THE HIDDEN LEAVEN
Christmas-eve had come round again. The successive changes of each
season had passed over Riverscourt;--the awakening of early spring, when
earth threw off her pall of snow, and budding life won its annual
triumph over the darkening chill of winter;--the bloom and blossom of
summer, when all nature lifted up its voice and sang to the sunshine,
amid fragrance of flowers and shade of soft green foliage;--the rich
fulfilment of autumn, when blossom ripened into fruit, and trees turned
to crimson and gold, emblem of the royal wealth of yielded harvest.
All this had come, and gone; and now, once more, earth slept 'neath
leaden skies; and bare branches forked out, hopeless, over the sodden
turf.
"Is this the end?" rasped the dead leaves, as the north wind swept them
in unresisting herds down the avenue of beeches. "The end! The end!"
wailed the north wind. "_The grass withereth, the flower fadeth--_"
Then Hope, born of Faith and Experience, cried: "_But the word of our
God shall stand forever! While the earth remaineth, seedtime and
harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night
shall not cease._ This is not death, but sleep. When spring sounds the
reveillé, life will stir and move again beneath the sod; all nature will
respond, and there shall come once more the great awakening; the dismal
sentries of darkness and of death may cease to challenge; the troops of
light and life march on their way. Again the victory will be with
spring."
* * * * *
During the year, now nearly over, Diana's inner life had reflected each
of these transitions, going on around her, in her own park and gardens.
In the lonely despairing weeks following her wedding-day, her heart
seemed numb and dead; her empty arms stiffened like leafless branches.
Her love had awakened, only to find itself entombed.
But, with the arrival of David's first letter, there burst upon her
winter the glad promise of spring.
"My dear wife," wrote David; and, as she read the words, strong
possessive arms seemed to enfold her. Though distance divided, she was,
unalterably, _that_ to him: "My dear wife."
The letter proceeded, in calm friendliness, to give her a full account
of his voyage; nothing more; yet with an intimacy of detail, an
assurance of her interest, which came as balm to Diana's sore heart. And
the letter ended: "Yours ever, David Rivers."
Then followed a sweet summer-time of wonderful promise. David's letters
reached her by every mail. They always began: "My dear wife"; they
always ended: "Yours ever, David Rivers"; they held no word of anything
closer or more intimate in their tie, than was in the bond; yet, as
Diana shared his hopes and expectations, his difficulties, and their
surmounting; as she followed with him along each step in the new
development of his work, the materialising of his ideas, the fulfilment
of his plans, by means of her gift of gold--it seemed to her that all
this was but the promise of spring; that a glad summer must soon come,
when David's heart should awaken to a need--not only of her sympathy and
of her help, but of _herself_; that, at no distant date, the mail would
bring a letter, saying: "My wife, I want you. Come to me!"
She forgot that, owing to their unnatural marriage, she was, of all
women, the one whom David could not, however much he might desire to do
so, attempt to woo and win. She realised her side of the question; yet,
womanlike, forgot his. No hint of her need of him was allowed to creep
into her letters, even between the lines; yet she eagerly searched
David's for some indication that his heart was beginning to turn toward
her, in more than friendliness. It seemed to her, that her growing love
for him must awaken in him a corresponding love for her.
But David's letters continued calm and friendly; and, as his work became
more absorbing, they held even less of personal detail, or of intimate
allusion to her life at home.
Yet this summer-time was one of growth and bloom to Diana, for there
blossomed up, between him and herself, by means of constant letters, a
wonderful friendship.
Their position, the one toward the other, was so unique; and, having no
one else with whom to share their inner lives and closest interests,
they turned to one another with a completeness which made a diary of
their correspondence.
The one subject upon which neither dared to be frank, was their love the
one for the other. Each was the very soul of honour, and each felt bound
by their mutual compact to hide from the other how infinitely more their
marriage had meant than they had ever dreamed it could, or intended it
should, mean.
* * * * *
With the awakening of her love for David, Diana passed through agonies
of shame at the recollection of the crude, calm way in which she had
asked him to marry her.
During the long days before the arrival of his first letter, she used,
almost every evening, to stand as she had stood that afternoon, facing
the empty chair which had then held David; and, whispering the fateful
words recall his face of protest; his look of horrified dismay. This was
the penance she imposed on her proud spirit; and she would creep
upstairs afterwards, her fair head bowed in shame; a beautiful Godiva,
who had ridden forth, not to save her townspeople, but to gain her own
desired ends.
Poor David! How he had leapt up in instant protest: "I cannot do this
thing!" Her suggestion to him had not even partaken of the nature of a
royal proposal of marriage, when the young man knows that the choice has
fallen upon himself, and stands waiting, with ready penknife, to slit
the breast of his tightly buttoned tunic, and insert therein the fair
white rose of a maiden's proffered love. David's uniform of amazed
manhood, had provided no improvised buttonhole for Diana's undesired
flower. He had stood before her, dismayed but implacable: "I cannot do
this thing!" Poor David, in his shabby jacket, with his thin, worn face,
and eyes ablaze. Diana cowered before the Peeping Tom of her own vivid
remembrance.
But, with the reading of his first letter, the words, "my dear wife,"
stole around her as protective arms, shielding her from shame, and
comforting her in her loneliness, with the fact of how much she had,
after all, been able to give him. Yet never--never--must word from her
reveal to David that she had given him, unasked, the whole love of her
woman's heart. Should he come to need it, and ask for it, he would find
it had all along been his.
At first, Diana's life had moved along its accustomed lines; with David,
and all he was to her, as a sweet central secret, hidden deeply in her
heart of hearts.
But, before long, she began to experience that which has been
beautifully described as "the expulsive power of a new affection."
David--like the little leaven, which a woman took and hid in three
measures of meal--David, working outward, from that inner shrine,
leavened her whole life.
He had not asked her to give up hunting, or dancing, or any of the
gaiety in which she delighted. Yet the more she lived in touch with his
strenuous life of earnest self-sacrifice, the less these things
attracted her.
Diana's friends never found her dull; but they gradually grew to realise
that her horizon had widened immeasurably beyond their own; that the
focussing points in her field of vision were things totally unseen by
themselves; that, in some subtle way, she had developed and grown beyond
their comprehension. They loved her still, but they left her. Diana
Rivers, of Riverscourt, ceased to be the centre of an admiring crowd.
They left her; but she was not conscious of their going.
She stood alone; yet did not know that she was lonely.
The only leaving of which she was aware, was that David had left her on
their wedding-day; the only loneliness, that David never intended to
return.
Truly, the little leaven had leavened the whole lump.
The glitter and the glamour of the kingdoms of this world had passed
away. The kingdom of heaven held sway in Diana's heart.
But the King of that kingdom, at this period of Diana's life, was
David.