BELLES AND BLACKBERRIES.
In the first flush of Diana's distress that night, it had seemed to her
that the sight of Lieut. Knowlton in all time to come could but give
her additional distress. How could she look at him? But the clear
morning light found her nerves quiet again, and her cheeks cool; and a
certain sweet self-respect, in which she held herself always, forbade
any such flutter of vanity or stir even of fancy as could in any wise
ruffle the simple dignity of this country girl's manner. She had no
careful mother's training, or father's watch and safeguard; the
artificial rules of propriety were still less known to her; but innate
purity and modesty, and, as I said, the poise of a true New England
self-respect, stood her in better stead. When Diana saw Mr. Knowlton
the next time, she was conscious of no discomposure; and _he_ was
struck with the placid elegance of manner, formed in no school, which
was the very outgrowth of the truth within her. His own manner grew
unconsciously deferential. It is the most flattering homage a man can
render a woman.
Mrs. Starling had delivered her mind, and thereafter she was content to
be very civil to him. Further than that a true record cannot go. The
young officer tried to negotiate himself into her good graces; he was
attentive and respectful, and made himself entertaining. And Mrs.
Starling was entertained, and entertained him also on her part; and
Diana watched for a word of favourable comment or better judgment of
him when he was gone. None ever came; and Diana sometimes sighed when
she and her mother had shut the doors, as that night, upon each other.
For to _her_ mind the favourable comments rose unasked for.
He came very often, on one pretext or another. He began to be very much
at home. His eye used to meet her's, as something he had been looking
for and had just found; and the lingering clasp of his hand said the
touch was pleasant. Generally their interviews were in the parlour of
Diana's home; sometimes he contrived an occasion to get her to drive
with him, or to walk; and Diana never found that she could refuse
herself the pleasure, or need refuse it to him. The country was so
thinly settled, and their excursions had as yet been in such lonely
places, that no village eyes or tongues had been aroused.
So the depth of August came. The two were standing one moonlight night
at the little front gate, lingering in the moonlight. Mr. Knowlton was
going, and could not go.
"Have you heard anything about the Bear Hill party?" he asked suddenly.
"O yes; Miss Delamater came here a week ago to speak about it."
"Are you going?"
"Mother said she would. So I suppose I shall."
"Where is it? and what is it?"
"The place? Bear Hill is a very wild, stony, bare hill--at least one
side of it is bare; the other side is covered with trees. And the bare
side is covered with blackberry bushes, the largest you ever saw; and
the berries are the largest. We always go there every summer, a number
of us out of Pleasant Valley, to get blackberries."
"How far is it?"
"Fifteen miles."
"That's a good way to go a-blackberrying," said the young man, smiling.
"People hereabouts must be very fond of that fruit."
"We want them for a great many uses, you know; it isn't just to eat
them. Mother makes jam and wine for the whole year, besides what we eat
at once. And we go for the fun too, as well as for the berries."
"So it is fun, is it?"
"I think so. We make a day of it; and everybody carries provisions; and
we build a fire, and it is very pleasant."
"I'll go," said Mr. Knowlton. "I have heard something about it at home.
They wanted me to drive them, but I wanted to know what I was engaging
myself to. Well, I'll be there, and I'll take care our waggon carries
its stock of supplies too. Thursday, is it?"
"I believe so."
"What time shall you go?"
"About eight o'clock--or half-past."
"_Eight!_" said the young officer. "I shall have to revive Academy
habits. I am grown lazy."
"The days are so warm, you know," Diana explained; "and we have to come
home early. We always have dinner between twelve and one."
"I see!" said the young man. "I see the necessity, and feel the
difficulty. Well, I'll be there."
He grasped her hand again; they had shaken hands before he left the
house, Diana remembered; and this time he held her fingers in a light
clasp for some seconds after it was time to let them go. Then he turned
and sprang upon his horse and went off at a gallop. Diana stood still
at the gate where he had left her, looking down the road and listening
to the diminishing sound of his horse's hoofs. The moonlight streamed
tenderly down upon her and the elm trees; it filled the empty space
where Knowlton's figure had been; it flickered where the elm branches
stirred lightly and cast broken shadows upon the ground; it poured its
floods of effulgence over the meadows and distant hills, in still,
moveless peace and power of everlasting calm. It was one of the minutes
of Diana's life that she never forgot afterwards; a point where her
life had stood still--still as the moonlight, and almost as sweet in
its broad restfulness. She lingered at the gate, and came slowly back
again into the house.
"What are you going to take to Bear Hill, mother?" inquired Diana the
next day.
"I don't know! I declare, I'm 'most tired of picnics; they cost more
than they come to. If we could tackle up, now, and go off by ourselves,
early some morning, and get what we want--there'd be some fun in that."
"It's a very lonely place, mother."
"That's what I say. I'm tired o' livin' for ever in a crowd."
"But you said you'd go?"
"Well, I'm goin'!"
"Then we must take something."
"Well; I'm goin' to. I calculated to take something."
"What?"
"Somethin' 'nother nobody else'll take--if I could contrive what that'd
be."
"Well, mother, I can tell you. Somebody'll be sure to carry cake, and
pies, and cold ham and cheese, and bread and butter, and cold chicken.
All that's sure."
"Exactly. I could have told you as much myself, Diana. What I want to
know is, somethin' nobody'll take."
"Green corn to boil, mother?"
"Well!" said Mrs. Starling, musing, "that _is_ an idea. How'd you boil
it?"
"Must take a pot--or borrow one."
"Borrow! Not I, from any o' the Bear Hill folks. I couldn't eat corn
out o' _their_ kettles. It's a sight o' trouble anyhow, Diana."
"Then, mother, suppose I make a chicken pie?"
"Do what you've a mind to, child. And there must be a lot o' coffee
roasted. I declare, if I wasn't clean out o' blackberry wine, I'd cut
the whole concern. There'll be churning just ready Thursday; and Josiah
had ought to be sent off to mill, we're 'most out o' flour, and he
can't go to-morrow, for he's got to see to the fence round the fresh
pasture lot. And I want to clean the kitchen this week. There's no
sittin' still in this world, I do declare! I haven't set a stitch in
those gowns o' mine since last Friday, neither; and Society comes here
next week. And if I don't catch Josiah before he goes out to work in
the morning and get the stove cleaned out--the flues are all choked
up--it'll drive me out o' the house or out o' my mind, with the smoke;
and Bear Hill won't come off then."
Bear Hill did "come off," however. Early on the morning of Thursday,
Josiah might be seen loading up the little green waggon with tin
kettles and baskets, both empty and full. Ears of corn went in too, for
the "idee" had struck Mrs. Starling favourably, and an iron pot found
its way into one corner. Breakfast was despatched in haste; the house
locked up and the key put under the door-stone for Josiah to find at
noon; and the two ladies mounted and drove away while the morning light
was yet fresh and cool, and the shadows of the trees lay long in the
meadow. August mornings and evenings were seldom hotter than was
agreeable in Pleasant Valley.
For some miles the road lay through the region so denominated. Then it
entered the hills, and soon the way led over them, up and down steep
ascents and pitches, with a green woodland on each side, and often a
look-out over some little meadow valley of level fields and cultivation
bordered and encircled by more hills. The drive was a silent one; Mrs.
Starling held the reins, and perhaps they gave her thoughts employment
enough; Diana was musing about another waggonful, and wondering
whereabouts it was. Till at a turn of the road she discerned behind
them, at some distance, a vehicle coming along, and knew, with a jump
of her heart, the colour of the horse and the figure of the driver.
Even so far off she was sure of them, and turned her sun-bonnet to look
straight forward again, hoping that her mother might not by any chance
give a look back. She did not herself again; but Diana's ears were
watching all the while after that for the sound of hoofs or wheels
coming near; and her eyes served her to see nothing but what was out of
her field of vision. The scenery grew by degrees rough and wild;
cultivation and civilisation seemed as they went on to fall into the
rear. A village, or hamlet, of miserable, dirty, uncomely houses and
people, was passed by; and at last, just as the morning was wakening up
into fervour, Mrs. Starling drew rein in a desolate rough spot at the
edge of a woodland. The regular road had been left some time before,
since when only an uncertain wheel track had marked the way. Two or
three farm waggons already stood at the place of meeting; nobody was in
them; the last comer was just hitching his horse to a tree.
"Here's Mis' Starling," he called out. "Good day! good-day to 'ye. Hold
on, Mis' Starling--I'll fetch him up. Goin' to conquer all Bear Hill,
ain't ye, with all them pails and kettles? Wall--blackberries ain't
ripe but once in the year. I've left all _my_ business to attend upon
the women folks. What's blackberries good for, now, when you've got
'em?"
"Don't you like a blackberry pie, Mr. Selden?"
"Bless you!" said the farmer, "I kin live without it; but my folks
can't live 'thout comin' once a year to Bear Hill. It is a wonder to me
why things warn't so ordered as that folks could get along 'thout
eatin'. It'd save a sight o' trouble. Why, Mis' Starlin', we're workin'
all the time to fill our stomachs; come to think of it, that's pretty
much what life is fur. Now I'll warrant you, they'll have a spread by
and by, that'll be worth all they'll get here to-day."
"Who's come, Mr. Selden?"
"Wall, they ain't all here yet, I guess; my folks is up in the lot,
hard to work, I s'pose. Mis' Seelye's gals is here; and Bill Howe and
his wife; and the Delamaters; that's all, I guess. He's safe now, Mis'
Starlin'."
This last remark had reference to the horse, which farmer Selden had
been taking out of the shafts and tethering, after helping the ladies
down. Mrs. Starling got out her pails and baskets destined for the
berry-picking, and gave some of them to her daughter.
"They'll be all flocking together, up in the thickest part of the lot,"
she whispered. "Now, Diana, if you'll sheer off a little, kind o', and
keep out o' sight, you'll have a ventur'; and we can stand a chance to
get home early after dinner. I'll go along ahead and keep 'em from
comin' where you are--if I can."
Diana heard with tingling ears, for she heard at the same time the
sound of the approaching waggon behind her. She did not look; she
caught up her pail and basket and plunged into the wood path after her
mother and Mr. Selden; but she had not gone three yards when she heard
her name called.
"You are not going to desert us?" cried young Knowlton, coming up with
her. "We don't know a step of the way, nor where to find blackberries
or anything. I have been piloting myself all the way by your waggon.
Come back and let me make you friends with my sister."
Blushing and hesitating, Diana had yet no choice. She followed Mr.
Knowlton back to the clearing, and looked on, feeling partly pleased
and partly uncomfortable, while he helped from their waggon the ladies
he had driven to the picnic. The first one dismounted was a beautiful
vision to Diana's eyes. A trim little figure, robed in a dress almost
white, with small crimson clusters sprinkled over it, coral buckle and
earrings, a wide Leghorn hat with red ribbons, and curly, luxuriant,
long, floating waves of hair. She was so pretty, and her attire was so
graceful, and had so jaunty a style about it, that Diana was struck
somehow with a fresh though very undefined feeling of uneasiness. She
turned to the other lady. Very pretty she was too; smaller even than
the first one, with delicate, piquant features and a ready smile.
Daintily she also was dressed in some stuff of deep green colour, which
set her off as its encompassing foliage does a bunch of cherries. Her
face looked out almost like one, it was so blooming, from the shadow of
a green silk sun-bonnet; and her hands were cased in green kid gloves.
Her eyes sought Diana.
"My sister, Mrs. Reverdy," said young Knowlton eagerly, leading her
forward. "Miss Starling, Genevieve; you know who Miss Starling is."
The little lady's answer was most gracious; she smiled winningly and
grasped Diana's hand, and was delighted to know her. "And we are so
glad to meet you; for we are strangers here, you know. I never was at
Bear Hill in my life, but they told us of wonderful blackberries here,
and such multitudes of them; and we persuaded Evan to drive us--you
know we don't often have him to do anything for us; so we came, but I
don't know what we should have done if we had not met you. Gertrude and
I thought we would come and see what a picnic on Bear Hill meant." And
she laughed again; smiles came very easily to her pretty little face.
And then she introduced Miss Masters. Knowlton stood by, looking on at
them all.
"These elegant women!" thought Diana; "what must I seem to him?" And
truly her print gown was of homely quality and country wear; she did
not take into the account a fine figure, which health and exercise had
made free and supple in all its movements, and which the quiet poise of
her character made graceful, whether in motion or rest. For grace is no
gift of a dancing-master or result of the schools. It is the growth of
the mind, more than of the body; the natural and almost necessary
symbolization in outward lines of what is noble, simple, and free from
self; and not almost but quite necessary, if the further conditions of
a well-made and well-jointed figure and a free and unconstrained habit
of life are not wanting. The conditions all met in Diana; the harmony
of development was, as it always is, lovely to see.
But a shadow fell on her heart as she turned to lead the way through
the wood to the blackberry field. For in the artistic elegance of the
ladies beside her, she thought she recognised somewhat that belonged to
Mr. Knowlton's sphere and not to her own--something that removed her
from him and drew them near; she thought he could not fail to find it
so. What then? She did not ask herself what then. Indeed, she had no
leisure for difficult analysis of her thoughts.
"Dear me, how rough!" Mrs. Reverdy exclaimed. "Really, Evan, I did not
know what you were bringing us to. Is it much farther we have to go?"
"It is all rough," said Diana. "You ought to have thick shoes."
"O, I have! I put on horridly thick ones,--look! Isn't that thick
enough? But I never felt anything like these stones. Is the blackberry
field full of them too? Really, Evan, I think I cannot get along if you
don't give me your arm."
"You have two arms, Mr. Knowlton--can't I have the other one?" cried
Miss Masters dolefully.
"I have got trees on my other arm, Gatty--I don't see where I should
put you. Can't you help Miss Starling along, till we get out of the
woods?"
"Isn't it very impertinent of him to call me Gatty?" said the little
beauty, tossing her long locks and speaking in a half aside to Diana.
"Now he would like that I should return the compliment and call him
Evan; but I won't. What do _you_ do, when men call you by your
Christian name?"
She was trying to read Diana as she spoke, eyeing her with sidelong
glances, and as they went, laying her daintily gloved hand on Diana's
arm to help herself along. Diana was astounded both at her confidence
and at her request for counsel; but as to meet the request would be to
return the confidence, she was silent. She was thinking, too, of the
elegant little boot Mrs. Reverdy had displayed, and contrasting it with
her own coarse shoes. And how very familiar these two were, that he
should speak to her by her first name so!
"Miss Starling!" cried the other lady behind her,--"do you know we have
been following your lead all the way we were coming this morning?"
"Mr. Knowlton said so," Diana replied, half turning.
"Aren't you very much flattered?"
This time Diana turned quite, and faced the two.
"My mother was driving, Mrs. Reverdy."
"Ah?" said the other with a very amused laugh. "But you could have done
it just as well, I suppose."
What does she mean? thought Diana.
"Can you do anything?" inquired the gay lady on her arm. "I am a
useless creature; I can only fire a pistol, and leap a fence on
horseback, and dance a polka. What can you do? I dare say you are worth
a great deal more than me. Can you make butter and bread and pudding
and pies and sweetmeats and pickles, and all that sort of thing? I dare
say you can."
"I can do that."
"And all I am good for is to eat them! I can do that. Do you make
cheeses too?"
"I can. My mother generally makes the cheese."
"O, but I mean you. What do people do on a farm? women, I mean. I know
what the men do. You know all about it. Do you have to milk the cows
and feed everything?--chickens and pigs, you know, and all that?"
"The men milk," said Diana.
"And you have to do those other things? Isn't it horrid?"
"It is not horrid to feed the chickens. I never had anything to do with
the pigs."
"O, but Evan says you know how to harness horses."
Does he? thought Diana.
"And you can cut wood?"
"Cut wood!" Diana repeated. "Did anybody say I could do that?"
"I don't know--Yes, I think so. I forget. But you can, can't you?"
"I never tried, Miss Masters."
"Do you know my cousin, Mr. Masters?--the minister, you know?"
"Yes, I know him a little."
"Do you like him?"
"I like him,--yes, I don't know anything against him," said Diana in
great bewilderment.
"O, but I do. Don't you know he says it is wicked to do a great many
things that we do? he thinks everybody is wicked who don't do just as
he does. Now I don't think everybody is bound to be a minister. He
thinks it is wicked to dance; and I don't care to live if I can't
dance."
"That is being very fond of it," said Diana.
"Do you dance her, in the country?"
"Sometimes; not very often."
"Isn't it very dull here in the winter, when you can't go after
blackberries?"
Diana smiled. "I never found it dull," she said. Nevertheless, the
contrast smote her more and more, between what Mr. Knowlton was
accustomed to in his world, and the very plain, humdrum, uneventful,
unadorned life she led in hers. And this elegant creature, whose very
dress was a sort of revelation to Diana in its perfection of beauty,
she seemed to the poor country girl to put at an immense distance from
Mr. Knowlton those who could not be charming and refined and exquisite
in the like manner. Her gloves,--one hand rested on Diana's arm, and
pulled a little too;--what gloves they were, for colour and fit and
make! Her foot was a study. Her hat might have been a fairy queen's
hat. And the face under it, pretty and gay and wilful and sweet, how
could any man help being fascinated by it? Diana made up her mind that
it was impossible.
The rambling path through the woods brought the party out at last upon
a wild barren hill-side, where stones and a rank growth of blackberry
bushes were all that was to be seen. Only far off might be had the
glimpse of other hills and of patches of cultivation on them; the near
landscape was all barrenness and blackberries.
"But where are the rest of the people?" said Mrs. Reverdy with her
faint laugh. "Are we alone? I don't see anybody."
"They are gone on--they are picking," Diana explained.
"Hid in this scrubby forest of bushes," said her brother.
"Have we got to go into that forest too?"
"If you want to pick berries."
"I think we'll sit here and let the rest do the picking," said Mrs.
Reverdy, looking with charming merriment at Gertrude. But Gertrude was
not so minded.
"No, I'm going after berries," she said. "Only, I don't see where they
are. I see bushes, and that is all."
"Just here they have been picked," said Diana. "Farther on there are
plenty."
"Well, you lead and we'll follow," said Mr. Knowlton. "You lead, Miss
Starling, and we will keep close to you."
Diana plunged into the blackberry bushes, and striking off from the
route she guessed the other pickers had taken, sought a part of the
wilderness lower down on the hill. There was no lack of blackberries
very soon. Every bush hung black with them; great, fat, juicy beauties,
just ready to fall with ripeness. Blackberry stains spotted the whole
party after they had gone a few yards, merely by the unavoidable
crushing up against the bushes. Diana went to work upon this rich
harvest, and occupied herself entirely with it; but berry-picking never
was so dreary to her. The very sound of the berries falling into her
tin pail smote her with a sense of pain; she thought of the day's work
before her with revulsion. However, it was before her, and her fingers
flew among the bushes, from berry to berry, gathering them with a deft
skilfulness her companions could not emulate. Diana knew how they were
getting on, without using her eyes to find out; for all their
experience was proclaimed aloud. How the ground was rough and the
bushes thorny, how the berries blacked their lips and the prickles
lacerated their fingers, and the stains of blackberry juice were
spoiling gloves and dresses and all they had on.
"I never imagined," said Mrs. Reverdy with a gay laugh, "that picking
blackberries was such a serious business. O dear! and it's only just
eleven o'clock now. And I am so hungry!"
"Eat blackberries," said Gertrude, who was doing it diligently.
"But I want to carry some home."
"You can buy 'em. We came for fun," was the cool answer.
"Fun?" said Mrs. Reverdy with another echoing, softly echoing, laugh;
"it's the fun of being torn and stained and scratched, and having one's
hat pulled off one's hair, and the hair off one's head."
Diana heard it all, they were not far from her; and she heard, too, Mr.
Knowlton's little remarks, half gallant, half mocking, but very
familiar, she thought. No doubt, to his sister; but how to Miss Masters
too? Yet they were; and also, she noticed, he kept in close attendance
upon the latter young lady; picking into her basket, getting her out of
her numerous entanglements with the blackberry branches, flattering and
laughing at her; Gertrude was having what she would call a good time;
why not? "And why should I?" thought Diana to herself as she filled her
pail. "It is not in my line. What a goose I was, to fancy that this
young man could take pleasure in being with me. He _did;_ but then he
was just amusing himself; it was not I; it was the country and the
fishing, and so on. What a goose I have been!"
As fast as the blackberries dropped into the pail, so fell these
reflections into Diana's heart; and when the one was full, so was the
other. And as she set down her pail and began upon a fresh empty one,
so she did with her thoughts; they began all over again too.
"Miss Starling, it is twelve o'clock," cried Mrs. Reverdy; "where are
all the rest of the people? Do you work all day without dinner? I
expected to see a great picnic out under the trees here."
"This is not the picnic place," said Diana. "We will go to it."
She went back first to the waggons; put her berries in safe keeping,
and got out some of the lunch supplies. Mr. Knowlton loaded himself
with a basket out of his waggon; and the procession formed again in
Indian file, everybody carrying something, and the two ladies grumbling
and laughing in concert. Diana headed the line, feeling very much
alone, and wishing sadly it were all over and she at home. How was she
to play her part in the preparations at hand, where she had always been
so welcome and so efficient? All spring and life seemed to be taken out
of her, for everything but the dull mechanical picking of berries.
However, strength comes with necessity, she found.