Diana Part 38

"Jim Treadwell broke _his_ neck out of a waggon," responded Mrs.

Starling.

"Ah, well! there ain't no security, no place; but don't it strike you, now, Mis' Starling, that a minister had ought to set an example of steady goin', and not turn the heads of the young men, and young women, with his capers?"

"He is a young man himself, Mrs. Flandin," Diana was bold to say.

"Wall--I know he is," said the lady in a disapproving way. "I know he is; and he can't help it; but if I had my way, I'd allays have a minister as much as fifty year old. It looks better," said Mrs. Flandin complacently; "and it _is_ better."

"What is he to do all the first fifty years of his life then?"

"Wall, my dear, I hain't got the arrangement of things; I don't know. I know Will would hitch up and carry you anywheres you want to go--if it's a waggon you want any time."

After that, Will made good his mother's promise, so far as intentions went. He was generally on hand when anything was to be done in which himself and his smart buggy could be useful. Indeed, he was very often on hand at other times; dropping in after supper, and appearing with baskets, which were found to contain some of the Flandin pears or the fine red apples that grew in a corner of the lot, and were famous. Some of his own bees' honey Will brought another time, and a bushel of uncommonly fine nuts. Of course this was in the fall, to which the weary weeks of Diana's summer had at length dragged themselves out. But if Will hoped that honey would sweeten Diana's reception of him and his attentions, as yet it did not seem to have the desired effect. In truth, though Will could never suspect it, her brain was so heavy with other thoughts that she was only in a vague and general way conscious of his presence; and of his officious gallantries scarcely aware. So little aware, indeed, of their bearing, that on two or three occasions she suffered herself to be conveyed in Will's buggy to or from some gathering of the neighbours; Mrs. Starling or Mrs. Flandin had arranged it, and Diana had quite blindly fallen into the trap. And then the young man, not unreasonably elated and inspirited, began to make his visits to Mrs. Starling's house more frequent than ever. It was little he did to recommend himself when he was there; he generally sat watching Diana, carrying on a spasmodic and interrupted conversation with Mrs. Starling about farm affairs, and seizing the opportunity of a dropped spool or an unwound skein of yarn to draw near Diana and venture some word to her. Poor Diana felt in those days so much like a person whose earthly ties are all broken, that it did not come into her head in what a different light she stood to other eyes.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A SNOWSTORM.

As the weeks of September rolled away, they brought by the necessary force of a.s.sociations a sharp waking up to Diana's torpor. These, last year, had been the weeks of her happiness; happiness had come to her dressed in these robes of autumn light and colour; and now every breath of the soft atmosphere, every gleam from the changing foliage, the light's peculiar tone, and the soft indolence of the hazy days, stole into the recesses of Diana's heart, and smote on the nerves that answered every touch with vibrations of pain. The AEolian harp that had sounded such soft harmonies a year ago, when the notes rose and fell in breathings of joy, clanged now with sharp and keen discords that Diana could scarcely bear. The time of blackberries pa.s.sed without her joining the yearly party which went as usual; she escaped that; but there was no escaping September. And when in due course the time for the equinoctial storms came, and the storms did not fail, though coming this year somewhat later than the last, Diana felt like a person wakened up to life to die the second time. Her mood all changed. From a dull, miserable apathy, which yet had somewhat of the numbness of death in it, she woke up to the intense life of pain, and to a corresponding, but in her most unwonted, irritability of feeling. All of a sudden, as it were, she grew sensitive to whatever in her life and surroundings was untoward or trying. She read through Will Flandin's devotion; she saw what her mother was "driving at," as she would have expressed it.

And the whole reality of her relations to Evan and his relations to her stood in colours as distinct as those of the red and green maple leaves, and unsoftened by the least haze of self-delusion. In the dash of the rain and the roar of the wind, in the familiar swirl of the elm branches, she read as it were her sentence of death. Before this she had not been dead, only stunned; now she was wakened up to die. Nature herself, which had been so kind a year ago, brought her now the irrevocable message. A whole year had gone by, a year of silence; it was merely impossible that Evan could be true to her. If he had been true, he would have overleaped all barriers, rather than let this silence last; but indeed he had no barriers to overleap; he had only to write; and he had plenty of time for it. _She_ might have overleaped barriers, earlier in the year, if she could have known the case was so desperate; and yet, Diana reflected, she could not and would not, even so. It was well she had not tried. For if Evan needed to be held, she would not put out a finger to hold him.

Of this change in Diana's mood it is safe to say that nothing was visible. Feeling as if every nerve and sense were become an avenue of living pain, dying mentally a slow death, she showed nothing of it to others. Mind and body were so sound and strong, and the poise of her nature was matched with such a sweet dignity, that she was able to go through her usual round of duties in quite her usual way; "die and make no sign." Nothing was neglected in any wise, nothing was slurred or hurried over; thoroughly, diligently, punctually, she did the work from which all heart was gone out, and even Mrs. Starling, keen enough to see anything if only she had a clue to it, watched and saw nothing. For Diana's cheek had been pale for a good while now, and she had never been a talkative person, lately less than ever; so the fact that in these days she never talked at all did not strike her mother. But such power of self-containing is a dangerous gift for a woman.

No doubt the extreme bustle and variety of the autumn and early winter work helped Mrs. Starling to shut her eyes to what she did not want to see; helped Diana too. Fall ploughing and sowing were to be attended to; laying down the winter's b.u.t.ter, storing the vegetables, disposing of the grain, fatting cattle, wood cutting and hauling, and repairing of fences, which Mrs. Starling always had done punctually in the fall as soon as the ploughs were put up. For nothing under Mrs. Starling's care was ever left at loose ends; there was not a better farmer in Pleasant Valley than she. Then the winter closed in, early in those rather high lat.i.tudes; and pork-killing time came, when for some time nothing was even thought of in the house but pork in its various forms,--lard, sausage, bacon, and hams, with extras of souse and headcheese. Snow had fallen already; and winter was setting in betimes, the knowing ones said.

So came one Sunday a little before Christmas. It brought a lull in the midst of the pork business. Hands were washed finally for the whole day, and the kitchen "redd up." The weariness of Diana's nerves welcomed the respite; for business, which oftimes is a help to bearing pain, in some moods aggravates it at every touch; and Diana was glad to think that she might go into her own room and lock the door and be alone with her misery. The day was cloudy and threatening, and Mrs.

Starling had avowed her purpose not to go to church. She was "tuckered out," she said. "And I am sure the Sabbath was given us for rest."

Diana made no answer; she was washing up the breakfast things.

"I guess we ain't early, neither," Mrs. Starling went on. "Well--one day in seven, folks must sleep; and I didn't get that headcheese out of my hands till 'most eleven o'clock. I guess it's first-rate, Diana; we'll try a bit this noon. Who's that stoppin'?--Will Flandin, if I see straight; that's thoughtful of him; now he'll take you to church, Di."

Will he? thought Diana. Flandin came in. Dressed in his Sunday best he always seemed to Diana specially lumbering and awkward; and to-day his hair was ma.s.sed into smoothness by means of I know not what bountiful lubrication, which looked very greasy and smelt very strong of cloves.

His necktie was blue with yellow spots; about the right thing, Will thought; it was strange what a disgust it gave Diana. What's in a necktie?

"Goin' to snow, Will?" asked Mrs. Starling.

"Wall--guess likely. Not jes' yet, though."

"Your mother got through with her pork?"

"Wall--I guess not. Seems to me, ef she was through, there wouldn't be so many pickle tubs round."

"Good weight?"

"Wall--fair."

"Our'n's better than that. Tell you what, Will, your pigs don't get the sunshine enough."

"Don't reckon they know the difference," said Will, smiling and glancing over towards Diana; but Diana was gone. "Were you calculatin'

to go to meetin' to-day, Mis' Starling?"

"Guess not to-day, Will. I'm gettin' too old to work seven days in a week--in pork-killin' time, anyhow. I'm calculatin' to stay home.

Diana's always for goin', though; she's gone to get ready, I guess. She ain't tired."

Silence. Diana's room was too far off for them to hear her moving about, and Mrs. Starling sat down and stretched out her feet towards the fire. Both parties meditating.

"You and she hain't come to any understanding yet?" the lady began.

Will shifted his position uneasily and spoke not.

"I wouldn't wait _too_ long, if I was you. She might take a notion to somebody else, you know, and then you and me'd be nowhere."

"Has she, Mis' Starling?" Will asked, terrified.

"She hain't told _me_ nothing of it, if she has; and I hain't seen her look sweet on anybody; but she might, you know, Will, if anybody came along that she fancied. I always like to get the halter over my horse's head, and then I know I've got him."

The image suggested nothing but difficulty to Will's imagination. A halter over Diana's stately neck!

"I allays catch a horse by cornerin' him," he said sheepishly, and again moving restlessly in his chair.

"That won't answer in this chase," said Mrs. Starling. "Diana'll walk up to you of her own accord, if she comes at all; but you must hold out your hand, Will."

"Ain't I a-doin' that all the while, Mis' Starling?" said Will, whom every one of his friend's utterances seemed to put farther and farther away from his goal.

"I reckon she'll come, all right," said Mrs. Starling rea.s.suringly; "but, you know, girls ain't obliged to see anybody's hand till they have to. You all like 'em better for bein' skittish. I don't. She ain't skittish with me, neither; and she won't be with you, when you've caught her once. Take your time, only I wouldn't be _too_ long about it, as I said."

Poor Will! The sweat stood upon his brow with the prospect of what was before him, perhaps that very day; for what time could be better for "holding out his hand" to Diana than a solitary sleigh ride? Then, if he held out his hand and she wouldn't see it!

Meanwhile.--Diana had, as stated, left the kitchen, and mounted the stairs with a peculiarly quick, light tread which meant business; for the fact was that she did discern the holding out of Will's hand, and was taking a sudden sheer. Nothing but the sheer was quite distinct to her mind as she set her foot upon the stair; but before she reached the top landing-place, she knew what she would do. Her mother was not going to church; Will Flandin was; and the plan, she saw, was fixed, that he should drive herself. Her mother would oblige her to go; or else, if she made a determined stand, Will on the other hand would not go; and she would have to endure him, plat.i.tudes, blue necktie, cloves, and all, for the remainder of the morning. Only one escape was left her.

With the swiftness and accuracy of movement which is possible in a moment of excitement to senses and faculties habitually deft and true, Diana changed her dress, put on the grey, thick, coa.r.s.e wrappings which were very necessary for any one going sleigh-riding in Pleasant Valley, took her hood in her hand, and slipped down the stairs as noiselessly as she had gone up. It was not needful that she should go through the kitchen, where her mother and her visitor were; there was a side door, happily; and without being seen or heard, Diana reached the barn.

The rest was easy. Prince was fast by his halter, instead of wandering at will over the sunny meadow; and without any delay or difficulty, Diana got his harness on and hitched him to the small cutter which was wont to convey herself and her mother to church and wherever else they wanted to go in winter time. Only Diana carefully took the precaution to remove the sleigh bells from the rest of Prince's harness; then she led him out of the barn where she had harnessed him, closed the barn doors securely, remembering how they had been left on another occasion, mounted, and drove slowly away. It had been a dreamy piece of work to her; for it had so fallen out that she had never once harnessed Prince again since that June day, when she, indeed, did not harness him, but had been about it, when somebody else had taken the work out of her hand. It was very bitter to Diana to handle the bridle and the traces that _he_ had handled that day; she did it with fingers that seemed to sting with pain at every touch; her brain got into a whirl; and when she finally drove off, it was rather instinctively that she went slowly and made no sound, for Will and his hopes and his wooing and his presence had faded out of her imagination. She went slowly, until she, also instinctively, knew that she was safe, and then still she went slowly. Prince chose his own gait. Diana, with the reins slack in her hand, sat still and thought. There was no need for hurry; it was not near church time, not yet even church-going time; Will would be quiet for a while yet, before it would be necessary to make any hue-and-cry after the runaway; and she and Prince would be far beyond ken by that time. And meanwhile there was something soothing in the mere being alone under the wide grey sky. n.o.body to watch her, nothing to exert herself about; for a few moments in her life, Diana could be still and drift.

Whither? She was beginning to feel that the chafing of home, her mother's driving and Will's courting, were becoming intolerable. Heart and brain were strained and sore; if she could be still till she died, Diana felt it to be the utmost limit of desirableness. She knew she was not likely to die soon; brain and nerve might be strained, but they were sound and whole; the full capacity for suffering, the unimpaired energy for doing, were hers yet. And stillness was not likely to be granted her. It was inexpressibly suitable to Diana's mood to sit quiet in the sleigh and let Prince walk, and feel alone, and know that no one could disturb her. A few small flakes of snow were beginning to flit aimlessly about; their soft, wavering motion suggested nothing ruder than that same purposeless drift towards which Diana's whole soul was going out in yearning. If she had been in a German fairy tale, the snow-flakes would have seemed to her spirits of peace. She welcomed them. She put out her hand and caught two or three, and then brought them close to look at them. The little fair crystals lay still on her glove; it was too cold for them to melt. O to be like that!--thought Diana,--cold and alone! But she was in no wise like that, but a living human creature, warm at heart and quick in brain; in the midst of humanity, obliged to fight out or watch through the life-battle, and take blows and wounds as they came. Ah, she would not have minded the blows or the wounds; she would have girded herself joyfully for the struggle, were it twice as long or hard; but now,--there was nothing left to fight for. The fight looked dreary. She longed to creep into a corner, under some cover, and get rid of it all. No cover was in sight.

Diana knew, with the subtle instinct of power, that she was one of those who must stand in the front ranks and take the responsibility of her own and probably of others' destinies. She could not creep into a corner and be still; there was work to do. And Diana never shirked work. Vaguely, even now, as Prince walked along and she was revelling, so to speak, in the loveliness and the peace of momentary immunity, she began to look at the question, how and where her stand must be and her work be done. Not as Will Flandin's wife, she thought! No, she could never be that. But her mother would urge and press it; how much worry of that sort could she stand, when she was longing for rest? Would her mother's persistence conquer in the end, just because her own spirit was gone for contending? No; never! Not Will Flandin, if she died for it. Anything else.

The truth was, the girl's life-hope was so dead within her, that for the time she looked upon all things in the universe through a veil of unreality. What did it matter, one thing or the other? what did it signify any longer which way she took through the wilderness of this world? Diana's senses were benumbed; she no longer recognised the forms of things, nor their possible hard edges, nor the perspectives of time.

Life seemed unending, long, it is true, to look forward to; but she saw it, not in perspective, but as if in a nightmare it were all in ma.s.s pressing upon her and taking away her breath. So what did points here and there amount to? What did it matter? any more than this snow which was beginning to come down so fast.

Fast and thick; the aimless scattering crystals, which had come fluttering about as if uncertain about reaching earth at all, had given place to a dense, swift, driving storm. Without much wind perceptible yet, the snowfall came with a steady straight drift which spoke of an impelling force somewhere, might it be only the weight of the cloud reservoirs from which it came. It came in a way that could no longer be ignored. The crystals struck Diana's face and hands with the force of small missiles. But just now she had been going through a grey and brown lonely landscape; it was covered up, and nothing to see but this white downfall. Even the nearest outlines were hidden; she could barely distinguish the fences on either hand of her road; nothing further; trees and hills were all swallowed up, and the road itself was not discernible at a very few paces' distance. Indeed, it was not too easy to keep her eyes open to see anything, so beat the crystals, sharp and fast, into her face. Diana smiled to herself, to think that she was safe now from even distant pursuit; no fear that Flandin would by and by come up with her, or even make his appearance at the church at all that day; the storm was violent enough to keep any one from venturing out of doors, or to make any one turn back to his house who had already left it. Diana had no thought of turning back; the more impossible the storm made other people's travelling, the better it was for hers.

Prince knew the way well enough, and could go to church like a Christian; she left the way to him, and enjoyed the strange joy of being alone, beyond vision or pursuit, set aside as it were from her life and life surroundings for a time. What did she care how hard the storm beat? To the rough treatment of life this was as the touch of a soft feather. Diana welcomed it; loved the storm; bent her head to shield her from the blast of it, and went on. The wind began to make itself known as one of the forces abroad, but she did not mind that either. Gusts came by turns, sweeping the snow in what seemed a solid ma.s.s upon her shoulder and side face; and then, in a little time more, there was no question of gusts, but a steady wild fury which knew no intermission. The storm grew tremendous, and everybody in Pleasant Valley was well aware that such storms in those regions did not go as soon as they came. Diana herself began to feel glad that she must be near her stopping-place. No landmarks whatever were visible, but she thought she had been travelling long enough, even at Prince's slow rate, to put most of the three miles behind her; and she grew a little afraid lest in the white darkness she might miss the little church; once past it, though never so little, and looking back would be in vain. It was a question if she would not pa.s.s it even with her best endeavour. In her preoccupation it had never once occurred to Diana to speculate on what she would find at the church, if she reached it; and now she had but one thought, not to miss reaching it. She had some anxious minutes of watching, for her rate of travelling had been slower than she knew, and there was a good piece of a mile still between her and the place when she began to look for it. Now she eyed with greatest care the road and the fences, when she could see the latter, and indeed it is poetical to speak of her seeing the road, for the tracks were all covered up. But at last Diana recognised a break in the fence at her left; checked Prince, turned his head carefully in that direction, found he seemed to think it all right, and presently saw just before her the long low shed in which the country people were wont to tie their horses for the time of divine service. Prince went straight to his accustomed place.