Diana Part 59

"No, not exactly; but somebody to help me."

"Are you turned weak and sickly, Diana?"

"No, mother."

"Then you don't want another girl, any more than a frog wants an umbrella. Put your baby in the crib and teach her to lie there, when you are busy. That's the way you were brought up."

"You must talk to Mr. Masters, mother."

"I don't want to talk to Mr. Masters--I've got something else to do.

But you can talk to him, Diana, and he'll do what you say."

"It's the other way, mother. I must do what he says." Diana's tone was peculiar.

"Then you're turned soft."

"I think I am turned hard."

"Your husband is easy to manage--for you."

"Is he?" said Diana. "I am glad it isn't true. I despise men that are easy to manage. I am glad I can respect him, at any rate."

Mrs. Starling looked at her daughter with an odd expression. It was curious and uncertain; but she asked no question. She seemed to change the subject; though perhaps the connection was close.

"Did you hear the family are coming to Elmfield again this summer?"

Diana's lips formed the word "no;" the breath of it hardly got out.

"Yes, they're coming, sure enough. Phemie will be here next week; and her sister, what's her name?--Mrs. Reverdy--is here now."

Silence.

"I suppose they'll fill the house with company, as they did last time, and cut up their shines as usual. Well! they don't come in my way. But you'll have to see 'em, I guess."

"Why?"

"You know they make a great to do about your husband in that family.

And Genevieve Reverdy seems uncommonly fond of you. She asked me no end of questions about you on Sabbath."

There flushed a hot colour into Diana's cheeks, which faded away and left them very pale.

"She hasn't grown old a bit," Mrs. Starling went on, talking rather uneasily; "nor she hain't grown wise, neither. She can't ask you how you do without a giggle. And she had dressed herself to come to church as if the church was a fair and she was something for sale. Flowers, and feathers, and laces, and ribbons, a little there and a little here; bows on her gloves, and bows on her shoes, and bows on her gown. I believed she would have tucked some into the corners of her mouth, if they would have stayed."

Diana made no reply. She was looking out into the sunlit hillside in view from her window, and had grown visibly whiter since her mother came in. Mrs. Starling reviewed her for that instant with a keen, anxious, searching gaze, which changed before Diana turned her head.

"I can't make out, for my part, what such folks are in the world for,"

she went on. "They don't do no good, to themselves nor to n.o.body else.

And fools mostly contrive to do harm. Well--she's coming to see you;--she'll be along one of these days."

"To see me!" Diana echoed.

"So she says. Maybe it's all flummery. I daresay it is; but she talked a lot of it. You'd ha' thought there warn't any one else in the world she cared about seeing."

Mrs. Starling went up-stairs at this point to see the baby, and Diana sat looking out of the window with her thoughts in a wild confusion of pain. Pain and fright, I might say. And yet her senses took the most delicate notice of all there was in the world outside to attract them.

Could it be June, once so fair and laughing, that smote her now with such blows of memory's hammer? or was it Memory using June? She saw the bright glisten of the leaves upon the hillside, the rich growth of the gra.s.s, the fair beams of the summer sun; she noticed minutely the stage of development which the chestnut blossoms had reached; one or two dandelion heads; a robin redbreast that was making himself exceedingly at home on the little spread of greensward behind the house. I don't know if Diana's senses were trying to cheat her heart; but from one item to another her eye went and her mind followed, in a maze of pain that was not cheated at all, till she heard her mother's steps forsake the house. Then Diana's head sank. And then, even at the moment, as if the robin's whistle had brought them, the words came to her--"Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me." An absolute promise of the Lord to his people. Could it be true, when trouble was beyond deliverance? And then came Basil's faith to her help; she knew how he believed every word, no matter how difficult or impossible; and Diana fell on her knees and hid her face, and fled to the one only last refuge of earth's despairing children. How even G.o.d could deliver her, Diana did not see, for the ground seemed giving away beneath her feet; but it is the man who cannot swim who clutches the rope for life and death; and it is when we are hopeless of our own strength that we throw ourselves utterly upon the one hand that is strong. Diana was conscious of little else but of doing that; to form a connected prayer was beyond her; she rather held up the promise, as it were with both hands, and pleaded it mutely and with the intensity of one hovering between life and death. The house was still, she feared no disturbance; and she remained motionless, without change of posture either of mind or body, for some length of time. Gradually the "I will deliver thee"--"I will deliver thee"--began to emphasize itself to her consciousness, like a whisper in the storm, and Diana burst into a terrible flood of tears. That touch of divine sympathy broke her heart.

She sobbed for minutes, only keeping her sobs too noiseless to reach and alarm Miss Collins' ears; till her agony was softened and changed at last into something more like a child's exhausted and humble tears, while her breast rose and fell so, pitifully. With that came also a vague floating thought or two. "My duty--I'll do my duty--I'll do my duty."

It was over, and she had risen and was resting in her chair, feeling weaker and yet much stronger than before; waiting till she could dare show her face to Miss Collins; when a little low tap was heard at the front door. Company? But Diana had noticed no step and heard no wheels.

However, there was no escape for her if it were company. She waited, and the tap was repeated. I don't know what about it this second time sent a thrill all down Diana's nerves. The doors were open, and seeing that Miss Collins did not stir, Diana uttered a soft "Come!" She was hardly surprised at what followed; she seemed to know by instinct what it would be.

"Where shall I come?" asked a voice, and a pair of brisk high-heeled shoes tripped into the house, and a little trilling laugh, equally light and meaningless, followed the words. "Where shall I come? It's an enchanted castle--I see n.o.body."

But the next instant she could not say that, for Diana showed herself at the door of her room, and Mrs. Reverdy hastened forward. Diana was calm now, with a possession of herself which she marvelled at even then. Bringing her visitor into the little parlour, she placed herself again in her chair, with her face turned from the light.

"And here I find you! O you beautiful creature!" Mrs. Reverdy burst out. "I declare, I don't wonder at--anything!" and she laughed. The laugh grated terribly on Diana. "I wonder if you know what a beauty you are?" she went on;--"I declare!--I didn't know you were half so handsome. Have you changed, since three years ago?"

"I think I must," Diana said quietly.

"But where have you been? Living here in Pleasant Valley?" was the next not very polite question.

"People do live in Pleasant Valley. Did you think not?" Diana answered.

"O yes. No. Not what we call life, you know. And you were always handsome; but three years ago you were just Diana Starling, and now--you might be anybody!"

"I am Mr. Masters' wife," said Diana, setting her teeth as it were upon the words.

"Yes, I heard. How happened it? Do you know, I am afraid you have done a great deal of mischief? O, you handsome women!--you have a great deal to account for. Did you never think you had another admirer?--in those days long ago, you know?"

"What if I had?" Diana said almost fiercely.

"O, of course," said Mrs. Reverdy with her laugh again,--"of course it is nothing to you now; girls are hard-hearted towards their old lovers, I know that. But weren't you a little tender towards him once? He hasn't forgotten his part, I can tell you. You mustn't be _too_ hard-hearted, Diana."

If the woman could have spoken without laughing! That little meaningless trill at the end of everything made Diana nearly wild. She could find no answer to the last speech, and so remained silent.

"Now I have seen you again, I declare I don't wonder at anything. I was inclined to quarrel with him, you know, thinking it was just a boyish foolish fancy that he ought to get over; I was a little out of patience with him; but now I see you, I take it all back. I declare, you're a woman the men might rave about. You mustn't mind if they do."

"There is another question, whether my husband will mind." She said the words with a hard, relentless force upon herself.

"Is he jealous?" laughing.

"He has no reason."

"Reason! O, people are jealous without reason; they don't wait for that. Better without than with. How is Mr. Masters? is he one of that kind? And how came he to marry you?"

"You ought not to wonder at it, with the opinion you have expressed of me."

"O no, I don't wonder at all! But somebody else wanted to marry you too; and somebody else thought he had the best right. I am afraid you flirted with him. Or was it with Mr. Masters you flirted? I didn't think you were a girl to flirt; but I see! You would keep just quietly still, and they would flutter round you, like moths round a candle, and it would be their own fault if they both got burned. Has Mr. Masters got burned? My poor moth has singed his wings badly, I can tell you. I am very sorry for him."