Chapter 20

SETTLED.

It was a very wild storm yet through which Mr. Masters drove Diana home. Still the wind blew hard, and the snow came driving and beating down upon their shoulders and faces in thick white masses; and the drifts had piled up in some places very high. More than once the sleigh, Prince and all, was near being lodged in a snow-bank, from which the getting free would have been a work of time; Mr. Masters had to get out and do some rather complicated engineering; and withal, through the thick and heavy snowfall it was difficult to see what they were coming to. Patience and coolness and good driving got the better of dangers however, and slowly the way was put behind them. They met nobody.

"Mr. Masters," said Diana suddenly, "you will have to stay at our house to-night. You can never get back."

"I don't believe Mrs. Starling will let me go," said the minister.

Diana did not know exactly how to understand this. It struck a sort of chill to her, that he was intending at once to proclaim their new relations to each other; yet she could find nothing to object, and indeed she did not wish to object.

"Mother will not be pleased," she ventured after a pause.

"No, I do not expect it. We have got to face that. But she is a wise woman, and will know how to accommodate herself to things when she knows she can't help it. I will put Prince up and give him some supper, and then we will see."

Diana accordingly went in alone. But, as it happened, Mrs. Starling was busied with some affairs in the outer kitchen; and Diana passed through and got up to her own room without any encounter. She was glad. Encounters were not in her line. She was somewhat leisurely, therefore, in taking off her wrappings and changing her dress. And as the minister was on the other hand as soon done with his ministrations to Prince as circumstances and the snow permitted, it fell out that they re-entered the kitchen almost at the same moment, though by different doors. It was the lean-to kitchen, the only place where fire was kept on Sunday: and indeed that was the usual winter dwelling-room, a little outer kitchen serving for all the dirty work. It was in what I should call dreary Sunday order; which means, order without life. The very chairs and tables seemed to say forlornly that they had nothing to do. Not so much as an open book proclaimed that the mistress of the place was any better off. However, she had other resources; for even as the minister came in from the snow, and Diana from up-stairs, Mrs. Starling herself made her appearance from the outer kitchen with a pan of potatoes in her hand.

Mrs. Starling liked neither to be surprised, nor to seem so. Moreover, from the outer kitchen door she had seen Prince and the sleigh going to the barn, and seen, too, who was driving him. With the cunning of an Indian, she had made a sudden tremendous leap to conclusions; how arrived at, I cannot say; there is a faculty in some natures that is very like a power of intuition. So she came in now with a manner that was undeclarative of anything but grimness; gave no sign of either surprise or curiosity; vouchsafed the minister only a scant little nod of welcome, and to Diana scarce a look; and set her pan of potatoes on the table, while she went into the pantry for a knife.

"Do you want those peeled, mother?" Diana asked.

"Must have something for supper, I suppose."

"Shall I do it?"

"No. I guess you've done enough for one day."

"_I_ have," said Mr. Masters. "And if you had driven these three miles in the snow, you would know it. May I have some supper, Mrs. Starling?"

"There'll be enough, I guess," said the mistress of the house, with her knife flying round the potato in hand in a way that showed both practice and energy. Then presently, with a scarce perceptible glance up at her daughter, she added,

"Where have you been?"

"To church, mother."

"To church!"--scornfully. "What did you do there?"

"She heard preaching," said the minister, in that very quiet and composed way of his, which it was difficult to fight against. Few people ever tried; if any one could, it was Mrs. Starling.

"I guess there warn't many that had the privilege?" she said inquiringly.

"Not many," said the minister. "I never had a smaller audience--in church--to preach to."

"Folks had better be at home such a day, and preach to themselves."

"I quite agree with you. So I brought Diana back as soon as I could. But we have been two hours on the way."

Mrs. Starling's knife flew round the potatoes; her tongue was silent. Diana began to set the table. Sitting by the corner of the fire to dry the wet spots on his clothes, the minister watched her. And Mrs. Starling, without looking, watched them both; and at last, having finished her potatoes, seized the dish and went off with it; no doubt to cook the supper, for savoury fumes soon came stealing in. Diana made coffee, not without a strange back look to a certain stormy September night when she had made it for some one else. It was December now--a December which no spring would follow; so what mattered anything, coffee or the rest? If there were any blessing left for her in the world, she believed it would be under Mr. Masters' protection and in his goodness. She felt dull and in a dream, but she believed that.

The three had supper alone. Conversation, as far as Mrs. Starling was concerned, went on the pattern that has been given. Mr. Masters was at the whole expense of the entertainment, mentally; and he talked with the ease and pleasantness that seemed natural to him, of things that could not help interesting the others; even Diana in her deadness of heart, even Mrs. Starling in her perversity, pricked up their ears and listened. I don't believe, either, he even found it a difficult effort; nothing ever seemed difficult to Mr. Masters that he had to do; it was always done so graciously, and as if he were enjoying it himself. So no doubt he was. Certainly this evening; though Mrs. Starling did not speak many words, and Diana spoke none. So supper was finished, and the mistress and her guest moved their chairs to the fire, while Diana busied herself in putting up the things, going in and out from the pantry.

"You'll have to keep me to-night, Mrs. Starling," said the minister.

"I knew that when I saw you come in," responded the lady, not over graciously.

"I am not going to receive hospitality under false pretences, though," said the minister. "If I rob, I won't steal. Mrs. Starling, Diana and I have come to an agreement."

"I knew that too," returned the lady defiantly.

"According to which agreement," pursued the other, without change of a hair, "I am coming again, some other time, to take her away, out of your care into mine."

"There go two words to that bargain," said Mrs. Starling after a half-minute's pause.

"Two words have been spoken; mine and hers. Now we want yours."

"Diana's got to take care of me."

"Does that mean that she is never to marry?"

"It don't mean anything ridiculous," said Mrs. Starling; "so it don't mean that."

"I should not like to say anything ridiculous. Then, if she may marry, it only remains that she and you should be suited. Do you object to me as a son-in-law?"

It is impossible to convey the impression of the manner, winning, half humourous, half dry, supremely careless and confident, in which all this was said on the minister's part. It was something almost impossible at the moment to withstand, and it fidgetted Mrs. Starling to be under the power of it. Her grudge against the minister was even increased by it, and yet she could not give vent to the feeling.

"I'm not called upon to make objections against you in any way," she answered rather vaguely.

"That means, of course, that you have no objections to make?"

"I don't make any," said Mrs. Starling shortly.

"I must be content with that," said Mr. Masters, smiling. "Diana, your mother makes no objections." And rising, he went and gravely kissed her.

I do not know what tied Mrs. Starling's tongue. She sat before the fire with her hands in her lap, in an inward fury of dull displeasure; she had untold objections to this arrangement; and yet, though she knew she must speak now or never, she could not speak. Whether it were the spell of the minister's manner, which, as I said, worked its charm upon her as it did upon others; whether it were the prick of conscience, warning her that she had interfered once too often already in her daughter's life affairs; or whether, finally, she had an instinctive sense that things were gone too far for her hindering hand, she fumed in secret, and did nothing. She was a woman of sense; she knew that if a man like Mr. Masters loved her daughter, and had got her daughter's good-will, it would be an ill waste of strength on her part to try to break the arrangement. It might be done; but it would not be worth the scandal and the confusion. And she was not sure that it could be done.

So she sat chewing the cud of her mortification and ire, giving little heed to what words passed between the others. It had come to this! She had schemed, she had put a violent hand upon Diana's fate, to turn it her own way, and now _this_ was the way it had gone! All her wrong deeds for nothing! She had purposed, as she said, that Diana should take care of her; therefore Diana should not marry any poor and proud young officer, nor any officer at all, to carry her away beyond reach and into a sphere beyond and above the sphere of her mother. No, Diana must marry a rich young farmer; Will Flandin would just do; a man who would not dislike or be anywise averse to receive such a mother-in-law into his house, but reckon it an added advantage. Then her home would be secure, and her continued rule; and ruling was as necessary to Mrs. Starling as eating. She would have a larger house and business to manage, and withal need not do herself more than she chose; having Diana, she would be sure of everything else she wanted. Now she had lost Diana. And only to a poor parson when all was done! Would it have been better to let her marry the officer? For Mrs. Starling had a shrewd guess that such would have been the issue of things if she had let them alone. Diana could not so have been more out of her power or out of her sphere; for Mrs. Starling had a certain assured consciousness that she would not "fit" in the minister's family, and that, gentle as he was, he would rule his house and his wife himself. She sat brooding, hardly hearing what was said by either of the others: and indeed, the discourse was not very lively; till Mr. Masters rose and bade them good night. And then Mrs. Starling still went on musing. Why had she not interfered at the right moment, to put a stop to this affair? She had let the moment go, and the thought vexed her; and her mood was not at all sweetened by the lurking doubt whether she could have stopped it if she had tried. Mrs. Starling could not abide to meet with her match, and sorely hated her match when she found it. What if she were to tell Diana of those letters of Evan? But then Diana would be off to the ends of the earth with _him_. Better keep her in the village, perhaps. Mrs. Starling grew more and more impatient.

"Diana, you are a big fool!" she burst out.

Diana at that moment thought _not_. She did not answer. Both were sitting before the wide fireplace, and Diana had not moved since Mr. Masters left them.

"What sort of a life do you expect you are going to have?"

"I don't know, mother."

"You, who might marry the richest man in town!--And live in plenty, and have just your own way, and everything you want! You _are_ a fool I Do you know what it means to be a poor minister's wife?"

"I shall know, I suppose. That is, if Mr. Masters is poor. I don't know whether he is or not."

"He is of course! They all are."

"Well, mother. You have taught me how to keep house on a little."

"Yes, you and me; that's one thing. It's another thing when you have a shiftless man hanging round, and a dozen children or so, and expected to be civil to all the world. They always have a house full of children, and they are all shiftless."

"Who, mother?"

"Poor ministers."

"Father hadn't--and wasn't."

"He was as shiftless a man as ever wore shoe-leather; he wasn't a bit of help to a woman. All he cared for was to lose his time in his books; and that's the way this man'll do, and leave you to take the brunt of everything. _Your_ time'll go in cookin' and mendin' and washin' up; and you'll have to be at everybody's beck and call at the end o' that. If there's anything _I_ hate, it's to be in the kitchen and parlour both at the same time."

Diana was silent.

"You might have lived like a queen."

"I don't want to live like a queen."

"You might have had your own way, Diana."

"I don't care about having my own way."

"I wish you would care, then, or had a speck of spirit. What's life good for?"

"I wish I knew"--said Diana wearily, as she rose and set back her chair.

"You never will know, in that man's house. I do think, ministers are the meanest lot o' folks there is; and that you should go and take one of them!"--

"It is the other way, mother; he has taken me," said Diana, half laughing at what seemed to her the disproportion between her mother's passion and the occasion for it.

"You were a fool to let him."

"I don't think so."

"You'll be sorry yet."

"Why?"

"They're a shiftless 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.