IS IT WELL WITH THEE?
Diana would have written to Mr. Knowlton to get her mystery solved; she
was far too simple and true to stand upon needless punctilio; but she
did not know how to address to him a letter. Evan himself had not known
when he parted from her; the information came in that epistle that
never reached her hands, that first letter. Names and directions had
all perished in the flames, and for want of them Diana could do
nothing. Meanwhile, what would Evan think? He would expect an answer,
and a quick answer, to his letter; he was looking for it now, no doubt;
wondering why it did not come, and disappointed, and fearing something
wrong. That trouble, of fearing something wrong, Diana was spared; for
she knew the family at Elmfield had heard, and all was well; but
sometimes her other troublesome thoughts made her powerless hands come
together with a clasp of wild pain. How long must she wait now? how
long would Evan wait, before in desperation he wrote again? And where
was her letter? for it had been written and sent; that she knew;--was
it lost? was it stolen? Had somebody's curiosity prevailed so far, and
was her precious secret town property by this time? Every day became
harder to bear; every week made the suspense more intolerable. Mrs.
Starling was far out in one of her suppositions. Will Flandin came a
good deal about the house, it is true; but Diana hardly knew he was
there. If she thought about it at all, she was half glad, because his
presence might serve to mask her silence and abstraction. She was
conscious of both, and the effort to cover the one and hide the other
was very painful sometimes.
October glories were passed away, and November days grew shorter and
shorter, colder and more dreary. It seemed now and then to Diana that
summer had gone to a distance from which it would never revisit her.
And after those days of constant communication with Evan, the blank
cessation of it, the ignorance of all that had befallen or was
befalling him, the want of a word of remembrance or affection, grew
almost to a blank of despair.
It was late in the month.
"What waggon's that stopping?" exclaimed Mrs. Starling one afternoon.
Mother and daughter were in the lean-to. Diana looked out, and saw with
a pang of various feelings what waggon it was.
"Ain't that the Elmfield folks?"
"I think so."
"I know so. I thought Mrs. Reverdy and the rest had run away from the
cold."
"Didn't you know Miss Masters had been sick?"
"How should I know it?"
"I heard so. I didn't know but you had heard it."
"I can't hear things without somebody tells me. Go along up-stairs,
Diana, and put on something."
Diana obeyed, but she was very quick about it; she was nervously afraid
lest while she was absent some word should be said that she would not
have lost for the whole world. What had they come for, these people?
Was the secret out, perhaps, and had they come to bring her a letter?
Or to say why Evan had not written? Could he have been sick? A feverish
whirlwind of thoughts rushed through Diana's head while she was
fastening her dress; and she went down and came into the parlour with
two beautiful spots of rose colour upon her cheeks. They were
fever-spots. Diana had been pale of late; but she looked gloriously
handsome as she entered the room. Bad for her. A common-looking woman
might have heard news from Evan; the instant resolve in the hearts of
the two ladies who had come to visit her was, that this girl should
hear none.
They were, however, exceedingly gracious and agreeable. Mrs. Reverdy
entered with flattering interest into all the matters of household and
farm detail respecting which Mrs. Starling chose to be communicative;
responded with details of her own. How it was impossible to get good
butter made, unless you made it yourself. How servants were
unsatisfactory, even in Pleasant Valley; and how delightful it was to
be able to do without them, as Mrs. Starling did and Diana.
"I should like it of all things," said Mrs. Reverdy with her unfailing
laugh; a little, well-bred, low murmur of a laugh. "It must be so
delightful to have your biscuits always light and never tasting of
soda; and your butter always as if it was made of cowslips; and your
eggs always fresh. We never have fresh eggs," continued Mrs. Reverdy,
shaking her head solemnly;--"never. I never dare to have them boiled."
"What becomes of them?" said a new voice; and Mr. Masters entered the
field--in other words, the room. Diana's heart contracted with a pang;
was this another hindrance in the way of her hearing what she wanted?
But the rest of the ladies welcomed him.
"Charming!" said Mrs. Reverdy; "now you will go home with us."
"I don't see just on what you found your conclusion."
"O, you will have made your visit to Mrs. Starling, you know; and then
you will have nothing else to do."
"There spoke a woman of business!" said the minister.
"Yes, why not?" said the lady. "I was just telling Mrs. Starling how I
should delight to do as she does, without servants, and how pleasant I
should find it; only, you know, I shouldn't know how to do anything if
I tried." Mrs. Reverdy seemed to find the idea very entertaining.
"You wouldn't like to get up in the morning to make your biscuits,"
said Gertrude.
"O yes, I would! I needn't have breakfast very early, you know."
"The good butter wouldn't be on the table if you didn't," said Mrs.
Starling.
"Wouldn't it? Why? Does it matter when butter is made, if it is only
made right?"
"No; but the trouble is, it cannot be made right after the sun is an
hour or two high."
"An hour or two!" Mrs. Reverdy uttered a little scream.
"Not at this time of year, mother," interposed Diana.
"Do you get up at these fearful times?" inquired Miss Masters
languidly, turning her eyes full upon the latter speaker.
Diana scarce answered. Would all the minutes of their visit pass in
these platitudes? could nothing else be talked of? The next instant she
blessed Mr. Masters.
"Have you heard from the soldier lately?" he asked.
"O yes! we hear frequently," Mrs. Reverdy said.
"He likes his post?"
"I really don't know," said her sister, laughing; "a soldier can't
choose, you know; I fancy they have some rough times out there; but
they manage to get a good deal of fun too. Evan's last letter told of
buffalo hunting, and said they had some very good society too. You
wouldn't expect it, on the outskirts of everything; but the officers'
families are very pleasant. There are young ladies, sometimes; and
every one is made a great deal of."
"Where is Mr. Knowlton?" Diana asked. She had been working up her
courage to dare the question; it was hazardous; she was afraid to trust
her voice; but the daring of desperation was on her, and the words came
out with sufficiently cool utterance. A keen observer might note a
change in Mrs. Reverdy's look and tone.
"O, he's in one of those dreadful posts out on the frontier; too near
the Indians; but I suppose if there weren't Indians there wouldn't be
forts, and they wouldn't want officers or soldiers to be in them," she
added, looking at Mr. Masters, as if she had found a happy final cause
for the existence of the aborigines of the country.
"What is the name of the place?" Diana asked.
"I declare I've forgotten. Fort----,I can't think of any name but
Vancouver, and it isn't that. Gertrude, what _is_ the name of that
place? Do you know, I can't tell whether it is in Arizona or
Wisconsin!" And Mrs. Reverdy laughed at her geographical innocence.
Gertrude "didn't remember."
"He is not so far off as Vancouver, I think," said Mr. Masters.
"No,--O no, not so far as that; but he might just as well. When you get
to a certain distance, it don't signify whether it is more or less; you
can't get at people, and they can't get at you. _You_ have seemed to be
at that distance lately, Basil. What a dreadful name! How came you to
be called such a name?"
"Be thankful it is no worse," said the minister gravely. "I might have
been called Lactantius."
"Lactantius! Impossible. Was there ever a man named Lactantius?"
"Certainly."
"'Tain't any worse than Ichabod," remarked Mrs. Starling.
"Nothing can be worse than Ichabod," said Mr. Masters in the same dry
way. "It means, 'The glory is departed.'"
"The Ichabods I knew, never had any glory to begin with," said Mrs.
Starling.
But the minister laughed at this, and so gaily that it was infectious.
Mrs. Starling joined in, without well knowing why; the lady visitors
seemed to be very much amused. Diana tried to laugh, with lips that
felt rigid as steel. The minister's eye came to hers too, she knew, to
see how the fun went with her. And then the ladies rose, took a very
flattering leave, and departed, carrying Mr. Masters off with them.
"I am coming to look at those books of yours soon," he said, as he
shook hands with Diana. "May I?"
Diana made her answer as civil as she could, with those stiff lips; how
she bade good-bye to the others she never knew. As her mother attended
them to the garden gate, she went up the stairs to her room, feeling
now it was the first time that the pain _could not be borne_. Seeing
these people had brought Evan so near, and hearing them talk had put
him at such an impossible distance. Diana pressed both hands on her
heart, and stood looking out of her window at the departing carriage.
What could she do? Nothing that she could think of, and to do nothing
was the intolerable part of it. Any, the most tedious and lingering
action, yes, even the least hopeful, anything that would have been
action, would have made the pain supportable; she could have drawn
breath then, enough for life's purposes; now she was stifling. There
was some mystery; there was something wrong; some mistake, or
misapprehension, or malpractice; _something_, which if she could put
her hand on, all would be right. And it was hidden from her; dark; it
might be near or far, she could not touch it, for she could not find
it. There was even no place for suspicion to take hold, unless the
curiosity of the post office, or of some prying neighbour; she did not
suspect Evan; and yet there was a great throb at her heart with the
thought that in Evan's place _she_ would never have let things rest.
Nothing should have kept the silence so long unbroken; if the first
letter got no answer, she would have written another. So would Diana
have done now, without being in Evan's place, if only she had had his
address. And that cruel woman to-day! did she know, or did she guess,
anything? or was it another of the untoward circumstances attending the
whole matter?
It came to her now, a thought of regret that she had not ventured the
disagreeableness and told her mother long ago of her interest in Evan.
Mrs. Starling could take measures that her daughter could not take. If
she pleased, that is; and the doubt also recurred, whether she would
please. It was by no means certain; and at any rate now, in her
mortification and pain, Diana could not invite her mother into her
counsels. She felt that as from her window she watched the receding
waggon, and saw Mrs. Starling turn from the gate and walk in.
Uncompromising, unsympathizing, even her gait and the set of her head
and shoulders proclaimed her to be. Diana was alone with her trouble.
An hour afterwards she came down as usual, strained the milk, skimmed
her cream, went through the whole little routine of the household
evening; her hands were steady, her eye was true, her memory lost
nothing. But she did not speak one word, unless, which was seldom, a
word was spoken to her. So went on the next day, and the next.
November's days were trailing along, December's would follow; there was
no change from one to another; no variety. Less than ever before; for,
with morbid sensitiveness, Diana shrank from visitors and visiting.
Every contact gave her pain.
Meanwhile, where was Evan's second letter? On its way, and in the post
office.
It was late in November; Diana was sitting at the door of the lean-to,
where she had been sitting on that June day when our story began. She
was alone this time, and her look and attitude were sadly at variance
with that former time. The November day was not without a charm of its
own which might even challenge comparison with the June glory; for it
was Indian summer time, and the wonder of soft spiritual beauty which
had settled down upon the landscape, brown and bare though that was,
left no room to regret the full verdure and radiant sunlight of high
summer. The indescribable loveliness of the haze and hush, the winning
tender colouring that was through the air and wrapped round everything,
softening, mellowing, harmonizing somehow even the most unsightly;
hiding where it could not beautify, and beautifying where it could not
hide, like Christian charity; gave a most exquisite lesson to the
world, of how much more mighty is spirit than matter. Diana did not see
it, as she had seen the June day; her arms were folded, lying one upon
another in idle fashion; her face was grave and fixed, the eyes aimless
and visionless, looking at nothing and seeing nothing; cheeks pale, and
the mouth parted with pain and questioning, its delicious childlike
curves just now all gone. So sitting, and so abstracted in her own
thoughts, she never knew that anybody was near till the little gate
opened, and then with a start she saw Mr. Masters coming up the walk.
Diana rose and stood in the doorway; all traces of country-girl
manners, if she had ever had any, had disappeared before the dignity of
a great and engrossing trouble.
"Good evening!" she said quietly, as they shook hands. "Mother's gone
out."
"Gone out, is she?" said Mr. Masters, but not with a tone of particular
disappointment.
"Yes. I believe she has gone to the Corner--to the post office."
"The Corner is a good way off. And how do you do?"
Diana thought he looked at her a little meaningly. She answered in the
customary form, that she was well.
"That says a great deal--or nothing at all," the minister remarked.
"What?" said Diana, not comprehending him.
"That form of words,--'I am well'."
"It is very apt to mean nothing at all," said Diana, "for people say it
without thinking."
"As you did just now?"
"Perhaps--but I _am_ well."
"Altogether?" said the minister. "Soul and mind and body?"
The word read dry enough; his manner, his tone, half gentle, half bold,
with a curious inoffensive kind of boldness, took from them their
dryness and gave them a certain sweet acceptableness that most persons
knew who knew Mr. Masters. Diana never dreamed that he was intrusive,
even though she recognised the fact that he was about his work.
Nevertheless she waived the question.
"Can anybody say that he is well _so?_" she asked.
"I hope he can. Do you know the old lady who is called Mother Bartlett?"
"O yes."
"Do you think she would hesitate about answering that question? or be
mistaken in the answer?"
"But what do you mean by it exactly?" said Diana.
"Don't you know?"
"I suppose I do. I know what it means to be well in body. I have been
well all my life."
"How would you characterize that happy condition?"
"Why," said Diana, unused to definitions of abstractions, but following
Mr. Masters' lead as people always did, gentle or simple,--"I mean, or
it means, sound, and comfortable, and fit for what one has to do."
"Excellent," said the minister. "I see you understand the subject.
Cannot those things be true of soul and mind, as well as of body?"
"What is the difference between soul and mind?" said Diana.
"A clear departure!" said the minister, laughing; then gravely, "Do you
read philosophy?"
"I don't know"--said Diana. "I read, or I used to read, a good many
sorts of books. I haven't read much lately."
The minister gave her another keen look while she was attending to
something else, and when he spoke again it was with a change of tone.
"I had a promise once that I should see those books."
"Any time," said Diana eagerly; "any time!" For it would be an easy way
of entertaining him, or of getting rid of him. Either would do.
"I think I proposed a plan of exchange, which might be to the advantage
of us both."
"To mine, I am sure," said Diana. "I don't know whether there can be
anything you would care for among the books up-stairs; but if there
should be-- Would you like to go up and look at them?"
"I should,--if it would not give you too much trouble."
It would be no trouble just to run up-stairs and show him where they
were; and this Diana did, leaving him to overhaul the stock at his
leisure. She came down and went on with her work.
Diana's heart was too sound and her head too clear to allow her to be
more than to a certain degree distressed at not hearing from Evan. She
did not doubt him more than she doubted herself; and not doubting him,
things must come out all right by and by. She was restive under the
present pain; at times wild with the desire to find and remove the
something, whatever it was, which had come between Evan and her; for
this girl's was no calm, easy-going nature, but one with depths of
passionate reserve and terrible possibilities of suffering or enjoying.
She had been calm all her life until now, because these powers and
susceptibilities had been in an absolute poise; an equilibrium that
nothing had shaken. Now the depths were stirred, and at times she was
in a storm of impatient pain; but there came revulsions of hope and
quiet lulls, when the sun almost shone again under the clearance made
by faith and hope. One of these revulsions came now, after she had set
the minister to work upon her books. Perhaps it was simple reaction;
perhaps it was something caught from the quiet sunshiny manner and
spirit of her visitor; but at her work in the kitchen Diana grew quite
calm-hearted. She fancied she had discerned somewhat of more than usual
earnestness in the minister's observation of her, and she began to
question whether her looks or behaviour had furnished occasion. Perhaps
she had not been ready enough to talk; poor Diana knew it was often the
case now; she resolved she would try to mend that when he came down.
And there was, besides, a certain lurking impatience of the bearing of
his words; they had probed a little too deep, and after the manner of
some morbid conditions, the probing irritated her. So by and by, when
Mr. Masters came down with a brown volume in his hand, and offered to
borrow it if she would let him lend her another of different colour,
Diana met him and answered quite like herself, and went on--
"Mr. Masters, how can people be always well in body, mind, and spirit,
as you say? I am sure people's bodies get sick without any fault of
their own; and there are accidents; and just so there are troubles.
People can't help troubles, and they can't be 'well' in mind, I
suppose, when they are in pain?"
"Are you sure of that?" the minister answered quietly, while he turned
to the window to look at something in the volume he had brought down
with him.
"Why, yes; and so are you, Mr. Masters; are you not?"
"You need to know a great deal to be sure of anything," he answered in
the same tone.
"But you are certain of this, Mr. Masters?"
"I shouldn't like to expose myself to your criticism. Let us look at
facts. It seems to me that David was 'well' when he could say, 'Thou
hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet
from falling.' Also the man described in another place--'He that
dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the
shadow of the Almighty.'"
There came a slight quiver across Diana's face, but her words were
moved by another feeling.
"Those were people of the old times; I don't know anything about them.
I mean people of to-day."
"I think Paul was 'well' when he could say, 'I have learned, in
whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.'"
"O, but that is nonsense, Mr. Masters!"
"It was Paul's experience."
"Yes, but it cannot be the experience of other people. Paul was
inspired."
"To write what was true,--not what was false," said the minister,
looking at her. "You don't think peace and content come by inspiration,
do you?"
"I did not think about it," said Diana. "But I am sure it is impossible
to be as he said."
"I never heard Paul's truth questioned before," said the minister, with
a dry sort of comicality.
"No, but, Mr. Masters," said Diana, half by way of apology, "I spoke
from my own experience."
"And he spoke from his."
"But, sir,--Mr. Masters,--seriously, do you think it is possible to be
contented when one is in trouble?"
"Miss Diana, One greater than David or Paul said this, 'If a man love
me, he will keep my words; and my Father will love him; and we will
come unto him, and make our abode with him.' Where there is that
indwelling, believe me, there is no trouble that can overthrow content."
"Content and pain together?" said Diana.
"Sometimes pain and very great joy."
"You are speaking of what I do not understand in the least," said
Diana. And her face looked half incredulous, half sad.
"I wish you did know it," he said. No more; only those few words had a
simplicity, a truth, an accent of sympathy and affection, that reached
the very depth of the heart he was speaking to; as the same things from
his lips had often reached other hearts. He promised to take care of
the book in his hand, and presently went away, with one of the warm,
frank, lingering grasps of the hand, that were also a characteristic of
Basil Masters. Diana stood at the door watching him ride away. It
cannot be said she was soothed by his words, and perhaps he did not
mean she should be. She stood with a weary feeling of want in her
heart; but she thought only of the want of Evan.