Diana Part 37

"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 gra.s.s 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 rea.s.suring. 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,

"n.o.body'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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sion 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?"