Daisy

"What is this, ma'am?"

"An invitation. The cadets have little parties for dancing, it seems, three times a week, in summer; poor fellows! it is all the recreation they get, I suspect; and of course, they want all the ladies that can be drummed up, to help them to dance. It's quite a charity, they tell me. I expect I shall have to dance myself."

I looked at the note, and stood mute, thinking what I should do. Ever since Mr. Thorold had mentioned it, up on the hill, the question had been recurring to me. I had never been to a party in my life, since my childish days at Melbourne. Aunt Gary's parties at Magnolia had been of a different kind from this; not assemblies of young people. At Mme. Ricard's I had taken dancing lessons, at my mother's order; and in her drawing room I had danced quadrilles and waltzes with my schoolfellows; but Mme. Ricard was very particular, and nobody else was ever admitted. I hardly knew what it was to which I was now invited. To dance with the cadets! I knew only three of them; however, I supposed that I might dance with those three. I had an impression that amusements of this kind were rather found in the houses of the gay than the sober-minded; but this was peculiar, to help the cadets' dance, Mrs. Sandford said. I thought Mr. Thorold wished I would come. I wondered Preston had not mentioned it. He, I knew, was very fond of dancing. I mused till the people came back from parade and we were called to tea; but all my musings went no further. I did not decide not to go.

"Now, Daisy," said Mrs. Sandford the next morning, "if you are going to the hop to-night, I don't intend to have you out in the sun burning yourself up. It will be terribly hot; and you must keep quiet. I am so thankful Grant is away! he would have you all through the woods, hunting for nobody knows what, and bringing you home scorched."

"Dear Mrs. Sandford," I said, "I can dance just as well, if I am burnt."

"That's a delusion, Daisy. You are a woman, after all, my dear – or you will be; and you may as well submit to the responsibility. And you may not know it, but you have a wonderfully fine skin, my dear; it always puts me in mind of fresh cream."

"Cream is yellow," I said.

"Not all the cream that ever I saw," said Mrs. Sandford. "Daisy, you need not laugh. You will be a queen, my dear, when you cease to be a child. What are you going to wear to-night?"

"I don't know, ma'am; anything cool, I suppose."

"It won't matter much," Mrs. Sandford repeated.

But yet I found she cared, and it did matter, when it came to the dressing-time. However she was satisfied with one of the embroidered muslins my mother had sent me from Paris.

I think I see myself now, seated in the omnibus and trundling over the plain to the cadets' dancing-rooms. The very hot, still July night seems round me again. Lights were twinkling in the camp, and across the plain in the houses of the professors and officers; lights above in the sky too, myriads of them, mocking the tapers that go out so soon. I was happy with a little flutter of expectation; quietly enjoying meanwhile the novel loveliness of all about me, along with the old familiar beauty of the abiding stars and dark blue sky. It was a five minutes of great enjoyment. But all natural beauty vanished from my thoughts when the omnibus drew up at the door of the Academic Building. I was entering on something untried.

At first sight, when we went into the room, it burst upon me that it was very pretty. The room was dressed with flags, – and evergreens, – and with uniforms; and undoubtedly there is charm in colour, and a gilt button and a gold strap do light up the otherwise sombre and heavy figures of our Western masculine costume. The white and rosy and blue draperies and scarfs that were floating around the forms of the ladies, were met and set off by the grey and white of the cadets and the heavier dark blue of the officers. I never anywhere else saw so pretty gatherings. I stood quite enchanted with the pleasure of the eye; till to my startled astonishment, Capt. Percival came up and asked me to dance with him. I had not expected to dance with anybody except Preston, and Mr. Thorold, and perhaps Mr. Caxton. Mr. Thorold came up before the dance began, and I presented him to Mrs. Sandford. He asked me for the first dance, then for the second. And there was no more time for anything, for the dancing began.

I had always liked dancing at school. Here the music was far better and the scene infinitely prettier; it was very pleasant, I thought. That is, when Capt. Percival did not talk; for he talked nothings. I did not know how to answer him. Of course it had been very hot to-day; and the rooms were very full; and there were a good many people at the hotel. I had nothing but an insipid affirmative to give to these propositions. Then said Capt. Percival insinuatingly —

"You are from the South?"

I had nothing but an insipid assent again.

"I was sure of it," he said. "I could not be mistaken."

I wondered how he knew, but it did not suit me to ask him; and we danced on again till the dance came to an end. I was glad when it did. In a minute more I was standing by Mrs. Sandford and introduced to Capt. Boulanger, who also asked me to dance, and engaged me for the next but one; and then Mr. Caxton brought up one of his brother cadets and presented him, and he asked me, and looked disappointed when for both the next dances I was obliged to refuse him. I was quite glad when Mr. Thorold came and carried me off. The second quadrille went better than the first; and I was enjoying myself unfeignedly, when in a pause of the dance I remarked to my partner that there seemed to be plenty of ladies here to-night.

"Plenty," he said. "It is very kind of them. What then?"

"Only – " I said – "so many people came and asked me to dance in the few minutes I stood by Mrs. Sandford, and one of them looked quite disappointed that he could not have me."

I was met by a look of the keenest inquiry, followed instantly and superseded by another flash of expression. I could not comprehend it at the time. The eyes, which had startled me by their steely gleam, softened wonderfully with what looked like nothing so much as reverence, along with some other expression which I could neither read at the moment nor fathom afterwards.

Both looks were gone before I could ask him what they meant, or perhaps I should have asked; for I was beginning to feel very much at my ease with Mr. Thorold. I trusted him.

"Did he want you for this dance?" was all he said.

"For this, and for the next," I answered.

"Both gone! Well, may I have the third, and so disappoint somebody else?" he said, laughing.

If I did not talk much with Mr. Thorold in intervals of dancing, at least we did not talk nonsense. In the next pause he remarked that he saw I was fond of this amusement.

"I think I like everything," I told him.

"Are the hills better than this?" he whispered.

"Oh, yes!" I said. "Don't you think so?"

He smiled, and said "truly he did." "You have been over the Flirtation walk, of course?" he added.

"I do not know which it is."

He smiled again, that quick illuminating smile, which seemed to sparkle in his hazel eyes; and nodded his head a little.

"I had the pleasure to see you there, very early one morning."

"Oh, is that it?" I said. "I have been down that way from the hotel very often."

"That way leads to it. You were upon it, where you were sitting. You have not been through it yet? May I show it to you some day? To-morrow?"

I agreed joyfully; and then asked who were certain of the cadets whom I saw about the room, with rosettes of ribbon and long streamers on the breast of their grey coats?

"Those are the Managers," said my companion. "You will see enough of them. It is their duty to introduce poor fellows who want partners."

I did not see much of them, however, that evening. As soon as I was released from that dance, Capt. Percival brought up Capt. Lascelles; and somebody else, Mr. Sandford, I believe, introduced Lt. Vaux, and Major Fairbairn; and Major Pitt was another, I believe. And Col. Walruss brought up his son, who was in the corps of cadets. They all wanted to dance with me; so it was lucky Mr. Thorold had secured his second dance, or I could not have given it to him. I went over and over again the same succession of topics, in the intervals of standing still. How the day had been warm, and the evening kept up its character; the hotels were full now; the cadets well off to have so many ladies; dancing a pleasant pastime, and West Point a nice place. I got so accustomed to the remarks I might expect, that my mouth was ready with an assenting "yes" before the speaker began. But the talking was a small part of the business, after all; and the evening went merrily for me, till on a sudden a shrill piercing summons of drum and fife, rolling as it were into our very ears, put a stop to proceedings. Midway in the movement the dancers stopped; there was a hurried bow and curtsey, and an instant scattering of all the grey-coated part of the assembly. The "hop" was over. We went home in the warm moonlight, I thinking that I had had a very nice time, and glad that Mr. Thorold was coming to take me to walk to-morrow.

CHAPTER XVI.

HOPS

THE afternoon was very sultry; however, Mr. Thorold came, and we went for our walk. It was so sultry we went very leisurely and also met few people; and instead of looking very carefully at the beauties of nature and art we had come to see, we got into a great talk as we strolled along; indeed, sometimes we stopped and sat down to talk. Mr. Thorold told me about himself, or rather, about his home in Vermont and his old life there. He had no mother, and no brothers nor sisters; only his father. And he described to me the hills of his native country, and the farm his father cultivated, and the people, and the life on the mountains. Strong and free and fresh and independent and intelligent – that was the impression his talk made upon me, of the country and people and life alike. Sometimes my thoughts took a private turn of their own, branching off.

"Mr. Thorold," said I, "do you know Mr. Davis of Mississippi?"

"Davis? No, I don't know him," he said shortly.

"You have seen him?"

"Yes, I have seen him often enough; and his wife, too."

"Do you like his looks?"

"I do not."

"He looks to me like a bad man – " I said slowly. I said it to Mr. Thorold; I would hardly have made the remark to another at West Point.

"He is about bad business – " was my companion's answer. "And yet I do not know what he is about; but I distrust the man."

"Mr. Thorold," said I, beginning cautiously, "do you want to have slavery go into the territories?"