Daisy

"No, ma'am – I could not; I am engaged for every dance, and more."

"More!" said Mrs. Sandford.

"Yes, ma'am – for the next time."

"Preston has reason!" she said, laughing. "But I think, Daisy, Grant will be the most jealous of all. Do him good. What will become of his sciences and his microscope now?"

"Why, I shall be just as ready for them," I said.

Mrs. Sandford shook her head. "You will find the hops will take more than that," she said. "But now, Daisy, think what you will wear; for we must go soon and get ready."

I did not want to think about it. I expected, of course, to put on the same dress I had worn the last time. But Mrs. Sandford objected very strongly.

"You must not wear the same thing twice running," she said, "not if you can help it."

I could not imagine why not.

"It is quite nice enough," I urged. "It is scarcely the least tumbled in the world."

"People will think you have not another, my dear."

"What matter would that be?" I said, wholly puzzled.

"Now, my dear Daisy!" said Mrs. Sandford, half laughing – "you are the veriest Daisy in the world, and do not understand the world that you grow in. No matter; just oblige me, and put on something else to-night. What have you got?"

I had other dresses like the rejected one. I had another still, white like them, but the make and quality were different. I hardly knew what it was, for I had never worn it; to please Mrs. Sandford I took it out now. She was pleased. It was like the rest, out of the store my mother had sent me; a soft India muslin, of beautiful texture, made and trimmed as my mother and a Parisian artist could manage between them. But no Parisian artist could know better than my mother how a thing should be.

"That will do!" said Mrs. Sandford approvingly. "Dear me, what lace you Southern ladies do wear, to be sure! A blue sash, now, Daisy?"

"No, ma'am, I think not."

"Rose? It must be blue or rose."

But I thought differently, and kept it white.

"No colour?" said Mrs. Sandford. "None at all. Then let me just put this little bit of green in your hair."

As I stood before the glass and she tried various positions for some geranium leaves, I felt that would not do either. Any dressing of my head would commonize the whole thing. I watched her fingers and the geranium leaves going from one side of my head to the other, watched how every touch changed the tone of my costume, and felt that I could not suffer it; and then it suddenly occurred to me that I, who a little while before had not cared about my dress for the evening, now did care and that determinedly. I knew I would wear no geranium leaves, not even to please Mrs. Sandford. And for the first time a question stole into my mind, what was I, Daisy, doing? But then I said to myself, that the dress without this head adorning was perfect in its elegance; it suited me; and it was not wrong to like beauty, nor to dislike things in bad taste. Perhaps I was too handsomely dressed, but I could not change that now. Another time I would go back to my embroidered muslins, and stay there.

"I like it better without anything, Mrs. Sandford," I said, removing her green decorations and turning away from the glass. Mrs. Sandford sighed, but said "it would do without them," and then we started.

I can see it all again; I can almost feel the omnibus roll with me over the plain, that still sultry night. All those nights were sultry. Then, as we came near the Academic Building, I could see the lights in the upper windows; here and there an officer sitting in a window-sill, and the figures of cadets passing back and forth. Then we mounted to the hall above, filled with cadets in a little crowd, and words of recognition came, and Preston, meeting us almost before we got out of the dressing-room.

"Daisy, you dance with me?"

"I am engaged, Preston, for the first dance."

"Already! The second, then, and all the others?"

"I am engaged," I repeated, and left him, for Mr. Thorold was at my side.

I forgot Preston the next minute. It was easy to forget him, for all the first half of the evening I was honestly happy in dancing. In talking, too, whenever Thorold was my partner; other people's talk was very tiresome. They went over the platitudes of the day; or they started subjects of interest that were not interesting to me. Bits of gossip – discussions of fashionable amusements with which I could have nothing to do; frivolous badinage, which was of all things most distasteful to me. Yet, amid it, I believe there was a subtle incense of admiration which by degrees and insensibly found its way to my senses. But I had two dances with Thorold, and at those times I was myself and enjoyed unalloyed pleasure. And so I thought did he.

I saw Preston, when now and then I caught a glimpse of him, looking excessively glum. Midway in the evening it happened that I was standing beside him for a few moments, waiting for my next partner.

"You are dancing with nobody but that man whom I hate!" he grumbled. "Who is it now?"

"Captain Vaux."

"Will you dance with me after that?"

"I cannot, Preston. I must dance with Major Banks."

"You seem to like it pretty well," he growled.

"No wonder," said Mrs. Sandford. "You were quite right about the geranium leaves, Daisy; you do not want them. You do not want anything, my dear," she whispered.

At this instant a fresh party entered the room, just as my partner came up to claim me.

"There are some handsome girls," said the captain. "Two of them, really!"

"People from Cozzens's," said Mrs. Sandford, "who think the cadets keep New York hours."

It was Faustina St. Clair and Mary Lansing, with their friends and guardians, I don't know whom. And as I moved to take my place in the dance, I was presently confronted by my school adversary and the partner she had immediately found. The greeting was very slight and cool on her side.

"Excessively handsome," whispered the captain. "A friend of yours?"

"A schoolfellow," I said.

"Must be a pleasant thing, I declare, to have such handsome schoolfellows," said the captain. "Beauty is a great thing, isn't it? I wonder, sometimes, how the ladies can make up their minds to take up with such great rough ugly fellows as we are, for a set. How do you think it is?"

I thought it was wonderful, too, when they were like him. But I said nothing.

"Dress, too," said the captain. "Now look at our dress! Straight and square and stiff, and no variety in it. While our eyes are delighted, on the other side, with soft draperies and fine colours, and combinations of grace and elegance that are fit to put a man in Elysium!"

"Did you notice the colour of the haze in the west, this evening, at sunset?" I asked.

"Haze? No, really. I didn't know there was any haze, really, except in my head. I get hazy amidst these combinations. Seriously, Miss Randolph, what do you think of a soldier's life?"

"It depends on who the soldier is," I said.

"Cool, really!" said the captain. "Cool! Ha! ha! – "

And he laughed, till I wondered what I could have said to amuse him so much.

"Then you have learned to individualize soldiers already?" was his next question, put with a look which seemed to me inquisitive and impertinent. I did not know how to answer it, and left it unanswered; and the captain and I had the rest of our dance out in silence. Meanwhile, I could not help watching Faustina. She was so very handsome, with a marked, dashing sort of beauty that I saw was prodigiously admired. She took no notice of me, and barely touched the tips of my fingers with her glove as we passed in the dance.

As he was leading me back to Mrs. Sandford, the captain stooped his head to mine. "Forgive me," he whispered. "So much gentleness cannot bear revenge. I am only a soldier."