Diana Part 32

He was speaking gravely, though with a surface pleasantry; both gravity and pleasantry were of a very winning kind. Diana looked on and listened, much interested, as well as amused; Gertrude puzzled and impatient, though unable to resist the attraction. She hesitated, and surveyed him.

"There can't be dishonesty unless where one owes something."

"Precisely"--he said, glancing at her. His hands were busy at the time with a supple twig he had cut from one of the trees, which he was tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of its leaves and buds.

"What do I owe?" said the beauty, throwing her tresses of hair off from her shoulders.

He waited a bit, the one lady looking defiant, the other curious; and then he said, with a sort of gentle simplicity that was at the same time uncompromising,

"'The Lord hath made all things for himself.'"

Gertrude's foot patted the turf; after a minute she answered,

"Of course you say that because you are a clergyman."

"No, I don't. I am stating a fact, which I thought it likely you had forgotten."

Gertrude stood up, as if she had got enough of the conversation. Diana wished for another word.

"It is a fact," she said; "but what have we to do with it?"

"Only to let the Lord have his own," said the minister with a full look at her.

"How do you mean, Mr. Masters? I don't understand."

Gertrude was marching over the gra.s.s, leading to the house. The other two followed.

"When you have contrived and made a thing, you reckon it is your own, don't you? and when you have bought something, you think it is at your disposal?"

"Certainly; but"--

"'_You_ were bought with a price.'"

"Of course, G.o.d has a right to dispose of us," Diana a.s.sented in an "of course" way.

"_Does_ he?" said the minister. Then, seeing her puzzled expression, he went on--"He cannot dispose of you as he wishes, without your consent."

Diana stopped short, midway in the meadow. "I do not in the least understand, Mr. Masters," she said. "How does He wish to dispose of me?"

"When you are his own, he will let you know," said the minister, beginning to stroll onward again; and no more words pa.s.sed till they were nearing the house, when he said suddenly, "Whom do you think you belong to now?"

Diana's thought made an instant leap at the words, a leap over hundreds of miles of intervening s.p.a.ce, and alighted beside a fine officer-like figure in a dark blue military coat with straps on the shoulders. That was where she "belonged," she thought; and a soft rose colour mantled on her cheek, and deepened, half with happiness, halt with pride. The question that had provoked it was forgotten; and the neighbourhood of the house was now too near to allow of the inquiry being pressed or repeated. The minister, indeed, was aware that for some time he and his companion had been facing a battery; but Diana was in happy unconsciousness; it was the thought of nothing present or near which made her eyes droop and her cheeks take on such a bloom of loveliness.

Among the eyes that beheld, Mrs. Starling's had not been the least keen, though she watched without seeming to watch. She saw how the minister and her daughter came slowly over the meadow, engaged with each other's conversation, while Miss Masters tripped on before them.

She noticed the pause in their walk, Diana's slow, thoughtful step; and then, as they came near, her flush and her downcast eye.

"The minister's talk's very interestin'," whispered Mrs. Carpenter in her ear.

"Not to me," said Mrs. Starling, wilfully misunderstanding. "Some folks thinks so, I know. I can't somehow never get along with him."

"And Diana sha'n't," was her inward resolve; "but she can't be thinkin'

of the other feller."

As if to try the question, at the moment, Mrs. Reverdy appeared at the top of the steps, just as the minister and Diana got to the foot of them. She was in high glee, for her party was going off nicely, and the tables were just preparing for supper.

"We want nothing now but Evan," she said with her unfailing laugh.

"Miss Starling, don't you think he might have come for this afternoon, just to see so many friends?"

Diana never knew where she got the coolness to answer, "How long a journey is it, Mrs. Reverdy?"

"O, I don't know! How far is it, Mr. Masters?--a thousand miles?--or two thousand? I declare I have no idea. But love laughs at distances, they say."

"Is Cupid a contractor on this road?" inquired the minister gravely.

"A contractor!" exclaimed Mrs. Reverdy, laughing, "oh, dear, what a funny idea! I never thought of putting it so. But I didn't know but Miss Starling could tell us."

"Do you know anything about it, Miss Diana?" asked the minister.

"About what?"

"Why Lieutenant Knowlton is not here this afternoon?"

Diana knew that several pairs of eyes were upon her. It was a dangerous minute. But she had failed to discern in Mrs. Reverdy or in Gertrude any symptom of more than curiosity; and curiosity she felt she could meet and baffle. It was impertinent, and it was unkind. So, though her mind was at a point which made it close steering, she managed to sheer off from embarra.s.sment and look amused. She laughed in the eyes that were watching her, and answered carelessly enough to Mr. Masters'

question that she "dared say Mr. Knowlton would have come if he could."

Mrs. Starling put up her work with a sigh of relief; and the rest of the persons concerned felt free to dismiss the subject from their minds and pay attention to the supper.

It was a great success, Mrs. Reverdy's sewing party. The excellent entertainment provided was heartily enjoyed, all the more for the little stimulus of curiosity which hung about every article and each detail of the tea-table. Old Mr. Bowdoin delighted himself in hospitable attentions to his old neighbours, and was full of genial and gratified talk with them. The stiffness of the afternoon departed before the tea and coffee; and when at last the a.s.sembly broke up, and a little file of country waggons drove away, one after another, from the door, it was with highly gratified loads of people.

Diana may be quoted as a single exception. In the tremor of her spirits which followed the bit of social navigation noticed above, she had hardly known how anything tasted at the supper; and the talk she had heard without hearing. There was nothing but relief in getting away.

The drive home was as silent between her and her mother as the drive out had been. Mrs. Starling was full of her own cogitations. Diana's thoughts were not like that,--hard-twisted and hard-knotted lines of argument, growing harder and more twisted towards their end; but wide flowing and soft changing visions, flowing sweet and free as the clouds borne on the air-currents of heaven; catching such colours, and drifting as insensibly from one form into another. The evening kept up the dreamy character of the afternoon, the haze growing duskier as the light waned; till the tender gleam of a full moon began to supply here and there the glory of the lost sunlight. It was a colder gleam, though; and so far, more practical than that flush of living promise which a little while ago had filled the sky and the world. Diana's thoughts centred on Evan's letter. Where was it? When should she get it? Josiah, she knew, had been to the post office that morning, and brought home nothing! She wished she could go to the post office herself; she sometimes had done so; but she would not like to take Evan's letter, either, from the knowing hands of the postmaster. She might not be able to command her looks perfectly.

"They don't know how to make soda biscuit down yonder," Mrs. Starling broke out abruptly, just as their drive was near ended.

"Don't they?" said Diana absently.

"All yellow!" said Mrs. Starling disdainfully. "n.o.body would ever know there was any salaratus in _my_ biscuit--or in yours either."

"Except from the lightness, mother."

"The lightness wouldn't tell what made 'em light," said Mrs. Starling logically. "They had salaratus in their pickles too."

"How could you tell?"

"Tell? As if I couldn't tell! Tell by the colour."

"Ours are green too."