Daisy

I nestled down into silence again, listening, almost with a doubt of my own senses, as the notes of the instruments mingled with the summer breeze and filled the June sunshine. The plain looked most beautiful, edged with trees on three sides, and bounded to the east, in front of me, by a chain of hills soft and wooded, which I afterwards found were beyond the river. Near at hand, the order of military array, the flash of a sword, the glitter of an epaulette, the glance of red sashes here and there, the regularity of a perfect machine. I said nothing more to Dr. Sandford; but I gathered drop by drop the sweetness of the time.

The statues broke into life a few minutes later, and there was a stir of business of some sort; but I could make out nothing of what they were doing. I took it on trust, and enjoyed everything to the full till the show was over.

CHAPTER XIV.

YANKEES

FOR several days I saw nothing of Preston. He was hardly missed.

I found that such a parade as that which pleased me the first morning came off twice daily; and other military displays, more extended and more interesting, were to be looked for every day at irregular times. I failed not of one. So surely as the roll of the drum or a strain of music announced that something of the sort was on hand, I caught up my hat and was ready. And so was Dr. Sandford. Mrs. Sandford would often not go; but the doctor's hat was as easily put on as mine, and as readily; and he attended me, I used to think, as patiently as a great Newfoundland dog. As patient, and as supreme. The evolutions of soldiers and clangour of martial music were nothing to him, but he must wait upon his little mistress. I mean of course the Newfoundland dog; not Dr. Sandford.

"Will you go for a walk, Daisy?" he said, the morning of the third or fourth day. "There is nothing doing on the plain, I find."

"A walk? Oh, yes!" I said. "Where shall we go?"

"To look for wonderful things," he said.

"Only don't take the child among the rattlesnakes," said Mrs. Sandford. "They are wonderful, I suppose, but not pleasant. You will get her all tanned, Grant!"

But I took these hints of danger as coolly as the doctor himself did; and another of my West Point delights began.

We went beyond the limits of the post, passed out at one of the gates which shut it in from the common world, and forgot for the moment drums and fifes. Up the mountain side, under the shadow of the trees most of the time, though along a good road; with the wild hill at one hand rising sharp above us. Turning round that, we finally plunged down into a grand dell of the hills, leaving all roads behind and all civilization, and having a whole mountain between us and the West Point plain. I suppose it might have been a region for rattlesnakes, but I never thought of them. I had never seen such a place in my life. From the bottom of the gorge where we were, the opposite mountain side sloped up to a great height; wild, lonely, green with a wealth of wood, stupendous, as it seemed to me, in its towering expanse. At our backs, a rocky and green precipice rose up more steeply yet, though to a lesser elevation, topped with the grey walls of the old fort, the other face of which I had seen from our hotel. A wilderness of nature it was; wild and stern. I feasted on it. Dr. Sandford was moving about, looking for something; he helped me over rocks, and jumped me across morasses, and kept watchful guard of me; but else he let me alone; he did not talk, and I had quite enough without. The strong delight of the novelty, the freedom, the delicious wild things around, the bracing air, the wonderful lofty beauty, made me as happy as I thought I could be. I feasted on the rocks and wild verdure, the mosses and ferns and lichen, the scrub forest and tangled undergrowth, among which we plunged and scrambled: above all, on those vast leafy walls which shut in the glen, and almost took away my breath with their towering lonely grandeur. All this time Dr. Sandford was as busy as a bee, in quest of something. He was a great geologist and mineralogist; a lover of all natural science, but particularly of chemistry and geology. When I stopped to look at him, I thought he must have put his own tastes in his pocket for several days past that he might gratify mine. I was standing on a rock, high and dry and grey with lichen; he was poking about in some swampy ground.

"Are you tired, Daisy?" he said, looking up.

"My feet are tired," I said.

"That is all of you that can be tired. Sit down where you are – I will come to you directly."

So I sat down and watched him, and looked off between whiles to the wonderful green walls of the glen. The summer blue was very clear overhead; the stillness of the place very deep; insects, birds, a flutter of leaves, and the grating of Dr. Sandford's boot upon a stone, all the sounds that could be heard.

"Why you are warm, as well as tired, Daisy," he said, coming up to my rock at last.

"It is warm," I answered.

"Warm?" said he. "Look here, Daisy!"

"Well, what in the world is that?" I said, laughing. "A little mud or earth is all that I can see."

"Ah, your eyes are not good for much, Daisy – except to look at."

"Not good for much for that," I said, amused; for his eyes were bent upon the earth in his hand.

"I don't know," said he, getting up on the rock beside me and sitting down. "I used to find strange things in them once. But this is something you will like, Daisy."

"Is it?"

"If you like wonderful things as well as ever."

"Oh, I do!" I said. "What is it, Dr. Sandford?"

He carefully wrapped up his treasure in a bit of paper and put it in his pocket; then he cut down a small hickory branch and began to fan me with it; and while he sat there fanning me he entered upon a lecture such as I had never listened to in my life. I had studied a little geology of course, as well as a little of everything else; but no lesson like this had come in the course of my experience. Taking his text from the very wild glen where we were sitting and the mountain sides upon which I had been gazing, Dr. Sandford spread a clear page of nature before me and interpreted it. He answered unspoken questions; he filled great vacancies of my ignorance; into what had been abysms of thought he poured a whole treasury of intelligence and brought floods of light. All so quietly, so luminously, with such a wealth of knowledge and facility of giving it, that it is a simple thing to say no story of Eastern magic was ever given into more charmed ears around an Arabian desert fire. I listened and he talked and fanned me. He talked like one occupied with his subject and not with me: but he met every half-uttered doubt or question, and before he had done he satisfied it fully. I had always liked Dr. Sandford; I had never liked him so much; I had never, since the old childish times, had such a free talk with him. And now, he did not talk to me as a child or a very young girl, except in bending himself to my ignorance; but as one who loves knowledge likes to give it to others, so he gave it to me. Only I do not remember seeing him like to give it in such manner to anybody else. I think the novelty added to the zest when I thought about it; at the moment I had no time for side thoughts. At the moment my ears could but receive the pearls and diamonds of knowledge which came from the speaker's lips, set in silver of the simplest clear English. I notice that the people who have the most thorough grasp of a subject make ever least difficulty of words about it.

The sun was high and hot when we returned, but I cared nothing for that. I was more than ever sure that West Point was fairyland. The old spring of childish glee seemed to have come back to my nerves.

"Dinner is just ready," said Mrs. Sandford, meeting us in the hall. "Why, where have you been? And look at the colour of Daisy's face! Oh, Grant, what have you done with her?"

"Very good colour – " said the doctor, peering under my hat.

"She's all flushed and sunburnt, and overheated."

"Daisy is never anything but cool," he said; "unless when she gets hold of a principle, and somebody else gets hold of the other end. We'll look at these things after dinner, Daisy."

"Principles?" half exclaimed Mrs. Sandford, with so dismayed an expression that the doctor and I both laughed.

"Not exactly," said the doctor, putting his hand in his pocket. "Look here."

"I see nothing but a little dirt."

"You shall see something else by and by – if you will."

"You have never brought your microscope here, Grant? Where in the world will you set it up?"

"In your room – after dinner – if you permit."

Mrs. Sandford permitted; and though she did not care much about the investigations that followed, the doctor and I did. As delightful as the morning had been, the long afternoon stretched its bright hours along; till Mrs. Sandford insisted I must be dressed, and pushed the microscope into a corner and ordered the doctor away.

That was the beginning of the pleasantest course of lessons I ever had in my life. From that time Dr. Sandford and I spent a large part of every day in the hills; and often another large part over the microscope. No palace and gardens in the Arabian nights were ever more enchanting, than the glories of nature through which he led me; nor half so wonderful. "A little dirt," as it seemed to ordinary eyes, was the hidden entrance way ofttimes to halls of knowledge more magnificent and more rich than my fancy had ever dreamed of.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Sandford found a great many officers to talk to.

It was not till the evening of the next day following my first walk into the mountains, that I saw Preston. It was parade time; and I was sitting as usual on one of the iron settees which are placed for the convenience of spectators. I was almost always there at parade and guardmounting. The picture had a continual fascination for me, whether under the morning sun, or the evening sunset; and the music was charming. This time I was alone, Dr. and Mrs. Sandford being engaged in conversation with friends at a little distance. Following with my ear the variations of the air the band were playing my mind was at the same time dwelling on the riches it had just gained in the natural history researches of the day, and also taking in half consciously the colours of the hills and the light that spread over the plain; musing, in short, in a kind of dream of delight; when a grey figure came between me and my picture. Finding that it did not move, I raised my eyes.

"The same Daisy as ever!" said Preston, his eyes all alight with fun and pleasure. "The same as ever! And how came you here? and when did you come? and how did you come?"

"We have been here ever since Friday. Why haven't you been to see me? Dr. Sandford sent word to you."

"Dr. Sandford!" said Preston, taking the place by my side. "How did you come here, Daisy?"

"I came by the boat, last Friday. How should I come?"

"Who are you with?"

"Dr. Sandford – and Mrs. Sandford."

"Mrs. Sandford, and Dr. Sandford," said Preston, pointedly. "You are not with the doctor, I suppose."

"Why yes, I am," I answered. "He is my guardian – don't you know, Preston? He brought me. How tall you have grown!"