Kitabı oku: «Diana», sayfa 11

CHAPTER XVI.
IS IT WELL WITH THEE?

Diana would have written to Mr. Knowlton to get her mystery solved; she was far too simple and true to stand upon needless punctilio; but she did not know how to address to him a letter. Evan himself had not known when he parted from her; the information came in that epistle that never reached her hands, that first letter. Names and directions had all perished in the flames, and for want of them Diana could do nothing. Meanwhile, what would Evan think? He would expect an answer, and a quick answer, to his letter; he was looking for it now, no doubt; wondering why it did not come, and disappointed, and fearing something wrong. That trouble, of fearing something wrong, Diana was spared; for she knew the family at Elmfield had heard, and all was well; but sometimes her other troublesome thoughts made her powerless hands come together with a clasp of wild pain. How long must she wait now? how long would Evan wait, before in desperation he wrote again? And where was her letter? for it had been written and sent; that she knew; – was it lost? was it stolen? Had somebody's curiosity prevailed so far, and was her precious secret town property by this time? Every day became harder to bear; every week made the suspense more intolerable. Mrs. Starling was far out in one of her suppositions. Will Flandin came a good deal about the house, it is true; but Diana hardly knew he was there. If she thought about it at all, she was half glad, because his presence might serve to mask her silence and abstraction. She was conscious of both, and the effort to cover the one and hide the other was very painful sometimes.

October glories were passed away, and November days grew shorter and shorter, colder and more dreary. It seemed now and then to Diana that summer had gone to a distance from which it would never revisit her. And after those days of constant communication with Evan, the blank cessation of it, the ignorance of all that had befallen or was befalling him, the want of a word of remembrance or affection, grew almost to a blank of despair.

It was late in the month.

"What waggon's that stopping?" exclaimed Mrs. Starling one afternoon. Mother and daughter were in the lean-to. Diana looked out, and saw with a pang of various feelings what waggon it was.

"Ain't that the Elmfield folks?"

"I think so."

"I know so. I thought Mrs. Reverdy and the rest had run away from the cold."

"Didn't you know Miss Masters had been sick?"

"How should I know it?"

"I heard so. I didn't know but you had heard it."

"I can't hear things without somebody tells me. Go along up-stairs,

Diana, and put on something."

Diana obeyed, but she was very quick about it; she was nervously afraid lest while she was absent some word should be said that she would not have lost for the whole world. What had they come for, these people? Was the secret out, perhaps, and had they come to bring her a letter? Or to say why Evan had not written? Could he have been sick? A feverish whirlwind of thoughts rushed through Diana's head while she was fastening her dress; and she went down and came into the parlour with two beautiful spots of rose colour upon her cheeks. They were fever-spots. Diana had been pale of late; but she looked gloriously handsome as she entered the room. Bad for her. A common-looking woman might have heard news from Evan; the instant resolve in the hearts of the two ladies who had come to visit her was, that this girl should hear none.

They were, however, exceedingly gracious and agreeable. Mrs. Reverdy entered with flattering interest into all the matters of household and farm detail respecting which Mrs. Starling chose to be communicative; responded with details of her own. How it was impossible to get good butter made, unless you made it yourself. How servants were unsatisfactory, even in Pleasant Valley; and how delightful it was to be able to do without them, as Mrs. Starling did and Diana.

"I should like it of all things," said Mrs. Reverdy with her unfailing laugh; a little, well-bred, low murmur of a laugh. "It must be so delightful to have your biscuits always light and never tasting of soda; and your butter always as if it was made of cowslips; and your eggs always fresh. We never have fresh eggs," continued Mrs. Reverdy, shaking her head solemnly; – "never. I never dare to have them boiled."

"What becomes of them?" said a new voice; and Mr. Masters entered the field – in other words, the room. Diana's heart contracted with a pang; was this another hindrance in the way of her hearing what she wanted? But the rest of the ladies welcomed him.

"Charming!" said Mrs. Reverdy; "now you will go home with us."

"I don't see just on what you found your conclusion."

"O, you will have made your visit to Mrs. Starling, you know; and then you will have nothing else to do."

"There spoke a woman of business!" said the minister.

"Yes, why not?" said the lady. "I was just telling Mrs. Starling how I should delight to do as she does, without servants, and how pleasant I should find it; only, you know, I shouldn't know how to do anything if I tried." Mrs. Reverdy seemed to find the idea very entertaining.

"You wouldn't like to get up in the morning to make your biscuits," said Gertrude.

"O yes, I would! I needn't have breakfast very early, you know."

"The good butter wouldn't be on the table if you didn't," said Mrs.

Starling.

"Wouldn't it? Why? Does it matter when butter is made, if it is only made right?"

"No; but the trouble is, it cannot be made right after the sun is an hour or two high."

"An hour or two!" Mrs. Reverdy uttered a little scream.

"Not at this time of year, mother," interposed Diana.

"Do you get up at these fearful times?" inquired Miss Masters languidly, turning her eyes full upon the latter speaker.

Diana scarce answered. Would all the minutes of their visit pass in these platitudes? could nothing else be talked of? The next instant she blessed Mr. Masters.

"Have you heard from the soldier lately?" he asked.

"O yes! we hear frequently," Mrs. Reverdy said.

"He likes his post?"

"I really don't know," said her sister, laughing; "a soldier can't choose, you know; I fancy they have some rough times out there; but they manage to get a good deal of fun too. Evan's last letter told of buffalo hunting, and said they had some very good society too. You wouldn't expect it, on the outskirts of everything; but the officers' families are very pleasant. There are young ladies, sometimes; and every one is made a great deal of."

"Where is Mr. Knowlton?" Diana asked. She had been working up her courage to dare the question; it was hazardous; she was afraid to trust her voice; but the daring of desperation was on her, and the words came out with sufficiently cool utterance. A keen observer might note a change in Mrs. Reverdy's look and tone.

"O, he's in one of those dreadful posts out on the frontier; too near the Indians; but I suppose if there weren't Indians there wouldn't be forts, and they wouldn't want officers or soldiers to be in them," she added, looking at Mr. Masters, as if she had found a happy final cause for the existence of the aborigines of the country.

"What is the name of the place?" Diana asked.

"I declare I've forgotten. Fort – ,I can't think of any name but

Vancouver, and it isn't that. Gertrude, what is the name of that place? Do you know, I can't tell whether it is in Arizona or

Wisconsin!" And Mrs. Reverdy laughed at her geographical innocence.

Gertrude "didn't remember."

"He is not so far off as Vancouver, I think," said Mr. Masters.

"No, – O no, not so far as that; but he might just as well. When you get to a certain distance, it don't signify whether it is more or less; you can't get at people, and they can't get at you. You have seemed to be at that distance lately, Basil. What a dreadful name! How came you to be called such a name?"

"Be thankful it is no worse," said the minister gravely. "I might have been called Lactantius."

"Lactantius! Impossible. Was there ever a man named Lactantius?"

"Certainly."

"'Tain't any worse than Ichabod," remarked Mrs. Starling.

"Nothing can be worse than Ichabod," said Mr. Masters in the same dry way. "It means, 'The glory is departed.'"

"The Ichabods I knew, never had any glory to begin with," said Mrs.

Starling.

But the minister laughed at this, and so gaily that it was infectious. Mrs. Starling joined in, without well knowing why; the lady visitors seemed to be very much amused. Diana tried to laugh, with lips that felt rigid as steel. The minister's eye came to hers too, she knew, to see how the fun went with her. And then the ladies rose, took a very flattering leave, and departed, carrying Mr. Masters off with them.

"I am coming to look at those books of yours soon," he said, as he shook hands with Diana. "May I?"

Diana made her answer as civil as she could, with those stiff lips; how she bade good-bye to the others she never knew. As her mother attended them to the garden gate, she went up the stairs to her room, feeling now it was the first time that the pain could not be borne. Seeing these people had brought Evan so near, and hearing them talk had put him at such an impossible distance. Diana pressed both hands on her heart, and stood looking out of her window at the departing carriage. What could she do? Nothing that she could think of, and to do nothing was the intolerable part of it. Any, the most tedious and lingering action, yes, even the least hopeful, anything that would have been action, would have made the pain supportable; she could have drawn breath then, enough for life's purposes; now she was stifling. There was some mystery; there was something wrong; some mistake, or misapprehension, or malpractice; something, which if she could put her hand on, all would be right. And it was hidden from her; dark; it might be near or far, she could not touch it, for she could not find it. There was even no place for suspicion to take hold, unless the curiosity of the post office, or of some prying neighbour; she did not suspect Evan; and yet there was a great throb at her heart with the thought that in Evan's place she would never have let things rest. Nothing should have kept the silence so long unbroken; if the first letter got no answer, she would have written another. So would Diana have done now, without being in Evan's place, if only she had had his address. And that cruel woman to-day! did she know, or did she guess, anything? or was it another of the untoward circumstances attending the whole matter?

It came to her now, a thought of regret that she had not ventured the disagreeableness and told her mother long ago of her interest in Evan. Mrs. Starling could take measures that her daughter could not take. If she pleased, that is; and the doubt also recurred, whether she would please. It was by no means certain; and at any rate now, in her mortification and pain, Diana could not invite her mother into her counsels. She felt that as from her window she watched the receding waggon, and saw Mrs. Starling turn from the gate and walk in. Uncompromising, unsympathizing, even her gait and the set of her head and shoulders proclaimed her to be. Diana was alone with her trouble.

An hour afterwards she came down as usual, strained the milk, skimmed her cream, went through the whole little routine of the household evening; her hands were steady, her eye was true, her memory lost nothing. But she did not speak one word, unless, which was seldom, a word was spoken to her. So went on the next day, and the next. November's days were trailing along, December's would follow; there was no change from one to another; no variety. Less than ever before; for, with morbid sensitiveness, Diana shrank from visitors and visiting. Every contact gave her pain.

Meanwhile, where was Evan's second letter? On its way, and in the post office.

It was late in November; Diana was sitting at the door of the lean-to, where she had been sitting on that June day when our story began. She was alone this time, and her look and attitude were sadly at variance with that former time. The November day was not without a charm of its own which might even challenge comparison with the June glory; for it was Indian summer time, and the wonder of soft spiritual beauty which had settled down upon the landscape, brown and bare though that was, left no room to regret the full verdure and radiant sunlight of high summer. The indescribable loveliness of the haze and hush, the winning tender colouring that was through the air and wrapped round everything, softening, mellowing, harmonizing somehow even the most unsightly; hiding where it could not beautify, and beautifying where it could not hide, like Christian charity; gave a most exquisite lesson to the world, of how much more mighty is spirit than matter. Diana did not see it, as she had seen the June day; her arms were folded, lying one upon another in idle fashion; her face was grave and fixed, the eyes aimless and visionless, looking at nothing and seeing nothing; cheeks pale, and the mouth parted with pain and questioning, its delicious childlike curves just now all gone. So sitting, and so abstracted in her own thoughts, she never knew that anybody was near till the little gate opened, and then with a start she saw Mr. Masters coming up the walk. Diana rose and stood in the doorway; all traces of country-girl manners, if she had ever had any, had disappeared before the dignity of a great and engrossing trouble.

"Good evening!" she said quietly, as they shook hands. "Mother's gone out."

"Gone out, is she?" said Mr. Masters, but not with a tone of particular disappointment.

"Yes. I believe she has gone to the Corner – to the post office."

"The Corner is a good way off. And how do you do?"

Diana thought he looked at her a little meaningly. She answered in the customary form, that she was well.

"That says a great deal – or nothing at all," the minister remarked.

"What?" said Diana, not comprehending him.

"That form of words, – 'I am well'."

"It is very apt to mean nothing at all," said Diana, "for people say it without thinking."

"As you did just now?"

"Perhaps – but I am well."

"Altogether?" said the minister. "Soul and mind and body?"

The word read dry enough; his manner, his tone, half gentle, half bold, with a curious inoffensive kind of boldness, took from them their dryness and gave them a certain sweet acceptableness that most persons knew who knew Mr. Masters. Diana never dreamed that he was intrusive, even though she recognised the fact that he was about his work. Nevertheless she waived the question.

"Can anybody say that he is well so?" she asked.

"I hope he can. Do you know the old lady who is called Mother Bartlett?"

"O yes."

"Do you think she would hesitate about answering that question? or be mistaken in the answer?"

"But what do you mean by it exactly?" said Diana.

"Don't you know?"

"I suppose I do. I know what it means to be well in body. I have been well all my life."

"How would you characterize that happy condition?"

"Why," said Diana, unused to definitions of abstractions, but following Mr. Masters' lead as people always did, gentle or simple, – "I mean, or it means, sound, and comfortable, and fit for what one has to do."

"Excellent," said the minister. "I see you understand the subject.

Cannot those things be true of soul and mind, as well as of body?"

"What is the difference between soul and mind?" said Diana.

"A clear departure!" said the minister, laughing; then gravely, "Do you read philosophy?"

"I don't know" – said Diana. "I read, or I used to read, a good many sorts of books. I haven't read much lately."

The minister gave her another keen look while she was attending to something else, and when he spoke again it was with a change of tone.

"I had a promise once that I should see those books."

"Any time," said Diana eagerly; "any time!" For it would be an easy way of entertaining him, or of getting rid of him. Either would do.

"I think I proposed a plan of exchange, which might be to the advantage of us both."

"To mine, I am sure," said Diana. "I don't know whether there can be anything you would care for among the books up-stairs; but if there should be – Would you like to go up and look at them?"

"I should, – if it would not give you too much trouble."

It would be no trouble just to run up-stairs and show him where they were; and this Diana did, leaving him to overhaul the stock at his leisure. She came down and went on with her work.

Diana's heart was too sound and her head too clear to allow her to be more than to a certain degree distressed at not hearing from Evan. She did not doubt him more than she doubted herself; and not doubting him, things must come out all right by and by. She was restive under the present pain; at times wild with the desire to find and remove the something, whatever it was, which had come between Evan and her; for this girl's was no calm, easy-going nature, but one with depths of passionate reserve and terrible possibilities of suffering or enjoying. She had been calm all her life until now, because these powers and susceptibilities had been in an absolute poise; an equilibrium that nothing had shaken. Now the depths were stirred, and at times she was in a storm of impatient pain; but there came revulsions of hope and quiet lulls, when the sun almost shone again under the clearance made by faith and hope. One of these revulsions came now, after she had set the minister to work upon her books. Perhaps it was simple reaction; perhaps it was something caught from the quiet sunshiny manner and spirit of her visitor; but at her work in the kitchen Diana grew quite calm-hearted. She fancied she had discerned somewhat of more than usual earnestness in the minister's observation of her, and she began to question whether her looks or behaviour had furnished occasion. Perhaps she had not been ready enough to talk; poor Diana knew it was often the case now; she resolved she would try to mend that when he came down. And there was, besides, a certain lurking impatience of the bearing of his words; they had probed a little too deep, and after the manner of some morbid conditions, the probing irritated her. So by and by, when Mr. Masters came down with a brown volume in his hand, and offered to borrow it if she would let him lend her another of different colour, Diana met him and answered quite like herself, and went on —

"Mr. Masters, how can people be always well in body, mind, and spirit, as you say? I am sure people's bodies get sick without any fault of their own; and there are accidents; and just so there are troubles. People can't help troubles, and they can't be 'well' in mind, I suppose, when they are in pain?"

"Are you sure of that?" the minister answered quietly, while he turned to the window to look at something in the volume he had brought down with him.

"Why, yes; and so are you, Mr. Masters; are you not?"

"You need to know a great deal to be sure of anything," he answered in the same tone.

"But you are certain of this, Mr. Masters?"

"I shouldn't like to expose myself to your criticism. Let us look at facts. It seems to me that David was 'well' when he could say, 'Thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.' Also the man described in another place – 'He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.'"

There came a slight quiver across Diana's face, but her words were moved by another feeling.

"Those were people of the old times; I don't know anything about them.

I mean people of to-day."

"I think Paul was 'well' when he could say, 'I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.'"

"O, but that is nonsense, Mr. Masters!"

"It was Paul's experience."

"Yes, but it cannot be the experience of other people. Paul was inspired."

"To write what was true, – not what was false," said the minister, looking at her. "You don't think peace and content come by inspiration, do you?"

"I did not think about it," said Diana. "But I am sure it is impossible to be as he said."

"I never heard Paul's truth questioned before," said the minister, with a dry sort of comicality.

"No, but, Mr. Masters," said Diana, half by way of apology, "I spoke from my own experience."

"And he spoke from his."

"But, sir, – Mr. Masters, – seriously, do you think it is possible to be contented when one is in trouble?"

"Miss Diana, One greater than David or Paul said this, 'If a man love me, he will keep my words; and my Father will love him; and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.' Where there is that indwelling, believe me, there is no trouble that can overthrow content."

"Content and pain together?" said Diana.

"Sometimes pain and very great joy."

"You are speaking of what I do not understand in the least," said Diana. And her face looked half incredulous, half sad.

"I wish you did know it," he said. No more; only those few words had a simplicity, a truth, an accent of sympathy and affection, that reached the very depth of the heart he was speaking to; as the same things from his lips had often reached other hearts. He promised to take care of the book in his hand, and presently went away, with one of the warm, frank, lingering grasps of the hand, that were also a characteristic of Basil Masters. Diana stood at the door watching him ride away. It cannot be said she was soothed by his words, and perhaps he did not mean she should be. She stood with a weary feeling of want in her heart; but she thought only of the want of Evan.