THE ASHES OF THE FIRE.
Diana sat down with her face in her hands, and was still. She felt like
a person stunned. It was very still all around her. The fire gently
breathed and snapped; the living presence that had been there was gone.
A great feeling of loneliness smote her. But there was leisure for few
tears just then; and too high-wrought a state of the nerves to seek
much indulgence in them. A little while, and Josiah would be there with
his pails of milk; there was something to be done first.
And quick, as another look from the window assured her. Things were
becoming visible out of doors. Diana roused herself, though every
movement had to be with pain, and went about her work. It was hard to
move the chair in which Evan had been sitting; it was hard to move the
table around which they had been so happy; even that little trace of
last night could not be kept. Evan's cup, Evan's plate, the bit of
bread he had left on it, Diana's fingers were dilatory and unwilling in
dealing with them. But then she roused herself and dallied no longer.
Table and cups and eatables were safely removed; the kitchen brushed
up, and the table set for breakfast: the fire made in the outer stove,
and the kettle put on; though the touch of the kettle hurt her fingers,
remembering when she had touched it last. Every tell-tale circumstance
was put out of the way, and the night of watching locked up among the
most precious stores of Diana's memory. She opened the lean-to door
then.
The morning was rising fair. Clouds and wind had wearied themselves
out, as it might be; and nature was in a great hush. Racks of vapour
were scattered overhead, slowly moving away in some current of air that
carried them; but below there was not a breath stirring. A little drip,
drip from the leaves only told how heavily they had been surcharged;
the long pendent branches of the elm hung moveless, as if they were
resting after last night's thrashing about. And as Diana looked, the
touches of gold began to come upon the hills and then on the tree-tops.
It was lovely and fair as ever; but to Diana it was a changed world.
She was not the same, and nothing would ever be just the same as
yesterday it had been. She felt that, as she looked. She had lost and
she had gained. Just now the loss came keenest. The world seemed
singularly empty. The noise of entering feet behind her brought her
back to common life. It was Josiah and the milk pails.
"Hain't set up all night, hev' ye?" was Josiah's startling remark. "I
vow! you get the start of the old lady herself. I b'ain't ready for
breakfast yet, if you be."
"It will be ready soon, Josiah."
"Mornin's is gettin' short," Josiah went on. "One o' them pesky barn
doors got loose in the night, and it's beat itself 'most off the
hinges, I guess. I must see and get it fixed afore Mis' Starlin's
round, or she'll be hoppin'. The wind was enough to take the ruff off,
but how it could lift that 'ere heavy latch, I don't see."
Diana went to the dairy without any discussion of the subject. Coming
back to the kitchen, she was equally startled and dismayed to see her
mother entering by the inner door. If there was one thing Diana longed
for this morning, it was, to be alone. Josiah and the farm boys were
hardly a hindrance. She had thought her mother could not be.
"Are you fit to be down-stairs, mother?" she exclaimed.
"Might as well be down as up," said Mrs. Starling. "Can't get well
lying in bed. I'm tired to death with it all these days; and last night
I couldn't sleep half the night; seemed to me I heard all sorts of
noises. If I'd had a light I'd ha' got up then. I thought the house was
coming down about my ears; and if it was, I'd rather be up to see."
"The wind blew so."
"You heard it too, did you? When did you come down, Diana? I hain't
heard the first sound of your door. 'Twarn't light, was it?"
"I have been up a good while. But you are not fit to do the least
thing, mother. I was going to bring you your breakfast."
"If there's a thing I hate, it's to have my meals in bed. I don't want
anything, to begin with; and I can take it better here. What have you
got, Diana? You may make me a cup of tea. I don't feel as though I
could touch coffee. What's the use o' _your_ gettin' up so early?"
"I've all to do, you know, mother."
"No use in burning wood and lights half the night, though. The day's
long enough. When did you bake?"
Diana answered this and several other similar household questions, and
got her mother a cup of tea. But though it was accompanied with a nice
bit of toast, Mrs. Starling looked with a dissatisfied air at the more
substantial breakfast her daughter was setting on the table.
"I never could eat slops. Diana, you may give me some o' that pork. And
a potato."
"Mother, I do not believe it is good for you."
"Good for me? And I have eat it all my life."
"But when you were well."
"I'm well enough. Put some of the gravy on, Diana. I'll never get my
strength back on toasted chips."
The men came in, and Mrs. Starling held an animated dialogue with her
factotum about farm affairs; while Diana sat behind her big
coffee-pot--not the one she had used last night, and wondered if that
was all a dream; more sadly, if she should ever dream again. And why
her mother could not have staid in her room one day more. One day
more!--
"He hain't begun to get his ploughing ahead," said Mrs. Starling, as
the door closed on the delinquent.
"What, mother?" Diana asked, starting.
"Ploughing. You haven't kept things a-going, as I see," returned her
mother. "Josiah's all behind, as usual. If I could be a man half the
time, I could get on. He ought to have had the whole west field
ploughed, while I've been sick."
"I don't know so much about it as you do, mother."
"I know you don't. You have too much readin' to do. There's a pane of
glass broken in that window, Diana."
"Yes, mother. I know it."
"How did it come?"
"I don't know."
"You'll never get along, Diana, till you know everything that happens
in your house. You aren't fit anyhow to be a poor woman. If you're
rich, why you can get a new pane of glass, and there's the end of it.
I'm not so rich as all that comes to."
"Getting a pane of glass, mother?"
"Without knowing what for."
"But how does it help the matter to know what for? The glass must be
got anyway."
"If you know what for, it won't be to do another time. You'll find a
way to stop it. I'll warrant, now, Diana, you haven't had the ashes
cleared out of that stove for a week."
"Why, mother?"
"It smokes. It always does smoke when it gets full of ashes; and it
never smokes when it ain't."
"There is no smoke _here_, surely."
"I smell it. I can smell anything there is about. I don't know whatever
there was in the house last night that smelled like coffee; but I
a'most thought there was somebody makin' it down-stairs. I smelled it
as plain as could be. If I could ha' got into my shoes, I believe I
would ha' come down to see, just to get rid of the notion, it worried
me so. It beats me now, what it could ha' been."
Diana turned away with the cups she had been wiping, that she might not
show her face.
"Don't you never have your ashes took up, Diana?" cried Mrs. Starling,
who, when much exercised on household matters, sometimes forgot her
grammar.
"Yes, mother."
"When did you have 'em took up in this chimney?"
"I do not remember--yesterday, I guess," said Diana vaguely.
"You never burnt all the ashes there is there since yesterday morning.
You'd have had to sit up all night to do it; and burn a good lot o'
wood on your fire, too."
"Mother," exclaimed Diana in desperation, "I don't suppose everything
is just as it would be if you'd been round all these days."
"I guess it ain't," said Mrs. Starling. "There's where you are wanting,
Diana. Your hands are good enough, but I wouldn't give much for your
eyes. There's where you'd grow poor, if you weren't poor a'ready. Now
you didn't know when that pane o' glass was broke. You'd go round and
round, and a pane o' glass'd knock out here, and a quart of oil 'ud
leak out there, and you'd lose a pound of flour between the sieve and
the barrel, and you'd never know how or where."
"Mother," said Diana, "you know I _never_ spill flour or anything else;
no more than you do."
"No, but it would go, I mean, and you never the wiser. It ain't the way
to get along, unless you mean to marry a rich man. Now look at that
heap o' ashes! I declare, it beats me to know what you _have_ been
doing to burn so much wood here; and mild weather, too. Who has been
here to see you, since I've been laid up?"
"Several people came to ask about you."
"Who did? and who didn't? that came at all."
"Joe Bartlett--and Mr. Masters--and Mrs. Delamater,--I can't tell you
all, mother; there's been a good many."
"Tell me the men that have been here.
"Well, those I said; and Will Flandin, and Nick, and Mr. Knowlton."
"Was _he_ here more than once?"
"Yes."
"How much more?"
"Mother, how do I know? I didn't keep count."
"Didn't keep count, eh?" Mrs. Starling repeated. "Must have been
frequent company, I judge. Diana, you mind what I told you?"
Diana made no answer.
"You shall have nothing to do with him," Mrs. Starling went on. "You
never shall. You sha'n't take up with any one that holds himself above
me. I'll be glad when his time's up; and I hope it'll be long before
he'll have another. Once he gets away, he'll think no more of _you_,
that's one comfort."
Diana knew that was not true; but it hurt her to have it said. She
could stand no more of her mother's talk; she left her and went off to
the dairy, till Mrs. Starling crept up-stairs again. Then Diana came
and opened the lean-to door and looked out for a breath of refreshment.
The morning was going on its way in beauty. Little clouds drifted over
the deep blue sky; the mellow September light lay on fields and hills;
the long branches of the elm swayed gently to and fro in the gentle air
that drove the clouds. But oh for the wind and the storm of last night,
and the figure that stood beside her before the chimney fire! The
gladsome light seemed to mock her, and the soft breeze gave her touches
of pain. She shut the door and went back to her work.