Diana Part 53

CHAPTER XXV.

MISS COLLINS' WORK.

It was well for Diana that she had got a talisman of better power than the world can manufacture. It was well for her, too, that she followed up earnestly the clue to life which had been given her. If you have a treasure-house of supplies, and are going to have to get to it in the dark by and by, it is good to learn the way very well while the light is there. For weeks Diana gave herself before all other things to the study of her Bible, and to better understanding of faith's duties and privileges. In all this, Basil was a great help; and daily his wife learned more and more to admire and revere the mind and temper of the man she had married. Reverence would have led surely to love, in such a nature as Diana's; but Diana's heart was preoccupied. What love could not do, however, conscience and grat.i.tude did as far as possible.

Nothing that concerned Basil's comfort or honour was uncared for by his wife. So, among other things, she never intrusted the care of his meals entirely to Miss Collins; and quite to that lady's discomfiture, would often come into the kitchen and prepare some nice dish herself, or superintend the preparation of it. Miss Collins resented this. She shared the opinion of some of the ladies of the Sewing Society, that Mrs. Masters was quite proud and needed to be "taken down" a bit; and if she got a good chance, she had it in her mind to do a little of the "taking down" herself.

It was one evening late in September. Frosts had hardly set in yet, and every change in the light and colour carried Diana's mind back to Evan and two years ago, and mornings and evenings of that time which were so filled with nameless joys and hopes. Diana did not give herself to these thoughts nor encourage them; they came with the suddenness and the start of lightning. Merely the colour of a hill at sunset was enough to flash back her thoughts to an hour when she was looking for Evan; or a certain sort of starlight night would recall a particular walk along the meadow fence; or a gust and whiff of the wind would bring with it the thrill that belonged to one certain stormy September night that never faded in her remembrance. Or the smell of coffee sometimes, when it was just at a certain stage of preparation, would turn her heart-sick. These a.s.sociations and remembrances were countless and incessant always under the reminders of the September light and atmosphere; and Diana could not escape from them, though as soon as they came she put them resolutely away.

This evening Mr. Masters was out. Diana knew he had gone a long ride and would be tired,--that is, if he ever could be tired,--and would be certainly ready for his supper when he came in. So she went out to make ready a certain dish of eggs which she knew he liked. Such service as this she could do, and she did. There was no thoughtful care, no smallest observance, which could have been rendered by the most devoted affection, which Diana did not give to her husband. Except,--she never offered a kiss, or laid her hand in his or upon his shoulder. Happily for her, Basil was not a particularly demonstrative man; for every caress from him was "as vinegar upon nitre;" she did not show repulsion, that was all.

"I guess I kin do that, Mis' Masters," said her handmaid, who always preferred to keep the kitchen for her own domain. Diana made no answer.

She was slowly and delicately peeling her eggs, and probably did not notice the remark. Miss Collins, however, resented the neglect.

"Mr. Masters is gone a great deal. It's sort o' lonesome up here on the hill. Dreadfully quiet, don't you think it is?"

"I like quiet," Diana answered absently.

"Du, hey? Wall, I allays liked life. I never could git too much o'

that. I should like a soldier's life uncommon,--if I was a man."

Diana had finished peeling her eggs, and now began to wash a bunch of green parsley which she had fetched from the garden, daintily dipping it up and down in a bowl of spring-water.

"It was kind o' lively down to the post office," Miss Collins remarked again, eyeing the beautiful half-bared arm and the whole figure, which in its calm elegance was both imposing and irritating to her. Miss Collins, indeed, had a very undefined sense of the beautiful; yet she vaguely knew that n.o.body else in Pleasant Valley looked so or carried herself so; no other woman's dress adorned her so, or was so set off by the wearer; although Diana's present attire was a very simply-made print gown, not even the stylish ladies of Elmfield produced an equal effect with their French dresses. And was not Diana "Mis' Starling's daughter?" And Diana seemed not to hear or care what she had to say!

"Everybody comes to the post office," she went on grimly; "you hev'

only to watch, and you see all the folks; and you know all that is goin' on. An' that suits me 'xactly."

"But you had nothing to do with the post office," said Diana. "How could you see everybody?"

"You keep your eyes open, and you'll see things, most places," said Miss Collins. "La! I used to be in and out; why shouldn't I? And now and then I'd say to Miss Gunn--'You're jest f.a.gged out with standin'

upon your feet; you jes' go in there and sit down by the fire, and don't let the pot bile over and put it out; and I'll see to the letters and the folks.' And so she did, and so I did. It was as good as a play."

"How?" said Diana, feeling a vague pain at the thought of the post office; that place where her hopes had died. Somehow there was a vague dread in her heart also, without any reason.

"Wall--you git at folks' secrets--if they have any," Miss Collins answered, suddenly checking her flow of words. Diana did not ask again; the subject was disagreeable. She began to cut up her parsley deftly with a sharp knife; and her handmaid stood and looked at her.

"Some folks thought, you know, at one time, that Mr. Masters was courtin' Phemie Knowlton. I didn't let on, but la! I knowed it warn't so. Why, there warn't never a letter come from her to him, nor went from him to her."

"She was here herself," said Diana; "why should they write? You could tell nothing by that."

"She warn't here after she had gone away," said Miss Collins; "and that was jes' the time when I knowed all about it. I knowed about other people too."

That was also the time after Evan had quitted Pleasant Valley. Yet Diana did not know why she could not keep herself from trembling. If Evan _had_ written, then, this Jemima Collins and her employer, Miss Gunn, would have known it and drawn their conclusions. Well, they had no data to go upon now.

"Bring me a little saucepan, Jemima, will you?"

Jemima brought it. Now her mistress (but she never called her so) would be away and off in a minute or two more, and leave her to watch the saucepan, she knew, and her opportunity would be over. Still she waited to choose her words.

"You ain't so fond o' life as I be," she observed.

"Perhaps not," said Diana. "I do not think I should like a situation in the post office."

"But I should ha' thought you'd ha' liked to go all over the world and see everything. Now Pleasant Valley seems to me something like a corner. Why didn't you?"

"Why didn't I what?" said Diana, standing up. She had been stooping down over her saucepan, which now sat upon a little bed of coals.

"La! you needn't look at me like that," said Miss Collins, chuckling.

"It's no harm. You had your ch'ice, and you chose it; only _I_ would have took the other."

"The other what? _What_ would you have taken?"

"Wall, I don' know," said Miss Collins; "to be sure, one never doos know till one is tried, they say; but if I had, I think I should ha'

took 'tother one."

"I do not understand you," said Diana, walking off to the table, where she began to gather up the wrecks of the parsley stems. She felt an odd sensation of cold about the region of her heart, physically very disagreeable.

"You are hard to make understand, then," said Miss Collins. "I suppose you know you had two sweethearts, don't you? And sure enough you had the pick of the lot. 'Tain't likely you've forgotten."

"How dare you speak so?" asked Diana, not pa.s.sionately, but with a sort of cold despair, eying her handmaiden.

"Dare?" said the latter. "Dare what? I ain't saying nothin'. 'Tain't no harm to have two beaux; you chose your ch'ice, and _he_ hain't no cause to be uncontented, anyhow. About the 'tother one I don't say nothin'. I should think he _was_, but that's nat'ral. I s'pose he's got over it by now. You needn't stand and look. He's fur enough off, too. Your husband won't be jealous. You knowed you had two men after you."

"I cannot imagine why you say that," Diana repeated, standing as it were at bay.

"How I come to know? That's easy. Didn't I tell you I was in the post office? La, I know, I see the letters."

"Letters!" cried Diana, in a tone which forthwith made Miss Collins open all the eyes she had. It was not a scream; it was not even very loud; yet Miss Collins went into a swift calculation to find out what was in it. Beyond her ken, happily; it was a heart's death-cry.

"Yes," she said stolidly; "I said letters. Ain't much else goin' at the post office, 'cept letters and papers; and I ain't one o' them as sets no count by the papers. La, what do I care for the news at Washington?

I don't know the folks; they may all die or get married for what I care; but in Pleasant Valley I know where I be, and I know who the folks be. And that's what made me allays like to get a chance to sort the letters, or hand 'em out."

"You never saw many letters of mine," said Diana, turning away to hide her lips, which she felt were growing strange. But she must speak; she must know more.

"N--o," said Miss Collins; "not letters o' your writin,'--ef you mean that."

"Letters of mine of any sort. I don't get many letters."

"Some of 'em's big ones, when they come, My! didn't I use to wonder what was in 'em! Two stamps, and _three_ stamps. I s'pose feelin's makes heavy weight." Miss Collins laughed a little.

"Two stamps and three stamps?" said Diana fiercely;--"how many were there?"

"I guess I knowed of three. Two I handed out o' the box myself; and Miss Gunn, she said there was another. There was no mistakin' them big letters. They was on soft paper, and lots o' stamps, as I said."