CHAPTER VIII.
GEOGRAPHY.
The Captain was not able to claim Daisy's promise immediately. On their return to the house he was at once taken up with some of the older people, and Daisy ran off to her long delayed dinner.
The next day in the course of her wanderings about the grounds, which were universal, Daisy came upon her cousin Preston. He sat in the shade of a clump of larches under a great oak, making flies for fishing; which occupation, like a gentlemanly boy as he was, he had carried out there where the litter of it would be in nobody's way. Preston Gary was a very fine fellow; about sixteen, a handsome fellow, very spirited, very clever, and very gentle and kind to his little cousin Daisy. Daisy liked him much, and was more entirely free with him perhaps than with any other person in the family. Her seeing him now was the signal for a joyous skip and bound which brought her to his side.
"Oh, Preston, are you going fishing?"
"Perhaps if I have a good day for it."
"When?"
"To-morrow."
"Who's going with you?"
"Nobody, I reckon. Unless you want to go, Daisy."
"Oh, Preston, may I go with you? Where are you going?"
"Daisy, I'm bound for the Hillsdale woods, back of Crum Elbow they say there are first-rate trout streams there; but I am afraid you can't go so far."
"Oh, I can go anywhere, Preston! with Loupe, you know.
You're going to ride, aren't you?"
"Yes, but Loupe! What shall we do with Loupe? You see, I shall be gone the whole day, Daisy it's likely. You'd get tired."
"Why, we could find somewhere to put Loupe Sam could take care of him. And I should like to go, Preston, if you think I would not frighten the fish."
"Oh, if Sam's going along, that is another matter," said Preston. "You frighten the fish, Daisy! I don't believe you can do that for anything. But I won't let you get into mischief."
So it was settled, and Daisy's face looked delighted; and for some time she and Preston discussed the plan, the fish, and his flies. Then suddenly Daisy introduced another subject.
"Preston, where is the Crimea?"
"The Crimea!" said Preston.
"Yes; where the English and the French were fighting with the
Russians."
"The Crimea! Why, Daisy, don't you know where it is? You'll find it in the Black Sea somewhere."
Daisy hesitated.
"But Preston, I don't know where the Black Sea is."
"Why, Daisy, what has become of your geography?"
"I never had much," said Daisy, humbly, and looking serious; "and lately mamma hasn't wanted me to do anything but run about."
"Well, if you take the map of Europe, and set out from the north of Russia and walk down, you'll find yourself in the Crimea after a while. Just hold that, Daisy, will you."
Daisy held the ends of silk he put in her fingers; but while he worked, she thought. Might it not be possible that a good knowledge of geography might have something to do with the use or the improvement of her talents? And if a knowledge of geography, why not also a knowledge of history, and of arithmetic, and of everything! There could not be a reasonable doubt of it. What would Preston be, what would Mr. Dinwiddie or Captain Drummond be, if they knew nothing? And by the same reasoning, what would Daisy Randolph be? What could she do with her talents, if she let them lie rusty with ignorance? Now this was a very serious thought to Daisy, because she did not like study. She liked knowledge right well, if she could get it without trouble, and if it was entertaining knowledge; but she did not think geography at all entertaining, nor arithmetic. Yet Daisy forgot all about Preston's artificial flies, and her face grew into a depth of sobriety.
"Preston " she began, slowly, "is it hard?"
"Not just that," said Preston, busy in finishing a piece of work, "it is a little ticklish to stroke this into order but it isn't hard, if you have the right materials, and know how."
"Oh, no I don't mean flies I mean geography."
"Geography!" said Preston. "Oh, you are at the Crimea yet, are you? I'll show it to you, Daisy, when we go in."
"Preston, is the use of geography only to know where places are?"
"Well, that's pretty convenient," said Preston. "Daisy, just look for that bunch of grey silk I had it here a minute ago."
"But Preston, tell me what is the use of it?"
"Why, my dear little Daisy thank you! you'd be all abroad without it."
"All abroad!" exclaimed Daisy.
"It comes to about that, I reckon. You wouldn't understand anything. How can you? Suppose I show you my pictures of the North American Indians they'll be as good as Chinese to you, if you don't know geography."
Daisy was silent, feeling puzzled.
"And," said Preston, binding his fly, "when you talk of the Crimea, you will not know whether the English came from the east or the west, nor whether the Russians are not living under the equator and eating ripe oranges."
"Don't they eat oranges?" said Daisy, seriously. But that question set Preston off into a burst of laughter, for which he atoned as soon as it was over by a very gentle kiss to his little cousin.
"Never mind, Daisy," he said; "I think you are better without geography. You aren't just like everybody else that's a fact."
"Daisy," said Captain Drummond, coming upon the scene, "do you allow such things?"
"It is Preston's manner of asking my pardon, Captain Drummond," Daisy answered, looking a little troubled, but in her slow, womanly way. The Captain could not help laughing in his turn.
"What offence has he been guilty of? tell me, and I will make him ask pardon in another manner. But, Daisy, do you reckon such a liberty no offence?"
"Not if I am willing he should take it," said Daisy.
The Captain seemed much amused. "My dear little lady!" he said, "it is good for me you are not half a score of years wiser. What were you talking about the Crimea? I heard the word as I came up."
"I asked Preston to show it to me on the map or he said he would."
"Come with me, and I'll do it. You shouldn't ask anybody but me about the Crimea."
So getting hold affectionately of Daisy's hand, he and she went off to the house. No one was in the library. The Captain opened a large map of Russia; Daisy got up in a chair, with her elbows on the great library table, and leaned over it, while the Captain drew up another chair and pointed out the Crimea and Sebastopol, and showed the course by which the English ships had come, for Daisy took care to ask that. Then, finding so earnest a listener, he went on to describe to her the situation of other places on the Peninsula, and the character of the country, and the severities of the climate in the region of the great struggle. Daisy listened, with her eyes varying between Captain Drummond's face and the map. The Black Sea became known to Daisy thence and forever.
"I never thought geography was so interesting!" she remarked with a sigh, as the Captain paused. He smiled.
"Now, Daisy, you have something to tell me," he said.
"What?" said Daisy, looking up suddenly.
"Why, you wanted to know about soldiers don't you remember your promise?"
The child's face all changed; her busy, eager, animated look became on the instant thoughtful and still. Yet changed, as the Captain saw with some curiosity, not to lesser but to greater intentness.
"Well, Daisy?"
"Captain Drummond, if I tell you, I do not wish it talked about."
"Certainly not!" he said, suppressing a smile, and watched her while she got down from her chair and looked about among the book-shelves.
"Will you please put this on the table for me?" she said "I can't lift it."
"A Bible!" said the Captain to himself. "This is growing serious." But he carried the great quarto silently and placed it on the table. It was a very large volume, fall of magnificent engravings, which were the sole cause and explanation of its finding a place in Mr. Randolph's library. He put it on the table and watched Daisy curiously, who, disregarding all the pictures, turned over the leaves hurriedly, till near the end of the book; then stopped, put her little finger under some words, and turned to him. The Captain looked and read over the little finger "Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ."
It gave the Captain a very odd feeling. He stopped, and read it two or three times over.
"But Daisy!" he said.
"What, Captain Drummond?"
"What has this to do with what we were talking about?"
"Would you please shut this up and put it away, first."
The Captain obeyed, and as he turned from the bookshelves Daisy took his hand again, and drew him, child-fashion, out of the house and through the shrubbery. He let her alone till she had brought him to a shady spot, where, under the thick growth of magnificent trees a rustic seat stood, in full view of the distant mountains and the river.
"Where is my answer, Daisy?" he said, as she let go his hand and seated herself.
"What was your question, Captain Drummond?"
"Now you are playing hide and seek with me. What have those words you showed me, what have they to do with our yesterday's conversation?"
"I would like to know," said Daisy, slowly, "what it means, to be a good soldier?"
"Why?"
"I think I have told you," she said.
She said it with the most unmoved simplicity. The Captain could not imagine what made him feel uncomfortable. He whistled.
"Daisy, you are incomprehensible!" he exclaimed, and, catching hold of her hand, he began a race down towards the river. Such a race as they had taken the day before. Through shade and through sun, down grassy steeps and up again, flying among the trees as if some one were after them, the Captain ran; and Daisy was pulled along with him. At the edge of the woods which crowned the river bank, he stopped and looked at Daisy who was all flushed and sparkling with exertion and merriment.
"Sit down there!" said he, putting her on the bank and throwing himself beside her. "Now you look as you ought to look!"
"I don't think mamma would think so," said Daisy, panting and laughing.
"Yes, she would. Now tell me do you call yourself a soldier?"
"I don't know whether there can be such little soldiers," said
Daisy. "If there can be, I am."
"And what fighting do you expect to do, little one?"
"I don't know," said Daisy. "Not very well."
"What enemies are you going to face?"
But Daisy only looked rather hard at the Captain, and made him no answer.
"Do you expect to emulate the charge of the Light Brigade, in some tilt against fancied wrong?"
Daisy looked at her friend; she did not quite understand him, but his last words were intelligible.
"I don't know," she said, meekly. "But if I do, it will not be because the order is a mistake, Captain Drummond."
The Captain bit his lip. "Daisy," said he, "are you the only soldier in the family?"
Daisy sat still, looking up over the sunny slopes of ground towards the house.
The sunbeams showed it bright and stately on the higher ground; they poured over a rich luxuriant spread of greensward and trees, highly kept; stately and fair; and Daisy could not help remembering that in all that domain, so far as she knew, there was not a thought in any heart of being the sort of soldier she wished to be. She got up from the ground and smoothed her dress down.
"Captain Drummond," she said, with a grave dignity that was at the same time perfectly childish too, "I have told you about myself I can't tell you about other people."
"Daisy, you are not angry with me!"
"No, sir."
"Don't you sometimes permit other people to ask your pardon in
Preston Gary's way?"
Daisy was about to give a quiet negative to this proposal, when perceiving more mischief in the Captain's face than might be manageable, she pulled away her hand from him, and dashed off like a deer. The Captain was wiser than to follow.
Later in the day, which turned out a very warm one, he and Gary McFarlane went down again to the edge of the bank, hoping to get if they could a taste of the river breeze. Lying there stretched out under the trees, after a little while they heard voices. The voices were down on the shore. Gary moved his position to look.
"It's that child what under the sun is she doing! I beg pardon for naming anything warm just now, Drummond but she is building fortifications of some sort, down there."
Captain Drummond came forward too. Down below them, a little to the right, where a tiny bend in the shore made a spot of shade, Daisy was crouching on the ground apparently very busy. Back of her a few paces was her dark attendant, June.
"There's energy," said Gary. "What a nice thing it is to be a child and play in the sand!"
The talk down on the shore went on; June's voice could scarcely be heard, but Daisy's words were clear "Do, June! Please try." Another murmur from June, and then Daisy "Try, June do, please!" The little voice was soft, but its utterances were distinct; the words could be heard quite plainly. And Daisy sat back from her sand-work, and June began to sing something. What, it would have been difficult to tell at the top of the bank, but then Daisy's voice struck in. With no knowledge that she had listeners, the notes came mounting up to the top of the bank, clear, joyous and strong, with a sweet power that nobody knew Daisy's voice had.
"Upon my word, that's pretty!" said the Captain.
"A pretty thing, too, faith," said Gary. "Captain, let's get nearer the performers. Look out, now, and don't strike to windward."
They went, like hunters, softly down the bank, keeping under shelter, and winding round so as to get near before they should be seen. They succeeded. Daisy was intent upon her sand-work again, and June's back was towards them. The song went on more softly; then in a chorus Daisy's voice rang out again, and the words were plain.
"Die in the field of battle,
Die in the field of battle,
Die in the field of battle,
Glory in your view."
"Spirited!" whispered Gary.
"I almost think it is a Swedish war song," said the Captain.
"I am not sure."
"Miss Daisy!" said June "the gentlemen "
Daisy started up. The intruders came near. On the ground beside her lay an open map of Europe; in the sand before her she had drawn the same outlines on a larger scale. The shore generally was rough and pebbly; just in this little cove there was a space of very fine sand, left wetted and adhesive by the last tide. Here the battle of Inkermann had been fought, and here Daisy's geography was going on. Captain Drummond, who alone had the clue to all this, sat down on a convenient stone to examine the work. The lines were pretty fairly drawn, and Daisy had gone on to excavate to some depth the whole area of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and the region of the Atlantic to some extent; with the course of the larger rivers deeply indented.
"What is all this gouging for, Daisy?" he said. "You want water here now, to fill up."
"I thought when the tide came, Captain Drummond, I could let it flow in here, and see how it would look."
"It's a poor rule that don't work both ways," said the Captain. "I always heard that 'time and tide wait for no man;' and we won't wait for the tide. Here Gary make yourself useful fetch some water here; enough to fill two seas and a portion of the Atlantic Ocean."
"What shall I bring it in, if you please?"
"Anything! your hands, or your hat, man. Do impossibilities for once. It is easy to see you are not a soldier."
"The fates preserve me from being a soldier under you!" said Gary "if that's your idea of military duty! What are you going to do while I play Neptune in a bucket."
"I am going to build cities and raise up mountains. Daisy, suppose we lay in a supply of these little white stones, and some black ones."
While this was done, and Daisy looked delighted, Mr. McFarlane seized upon a tin dipper which June had brought, and filled it at the river. Captain Drummond carefully poured out the water into the Mediterranean, and opened a channel through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, which were very full of sand, into the Black Sea. Then he sent Gary off again for more; and began placing the pebbles.
"What is that for, Captain Drummond?" asked Daisy.
"These are the Alps white, as they should be, for the snow always lies on them."
"Is it so cold there?"
"No, but the mountains are so high. Their tops are always cold, but flowers grow down in the valleys. These are very great mountains, Daisy."
"And what are those black ones, Captain Drummond?"
"This range is the Pyrénées between France and Spain; they are great too, and beautiful. And here go the Carpathians and here the Ural mountains, and these must stand for the Apennines."
"Are they beautiful too?"
"I suppose so but I can't say, never having been there. Now what shall we do for the cities? As they are centres of wealth, I think a three-cent piece must mark them. Hand over, Gary; I have not thrips enough. There is St. Petersburg here is Constantinople here is Rome now here is Paris. Hallo! we've no England! can't leave London out. Give me that spoon, Daisy " and the Captain, as he expressed it, went to work in the trenches. England was duly marked out, the channel filled, and a bit of silver planted for the metropolis of the world.
"Upon my word!" said Gary, "I never knew geography before. I shall carry away some ideas."
"Keep all you can get," said the Captain. "Now, there's
Europe."
"And here were the battles," said Daisy, touching the little spot of wet sand which stood for the Crimea.
"The battles!" said Gary. "What battles?"
"Why, where the English and French fought the Russians."
"The battles! Shades of all the heroes! Why, Daisy, Europe has done nothing but fight for a hundred thousand years. There isn't a half inch of it that hasn't had a battle. See, there was one, and there was another tremendous; and there, and there, and there, and there, and all over! This little strip here that is getting swallowed up in the Mediterranean there has been blood enough shed on it to make it red from one end to the other, a foot deep. That's because it has had so many great men belonging to it."
Daisy looked at Captain Drummond.
"It's pretty much so, Daisy," he said; "all over the south of
Europe, at any rate."
"Why over the south and not the north?"
"People in the north haven't anything to fight for," said Gary. "Nobody wants a possession of ice and snow more than will cool his butter."
"A good deal so, Daisy," said Captain Drummond, taking the silent appeal of her eyes.
"Besides," continued Gary, "great men don't grow in the north. Daisy, I want to know which is the battle-field you are going to die on."
Daisy sat back from the map of Europe, and looked at Gary with unqualified amazement.
"Well?" said Gary. "I mean it."
"I don't know what you mean."
"I hear you are going to die on the field of battle and I want to be there that I may throw myself after you, as Douglas did after the Bruce's locket; saying 'Go thou first, brave heart, as thou art wont, and I will follow thee!' "
"Daisy," said the Captain, "you were singing a battle-song as we came down the hill that is what he means."
"Oh! " said Daisy, her face changing from its amazed look.
But her colour rose, too, a little.
"What was it?"
"That?" said Daisy. "Oh, that was a hymn."
"A hymn!" shouted Gary. "Good! A hymn! That's glorious! Where did you get it, Daisy? Have you got a collection of Swedish war-songs? They used to sing and fight together, I am told. They are the only people I ever heard of that did except North American Indians. Where did you get it?"
"I got it from June."
"June! what, by inspiration? June is a fine month, I know for strawberries but I had no idea "
"No, no," said Daisy, half laughing, "I mean my June there she is; I got it from her."
"Hollo!" cried Gary. "Come here, my good woman Powers of
Darkness! Is your name June?"
"Yes sir, if you please," the woman said, in her low voice, dropping a courtesy.
"Well, nobody offers more attractions in a name," said Gary; "I'll say that for you. Where did you get that song your little mistress was singing when we came down the hill? Can you sing it?"
June's reply was unintelligible.
"Speak louder, my friend. What did you say?"
June made an effort. "If you please, sir, I can't sing," she was understood to say. "They sings it in camp meeting."
"In camp meeting!" said Gary. "I should think so! What's that!
You see I have never been there, and don't understand."
"If you please, sir the gentleman knows" June said, retreating backwards as she spoke, and so fast that she soon got out of their neighbourhood. The shrinking, gliding action accorded perfectly with the smothered tones and subdued face of the woman.
"Don't she know!" said Gary. "Isn't that a character now? But,
Daisy, are you turning Puritan?"
"I don't know what that is," said Daisy.
"Upon my word, you look like it! It's a dreadful disease, Daisy; generally takes the form of I declare I don't know! fever, I believe, and delirium; and singing is one of the symptoms."
"You don't want to stop her singing?" said Captain Drummond.
"That sort? yes I do. It wouldn't be healthy, up at the house. Daisy, sing that gipsy-song from 'The Camp in Silesia,' that I heard you singing a day or two ago."
" 'The Camp in Silesia'?" said Captain Drummond. "Daisy, can you sing that?"
"Whistles it off like a gipsy herself," said Gary. "Daisy, sing it."
"I like the other best," said Daisy.
But neither teasing nor coaxing could make her sing again, either the one or the other.