THE HIDDEN LEAVEN
Christmas-eve had come round again. The successive changes of each season had pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s withereth, the flower fadeth--_"
Then Hope, born of Faith and Experience, cried: "_But the word of our G.o.d 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 reveille, 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 a.s.surance 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.diva, 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 b.u.t.toned tunic, and insert therein the fair white rose of a maiden"s proffered love. David"s uniform of amazed manhood, had provided no improvised b.u.t.tonhole 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 pa.s.sed 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.
CHAPTER XXV
THE PROPERTY OF THE CROWN
The summer pa.s.sed in perpetual expectation; which, when autumn arrived, seemed ripe for fulfilment.
Diana"s mind was so absorbed by her love for David, that she scarcely realised how completely she kept it out of her letters; or that his reticence might merely have been a reflection of her own. Also she every now and then relieved her feelings by writing him a complete outpouring.
This, often written side by side with her letter for the mail, she would seal up in an envelope addressed to David, and place in a compartment of the sandal-wood box in which she kept all his letters, with a vague idea that some day she herself would be able to place in his hands these unposted missives.
One afternoon, just as she was closing both envelopes, callers arrived.
They stayed to tea; leaving, only a few minutes before Rodgers came in with the post-bag.
Diana stamped her letter, and placed it in the bag. Then spent half an hour looking through some of David"s before locking them up with the one she had just written. This was especially full of tenderness and longing; and, though the quick blood mantled her cheek at the recollection of words it contained, her heart felt lightened and relieved.
"How foolish I am," she thought; "no wiser than the ordinary married women, whom I used to despise."
She took up a little pile of these letters, lying safely in their own compartment in the sandal-wood casket.
"They all belong to David," she whispered. "Some day--he will see them."
Then something about the address of the one she had just placed with the rest, caught her eye. The writing was hurried, and more like that which she had rapidly finished for posting, while Rodgers waited.
She tore it open.
_My dear David._
She glanced at the end. Then she sprang up and pealed the bell.