Daisy in the Field | Page 6

our
conversation ended. It had laid on my heart a grave burden of
well-defined care, which went with me thenceforth. I could never
ignore it nor doubt it was there. Not but I knew well enough each
several point in our discussion, before it had come up in words between
Miss Cardigan and me; but having so come up, and taken form, each
was a tangible thing for ever after. It is odd, how much we can bear

unspoken, to which words give an unendurable weight and power.
However, these troubles, in their present form, were not unendurable. I
only felt them constantly from that time.
My visits to Miss Cardigan now were what they had always been; only
perhaps she was a little more tenderly affectionate and careful of me.
We did not go back to the discussions of that day, nor to any other
regarding my affairs; but she and I scanned the papers well, and talked
to each other of the items that seemed now to touch Thorold's and my
future as well as the future of the country. We talked, - I could not help
it; and yet often I would as lief not; the subjects were not quieting.
The first thing, was the going to Washington of Christian and his class.
He wrote to me about it. They went in haste and zeal; waiting for
nothing; losing not a train; going by night. Some in civilian's dress;
some in cadet clothes, with the black stripe torn off the leg; all eager for
their work. What work? It was peaceful enough work just at first.
Thorold and others were set to drill the new citizen soldiers who had
come in, answering to the President's proclamation, and who knew
simply nothing of the business they were to be wanted for, if wanted at
all. It was likely they would have something to do! Already a second
proclamation from the President had called for a second supply of men,
to serve for three years, if the war was not sooner ended. Seamen for
the navy also, in like manner.
For three years or the war! It went to my heart, that requisition. It
looked so terribly in earnest. And so unhopeful. I wondered, those days,
how people could live that did not know how to pray; when every one
had, or might have, a treasure at stake in this fierce game that was
playing. I have often since felt the same wonder.
I do not know how studies and the usual forms of school recitations
went on; but they did go on; smoothly, I suppose. I even recollect that
mine went on successfully. With my double or treble motive for
desiring success, I had also a reason for prizing and remembering the
attainment. But my head was on graver matters, all the time. Would the
rebels attack, Washington? it was constantly threatened. Would
fighting actually become the common news of the land? The answer to

this second query began to be sounded audibly. It was before May was
over, that Ellsworth's soldiers took possession of Alexandria, and he
was killed. That stirred people at the time; it looks a very little thing
now. Alexandria! how I remembered driving through it one grey
morning, on one of my Southern journeys; the dull little place, that
looked as if it had fallen asleep some hundred or two years ago and
never waked up. Now it was waked up with rifle shots; but its slave pen
was emptied. I was glad of that. And Thorold was safe in Washington,
drilling raw soldiers, in the saddle all day, and very happy, he wrote me.
I had begun to be uneasy about his writing to me. It was without leave
from my father and mother, and the leave I knew could not be obtained;
it would follow that the indulgence must be given up. I knew it must. I
looked that necessity in the face. A correspondence, such a
correspondence, carried on without their knowing of it, must be an
impossibility for me. I intended to tell Christian so, and stop the letters,
before I should go abroad. My difficulties were becoming daily more
and more clear, and looking more and more unmanageable. I wondered
sometimes whither I was drifting; for guide or choose my course I
could not. I had got into the current by no agency and with no fault of
my own. To get out of the current - perhaps that might not be till life
and I should go out together. So I was a somewhat sober and diligent
student those closing weeks of the term; and yet, very happy, for
Christian loved me. It was a new, sweet, strange, elixir of life.
The term was almost out, when I was