A STORM IN SEPTEMBER.
Diana was not put to the trial next day of venturing her precious
things to harsh handling. A very uncommon thing happened. Mrs. Starling
was not well, and kept her bed.
She had caught cold, she confessed, by some imprudence the day before;
and symptoms of pleurisy made it impossible that she should fight
sickness as she liked to fight it, on foot. The doctor was not to be
thought of; Mrs. Starling gave her best and only confidence to her own
skill; but even that bade her lie by and "give up."
Diana had the whole house on her hands, as well as the nursing. Truth
to tell, this last was not much. Mrs. Starling would have very little
of her daughter's presence; still less of her ministrations. To be "let
alone" was her principal demand, and that Diana should "keep things
straight below." Diana did that. The house went on as well as ever; and
even the farm affairs received the needful supervision. Josiah Davis
was duly ordered, fed, and dismissed; and when evening came, Diana was
dressed in order, bright, and ready for company. Company it pleased her
to receive in the lean-to kitchen; the sound of voices and laughter
beneath her would have roused Mrs. Starling to a degree of excitement
from which it would have been impossible to keep back anything; and
probably to a degree of consequent indignation which would have been
capable of very informal measures of ejectment regarding the intruder.
No; Diana could not risk that. She must wait till her mother's nerves
and temper were at least in their ordinary state of wholesome calm,
before she would shock them by the disclosures she had to make. And
almost by their preciousness to herself, Diana gauged their
unwelcomeness to her mother. It was always so. The two natures were so
unlike, that not even the long habit of years could draw them into
sympathy. They thought alike about nothing except the housewifely
matters of practical life. So these evenings when Mrs. Starling was
ill, Diana had her lamp and her fire in the lean-to kitchen; and there
were held the long talks with Mr. Knowlton which made all the days of
September so golden,--days when Diana's hands were too busy to let her
see him, and he was told he must not come except at night; but through
all the business streamed the radiant glow of the last night's talk,
like the September sunlight through the misty air.
So the days went by; and Mrs. Starling was kept a prisoner; pain and
weakness warning her she must not dare try anything else. And in their
engrossment the two young people hardly noticed how the time flew.
People in Pleasant Valley were not in the habit of paying visits to one
another in the evenings, unless specially invited; so nobody discovered
that Evan came nightly to Mrs. Starling's house; and if his own people
wondered at his absence from home, they could do no more. Suspicion had
no ground to go upon in any particular direction.
The month had been glorious with golden leaves and golden sunshine,
until the middle was more than past. Then came a September storm; an
equinoctial, the people said; as furious as the preceding days had been
gentle. Whirlwinds of tempest, and floods of rain; legions of clouds,
rank after rank, bringing the winds in their folds; or did the winds
bring them? All one day and night and all the next day, the storm
continued; and night darkened early upon Pleasant Valley with no
prospect of a change. Diana had watched for it a little eagerly; Evan's
visit was lost the night before, of course; it was much to lose, when
September days were growing few; and now another night he could not
come. Diana stood at the lean-to door after supper, looking and making
her conclusions sorrowfully. It was darkening fast; very dark it would
be, for there was no moon. The rain came down in streams, thick and
grey. The branches of the elm trees swung and swayed pitilessly in the
wind, beating against each other; while the wind whistled and shouted
its intention of keeping on so all night. "He can't come," sighed Diana
for the fifth or sixth time to herself; and she shut the door. It could
be borne, however, to lose two evenings, when they had enjoyed so many
together, and had so many more to look forward to; and with that
mixture in her heart of content and longing, which everybody knows,
Diana trimmed her lamp and sat down to sew. How the wind roared! She
must trim her fire too, or the room would be full of smoke. She made
the fire up; and then the snare of its leaping flames and glowing coal
bed drew her from her work; she sat looking and thinking, in a fulness
of happiness to which all the roar of the storm only served for a foil.
She heard the drip, drip of the rain; the fast-running stream from the
overcharged eaves trough; then the thunder of the wind sweeping over
the house in a great gust; and the whistle of the elm branches as they
swung through the air like tremendous lithe switches, beating and
writhing and straining in the fury of the blast. Looking into the
clear, glowing flames, Diana heard it all, with a certain sense of
enjoyment; when in the midst of it she heard another sound, a little
thing, but distinguishable from all the rest; the sound of a foot upon
the little stone before the door. Only one foot it could be in the
world; Diana started up, and was standing with lips apart, facing the
door, when it opened, and a man came in enveloped in a huge cloak,
dripping at every point.
"Evan!" Diana's exclamation was, with an utterance between joy and
dread.
"Yes," said he as he came forward into the room,--"I've got orders."
Without another word she helped relieve him of his cloak and went with
it to the outer kitchen, where she hung it carefully to dry. As she
came back, Evan was standing in front of the fire, looking gravely into
it. The light danced and gleamed upon the gold buttons on his breast,
and touched the gold bands on his shoulders; it was a very stately and
graceful figure to Diana's eyes. He turned a little, took her into his
arms, and then they both stood silent and still.
"I've got my orders," Knowlton repeated in a low tone.
"To go soon, Evan?"
"Immediately."
"I knew it, when I heard your foot at the door."
They were both still again, while the storm swept over the house in a
fresh burst, the wind rushing by as if it was glad he was going and
meant he should. Perhaps the two did not hear it; but I think Diana
did. The rain poured down in a kind of fury.
"How could you get here, Evan?" she asked, looking up at him.
"I must, I had only to-night."
"You are not _wet?_"
"No, darling! Rain is nothing to me. How are you? and how is your
mother?"
"She is better. She is getting well."
"And you? You are most like a magnolia tree, full of its white
magnificent blossoms; sweet in a kind of wealth of sweetness and
bountiful beauty. One blossom would do for a comparison for ordinary
women; but you are like the whole tree."
"Suppose I were to find comparisons for you?"
"Ay, suppose you did. What would you liken me to?" said he with a
sparkle of the eyes, which quite indisposed Diana from giving any more
fuel to the fire that supplied it.
"What, Di? You might as well give me all the comfort you can to take
away with me. I shall need it. And it will be long before I can come
back for more. What am I like?"
"Would you feel any better for thinking yourself like a pine tree? or a
green hemlock? one of those up in our ravine of the brook?"
"Ah, our ravine of the brook! Those days are all gone. I wish I were a
green hemlock anywhere, with you a magnolia beside me; or better, a
climbing rose hanging upon me! If I could take you, Di!"
The pang of the wish was very keen in her; the leap of the will towards
impossibilities; but she said nothing and stood quite motionless.
"I cannot come back for you at Christmas, Di."
"Where are you going, Evan."
"Where I would not take you, anyhow. I am under orders to report myself
at a post away off on the Indian frontier, a long journey from here;
and a rough, wild place never fit for such as you. Of course we young
officers are the ones to be sent to such places; unless we happen to
have influence at headquarters, which I haven't. But I shall not stay
there for ever."
"Must you go just where they send you?"
"Yes," he said with a laugh. "A soldier cannot choose."
"Must you stay as long as they keep you there?"
"Yes, of course. But there is no use in looking at it gloomily, Di. The
months will pass, give them time; and years are made of months. The
good time will come at last. I'm not the first who has had to bear this
sort of thing."
"Will you have to stay _years_ there?"
"Can't tell. I may. It depends on what is doing, and how much I am
wanted. Probably I may have to stay two years at least; perhaps three."
"But you can get a furlough and come for a little while, Evan?" said
Diana; her voice sounded frightened.
"That's the worst of it!" said Knowlton. "I don't know whether I can or
not."
"Why, Evan? don't they always?"
"Generally it can be done if the distance is not too great, and you are
not too useful. You see, there are seldom too _many_ officers on hand,
at those out-of-the-way posts."
"Is there so much to do?" said Diana, half mechanically. Her thoughts
were going farther; for grant the facts, what did the reasons matter?
"There's a good deal to do sometimes," Evan answered in the same way,
thinking of more than he chose to speak. They stood silent again
awhile. Diana was clasped in Knowlton's arms; her cheek rested on his
shoulder; they both looked to the fire for consolation. Snapping,
sparkling, glowing, as it has done in the face of so many of our
sorrows, small and great, is there no consolation or suggestion to be
got out of it? Perhaps from it came the suggestion at last that they
should sit down. Evan brought a chair for Diana and placed one for
himself close beside it, and they sat down, holding fast each other's
hands.
Was it also the counsel of the fire that they should sit there all
night? For it was what they did. The fire burned gloriously; the lamp
went out; the red lights leaped and flickered all over floor and
ceiling; and in front of the blaze sat the two, and talked; enough to
last two years, you and I might say; but alas! to them it was but a
whetting of the appetite that was to undergo such famine.
"If I could only take you with me, my darling!" Evan said for the
twentieth time. And Diana was silent at first; then she said,
"It would be pleasant to go through hardships together."
"No, it wouldn't!" said Evan. "Not hardships for you, my beauty! They
are all very well for me; in a soldier's line; but not for you!"
"A soldier's wife ought not to be altogether unworthy of him," Diana
answered.
"Nor he of her. So I wouldn't take you if I could where I am going. A
soldier's wife will have hardships enough, first and last, no fear; but
some places are not fit for women anyhow. I wish I could have seen Mrs.
Starling, though, and had it out with her."
"Had it out!" repeated Diana.
"Yes. I should have a little bit of a fight, shouldn't I? She _don't_
like me much. I wonder why?"
"Evan," said Diana after a minute's thought, "if you are to be so long
away, there is no need to speak to anybody about our affair just now.
It is our affair; let it stay so. It is our secret. I should like it
much better to keep it a secret. I don't want to hear people's talk.
Will you?"
"But our letters, my dear; they will tell your mother."
"Mother will not see mine. And she is not likely to see yours; I shall
go to the post office myself. If she did, and found it out, I could
keep _her_ quiet easily enough. She would not want to speak, any more
than I."
Evan combated this resolution for some time. He wished to have Diana
friends with his sisters and at home at Elmfield. But Diana had her own
views, and desired so strongly to keep her secret to herself, during
the first part at least of what threatened to be a long engagement,
that at last he yielded. It did not matter much to him, he said, away
off in the wilds.
So that subject was dismissed; and before the fantasia of the flames
they sat and composed a fantasia of life for themselves; as bright, as
various, as bewitching, as evanishing; the visions of which were
mingled with the leaping and changing purple and flame tints, the
sparkle and the flash of the fire. Diana could never stand before a
fire of hickory logs and fail to see her life-story reappear as she had
seen it that night.
The hours went by.
"It's too bad to keep you up so, my darling!" Evan remarked. "I am
selfish."
"No indeed! But you must want something, Evan! I had forgotten all
about it."
He said he wanted nothing, but her; however, Diana's energies were
roused. She ran into the back kitchen, and came from thence with the
tea-kettle in her hands, filled. She was not allowed to set it down, to
be sure, but under her directions it was bestowed in front of the
glowing coals. Then, with noiseless, rapid movements, she brought a
little table to the hearth and fetched cups and plates. And then she
spread the board. There was a cold ham on the big table; and round
white slices of bread, such as cities never see; and cake, light and
fruity; and yellow butter; and a cream pie, another dainty that
confectioners are innocent of; and presently the fragrance of coffee
filled the old lean-to to the very roof. Evan laughed at her, but
confessed himself hungry, and Diana had it all her own way. For once,
this rare once, she would have the pleasure, she and Evan alone; many a
day would come and go before she might have it again. So she thought as
she poured coffee upon the cream in his cup. And whether the pleasure
or the pain were the keenest even then, I cannot tell; but it was one
of those minutes when one chooses the pleasure, and will have it and
will taste it, whatever lies at the bottom of the draught. The small
hours of night, the fire-lit kitchen, the daintily-spread table, she
and Evan at opposite sides of it; the pleasure of ministering, such as
every woman knows; the beauty of her bread, the magnificence of her
coffee, the perfection of her cookery, the exultation of seeing him
enjoy it; while her heart was storing up its treasure of sorrow for the
unfolding by and by, and knew it, and covered it up, and went on
enjoying the minute. The criticism is sometimes made upon a writer here
and there, that he talks too much about _eating;_ and in a
high-finished and artificial state of society it is indeed true that
eating is eating, and nothing more. Servants prepare the viands, and
servants bring them; and the result is more or less agreeable and
satisfactory, but can hardly be said to have much of poetry or
sentiment about it. The case is not so with humbler livers on the
earth's surface. Sympathy and affection and tender ministry are wrought
into the very pie-crust, and glow in the brown loaves as they come out
of the oven; and are specially seen in the shortcake for tea, and the
favourite dish at dinner, and the unexpected dumpling. Among the
working classes, too,--it is true only of them?--the meals are the
breathing spaces of humanity, the resting spots, where the members of
the household come together to see each other's faces for a moment at
leisure, and to confer over matters of common interest that have no
chance in the rush and the whirl of the hours of toil. At any rate, I
know there was much more than the mere taste of the coffee in the cups
that Diana filled and Knowlton emptied; much more than the supply of
bodily want in the bread they eat.
The repast was prolonged and varied with very much talk; but it was
done at last. The kettle was set on one side, the table pushed back,
and Evan looked at his watch. Still talk went on quietly for a good
while longer.
"At what hour does your chief of staff open his barn doors?" said Evan,
looking at his watch again.
"Early," said Diana, not showing the heart-thrust the question had
given her. "Not till it is light, though."
"It will be desirable that I should get off before light, then. It is
not best to astonish him on this occasion."
"It is not near light yet, Evan?"
He laughed, and looked at her. "Do you know, I don't know when that
moment comes? I have not seen it once since I have been at Elmfield. It
shows how little truth there is in the theories of education."
Diana did not ask what he meant. She went to the door and looked out.
It was profoundly dark yet. It was also still. The rain was not
falling; the wind had ceased; hush and darkness were abroad. She came
back to the fire and asked what o'clock it was. Evan looked. They had
an hour yet; but it was an hour they could make little use of. The
night was gone. They stood side by side on the hearth, Evan's arm round
her; now and then repeating something which had been already spoken of;
really endeavouring to make the most of the mere fact of being
together. But the minutes went too fast. Again and again Diana went to
the window; the second time saw, with that nameless pang at her heart,
that the eastern horizon was taking the grey, grave light of coming
dawn. Mr. Knowlton went out then presently, saddled his horse, and
brought him out to the fence, all ready. For a few minutes they waited
yet, and watched the grey light creeping up; then, before anything was
clearly discernible through the dusky gloom, the last farewell was
taken; Evan mounted and walked his horse softly away from the door.