THE USE OF LIVING.
It was quite according to Diana's nature, that as the winter went on,
though still without news of Evan, her tumult and agony of mind quieted
down into a calm and steadfast waiting. Her spirit was too healthy for
suspicion, too true for doubt; and put away doubt and suspicion, what
was left but the assurance that there had been some accident or
mistake; from the consequences of which she was suffering, no doubt,
but which would all be made right, and come out clear so soon as there
could be an opportunity for explanation. For that there was nothing to
do but to wait a little; with the returning mild weather, Evan would be
able to procure a furlough, he would be at her side, and then--nothing
then but union and joy. She could wait; and even in the waiting, her
healthy spirit as it were sloughed off care, and came back again to its
usual placid, strong, bright condition.
So the winter went; a winter which was ever after a blank in Diana's
remembrance; and the cold weather broke up into the frosts and thaws
that sugar-makers love; and in such a March day it was, the word came
to Mrs. Starling's house that old Squire Bowdoin was dead. The like
weather never failed in after years to bring back to Diana that one day
and its tidings and the strange shock they gave her.
"'Twas kind o' sudden," said the news-bringer, who was Joe Bartlett;
"he was took all to once and jes' dropped--like a ripe chestnut."
"Why, like a ripe chestnut?" said Mrs. Starling sharply.
"Wall, I had to say suthin', and that come first. The Scripter doos
speak of a shock o' corn in his season, don't it, Mis' Starling?"
"What's the likeness between a shock o' corn and a chestnut, Joe? I
can't abide to hear folks talk nonsense. Who's at Elmfield?"
"Ain't nary one there that had ought to be there; nary one but the
help."
"But they're comin'?" said Mrs. Starling, lifting up her head for the
answer.
"Wall, I can't say. Evan, he's too fur; and I guess men in his place
hain't their ch'ice. And his folks is flourishy kind o' bodies; I don't
set no count on 'em, for my part."
"Well, everybody else'll be there, and shame 'em if they ain't," said
Mrs. Starling. "How's your mother, Joe?"
"Wall, I guess _she's_ ripe," said Joe with a slow intonation, loving
and reverent; "but she's goin' to hold on to this state o' things yet
awhile. Good day t'ye!"
Diana went to the old man's funeral with her mother; in a sort of
tremble of spirits, looking forward to what she might possibly see or
hear. But no one was there; no one in whom she had any interest; none
of Mr. Bowdoin's grandchildren could make it convenient to come to his
funeral. The large gathering of friends and neighbours and distant
relations were but an unmeaning crowd to Diana's perceptions.
What difference would this change at Elmfield make in her own
prospects? Would Mrs. Reverdy and her set come to Elmfield as usual,
and so draw Evan as a matter of course? They might not, perhaps. But
what difference could it be to Diana? Evan would come, at all events,
and under any circumstances; even if his coming let the secret out; he
would come, and nothing would keep him from it; the necessity of seeing
her would be above all other except military necessities. Diana thought
she wished the old gentlemen had not died. But it could make no
difference. As soon as he could, Evan would be there.
She returned to her quiet waiting. But now nature began to be noisy
about her. It seemed that everything had a voice. Spring winds said,
"He is coming;" the perfume of opening buds was sweet with his far-off
presence; the very gales that chased the clouds, to her fancy chased
the minutes as well; the waking up of the household and farm
activities, said that now Diana's inner life would come back to its
wonted course and arrangements.
The spring winds blew themselves out; spring buds opened into full
leafage; spring activities gradually merged into the steady routine of
summer; and still Diana saw nothing, and still she heard nothing of
Evan.
She was patient now by force of will; doggedly trusting. She _would_
not doubt. None of the family came to Elmfield; so there was no news by
the way that could reach her. Mrs. Starling watched the success of her
experiment, and was satisfied. Will began to come about the house more
and more.
It was near the end of summer, more than a year since her first
introduction to Evan, that Diana found herself again one day at Mother
Bartlett's cottage. She always made visits there from time to time;
to-day she had come for no special reason, but a restlessness which
possessed her at home. The old lady was in her usual chimney corner,
knitting, as a year ago; and Diana, having prepared the mid-day repast
and cleared away after it, was sitting on the doorstep at the open
door; whence her eye went out to the hillside pasture and followed the
two cows which were slowly moving about there. It was as quiet a bit of
nature as could be found anywhere; and Diana was very quiet looking at
it. But Mrs. Bartlett's eye was upon her much more than upon her work;
which, indeed, could go on quite well without such supervision. She
broke silence at last, speaking with an imperceptible little sigh.
"And so, dear, the minister preached his sermon about the fashions last
Sabbath?"
"About fashion," said Diana. "He had promised it long ago."
"And what did he say, dear?"
"He said, 'The fashion of this world passeth away.'"
"But he said something more, I suppose? _I_ could have said that."
"He said a great deal more," replied Diana. "It was a very curious
sermon."
"As I hain't heard it, and you hev', perhaps you'll oblige me with some
more of it."
"It was a very curious sermon," Diana repeated. "Not in the least like
what you would have expected. There wasn't much about fashion in it;
and yet, somehow it seemed to be _all_ that."
"What was his text?"
"I can't tell; something about 'the grace of the fashion of it.' I
don't remember how the words went."
"I know, I guess," said the old lady. "'Twas in James, warn't it?
Something like this--'The sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat.'"
"Yes, yes, that was it."
"'--but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the
grace of the fashion of it perisheth.'"
"That was it," assented Diana.
"So he preached about the shortness of life?"
"No, not at all. He began with those words, and just a sentence or
two--and it was beautiful, too, mother--explaining them; and then he
said the Bible hadn't much in it directly speaking of our fashions; he
would give us what there was, and let us make what we could of it; so
he did."
"You can make a good deal of it if you try," said Mrs. Bartlett. "And
then, dear?"
"Then he went off, you'd never think where--to the last chapter of
Proverbs; and he described the woman described there; and he made her
out so beautiful and good and clever and wise, that somehow, without
saying a word about fashion, he made us feel how _she_ would never have
had any concern about it; how she was above it, and five times more
beautiful without, than she would have been with, the foolish ways of
people now-a-days. But he didn't say that; you only felt it. I don't
much believe there are any such women, mother."
"I hope and believe you'll make just such a one, Diana."
"I?" said the girl, with a curious intonation; then subsiding again
immediately, she sat as she had sat at her own door a year ago, with
arms folded, gazing out upon the summery hill pasture where the cows
were leisurely feeding. But now her eyes had a steady, hard look, not
busy with the sunshiny turf or the deep blue sky against which the line
of the hill cut so soft and clear. _Then_ the vision had been all
outward.
"And that was his sermon?" said the old lady with a dash of
disappointment.
"No! O no," said Diana, rousing herself. "He went on then--how shall I
tell you? Do you remember a verse in the Revelation about the Church
coming down as a bride adorned for her husband?"
"Ay!" said the old lady with a gratified change of voice. "Well?"
"He went on to describe that adornment. I can't tell you how he did it;
I can't repeat what he said; but it was inner adornment, you know; 'all
glorious within,' I remember he said; and without a word more about
what he started with, he made one feel that there is no real adornment
but that kind, nor any other worth a thought. I heard Kate Boddington
telling mother, as we came out of church, that she felt as cheap as
dirt, with all her silk dress and new bonnet; and Mrs. Carpenter, who
was close by, said she felt there wasn't a bit of her that would bear
looking at."
"What did your mother say?"
"Nothing. She didn't understand it, she said."
"And, Di, how did you feel?"
"I don't think I felt anything, mother."
"How come that about?"
"I don't know. I believe it seems to me as if the fashion of this world
never passed away; it's the same thing, year in and year out."
"What ails you, Diana?" her old friend asked after a pause.
"Nothing. I'm sort o' tired. I don't see how folks stand it, to live a
long life."
"But life has not been very hard to you, honey."
"It needn't be _hard_ for that," Diana answered, with a kind of choke
in her voice. "Perhaps the hardest of all would be to go on an
unvarying jog-trot, and to know it would always be so all one's life."
"What makes life all of a sudden so tiresome to you, Di?"
"Something I haven't got, I suppose," said the girl drearily. "I have
enough to eat and drink."
"You ain't as bright as you used to be a year ago."
"I have grown older, and have got more experience."
"If life is good for nothin' else, Di, it's good to make ready for what
comes after."
"I don't believe that doctrine, mother," said Diana energetically.
"Life is meant to be life, and not getting ready to live. _'Tisn't_
meant to be all brown and sawdusty here, that people may have it more
fresh and pleasant by and by."
"No; but to drive them out o' this pasture, maybe. If the cows found
always the grass long in the meadow, when do you think they'd go up the
hill?"
A quick, restless change of position was the only answer to this; an
answer most unlike the natural calm grace of Diana's movements. The old
lady looked at her wistfully, doubtfully, two or three times up and
down from her knitting, before speaking again. And then speaking was
prevented, for the other door opened and the minister came in.
Basil was always welcome, whatever house or company he entered; he
could fall in with any mood, take up any subject, sympathize in
anybody's concerns. That was part of his secret of power, but that was
not all. There was about him an _aura_ of happiness, so to speak; a
steadfastness of the inner nature, which gave a sense of calm to others
almost by the force of sympathy; and the strength of a quiet will,
which was, however, inflexible. All that was restless, uncertain, and
unsatisfied in men's hearts and lives, found something in him to which
they clung as if it had been an anchor of hope; and so his popularity
had a very wide, and at first sight very perplexing range.
The two women in Mrs. Bartlett's cottage were glad to see him; and they
had reason. Perhaps, for he was very quick, he discerned that the
social atmosphere had been somewhat hazy when he came in; for through
all his stay his talk was so bright and strong that it met the needs of
both hearers. Even Diana laughed with him and listened to him; and when
he rose to take leave, she asked if he came on horseback to-day?
"No, I am ease-loving. I borrowed Mr. Chalmers' buggy."
"Which way are you going now, sir, if you please?"
He hesitated an instant, looked at her, and answered quite demurely, "I
think, your way."
"Would you be so kind as to take me so far as home with you, then?"
"I don't see any objection to that," said Basil in the same cool
manner. And Diana hastily took her bonnet and kissed her old friend,
and in another minute or two she was in the buggy, and they were
driving off.
If the minister suspected somewhat, he would spoil nothing by being in
a hurry. He drove leisurely, saying that it was too hot weather to ask
much exertion even from a horse; and making little slight remarks, in a
manner so gentle and quiet as to be very reassuring. But if that was
what Diana wanted, she wanted a great deal of it; for she sat looking
straight between the edges of her sun-bonnet, absolutely silent, hardly
even making the replies her companion's words called for. At last he
was silent too. The good grey horse went very soberly on, not urged at
all; but yet even a slow rate of motion will take you to the end of
anything, given the time; and every minute saw the rods of Diana's road
getting behind her. I suppose she felt that, and spoke at last in the
desperate sense of it. When a person is under that urgency, he does not
always choose his words.
"Mr. Masters, is there any way of making life anything but a miserable
failure?"
The lowered cadences of Diana's voice, a thread of bitterness in her
utterance, quite turned the minister's thought from anything like a
light or a gay answer. He said very gravely,
"Nobody's life need be that."
"How are you to get rid of it?"
"Of that result, you mean?"
"Yes."
"Will you state the difficulty, as it appears to you?"
"Why, look at it," said Diana, more hesitatingly; "what do most
people's lives amount to?--what does mine? To dress oneself, and eat
and drink, and go through a round of things, which only mean that you
will dress yourself and eat and drink again and do the same things
to-morrow, and the next day;--what does it all amount to in the end?"
"Is life no more than that to you?"
Diana hesitated, but then, with a tone still lowered, said, "No."
The minister was silent now, and presently Diana went on again.
"The whole world seems to me just so. People live, and die; and they
might just as well not have lived, for all that their being in the
world has done. And yet they have lived--and suffered."
More than she knew was told in the utterance of that last word. The
minister was still not in a hurry to speak. When he did, his question
came as a surprise.
"You believe the first chapter of Genesis, Miss Diana?"
"Certainly," she said, feeling with downcast heart, "O, now a sermon!"
"You believe that God made the earth, and made man to occupy it?"
"Yes--certainly."
"What do you think he made him for?"
"I know what the catechism says," Diana began slowly.
"No, no; my question has nothing to do with the catechism. Do you
believe that the Creator's intention was that men should live
purposeless lives, like what you describe?"
"I can't believe it."
"Then what purpose are we here for? Why am I, and why are you, on the
earth?"
"I don't know," said Diana faintly. The talk was not turning out well
for her wish, she thought.
"To find that out,--and to get in harmony with the answer,--is the
great secret of life."
"Will you help me, Mr. Masters?" said Diana humbly. "It is all dark and
wild to me,--I see no comfort in anything. If there were nothing better
than this, one would rather _not_ be on the earth."
Mr. Masters might have pondered with a little surprise on the strength
of the currents that flow sometimes where the water looks calm; but he
had no time, and in truth was in no mood for moralizing just then. His
answer was somewhat abrupt, though gentle as possible.
"What do you want, Miss Diana?"
But the answer to that was a choked sob, and then, breaking all bounds
of her habit and intention, a passionate storm of tears. Diana was
frightened at herself; but, nevertheless, the sudden probe of the
question, with the sympathetic gentleness of it, and the too great
contrast between the speaker's happy, calm, strong content and her own
disordered, distracted life, suddenly broke her down. Neither, if you
open the sluice-gates to such a current, can you immediately get them
shut again. This she found, though greatly afraid of the conclusions
her companion might draw. For a few minutes her passion was utterly
uncontrolled.
If Basil drew conclusions, he was not in a hurry to make them known. He
did not at that time follow the conversation any further; only
remarking cheerfully, and sympathetically too, "We must have some more
talk about this, Miss Diana; but we'll take another opportunity," and
so presently left her at her own door, with the warm, strong grasp of
the hand that many a one in trouble had learned to know. There is
strange intelligence, somehow, in our fingers. They can say what lips
fail to say. Diana went into the house feeling that her minister was a
tower of strength and a treasury of kindness.
She found company. Mrs. Flandin and her mother were sitting together.
"Hev' you come home to stay, Diana?" was her mother's sarcastic
salutation.
"How come you and the Dominie to be a ridin' together?" was the other
lady's blunter question.
"I had the chance," said Diana, "and I asked him to bring me. It's too
hot for walking."
"And how come he to be in a buggy, so convenient? He always goes
tearin' round on the back of that 'ere grey horse, I thought. I never
see a minister ride so afore; and I don't _think_, Mis' Starling, it's
suitable. What if he was to break his neck, on the way to visit some
sick man?"
"Jim Treadwell broke _his_ neck out of a waggon," responded Mrs.
Starling.
"Ah, well! there ain't no security, no place; but don't it strike you,
now, Mis' Starling, that a minister had ought to set an example of
steady goin', and not turn the heads of the young men, and young women,
with his capers?"
"He is a young man himself, Mrs. Flandin," Diana was bold to say.
"Wall--I know he is," said the lady in a disapproving way. "I know he
is; and he can't help it; but if I had my way, I'd allays have a
minister as much as fifty year old. It looks better," said Mrs. Flandin
complacently; "and it _is_ better."
"What is he to do all the first fifty years of his life then?"
"Wall, my dear, I hain't got the arrangement of things; I don't know. I
know Will would hitch up and carry you anywheres you want to go--if
it's a waggon you want any time."
After that, Will made good his mother's promise, so far as intentions
went. He was generally on hand when anything was to be done in which
himself and his smart buggy could be useful. Indeed, he was very often
on hand at other times; dropping in after supper, and appearing with
baskets, which were found to contain some of the Flandin pears or the
fine red apples that grew in a corner of the lot, and were famous. Some
of his own bees' honey Will brought another time, and a bushel of
uncommonly fine nuts. Of course this was in the fall, to which the
weary weeks of Diana's summer had at length dragged themselves out. But
if Will hoped that honey would sweeten Diana's reception of him and his
attentions, as yet it did not seem to have the desired effect. In
truth, though Will could never suspect it, her brain was so heavy with
other thoughts that she was only in a vague and general way conscious
of his presence; and of his officious gallantries scarcely aware. So
little aware, indeed, of their bearing, that on two or three occasions
she suffered herself to be conveyed in Will's buggy to or from some
gathering of the neighbours; Mrs. Starling or Mrs. Flandin had arranged
it, and Diana had quite blindly fallen into the trap. And then the
young man, not unreasonably elated and inspirited, began to make his
visits to Mrs. Starling's house more frequent than ever. It was little
he did to recommend himself when he was there; he generally sat
watching Diana, carrying on a spasmodic and interrupted conversation
with Mrs. Starling about farm affairs, and seizing the opportunity of a
dropped spool or an unwound skein of yarn to draw near Diana and
venture some word to her. Poor Diana felt in those days so much like a
person whose earthly ties are all broken, that it did not come into her
head in what a different light she stood to other eyes.