Diana

Diana did not take the bearing of the question.

"I go into the water every morning," the old lady explained. "You had better do the same. It will strengthen you."

"Into the water! You mean the salt water?"

"Of course I mean the salt water. There isn't any fresh water to go into, and no good if there was."

"I never tried salt water. I never saw salt water before."

"Do you good," said the old lady. "Well, go and sleep, my dear. Basil says you want rest."

But that way of taking it was not Diana's need, or purpose. She withdrew into her cool green-shaded room, and as the baby still slept, set open the blind doors which made that pleasant green shade, and sat down on the threshold to be quiet, and enjoy the view. The water was within a few rods of her window; nothing but a narrow strip of grass and a little picket fence intervening between the house and the sandy bit of beach. The waves were rolling in from the Narrows, which here were but a short distance to the eastward; and across the broad belt of waters she could see the low shore of Long Island on the other side. Diana put her head out of the door, and there, seven miles away to the west and north, she could see where a low, hovering, light smoke cloud told of the big city to which it owed its origin. Over the bay sails were flitting, not swiftly, for the air was only very gently stirring; but they were many, near and far, of different sizes and forms; and the mighty tide was rushing in with wonderful life and energy in its green waves. Diana's senses were like those of a person enchanted. She drew in the salt, lively air; she looked at the cool lights and shadows of the rushing water, over which here and there still hung bands of morning mist; she heard the lap of the waves upon the shore as they went by; and it was to her as if she had escaped from danger and perplexity into another world, where sorrow might be, indeed, but from which confusion and fear were banished.

The baby slept on, as if she had been broken off her rest by the novelties and inconveniences of travelling, and were making up for lost time; and Diana sat on the threshold of her door and thought. The lull was inexpressibly sweet, after the storm that had tossed her hither. It gave her repose just to remember that Evan could not find her out – and that Basil would leave her alone. Yes, both thoughts came in for a share in the deep-drawn breaths of relief which from time to time wrung themselves from Diana's breast. She knew it; she could not help it; and she soon forgot her husband in thinking of her lover. It seemed to her she might allow herself that indulgence now; now when she had put a gulf between them which he could not bridge over, and she would not; now when she had brought a separation between them which must forever be final. For she would never see him again. Surely now she might think of him, and let fancy taste the sweet bitter drops that memory would distil for her. Diana went back to the old time and lived in it for hours, till the baby awoke and claimed her; and even then she went on with her dream. She dreamed all day.

Next morning early, before she was awake, there came a little imperative tap at her door. Diana sprang up and opened it.

"I am going to take my bath," said her hostess. "Here's a bathing dress – put it on and come along."

"Now?" said Diana doubtfully.

"Why, of course now! Now's the time. Nobody'll see you, child; and if they do, it won't matter. Hundreds would see you if you were at Long Branch or Newport. Come along; you want bracing."

I wonder if I do, thought Diana, as she clothed herself in the loose gown of brown mohair; then slipped out after her hostess. If she did, she immediately confessed to herself, this was the thing to give it. The sun was not yet up; the morning air crisp and fresh and delicious; the water rolling gently in from the Narrows again, in a mighty tide, but with no wind, so sending up only little waves to the beach; however, they looked somewhat formidable to Diana.

"How far do you go in?" she asked.

"As far as I can. I can't swim, child, so I keep to shore. Come after me, here!" —

And she seized Diana's hand and marched in ahead of her, and marched on, till Diana would have stopped, but the old lady's hand pulled her along.

It was never to be forgotten, that first taste of salt water. When they were in the flood up to their necks, her companion made her duck her head under; it filled Diana's mouth and eyes at the first gasp with salt water, but what a new freshness of life seemed at the same time to come into her! How her brain cleared, and her very heart seemed to grow strong, and her eyesight true in that lavatory! She came out of the water for the moment almost gay, and made her toilette with a vigour and energy she had not brought to it in many a day. Breakfast was better to her, and the old lady was contented with what she said about it.

Yet Diana sat and dreamed again all day after that, watching the rolling tide of waters, and letting her thoughts run on in as uninterrupted a flow. She dreamed only about Evan; she went over old times and new, old impressions and new; she recalled words and looks and tones and gestures, of long ago and lately; at Pleasant Valley she had not dared; here she thought it was safe, and she might take the indulgence. She recalled all Evan's looks. How he had improved! More stately, more manly, more confident (could that be?), more graceful; with the air of command replacing a comparative repression of manner (only comparative), even as the full, thick, curly moustache replaced a velvety dark line which Diana well remembered. As he had been then, she had fancied him perfect; as he was now, he was to the eye far finer yet. Basil could not compare with him. Ah, why did fancy torture her by ever bringing forward the comparison! Basil never pretended to wear a moustache, and the features of his face were not so regular, and his eye was not so brilliant, and the indescribable air of authority was not there, nor the regulated grace of movement. True, Basil could sit a horse, and ride him, she knew, as well as anybody; and true, Basil's face had a high grave sweetness which was utterly unknown to the countenance of that other; and it was also true, that if Mr. Masters wore no air of command, he knew what the thing meant, especially command over himself. And there the comparison failed for Evan. In the contrast, Diana, down deep in the bottom of her heart, was not satisfied with him, not pleased, not contented. He might know how to give orders to his company, he had not left off himself being under orders; he might be strong to enforce discipline among his men, but alas! alas! he had left the reins loose upon the neck of his passions. Basil never did that, never. Basil never would in the like circumstances have sought a weak gratification at her expense. That was the word; weak. Evan had been selfishly weak. Basil was always, so far as she had known him, unselfishly strong. And yet, and yet! – she loved the weak one; although it pained her that he should have been weak.

Days went by. Diana lived in dreams.

"What is the matter with you?" her old friend asked her abruptly one evening.

"Nothing, I think," said Diana, looking up from her sewing and answering in some surprise.

"Nothing the matter! Then what did you come here for?"

"I thought" – Diana hesitated in confusion for the moment – "my husband agreed with me in thinking, that it would be good for me to be away from home for awhile."

"Wanted change, eh?" Mrs. Sutphen said dryly.

Diana did not know what to add to her words.

"Change and salt air" – the old lady went on.

"Not salt air particularly," Diana answered, feeling that she must answer. "I did not think of salt air. Though no change could have been so good for me."

"Has it been good for you?"

"I have enjoyed it more than I can tell," Diana said, looking up again.

"Yes, yes; but that isn't the thing. I know you enjoy it. But do you think it is making you fat?"

"I don't need that," said Diana, smiling. "I am fat enough."

"You won't be, if you go on losing as you have done since you came. Now

I agree with you that I don't think that is Clifton air. What is it?"

Diana could not reply. She was startled and troubled. She knew the fact was true.

"Basil won't like it if I let this go on; and I don't mean it shall. Is anything the matter between you and him?"

"What do you mean?" Diana asked, to gain time.

"You know what I mean. I spoke plain. Have you and he had any sort of a quarrel or disagreement?"

"Certainly not!"

"Certainly not?– then why aren't you happy?"

"Why do you ask me?" said Diana. "Why should you question my being happy?"

"I've got eyes, child; inconvenient things, for they see. You look and act like a marble woman; only that you are not cold, and that you move about. Now, that isn't your nature. What spell has come over you?"

"You know, Mrs. Sutphen," Diana answered with calmness, "there are many things that come up in the world to try one and trouble one; things one cannot help, and that one must bear."

"I know that, as well as you do. But a woman with the husband you have got, ought never to be petrified by anything that comes to her. In the first place, she has no cause; and in the second place, she has no right."

There was such an instant assent of Diana's inner nature to at least the latter of these assertions, that after a minute or two's pause she said very simply —

"Thank you, That is true."

"He's rather fond of you, isn't he?" the old lady asked with a well-pleased look at her beautiful neighbour.

"Yes. Too much," said Diana, sighing.

"Can't be too much, as I see, if only you are equally fond of him; it is bad to have inequality in that matter. But, my dear, whatever you do, don't turn into marble. There's fire at the heart of the earth, folks say, but it don't do us much good in winter."

With this oracular statement Mrs. Sutphen closed her lecture. She had said enough. Diana spent half that night and all the next day in a quite new set of meditations.

And more days than one. She waked up to see what she had been doing. What business had she to be thinking of Evan, when she was Basil's wife? – what right to, be even only in imagination, spending her life with him? She knew, now that she was called to look at it, that Mrs. Sutphen had spoken true, and that a process had been going on in herself which might well be likened to the process of petrifying. Everything had been losing taste and colour lately; even her baby was not the delight she had been formerly. Her mind had been warped from its healthy condition, and was growing morbid. Conscience roused up now fully, and bade Diana stop short where she was and take another course. But there she was met by a difficulty; one that many a woman has had to meet, and that few have ever overcome. To take another course, meant that she should cease thinking of Evan, – cease thinking of him even at all; for it was one of those things which you cannot do a little. She tried it; and she found it to be impossible. Everything and anything would set her upon the track of thinking of him; everything led to him; everything was bound up with him, either by sympathy or contrast. She found that she must think of Evan, because she loved him. She said that to herself, and pleaded it. Then do not love him! was the instant sharp answer of conscience. And Diana saw a battle set in array.

That day, the day when she got to this point, was one of those which even in summer one may know on the sea-shore. It was grey and cool, and a violent easterly wind was driving the waters in from the Narrows. The moment Diana got a sight of those battle forces opposed to each other in her spiritual nature, she threw on bonnet and shawl and went out. Baby was sleeping, and she left her safely in charge of a good-tempered servant who asked no better.

She went along the shore in the face of the wind, meeting, breasting, overcoming it, though with the exertion of determined strength and energy. The gale was rather fierce. It was a sight to see, the rush of that tide of waters, mighty, sweeping, rolling and tumbling in from the great sea, restless, endless. Diana did not stop to draw comparisons, yet I think she felt them even then; the wild accord of the unchained forces without and the unchained forces within. Who could stay them, the one or the other? "That is Nature," said Diana to herself; "and this is Nature; 'the troubled sea that cannot rest.' But that is spoken of the wicked; am I wicked because I cannot help what I cannot help? As well put out my tiny hand and sweep back that stormy flood of water to the ocean where it comes from! – as hopefully, as practicably. What am I, I– but a chip or a shingle tossed and chased along on the power of the waves? The wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest; that is it, it cannot rest. Look at it, and think of bidding it rest!"

She had walked a long way in the teeth of the storm, and yet, unwilling even to turn her face homewards with her mind still at war, she had crouched down to rest under the lee of an old shed which stood near the edge of the water. Diana drew her shawl closer round her and watched the wild play of the waves, which grew wilder every moment; taking a sort of gloomy comfort in the thought that they were not more irresistible or unopposable than the tempest in her own heart. Then came in the thought – it stole in – "There was One who could bid it be still – and the sea heard him and was quiet. If he could do that, could he not still this other storm? A worse storm, yes; but could not the hand that did one thing do the other?" Diana knew on the instant that it could; but with that came another consciousness – that she wished it could not. She did not want the storm laid. Better the raging forces than the calm that would follow the death of her love for Evan Knowlton. "But it could never die!" was the impatient objection of her heart; and then came the whisper of conscience, "It ought; you know it ought; and the Lord never bade you do a thing he would not help you to do, or do for you if you are willing." And she remembered: "If ye shall say to this mountain, Be thou removed." – Could she be willing? that was all. Would she say it?

The Lord said, there are some sorts of devils that are only cast out by prayer and fasting; and I suppose that means, by very great and determinate laying hold of the offered strength and fullest surrender to all its dispositions.

This was a battle before which Waterloo sinks to a play of fire-crackers and Gravelotte to a great wrestling match. There was struggle on those fields, and bitter determination, and death faced and death met; and yet the combatants there never went to the front with the agony which Diana's fight cost her. And if anybody thinks I am extravagant, I will remind him on what authority we have it, that "he that ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city." Let no one suppose the battle in Diana's instance was soon fought and over. It was death to give up Evan; not the death of the body, which lived on and was strong though she grew visibly thin, but the death of the will; and that is a death harder by far than the other. Diana was in the struggle of that fight for many a day, and, as I said, growing thin under it. She was not willing; if she could be delivered from this passion which was like her life, she was not willing to be delivered. Yet duty was plain; conscience was inexorable. Diana struggled and fought till she could fight no longer, and then she dragged herself as it were to the feet of the Stiller of the waves, with the cry of the Syro-Phenician woman on her lips and in her heart: "Lord, help me!" But the help, Diana knew by this time, meant that he should do all the work himself, not come in aid of her efforts, which were like ropes of straw in a flame. Let no one think, either, that the first struggle to have faith was faith itself, or that the first endeavour to submit was surrender. There is a wide difference, and often a wide distance. But there came a time – it was slow in coming, but it came – when like a wearied child Diana ceased from her own efforts, and like a helpless child threw herself upon strength that she knew. And then the work was done.

Let no one say, either, that what I have described is an impossibility. "If ye have faith," – the Master said, – "nothing shall be impossible to you." And nothing is. "He is a Rock; his work is perfect." And he who overcame all our enemies for us can overcome them in us. They are conquered foes. Only, the Lord will not do the work for those who are trusting in themselves.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

BUDS AND BLOSSOMS

It was the end of September. Nearing a time of storms again in the air and on the sea; but an absolute calm had settled down upon Diana. Not at all the calm of death; for after death, in this warfare, comes not only victory, but new life. It was very strange, even to herself. She had ceased to think of Captain Knowlton; if she thought of him, it was with the recognition that his power over her was gone. She felt like a person delivered from helpless bondage. There was some lameness, there were some bruises yet from the fight gone by; but Diana was every day recovering from these, and elasticity and warmth were coming back to the members that had been but lately rigid and cold. The sun shone again for her, and the sky was blue, and the arch of it grew every day loftier and brighter to her sense. At first coming to Clifton, Diana had perceived the beauties and novelties of her new surroundings; now she began to enjoy them. The salt air was delicious; the light morning mist over the bay, as she saw it when she went to take her morning bath, held a whole day of sunlit promise within its mysterious folds; the soft low hum of the distant city, which she could hear when the waves were still, made the solitude and the freshness and the purity of the island seem doubly rare and sweet. And her baby began to be now to Diana the most wonderful of delights; more than ever it had been at any previous time.

All this while she had had letters from Basil; not very long letters, such as a man can write to a woman whose whole sympathy he knows he has; but good letters, such as a man can write to a woman to whom his own heart and soul have given all they have. Not that he ever spoke of that fact, or alluded to it. Basil was no maudlin, and no fool to ask for a gift which cannot be yielded by an effort of will; and besides, he had never entirely lost hope; so that, though things were dark enough for him certainly, he could write manly, strong, sensible letters, which, in their very lack of all allusion to his own feelings, spoke whole volumes to the woman who knew him and could interpret them. The thought of him grieved her; it was getting to be now the only grief she had. Her own letters to him were brief and rare. Diana had a nervous fear of letting the Clifton postmark be seen on a letter of hers at home, knowing what sort of play sometimes went on in the Pleasant Valley post office; so she never sent a letter except when she had a chance to despatch it from New York. These epistles were very abstract; they spoke of the baby, told of Mrs. Sutphen, gave details of things seen and experienced; but of Diana's inner life, the fight and the victory, not a whit. She could not write about them to Basil; for, glad as he would be of what she could tell him, she could not say enough. In getting deliverance from a love it was wrong to indulge, in becoming able to forget Evan, she had not thereby come nearer to her husband, or in the least fonder of thinking of him; and so Diana shrank from the whole subject when she found herself with pen in hand and paper before her.

When September was gone and October had begun its course, a letter came from Basil in which he desired to know about Diana's plans. There were no hindrances any longer in the way of her coming home, he told her. Diana had known that such a notification would come, must come, and yet it gave her an unwelcome start. Mrs. Sutphen had handed it to her as they came in from their morning dip in the salt water; the coachman had brought it late last evening from the post office, she said. Diana had dressed before reading it; and when she had read it, she sat down upon the threshold of her glass door to think and examine herself.

It was October, yet still and mild as June. Haze lay lingering about the horizon, softened the shore of Long Island, hid with a thick curtain the place of the busy city, the roar of which Diana could plainly enough hear in the stillness, a strange, indistinct, mysterious, significant murmur of distant unrest. All before and around her was rest; the flowing waters were too quiet to-day to suggest anything disquieting; only life, without which rest is nought. The air was inexpressibly sweet and fresh; the young light of the day dancing as it were upon every cloud edge and sail edge, in jocund triumph beginning the work which the day would see done. Diana sat down and looked out into it all, and tried to hold communion with herself. She was sorry to leave this place. Yes, why not? She was sorry to exchange her present life for the old one. Quiet and solitary it had been, this life at Clifton, for Mrs. Sutphen scarcely made her feel less alone with her than without her; and she had held herself back from society. Quiet and solitary, and lately healing; and Pleasant Valley was full of painful memories and associations, her mother, and – her husband. Diana felt as if she could have welcomed everything else, if only Basil had not been there. The sight of the lovely bay with its misty shores and its springing light hurt her at last, because she must leave it; she sank her face in her hands and began to call herself to account. Duty was waiting before her; was she not willing to take it up? She had surrendered her will utterly to God in the matter of her love to Evan, and she had been delivered from the torture and the bondage of it; quite delivered; she could bear to live without Evan now, she could bear to live without thinking of him; he would always be in a certain sense dear, but the spell of passion was broken for ever. That did not make her love her husband. No; but would not the same strength that had freed her from temptation on the one hand, help her to go forward and do her duty on the other? And in love and gratitude for the deliverance vouchsafed her, should she not do it? "I will do it, if I die!" was her inward conclusion. "And I shall not die, but by the Lord's help I shall do it."

So she wrote to her husband that she was ready, and he came to fetch her.

The Pleasant Valley maples were flaunting in orange and crimson when the home journey was made. The fairest month of the year was in the prime of its beauty; the air had that wonderful clearness and calm which bids the spirit of the beholder be still and be glad, saying that there is peace and victory somewhere, and rest, when the harvest of life is gathered. Diana felt the speech, but thought nevertheless that for her, peace and victory were a good way off. She believed they would come, when life was done; the present thing was to live, and carry the burden and do the work. The great elms hung still green and sheltering over the lean-to door. The house was enlarged and improved; and greatly beautified with a coat of paint. Diana saw it all; and she saw the marvellous beauty of the meadows and their bordering hills; she felt as if she were coming to her prison and place of hard labour.

"How do you like the looks of things?" her husband asked.

"Nice as can be."

"You like it?"

"Very much. I am glad you did not make the house white."

"I remembered you said it ought to be brown."

"But would you have liked it white?"

"I would have liked it no way but your way," he said with a slight smile and look at her, which Diana could not answer, and which cut her sharply. She had noticed, she thought, that Basil was more sober than he used to be. She thought she knew why; and she wanted to tell him part of what had gone on in her mind of late, and how free she was of the feelings he supposed were troubling her; but a great shyness of the subject had seized Diana. She was afraid to broach it at all, lest going on from one thing to another, Basil might ask a question she could not answer. She was very sorry for him, so much that she almost forgot to be sorry for herself, as she went into the house.