I do hate soldiers. I always did, from my youth up, till the war in the East startled everybody like a thunder-clap. What a time it was—this time two years ago! How the actual romance of each day, as set down in the newspapers, made my old romances read like mere balderdash: how the present, in its infinite piteousness, its tangible horror, and the awfulness of what they called its “glory” cast the tame past altogether into shade! Who read history then, or novels, or poetry? Who read anything but that fearful “Times?”
And now it is all gone by we have peace again; and this 20th of September, 1856, I begin with my birthday a new journal—(capital one, too, with a first-rate lock and key, saved out of my summer bonnet, which I didn't buy). Nor need I spoil the day—as once—by crying over those who, two years since,
“Went up
Red Alma's heights to glory.”
Conscience, tender over dead heroes, feels not the smallest compunction in writing the angry initiatory line, when she thinks of that odious camp which has been established near us, for the education of the military mind, and the hardening of the military body. Whence red-coats swarm out over the pretty neighbourhood like lady-birds over the hop-gardens,—harmless, it is true, yet for ever flying in one's face in the most unpleasant manner, making inroads through one's parlour windows, and crawling over one's tea-table. Wretched red insects! except that the act would be murder, I often wish I could put half-a-dozen of them, swords, epaulets, moustaches, and all, under the heel of my shoe.
Perhaps this is obstinacy, or the love of contradiction. No wonder. Do I hear of anything, but soldiers from morning till night? At visits or dinner parties can I speak to a soul—and 'tisn't much I do speak to anybody—but that she—I use the pronoun advisedly—is sure to bring in with her second sentence something about “the camp?”
I'm sick of the camp. Would that my sisters were! For Lisabel, young and handsome, there is some excuse, but Penelope—she ought to know better.
Papa is determined to go with us to the Grantons' ball to-night. I wish there were no necessity for it; and have suggested as strongly as I could that we should stay at home. But what of that? Nobody minds me. Nobody ever did that I ever remember. So poor papa is to be dragged out from his cosy arm-chair, jogged and tumbled across these wintry moors, and stuck up solemn in a corner of the drawing-room—being kept carefully out of the card-room because he happens to be a clergyman. And all the while he will wear his politest and most immovable of smiles, just as if he liked it. Oh, why cannot people say what they mean and do as they wish! Why must they hold themselves tied and bound with horrible chains of etiquette even at the age of seventy! Why cannot he say, “Girls”—no, of course he would say “young ladies”—“I had far rather stay at home—go you and enjoy yourselves;” or better still, “go, two of you—but I want Dora.”
No, he never will say that. He never did want any of us much; me less than any. I am neither eldest nor youngest, neither Miss Johnston nor Miss Lisabel—only Miss Dora—Theodora—“the gift of God,” as my little bit of Greek taught me. A gift—what for, and to whom? I declare, since I was a baby, since I was a little solitary ugly child, wondering if ever I had a mother like other children, since even I have been a woman grown, I never have been able to find out.
Well, I suppose it is no use to try to alter things. Papa will go his own way, and the girls theirs. They think the grand climax of existence is “society;” he thinks the same—at least for young women, properly introduced, escorted and protected there. So, as the three Misses Johnston—sweet fluttering doves!—have no other chaperon, or protector, he makes a martyr of himself on the shrine of paternal duty, alias respectability, and goes.