Daisy

"No!" said he. "Do you?"

"No. What do you think would happen if a Northern President should be elected in the fall?"

"Then slavery would not go into the territories," he said, looking a little surprised at me. "The question would be settled."

"But do you know some people say – some people at the South say – that if a Northern President is elected, the Southern States will not submit to him?"

"Some people talk a great deal of nonsense," said Mr. Thorold. "How could they help submitting?"

"They say – it is said – that they would break off from the North and set up for themselves. It is not foolish people that say it, Mr. Thorold."

"Will you pardon me, Miss Randolph, but I think they would be very foolish people that would do it."

"Oh, I think so too," I said. "I mean, that some people who are not foolish believe that it might happen."

"Perhaps," said Mr. Thorold. "I never heard anything of it before. You are from the South yourself, Miss Randolph?" he added, looking at me.

"I was born there," I said. And a little silence fell between us. I was thinking. Some impression, got I suppose from my remembrance of father and mother, Preston, and others whom I had known, forbade me to dismiss quite so lightly, as too absurd to be true, the rumour I had heard. Moreover, I trusted Dr. Sandford's sources of information, living as he did in habits of close social intercourse with men of influence and position at Washington, both Southern and Northern.

"Mr. Thorold," – I broke the silence, – "if the South should do such a thing, what would happen?"

"There would be trouble," he said.

"What sort of trouble?"

"Might be all sorts," said Mr. Thorold, laughing; "it would depend on how far people's folly would carry them."

"But suppose the Southern States should just do that; – say they would break off and govern themselves?"

"They would be like a bad boy that has to be made to take medicine."

"How could you make them?" I asked, feeling unreasonably grave about the question.

"You can see, Miss Randolph, that such a thing could not be permitted. A government that would let any part of its subjects break away at their pleasure from its rule, would deserve to go to pieces. If one part might go, another part might go. There would be no nation left."

"But how could you help it?" I asked.

"I don't know whether we could help it," he said; "but we would try."

"You do not mean that it would come to fighting?"

"I do not think they would be such fools. I hope we are supposing a very unlikely thing, Miss Randolph."

I hoped so. But that impression of Southern character troubled me yet. Fighting! I looked at the peaceful hills, feeling as if indeed "all the foundations of the earth" would be "out of course."

"What would you do in case it came to fighting?" said my neighbour. The words startled me out of my meditations.

"I could not do anything."

"I beg your pardon. Your favour – your countenance, would do much; on one side or the other. You would fight – in effect – as surely as I should."

I looked up. "Not against you," I said; for I could not bear to be misunderstood.

There was a strange sparkle in Mr. Thorold's eye; but those flashes of light came and went so like flashes, that I could not always tell what they meant. The tone of his voice, however, I knew expressed pleasure.

"How comes that?" he said. "You are Southern?"

"Do I look it?" I asked.

"Pardon me – yes."

"How, Mr. Thorold?"

"You must excuse me. I cannot tell you. But you are South?"

"Yes," I said. "At least, all my friends are Southern. I was born there."

"You have one Northern friend," said Mr. Thorold, as we rose up to go on. He said it with meaning. I looked up and smiled. There was a smile in his eyes, mixed with something more. I think our compact of friendship was made and settled then and at once.

He stretched out his hand, as if for a further ratification. I put mine in it, while he went on, – "How comes it, then, that you take such a view of such a question?"

There had sprung up a new tone in our intercourse, of more familiarity, and more intimate trust. It gave infinite content to me; and I went on to answer, telling him about my Northern life. Drawn on, from question to question, I detailed at length my Southern experience also, and put my new friend in possession not only of my opinions, but of the training under which they had been formed. My hand, I remember, remained in his while I talked, as if he had been my brother; till he suddenly put it down and plunged into the bushes for a bunch of wild roses. A party of walkers came round an angle a moment after; and waking up to a consciousness of our surroundings, we found, or I did, that we were just at the end of the rocky walk, where we must mount up and take to the plain.

The evening was falling very fair over plain and hill when we got to the upper level. Mr. Thorold proposed that I should go and see the camp, which I liked very much to do. So he took me all through it, and showed and explained all sorts of things about the tents and the manner of life they lived in them. He said he should like it very much, if he only had more room; but three or four in one little tent nine feet by nine, gave hardly, as he said, "a chance to a fellow." The tents and the camp alleys were full of cadets, loitering about, or talking, or busy with their accoutrements; here and there I saw an officer. Captain Percival bowed, Captain Lascelles spoke. I looked for Preston, but I could see him nowhere. Then Mr. Thorold brought me into his own tent, introduced one or two cadets who were loitering there, and who immediately took themselves away; and made me sit down on what he called a "locker." The tent curtains were rolled tight up, as far as they would go, and so were the curtains of every other tent; most beautiful order prevailed everywhere and over every trifling detail.

"Well," said Mr. Thorold, sitting down opposite me on a candle-box – "how do you think you would like camp life?"

"The tents are too close together," I said.

He laughed, with a good deal of amusement.

"That will do!" he said. "You begin by knocking the camp to pieces."

"But it is beautiful," I went on.

"And not comfortable. Well, it is pretty comfortable," he said.

"How do you do when it storms very hard – at night?"

"Sleep."

"Don't you ever get wet?"

"That makes no difference."

"Sleep in the rain!" said I. And he laughed again at me. It was not banter. The whole look and air of the man testified to a thorough soldierly, manly contempt of little things – of all things that might come in the way of order and his duty. An intrinsic independence and withal control of circumstances, in so far as the mind can control them. I read the power to do it. But I wondered to myself if he never got homesick in that little tent and full camp. It would not do to touch the question.

"Do you know Preston Gary?" I asked. "He is a cadet."