Diana Part 24

"Immediately."

"I knew it, when I heard your foot at the door."

They were both still again, while the storm swept over the house in a fresh burst, the wind rushing by as if it was glad he was going and meant he should. Perhaps the two did not hear it; but I think Diana did. The rain poured down in a kind of fury.

"How could you get here, Evan?" she asked, looking up at him.

"I must, I had only to-night."

"You are not _wet?_"

"No, darling! Rain is nothing to me. How are you? and how is your mother?"

"She is better. She is getting well."

"And you? You are most like a magnolia tree, full of its white magnificent blossoms; sweet in a kind of wealth of sweetness and bountiful beauty. One blossom would do for a comparison for ordinary women; but you are like the whole tree."

"Suppose I were to find comparisons for you?"

"Ay, suppose you did. What would you liken me to?" said he with a sparkle of the eyes, which quite indisposed Diana from giving any more fuel to the fire that supplied it.

"What, Di? You might as well give me all the comfort you can to take away with me. I shall need it. And it will be long before I can come back for more. What am I like?"

"Would you feel any better for thinking yourself like a pine tree? or a green hemlock? one of those up in our ravine of the brook?"

"Ah, our ravine of the brook! Those days are all gone. I wish I were a green hemlock anywhere, with you a magnolia beside me; or better, a climbing rose hanging upon me! If I could take you, Di!"

The pang of the wish was very keen in her; the leap of the will towards impossibilities; but she said nothing and stood quite motionless.

"I cannot come back for you at Christmas, Di."

"Where are you going, Evan."

"Where I would not take you, anyhow. I am under orders to report myself at a post away off on the Indian frontier, a long journey from here; and a rough, wild place never fit for such as you. Of course we young officers are the ones to be sent to such places; unless we happen to have influence at headquarters, which I haven't. But I shall not stay there for ever."

"Must you go just where they send you?"

"Yes," he said with a laugh. "A soldier cannot choose."

"Must you stay as long as they keep you there?"

"Yes, of course. But there is no use in looking at it gloomily, Di. The months will pa.s.s, give them time; and years are made of months. The good time will come at last. I'm not the first who has had to bear this sort of thing."

"Will you have to stay _years_ there?"

"Can't tell. I may. It depends on what is doing, and how much I am wanted. Probably I may have to stay two years at least; perhaps three."

"But you can get a furlough and come for a little while, Evan?" said Diana; her voice sounded frightened.

"That's the worst of it!" said Knowlton. "I don't know whether I can or not."

"Why, Evan? don't they always?"

"Generally it can be done if the distance is not too great, and you are not too useful. You see, there are seldom too _many_ officers on hand, at those out-of-the-way posts."

"Is there so much to do?" said Diana, half mechanically. Her thoughts were going farther; for grant the facts, what did the reasons matter?

"There's a good deal to do sometimes," Evan answered in the same way, thinking of more than he chose to speak. They stood silent again awhile. Diana was clasped in Knowlton's arms; her cheek rested on his shoulder; they both looked to the fire for consolation. Snapping, sparkling, glowing, as it has done in the face of so many of our sorrows, small and great, is there no consolation or suggestion to be got out of it? Perhaps from it came the suggestion at last that they should sit down. Evan brought a chair for Diana and placed one for himself close beside it, and they sat down, holding fast each other's hands.

Was it also the counsel of the fire that they should sit there all night? For it was what they did. The fire burned gloriously; the lamp went out; the red lights leaped and flickered all over floor and ceiling; and in front of the blaze sat the two, and talked; enough to last two years, you and I might say; but alas! to them it was but a whetting of the appet.i.te that was to undergo such famine.

"If I could only take you with me, my darling!" Evan said for the twentieth time. And Diana was silent at first; then she said,

"It would be pleasant to go through hardships together."

"No, it wouldn't!" said Evan. "Not hardships for you, my beauty! They are all very well for me; in a soldier's line; but not for you!"

"A soldier's wife ought not to be altogether unworthy of him," Diana answered.

"Nor he of her. So I wouldn't take you if I could where I am going. A soldier's wife will have hardships enough, first and last, no fear; but some places are not fit for women anyhow. I wish I could have seen Mrs.

Starling, though, and had it out with her."

"Had it out!" repeated Diana.

"Yes. I should have a little bit of a fight, shouldn't I? She _don't_ like me much. I wonder why?"

"Evan," said Diana after a minute's thought, "if you are to be so long away, there is no need to speak to anybody about our affair just now.

It is our affair; let it stay so. It is our secret. I should like it much better to keep it a secret. I don't want to hear people's talk.

Will you?"

"But our letters, my dear; they will tell your mother."

"Mother will not see mine. And she is not likely to see yours; I shall go to the post office myself. If she did, and found it out, I could keep _her_ quiet easily enough. She would not want to speak, any more than I."

Evan combated this resolution for some time. He wished to have Diana friends with his sisters and at home at Elmfield. But Diana had her own views, and desired so strongly to keep her secret to herself, during the first part at least of what threatened to be a long engagement, that at last he yielded. It did not matter much to him, he said, away off in the wilds.

So that subject was dismissed; and before the fantasia of the flames they sat and composed a fantasia of life for themselves; as bright, as various, as bewitching, as evanishing; the visions of which were mingled with the leaping and changing purple and flame tints, the sparkle and the flash of the fire. Diana could never stand before a fire of hickory logs and fail to see her life-story reappear as she had seen it that night.

The hours went by.

"It's too bad to keep you up so, my darling!" Evan remarked. "I am selfish."

"No indeed! But you must want something, Evan! I had forgotten all about it."

He said he wanted nothing, but her; however, Diana's energies were roused. She ran into the back kitchen, and came from thence with the tea-kettle in her hands, filled. She was not allowed to set it down, to be sure, but under her directions it was bestowed in front of the glowing coals. Then, with noiseless, rapid movements, she brought a little table to the hearth and fetched cups and plates. And then she spread the board. There was a cold ham on the big table; and round white slices of bread, such as cities never see; and cake, light and fruity; and yellow b.u.t.ter; and a cream pie, another dainty that confectioners are innocent of; and presently the fragrance of coffee filled the old lean-to to the very roof. Evan laughed at her, but confessed himself hungry, and Diana had it all her own way. For once, this rare once, she would have the pleasure, she and Evan alone; many a day would come and go before she might have it again. So she thought as she poured coffee upon the cream in his cup. And whether the pleasure or the pain were the keenest even then, I cannot tell; but it was one of those minutes when one chooses the pleasure, and will have it and will taste it, whatever lies at the bottom of the draught. The small hours of night, the fire-lit kitchen, the daintily-spread table, she and Evan at opposite sides of it; the pleasure of ministering, such as every woman knows; the beauty of her bread, the magnificence of her coffee, the perfection of her cookery, the exultation of seeing him enjoy it; while her heart was storing up its treasure of sorrow for the unfolding by and by, and knew it, and covered it up, and went on enjoying the minute. The criticism is sometimes made upon a writer here and there, that he talks too much about _eating;_ and in a high-finished and artificial state of society it is indeed true that eating is eating, and nothing more. Servants prepare the viands, and servants bring them; and the result is more or less agreeable and satisfactory, but can hardly be said to have much of poetry or sentiment about it. The case is not so with humbler livers on the earth's surface. Sympathy and affection and tender ministry are wrought into the very pie-crust, and glow in the brown loaves as they come out of the oven; and are specially seen in the shortcake for tea, and the favourite dish at dinner, and the unexpected dumpling. Among the working cla.s.ses, too,--it is true only of them?--the meals are the breathing s.p.a.ces of humanity, the resting spots, where the members of the household come together to see each other's faces for a moment at leisure, and to confer over matters of common interest that have no chance in the rush and the whirl of the hours of toil. At any rate, I know there was much more than the mere taste of the coffee in the cups that Diana filled and Knowlton emptied; much more than the supply of bodily want in the bread they eat.

The repast was prolonged and varied with very much talk; but it was done at last. The kettle was set on one side, the table pushed back, and Evan looked at his watch. Still talk went on quietly for a good while longer.

"At what hour does your chief of staff open his barn doors?" said Evan, looking at his watch again.