like to have the finishing of that 'if' – if you have no objection."

"I like the place," I repeated. "There are some things about it I do not like."

"Climate, perhaps?"

"I did not mean the climate. I do not think I meant anything that belonged to the place itself."

"How do you do?" was the doctor's next question.

"I am very well, sir."

"How do you know it?"