"Come, Daisy, let us be friends!" he said. And he was stooping to kiss me; but I put out my hand to keep him back.
"Not till you have told Darry you are sorry," I said.
Preston was angry instantly, and stood upright.
"Ask pardon of a servant!" he said. "You would have the world upside down directly."
I thought it was upside down already; but I was too weak and downhearted to say so.
"Daisy, Daisy!" said Preston – "And there you lie, looking like a poor little wood flower that has hardly strength to hold up its head; and with about as much colour in your cheeks. Come, Daisy, kiss me, and let us be friends."
"If you will do what is right," I said.
"I will – always," said Preston; "but this would be wrong, you know." And he stooped again to kiss me. And again I would not suffer him.
"Daisy, you are absurd," said Preston, vibrating between pity and anger, I think, as he looked at me. "Darry is a servant, and accustomed to a servant's place. What hurt you so much did not hurt him a bit. He knows where he belongs."
"You don't," said I.
"What?"
"Know anything about it." I remember I spoke very feebly. I had hardly energy left to speak at all. My words must have come with a curious contrast between the meaning and the manner.
"Know anything about what, Daisy? You are as oracular and as immovable as one of Egypt's monuments; only they are very hard, and you are very soft, my dear little Daisy! – and they are very brown, according to all I have heard, and you are as white as a wind-flower. One can almost see through you. What is it I don't know anything about?"
"I am so tired, Preston!"
"Yes; but what is it I don't know anything about?"
"Darry's place – and yours," I said.
"His place and mine! His place is a servant's, I take it, belonging to Rudolf Randolph, of Magnolia. I am the unworthy representative of an old Southern family, and a gentleman. What have you to say about that?"
"He is a servant of the Lord of lords," I said; "and his Master loves him. And He has a house of glory preparing for him, and a crown of gold, and a white robe, such as the King's children wear. And he will sit on a throne himself by and by. Preston, where will you be?"
These words were said without the least heat of manner – almost languidly; but they put Preston in a fume. I could not catch his excitement in the least; but I saw it. He stood up again, hesitated, opened his mouth to speak and shut it without speaking, turned and walked away and came back to me. I did not wait for him then.
"You have offended one of the King's children," I said; "and the King is offended."
"Daisy," said Preston, in a sort of suppressed fury, "one would think you had turned Abolitionist; only you never heard of such a thing."
"What is it?" said I, shutting my eyes.
"It is just the meanest and most impudent shape a Northerner can take; it is the lowest end of creation, an Abolitionist is; and a Yankee is pretty much the same thing!"
"Dr. Sandford is a Yankee," I remarked.
"Did you get it from him?" Preston asked, fiercely.
"What?" said I, opening my eyes.
"Your nonsense. Has he taught you to turn Abolitionist?"
"I have not turned at all," I said. "I wish you would. It is only the people who are in the wrong that ought to turn."
"Daisy," said Preston, "you ought never to be away from Aunt Felicia and my uncle. Nobody else can manage you. I don't know what you will become or what you will do, before they get back."
I was silent; and Preston, I suppose, cooled down. He waited awhile, and then again begged that I would kiss and be friends. "You see, I am going away to-morrow morning, little Daisy."
"I wish you had gone two days ago," I said.
And my mind did not change, even when the morning came.
CHAPTER V.
IN THE KITCHEN
I WAS ill for days. It was not due to one thing, doubtless, nor one sorrow, but the whole together. My aunt sent to Baytown for the old family physician. He came up and looked at me, and decided that I ought to "play" as much as possible!
"She isn't a child that likes play," said my aunt.
"Find some play that she does like, then. Where are her father and mother?"
"Just sailed for Europe, a few weeks ago."
"The best thing would be for her to sail after them," said the old doctor. And he went.
"We shall have to let her do just as they did at Melbourne," said my aunt.
"How was that?" said Miss Pinshon.
"Let her have just her own way."
"And what was that?"
"Oh, queer," said my aunt. "She is not like other children. But anything is better than to have her mope to death."
"I shall try and not have her mope," said Miss Pinshon.
But she had little chance to adopt her reforming regimen for some time. It was plain I was not fit for anything but to be let alone, like a weak plant struggling for its existence. All you can do with it is to put it in the sun; and my aunt and governess tacitly agreed upon the same plan of treatment for me. Now, the only thing wanting was sunshine; and it was long before that could be had. After a day or two I left my bed, and crept about the house, and out of the house under the great oaks, where the material sunshine was warm and bright enough, and caught itself in the grey wreaths of moss that waved over my head, and seemed to come bodily to woo me to life and cheer. It lay in the carpet under my feet, it lingered in the leaves of the thick oaks, it wantoned in the wind, as the long draperies of moss swung and moved gently to and fro; but the very sunshine is cold where the ice meets it; I could get no comfort. The thoughts that had so troubled me the evening after my long talk with Preston were always present with me; they went out and came in with me; I slept with them, and they met me when I woke. The sight of the servants was wearying. I shunned Darry and the stables. I had no heart for my pony. I would have liked to get away from Magnolia. Yet, be I where I might, it would not alter my father's position towards these seven hundred people. And towards how many more? There were his estates in Virginia.
One of the first things I did, as soon as I could command my fingers to do it, was to write to him. Not a remonstrance. I knew better than to touch that. All I ventured, was to implore that the people who desired it might be allowed to hold prayer-meetings whenever they liked, and Mr. Edwards be forbidden to interfere. Also I complained that the inside of the cabins were not comfortable; that they were bare and empty. I pleaded for a little bettering of them. It was not a long letter that I wrote. My sorrow I could not tell, and my love and my longing were equally beyond the region of words. I fancy it would have been thought by Miss Pinshon a very cold little epistle, but Miss Pinshon did not see it. I wrote it with weak trembling fingers, and closed it and sealed it and sent it myself. Then I sank into a helpless, careless, listless state of body and mind, which was very bad for me; and there was no physician who could minister to me. I went wandering about, mostly out of doors, alone with myself and my sorrow. When I seemed a little stronger than usual, Miss Pinshon tried the multiplication table; and I tried, but the spring of my mind was for the time broken. All such trials came to an end in such weakness and weariness, that my governess herself was fain to take the book from my hands and send me out into the sunshine again.
It was Darry at last who found me one day, and, distressed at my looks, begged that I would let him bring up my pony. He was so earnest that I yielded. I got leave, and went to ride. Darry saddled another horse for himself and went with me. That first ride did not help me much; but the second time a little tide of life began to steal into my veins. Darry encouraged and instructed me; and when we came cantering up to the door of the house, my aunt, who was watching there, cried out that