Diana Part 9

The old lady looked at her thoughtfully and wistfully, but said no more. Diana cleared the table and washed the few dishes; and when all was straight again, took out a newspaper she had brought from home, and she and the old lady settled themselves for an afternoon of enjoyment.

For it was that to both parties. At home Diana cared little about the paper; here it was quite another thing. Mrs. Bartlett wanted to hear all there was in it; public doings, foreign doings, city news, editor's gossip; and even the advertis.e.m.e.nts came in for their share of pleasure-giving. New inventions had an interest; tokens of the world's movements, or the world's wants, in other notices, were found suggestive of thought or provocative of wonder. Sitting with her feet put towards the fire, her knitting in her hands, the quick grey eyes studied Diana's face as she read, never needing to give their supervision to the fingers; and the coa.r.s.e blue yarn stocking, which was doubtless destined for Joe, grew visibly in length while the eyes and thoughts of the knitter were busy elsewhere. The newspaper filled a good part of the afternoon; for the reading was often interrupted for talk which grew out of it. When at last it was done, and Mrs.

Bartlett's eyes returned to the fire, there were a few minutes of stillness; then she said gently,

"Now, our other reading, dear?"

"You like this the best, Mother Bartlett, don't you?" said Diana, as she rose and brought from the inner room a large volume; _the_ Book, as any one might know at a glance; carefully covered with a sewn cover of coa.r.s.e cloth. "Where shall I read now?"

The place indicated was the beginning of the Revelation, a favourite book with the old lady. And as she listened, the knitting grew slower; though, true to the instinctive habit of doing something, the fingers never ceased absolutely their work. But they moved slowly; and the old lady's eyes, no longer on the fire, went out of the open window, and gazed with a far-away gaze that went surely beyond the visible heaven; so wrapt and steady it was. Diana, sitting on a low seat at her feet, glanced up sometimes; but seeing that gaze, looked down and went on again with her reading and would not break the spell. At last, having read several chapters without a word of interruption, she stopped. The old lady's eyes came back to her knitting, which began to go a little faster.

"Do you like all this so much?" Diana asked. "I know you do; but I can't see why you do. You can't understand it."

"I guess I do," said the old lady. "I seem to, anyhow. It's queer if I don't."

"But you can't make anything of all those horses?"

"Why, it's just what you've been readin' about all the afternoon."

"In the newspaper!" cried Diana.

"It's many a year that I've been lookin' at it," said the old lady; "ever sen I heard it all explained by a good minister. I've been lookin' at it ever sen." She spoke dreamily.

"It's all words and words to me," said Diana.

"There's a blessin' belongs to studyin' them words, though. Those horses are the works and judgments of the Lord that are goin' on in all the earth, to prepare the way of his comin'."

"Whose coming?"

"The Lord's comin'," said the old lady solemnly. "The white horse, that's victory; that's goin' on conquering and to conquer; that's the truth and power of the Lord bringin' his kingdom. The red horse, that's war; ah, how that red horse has tramped round the world! he's left the marks of his hoofs on our own ground not long sen; and now you've been readin' to me about his goin's on elsewhere. The black horse, that's famine; and not downright starvation, the minister said, but just want; grindin' and pressin' people down. Ain't there enough o' that in the world? not just so bad in Pleasant Valley, but all over. And the pale horse--what is it the book calls him?--that's death; and he comes to Pleasant Valley as he comes everywhere. They've been goin', those four, ever sen the world was a world o' fallen men."

"But what do they do to prepare the way for the Lord's coming?" said Diana.

"What do I know? _That_'ll be known when the book shall come to be read, I s'pose. I'm waitin'. I'll know by and by"--

"Only I can seem to see so much as this," the old lady went on after a pause. "The Lord won't have folk to settle down accordin' to their will into a contented forgetfulness o' him; so he won't let there be peace till the King o' Peace comes. O, I'd be glad if he'd come!"

"But that will be the end of the world," said Diana.

"Well," said Mrs. Bartlett, "it might be the end of the world for all I care; if it would bring Him. What do I live for?"

"You know I don't understand you, Mother Bartlett," said Diana gently.

"Well, what do you live for, child?"

"I don't know," said Diana slowly. "Nothing. I help mother make b.u.t.ter and cheese; and I make my clothes, and do the housework. And next year it'll be the same thing; and the next year after that. It don't amount to anything."

"And do you think the Lord made you--you pretty creatur!"--said the old lady, softly pa.s.sing her hand down the side of Diana's face,--"for nothin' better than to make cheese and b.u.t.ter?"

Diana smiled and blushed brightly at her old friend, a lovely child's smile.

"I may come to be married, you know, one of these days! But after all, _that_ don't make any difference. It's the same thing, married or not married. People all do the same things, day after day, till they die."

"If that was all"--said the old lady meditatively, looking into the fire and knitting slowly.

"It _is_ all; except that here and there there is somebody who knows more and can do something better; I suppose life is something more to them. But they are mostly men."

"Edication's a fine thing," Mrs. Bartlett went on in the same manner; "but there's two sorts. There's two sorts, Diana. I hain't got much,--o' one kind; I never had no chance to get it, so I've done without it. And now my life's so near done, it don't seem much matter.

But there's the other sort, that ain't learned at no 'cademy. The Lord put me into _his_ school forty-four years ago--where he puts all his children; and if they learn their lessons, he takes 'em up and up,--some o' the lessons is hard to learn,--but he takes 'em up and up; till life ain't a puzzle no longer, and they begin to know the language o' heaven, where his courts be. And that's edication that's worth havin',--when one's just goin' there, as I be."

"How do you get into that school, Mother Bartlett?" Diana asked thoughtfully, and yet with her mind not all upon what she was saying,

"You are in it, my dear. The good Lord sends his lessons and his teachers to every one; but it's no use to most folks; they won't take no notice."

"What 'teachers'?" said Diana, smiling.

"There's a host of them," said Mrs. Bartlett; "and of all sorts. Why, I seem to be in the midst of 'em, Diana. The sun is a teacher to me every day; and the clouds, and the air, and the colours. The hill and the pasture ahint the house,--I've learned a heap of lessons from 'em. And I'm learnin' 'em all the time, till I seem to be rich with what they're tellin' me. So rich, some days I 'most wonder at myself. No doubt, to hear all them voices, one must hear the voice o' the Word. And then there's many other voices; but they don't come just so to all. I could tell you some o' mine; but the ones that'll come to you'll be sure to be different; so you couldn't learn from _them_, child. And folks thinks I'm a lonesome old woman!"

"Well, how can they help it?" said Diana.

"It's nat'ral," said Mrs. Bartlett.

"I can't help your seeming so to me."

"That _ain't_ nat'ral, for you had ought to know better. They think, folks does,--I know,--I'm a poor lone old woman, just going to die."

"But isn't that nearly true?" said Diana gently.

There was a slight glad smile on the withered lips as Mrs. Bartlett turned towards her.

"You have the book there on your lap, dear. Just find the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of John, and read the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth verses. And when you feel inclined to think that o' me agin, just wait till you know what they mean."

Diana found and read:--

"'Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whoesoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.'"

CHAPTER V.

MAKING HAY.

June had changed for July; but no heats ever withered the green of the Pleasant Valley hills, nor browned its pastures; and no droughts ever stopped the tinkling of its rills and brooks, which rolled down, every one of them, over gravelly pebbly beds to lose themselves in lake or river. Sun enough to cure the hay and ripen the grain, they had; and July was sweet with the perfume of hayfield, and lovely with brown hayricks, and musical with the whetting of scythes. Mrs. Starling's little farm had a good deal of gra.s.s land; and the haying was proportionally a busy season. For haymakers, according to the general tradition of the country, in common with reapers, are expected to eat more than ordinary men, or men in ordinary employments; and to furnish the meals for the day kept both Mrs. Starling and her daughter busy.

It was mid-afternoon, sunny, perfumed, still; the afternoon luncheon had gone out to the men, who were cutting then in the meadow which surrounded the house. Diana found her hands free; and had gone up to her room, not to rest, for she was not tired, but to get out of the atmosphere of the kitchen and breathe a few minutes without thinking of cheese and gingerbread. She had begun to change her dress; but leisure wooed her, and she took up a book and presently forgot even that care in the delight of getting into a region of _thought_. For Diana's book was not a novel; few such found their way to Pleasant Valley, and seldom one to Mrs. Starling's house. Her father's library was quite unexhausted still, its volumes took so long to read and needed so much thinking over; and now she was deep in a treatise more solid and less attractive than most young women are willing to read. It carried her out of the round of daily duties and took her away from Pleasant Valley altogether, and so was a great refreshment. Besides, Diana liked thinking.