Diana Part 76

"Insomuch as the 'other people' are more in numbers and far more needy in condition."

"Want you more"--said Diana wistfully.

"That is the plain English of it."

"And will you go?"

"What do you counsel?"

"I do not know the people"--said Diana, breathless.

"Nor I, as yet. The church that calls me is itself a rich little church, which has been accustomed, I am afraid, for some time, to a dead level in religion."

"They must want you then, badly," said Diana. "That was how Pleasant Valley was five years ago."

"But round the church lies on every hand the mill population, for whom hardly any one cares. They need not one man, but many. Nothing is done for them. They are almost heathen, in the midst of a land called Christian."

"Then you will go?" said Diana, looking at Mr. Masters, and wishing that he would speak to her with a different expression of face. It was calm, sweet, and high, as always; but she knew he thought his wife was lost to him for ever. "And yet, I told him, last night!" she said to herself. Really, she was thinking more of that than of this other subject Basil had unfolded to her.

"I do not know," he answered. "How would you like to run over there with me and take a look at the place? I have a very friendly invitation to come and bring you,--for the very purpose."

"Run over? Why, it must be more than one day's journey?"

"One runs by railway," said Basil simply. "What do you think? Will you go?"

"O yes, indeed! if you will let me. And Rosy?"

"We will go nowhere without Rosy."

Diana made her cake like one in a dream.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

BABYLON.

The journey to Mainbridge, the manufacturing town in question, took place within a few days. With eager cordiality the minister and his family were welcomed in the house of one of the chief men of the church and of the place, and made very much at home. It was a phasis of social life which Diana had hardly touched ever before. Wealth was abounding and superabounding; the house was large, the luxury of furnishing and fitting, of service and equipage, was on a scale she had never seen.

Basil was amused to observe that she did not seem to see it now; she took it as a matter of course, and fitted in these new surroundings as though her life had been lived in them. The dress of the minister's wife was very plain, certainly; her muslins were not costly, and they were simply made; yet n.o.body in the room looked so much dressed as she.

It was the dignity of her beauty that so attired her; it was beauty of mind and body both; and both made the grace of her movements and the grace of her quiet so exquisite as it was. Basil smiled--and sighed.

But there was no doubt Diana saw the mill people. The minister and his wife were taken to see the mills, of course, divers and various--silk mills, cotton mills, iron mills. The machinery, and the work done by it, were fascinating to Diana and delightful; the mill people, men, women, and children, were more fascinating by far, though in a far different way. She watched them in the mills, she watched them when she met them in the street, going to or from work.

"Do they go to church?" she asked once of Mr. Brandt, their entertainer. He shook his head.

"They are tired with their week's work when Sat.u.r.day night comes, and want to rest. Sunday was given for rest," he said, looking into Diana's face, which was a study to him.

"Don't you think," she said, "rest of body is a poor thing without rest of mind?"

"_My_ mind cannot rest unless my body does," he answered, laughing.

"Take it the other way--don't you know what it is to have rest of mind make you forget weariness of body?"

"No--nor you either," said he.

"Then I am sorry for you; and I wish I could get at the mill people."

"Why?"

"To tell them what I know about it."

"But you could not get at them, Mrs. Masters. They are in the mills from seven till seven--or eight, and come out tired and dirty; and Sunday, as I told you, they like to stay at home and rest and perhaps clean up."

"If there is no help for that," said Diana, "there ought to be no mills."

"And no manufacturers?"

"What are silk and iron, to the bodies and souls of men? Basil, does that pa.s.sage in the Revelation mean _that?_"

"What pa.s.sage?" said Mr. Brandt. "Here is a Bible, Mrs. Masters; perhaps you will be so good as to find the place. I am afraid from your expression, it is not a flattering pa.s.sage for us millowners. What are the words you refer to?"

I think he wanted to draw out Diana much more than the meaning of Scripture. She took the Bible a little doubtfully and glanced at Basil.

He was smiling at her in a rea.s.suring way, but did not at all offer to help. Diana's thoughts wandered somewhat, and she turned the leaves of the Bible unsuccessfully. "Where is it, Basil?"

"You are thinking of the account of the destruction of Babylon. It is in the eighteenth chapter."

"But Babylon!" said the host. "We have nothing to do with Babylon. That means Rome, doesn't it?"

"Here's the chapter," said Diana. "No, it cannot mean Rome, Mr. Brandt; though Dean Stanley seems to a.s.sume that it does, in spite of the fact which he naively points out, that the description don't fit."

"What then?"

"Basil, won't you explain?"

"It is merely an a.s.sumption of old Testament imagery," said Basil. "At a time when lineal Israel stood for the church of G.o.d upon earth, Babylon represented the head and culmination of the world-power, the church's deadly opponent and foe. Babylon in the Apocalypse but means that of which Nebuchadnezzar's old Babylon was the type."

"And what is that?"

"The power of this world, of which Satan is said to be the prince."

"But what do you mean by the _world_, Mr. Masters? We cannot get out of the world--it is a pretty good world, too, I think, take it for all in all. People talk of being worldly and not worldly;--but they do not know what they are talking about."

"Why not?" Diana asked.