Diana Part 45

"They're a s.h.i.+ftless lot," said Mrs. Starling rather evasively, "the whole of 'em. And this one has a way of holding his own in other folks'

houses, that is intolerable to me! I never liked him, not from the very first."

"I always liked him," said Diana simply; and she went off to her room.

She had not expected that her mother would favour the arrangement; on the contrary; and it had all been settled much more easily than she had looked for.

CHAPTER XXI.

UNSETTLED.

So things were settled, and Mrs. Starling made no attempt to unsettle them; on the other hand, she fell into a condition of permanent unrest which I do not know how to characterize. It was not ill-humour exactly; it was not displeasure; or if, it was displeasure at herself, but it was contrary to all Mrs. Starling's principles to admit that, and she never admitted it. Her farm servant, Josh, described her as being always now in an "aggravated" state; and Diana found her society very uncomfortable. There was never a word spoken pleasantly, by any chance, about anything; good was not commended, and ill was not deplored; but both, good and ill, were taken up in the same sharp, acrid, cynical tone, or treated with the like restless mockery. Mrs. Starling found no fault with Diana, other than by this bitter manner of handling every subject that came up; at the same time she made the little house where they lived together a place of thunderous atmosphere, where it was impossible to draw breath freely and peacefully. They were very much shut up to one another, too. That Sunday storm in December had been followed by successive falls of snow, so deep that the ways were enc.u.mbered, and travelling more difficult than usual in Pleasant Valley even in winter. There was very little getting about between the neighbours' houses; and the people let their social qualities wait for spring and summer to develope themselves. Diana and her mother scarcely saw anybody. Nick Boddington at rare intervals looked in. Joe Bartlett once or twice came with a message from his mother; once Diana had gone down to see her. Even Mr. Masters made his appearance at the little brown farm-house less frequently than might have been supposed; for, in truth, Mrs. Starling's presence made his visits rather unsatisfactory; and besides the two kitchen fires, there was none other in the house to which Diana and he could withdraw and see each other alone. So he came only now and then, and generally did not stay very long.

To Diana, all this while, the coming or the going, the solitude or the company, even the good or ill humours of her mother, seemed to be of little importance. She lived her own shut-up, deadened, secret life through it all, and had no nerves of sensation near enough to the surface to be affected much by what went on outside of her. What though her mother was all the while in a rasped sort of state? it could not rasp Diana; she seemed to wear a coat of mail. Neighbours? no neighbours were anything to her one way or another; if she could be said to like anything, it was to be quite alone and see and hear n.o.body. Her marriage she looked at in the same dull way; with a thought, so far as she gave it a thought, that in the minister's house her life would be more quiet, and peace and good-will would replace the eager disquiet around her which, without minding it, Diana yet perceived. More quiet and better, she hoped her life would be; her life and herself; she thought the minister was getting a bad bargain of it, but since it was his pleasure, she thought it was a good thing for her; every time she met the gentle kind eyes and felt the warm clasp of his hand, Diana repeated the a.s.surance to herself. The girl had sunk again into mental torpor; she did not see nor hear nor feel; she lived along a mechanical sort of life, having relapsed into her former stunned condition. Not crushed--there was too much of Diana's nature for one blow or perhaps many blows to effect that; not beaten down, like some other characters; she went on her way upright, alert, and strong, doing and expecting to do the work of life to its utmost measure; all the same, walking as a ghost might walk through the scenes of his former existence; with no longer any natural conditions to put her at one with them, and only conscious of her dead heart. This state of things had given way in the fall to a few months of incessant and very live pain; with her betrothal to the minister Diana had sunk again into the dulness of apathy. But with a const.i.tution mental and physical like hers, so full of sound life-blood, so true and strong, in the nature of things this state of apathetic sleep could not last for ever. And the time of final waking came.

The winter had dragged its length away. Spring had come, with its renewal of all the farm and household activities. Diana stood up to her work and did it, day by day, with faultless accuracy, with blameless diligence. She was too useful a helper not to be missed unwillingly from any household that had once known her; and Mrs. Starling's temper did not improve. It had been arranged that Diana's marriage should take place about the first of June. Spring work over, and summer going on its orderly way, she could be easiest spared then, she thought; and Mrs. Starling, seeing it must be, made no particular objection. Beyond the time, nothing had been talked of yet concerning the occasion. So it was a hitherto untouched question, when Mrs. Starling asked her daughter one day,--"What sort of a wedding are you calculatin' to have?"

"What sort of a wedding? I don't know," said Diana. "What do you mean by a wedding?"

"The thing is, what _you_ mean by it. Don't be a baby, Diana Starling!

Do you mean to ask your friends to see you married?"

"I don't want anybody, I am sure," said Diana. "And I am sure Mr.

Masters does not care."

"Are you going to be married in a black gown?"

"Black! No; but I do not care what kind of a gown it is, further than that."

"I don't think you care much about the whole thing," said Mrs.

Starling, looking at her. "If I was you, I wouldn't be married just to please somebody else, without it pleased myself too. That's what _I_ think."

Poor Diana thought of Mr. Masters' face as she had seen it the last time; and it seemed to her good to give somebody else pleasure, even if pleasure were gone and out of the question for her. This view of the question, naturally, she did not make public.

"What _are_ you going to marry this man for?" said Mrs. Starling, standing straight up (she had been bending over some work) and looking hard at her daughter.

"I hope he'll make a good woman of me," Diana said soberly.

"If you had a little more s.p.u.n.k, you might make a good man of him; but you aren't the woman to do it. He wants his pride taken down a bit."

"But what about the day, mother?" said Diana, who preferred not to discuss this subject.

"Well, if you haven't thought of it, I have; and I'm going to ask all the folks there are; and we've got to make a spread for 'em, Diana Starling, so we may as well be about it."

"Already!" said Diana. "It's weeks yet."

"They'll run away, you'll find; and the cake'll be better for keepin'.

You may go about stonin' the fruit as soon as you're a mind to."

Diana said no more, but stoned her raisins and picked over her currants and sliced her citron, with the same apathetic want of realization which lately she had brought to everything. It might have been cake for anybody else's wedding that she was getting ready, so little did her fingers recognise the relation of the things with herself. The cake was made and baked and iced and ornamented. And then Mrs. Starling's activities went on to other items of preparation. Seeing Diana would be married, she meant it should be done in a way the country-side would not forget; neither should Mrs. Flandin make mental comparisons, pityingly, of the wedding that was, with the wedding that would have been with her son for the bridegroom. Baking and boiling and roasting and jellying went on in quant.i.ty, for Mrs. Starling was a great cook, and could do things in style when she chose. The house was put in order; fresh curtains hung up, and the handsomest linen laid out, and greens and flowers employed to cover and deck the severely plain walls and furniture. One thing more Mrs. Starling wished for which she was not likely to have, the presence of one of the Elmfield family on the occasion. She would have liked some one of them to be there, in order that sure news of the whole might go to Evan and beyond possibility of doubt; for a lurking fear of his sudden appearing some time had long hidden in Mrs. Starling's mind. I do not know what she feared in such a case. Of the two, Evan was hardly more distasteful to her as a son-in-law than the minister was; though it is true that her action in the matter of burning the letters had made her hate the man she had injured. This feeling was counterbalanced, I confess, by another feeling of the delight it would be to see Mr. Masters nonplussed; but on the whole, she preferred that Evan should keep at a distance.

All the work and confusion of these last few weeks claimed Diana's full time and strength, as well as her mother's; she had scarcely a minute to think; and that was one reason, no doubt, why she went through them with such unchanged composure. They were all behind her at last.

Everything was in order and readiness, down to the smallest particular; and it was with a dull sense of this that Diana went up to her room the last night before her wedding day. It was all done, and the time was all gone.

She went in slowly, went to the window, opened it and sat down before it. June had come again; one day of June was pa.s.sed, and to-morrow would be the second. Through the bustle of May, Diana had hardly given a look to the weather or a thought to the time of year; it greeted her now at her window like a dear old friend that she had been forgetting.

The moon, about an hour high, gave a gentle illumination through the dewy air, revealing plainly enough the level meadows, and the hills which made their distant bordering. The scent of roses and honeysuckles was abroad; just under Diana's window there was a honeysuckle vine in full blossom, and the rich, peculiar fragrance came in heavily-laden puffs of air; the softest of breezes brought them, stirring the little leaves lazily, and just touched Diana's face, sweet and tender, reminding, caressing. Reminding of what? For it began to stir vaguely and uneasily in Diana's heart. Things not thought of before put in a claim to be looked at. This her home and sanctuary for so many years, it was to be hers no longer. This was the last night at her window, by her honeysuckle vine. She would not have another evening the enjoyment of her wonted favourite view over the fields and hills; she had done with all that. Other scenes, another home, would claim her; and then slowly rose the thought that her freedom was gone; this was the last time she would belong to herself. Oddly enough, nothing of all this had come under consideration before. Diana had been stunned; she had believed for a long time that she was dead, mentally; she had been, as it were, in a slumber, partly of hopelessness, partly of preoccupation; now the time of waking had come; and the hidden life in her stirred and rose and s.h.i.+vered with the consciousness that it _was_ alive and in its full strength, and what it meant for it to be alive now. As I said, Diana's nature was too sound and well-balanced and strong for anything to crush it, or even any part of it; and now she knew that the nerves of feeling she thought Evan had killed for ever, were all astir and quivering, and would never be fooled into slumbering again. I cannot tell how all this dawned and broke to her consciousness. She had sat down at her window a calm, weary-hearted girl, placid, and with even a dull sort of content upon her; so she had sat and dreamed awhile; and then June and moonlight, and her honeysuckle, and the roses, and the memory of her free childish days, and the image of her lost lover, and the thought of where she was standing, by degrees--how gently they did it, too--roused her and p.r.i.c.ked her up to the consciousness of what she going to do. What was she going to do? Marry a man who had no real place in her heart. She had thought it did not matter; she had thought she was dead; now all at once she knew that she was alive in every fibre, and that it mattered fearfully. The idea of Mr. Masters stung her, not as novel-writers say "almost to madness,"--for there was no such irregularity in Diana's round, sound, healthy nature,--but to pain that seemed unbearable. No confusion in her brain, and no dulness now; on the contrary, an intense consciousness of all that her position involved. She had made a mistake, like many another; unlike many, she had found it out early. She was going to marry a man to whom she had no love to give; and she knew now that the life she must thenceforth lead would be daily torture. Almost the worse because she had for Mr.

Masters so deep a respect and so true an appreciation. And he loved her; of that there was no question; the whole affection of the best man she had ever known was bestowed upon her, and in his hopes he saw doubtless a future when she would have learnt to return his love. "And I never shall," thought Diana. "Never, as long as I live. I wonder if I shall get to hate him because I am obliged to live with him? All the heart I have is Evan's, and will be Evan's; it don't make any difference that he was not worthy of me, as I suppose he wasn't; I have given, and I cannot take back. And now I must live with this other man!"--Diana shuddered already.

She shed no tears. Happy are they whose grief can flow; part of the oppression, at least, flows off with tears, if not part of the pain.

Eyes wide open, staring out into the moonlight; a rigid face, from which the colour gradually ebbed and ebbed away, more and more; so Diana kept the watch of her bridal eve. As the moon got higher, and the world lay clearer revealed under its light, shadows grew more defined, and objects more recognisable, it seemed as if in due proportion the life before Diana's mental vision opened and displayed itself, plainer and clearer; as she saw one, she saw the other. If Diana had been a woman of the world, her strength of character would have availed to do what many a woman of the world has not the force for; she would have drawn back at the last minute and declined to fulfil her engagement.

But in the sphere of Diana's experience, such a thing was unheard of.

All the proprieties, all the conditions of the social life that was known to her, forbade even the thought; and the thought never came to her. She felt just as much bound, that is, as irrecoverably, as she would be twenty-four hours later. But she was like a caged wild animal.

The view of the sweet moonlit country became unbearable at last, and she walked up and down her floor; she had a vague idea of tiring herself so that she could sleep. She did get tired of walking, but no sleep came; and at last she sat down again before her window to watch another change that was coming over the landscape. The moon was down, and a cool grey light, very unlike her soft glamour, was stealing into the sky and upon the world. Yes, the day was coming; the clear light of a matter-of-fact, work-a-day creation. It was coming, and she must meet it, and march on in the procession of life, which would leave no one out. If she could go alone! But she must walk by another's side now.

And to that other, the light of this grey dawn, if he saw it, brought only thoughts of joy. Could she help his being disappointed? Would she be able to help his finding out what a dreadful mistake he had made, and she? "I _must_," thought Diana, and set her teeth mentally; "he must not know how I feel; he does not deserve that. He deserves nothing but good, of me or of anybody. I will give him all I can, and he shall not know how I do it."

With a recoil in every fibre of her nature, Diana turned to take up her life burden. She felt as if she had had none till now.

CHAPTER XXII.

NEW LIFE.

The first week of Diana's marriage was always a blank in her memory.

The one continual, intense strain of effort to hide from her husband what she was thinking and feeling swallowed up everything else. Mr.

Masters had procured a comfortable little light rockaway, and avoiding all public thoroughfares and conveyances, had driven off with Diana among the leafy wildernesses of the White Mountains; going where they liked and stopping where they liked. It was more endurable to Diana than any other way of spending those days could have been; the constant change and activity, and the variety of new things always claiming attention and admiration, gave her all the help circ.u.mstances could give. They offered abundance of subjects for Mr. Masters to talk about; and Diana could listen, and with a word or two now and then get along quite pa.s.sably. But of all the beauty they went through, of all the glory of those June days, of all the hours of conversation that went on, Diana kept in her memory but the one fact of continual striving to hinder Mr. Masters from seeing her heart. She supposed she succeeded; she never could tell. For one other thing forced itself upon her consciousness as the days went on--a growing appreciation of this man whom she did not love. His gentleness of manner, his tender care and consideration for her, the even sweetness of temper which nothing disturbed and which would let nothing disturb her, playing with inconveniences which he could not remove; and then, beneath all that, a strength of character and steady force of will which commanded her utmost respect and drew forth her fullest confidence. It hurt Diana's conscience terribly that she had given this man a wife who, as she said to herself, was utterly unworthy of him; to make this loss good, so far as any possible service or life-work could, she would have done anything or submitted to anything. It was the one wish left her.

"What do you think of going home?" Mr. Masters asked suddenly one evening. They had come back from a glorious ramble over the nearest mountain, and were sitting after supper in front of the small farm-house where they had found lodging, looking out upon the view.

Twilight was settling down upon the green hills. Diana started and repeated his word.

"Home?"

"Yes. I mean Pleasant Valley," said the minister, smiling. "Not the house where I first saw you. There are one or two sick people, from whom I do not feel that I can be long away."

"You always think of other people first!" said Diana, almost with a sigh.

"So do you."

"No, I do not. I do not think I do. It seems to me I have always thought most of myself."

"You can begin now, then, to do better."